The biotas of a suite of neighboring patches of remnant vegetation often form a series of nested sub-sets, in which the species present in species-poor patches are non-random sub-sets of those present in richer patches. There has been recent interest in ways in which this knowledge may be used to aid conservation. We focus here on whether nested patterns can be used predictively. If nestedness in a fragmented system increases over time through biotic relaxation, locations where particular species may become extinct or are likely to colonize might be predictable and this could be useful in threatened-species management. We used the Temperature Calculator of Atmar and Patterson (1995) to arrange a matrix of bird species' occurrences in a series of buloke Allocasuarina leuhmannii woodland remnants so that nestedness was maximized. Probability bands generated by the calculator were used to predict possible colonization and extinction events. We then re-surveyed the avifauna of the fragments after a seven-year interval to test these predictions. Although nestedness increased between the two survey periods, there was no linear relationship between the generated probability of extinctions or colonizations and the accuracy of the predictions. The predictions derived from the calculator were no more accurate than a second set of predictions generated by use of a simple non-nested model. Despite the increase in nestedness, the arrangement of sites in each of the two maximally packed matrices was substantially different. For the nestedness matrix to generate accurate predictions, an increase in nestedness must be due to a minimization of unexpected species presences and absences rather than an extensive redistribution of species among remnants, as we found. The potential utility of nested patterns in predicting systematic colonization and extinction events should be further evaluated in other, less dynamic, fragmented systems such as those undergoing biotic relaxation.


Using Freud's 1919 essay on various manifestations of the uncanny as a starting point, this article considers the relationship between the queer and the uncanny. It focuses on how the 'queer uncanny' may offer new ways of problematically posing notions of both ontological stability and normality, and furthermore, may work to disrupt definitions of gender and sexuality in relation to what constitutes the human. The article seeks to show how we may conceptualize the queer uncanny through its confrontation of a heteronormative category of the real. The article focuses in particular on anxieties about ontological boundaries and their relation to gender ambivalence in light of the contemporary theoretical writings of Judith Butler and Sue-Ellen Case. Then it moves to investigate the metaphor of 'the closet' as a materialization of heteronormative domination, as theorized by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, to consider its uncanny presence in the domestic space. Finally, through the notion of the uncanny, this article suggests we may also attempt a queer critical reading that, following Sue-Ellen Case's theoretical encouragement, works 'at the site of ontology' rather than in a gender and identity politics hinged on representation.


Technologies such as automobiles or mobile phones allow us to perform beyond our physical capabilities and travel faster or communicate over long distances. Technologies such as computers and calculators can also help us perform beyond our mental capabilities by storing and manipulating information that we would be unable to process or remember. In recent years there has been a growing interest in assistive technology for cognition (ATC) which can help people compensate for cognitive impairments. The aim of this thesis was to investigate ATC for memory to help people with memory difficulties which impacts independent functioning during everyday life.
Chapter one argues that using both neuropsychological and human computing interaction theory and approaches is crucial when developing and researching ATC. Chapter two describes a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies which tested technology to aid memory for groups with ABI, stroke or degenerative disease. Good evidence was found supporting the efficacy of prompting devices which remind the user about a future intention at a set time. Chapter three looks at the prevalence of technologies and memory aids in current use by people with ABI and dementia and the factors that predicted this use. Pre-morbid use of technology, current use of non-tech aids and strategies and age (ABI group only) were the best predictors of this use. Based on the results, chapter four focuses on mobile phone based reminders for people with ABI. Focus groups were held with people with memory impairments after ABI and ABI caregivers (N=12) which discussed the barriers to uptake of mobile phone based reminding. Thematic analysis revealed six key themes that impact uptake of reminder apps; Perceived Need, Social Acceptability, Experience/Expectation, Desired Content and Functions, Cognitive Accessibility and Sensory/Motor Accessibility. The Perceived need theme described the difficulties with insight, motivation and memory which can prevent people from initially setting reminders on a smartphone. Chapter five investigates the efficacy and acceptability of unsolicited prompts (UPs) from a smartphone app (ForgetMeNot) to encourage people with ABI to set reminders. A single-case experimental design study evaluated use of the app over four weeks by three people with severe ABI living in a post-acute rehabilitation hospital. When six UPs were presented through the day from ForgetMeNot, daily reminder-setting and daily memory task completion increased compared to when using the app without the UPs. Chapter six investigates another barrier from chapter 4 – cognitive and sensory accessibility. A study is reported which shows that an app with 'decision tree' interface design (ApplTree) leads to more accurate reminder setting performance with no compromise of speed or independence (amount of guidance required) for people with ABI (n=14) compared to a calendar based interface. Chapter seven investigates the efficacy of a wearable reminding device (smartwatch) as a tool for delivering reminders set on a smartphone. Four community dwelling participants with memory difficulties following ABI were included in an ABA single case experimental design study. Three of the participants successfully used the smartwatch throughout the intervention weeks and these participants gave positive usability ratings. Two participants showed improved memory performance when using the smartwatch and all participants had marked decline in memory performance when the technology was removed. Chapter eight is a discussion which highlights the implications of these results for clinicians, researchers and designers.


Cloud computing is a new computing paradigm, combining diverse client devices -- PCs, smartphones, sensors, single-function, and embedded -- with computation and data storage in the cloud. As with every advance in computing, programming is a fundamental challenge, as the cloud is a concurrent, distributed system running on unreliable hardware and networks. Orleans is a software framework for building reliable, scalable, and elastic cloud applications. Its programming model encourages the use of simple concurrency patterns that are easy to understand and employ correctly. It is based on distributed actor-like components called grains, which are isolated units of state and computation that communicate through asynchronous messages. Within a grain, promises are the mechanism for managing both asynchronous messages and local task-based concurrency. Isolated state and a constrained execution model allow Orleans to persist, migrate, replicate, and reconcile grain state. In addition, Orleans provides lightweight transactions that support a consistent view of state and provide a foundation for automatic error handling and failure recovery. We implemented several applications in Orleans, varying from a messaging-intensive social networking application to a data- and compute-intensive linear algebra computation. The programming model is a general one, as Orleans allows the communications to evolve dynamically at runtime. Orleans enables a developer to concentrate on application logic, while the Orleans runtime provides scalability, availability, and reliability.


Three different concentrations (10, 20 and 30 ppm) of the dry propolis and pollen extracts were applied in double distilled water. Biochemical and hematological parameters in blood of rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) treated to various propolis and pollen concentrations (10, 20 and 30 ppm) for 96 h were determined. Fish treated to 20 and 30 ppm of propolis extract presented significant increases (p<0.05) in glucose, triglycerides, total cholesterol levels and LDH activities as compared with the 10 ppm. But, there were significant decreases in AST, ALP, erytrocyte and hemoglobin as compared with the 10 ppm. In groups administrated pollen extracts; there were significant decreases in the levels of urea and glucose in 10 and 20 ppm concentrations compared with 30 ppm (p<0.05). Significant changes in the erytrocyte counts and hematocrit values in blood of fish treated to 20 and 30 ppm pollen were observed compared to 10 ppm pollen group (p<0.05). The data showed that propolis and pollen have important positive effects on biochemical and hematological parameters at 10 ppm levels, whereas other concentrations appear to be unfavorable for blood of rainbow trouts. Due to antioxidant and preservative properties of propolis and pollen, they may not only prolong the physiological functions of some aquatic living organisms, but also contribute to the health benefit of consumers who consume aquatic animals.


Objective: This study aimed is to discuss the clinical effects of nursing intervention on severe patients in a respiratory department.
Methods: Eighty-four severe patients admitted in the respiratory department in our hospital from January 2016 to September 2017 were selected and categorized into the control (n=42) and intervention groups (n=42) through random number table method. The control group was provided with conventional intervention, and the intervention group was treated with nursing intervention. The nursing effect, blood indexes, hours of respirator use, observation time in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), occurrence rate of adverse event, and nursing satisfaction of the two groups were compared.
Results: The total nursing efficiencies of the intervention and control groups were 92.9% and 76.2%, which showed significant difference (P<0.05). The intervention group was superior to the control group in terms of heart rate, respiratory rate, arterial partial pressure of oxygen, arterial partial pressure of carbon dioxide, hours of respirator use, and observation time in the ICU (P<0.05). The occurrence rate of adverse events of the intervention group was 4.8%, which was significantly lower than that of the control group (19.0%) (P<0.05). The nursing satisfaction of the intervention group (95.2%) was exceedingly higher than that of the control group (81.0%) (P<0.05).
Conclusions: Compared with conventional intervention, nursing intervention presented more outstanding clinical effects to severe patients in the respiratory department. Nursing intervention can not only improve the blood indexes of patients but also reduce the occurrence rate of adverse events and increase the nursing satisfaction of patients. Nursing intervention was associated with safety and reliability. Therefore, nursing intervention has promising clinical application and should be promoted.


From a business perspective, cloud computing has revolutionized the information and communication technology (ICT) industry by offering scalable and on-demand ICT services as well as innovative pricing plans such as pay-per-use and subscription. Considering the economic benefits of cloud computing, cloud-based design and manufacturing (CBDM) has been proposed as a new paradigm in digital manufacturing and design innovation. Although CBDM has the potential to reduce costs associated with high performance computing (HPC) and maintaining ICT infrastructures in the context of cloud computing, it is challenging to justify the potential cost savings associated with design and manufacturing because of the complexity in the economic benefit analysis of migrating to CBDM. In response, this paper provides important insights into the economics of CBDM by identifying key cost factors and potential pricing models that can influence decision making on whether migrating to the cloud for computationally expensive analyses that are commonplace for design and manufacturing (e.g., computer-aided design (CAD)/computer-aided engineering (CAE)/computer-aided manufacturing (CAM)) is economically justifiable. This work, for the first time, identifies the key economic benefits required for a comparative study that supports organizations in determining when traditional in-house design and manufacturing versus CBDM is most appropriate. Several comparative case studies and a hypothetical application example are provided to demonstrate and quantitatively validate decision support methods. Finally, key issues and road blocks for CBDM are outlined. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4030306]


The hemoglobin vesicle (HbV) is a red cell substitute encapsulating purified concentrated Hb in a phospholipid vesicle. In order to suppress metHb formation or autoxidation, for the long-term maintenance of the oxygen transporting capability, a series of thiols (cysteine, Cys; glutathione, GSH; homocysteine, Hcy; and acetylcysteine, Acy) were studied as reductants of metHb. Hcy and GSH showed a good suppressive effect on metHb formation, while Cys adversely accelerates the metHb formation at a rate twice that of the Hb solution without any reductants and Acy showed no change. The significant suppression by the coaddition of superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase to Cys indicated that Cys was easily oxidized by oxygen and simultaneously generates a large amount of active oxygens. The effective suppression of metHb formation by SOD and catalase was not observed for HbV containing no reductants, indicating that the generation of active oxygens from Hb itself is not significant. The coencapsulation of Hcy with Hb resulted in a low rate of metHb formation in HbV (initial rate, 1%/h) in vitro at an oxygen partial pressure (Po2) of 142 Torr. The rate increased with decreasing Po2, showed a maximum (2.2%/h) around Po2 = 23 Torr, and then decreased to 0%/h at 0 Torr. From these results, it is suggested that the fast metHb formation rate in the blood circulation of Wistar rats injected with 20 vol % of the HbV solution would be mainly caused by the exposure of HbV to the low Po2.


The Leeds RoaDMaP Project will investigate the requirements for, and pilot the implementation of, an institutional research data management
infrastructure, which includes policies, data management plans and guidelines, processes, systems, support and training.
The project, led by the University of Leeds Library, builds upon the work started at Leeds as part of a UKRDS feasibility study and will involve a
collaboration of staff from the University's central services and academic departments alongside the DCC and two commercial partners,
F5 and National Instruments.
The RoaDMaP Project will be able to directly inform the JISC Managing Research Data Programme and the wider community – it will be delivered
via a series of work-packages and 3 case studies which relate to the 3 broad stages of the research lifecycle – to ensure that the pilot infrastructure
accommodates data management requirements for pre-award, live, and post-award research groups. The work-packages have been defined to
address the sections of a research data management infrastructure that other HEIs are considering, and the case studies have been defined to
ensure that a cross section (in terms of lifecycle stage, primary role and discipline) of research staff are contributing to project findings.


The recipe for the creation of Silicon Valley is not clear nor easy. But it's clear from the results that something big is happening here. How Silicon Valley became that critical in the global startup ecosystem? How can Europe be part of this innovation catalyzer? The European Governments have a clear strategy: building a "two-way bridge" supporting startups in both ways (going to Silicon Valley and coming back to Europe). This does not only offer a cutting-edge service for European startups, but also is remarkably improving the European innovation ecosystem avoiding the uncontrolled "human capital (and startups) flight" and attracting international capitals in Europe.


CTLA-4 is a potent inhibitor of T cell activation, primarily upon binding to its costimulatory ligands (B7.1 and B7.2) expressed on APCs. However, variants of CTLA-4 can also function independently of B7 molecules. 1/4CTLA-4 is a highly conserved isoform encoded by exons 1 and 4 of the Ctla4 gene that lacks the ligand-binding and the transmembrane domains, and as yet, its function is not known. To investigate the function of 1/4CTLA-4, we generated transgenic (Tg) mice overexpressing this variant. Cytokine production by 1/4CTLA-4 Tg T cells was elevated compared with wild type T cells. The frequency of CD44 high memory T cells in 1/4CTLA-4 Tg mice was increased, and as the mice aged, the frequency further increased. 1/4CTLA-4 Tg mice >1 y old had increased expression of T cell activation markers and developed spontaneous autoimmunity, including elevated production of autoantibodies. In contrast with young 1/4CTLA-4 Tg mice, aged 1/4CTLA-4 Tg mice had elevated frequencies of Foxp3 + regulatory T cells, but the regulatory T cells from these mice were not able to inhibit colitis development. Collectively, these data suggest that the function of the 1/4CTLA-4 isoform is distinct from that of CTLA-4 in that it enhances T cell activation and promotes autoimmunity rather than inhibiting immune responses. The Journal of Immunology , 2012, 188: 000–000.


Mediator is a central coactivator complex required for regulated transcription by RNA polymerase (Pol) II in all eukaryotes. Budding yeast Mediator has a size of 1.4 MDa and consists of 25 subunits arranged in the head, middle, tail, and kinase modules. It is thought that Mediator forms an interface between the general RNA polymerase (RNA Pol) II machinery and transcriptional activators leading to promotion of pre-initiation complex (PIC) assembly.
Mediator middle module from budding yeast consists of seven subunits Med1, 4, 7, 9, 10, 21, and 31 and was investigated during this thesis both structurally and functionally. Previously, the structure of a subcomplex comprising the C-terminal region of Med7 (Med7C) and Med21 was solved by X-ray crystallography and protocols for obtaining larger recombinant complexes were established in the laboratory. As structural and functional studies of Mediator are limited by the availability of protocols for the preparation of modules, I pursued these studies and established protocols for obtaining pure endogenous and recombinant complete Mediator middle module.
Another subcomplex of the middle module, comprising the N-terminal part of subunit Med7 (Med7N) and the highly conserved subunit Med31 (Soh1) was successfully crystallized and its structure solved during this work. It is found, that it contains a unique structure and acts also as a functional entity (termed submodule). The Med7N/31 submodule shows a novel fold, with two conserved proline-rich stretches in Med7N wrapping around the righthanded four-helix bundle of Med31. In vitro, Med7N/31 is required for activated transcription and can act in trans when added exogenously. In vivo, Med7N/31 has a predominantly positive function on the expression of a specific subset of genes, including genes involved in methionine metabolism and iron transport. Comparative phenotyping and transcriptome profiling identified specific and overlapping functions of different Mediator submodules.
Crystallization screening of larger middle module (sub-)complexes did not result in crystal formation, even after removal of some flexible regions. Thus alternative methods were applied to characterize the middle module topology. Native mass spectrometry reveals that all subunits are present in equimolar stoichiometry. Ion mobility mass spectrometry, limited proteolysis, light scattering, and small angle X-ray scattering all indicate a high degree of intrinsic flexibility and an elongated shape of the middle module, giving a potential explanation of why crystallization of larger complexes was unsuccessful. Moreover, based on systematic protein-protein interaction analysis, a new model for the subunit-subunit interaction network within the middle module of the Mediator is proposed. In this model, the Med7 and Med4 subunits serve as a binding platform to form the three heterodimeric subcomplexes Med7N/21, Med7C/31, and Med4/9. The subunits Med1 and Med10, which bridge to the Mediator tail module, bind to both Med7 and Med4. Furthermore, first steps in establishing an in vitro assay to test endogenous and recombinant middle module functionality have been initiated and will provide the basis for future studies.


Staphylococcus aureus strains with multiple resistances to antibiotics are increasingly widespread in hospitals and community settings, thus the development of new agents are urgently necessary. The availability of complete whole-genome nucleotide sequence data of various strains of S. aureus, presents an opportunity to explore novel compounds and their targets to address the challenges presented by antimicrobial drug resistance in this organism. Study compounds α-amyrin [3β-hydroxy-urs-12-en-3-ol (AM)], betulinic acid [3β-hydroxy-20(29)-lupaene-28-oic acid (BA)] and betulinaldehyde [3β-hydroxy-20(29)-lupen-28-al (BE)] belong to pentacyclic triterpenoids that are based on a 30-carbon skeleton comprising five six-membered rings or four six-membered rings and one five-membered rings. These compounds were reported to exhibit antimicrobial activities against bacteria and fungi, including S. aureus. The MIC values of these compounds against reference strains of methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA ATCC 43300) and methicillin-sensitive S. aureus (MSSA ATCC 29213) ranged from 64 to 512 μg/ml while most combinations of the compounds and combinations with standard antibiotics methicillin and vancomycin showed synergistic effects. However, the response mechanisms of S. aureus to these compounds are still poorly understood. The genome-wide transcription of reference strains MRSA and MSSA treated with sub-inhibitory concentrations of the three compounds was determined using Affymetrix GeneChips. Treatment of the MRSA strain with AM resulted in the down-regulation of genes involved in the peptidoglycan biosynthesis, aminoacyl tRNA synthase and fatty acid biosynthesis pathways. When treated with BA, there was up-regulation of genes involved in β-lactam resistance, ABC transporters and DNA replication. Down-regulation of genes involved in three main pathways; i.e. fatty acid biosynthesis, peptidoglycan biosynthesis and ribosome were observed when the reference strain of MRSA was treated with BE. In addition, two genes in the ABC transporter pathway were at least 3-fold up-regulated. Similar to the effect of BE against MRSA, AM inhibits MSSA primarily via the ribosomes. The gene expression pattern of MSSA after treatment with BA exhibited minimal changes, while the effect of BE on MSSA is also primarily on the ribosome. In general, there were positive correlation between microarray data and real-time PCR data for all the genes validated. The findings showed that AM, BA and BE affected novel and previously targeted pathways which could be further explored in the development of therapeutic compounds for the treatment of S. aureus infections.


Background Gangstalking is a novel persecutory belief system whereby those affected believe they are being followed, stalked, and harassed by a large number of people, often numbering in the thousands. The harassment is experienced as an accretion of innumerable individually benign acts such as people clearing their throat, muttering under their breath, or giving dirty looks as they pass on the street. Individuals affected by this belief system congregate in online fora to seek support, share experiences, and interact with other like-minded individuals. Such people identify themselves as targeted individuals. Objective The objective of the study was to characterize the linguistic and rhetorical practices used by contributors to the gangstalking forum to construct, develop, and contest the gangstalking belief system. Methods This mixed methods study employed corpus linguistics, which involves using computational techniques to examine recurring linguistic patterns in large, digitized bodies of authentic language data. Discourse analysis is an approach to text analysis which focuses on the ways in which linguistic choices made by text creators contribute to particular functions and representations. We assembled a 225,000-word corpus of postings on a gangstalking support forum. We analyzed these data using keyword analysis, collocation analysis, and manual examination of concordances to identify discursive and rhetorical practices among self-identified targeted individuals. Results The gangstalking forum served as a site of discursive contest between 2 opposing worldviews. One is that gangstalking is a widespread, insidious, and centrally coordinated system of persecution employing community members, figures of authority, and state actors. This was the dominant discourse in the study corpus. The opposing view is a medicalized discourse supporting gangstalking as a form of mental disorder. Contributors used linguistic practices such as presupposition, nominalization, and the use of specialized jargon to construct gangstalking as real and external to the individual affected. Although contributors generally rejected the notion that they were affected by mental disorder, in some instances, they did label others in the forum as impacted/affected by mental illness if their accounts if their accounts were deemed to be too extreme or bizarre. Those affected demonstrated a concern with accumulating evidence to prove their position to incredulous others. Conclusions The study found that contributors to the study corpus accomplished a number of tasks. They used linguistic practices to co-construct an internally coherent and systematized persecutory belief system. They advanced a position that gangstalking is real and contested the medicalizing discourse that gangstalking is a form of mental disorder. They supported one another by sharing similar experiences and providing encouragement and advice. Finally, they commiserated over the challenges of proving the existence of gangstalking.


Lawyers treat jury selection — no surprise here — as an issue to litigate. In this article, we stand outside the litigator's role and look at jury selection from the viewpoint of citizens and voters. As citizens, we believe that the composition of juries in criminal cases deserves political debate outside the courtroom. Voters should use the jury selection habits of judges and prosecutors when deciding whether to re-elect the incumbents to those offices. More generally, jury composition offers a stress test for the overall health of local criminal justice. Conditions are unhealthy when the full-time professionals of criminal justice build juries that exclude parts of the local community, particularly when they exclude members of traditionally marginalized groups such as racial minorities. Every sector of society should participate in the administration of criminal justice. This political problem starts as a public records problem. As we discuss in Part I of this article, limited public access to court data reinforces the single-case focus of the legal doctrines related to jury selection. Poor access to records is the single largest reason why jury selection cannot break out of the litigator's framework to become a normal topic for political debate. As we describe in Part II, we worked with dozens of students, librarians, and court personnel to collect jury selection documents from individual case files and assembled them into a single database, which we call "The Jury Sunshine Project." In Part III, we present some initial findings from the Jury Sunshine Project to illustrate how public data might generate political debate beyond the courtroom. Part IV explores the possible explanations for the racial patterns that we observed in jury selection. Some accounts of this data point to benign non-racial factors as the real explanation for the patterns we observed. Finally, in Part V we generalize from our data about the race of jurors to ask more generally how accessible public records could transform criminal justice.


A rational monoclonal antibody (mAb)-based antitumor therapy approach has previously been shown to eradicate various established experimental and carcinogen-induced tumors in a majority of mice. This therapy comprised an agonistic mAb reactive with tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand receptor (DR5), expressed by tumor cells, an agonistic anti-CD40 mAb to mature dendritic cells, and an agonistic anti-4-1BB mAb to costimulate CD8(+) T cells. Because agonists of CD40 have been toxic in patients, we were interested in substituting anti-CD40 mAb with other dendritic cell-maturing agents, such as glycolipid ligands recognized by invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells. Here, we show that CD1d-restricted glycolipid ligands for iNKT cells effectively substitute for anti-CD40 mAb and reject established experimental mouse breast and renal tumors when used in combination with anti-DR5 and anti-4-1BB mAbs (termed "NKTMab" therapy). NKTMab therapy-induced tumor rejection was dependent on CD4(+) and CD8(+) T cells, NKT cells, and the cytokine IFN-gamma. NKTMab therapy containing either alpha-galactosylceramide (alpha-GC) or alpha-C-galactosylceramide (alpha-c-GC) at high concentrations induced similar rates of tumor rejection in mice; however, toxicity was observed at the highest doses of alpha-GC (>250 ng/injection), limiting the use of this glycolipid. By contrast, even very low doses of alpha-c-GC (25 ng/injection) retained considerable antitumor activity when used in combination with anti-DR5/anti-4-1BB, and thus, alpha-c-GC showed a considerably greater therapeutic index. In summary, sequential tumor cell apoptosis and amplification of dendritic cell function by NKT cell agonists represents an exciting and novel approach for cancer treatment.


I am happy that just before leaving Uganda I could make some new recordings of a great Musoga singer, Waiswa Lubogo, who is blind, and whom I brought hitchhiking from the Foundation for the Blind to his parents. (His mother had not seen him for a year.) After having reached his home together, where I was received with great friendliness I started to record in the region. (It is near Kaliro, south of Lake Kyoga). I even made a short study of embaire-xylophone playing; because there were two Embaire-bands in the village. All was very encouraging to me and about Basoga music (particularly for Budongo). I know quite something now. One thing I definitely found about the tuning: it is always pentatonic but in the intervals from day to day or from, week to week not constant. Even the best musicians, who tuned their instruments carefully before starting to play, used a slightly different tuning on different days. The tuning of Waiswas instrument I have recorded three times and it always was a little different. But I am also sure that the Basoga Budongo players (at least all those whom I have recorded in the past three years, and they were quite many from many regions) do not like to tune the octaves completely pure. They love a slightly dissonant effect in the tuning of the octave. I intend to write an article soon about Basoga music and I will then give all the references.


Triatomine bug species such as Microtriatoma trinidadensis, Eratyrus mucronatus, Belminus herreri, Panstrongylus lignarius, and Triatoma tibiamaculata are exquisitely adapted to specialist niches. This suggests a long evolutionary history, as well as the recent dramatic spread a few eclectic, domiciliated triatomine species. Virtually all species of the genus Rhodnius are primarily associated with palms. The genus Panstrongylus is predominantly associated with burrows and tree cavities and the genus Triatoma with terrestrial rocky habitats or rodent burrows. Two major sub-divisions have been defined within the species Trypanosoma cruzi, as T. cruzi 1 (Z1) and T. cruzi 2 (Z2). The affinities of a third group (Z3) are uncertain. Host and habitat associations lead us to propose that T. cruzi 1 (Z1) has evolved in an arboreal, palm tree habitat with the triatomine tribe Rhodniini, in association with the opossum Didelphis. Similarly we propose that T. cruzi (Z2) and Z3 evolved in a terrestrial habitat in burrows and in rocky locations with the triatomine tribe Triatomini, in association with edentates, and/or possibly ground dwelling marsupials. Both sub-divisions of T. cruzi may have been contemporary in South America up to 65 million years ago. Alternatively, T. cruzi 2 (Z2) may have evolved more recently from T. cruzi 1 (Z1) by host transfers into rodents, edentates, and primates. We have constructed a molecular phylogeny of haematophagous vectors, including triatomine bugs, which suggests that faecal transmission of trypanosomes may be the ancestral route. A molecular clock phylogeny suggests that Rhodnius and Triatoma diverged before the arrival, about 40 million years ago, of bats and rodents into South America.


Objective Depressive symptoms are common in schizophrenia and can worsen outcomes and increase suicide risk. Lurasidone is an atypical antipsychotic agent indicated for the treatment of schizophrenia and for the treatment of major depressive episodes associated with bipolar I disorder. This post hoc analysis evaluated the effect of lurasidone on depressive symptoms in patients with schizophrenia. Methods Patient-level data were pooled from 4 similarly designed, double-blind, placebo-controlled, 6-week registration studies of lurasidone (40–160 mg/d) in adult patients with an acute exacerbation of schizophrenia. Changes in depressive symptoms, measured by the Montgomery–Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS), were analyzed for the overall sample and for subgroups of patients stratified by baseline MADRS scores. Results MADRS assessments at baseline and endpoint (day 42 or last observation carried forward [LOCF]) were available for 1330 patients. Patients receiving lurasidone experienced significantly greater decreases in MADRS score (–2.8, least-squares [LS] mean change, LOCF) compared with patients receiving placebo (–1.4, P < .001, effect size 0.24). Analysis of change in MADRS score (LOCF) by baseline symptom severity (MADRS score of ≥12, ≥14, ≥16, ≥18) showed significantly greater improvement for lurasidone-treated patients across all severity groups; effect sizes ranged from 0.25 to 0.34. Among patients with a baseline MADRS score of ≥12, depressive symptom remission (defined as MADRS score <10 at LOCF endpoint) was attained by 45.0% of lurasidone-treated patients and 36.3% of patients receiving placebo (P < .05). Conclusions In a pooled analysis of short-term, placebo-controlled studies, lurasidone significantly improved depressive symptoms in patients with schizophrenia.


Convergence into 4G wireless communication systems pushes the design of radio receivers beyond limits unconceivable only few years ago. The complexity of RF systems has increased enormously as new communication standards have appeared in the wireless scenario. The convergence trends, enabled by the advances in fabrication technology, have driven the software defined radio (SDR) more and more into the RF and analog front-end. There is a clear need for design automation and advanced simulation techniques at the different levels that go from the system idea to chip fabrication. Reducing the number of design iterations between these levels is key in meeting the increasingly tight time-to-market constraints. As of today, there is not a single tool that covers the complete design flow. Instead, there is an intricate puzzle of design and simulation tools that focus on the various steps that go from system to silicon. The amount of RF and analog EDA tools available is certainly scarce in comparison with their digital counterparts. Most of the design work still depends on the radio engineer, making the process less than optimal. This paper describes some of the challenges faced by today's radio designers and discusses some of the solutions provided by the EDA community.


The aims of this paper are firstly to access the contribution of foreign direct investment (FDI) to economic growth in countries of the countries CEMAC region, and secondly to show how these foreign investments contribute to the growth of the CEMAC. The basic theory is that of endogenous growth. The econometrical study is based on the work of Alaya et al. (2009) and Borensztein et al. (1998). This model also includes the channels through which FDI influences growth. The study covers the period 1980 to 2010. All CEMAC countries are considered. To estimate the model, the author has used the method of double least squares and the generalised method moment. The results show that FDI affect growth in all CEMAC countries except Congo. The means by which the realisation of their influence differs from one country to another but globally, the channels through which FDI influences growth are labour and human capital. The main recommendation of the study is to promote economic and structural policies to modernise the economies of CEMAC.


Market participants are generally in agreement that the coronavirus pandemic will have a severe impact on the European economy, but it is difficult to predict the length and extent of the pandemic's effects. However, using the yield curves of corporate bonds, we can reach some preliminary conclusions about the impact of the pandemic. The expectations of financial market participants are revealed in the yield curves of corporate bonds, as yields reflect risk expectations over various maturities. To analyze these expectations, we first estimated the yield curves of corporate bonds in Germany, France, Italy, and Spain and put them into context with the progression of the pandemic. This shows that the bond yields with long maturities are also increasing; therefore, financial market participants are expecting negative effects to last for at least five years. Using an event study, the effects of the European fiscal and monetary policy measures are analyzed as well. The results suggest that measures are successful when they are wide ranging and coordinated Europe-wide. Moreover, the results show that financial and monetary policies must also be coordinated to fight the economic impact of the pandemic effectively.


This essay treats "Chineseness" as a work in progress for ethnic Chinese new immigrants to Global Cities, one in which individuals and families create, maintain, and modify the Chineseness component of their identity as they adapt to environments of multicultural populations, including earlier ethnic Chinese migrants. It is argued that the forms of Chineseness chosen and presented to others must be acceptable to both other Chinese and the local population as a whole, while also satisfying the immigrants' own values and the heritage they hope to give to their children. Their choices and presentation must also deal with national and local classifications and stereotypes about them. The raw material for their choices and inventions comes from their own experience, that of friends and earlier migrants and, over the past several years, sites on the internet. Vancouver is used as the example. In the Vancouver case, Chinese new immigrants must deal with Canadian official multiculturalism and the usage of the label "visible minority" as well as the Vancouver rhetoric about the character of that city.


Howard Hawks (1896-1977) is one of America's great film directors. During a career that spanned fifty years and produced more than forty films, this writer, producer, and director made highly successful movies and managed to maintain remarkable artistic control during a time when studio moguls usually ruled. Hawks conquered virtually every genre, including action/adventure, comedy, western, film noir, gangster, science fiction, and musical films. The remarkable diversity of his work may have kept Hawks from being as easily recognized as his contemporaries Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford. Hawks brought a unique stamp to all of his films by mixing dramatic and comedic elements, manipulating gender conventions, emphasizing story and dialogue, and eschewing cinematic trickery and sentimentality. His classic oeuvre includes films such as Scarface, Only Angels Have Wings, His Girl Friday, Sergeant York, Bringing Up Baby, The Big Sleep, Red River, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and Rio Bravo. This collection of interviews takes the reader from talks with his admirers in the French press to revealing discussions late in his life. By his own admission, Hawks was above all a storyteller. These interviews are replete with entertaining anecdotes. Howard Hawks: Interviews is a diverse collection offering valuable access to the life and career of one of the most fiercely independent filmmakers in the history of Hollywood. Scott Breivold is an associate librarian at California State University, Los Angeles, and director of the university library's music and media center.


The individualization of risk is alleged to have generated a rise in flexible and insecure forms of non‐standard employment, which in turn create 'new inequalities and insecurities' that permeate all social groups. Using longitudinal data from the Canadian Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (1993–98), this study empirically assesses this claim by examining the levels of insecurity, composition and voluntary nature of jobs with irregular work times. The institutional structures of the individualist employment and liberal welfare regimes and education system are considered as important filters. Findings demonstrate that we have not entered a 'post‐class' society, but that established inequality structures of social class, gender, and minority status persist. Jobs with irregular shifts have an internal hierarchy that produce different levels of economic, employment relation and social integration insecurity. The majority of youth in these jobs face higher insecurity and view non‐standard shifts as involuntary, supporting the notion that risk is increasingly shifted from the state or firm to the individual. The broader implications for social life are then considered followed by the discussion of whether these are 'stop‐gap' jobs or the creation of a 'precarious proletariat'.


Virtual Machine technology applies the concept of virtualization to an entire machine, circumventing real machine compatibility constraints and hardware resource constraints to enable a higher degree of software portability and flexibility. Virtual machines are rapidly becoming an essential element in computer system design. They provide system security, flexibility, cross-platform compatibility, reliability, and resource efficiency. Designed to solve problems in combining and using major computer system components, virtual machine technologies play a key role in many disciplines, including operating systems, programming languages, and computer architecture. For example, at the process level, virtualizing technologies support dynamic program translation and platform-independent network computing. At the system level, they support multiple operating system environments on the same hardware platform and in servers.

 Historically, individual virtual machine techniques have been developed within the specific disciplines that employ them (in some cases they aren't even referred to as "virtual machines?), making it difficult to see their common underlying relationships in a cohesive way. In this text, Smith and Nair take a new approach by examining virtual machines as a unified discipline. Pulling together cross-cutting technologies allows virtual machine implementations to be studied and engineered in a well-structured manner. Topics include instruction set emulation, dynamic program translation and optimization, high level virtual machines (including Java and CLI), and system virtual machines for both single-user systems and servers.

 * Examines virtual machine technologies across the disciplines that use them—operating systems, programming languages and computer architecture—defining a new and unified discipline.
 * Reviewed by principle researchers at Microsoft, HP, and by other industry research groups.
 * Written by two authors who combine several decades of expertise in computer system research and development, both in academia and industry.


Background Acute renal failure is a side effect of NSAIDs. Purpose To assess the appropriateness of the intravenous prescription of dexketoprofen according to the dosage specifications depending on renal function following the recommendations of the Summary of Product Characteristics. Materials and Methods An observational, retrospective study that analysed dexketoprofen prescriptions in surgical patients admitted to a tertiary hospital from January-September 2011. The estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGF) was calculated by the CKD-EPI formula, of reference in the hospital. The Summary of Product Characteristics advises using the following posology for dexketoprofen: 150 mg maximum daily dose for a maximum duration of 48 hours. In patients with renal impairment: GF < 50 mL/min: administration contraindicated GF 50–80 mL/min: 25 mg/12 h. Maximum: 50 mg daily. GF > 80 mL/min: No dosage adjustment required. Results Prescriptions from 1946 patients were analysed. Of the patients, 54.3% were male and 45.7% female, with a mean age of 59.8 years (17–103). The mean serum creatinine levels were 0.84 mg/dL ± 0.43 and the mean eGF from the CKD-EPI calculation was 83.05 ± 26.17 mL/min/1.73m2. In 58% of the admissions the drug was not prescribed correctly. Of these: 270 patients were prescribed dexketoprofen when the eFG was less than 50 mL/min/1.73m2; 550 of them had an unadjusted prescription with an eFG 50–80 mL/min/1.73m2. 370 patients with an eGF > 80 mL/min/1.73 m2 were prescribed NSAIDs for longer than 48 h. Conclusions 58% of the intravenous NSAID prescriptions did not conform to the SPC recommendations. Due to this fact and in order to prevent renal toxicity it is recommended: To establish protocols for pain management during hospitalisation to limit the duration of these drugs to 48 hours and adjust the dose to the patient's renal function. To enhance the proactive role of the pharmacist in individualised patient monitoring. No conflict of interest.


Gottfried W. Leibniz was a philosopher and mathematician who lived in Germany from 1646 to 1716. He first gained a bachelor's degree in philosophy, then later earned one in law. As his life went on, he made many contributions to the mathematical world. From discovering differential and integral calculus to creating the binary system of arithmetic, Leibniz changed today's world. He worked also with physics, dynamics, and attempted to create a calculating machine. While making these discoveries, he had the privilege of working with many different scholars and mathematicians, namely Weigel, Boineburg, and Huygens. With the help and guidance of these professionals, Leibniz was able to soar in his career. Leibniz was also a very religious man, as seen from his Lutheran faith. He was passionate about re-unifying the Christian churches and used his degree in philosophy to share about his faith. Leibniz enjoyed studying logic and reasoning, which directly affected both his beliefs and his mathematical discoveries. He spoke on the problem of evil in this world and still claimed that God is good regardless of the circumstances. The mathematical career of Leibniz and his profession of faith to the world make him a very well-known and influential figure. He changed the way that mathematics was performed and spoke to the beauty of our Creator.


In the 1960s, art patrons Dominique and Jean de Menil founded an image archive showing the ways that people of African descent have been represented in Western art from the ancient world to modern times. Highlights from the image archive, accompanied by essays written by major scholars, appeared in three large-format volumes, consisting of one or more books, that quickly became collector's items. A half-century later, Harvard University Press and the Du Bois Institute are proud to have republished five of the original books and to present five completely new ones, extending the series into the twentieth century."The Impact of Africa," the first of two books on the twentieth century, looks at changes in the Western perspective on African art and the representation of Africans, and the paradox of their interpretation as simultaneously "primitive" and "modern." The essays include topics such as the new medium of photography, African influences on Picasso and on Josephine Baker's impression of 1920s Paris, and the influential contribution of artists from the Caribbean and Latin American diasporas.


Economic analysis of corporate takeovers has traditionally advocated legal doctrines that ensure a target company in a takeover contest is acquired by the bidder willing to pay the most for it. The reason stems from the conventional assumption that a bidder's offer price should reflect its ability to put target's assets to productive use. This Article challenges this assumption by turning to the success of private equity firms in outbidding publicly-traded, strategic bidders during the recent takeover wave. Using standard valuation modeling, the Article reveals how a critical component of any bidder's valuation of target stems from its source of acquisition financing. Specifically, a bidder's ability to finance a takeover with debt can lead to a significant increase in its valuation of target owing to a de facto government subsidy created by the deductibility of interest payments. Simultaneously, however, not every bidder has the ability to utilize debt-financing to the same extent - a point emphasized in forty years of finance research. The result is that during periods of robust credit markets such as occurred during 2004-2007, the highest bidders in takeover contests may often be those bidders such as private equity firms who are capable of using large amounts of debt-financing. By highlighting the critical role of finance in explaining bidder valuations, this Article illustrates how accurate economic analysis of takeovers requires careful attention to bidders' divergent financing decisions. Indeed, by failing to take finance seriously, traditional takeover scholarship may very well be advocating legal rules that promote inefficient takeovers.


During gas turbine engine testing, steady-state gas-path stagnation pressures and temperatures are measured in order to calculate the efficiencies of the main components of turbomachinery. These measurements are acquired using fixed intrusive probes, which are installed at the inlet and outlet of each component at discrete point locations across the gas-path. The overall uncertainty in calculated component efficiency is sensitive to the accuracy of discrete point pressures and temperatures, as well as the spatial sampling across the gas-path. Both of these aspects of the measurement system must be considered if more accurate component efficiencies are to be determined. High accuracy has become increasingly important as engine manufacturers have begun to pursue small gains in component performance, which require efficiencies to be resolved to within less than ±1%. This article reports on three new probe designs that have been developed in a response to this demand. The probes adopt a compact combination arrangement that facilitates up to twice the spatial coverage compared to individual stagnation pressure and temperature probes. The probes also utilise novel temperature sensors and high recovery factor shield designs that facilitate improvements in point measurement accuracy compared to standard Kiel probes used in engine testing. These changes allow efficiencies to be resolved within ±1% over a wider range of conditions than is currently achievable with Kiel probes.


Streptococcus mutans is considered the major aetiological agent of human dental caries. It is an obligate biofilm-forming bacterium, which resides on teeth and forms, together with other species, an oral biofilm that is often designated as supragingival plaque. This thesis consists of three distinct parts. The first part describes, using microarray analysis, how S. mutans modulates gene expression when grown under different conditions in biofilms. The goal of this analysis was to identify genes that are required for establishment and survival in biofilms. When grown in exponential biofilms S. mutans increased the expression of uptake systems for Mn2+, suggesting a requirement for this element for proper establishment in biofilm. Furthermore, S. mutans down-regulated genes associated with sucrose-dependent adhesion (spaP, gtfB). When exponential biofilms were cultivated in the presence of sucrose, a specific sucrose-transporter was activated. Compared with planktonic growth, stationary phase biofilms showed a greater change in their gene expression profile than biofilms harvested from the exponential growth phase, indicating that different regulation modes of growth processes are operating under altered environmental conditions. Again compared with planktonic growth, stationary phase biofilms grown with glucose showed up-regulation of genes involved in carbohydrate metabolism and signal transduction, and downregulation of genes associated with translation, energy production and amino-acid transport, and metabolism. A gene cluster comprising the lrgA and lrgB genes, which are predicted to be involved in cell death, was also highly up-regulated in these biofilms. Comparison of the transcriptome of a sucrose-grown stationary biofilm with that of a glucosegrown stationary biofilm culture suggested that there may be more DNA damage in the former, since several genes coding for repair enzymes were up-regulated. Energy consumption and the metabolism of amino-acids and sugars were decreased. When comparing starved biofilms with fed biofilms of S. mutans, the latter showed an increase in expression of genes required for transcription and translation, as well as of genes incoding a specific PTS system responsible for the uptake of sucrose. The opposite pattern was observed when biofilms were transfered from replete medium to starving conditions. In the second part of this work, the involvement of the two gene clusters lrgAB and cidAB in cell death was investigated. Using real-time RT-PCR, it was found that expression of lrgAB increased with rising cell density. A similar pattern was observed for lytSR, which encodes a two-component 5 signal transduction system. Further analysis suggested that the lrgAB genes were negatively regulated by LytSR. The lrgAB genes appear to be important for long-term survival, since a lrgAB knock-out mutant exhibited a 3log10-decrease in viable cell count after 13 days of incubation. The expression of lrgAB increased in response to lactic acid, the predominant organic acid found in culture media from bacteria grown with sucrose as the sole carbon source. The exposure of S. mutans to CCCP, an ionophore that affects both components of the proton motive force, resulted in high expression of lrgAB. Biofilm formation was not affected in both lrgAB and cidAB mutants. Overall, it was shown that the lrgAB gene cluster encodes an important factor for S. mutans survival in stationary phase. This factor is probably required to withstand low pH, starvation, or membrane-damaging agents. Bacteria can detect, transmit and react to signals from the outside world by two-component systems and by serine-threonine kinases and phosphatases first detected eukaryotic cells, but later recognized to occur widespread in bacteria as well. S. mutans contains one such serine-threonine kinase, encoded by pknB. A gene encoding serine-threonine phosphatase, pppL, is located upstream of pknB. In the third part of the work, the phenotypes of single mutants in pknB and pppL and of a pknB - pppL double mutant were characterized. All mutants showed abnormal cell shapes and grew slower than the wild type. Whole genome transcriptome analysis revealed that a pknB mutant showed reduced expression of genes in bacteriocin production and genetic competence. Among the genes that were differentially regulated in the pknB mutant several were likely involved in cell-wall metabolism. One such gene, SMU.2146c, and two genes encoding bacteriocins were shown to be also down-regulated in a mutant in vicK, a sensor kinase involved in response to oxidative stress. Collectively, the results indicate that PknB can modulate the activity of the two-component signal transduction systems VicKR and ComDE.


This paper considers GARCH(1,1) models in which the time-varying coefficients are functions of the realizations of an exogenous stochastic process. Time series generated by this model are in general nonstationary. Necessary and sufficient conditions are given for the existence of non-explosive solutions, and for the existence of moments of these solutions. The asymptotic properties of the quasi-maximum likelihood estimator are derived under mild assumptions and its finite sample properties are investigated by simulations.


Abstract The present study examined the associations between a high‐K (slow) life history strategy and depressive symptomatology. The participants were a sample of 494 male utility workers who underwent psychological evaluations. It was hypothesised that high‐K will correlate negatively with, and will be a negative predictor of, depressive symptomatology. The results confirmed the predictions, showing that high‐K accounts for 15% of the variance in depressive symptomatology after controlling for risk factors for depression such as demographics, prior traumatic experiences, past depression, and recent negative life events. Implications of the results are discussed.


An overview of the progress on pulse-preserving, coherent, nonlinear fiber-based supercontinuum generation is presented. The context encompasses various wavelength ranges and pump sources, starting with silica photonic crystal fibers pumped with 1.0 μm femtosecond lasers up to chalcogenide step-index and microstructured fibers pumped from optical parametric amplifiers tuned to mid-infrared wavelengths. In particular, silica and silicate-based all-normal dispersion (ANDi) photonic crystal fibers have been demonstrated for pumping with femtosecond lasers operating at 1.56 μm with the recorded spectra covering 0.9–2.3 μm. This matches amplification bands of robust fiber amplifiers and femtosecond lasers. The review therefore focuses specifically on this wavelength range, discussing glass and nonlinear fiber designs, experimental results on supercontinuum generation up to the fundamental limit of oxide glass fiber transmission around 2.8 μm, and various limitations of supercontinuum bandwidth and coherence. Specifically, the role of nonlinear response against the role of dispersion profile shape is analyzed for two different soft glass ANDi fibers pumped at more than 2.0 μm. A spatio-temporal interaction of the fundamental fiber mode with modes propagating in the photonic lattice of the discussed ANDi fibers is shown to have positive effects on the coherence of the supercontinuum at pump pulse durations of 400 fs. Finally, the design and development of graded-index, nanostructured core optical fibers are discussed. In such structures the arbitrary shaping of the core refractive index profile could significantly improve the engineering flexibility of dispersion and effective mode area characteristics, and would be an interesting platform to further study the intermodal interaction mechanisms and their impact on supercontinuum coherence for sub-picosecond laser pumped setups.


As technologies permitting both the creation and retrieval of data containing spatial information continue to develop, so do the number of visualizations using such data. This spatial information will often comprise a place name that may be "geocoded" into coordinates, and displayed on a map, frequently using a "heatmap-style" visualiza- tion to reveal patterns in the data. Across a dataset, however, there is often ambiguity in the geographic scale to which a place-name refers (country, county, town, street etc.), and attempts to simultaneously map data at a multitude of different scales will result in the formation of "false hotspots" within the map. These form at the centers of administrative areas (countries, counties, towns etc.) and introduce erroneous patterns into the dataset whilst obscuring real ones, resulting in misleading visualizations of the patterns in the dataset. This paper therefore proposes a new algorithm to intelligently redistribute data that would otherwise contribute to these "false hotspots," moving them to locations that likely reflect real-world patterns at a homogeneous scale, and so allow more representative visualizations to be created without the negative effects of "false hotspots" resulting from multi-scale data. This technique is demonstrated on a sample dataset taken from Twitter, and validated against the "geotagged" portion of the same dataset.


In The Landscape of Reform Ben Minteer offers a fresh and provocative reading of the intellectual foundations of American environmentalism, focusing on the work and legacy of four important conservation and planning thinkers in the first half of the twentieth century: Liberty Hyde Bailey, a forgotten figure in the Progressive conservation movement; urban and regional planning theorist Lewis Mumford; Benton MacKaye, the forester and conservationist who proposed the Appalachian Trail in the 1920s; and Aldo Leopold, author of the environmentalist classic A Sand County Almanac. Minteer argues that these writers blazed a significant "third way" in environmental ethics and practice, a more pragmatic approach that offers a counterpoint to the anthropocentrism-versus-ecocentrism -- use-versus-preservation -- narrative that has long dominated discussions of the development of American environmental thought. Minteer shows that the environmentalism of Bailey, Mumford, MacKaye, and Leopold was also part of a larger moral and political program, one that included efforts to revitalize democratic citizenship, conserve regional culture and community identity, and reclaim a broader understanding of the public interest that went beyond economics and materialism. Their environmental thought was an attempt to critique and at the same time reform American society and political culture. Minteer explores the work of these four environmental reformers and considers two present-day manifestations of an environmental third way: Natural Systems Agriculture, an alternative to chemical and energy-intensive industrial agriculture; and New Urbanism, an attempt to combat the negative effects of suburban sprawl. By rediscovering the pragmatic roots of American environmentalism, writes Minteer, we can help bring about a new, civic-minded environmentalism today.


This is an action-oriented book for managers and entrepreneurs searching ways to tackle issues they face in terms of developing and delivering services. The book focuses on service organizations, but has a broad interpretation of what services are. Directed to the business world and combines inspirational text that is full of examples, with the features of a useful handbook of practical methods with associated templates. The central argument is that managers and entrepreneurs designing service offerings will benefit from using approaches and methods from design and the arts, especially at the early stages of projects. Sometimes called design thinking or design innovation, such approaches help organizations explore and create new configurations of people and things that support users, customers, staff and partners in creating value together. In short, this book argues that design and arts-based approaches are valuable to managers and entrepreneurs designing services, when uncertainty and ambiguity are high. It shows when and how to use these approaches, introduces specific methods, reviews their strengths and limitations, and finally helps managers think through what it takes to start using them in projects and within teams and develop the culture and behaviours that access the creativity they support.


Extracted from text ... Workshop on HIV/AIDS and the infant's right to nutrition Lynn Boezak T he Socio-Economic Rights Project held a workshop on HIV/Aids and the infant?s right to nutrition on 15 October 2002 in Cape Town. The workshop drew participants from the Department of Health, social workers, medical practitioners, human rights activists and other role-players in the field of HIV/Aids. It aimed to provide a platform for debate and information sharing among the various role- players with a view to creating opportunities for collaborative efforts in tackling the many complex and challenging issues involved. The workshop dealt with the medical and ..


The 70-kb virulence plasmid, pYV, of Yersinia enterocolitica encodes a number of secreted proteins (Yops) which are essential for virulence. YopD, the 33-kDa product of the lcrGVHyopBD operon, appears to be involved in delivering YopE and YopH (the Yersinia protein tyrosine phosphatase) into target cells. These proteins then act in concert to cause cytotoxicity in host cells. Previously, we reported that bacteria carrying transposon insertions in yopD are not cytotoxic for macrophages, show impaired tyrosine phosphatase activity in host cells, and are avirulent for mice (E. L. Hartland, S. P. Green, W. A. Phillips, and R. M. Robins-Browne, Infect. Immun. 62:4445-4453, 1994). trans complementation of yopD mutants of Y. enterocolitica with the yopD gene restores all these properties. In this study, we show that polar mutations in proximal genes of the lcrGVHyopBD operon also abrogated bacterial virulence and the capacity to induce cytotoxicity in mouse bone marrow-derived macrophages and HEp-2 epithelial cells. Moreover, trans complementation of a yopBD mutant with the yopD gene alone was not sufficient to restore the ability of the bacteria to cause cytotoxicity. Further work showed that YopB was required for cytotoxicity, dephosphorylation of host proteins, and virulence for mice. These findings indicate that YopB and YopD may serve a related function in Y. enterocolitica and that they may act together to deliver intracellularly acting Yops to their respective targets in host cells.


ISO (International Organization for Standardization) management systems are represented by ISO 9001:2000. Since the establishment of the ISO 9000 series in 1984, many manufacturers in Japan that perform international transactions have adopted the ISO management systems, and now, companies in various industries, including those in the service sector, have implemented ISO management systems. The ISO 9001 system specifies operational procedures that reflect business policy, organizational characteristics, environmental factors, etc., and conformance to the international standard has been the requirement of ISO 9001 certification. In recent years, increasing importance has been attached to the effectiveness of ISO 9001 system implementation from the management perspective. In this study, we analyze the impact of ISO 9001 system implementation on operational effectiveness with management philosophy, MBO (management by objectives), management control, and management justice. We also introduce external characteristics to examine the effectiveness of ISO system implementation under the trading partners' strong/weak pressure on the company to implement the ISO system. We conducted a mail survey with corporate heads and administrative managers, and obtained 511 effective responses from 1,250 unlisted Japanese companies.


Nuclear vendors and utilities perform numerous simulations and analyses in order to ensure the safe operation of nuclear power plants (NPPs). In general, the simulations are carried out using vendor-specific design codes and best-estimate system analysis codes, most of which were developed based on one-dimensional lumped parameter models. During the past decade, however, computers, parallel computation methods, and three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) codes have been dramatically enhanced. The use of advanced commercial CFD codes is considered beneficial in the safety analysis and design of NPPs. The present work analyzes the flow distribution in the downcomer and lower plenum of Korean standard nuclear power plants using STAR-CD. The lower plenum geometry of a pressurized water reactor (PWR) is very complicated, as there are many reactor internals, which hinders CFD analysis for real reactor geometry up to now. The present work takes advantage of 3D CAD model so that real geometry of a PWR is used. The results give a clear figure about flow fields in the downcomer and lower plenum of a PWR, which is one of major safety concerns. The calculated pressure drop across the downcomer and lower plenum appears to be in good agreement with the data in engineering calculation. An algorithm that can evaluate the head loss coefficient, which is necessary for thermal-hydraulic system code running, was suggested based on these CFD analysis results.


The concentration of global wealth, power, knowledge, authority and prestige continues unabated. Antitrust enforcement has been at the heart of debates on combating increasing inequality. Yet, the transformation possibilities have been overstated, while its impact has been paralyzed by widespread assumptions about both antitrust and international trade analysis. Challenging "market power" or "capital accumulation", as per Thomas Piketty's analysis, may contribute to the reproduction of concentration of power. This article cautions about the viability of the current antitrust and international trade assumptions and doctrines to tackle the challenges of growth and injustice of today's globalized society. It argues that the hierarchical structure of production in goods, services, knowledge, and prestige in global society should be the starting point of legal and economic analysis. Lawyers should articulate targeted resistance to particular hierarchies using antitrust and trade law as updated tools. As an example of this analysis, this article describes a privilege to harm, enjoyed by companies from the structural center of Europe against firms on the periphery. This privilege is termed: dumping by the center. This analysis provides one explanation for the increasing wealth and power in the center of the European Union, despite the Union's promise of development for all. While developing this doctrine, several assumptions of antitrust and trade law are challenged, including the coherence of the consumer welfare standard, the benefits of low prices and the assumption that non-predatory dumping on the internal market is not possible.


This report discusses the new defense strategy, which was unveiled by senior Department of Defense (DOD) leadership based on a review of potential future security challenges, current defense strategy, and budgetary constraints. This strategy will rebalance the Army's global posture and presence, emphasizing where potential problems are likely to arise, such as the Asia-Pacific region and the Middle East.


An improved cryostat has been developed for cooling a wide panel evenly over its surface to a temperature of -423 F (approximately equal to -253 C) by use of liquid helium. Originally, the cryostat was to be used in measuring apparent strains in wide aluminum/lithium panels as functions of temperature in order to develop data for temperature compensation of the readings of strain gauges on a tank containing liquid hydrogen. Relative to the cryostat used previously for this purpose, the improved cryostat can be prepared for a test in less time, and it loses less helium during each test. Each wide panel to be tested is instrumented with thermocouples in preparation for a test. The previous cryostat was made of two aluminum halves that, for each test, were sandwiched together and sealed around the instrumented wide panel to be tested. The panel was thus enclosed in a plenum. The cryostat and adjacent panel areas protruding from the cryostat were then coated with a thermally insulating foam. During a test, liquid helium was made to flow into the plenum through a port on the bottom. The helium vaporized and expanded, filling the plenum with cold helium gas, which eventually flowed out of the plenum through a port on the top. The nature of the flow was such that a significant portion of the helium did not come into contact with the wide panel; hence, cooling was less efficient than it might otherwise have been. After completion of each test, the foam and the cryostat were separated from the panel. The cryostat was cleaned and prepared for installation on another instrumented wide panel for the next test. It took 28 hours to install the cryostat onto the instrumented panel, apply the foam, and perform ancillary operations in preparation for a test. The volume of liquid helium consumed during each test was 750 liters. The improved cryostat (see figure) includes an upper section and a lower section, both of which include permanent housings made of a thermally insulating foam 2-in. (approximately equal to 5-cm) thick. A liquid-helium- injection manifold is attached to the inside of the top section. The bottom section includes an outlet for helium gas. The manifold contains slots that, when the cryostat is installed on the panel, are located approximately 1 in. (approximately equal to 2.5 cm) from the wide panel. The array of slots spans a substantial portion of the area of the panel. The top and bottom sections of the cryostat are sealed to the panel by use of polytetrafluoroethylene cord and aluminum tape. Liquid helium is fed into the manifold from the top. The helium leaves the manifold through the slots and thus impinges directly on the panel. Hence, all the helium entering the cryostat must come into contact with the panel before leaving the cryostat. After a test, the cryostat is removed from the panel and reinstalled onto another panel for the next test. Installation of the cryostat on an instrumented panel takes a negligible amount of time, in comparison with the 28 hours associated with the previous cryostat. The amount of liquid helium consumed during a test in the improved cryostat is 500 liters - 250 liters less than before.


This article contributes to our understanding of community resilience. Community resilience is the ability of a community to cope and adjust to stresses caused by social, political, and environmental change and to engage community resources to overcome adversity and take advantage of opportunities in response to change. Through an analysis of local responses to multiple challenges, six dimensions of community resilience were found in one village in northern Norway. These dimensions; community resources, community networks, institutions and services, people–place connections, active agents, and learning; are activated in processes and activities in the village to respond to current challenges. Although this corroborates findings from other community resilience research, this research suggests that community resilience is both complex and dynamic over time. Although communities may consider themselves resilient to today's challenges, the rate and magnitude of expected systemic global changes, especially climate change, means that future resilience cannot be taken for granted. This work concludes that there is a risk that community resilience may be an illusion, leading to complacency about the need for adaption to multiple factors of change. Hence, the ability of communities to actively engage in reflexive learning processes is of importance for both adaptation and future resilience.


To determine whether the ability of zebra mussels (Dreissena polymorpha) to absorb and metabolize a variety of dissolved organic compounds allows them to persist when food levels are too low to sustain them, we compared how quickly starving mussels lost weight when kept in water with and without natural dissolved organic matter (DOM). Mussels fed a starvation ration of algae were maintained either in filtered Hudson River water or in ultraviolet‐treated deionized water with major ions added at concentrations equivalent to those in the Hudson. Both types of water were continually filtered. Zebra mussels lost weight two‐ to fivefold faster in the absence of natural DOM, consistent with the idea that the uptake of DOM provides a substantial metabolic subsidy to these organisms. Ingestion of bacteria could not account for this effect. We calculate that the DOM subsidy amounted to more than half of the zebra mussel respiratory requirement under the experimental conditions, which is enough to double the length of time that zebra mussels can survive in the complete absence of particulate food. The effect of DOM on zebra mussel metabolism is 1.5‐ to fourfold larger than that predicted solely from estimates of amino and fatty acid uptake in the Hudson River. Because Hudson River DOM is largely allochthonous in origin, this subsidy could give zebra mussels a distinct advantage over other organisms competing for phytoplankton resources. We postulate that zebra mussels will have the largest effects on freshwater ecosystems that receive substantial inputs of organic matter from the surrounding watershed.


Bragg diffraction of a read beam is studied theoretically when the refractive-index grating is placed inside a Fabry–Perot cavity. Diffraction efficiency, angular selectivity, and signal-to-noise ratio are largely enhanced compared with those for the bare Bragg grating, which may permit the use of low-efficiency or short-length materials as well. The results are much better for an asymmetric cavity operated in reflection than for a symmetric cavity in transmission.


We present an extensive experimental study of microwave scattering by a fully characterized complex aggregate. We measured the full amplitude scattering matrix (amplitude and phase of the four elements) for a wide range of configurations. The presented results are of special interest to the light scattering community. Our experiments offer the possibility to validate numerical methods against experiments, since the geometrical and dielectric properties of the complex target are known to a high degree of precision, a situation difficult to attain in the optical regime. We analyze in detail the behaviour of amplitude and phase as a function of the scattering angle and target orientation. Furthermore, we compare different computational methods for a specific experimental configuration.


The Lemoine point, K ,o fABC has special properties involving centroids of pedal triangles. These properties motivate a definition of Lemoine field, F , and a coordinatization of the plane of ABC using perpendicular axes that pass through K. These principal axes are symmetrically related to two other lines: one passing through the isodynamic centers, and the other, the isogonic centers.


This paper discusses global public goods related to the world's land resources, their current provision and likely future provision, their potential impacts on the world's poorest households, as well as prospects for using foreign assistance to enhance these outcomes. Specifically, the paper discusses: carbon sequestration, the provision of biodiversity and ecosystem services, water management, and investments in research, policies, and institutions to facilitate adaptation to climate change. Within this context, access to geospatial analysis tools and information on climate, land use and tenure, poverty and environmental indicators will become increasingly valuable to both public and private decision makers.


Violence in schools is an everyday occurrence and, for the most part, it tends to be regarded as a male issue. There is little indication in media or research reports that female learners perpetrate violence in schools. Research suggests that school violence is caused by male teachers or learners, takes place amongst males and tends to be of a physical or sexual nature. There is, however, a less prominent body of international work, which has begun to explore female aggression and violence at schools. Thus far, there has been little comparable research in South Africa. The thesis is an exploratory study of female violence in schools. The subject is approached by examining the perceptions of male as well as female teachers in primary and secondary schools in Durban.


The author is developing a numerical code with thousands of emission zones to simulate the time-dependent multi-waveband emission from blazars. The code is based on a model in which turbulent plasma flowing at a relativistic speed down a jet crosses a standing conical collimation shock that accelerates electrons to maximum energies in the 5-100 GeV range. This paper reports early results produced by the model. The simulated light curves and time profiles of the degree and position angle of polarization have a number of features in common with the observational data of blazars. Maps of the polarized intensity structure can be compared with those of blazars observed with very long baseline interferometry at short millimeter wavelengths.


The success of cloud computing makes an increasing number of real-time applications such as signal processing and weather forecasting run in the cloud. Meanwhile, scheduling for real-time tasks is playing an essential role for a cloud provider to maintain its quality of service and enhance the system's performance. In this paper, we devise a novel agent-based scheduling mechanism in cloud computing environment to allocate real-time tasks and dynamically provision resources. In contrast to traditional contract net protocols, we employ a bidirectional announcement-bidding mechanism and the collaborative process consists of three phases, i.e., basic matching phase, forward announcement-bidding phase and backward announcement-bidding phase. Moreover, the elasticity is sufficiently considered while scheduling by dynamically adding virtual machines to improve schedulability. Furthermore, we design calculation rules of the bidding values in both forward and backward announcement-bidding phases and two heuristics for selecting contractors. On the basis of the bidirectional announcement-bidding mechanism, we propose an agent-based dynamic scheduling algorithm named ANGEL for real-time, independent and aperiodic tasks in clouds. Extensive experiments are conducted on CloudSim platform by injecting random synthetic workloads and the workloads from the last version of the Google cloud tracelogs to evaluate the performance of our ANGEL. The experimental results indicate that ANGEL can efficiently solve the real-time task scheduling problem in virtualized clouds.


Fusarium circinatum, the causal agent of pitch canker disease (PCD), poses a threat to Pinus radiata plantations due to the presence of bleeding cankers on the trunk that can cause the tree to die. This pathogen has been reported to be phoretically associated with bark beetle species, specifically, with Pityophthorus species in California. Pityophthorus pubescens is a secondary pest, attacking weak trees or broken branches in healthy trees. The aim of this study was to know the association between P. pubescens and F. circinatum in PCD affected plantations in northern Spain. Specific aims were determined: i) to assess the phoretic association between P. pubescens and F. circinatum, ii) to study the presence of F. circinatum in P. pubescens infested twigs and iii) to evaluate whether PCD damages were enhanced in (E)-pityol baited P. radiata trees. Funnel traps baited with (E)-pityol were established and twigs from infested trees were sampled to collect insects and plant tissues in PCD affected plots, with the aim of testing the presence of F. circinatum. Moreover, an experiment was carried out in nature in which P. radiata trees were baited with (E)-pityol and PCD symptoms were evaluated 4 times during one year. A total of 263 specimens were collected from funnel traps between June and September 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013. Moreover, 215 specimens were collected from 424 galleries within the twigs in 2012 and 2013. The pathogen appeared on 1.05% and 2% of the insects in the funnel traps during 2010 and 2012 respectively. Regarding the collected twigs, F. circinatum was found in 3 galleries, whilst results of the baiting experimentation showed symptoms in the crown were more influenced by (E)-pityol than those on the trunk. This work affirms a weak association between P. pubescens and F. circinatum in our study area.


Reverse engineering of binary executables is a critical problem in the computer security domain. On the one hand, malicious parties may recover interpretable source codes from the software products to gain commercial advantages. On the other hand, binary decompilation can be leveraged for code vulnerability analysis and malware detection. However, efficient binary decompilation is challenging. Conventional decompilers have the following major limitations: (i) they are only applicable to specific source-target language pair, hence incurs undesired development cost for new language tasks; (ii) their output high-level code cannot effectively preserve the correct functionality of the input binary; (iii) their output program does not capture the semantics of the input and the reversed program is hard to interpret. To address the above problems, we propose Coda, the first end-to-end neural-based framework for code decompilation. Coda decomposes the decompilation task into two key phases: First, Coda employs an instruction type-aware encoder and a tree decoder for generating an abstract syntax tree (AST) with attention feeding during the code sketch generation stage. Second, Coda then updates the code sketch using an iterative error correction machine guided by an ensembled neural error predictor. By finding a good approximate candidate and then fixing it towards perfect, Coda achieves superior performance compared to baseline approaches. We assess Coda's performance with extensive experiments on various benchmarks. Evaluation results show that Coda achieves an average of 82\% program recovery accuracy on unseen binary samples, where the state-of-the-art decompilers yield 0\% accuracy. Furthermore, Coda outperforms the sequence-to-sequence model with attention by a margin of 70\% program accuracy.


This study aimed to assess a variety selection and preference criteria based on net return ha-1 in durum wheat (Triticum durum L). Regional yield trials with 25 entries were planted in Diyarbakir, Hazro and Ceylanpinar locations in southeast Anatolia in 2004/05 and in Diyarbakir and Hazro in 2005/2006 growing season. A randomized complete block design with 4 replications was employed. Grain samples from each location were subjected to some quality analyses and then presented to randomly selected grain purchasers within the local commodity market for market price estimations. The results revealed that entries 13, 7, 3, 16 and 24 were found to be top 5 highest yielding. Regression analysis showed that the entry 13 and 24 were stable for grain yield. It was found that the most of high yielding entries were also high income generating in both years. Entries 13, 24, 16, 7 and 2 were always found to be first 5  highest incomes generating in both years. Except for 1000 kernel weights in first year, none of other quality parameters was found to be correlating market prices. There were 6.08 and 25 US$/tonne market price difference between entries with highest and lowest market prices in both years respectively. It was concluded that Ažanliurfa commodity market does not offer adequate premiums for the quality characteristics of durum wheat under study. This may result in farmer preference for high yielding with relatively low quality varieties. Breeders and farmers must also give priority to develop selectcultivars with high net return (US$/ ha) rather than high yielding or high quality (=high marketing prices) only.

 Key words: Durum wheat, variety preference, net returns, quality, yield.


We present an autoencoder that leverages learned representations to better measure similarities in data space. By combining a variational autoencoder with a generative adversarial network we can use learned feature representations in the GAN discriminator as basis for the VAE reconstruction objective. Thereby, we replace element-wise errors with feature-wise errors to better capture the data distribution while offering invariance towards e.g. translation. We apply our method to images of faces and show that it outperforms VAEs with element-wise similarity measures in terms of visual fidelity. Moreover, we show that the method learns an embedding in which high-level abstract visual features (e.g. wearing glasses) can be modified using simple arithmetic.


Objectives To examine the association between marital status and dementia in a cohort of young-old (50–64) and middle-old (65–74) adults, and also whether this may differ by gender. Design Prospective population-based study with follow-up time of up to 10 years. Setting Swedish national register-based study. Participants 2 288 489 individuals, aged 50–74 years, without prior dementia diagnosis at baseline. Dementia was identified using the Swedish National Patient Register and the Cause of Death Register. Outcome measures The influence of marital status on dementia was analysed using Cox proportional hazards models, adjusted stepwise for multiple covariates (model 1: adjusted for age and gender; and model 2: additionally adjusted for having adult children, education, income and prior cardiovascular disease). Results During follow-up, 31 572 individuals in the study were identified as demented. Cox regression showed each non-married subcategory to be associated with a significantly higher risk of dementia than the married group, with the highest risk observed among people in the young-old age group, especially among those who were divorced or single (HRs 1.79 vs 1.71, fully adjusted model). Analyses stratified by gender showed gender differences in the young-old group, with indications of divorced men having a higher relative risk compared with divorced women (HRs 2.1 vs 1.7, only-age adjusted model). However, in the fully adjusted model, these differences were attenuated and there was no longer any significant difference between male and female participants. Conclusions Our results suggest that those living alone as non-marrieds may be at risk for early-onset and late-onset dementia. Although more research is needed to understand the underlying mechanism by which marital status is associated with dementia, this suggests that social relationships should be taken seriously as a risk factor for dementia and that social-based interventions may provide an opportunity to reduce the overall dementia risk.


The constituents of the roots of Echinacea simulata and E. paradoxa were examined by HPLC. The major lipophilic and hydrophilic compounds could be identified. E. paradoxa contained several ketoalkenynes and proved to have almost identical constituents as E. pallida. E. simulata contained alkamides as found in E. angustifolia and in addition ketoalkenynes as in E. pallida. Echinacoside was found in both species.


The contribution focusses on Covid-19 associated discrimination (CAD) in Germany and asks whether immigrants from Asian origin are increasingly discriminated against during the COVID-19 pandemic and whether other immigrant groups face similar threats. Using data from the COVID-19 add-on-survey for CILS4EU-DE (CILS4COVID), we demonstrate that immigrants from Asian origin report an increasing CAD during the pandemic, which is more pronounced for respondents residing in administrative districts with a more dynamic COVID-19 situation. Similar results can be found for respondents originating from both American continents and from countries of the former Soviet Union. Given that COVID-19 was first reported in Asia, but with rather low number of infections later on, and the rather high infection rates on both American continents and in Russia, we conclude that CAD experienced by these groups might happen in a reaction to both realistic and symbolic threats posed by the virus.


This article samples several television serials from Hong Kong and Japan to examine trends in East Asian television dramas' portrayal of discourses on health, illness, and disability. Such portrayals are a response to an increasingly literate publics' demands for less explicitly instructional health narratives and for dramatic demonstration of knowledge through para-performances in television serials. Accompanying these health messages are exhibitions of positive psycho-behavioral mechanisms for coping with disability or disease that typify the ideal sociocultural traits of the individual. East Asian dramas have defined many trends of modern living for transnational and regional viewers, and the health discourses in these productions are similarly likely to significantly shape notions of modernity and urbanity in regional contexts. Using an "informatization–dramatization" analytical framework, this article seeks to conceptualize the narrative structures behind the presentation of these health-related messages.


One of the most cherished propositions in economics is that market competition by and large raises consumer welfare. But whether political competition has similarly virtuous consequences is far less discussed. This paper formulates a model to explain why political competition may enhance economic performance and uses the United States as a testing ground for the model's implications. It finds statistically robust evidence that political competition has quantitatively important effects on state income growth, state policies, and the quality of Governors.


Now, more than ever, the United States needs to strengthen its relationship with the Republic of South Africa (RSA). A renewed focus on the African continent by global powers is putting Africa at the centre of a struggle for influence and resources. The US provides aid for numerous countries throughout Africa, but South Africa undeniably receives the major share with over US$221 million for Aids relief alone in 2006. Yet, diplomatic relations between the US and South Africa remain somewhat strained and prevent the US from collaborating effectively with South Africa to bring peace and security to the African continent. Working through those differences sooner, rather than later, will yield enormous returns for the African continent as a whole, as well as for US national security concerns in the future.
The RSA is the strongest economic power on the African continent, with a gross domestic product (GDP) in 2006 of US$587,5 billion (more than 67 per cent of which came from the services sector) and a GDP growth rate of 5 per cent. Unfortunately, even the current economic growth has not been sufficient to lower the unemployment rate, since the country is still plagued by many problems from the apartheid era, specifically poverty and a lack of economic empowerment among previously disadvantaged groups. These problems spill over into the wider economy and prevent South Africa from being the leader on the continent that the world expects it to be.
The US is involved in multiple programmes to alleviate many of South Africa's problems - by means of military assistance, health services, economic aid and other projects from numerous agencies. The existing programmes, combined with stronger diplomatic and military relationships between the two countries, are critical in ensuring that South Africa becomes a beacon of leadership for other countries. In addition, with South Africa being the hegemon of Africa, better relations with South Africa are vital to US interests in Africa: South Africa will be able to act as a committed US partner once relations have been strengthened.
The recent announcement that the US is preparing to establish a unified, designated Africa Command (AFRICOM), which will be responsible for the entire African continent except Egypt, presents a new set of opportunities for the US and South Africa to strengthen military and diplomatic relations. This will inevitably lead to a more prosperous South Africa and Africa since a stronger South Africa can play a larger role in the humanitarian crises that plague the continent.
This paper focuses on why it is imperative that the US, in addition to focusing its attention on northern Africa (due to national interests such as oil, terrorism and potential rogue states), should also devote extensive attention to South Africa. Working through the present challenges and maintaining sound diplomatic relations will benefit not only the US and South Africa, but the African continent as a whole.