This branch technical position (BTP) paper on the environmental monitoring program for a low-level radioactive waste disposal facility provides general guidance on what is required by Section 61.53 of Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations (10 CFR) of applicants submitting a license application for such a facility. In general, the environmental monitoring program consists of three phases: preoperational, operational, and postoperational. Each phase of the monitoring program should be designed to fulfill the specific objectives defined in the BTP paper. During the preoperational phase, the objectives of the program are to provide site characterization information, to demonstrate site suitability and acceptability, to obtain background or baseline information, and to provide a record for public information. During the operational phase, the emphasis on measurement shifts. Monitoring data are obtained to provide early warning of releases and to document compliance with regulations, the dose limits of 10 CFR Part 61, or applicable standards of the US Environmental Protection Agency. Data are also used to update important pathway parameters to improve predictions of site performance and to provide a record of performance for public information. The postoperational environmental monitoring program emphasizes measurements to demonstrate compliance with the site-closure requirements and continuedmore » compliance with the performance objective in regard to the release of radionuclides to the environment. The data are used to support evaluation of long-term effects on the general public and for public information. Guidance is also provided in the BTP paper on the choice of which constituents to measure, setting action levels, relating measurements to appropriate actions in a corrective action plan, and quality assurance.« less


Polyvocality, according to Bakhtin (1986), is integral to all human communication: our understanding of any text is informed by our knowledge of its history of use. Kristeva's work on intertextuality elaborates this picture by emphasising the relationships between texts at a single point in time (Moi, 1986). Between them, these two influential critics have highlighted the importance both of diachronic and of synchronic textual relationships in understanding language in use. In the emergent present of any act of communication, the generally unconscious but still shaping memories of history of use are entwined with the configuring effects of the nature of the communication channel. Just as the model of language as a conduit for ideas has been quizzed and found seriously wanting (Reddy,1993), so 'context' can no longer (if it ever did) work as a container metaphor to identify what lies around the linguistic code. The study of language as social interaction demands examination of attempts at intersubjectivity via texts that can only be approached through active engagement with their spatial and temporal characteristics and, therefore, through active engagement with culturally embedded meanings. In this paper we take data from two kinds of sources in order to explore the issues raised above. Both sets of data are from novice users of a technology communicating with their peers: (a) three- and four-year old children talking with others on a simplified telephone system; and (b) undergraduate students engaged in Internet Relay Chat. Our investigation points up interlocutors' creative deployment of language resources in their encounters with the constraints (understood here as the affordances and limitations) of the mode of communication, and demonstrates ways in which those language resources are permeated by participants' sociocultural understandings. This is evidenced through three lines of inquiry: • the acquisition and manipulation of socially constructed routines in openings and closings; • phonological, graphical and other means of language play; • pursuit of interpersonal goals through negotiation. Finally it is proposed, partly through this paper as an enacting exemplar, that the study of young children's discourse need not proceed from an assumption of deficit and need not be shunted into (cognitivist) psycholinguistics. From the viewpoint of linguistic or discourse theory as centre ground, data from children's discourse need not be separated off as at best a specialist area, at worst an irrelevance to mainstream theorizing appertaining to issues of linguistics, language and the real world. Engaging with new communication channels entails learning, language development, and hence modification to social identity for all. Consideration of such changes must be at the heart of theorizing discourse.


In this paper, drawn from an educational study of The Occupy Movement (Occupy), I will argue that when studying a complex phenomenon, which is not normally associated with the 'discipline' of education, the only way to understand in depth what you are seeing is to use a radical bricolage approach in order to create an authentic and rigorous interpretation of it. I will also go on to explore the idea that the research method should mirror the phenomena that it investigates, so when studying a radical phenomenon such as Occupy, one should turn to a radical approach to research to create symmetry between object and method. I will then discuss how this is possible in the context of an early career researcher who, by necessity, can only use an unsophisticated form of bricolage due to the inexperience of the researcher at the beginning of her journey, and how they can conceptualise this form of bricolage as 'radical research' in order to avoid unnecessary criticism. A study of Occupy from an educational perspective has to be trans- and multi- disciplinary by its very nature, in order to understand how and why the movement came about and what it might teach us about education. Bricolage, as a radical research methodology captures this nature very well, using transdisciplinary theoretical thinking alongside a mesh of research methodologies, makes this an exceptional way to both understand and capture complexity in both object and method. The paper examines bricolage from an early research perspective and discusses what disciplines the researcher may need to draw upon for the study. This is the beginning of my journey; these are my initial thoughts, which, in the true spirit of bricolage and critical pedagogy, will be re-read, re-written and re-thought throughout my learning journey.


This final project consisted in improving the production performance of the Barcelona site. In order to achieve this, I had to investigate and analyze the current systems, processes and software, and make all necessary changes and updates that were needed. I first looked at one process, which was the quality control process, and then looked at the personalization process, which was the actual production of the smart cards. In order to not affect real production, because making a mistake could have cost the company a stop in their daily production, the Production Manager let me have an unused computer to run my quality control tests. Once all clients were validated, I deployed the new system onto the production shop floor and saved the operators lots of time, which meant an increase in production. I used the analysis before and after to compare the results and prove that production was indeed increase and that the time of the operators work was reduced. The second part of the analysis had to be done on the machines because this was the actual production. I updated all software, the infrastructure in terms of connection to the servers, and the mechanics, and ran tests. I also used the before and after analysis to compare the results and proved that production was increased by a lot, and that the delivery time of the cards was reduced between one to two hours. Once all clients were validated with the new infrastructure and the results came out positive, I deployed it into the shop floor and production noticed a big change and the performance of the machines was at its optimum. During the project, I encountered many problems, and the most important part was the communication and organization between my project and production. The project had to be without mistakes because the impact could have been huge. In conclusion, three main objectives were set for this project. Reorganizing and recreating the entire software infrastructure along with a deep study of production optimization, a detailed view of the possible actions to be performed were analyzed. The following main areas were the objectives of this project: - Reduced delivery time of the daily card production to the customer (SLA) - Increased production capacity of the personalization center - Possible changes in equipment to improve the response of the two anterior points


To date most research in software effort estimation has not taken into account any form of chronological split when selecting projects for training and testing sets. A chronological split represents the use of a project's starting and completion dates, such that any model that estimates effort for a new project p only uses as its training set projects that were completed prior to p's starting date. Three recent studies investigated the use of chronological splits, using a type of chronological split called a moving window, which represented a subset of the most recent projects completed prior to a project p's starting date. They found some evidence in favour of using windows whenever projects were recent. These studies all defined window sizes as being fixed numbers of recent projects. In practice, we suggest that estimators are more likely to think in terms of elapsed time than the size of the data set, when deciding which projects to include in a training set. Therefore, this paper investigates the effect on accuracy when using moving windows of various durations to form training sets on which to base effort estimates. Our results show that the use of windows based on duration can affect the accuracy of estimates (in this data set, a window of about three years duration appears best), but to a lesser extent than windows based on a fixed number of projects.


We used a new combination of sampling techniques involving in situ imaging of particles in the water column and the collection of particle flux in viscous polyacrylamide gels to estimate the average sinking velocities (Wi,avg) of marine particles ranging from equivalent spherical diameters of 70 µm to 6 mm at several locations, depths, and times along the west Antarctica Peninsula to explore the variability of Wi,avg. During the January 2009 deployments, Wi,avg ranged from about 10 to 150 m d−1, with the fastest velocities at the large and small ends of the sizes considered. A repeat occupation of one station in Marguerite Bay in February 2009 gave Wi,avg size distributions that were quite different from those of the previous month, with rapidly sinking small particles and very slow Wi,avg for the large particle classes. These results demonstrate the importance of diatom aggregates and krill fecal pellets with regard to the ocean's biological pump in this region. The observed variability in space and time indicates that global relationships between particle concentrations and fluxes, or simple theoretical formulations of sinking velocity as a function of particle size (such as a single parameterization of the Stokes' Law), are unsuitable for yielding accurate estimates of particle flux from measurements of the particle size distribution. Combining measurements of Wi,avg with high‐frequency sampling of the particle concentration size distribution would enable the estimation of particle fluxes at much higher temporal and spatial resolutions than is currently possible with conventional sediment trapping methods.


This paper presents a hybrid self-adaptive global best harmony search algorithm (HSGHSA) to improve the performance of harmony search algorithm (HSA) for solving vehicle routing problems with time windows (VRPTW). To explore the search space more efficiently, the proposed HSGHSA couples an improved variant of HSA called global best harmony search algorithm with a self-adaptive mechanism for tuning its control parameters. Moreover, the HSGHSA adopts six local search (LS) neighborhood structures to enhance its exploitation capability. The effectiveness of HSGHSA is evaluated against Solomon's VRPTW benchmark and its performance is compared with HSA and several state-of-the-art algorithms. The obtained results confirm that the HSGHSA produces very competitive results compared to the other algorithms.


The results of a multiproxy study reconstructing the climate history of the last 9300 years in northern Sweden are presented. It is based on diatom, chironomid and pollen analyses, as well as near-infrared spec troscopy (NIRS), of a radiocarbon dated sediment core from Sjuodjijaure (67°22N, 18°04E), situated 100 m above tree-line in the Scandes mountains. Mean July air temperature was reconstructed using transfer functions established for the region. The biological proxies show significant changes in composition during the Holocene and the inferred temperatures all follow the same general trend. For the period between about 9300 to 7300 cal. BP the reconstructions should be interpreted with caution due to the lack of convincing modern analogues in the training set. However the reconstruction suggest that July temperature was on average about the same as today, with several rapid short-term cold and warm periods. Cold periods were dated to about 8500, 8200 and 7600 cal. years BP and a warm period to about 7700 cal. BP. About 7300 cal. BP, a major shift to a warmer climate occurred. Pine migrated into the area, which was previously covered with birch forest. From the mid-Holocene until today the sediment record suggests a descending tree-limit and a gradual lowering of July temperature.


An automatic slit drive has been constructed for a single-beam infrared spectrometer, using two helical potentiometers in a servosystem. The output of generator potentiometer is heavily loaded causing its output voltage function to curve sharply with displacement. This reduces the number of taps per prism to two. Evaluation of circuit parameters is described, and values are listed for prisms of calcium fluoride, sodium chloride, potassium bromide, and cesium bromide, used in double pass. A simple modification permits selection of several different energy levels. The resulting curves of spectrometer output vs frequency are constant.


Engineers are torn between an attitude of strong design and dreams of autonomous devices. They want full mastery of their artifacts while wishing these were much more adaptive or ''intelligent.'' Today, while we must still spoon-feed (program, repair, upgrade) our most sophisticated computer and robotic systems, insatiable demand for novelty has created an escalation in system size and complexity. In this context, the tradition of rigid top-down planning and implementation in every detail has become unsustainable. Natural complex systems, large sets of elements interacting locally and producing nontrivial collective behaviors, offer a powerful alternative and source of innovative ideas. Going beyond metaheuristic disciplines based on ''neurons'' (machine learning), ''genes'' (genetic algorithms), or ''ants'' (ant colony optimization), this article highlights a new avenue of bioinspired engineering that simulates the growth of fine-grained multicellular organisms. It presents a brief overview of morphogenetic engineering and one of its instances, embryomorphic engineering, which are two fields that explore the decentralized self-organization of artificial complex morphologies and behaviors. MapDevo3D, an embryomorphic engineering model of developmental animats in a 3D virtual physics world, is described in more detail. Bodies are composed of several hundreds of cells, giving them a quasi-continuous texture close to the tenets of ''soft robotics.'' Motion results from local muscle twitching without a central nervous system. Altogether, the challenge is not to build a system directly but find the rules that its components must follow to build it for us.


In this dissertation, the synthesis and characterization
 of a series of iron complexes based on different ligand platforms are
 described.
 The complexes are subsequently studied for their activity in catalytic water
 oxidation with the help of a variety of electroanalytical techniques.
 The results show that the catalytic activity of structurally related iron
 complexes correlates strongly with the electronics of the iron centre. Another potentially very important aspect in the field of homogeneous electrocatalysis
 which has so far received only very little attention in published literature
 is the influence of the nature of the electrode material on the resulting
 electrochemistry.
 The results discussed in thesis show that interactions between the working
 electrode and the catalyst in solution can exhibit a strong influence on the
 resulting electrochemistry.
 Overall, the results of this work demonstrate that iron-based complexes can
 indeed be made to work as electrocatalysts for the water oxidation reaction.
 Furthermore, the results show that the electronic structure of the iron
 centre is a promising target for the design of new and improved catalysts.
 Finally, the results also highlight the importance of trying out different
 electrode materials as part of routine tests of new potential
 electrocatalysts.


This article explores issues related to the digitization of traditional knowledge. Using the example of the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) in India, it (1) explores the interfaces between the TKDL and the digital, (2) problematizes the relationship between the TKDL, power and digital knowledge, (3) raises issues around traditional knowledge (TK) and dominant traditions of intellectual property (IP) and (4) explores the status of reinvented traditions in relation to TK. While the article includes an immanent critique of the politics of the digital in relation to the TKDL, it supports the view that the digital can play a significant role in the preservation, elucidation and strengthening of traditional/ indigenous cultures.


It seems that even the ancients explored the intrinsic conflict between caring and commerce in medicine. Today, the relevance of this conflict has grown, as commercialism and its culture of creating wealth infiltrate health care. Essential to this process is advertising. Once, the medical profession regarded advertising with disdain. Professional reputations and expertise had always been spread by word of mouth. Alas, no more. Now the media proclaim the availability of "unrivalled" medical services. These newcomers are commercial concerns capitalising on medical technology. Promotions lauding their services are delivered by celebrities, and Australians are urged to screen for potential "nasties" by having total body scans. This is despite the fact that health authorities are so concerned about total body scans that in 2004 they issued a public health alert: "Full body scans . . . involve doses of radiation that health experts do not consider to be justifiable in terms of a health check". But the promos push consumer rights: "You have the right to know. . .what might be waiting to make you sick." And recently, there has been a disturbing twist in advertisements which seems to threaten the independence of medical practice: "Your doctor may advise you not to waste your time or money — but is he willing to take legal responsibility if he's wrong? Insist on a referral." We hear a lot from our health ministers about transparency and ethical conduct for doctors. We may well ask whether the advertising antics of some health care businesses are also on their radar?


This research was based the existence of complaints or customer dissatisfaction over the services provided Bengkel Ajisaka Motor. Complaints should be addressed properly by the parties Bengkel Ajisaka Motor, because if not addressed properly, then the customer will tell a disappointing experience to others, so that will worsen the image and the existence of the workshop. Complaints can be minimized by taking the necessary steps, so customers will feel satisfied with the services and support provided by the workshop. Customer satisfaction in the long term to create customer loyalty towards Bengkel Ajisaka Motor. The purpose of this study was to analyze the impact of service quality, including physical evidence, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy towards customer satisfaction Bengkel Ajisaka Motor.
This research was conducted using questionnaires to 100 people Bengkel Ajisaka Motor subscribers obtained by using accidental sampling technique. We then performed an analysis of data obtained in the form of quantitative and qualitative analysis. A quantitative analysis include validity and reliability test, the classic assumption test, multiple regression analysis, Goodness of Fit tests through the F test and t test and coefficient of determination (R²). Qualitative analysis is an interpretation of the data obtained in this study, and results of data processing that have been implemented with a description and explanation.
The results showed that the coefficient of determination shown in the Adjusted R Square of 0.679, which means that customer satisfaction can be explained by the five independent variables in this research that physical evidence, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy is 67.9%. The remaining 32.1% can be explained by other variables outside of the five variables used in this study. Partially based on the results of t test variables in this study has positive and significant in which physical evidence has the greatest influence than other variables in this study, whereas responsiveness has the smallest influence on customer satisfaction. F test results indicate that simultaneously or jointly variables in this research that physical evidence, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy have a positive and significant impact on customer satisfaction.


: This study aims to analyze determinant factors for destination selection of halal eco-tourism using confirmatory factor analysis. Destination of halal eco-tourism is place for tourism that educate visitors about environmental awareness and providing halal compliant entertainment. The research method implemented in this study using quantitative approach namely questionnaire analysis. The endogenous latent construct is customer intention to visit destination of halal eco-tourism. The four exogenous latent constructs are brand equity, culture, quality and social. This study developed the research framework with adoption of social distance theory. The sample size of corresponding respondents is 300 customers that have intention to visit tourism places that halal compliant. Next, this study analyzed measurement model using confirmatory factor analysis for pooled model approach. Then, the validity and reliability constructs of measurement model were validated using three main model fit indexes namely absolute fit, incremental fit and parsimonious fit. Next, structural model of path analysis was performed using structural equation modelling was performed. The multivariate regression analysis was performed with maximum likelihood approach. The result shows the absolute fit (RMSEA) is 0.029, incremental fit (CFI) is 0.997 and parsimonious fit (Chi-square/degree-of-freedom) is 1.247. All of three model fit indexes indicate the measurement and structural model is good fit with actual data. Multiple regression analysis shows all four exogenous latent constructs indicates significant relationship to endogenous latent construct namely customer intention to visit destination of halal ecotourism. The contribution of this study is it adding new knowledge to literature of tourism management. In addition, this study provides clear understanding for policy makers in developing eco-tourism attraction that meet with customers preference in generating profits for tourism industries. The novelty of this research is it provides a clear procedure for performing confirmatory factor analysis for validating model fit with real data.


The production of droplets from jets formed directly at nozzles
was used in the lead shot production process where a nozzle was placed
in the base of a tank of molten lead. A similar process is now used to
obtain fertilizer prills where solid particles are produced from fertilizer
melts by liquid jet break-up. This method could be extended to other materials such as metals and polymers where it is advantageous to obtain
the material as solid spheres. The extension of this method to such
materials requires a knowledge of the break-up behaviour of a wide range
of liquids exhibiting both Newtonian and non-Newtonian behaviour.
Since the more viscous liquids are difficult to break-up for the
method to be successful in handling viscous liquids stronger forces than
the naturally occurring capillary forces may be required. It is for
this reason that the application of electrohydrodynamic forces to jets is
considered in this thesis.
It is of prime importance in most applications of jet break-up,
after determining the conditions for instability, to determine the size
of droplets formed. It is for this reason that this thesis is primarily
concerned with the prediction of the size of droplets formed and also
concerned with possible methods of monosize droplet production by liquid
jet break-up.


Software systems convert between graphemes and phonemes using lexicon-based, rule-based or data-driven techniques. shotgun combines these techniques in a hybrid system which converts between graphemes and phonemes bi-directionally, adds linguistic and educational information about the relationships between graphemes and phonemes and provides estimates about the likelihood that the generated output is correct. We describe the components from which shotgun is built and determine its accuracy by running tests on two data sources, the BasisSpellingBank and celex, comparing the results to Nunn's (1998) rule-based conversion system. shotgun converts phonemes to graphemes and vice versa with precision of 81% and 86% when tested on the BasisSpellingBank, and 80% and 81% when tested on celex. shotgun proves to be a powerful new conversion tool.


This article offers an explanation for the limited uses of participatory communication in development by taking an institutionalist perspective that examines prevalent notions about communication and organizational uses in international aid institutions. The argument is that institutional goals and dynamics determine the use of disciplinary and theoretical approaches. The selection of specific communication approaches is not primarily based on their analytical or normative value, but rather, on institutional factors and expectations. Institutional dynamics undercut the potential contributions of participatory communication in three ways. First, bureaucratic requirements favor the use of informational models over participatory approaches to communication. Standard institutional procedures inside development agencies, donors and governments perpetuate understandings and uses of communication as a set of technical skills to disseminate messages. Second, the weak status of communication as a field of study and practice in development organizations undermine the prospects for expanding the understanding of communication that do not fit prevalent institutional expectations. As long as technical experts in public health or other fields expect communication to be 'the art of messaging,' communication staff lacks autonomy to make decisions and incorporate participatory approaches. Third, the institutional predominance of a technical mindset also limits the uses of participation thinking. The prioritization of technical perspectives decouples 'development' programs from local processes of participation and change.


In recent years, the Third Medical Faculty of Charles University in Prague has joined the policy of the World Health Organization (WHO) and European Union in order to prevent and reduce smoking among faculty members and students - future health professionals. The following strategies have been developed in the main areas related to academic life - education, counselling, anti-smoking campaign, research, and organizational measures. Education - Curriculum Topics related to smoking were included into curricula of medical and bachelor studies. Department of Pharmacology presents pharmacological aspects of tobacco dependence in the course on "Mental Disorders" in the 3rd year to all medical students. The department also offers the optional course on "Neurobiology, prevention and treatment of dependences" to about 10 medical students in their 3rd and 4th study year. Within one semester course, one three hours seminar is devoted to smoking. The leading experts in the field are invited to the seminar to discuss the issue with students. The students are invited to work on a proposal of a campaign against smoking in students and health professionals. The department presents a special webpage on dependences, incl. smoking with presentations for students (http://www.lf3. cuni.cz/cs/pracoviste/farmakologie/Neuropsychofarmakologie). Department of Child and Youth Health presents the following topics related to smoking - health risks, prevalence, prevention and counselling - in the Module of Preventive Medicine scheduled for the 6th year students and students of Public Health, General Nurse, and Dental Hygienist bachelor studies. Counselling The smoking cessation consultancy was established in the academic year 2010/11 in the Students Counselling Centre run at the Department of Child and Youth Health. The consultancy includes the first contact with a client, a motivation dialogue and behavioural counselling, and support in the process of quitting smoking. Clients needing pharmacological treatment are referred to the specialized Centre for the Treatment of Tobacco Dependence at the Clinic of Pneumology and Chest Surgery of the Third Faculty of Medicine in the Bulovka Teaching Hospital in Prague 8. Anti-smoking Campaign In accordance with the World No Tobacco Day (31 May 2011) the joint art exhibiton of our faculty students and the collaborating secondary school for nurses has been organized with the aim to point out to the serious problem of tobacco dependence in young people. …


We discuss important features and pitfalls of panel-data event study designs. We derive the following main results: First, event study designs and distributed-lag models are numerically identical leading to the same parameter estimates after correct reparametrization. Second, binning of effect window endpoints allows identification of dynamic treatment effects even when no never-treated units are present. Third, classic dummy variable event study designs can be naturally generalized to models that account for multiple events of different sign and intensity of the treatment, which are particularly interesting for research in labor economics and public finance.


SAML federations provide students the possibility to use their home university's account even in case they decide to study one or more semesters abroad. The visited university can rely on the identity information transmitted via the federation's mechanisms. However, when services at the visited university require payment, such as using a printer, the roaming student is nevertheless required to have a local account, since the federation does not support payment. Therefore, the purpose of this research paper is to provide information about changes and enhancements to the federation's architecture as well as to the used protocol, i.e., SAML, to enable payment within SAML federations. Thus, the SAML definitions have been taken as fundamentals for payment related enhancements. Furthermore, the enhanced federation was validated and prototypically implemented to prove correctness and real-life usage. This led to the result that it is feasible to provide payments within a SAML federation as long as the modifications proposed within this paper are carried out. Abstract SAML federations provide students the possibility to use their home university's account even in case they decide to study one or more semesters abroad. The visited university can rely on the identity information transmitted via the federation's mechanisms. However, when services at the visited university require payment, such as using a printer, the roaming student is nevertheless required to have a local account, since the federation does not support payment. Therefore, the purpose of this research paper is to provide information about changes and enhancements to the federation's architecture as well as to the used protocol, i.e., SAML, to enable payment within SAML federations. Thus, the SAML definitions have been taken as fundamentals for payment related enhancements. Furthermore, the enhanced federation was validated and prototypically implemented to prove correctness and real-life usage. This led to the result that it is feasible to provide payments within a SAML federation as long as the modifications proposed within this paper are carried out.


Summary and Conclusions
A uniform suspension was prepared from each of 46 fecal specimens selected because they were known to contain relatively large numbers of eggs of Schistosome mansoni. The number of eggs per cc. in each suspension was then determined by the Stoll dilution egg counting technique. The suspensions were examined by the routine diagnostic modification and also a semiquantitative modification of the acid-ether centrifugation technique and the zinc sulfate flotation technique and counts were made of the eggs recovered by the four methods. For twenty-five specimens found to contain over 400 eggs per cc., the results of the counts obtained by the various techniques were expressed in terms of the percentage of the available eggs that were actually recovered.
The acid-ether technique was found to be superior to the zinc sulfate flotation technique as a routine method for the isolation of schistosome eggs, recovering a greater number of eggs from 41 of the 46 specimens. In the group of 25 specimens, the acid-ether routine method gave an average percentage of 20.6% while the zinc sulfate counterpart gave an average of 4.6%. The semiquantitative modification of the acid-ether technique gave an average recovery of 48.2% while the zinc sulfate semiquantitative method gave an average recovery of 22.2%. The acid-ether preparations showed no distortion of the eggs, and usually contained less extraneous fecal debris than did the zinc sulfate preparations.
Although the acid-ether technique has inherent disadvantages the simplicity and efficiency of the method are such that it would appear to deserve further investigation as a routine diagnostic and survey procedure for the recovery of the eggs of Schistosoma mansoni.
4


Lasting peace after civil war is difficult to establish. One promising way to ensure durable peace is by carefully designing civil war settlements. We use a single theoretical model to integrate existing work on civil war agreement design and to identify additional agreement provisions that should be particularly successful at bringing about enduring peace. We make use of the bargaining model of war which points to commitment problems as a central explanation for civil war. We argue that two types of provisions should mitigate commitment problems: fear-reducing and cost-increasing provisions. Fear-reducing provisions such as third-party guarantees and power-sharing alleviate the belligerents' concerns about opportunism by the other side. Provisions such as the separation of forces make the resumption of hostilities undesirable by increasing the costs of further fighting. Using newly expanded data on civil war agreements between 1945 and 2005, we demonstrate that cost-increasing provisions indeed reduce the chance of civil war recurrence. We also identify political power-sharing as the most promising fear-reducing provision.


Historian Hans-Werner Goetz presents here a comprehensive depiction of life in the earlier Middle Ages that focuses on "everyday history". According to Goetz it is nearly impossible to write a history of everyday life during the Middle Ages since the written sources of that age had entirely different purposes, never describing everyday life for its own sake. However, by drawing on chronicles, legal documents and even fiction, Goetz is able to produce a lively picture of this era, illuminating everyday life as it was conditioned by institutional, physical, and social environments. "Life in the Middle Ages" addresses many of the current concerns of medieval historians in one volume. After a brief introduction to the general conditions of medieval life, Goetz examines the family, illustrating the family's fundamental importance as an ideal building block for other forms of society. The book explores monasticism and the monastery, which during the early and the high Middle Ages affected not only religious but also social, political, economic and spiritual life. Goetz examines peasant life within the seigneurial system, focusing on the social and existential forms of the medieval manorial system. He also examines the life of the ruling class, concentrating on the sociopolitical level of princes and kings and the "courtly life". Finally, Goetz evokes the beginning of urban life in the early medieval and high medieval town. Throughout the book Goetz uses vignettes to illustrate the lives of simple people who may not have influenced world history but were nevertheless an integral part of it. Written for a broad audience, "Life in the Middle Ages" should interest students, scholars and all general readers interested in both history and the Middle Ages.


Computer architecture manuals describe the instruction set of the machine and the semantics of the machine instructions by a combination of natural language and ISP (Instruction Set Processor) descriptions. The syntax of the instructions in assembly is well defined in the form of tables in the manual. However the semantics is not so well specified and descriptions vary widely from one manual to another. When developing a retargetable binary translator as much as possible needs to be specified in order to automatically generate code from specifications, hence separating machine-independent issues from the manual coding stage. The specification of the semantics of machine instructions is one such task, with the aim of generating suitable code for an intermediate representation that is to be used during the analysis stage. We describe the design process used to develop a semantic specification language, SSL, to integrate into a retargetable binary translation framework. The techniques described herein are suitable not just to binary translators but also to machine-code manipulation tools such as optimizing compilers, binary profilers, instrumentors, and binary debuggers.


Bamboo resource assessment has witnessed great interest in the world with very little attention in the Congo Basin forests. This study was initiated to assess bamboo species distribution in Cameroon with respect to Agroecological Zones (AEZ), using remote sensing. Forty-eight sheets of Landsat 8/Operational Land Imager (OLI) and the Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) instruments' images were mosaiced with the Envi 5.3 software. The bamboo index (BI) was calculated and used to identify wild bamboo-growing regions in Cameroon. Maps of bamboo growing regions helped in ground truthing. GPS coordinates were used to validate the bamboo presence with an accuracy of 78%. The result showed that bamboo spatial area statistics was 794.60, 451 308.36, 241 295.87, 302 989.41 and 219 094.67 ha in Sudano-Sahel, Guinea Savannah, Western Highlands, Monomodal rainfall forests and Bimodal rainfall forest, respectively with a total of 1 215 482.91 ha.  Bambusa vulgaris Schrad. ex J.C.Wendl.; Oxytenanthera abyssinica (A. Rich.) Munro; Phyllostachys sp.; Yushania alpina K. Schum; Ochlandra travancorica (Bedd.) Gamble; Dendrocalamus strictus (Roxb.) Nees; Phylostachys atrovaginata C. S. Chao & H.Y.Chou; Phyllostachys aurea Riviere & C. Riviere, were found in Cameroon.  O. abyssinica was dominant in Agroecological zones 1 and 2; P. aurea in Agroecological zones 3; and B. vulgaris in respectively Agroecological zones 4 and 5. These results can orientate policies and planning towards a sustainable bamboo sector development and mitigating the effects of climate change in Cameroon.

 Key words: Spatial distribution, remote sensing, agroecological zone, climate change mitigation.


It was a crime that captured national attention. In the idyllic suburb of Glen Ridge, New Jersey, four of the town's most popular high school athletes were accused of raping a retarded young woman while nine of their teammates watched. Everyone was riveted by the question: What went wrong in this seemingly flawless American town? In search of the answer, Bernard Lefkowitz takes the reader behind Glen Ridge's manicured facade into the shadowy basement that was the scene of the rape, into the mansions on 'Millionaire's Row', into the All-American high school, and finally into the courtroom where justice itself was on trial. Lefkowitz's sweeping narrative, informed by more than 200 interviews and six years of research, recreates a murky adolescent world that parents didn't - or wouldn't - see: a high school dominated by a band of predatory athletes; a teenage culture where girls were frequently abused and humiliated at sybaritic and destructive parties, and a town that continued to embrace its celebrity athletes - despite the havoc they created - as 'our guys'. But that was not only true of Glen Ridge; Lefkowitz found that the unqualified adulation the athletes received in their town was echoed in communities throughout the nation. Glen Ridge was not an aberration. The clash of cultures and values that divided Glen Ridge, Lefkowitz writes, still divides the country. Parents, teachers, and anyone concerned with how children are raised, how their characters are formed, how boys and girls learn to treat each other, will want to read this important book.


Fragments of a Portland cement clinker were examined by scanning electron microscopy with backscattered electron imaging and X-ray microanalysis. In some, the microstructure was normal, but in others varying proportions of material having features characteristic of formation in a reducing atmosphere were present. The principal such features were partial decomposition of the alite and the presence in the interstitial matrix of a high proportion of aluminate and small amounts of sulfide and metallic iron. The alite decomposition, which had produced myrmekitic intergrowths of belite and lime, appeared to have been preceded by incorporation of S2- and additional Fe2+ into the structure, which had lowered its stability, and to have occurred under reducing conditions. The mechanisms of the alite decomposition and of the formation of the interstitial material are discussed. All the fragments showing features characteristic of formation under reducing conditions were black; a dark colour in clinker is thus not a safe indication that such features are absent.


Pitting fascists and communists in a showdown for supremacy, the Spanish Civil War has long been seen as a grim dress rehearsal for World War II. Francisco Franco s Nationalists prevailed with German and Italian military assistance a clear instance, it seemed, of like-minded regimes joining forces in the fight against global Bolshevism. In Hitler s Shadow Empire "Pierpaolo Barbieri revises this standard account of Axis intervention in the Spanish Civil War, arguing that economic ambitions not ideology drove Hitler s Iberian intervention. The Nazis hoped to establish an economic empire in Europe, and in Spain they tested the tactics intended for future subject territories.The Nazis provided Franco s Nationalists with planes, armaments, and tanks, but behind this largesse was a Faustian bargain. Through weapons and material support, Germany gradually absorbed Spain into an informal empire, extending control over key Spanish resources in order to fuel its own burgeoning war industries. This plan was only possible and profitable because of Hitler s economic czar, Hjalmar Schacht, a wizard of international finance. His policies fostered the interwar German recovery and consolidated Hitler s dictatorship. Though Schacht s economic strategy was eventually abandoned in favor of a very different conception of racial empire, Barbieri argues it was in many ways a more effective strategic option for the Third Reich.Deepening our understanding of the Spanish Civil War by placing it in the context of Nazi imperial ambitions, Hitler s Shadow Empire" illuminates a fratricidal tragedy that still reverberates in Spanish life as well as the world war it heralded."


This formative history takes a new look at a dramatic conflict-the war on the Detroit frontier in 1812-13. Powerful key players (Procter, Tecumseh and Brock), their disparate war aims, and the "all or nothing" character of the campaigns they waged still seem larger than life. Yet Sandy Antal's careful reconstruction of Native and national aspiration, vested colonial interest, and territorial aggression, reveals motives and expedients that were as often mundane as heroic. A Wampum Denied reassesses the much-maligned career of Henry Procter, commander of the British forces, traces the Canadian/British/Native side of the conflict (amid a literature dominated by the American view), and casts new light on an allied military strategy that very nearly succeeded, but when it failed, failed spectacularly.


Banting and Best extracted the first insulin to be used in a clinical setting from dogs' pancreata in 1922. This was the advent of a remarkable medical breakthrough in the treatment of diabetes and Banting and Macleod were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology in recognition of the significance of their achievement. The initial formulations contained many impurities and hence there was wide variability in potency from one batch to another. John Abel isolated insulin in its pure and crystalline form in 1926 and, alongside improved manufacturing techniques, this resulted in production of higher quality formulations from bovine and porcine sources. The 1930s saw the introduction of medium and long acting insulins, following the discovery, by Hagedorn, that addition of protamine to insulin preparations prolonged insulin action by slowing absorption. In 1964 Panavotis and Katsoyanis developed the first synthesised human insulin and recombinant DNA technology in the 1980s allowed manufacture of human insulin on a commercial scale. However, it was another 15 years before radically new insulin analogues were developed and licensed.

Insulin analogues have been developed through genetic engineering of the native insulin molecule to try and overcome some of the hurdles faced when using regular human insulin for replacement.

The limitations of regular insulin include the necessity to inject 20–30 minutes before ingestion of food to allow for the delay in onset of action and the prolonged period of action of up to eight hours. This profile may result in high postprandial glucose while running the risk of pre-prandial hypoglycaemia. The limitations of the traditional long acting insulins relate to the pronounced peak of effect, rather than a smooth continuous action, an action profile of less than 24 hours, and pronounced intra- and inter-subject variation. Alteration of specific amino acid sequences, addition of amino acids and …


Abstract We describe "domain fronting," a versatile censorship circumvention technique that hides the remote endpoint of a communication. Domain fronting works at the application layer, using HTTPS, to communicate with a forbidden host while appearing to communicate with some other host, permitted by the censor. The key idea is the use of different domain names at different layers of communication. One domain appears on the "outside" of an HTTPS request—in the DNS request and TLS Server Name Indication—while another domain appears on the "inside"—in the HTTP Host header, invisible to the censor under HTTPS encryption. A censor, unable to distinguish fronted and nonfronted traffic to a domain, must choose between allowing circumvention traffic and blocking the domain entirely, which results in expensive collateral damage. Domain fronting is easy to deploy and use and does not require special cooperation by network intermediaries. We identify a number of hard-to-block web services, such as content delivery networks, that support domain-fronted connections and are useful for censorship circumvention. Domain fronting, in various forms, is now a circumvention workhorse. We describe several months of deployment experience in the Tor, Lantern, and Psiphon circumvention systems, whose domain-fronting transports now connect thousands of users daily and transfer many terabytes per month.


We review the main features of the Weyl-Wigner formulation of noncommutative quantum mechanics. In particular, we present a -product and a Moyal bracket suitable for this theory as well as the concept of noncommutative Wigner function. The properties of these quasi-distributions are discussed as well as their relation to the sets of ordinary Wigner functions and positive Liouville probability densities. Based on these notions we propose criteria for assessing whether a commutative regime has emerged in the realm of noncommutative quantum mechanics. To induce this noncommutative-commutative transition, we couple a particle to an external bath of oscillators. The master equation for the Brownian particle is deduced.


A popular favourite of the contemporary internet is the curious facial recognition performed upon everyday things and places – a cheese grater, parking meter, coat hook – examples of which are frequently shared via social networks using an #iseefaces hashtag. There are countless blogs and Flickr pools devoted to the idea (including one from British comedian Dave Gorman), and even a calendar featuring Francois Robert's many photographs of the faces he discerned amongst mops, sockets, hinges, and cameras, a marbled sponge cake or a lemon… It even featured in the arguably more highbrow context of the 2013 Venice Biennale when Roger Callois' collection of 'pictorial stones' were exhibited; they included an agate wherein one easily discerns a ghostly little creature, to which has been assigned the name Le Petit Fantome… This phenomenon of pareidolia – the term originates from the Greek 'para' (παρά - beside or beyond) and 'eidōlon' (eἴδωλον - form or image) – occurs because the human visual system has a tendency to extract patterns from noise, thus perceiving 'meaning' in random source material. In my paper I am interested to use this current fascination for pareidolia as the occasion to think about our desire to read meaning and significance into things. As an artist/scholar working with the everyday, rather than attempting to pin down definitive interpretations, I am interested in enlarging what can be generated from the ordinary objects and materials that surround us. My desire for richer, multiplied possibilities takes up Michel Foucault's assertion that as academics we are suffering from 'channels that are too narrow, skimpy, quasi-monopolistic, insufficient', and his suggestion that 'we must multiply the paths and the possibility of comings and goings...' My own attempt to do so occurs through an independent serial publication, the Pam Flett Press, each issue of which begins by recognising some instance of everyday life (graffiti on urban walls, the ubiquitous plastic bag, the scatter of gum on city pavements, the pareidolic desire to see faces in ordinary objects…) before using this as a means with which to think creatively and critically. The current paper focuses upon instances from issue #5 'I see faces' and posits making as a making-one's-way-into-understanding the everyday, before suggesting that using the everyday as material can in turn rethink academic and creative work.


We show that exposure to the risk of kurtosis in oil market drives the cross-section of stock returns from 1996 to 2014. The average monthly difference between the return of portfolio of stocks with low exposure and high exposure to the risk of kurtosis is -0.37%, showing that higher exposure to oil's kurtosis risk will be penalized by lower average returns. We are able to confirm the significance of kurtosis risk within the statistical framework of Carhart 4-factor model. In contrast to the skewness risk, which is only a significant player in some of the sub-periods, kurtosis risk is keeping its significance through all sub-periods, as well as after taking market moments into account and within different maturities. The significance of the risk of skewness gets more evident moving from shorter to longer maturities. The risk of volatility, which has been shown to be a significant-priced risk in the cross-section of stock returns in literature, loses its significance after controlling for the third and fourth moments.


The emerging Web-based proposals for network management are a promising approach for managing distributed and heterogeneous computer networks. This paper discusses how these technologies can be used to implement the Management by Delegation decentralised paradigm (MbD, introduced by Yemini and Goldszmidt). Managers and agents can benefit from the ease of use and platform-independence of Web-based protocols and tools while supporting the essential feature of MbD: elasticity.


Radiation effects are presented for the first time for vertically integrated 3 × 64-kb SOI SRAM circuits fabricated using the 3D process developed at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. Three fully-fabricated 2D circuit wafers are stacked using standard CMOS fabrication techniques including thin-film planarization, layer alignment and oxide bonding. Micron-scale dense 3D vias are fabricated to interconnect circuits between tiers. Ionizing dose and single event effects are discussed for proton irradiation with energies between 4.8 and 500 MeV. Results are compared with 14-MeV neutron irradiation. Single event upset cross section, tier-to-tier and angular effects are discussed. The interaction of 500-MeV protons with tungsten interconnects is investigated using Monte-Carlo simulations. Results show no tier-to-tier effects and comparable radiation effects on 2D and 3D SRAMs. 3DIC technology should be a good candidate for fabricating circuits for space applications.


Abstract. The Arctic Ocean is considered the most vulnerable ecosystem to ocean acidification, and large-scale assessments of pH and the saturation state for aragonite (Ωarag) have led to the notion that the Arctic Ocean is already close to a corrosive state. In high-latitude coastal waters the regulation of pH and Ωarag is, however, far more complex than offshore because increased biological activity and input of glacial meltwater affect pH. Effects of ocean acidification on calcifiers and non-calcifying phototrophs occupying coastal habitats cannot be derived from extrapolation of current and forecasted offshore conditions, but they require an understanding of the regimes of pH and Ωarag in their coastal habitats. To increase knowledge of the natural variability in pH in the Arctic coastal zone and specifically to test the influence of benthic vegetated habitats, we quantified pH variability in a Greenland fjord in a nested-scale approach. A sensor array logging pH, O2, PAR, temperature and salinity was applied on spatial scales ranging from kilometre scale across the horizontal extension of the fjord; to 100 m scale vertically in the fjord, 10–100 m scale between subtidal habitats with and without kelp forests and between vegetated tidal pools and adjacent vegetated shores; and to centimetre to metre scale within kelp forests and millimetre scale across diffusive boundary layers of macrophyte tissue. In addition, we assessed the temporal variability in pH on diurnal and seasonal scales. Based on pH measurements combined with point samples of total alkalinity, dissolved inorganic carbon and relationships to salinity, we also estimated variability in Ωarag. Results show variability in pH and Ωarag of up to 0.2–0.3 units at several scales, i.e. along the horizontal and vertical extension of the fjord, between seasons and on a diel basis in benthic habitats and within 1 m3 of kelp forest. Vegetated intertidal pools exhibited extreme diel pH variability of > 1.5 units and macrophyte diffusive boundary layers a pH range of up to 0.8 units. Overall, pelagic and benthic metabolism was an important driver of pH and Ωarag producing mosaics of variability from low levels in the dark to peak levels at high irradiance generally appearing favourable for calcification. We suggest that productive coastal environments may form niches of high pH in a future acidified Arctic Ocean.


Cells release extracellular vesicles in response to external factors or in a physiological way. Microvesicles and exosomes originate in cells in different ways and, depending on their contents, may have multiple biological effects on other cells and the environment. The host cell-parasite relationship could be changed dramatically by the plasticity of a new type of communication through extracellular vesicles. In the present paper, we discuss how protozoans use this new resource to evade the immune system and establish infection.


A 3-year-old, intact, male Beagle dog developed clinical signs of pleurothotonus and altered head position to the right, neck pain, nystagmus, hyperreflexia of the left forelimb, and hyperextension of both forelimbs. Magnetic resonance imaging enabled a tentative diagnosis of thalamic neoplasia with incidental hydromyelia at the level of the second cervical vertebra. The animal was euthanatized due to the poor prognosis, and a necropsy was performed. A large, well-demarcated, nonencapsulated, and focally infiltrative mass was present in the approximate location of, and effacing, the pineal gland. The mass was composed of densely packed polyhedral neoplastic cells that exhibited epithelial characteristics, such as intercellular junctions, and contained carbohydrate granules and occasionally melanin granules. Immunohistology confirmed that neoplastic cells expressed neuron-specific enolase and, in a small proportion, cytokeratin. These combined findings led to the diagnosis of a papillary tumor of the pineal region, a tumor not previously described in dogs.


Background: Venous thromboembolism is a major patient safety issue. The Plastic Surgery Foundation–sponsored Venous Thromboembolism Prevention Study examined whether postoperative enoxaparin prevents symptomatic venous thromboembolism in adult plastic surgery patients. Methods: In 2009, four sites uniformly adopted a clinical protocol. Patients with a Caprini score of 3 or higher received postoperative enoxaparin prophylaxis for the duration of inpatient stay. Venous Thromboembolism Prevention Study historical control patients had an operation between 2006 and 2008 but received no chemoprophylaxis for 60 days after surgery. The primary study outcome was symptomatic 60-day venous thromboembolism. Results: Three thousand three hundred thirty-four patients (1876 controls and 1458 enoxaparin patients) were included. Notable risk reduction was present in patients with a Caprini score greater than 8 (8.54 percent versus 4.07 percent; p = 0.182) and a Caprini score of 7 to 8 (2.55 percent versus 1.15 percent; p = 0.230) who received postoperative enoxaparin. Logistic regression was limited to highest risk patients (Caprini score ≥7) and demonstrated that length of stay greater than or equal to 4 days (adjusted odds ratio, 4.63; p = 0.007) and Caprini score greater than 8 (odds ratio, 2.71; p = 0.027) were independent predictors of venous thromboembolism. When controlling for length of stay and Caprini score, receipt of postoperative enoxaparin was protective against venous thromboembolism (odds ratio, 0.39; p = 0.042). Conclusions: In high-risk plastic surgery patients, postoperative enoxaparin prophylaxis is protective against 60-day venous thromboembolism when controlling for baseline risk and length of stay. Hospitalization for 4 or more days is an independent risk factor for venous thromboembolism. CLINICAL QUESTION/LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Therapeutic, III.


Over the past few decades, dual attitude ⁄process ⁄system models have emerged as the dominant framework for understanding a wide range of psychological phenomena. Most of these models characterize the unconscious and conscious mind as being built from discrete processes or systems: one that is reflexive, automatic, fast, affective, associative, and primitive, and a second that is deliberative, controlled, slow, cognitive, propositional, and more uniquely human. Although these models serve as a useful heuristic for characterizing the human mind, recent developments in social and cognitive neuroscience suggest that the human evaluative system, like most of cognition, is widely distributed and highly dynamic. Integrating these advances with current attitude theories, we review how the recently proposed Iterative Reprocessing Model can account for apparent dual systems as well as discrepancies between traditional dual system models and recent research revealing the dynamic nature of evaluation. Furthermore, we describe important implications this dynamical system approach has for various social psychological domains.


Three rhesus macaques, previously immunized with SIVdelta3 or SIVdelta2, each an attenuated derivative of SIVmac239, and two naive monkeys were challenged with 30,000 50% tissue culture infective doses of SHIV, an SIV/human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) chimeric virus bearing the dual-tropic envelope of HIV-1DH12. By several criteria, including virus isolation, serological assays, and PCR (both DNA and reverse transcriptase), SHIV levels were reduced to barely detectable levels in the circulating blood of vaccinated animals. The resistant SIV-vaccinated macaques had no preexisting neutralizing antibodies directed against SHIV, nor did they produce neutralizing antibodies at any time over a 14-month observation period following SHIV challenge. Interestingly, SIV sequences, derived from the vaccine, could be amplified from numerous tissue samples collected at the conclusion of the experiment, 60 weeks postchallenge, but SHIV-specific sequences (viz., HIV-1 env) could not. These results demonstrate that live attenuated SIV vaccines provide strong long-term protection even against challenge strains with highly divergent envelope sequences.


Can national emissions inventories be verified through direct atmospheric measurements? Greenhouse gas emissions are currently quantified from statistical data without testing the results against the actual increases of these gases in the atmosphere. This is like dieting without weighing oneself. Data are produced by greenhouse gas emitters of all sizes, from factory or farm to nation, and are quoted to high precision—yet misreporting occurs, whether by simple error, ignorance, or intention. But now scientists on both sides of the Atlantic are arguing that regulation of greenhouse gas emissions can have integrity only if verified by direct atmospheric measurements (1, 2).


This is explained in the initial chapter by Stig Hakangard, head of division, and Anders G. Nilsson, professor, at Karlstad University: "Information Systems is an expansive discipline in society today. As representatives of the Karlstad University approach we consider that the task of Information Systems is to illustrate how the use of modern information technology can support business operations; create new business opportunities and contribute to a more proactive service management in private companies and public organisations. Information Systems is a multidisciplinary subject with elements of technical, economic and pedagogical aspects. It is founded on an approach called consumable research, which means that our research is a combination of theoretical rigour and industry relevance. The challenge is to create mutual benefits to both the academic world and the business community when implementing theoretical knowledge in practice."


A typical audio signal processing pipeline includes multiple disjoint analysis stages, including calculation of a time-frequency representation followed by spectrogram-based feature analysis. We show how time-frequency analysis and nonnegative matrix factorisation can be jointly formulated as a spectral mixture Gaussian process model with nonstationary priors over the amplitude variance parameters. Further, we formulate this nonlinear model's state space representation, making it amenable to infinite-horizon Gaussian process regression with approximate inference via expectation propagation, which scales linearly in the number of time steps and quadratically in the state dimensionality. By doing so, we are able to process audio signals with hundreds of thousands of data points. We demonstrate, on various tasks with empirical data, how this inference scheme outperforms more standard techniques that rely on extended Kalman filtering.


Europe's economic performance has deteriorated continuously over the last two decades both in terms of its unemployment and its labor force participation rate; more recently its productivity has declined relative to the United States. This is due to a complex interaction between the how these welfare states are designed, the institutions created by the European Union, idiosyncratic factors resulting from linguistic differences, population dynamics and other cultural factors, and an increasing emphasis on non-economic objectives. Although structural reforms can provide a solution, it will be a long, difficult and costly process. A more successful approach involves a redesign of the macroeconomic framework in Europe. Aggregate demand stimulation should be given priority since it will not only increase employment directly, but, by slightly raising inflation, will allow negative real interest rates and separate real wages movements from nominal wages. More generally, EU institutions appear to have been designed assuming a perfect world; instead these need to be designed around existing national institutions and cultural practices.


We find that regulators can implement identical rules inconsistently due to differences in their institutional design and incentives and this behavior adversely impacts the effectiveness with which regulation is implemented. We study supervisory decisions of U.S. banking regulators and exploit a legally determined rotation policy that assigns federal and state supervisors to the same bank at exogenously fixed time intervals. Comparing federal and state regulator supervisory ratings within the same bank, we find that federal regulators are systematically tougher, downgrading supervisory ratings almost twice as frequently as state supervisors. State regulators counteract these downgrades to some degree by upgrading more frequently. Under federal regulators, banks report higher fraction of nonperforming loans, more delinquent loans, higher regulatory capital ratios, and lower returns on assets. Leniency of state regulators relative to their federal counterparts is related to costly consequences and likely proxies for delayed corrective actions—more lenient states have higher bank-failure rates, lower repayment rates of government assistance funds, and more costly bank resolutions. Moreover, relative leniency of state regulators at the bank level predicts the bank's subsequent likelihood of severe distress. The discrepancy in regulator behavior arises because of differences in how much regulators care about the local economy as well as differences in human and financial resources involved in implementing the regulation. There is no support for the corruption hypothesis, which includes "revolving doors" as a reason for leniency of state regulators. We conclude by discussing broader applicability of our findings as well as implications of our work for the design of banking regulators in the U.S. and Europe.


Today transnational TV networks count among television's most prestigious brands and rank among Europe's leading TV channels. This is the first, dynamically told story of the extraordinary journey of transnational television in Europe from struggling origins to its present day boom. It is based in extensive research into the international television industry and makes full use of its author's remarkable access to leading industry figures, from Sky and Turner to Discovery and BBC World.The tale begins with a few cross-border TV channels, who fought hostile governments, faced antagonism from the broadcasting establishment and provoked the contempt of advertisers. But, Jean Chalaby argues, the planets came into alignment for pan-European television in the late 1990s, when a transnational shift in European broadcasting was produced. He shows how transnational television and globalization have transformed one another, and how transfrontier TV networks reflect - and help sustain - a global economic order in which the connection between national territory and patterns of production and distribution have broken down.


We are no less directly acquainted with the temporal structure of the world than with its spatial structure. We hear one word succeeding another; feel two taps as simultaneous; or see the glow of a firework persisting, before it finally fizzles and fades. However, time is special, for we not only experience temporal properties; experience itself is structured in time.
Part One articulates a natural framework for thinking about experience in time. I claim (i) that experience in its experiential aspect has a realistically conceived temporal structure; (ii) that our judgements about that structure always go via judgements about the temporal structure of the apparent objects of perception; and (iii) that a subject undergoing perceptual experience of a given experiential kind is always in a position to know that they are undergoing experience of that kind simply in virtue of so undergoing. On this basis, I argue that the temporal structure of experience cannot systematically come apart from the temporal structure of its objects.
Part Two treats four puzzles relating to our experience of time. The first is Dennett's notorious discussion of masking and apparent motion phenomena. The second is the traditional debate regarding the very possibility of perceiving temporal properties. The third is Fara's recent contention that standard explanations of our experience of slow changes preclude us from perceiving constant motion. A common reaction to these three puzzles is to reject some element of the naive picture of temporal experience developed in Part One. I resolve them instead by showing how each arises from mistakenly thinking that experience is homoeomerous down to very short durations or instants. That is, thinking that we can analyse experience into a series of independent short slices, and explain the nature of the stream of consciousness in terms of those slices. The final chapter discusses a fourth puzzle about visual motion perception which I diagnose as driven by a rather different, but equally misguided way of thinking about vision.


This paper reports the main recent results of the RFX-mod fusion science activity. The RFX-mod device is characterized by a unique flexibility in terms of accessible magnetic configurations. Axisymmetric and helically shaped reversed-field pinch equilibria have been studied, along with tokamak plasmas in a wide range of q(a) regimes (spanning from 4 down to 1.2 values). The full range of magnetic configurations in between the two, the so-called ultra-low q ones, has been explored, with the aim of studying specific physical issues common to all equilibria, such as, for example, the density limit phenomenon. The powerful RFX-mod feedback control system has been exploited for MHD control, which allowed us to extend the range of experimental parameters, as well as to induce specific magnetic perturbations for the study of 3D effects. In particular, transport, edge and isotope effects in 3D equilibria have been investigated, along with runaway mitigations through induced magnetic perturbations. The first transitions to an improved confinement scenario in circular and D-shaped tokamak plasmas have been obtained thanks to an active modification of the edge electric field through a polarized electrode. The experiments are supported by intense modeling with 3D MHD, gyrokinetic, guiding center and transport codes. Proposed modifications to the RFX-mod device, which will enable further contributions to the solution of key issues in the roadmap to ITER and DEMO, are also briefly presented.


The model of French‐style journalism has historically been built around two figures: that of the writer and that of the politician. This model has also historically been built on male values. I will try to show in this article the effects of feminization on the very definition of journalism. To do so, I have chosen to observe three different moments in the history of journalism that are important steps in the process of journalistic professionalization. I have chosen to "reread" three key moments in journalistic history—theturn of the twentieth century, the liberation from German occupation in 1944, and the end of the 1970s—in the light of editorial projects carried out by women and seeking to reconcile feminist or women's interests and professional excellence. These three projects—La Fronde in 1897, Elle in 1945, F Magazine and Histoires d'Elles in the late 1970s—show how new entrants into a professional group succeed in imposing values in line with their trajectories and dispositions.


Mastocytosis is a rare disease that has been defined as an abnormal accumulation of mast cells in one or more organ systems. Previously considered a myeloproliferative neoplasm, mastocytosis is now classified in its own category under myeloid neoplasms. Since 2016 it was separated into three categories, cutaneous mastocytosis (CM), systemic mastocytosis (SM) and mast cell sarcoma, these diseases occuring in both children and adults. We hereby present a diagnostic algorithm and a short case report of a patient with a rare form of SM.


Abstract. The relationship between the gyre-scale circulation of the North Atlantic, represented by air pressure near to the centre of the sub-tropical gyre, and sea level measured at the eastern boundary of the ocean has been investigated using records commencing in the middle of the 18th century. These time series are twice as long as those employed in an earlier study of this relationship. Near-continuous values of annual mean sea level and mean high water from Brest, and air pressure fields for the eastern North Atlantic derived from terrestrial instrumental pressure records and ship logbook information, have been used to demonstrate that sea level on the eastern boundary does indeed appear to be related to air pressure at the centre of the gyre (subject to reservations concerning short sub-sections of data near to the ends of the records). These findings confirm the earlier conclusions but over much longer timescales. This relationship can explain at least part of the century timescale accelerations in European sea level records obtained from tide gauge and saltmarsh data. This finding has important implications for interpretation of the observed sea level rise and acceleration on the European Atlantic coast, suggesting that redistribution of water could play an important role instead of (or as well as) change in ocean volume.


Introduction Just back from first frenzied shopping experience in the UK, a four year old ever-inquisitive daughter asked to her father, "Why do we not have a Harrods in Delhi? Shopping there is so much fun!" Simple question for a four-year-old, but not so simple for her father to explain.


Humidity is the most problematic parameter for the accurate determination of the refractive index of air. Besides the fact that the humidity measurement can be limiting, the existing empirical equations for the refractive index of moist air are either restricted to 20 degrees C or are based on insufficient knowledge of the refractivity of water vapor. To overcome this problem, a new kind of measurement method for the refractivity of water vapor is suggested that is based on the accurate measurement of the absolute length of a step length by interferometry under vacuum conditions and subsequent measurements at different well-defined absolute water vapor pressures.


Some of the most widely expressed myths about the German financial system are concerned with the close ties and intensive interaction between banks and firms, often described as Hausbank relationships. Links between banks and firms include direct shareholdings, board representation, and proxy voting and are particularly significant for corporate governance. Allegedly, these relationships promote investment and improve the performance of firms. Furthermore, German universal banks are believed to play a special role as large and informed monitoring investors (shareholders). However, for the very same reasons, German universal banks are frequently accused of abusing their influence on firms by exploiting rents and sustaining the entrenchment of firms against efficient transfers of firm control. In this paper, we review recent empirical evidence regarding the special role of banks for the corporate governance of German firms. We differentiate between large exchange-listed firms and small and medium sized companis throughout. With respect to the role of banks as monitoring investors, the evidence does not unanimously support a special role of banks for large firms. Only one study finds that banks' control of management goes beyond what non-bank shareholders achieve. Proxy-voting rights apparently do not provide a significant means for banks to exert management control. Most of the recent evidence regarding small firms suggests that a Hausbank relationship can indeed be beneficial. Hausbanks are more willing to sustain financing when borrower quality deteriorates, and they invest more often than arm's-length banks in workouts if borrowers face financial distress.


Engine intake system leaks are a primary reason behind unsatisfactory operational and emission characteristics of
turbocharged engines. In faulty conditions, the intake mass flow sensed by the mass flow sensor does not reach the
combustion chamber, resulting in a less than required air fuel mass ratio. This may result in increased emissions along
with unsatisfactory performance of exhaust gas recirculation system. In the present work, an acoustic sniffer system
has been developed which identifies the presence and location of leaks in the intake system. The acoustic sniffer
system uses a directional acoustic probe which records acoustic signatures of the leaks and positively identifies their
presence. The sound pressure level data obtained from the acoustic probe is converted into frequency domain by FFT.
Frequencies corresponding to the leaks are then identified in different octave bands. Experimental work on a four
stroke 4.3 litre diesel engine demonstrates that the sniffer could be used to identify and quantify the leaks in the engine
system. The system performs satisfactorily on a variety of leaks created in the intake system. It has also been found
that sound pressure levels and frequency bands corresponding to different leaks could be used to estimate the amount
of gas leaked from the system. This acoustics based system provides a simple and yet reliable method for leak
diagnosis in engine intake system.


The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission provides measurements of spatiotemporal change in land water storage that may improve simulation results of land surface models (LSMs). We show that a transfer scheme recently developed within the Organising Carbon and Hydrology in Dynamic Ecosystems (ORCHIDEE) LSM significantly improves the simulated land water storage. Over large tropical rivers basins, model results without the transfer scheme provide significantly smaller amplitudes of water storage than observed by GRACE. Including the transfer scheme that accounts for water stored in the river systems and aquifers during its transfer to the oceans leads to predicted land water storage that are comparable to GRACE observations. Water stored in aquifers contributes about half the seasonal variation of water storage over large basins such as the Amazon, Congo, Yangtze, Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Mekong.


One group of athletes only recently receiving attention from sport psychologists is those who are deaf. Although these athletes have a communication disability, they participate in sport at all levels, from recreational sport participant to Olympic competitor. This paper reviews the literature on sport psychology and athletes who are deaf. Issues related to assessment of psychological skills with athletes who are deaf are explored through a study with 26 National Deaf Volleyball Tournament players, using the Psychological Skills Inventory for Sport. Finally, suggestions are offered for sport psychologists considering working with athletes who are deaf.


The Cave Canyon detachment, a low-angle normal fault that crops out in the Mineral Mountains, west-central Utah, has been interpreted as a hanging-wall splay of a much larger structure (the Sevier Desert detachment) that was influential in development of the idea that low-angle normal faults play a role in crustal extension. The Cave Canyon detachment provides expectations for the deformational features that might be expected along the hypothesized Sevier Desert detachment, which is not exposed in outcrop and is inferred to exist primarily on the basis of seismic reflection data.

The footwall of the Cave Canyon detachment is characterized by a 200-m-thick granite cataclasite, which exhibits a clear decrease in grain size and increase in microfracture density as the fault surface is approached. Undulatory extinction in quartz and feldspar and abundant quartz deformation lamellae at distances more than 200 m from the fault surface are interpreted as related to cooling of the Miocene granite rather than to normal faulting. Although mylonitic textures have previously been described in the granite, we found no evidence for mylonitization in the footwall rocks. The hanging wall of the detachment is characterized by 9 m of deformed, partially dolomitized limestone, with a 2-m-thick carbonate mylonite at the contact. Deformation features include dynamic recrystallization, grain-size reduction, development of twinning with a strong preferred orientation, some grain-size layering, and undulatory extinction close to the fault. Static recrystallization overprints fossils and ooids at distances greater than 9 m.

Drill cuttings and some core recovered at similar distances above and below the hypothesized Sevier Desert detachment show no evidence for localized deformation (ARCO Hole-in-the-Rock No. 1, ARCO Meadow Federal No. 1, and Argonaut Energy Federal No. 1 wells). Fossils and ooids are undeformed in Paleozoic carbonate rocks within 3 m below the contact, and sandstone and conglomerate with rounded clasts lacking more than background levels of microfracturing are found in samples within 3 m above the contact. These features contrast markedly with those of the Cave Canyon detachment, which was active at a considerably shallower and cooler level in the crust (∼5 km and <300 °C) than is implied for Paleozoic rocks beneath the Sevier Desert, once hanging-wall rocks are restored along the hypothesized detachment (9−14 km and 280−425 °C at the locations studied). The very different character of the two surfaces reinforces our earlier suggestion that beneath much of the Sevier Desert basin, the base of the Tertiary section is an unconformity rather than a low-angle normal fault.


mHealth apps are mobile device applications intended to improve health outcomes, deliver health care services, or enable health research.1 The number of apps has increased substantially, and more than 40 000 health, fitness, and medical apps currently are available on the market.2 Because apps can be used to inexpensively promote wellness and manage chronic diseases, their appeal has increased with health reform and the increasing focus on value. The bewildering diversity of apps available has made it difficult for clinicians and the public to discern which apps are the safest or most effective.


UEHARA, L. A.; BUTTON, C.; DAVIDS, K. The effects of focus of attention instructions on novices learning soccer chip. Brazilian Journal of Biomotricity, v. 2, n. 1, p. 63-77, 2008. Research has suggested that instructions that direct the learner to focus on the movements of their body parts are typically less effective than instructions that focus on the environmental effects of the movement during motor skill acquisition. However, it has been argued that effects of instructional focus depend on the skill level of participants and influential constraints such as whether the learners are predominantly goal oriented. The present study compared the effects of internal and external focus of attention instructions on two groups of novices during acquisition of a soccer chip skill. Twelve adult participants practiced chipping a ball with their non-dominant foot over a barrier towards a circular target. An internal focus instruction group (IFIG) received instructions throughout practice directing them to attend to the coordination of their body parts. An external focus instruction group (EFIG) received instructions referring to the effect of their movements on the environment. Results from both outcome (ball landing position accuracy and consistency) and qualitative movement form data were consistent, showing that participants of both groups improved their performance and were able to retain the skill after a two day break (p < 0.05). However, there were no significant differences between the groups for either outcome score or for the qualitative analysis, suggesting that internal focus instructions and external focus instructions were equally beneficial. These findings suggest that novices with no previous experience of a skill switch interchangeably from one type of attentional focus to another regardless of


We present an immunosensor for the rapid and sensitive detection of the p53 oncosuppressor protein and of its mutated form p53R175H, which are both valuable cancer biomarkers. The sensor is based on the accurate measurement of the source-drain current variation of a metal oxide semiconductor field-effect transistor, as due to the gate potential changing arising from charge release upon the selective capture of a biomarker by the partner immobilized on a sensing surface connected to the gate electrode. A suitable microelectronic system is implemented to combine high current resolution, which is needed to be competitive with standard immunoassays, with compact dimensions of the final sensor device.


Scheduling in wireless networks plays an important role. The undetermined nature of the wireless channel is usually considered as an undesirable property. Recently, the idea of opportunistic scheduling is introduced and it takes advantage of the time-varying channel for performance improvement such as throughput and delay. Since the introduction of opportunistic scheduling, there are two main bodies of works. The first body of works assume that each user is greedy and has infinite backlog for transfer. With this assumption, fairness objective becomes an important factor in designing a scheduling algorithm to avoid severe starvation of certain users. Typical fairness involve processor sharing time fairness, proportional fairness, and minimum performance guarantee. On the other hand, delay performance is not a appropriate factor to evaluate the effectiveness of a scheduling algorithm because of the infinite backlog assumption. In reality, this assumption is not true as data arrives and leaves the network randomly in practice. The second body of works deal with the relaxation of the infinite backlog assumption. Thus, the notion of stability region arises. The definition of stability is that the queue at each source node remains finite. Stability region can be defined as the set of traffic intensities which can all be stabilized by the network. The well known throughput optimal algorithm is proven capable of achieving the largest stability region. In this thesis, two innovative opportunistic scheduling algorithms which aim to minimize the amount of resources used to stabilize the current traffics are proposed. The key feature of our algorithms is that the incoming traffic rates are available to the scheduler, whereas the throughput optimal algorithm has no such prior traffic knowledge. Performance comparisons are made by means of simulation to demonstrate that the proposed algorithms can achieve the same stability region as the throughput optimal algorithm. Moreover, the delay performance is better than that of the throughput optimal algorithm, especially under heavy traffic conditions.


Abstract:Slavery is not a fixed condition but a spectrum of unfreedom. The term Islamic slavery has been bandied about for four decades without an adequate definition. At the birth of Islam there were a large number of captives from endemic intertribal warfare, many of them Arabs who were often exchanged or ransomed. When the original Islamic state in Medina expanded to become dynastic Muslim empires that conquered large parts of the Byzantine and Persian empires, the ethical principles in the Quran and the hadiths regarding the treatment of captives were no longer adequate to deal with the new situation. They had to be reduced to enforceable laws by the various sharia schools. The empires inherited the Mesopotamian plains, which required irrigation on a large scale based on massive slave labor. Commercially acquired slaves became the norm, and large concentrations of imported slaves from Africa and elsewhere living under harsh conditions ultimately led to the Zanj Revolution. It threatened even the survival of the Abbasid dynasty, and led to the abandonment of plantation use of slaves.


BACKGROUND It is important to examine progression to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) or death and its predictors among human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infected persons before and after the introduction of the highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) available in Japan since 1997. METHODS The data used were from a survey of persons with HIV infected through blood coagulation factor products in Japan. Progression to AIDS or death during two periods, between January 1994 and March 1997, and between April 1997 and March 2002, were observed. RESULTS The AIDS-free proportion after 3 years was 74% among 417 participants for the earlier period and 94% among 605 participants in the later one. The hazard ratio of low CD4 cell count (less than 200 cells/μL) was 50.8 for the earlier period and 4.7 for the later one compared with that of 500 cells/μL or more. After adjustment by plasma HIV RNA levels and use of antiretroviral therapy, the hazard ratios of the low CD4 cell count for the later period were still significant. CONCLUSION The AIDS-free proportion among people with HIV infected through blood products in Japan largely increased after the introduction of HAART. The CD4 cell count remains an important predictor of future progression, but its importance might be less because of HAART.


The relationship between religion and protest has been thoroughly discussed in various academic disciplines of social sciences, but there is far from consensus on the topic. Scholars differ significantly in their opinions on how religious values and doctrines shape the mechanisms which link protest and religion, and on how interaction between religious groups, the state, and other secular and religious groups may increase or reduce the likelihood of protests. Contemporary China provides an ideal setting in which to further advance scholarly understanding of roles that religion plays in protest, thanks to its richness, diversity, and complexity of religion, protest, and their relationship. In contemporary China, due to the inherent, profound, and possibly deliberate ambiguities within the state's legal and regulatory arrangements on religious affairs, the boundaries between government-sanctioned churches and "underground" churches are often blurred. Many Christianity-related protests directly respond to government crackdowns, which are aimed not only at those congregations and groups that are normally considered as "underground," "unofficial," or "independent," but also at churches that have long been tolerated or even officially recognized by the state. Further, while many Christianity-related protests are closely associated with the clash of ideologies in contemporary China, the specific causes of protests differ significantly among Catholic and Protestant churches, and Christian-inspired groups. The ideological incompatibility between the ruling Communist Party and the Catholic Church in China is epitomized by their struggle for authority and influence over the Chinese Catholic community. Until the provisional agreement signed between Beijing and the Vatican in September 2018, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Holy See had been competing fiercely for the authority to approve the ordination of new bishops, with such confrontations triggering numerous protests among Chinese Catholics. Unlike the Catholic Church, many of the Protestant churches that have emerged in the post-Mao era—including most "house" churches that do not affiliate with the state-sanctioned church—have no direct link with the transnational denominations which were active in China before the communist takeover in 1949 and are operated solely by Chinese citizens. However, while many Chinese Protestants display affection toward China and a sense of responsibility for improving their country, some influential Protestant church leaders have turned their progressive theology into social activism since the turn of the 21st century, leading to various forms of protests against the authoritarian policies and politics in contemporary China. Ideological and theological conflicts between different religions or religious schools may also trigger the Chinese state's suppression of certain religious groups and activities, which often in turn cause protests. In particular, the Communist Party tends to impose extremely harsh repercussions on religious groups that are accused by mainstream Christianity of being "heterodoxies," like the Shouters and the Disciples. These religious groups are often labelled as "evil cults" and their leaders and members often face legal action or even criminal charges. The protests organized by these religious groups have not only targeted the government but also the mainstream Christian churches that criticize them from a theological point of view. Given the profound ideological and political incompatibility of the CCP and various Christian groups, it is unlikely that Christianity can replicate the close collaborations that Buddhism and Daoism have developed with the CCP since the early 1980s.


Vol 1: "An Antidote Against Atheism, or An Appeal to the Natural Faculties of the Minde of Man, Whether There be Not a God" (1655, 2nd ed., 398pp). Vol 2: "Conjectura Cabbalistica - Or, a Conjectural Essay of Interpreting the Minde of Moses According to a Three Fold Cabbala, viz., Literal, Philosophical, Mystical or Divinely Moral" (1653 ed., 251pp). Vol 3: "Enthusiasmus Thriumphatus - Or, a Discourse of the Nature, Causes, Kinds and Cure of Enthusiasme" (1656 ed., 319pp). Vol 4: "The Immortality of the Soul, so Farre Forth as it is Demonstrable from the Knowledge of Nature and the Light of Reason" (1659 ed., 549pp). Vol 5: "An Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness" (1660 ed., 546pp). Vol 6: "An Account of the Virtue - Or, Dr Henry More's Abridgement of Morals, put into English" (by Edward Southwell, 1690 ed., 268pp). Vol 7: "Enchiridion Metaphysicum - Sive, De Rebus Incorporsis Succincta and Luculenta Dissertatio" (1671 ed., 403pp). Vol 8: "Two Choice and Useful Treatises - the One Lux Orientalis - Or, an Enquiry into the Opinion of the Eastern Sages Concerning the prae-Existence of Souls (by Joseph Glanvill), the Other, a Discourse on Truth (by George Rust) with Annotations on them both (by Henry More)" (1682 ed., 476pp). Vol 9: "The Life of the Learned and Pious Dr Henry More", by Richard Ward (1911 ed., 323pp).