The field of labor organizing - once a site of progressive disenchantment with law - has now become a crucial locus of law's resurgence. There is mounting evidence that legal innovation is contributing to a new dynamism within the labor movement as immigrant worker centers, community-labor coalitions, and other grassroots alliances creatively use law to mobilize low-wage workers. These efforts suggest that a reorientation is under way within the labor movement, with activists adopting a legal pluralist approach to organizing that takes strategic advantage of the multiple and intersecting ways in which both employee and employer activities are legally regulated to leverage the power of law to advance labor goals. Yet, while there are a growing number of stories of legal mobilization campaigns outside of the formal labor law context, the evidence of their short-term impact and transformative legacy is less developed. Nor is there a detailed empirical picture of the variables that impact success and failure. This Article responds to this gap by recounting a pivotal story of contemporary labor activism: the anti-sweatshop movement in the Los Angeles garment industry. It offers a detailed case study of the decade-long campaign to bring accountability to the country's largest garment production sector. At its most ambitious, the campaign sought to make legal responsibility follow economic power, rupturing the legal fiction that protected profitable retailers and manufacturers from the labor abuses committed by their contractors. Toward this end, the campaign deployed a multi-faceted tactical approach, pioneering the strategic integration of targeted litigation and worker organizing in a way that challenged the conventional wisdom about the demobilizing impact of law - and marked the emergence of a new wave of low-wage worker organizing outside of the traditional labor law regime. This Article examines how law lived up to its promise in the anti-sweatshop movement. It begins by outlining the role of law in facilitating the rise of modern sweatshop labor in the garment industry, showing how industry actors combined legal opportunities for foreign outsourcing and domestic subcontracting with anti-union efforts and aggressive immigrant hiring to deregulate garment production in Los Angeles. It then offers a close descriptive account of the coordinated litigation, legislative, and grassroots campaign to reform industry labor practices by assigning liability to the retailers and manufacturers that ultimately benefited from sweatshop abuse. The Article concludes by appraising the results of the anti-sweatshop campaign from a qualitative empirical perspective, examining what was achieved and what remained undone, while suggesting theoretical implications for the study of labor law and the relationship between law and organizing.


This paper demonstrates the effectiveness of numerical modelling of aerodynamics as a problem-based-learning strategy for the implementation of aerodynamics theory in sports car engineering programs. Examples are presented of multidisciplinary projects that apply fundamental aerodynamics theory (Thin-airfoil Theory, Vortex Panel Method, Finite-wing Theory and Lifting-line Theory), mathematical models and computer aided design in the conceptual design of inverted wings for the Grand Touring sports car. It is suggested that a numerical modelling problem-based-learning project commences with an analysis of airfoil geometry and mean camber line followed by simulation of surface velocity, pressure distribution and boundary layer development at low Reynolds numbers. Airfoil properties are subsequently used to inform the construction of the three-dimensional wing; where, wing planform, taper and flow control devices including a Gurney flap and end plates must be adjusted to enhance aerodynamic efficiency and comply with motor racing regulations. Optimised geometric or aerodynamic twist may be implemented for the twisted wing to replicate the high performance of a straight wing of elliptic planform and yield high downforce and minimum possible induced drag. Validation tests ultimately determine the accuracy of a computational method in predicting wing performance and should be an integral component of any problem-based-learning project. Numerical modelling of aerodynamics is suggested as a problem-based-learning strategy for Engineering students to undertake complex multi-disciplinary real-world projects that promote initiative and creativity.


Shape types are a general concept of process types which allows verification of various properties of processes from various calculi. The key property is that shape types "look like processes", that is, they resemble process structure and content. Poly✶, originally designed by Makholm and Wells, is a type system scheme which can be instantiated to a shape type system for many calculi. Every Poly✶ instantiation has desirable properties including subject reduction, polymorphism, the existence of principal typings, and a type inference algorithm. In the first part of this thesis, we fix and describe inconsistencies found in the original Poly✶ system, we extend the system to support name restriction, and we provide a detailed proof of the correctness of the system. In the second part, we present a description of the type inference algorithm which we use to constructively prove the existence of principal typings. In the third part, we present various applications of shape types which demonstrate their advantages. Furthermore we prove that shape types can provide the same expressive power as and also strictly superior expressive power than predicates of three quite dissimilar analysis systems from the literature, namely, (1) an implicitly typed π-calculus, (2) an explicitly typed Mobile Ambients, (3) and a flow analysis system for BioAmbients.


The energy Internet (EI)-based vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology facilitates the electric vehicles not only to distribute additional electricity into grid systems, but also support receiving back from the power grid in the form of charging. The secure key establishment is quite significant to initiate the bidirectional electricity power delivery into and from the system. To effectively implement any EI-based V2G communication, the authentication protocol must be free from cyber attacks. In this article, we not only explore the drawbacks of several smart grid-based authentication protocols but also bring forth the limitations of a recently presented EI-based V2G scheme by Gope and Sikdar. The examined drawbacks in this protocol may disrupt its proper functioning, since it faces desynchronization problems while logging into the mobile device bearing registration parameters. The scheme is also vulnerable to replay attack and man-in-the-middle attack. The user is also unable to validate session key in the protocol. Considering these limitations, we propose a novel and efficient V2G protocol framework enabling the vehicles to communicate or recharge at desired recharging stations. The results of the proposed framework are compared with several contemporary schemes, and its security features are validated by random oracle model-based formal analysis.


This book is an examination of the music of the Balinese gender wayang, the quartet of metallophones (gender) that accompanies the Balinese shadow puppet play (wayang kulit). It focuses on processes of musical variation, the main means of creating new music in this genre, and the implications of these processes for the social and historical study of Balinese music, musical aesthetics, concepts of creativity and compositional methods.
Firstly, it studies the processes of composition and variation-making in this unnotated tradition. Secondly, it examines the relationship between pre-composition and spontaneous variation-making. Thirdly, it explores concepts of musical composition, variation, improvisation and creativity in gender wayang, which shed light on attitudes to these processes in Bali in general. These processes are examined in two main geographical areas: Sukawati in South Bali and, secondly, the contrasting area of East Bali, particularly the villages of Budakeling and Tenganan.
Part 1 describes the context of gender wayang within Balinese musical and ritual life and situates the argument in the light of current research on Balinese music and ethnomusicological theories of improvisation and composition. In part 2, I examine compositional techniques in gender wayang in more depth, as well as aspects of regional variation, before analysing the processes at work in a spectrum from the more improvised to the more pre-composed, illuminated by players' comments. Finally, in part 3, I draw out and bring into focus certain themes raised by the processes described in the previous chapters, particularly those that relate to changing social contexts for the music.


Molecular dynamics simulations were performed to examine different aspects of radiation damage in materials having the bixbyite and NaCl structures. The displacement threshold energy, Ed, and the Frenkel pair formation energy, Efp, were investigated. The Ed values show a significant dependence on the Primary Knock-on Atom (PKA) direction and some correlation between Ed values in the different materials can be observed. No functional relation between Ed and Efp for materials with the same structures was found other than the obvious one that a higher value of Ed corresponds to a higher Efp. Low and high energy cascades in Er2O3 were performed. The Er PKA, which is much heavier than the O PKA, produces more sub-cascades which spread over a shorter distance. The resulting collisional damage was investigated and analysed. Temperature accelerated dynamics and kinetic Monte Carlo methods were used to examine diffusion of point defects in Er2O3. Some of the transitions were found to be rank 2 saddles and a strategy for determining the exponential prefactors was introduced for these cases. The most mobile defect is the oxygen vacancy with lowest energy transition barrier for diffusion of 1 eV. Other defects have very high energy barriers but the energy barrier for recombination between the vacancy and interstitial is found to be dramatically reduced for closely separated Er defects. Radiation damage was examined close to twist grain boundaries in MgO and in nanocrystalline MgO. Grain boundaries were shown to be sinks for interstitial defects with a build up of vacancies in the crystal grains away from the boundaries. The transition barriers for both defects to a grain boundary showed a reduction within 3 layers from the boundary. However there is no net reduction in system energy for a vacancy in the grain boundary compared to a vacancy in the bulk whereas a significant energy reduction is observed for the interstitial in the grain boundary compared with the bulk. These energies show the possible of vacancies to be accumulated in the crystal after collision cascades while interstitials are trapped on the grain boundary.


Background/Aims: The incidence of uncomplicated peptic ulcer has decreased in recent years. It is unclear what the impact of this has been on the epidemiology of peptic ulcer complications. This systematic review aimed to determine the incidence, recurrence and mortality of complicated peptic ulcer and the risk factors associated with these events. Methods: Systematic PubMed searches. Results: Overall, 93 studies were identified. Annual incidence estimates of peptic ulcer hemorrhage and perforation were 19.4–57.0 and 3.8–14 per 100,000 individuals, respectively. The average 7-day recurrence of hemorrhage was 13.9% (95% CI: 8.4–19.4), and the average long-term recurrence of perforation was 12.2% (95% CI: 2.5–21.9). Risk factors for peptic ulcer complications and their recurrence included nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug and/or acetylsalicylic acid use, Helicobacter pylori infection and ulcer size ≧1 cm. Proton pump inhibitor use reduced the risk of peptic ulcer hemorrhage. Average 30-day mortality was 8.6% (95% CI: 5.8–11.4) after hemorrhage and 23.5% (95% CI: 15.5–31.0) after perforation. Older age, comorbidity, shock and delayed treatment were associated with increased mortality. Conclusions: Complicated peptic ulcer remains a substantial healthcare problem which places patients at a high risk of recurrent complications and death.


O-linked N-acetylglucosamine transferase (OGT) catalyzes the attachment ofN-acetylglucosamine (GlcNAc) monosaccharides to the hydroxyl group of serine or threonine residues of intracellular proteins and may play an important role in the hexosamine pathway. Glucose-induced insulin resistance is mediated by increased activity of the hexosamine pathway. In the present study, we examined the localization of OGT mRNA and OGT protein in the rat pancreas. The sites of OGT mRNA expression were determined by in situ hybridization histochemistry with a digoxigenin (DIG)-labeled antisense cRNA probe. Intense hybridization signals were present in the exocrine acinar cells, while weaker ones were detected in the islets of Langerhans. This distribution was confirmed using additional antisense cRNA or oligo-cDNA probes complementary to different regions of OGT mRNA. In addition, immunofluorescence staining with antibody raised against OGT stained both the exocrine acinar cells and endocrine islet cells. In the acinar cell nucleus, the zymogen granule region and contour of the cell were intensely stained. In the islets of Langerhans, especially in the alpha-cells, intense staining with anti-OGT antibody was observed. These staining patterns were almost identical to those seen when staining for the O-linked GlcNAc (O-GlcNAc) modification. Immuno-electron microscopy showed that OGT is localized to the euchromatin of the nucleus and around the secretory granules of exocrine acinar cells and endocrine islet cells. These results suggest that OGT is involved in the regulation of transcription and of granular secretion. Thus, one or more O-GlcNAcylated proteins may be important components of the glucose-sensing mechanism in the pancreas.


The authors of this book demonstrate that fieldwork is first and foremost a human pursuit. They draw upon published and unpublished accounts of fieldworkers' personal experiences to develop the thesis that an appreciation of fieldwork as a unique mode of inquiry depends upon an understanding of the role the human element plays in it. They analyze the processes involved when people study people firsthand, focusing upon the recurrent human problems that arise and must be solved. The human processes and problems, they argue, are common to all fieldwork, regardless of the disciplinary backgrounds or the specific interests of individual researchers.


This study was designed to explore cognitive and motivational factors that underlie preferences for particular sports. Based upon self-presentational theory, it was assumed that sports constitute a symbol system that communicates something about the participant's personality and identity. Individuals may learn to prefer those sports whose symbolism is appropriate to their desired social identity. In order to explore this premise, subjects were asked to rate the participants of five different sports (bowling, skiing, golf, tennis, motocross) on 70 personality and identity dimensions. Results indicated that stereotypes concerning the participants in each sport are widely shared, and that specific identity dimensions are associated with each sport.


Speaking on inhalation, pulmonic ingressive speech, is well-known in Scandinavia and often believed to be unique to this part of the world. It has, however been shown (Eklund, 2002, 2007, 2008) that not only is ingressive speech not confined to the northernmost part of Europe, it is found all over the world and might be egarded as a linguistic universal, and can be placed in one of the differentuniversal categories described by Croft (2003). In connection with the Eklund(2008) publication, a website was created, devoted to ingressive speech and phonation: http://ingressivespeech.info. Over the years incoming comments and reports have both offered further evidence for languages already on the list, as well as new languages with ingressives. Some of these are described in this paper.


Objective: To determine whether the cost-effectiveness methodology used to evaluate disease modifying therapies (DMTs) for relapsing forms of multiple sclerosis (RMS) follows patient-centered, best practice guidelines. Background: As more payers move towards value-based reimbursement, coverage decisions will increasingly be based not only on treatment efficacy and safety, but also treatment value. In the case of RMS, the ability of payers and providers to identify high value treatments, however, depends on the availability of cost-effectiveness studies that capture all treatment benefits and costs. Design/Methods: We selected five cost-effectiveness studies of DMTs for RMS patients set in three countries (Canada, United States, United Kingdom). We compared treatment benefit and cost components captured in these studies against best practices outlined by the Second Panel on Cost-Effectiveness in Health and Medicine. Results: DMT treatment benefits measured in all five studies included clinical endpoints used in regulatory approval (e.g., disability progression, relapse rate, and death), but other clinical endpoints of interest to patients were captured less frequently. Although most (4 of 5 studies) considered patient pain, mobility, fatigue and adverse events, fewer measured neurological function (e.g., sensation, dexterity, cognitive function) (3/5) or activities of daily living (3/5). These studies included pharmaceutical and disability-related medical costs, but generally failed to consider patient transportation (0/5) and home modification (1/5) costs. Novel value measures recommended by the Second Panel—such as option value from future innovation and insurance value to patients without RMS—were not included in any of the studies considered. Conclusions: There is significant heterogeneity in measurements of DMT treatment value across studies, and the omission of patient-centric treatment benefits may adversely impact coverage. Future DMT cost-effectiveness studies should follow best practices to insure DMT health benefits and costs are fully captured. Study Supported by: Novartis Pharmaceuticals Disclosure: Dr. Shafrin has received compensation for activities with Precision Health Economics as an employee. Dr. Shafrin has received research support from Novartis. Dr. Kantor has received personal compensation for activities with Avanir, Bayer, Biogen, EMD Serono, Abbvie, Genzyme, Malinckrodt, Novartis, Otsuka, and Sandoz as consulting services and/or speakig honoraria. Dr. Brauer has received personal compensation for activities with Precision Health Economics as an employee. Dr. Ko has received personal compensation for activities with Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation as an employee. Dr. Herrera holds stock and/or stock options in Novartis, which sponsored research in which Dr. Herrera was involved as an investigator. Dr. Goldman has received personal compensation for activities with Precision Health Economics. Dr. Goldman has received personal compensation in an editorial capacity for Health Affairs, the American Journal of Managed Care, and the Forum for Health Economics and Policy. Dr. Goldman has received compensation for serving as the Managing Director of Precision Health Economics. Dr. Goldman has received research support from Novartis.


The aim of the research reported here was to examine the causal impact of social capital on health in 14 European countries. Using data from the European Social Survey for 14 European countries, supplemented by regional-level data, the authors studied whether individual and/or community-level social capital positively affects health. The authors controlled for other relevant factors that are also expected to affect health, and addressed – via an instrumental variable approach – the challenge of assessing causality in the relationship between social capital and health. The large variance of the error term due to measurement errors calls for strong instruments to obtain reliable estimates in a finite sample. The dataset is rich enough in information to allow the finding of a seemingly strong causal relationship between social capital and individual health. Community social capital (defined at regional level) appears not to affect health once individual-level social capital is controlled for. Taken at face value, the findings suggest that policy interventions should be targeted at improving primarily individual social capital. In doing so they would achieve a double effect: on the one hand they would directly improve individual health; on the other they would contribute to community social capital, which reinforces the beneficial role of individual social capital.


The European green crab Carcinus maenas L, is a major invasive species in North America as well as many other regions around the world, including South Africa, Australia, South America, and Asia. The species poses a significant threat to the diverse ecosystems and the aquaculture industries on the East coast of the United States, with the state of Maine particularly at risk. The shellfish industry is a significant part of Maine's economy, and is threatened by the foraging behavior of green crabs toward small bivalves (Beal 2015). Climate change likely plays a large role in the rapid population growth of C. maenas over the last 5-10 years by opening up marginal habitats for the crabs to occupy (Beal 2015). Steroid activity is highly dependent on environmental conditions, and changes in temperature have been linked to the ecological success of C. maenas. This project will focus on developing an accessible low-cost ocean-acidification simulator at the University of Maine Aquaculture Research Center to be used to explore physiological responses of C. maenas to acidified conditions and quantify estradiol levels in the animals using an Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA). Animal trials conducted with the system will provide information on parameters related to the effect of acidic stress on the endocrine system of green crabs. Additionally, the outlines for the construction of the simulator can be used as a model for students for an inexpensive holding facility to test effects of acidification. Data obtained from the Accessible LowCost Ocean Acidification Simulation Tool (ALCOAST) can also be used by policy makers to evaluate whether climate change can provide information on physiological interactions between C. maenas and its environment. This study stands to fill a significant gap in knowledge that is relevant not only to Maine's economy and management of invasive species, but also to studies of how invasive species react to climate change.


Non-linear transmission lines (NLTL) are used for pulse shaping. We developed the theory of pulse propagation through the NLTL. The problem of a wide pulse degenerating into multiple pulses rather than a single pulse is solved by using a novel gradually scaled NLTL. We exploit certain favorable properties of accumulation mode MOS varactors to design an NLTL that can sharpen both rising and falling edges, simultaneously. There is a good agreement among the theory, simulations, and measurements.


We consider how an agent should update her uncertainty when it is represented by a set P of probability distributions and the agent observes that a random variable X takes on value x, given that the agent makes decisions using the minimax criterion, perhaps the best-studied and most commonly-used criterion in the literature. We adopt a game-theoretic framework, where the agent plays against a bookie, who chooses some distribution from P. We consider two reasonable games that differ in what the bookie knows when he makes his choice. Anomalies that have been observed before, like time inconsistency, can be understood as arising because different games are being played, against bookies with different information. We characterize the important special cases in which the optimal decision rules according to the minimax criterion amount to either conditioning or simply ignoring the information. Finally, we consider the relationship between conditioning and calibration when uncertainty is described by sets of probabilities.


The maritime transport industry carries the majority of global trade. Large ships use diesel
engines that are significantly larger than automotive diesel engines and consume low quality
heavy fuel oil (HFO). This project aimed to better understand the dynamics of long duration,
high fuel viscosity diesel sprays that are typical of a marine engine and to improve the accuracy
of CFO models used for optimisation of engine design. The project utilised both numerical
methods and experimental methods. The numerical softw<U'e package called "Star-CO v3.26"
was used for the numerical simulation part of the project. For the gas phase, the Large Eddy
Simulation turbulence model was employed throughout. New sub-models were added to the
Star-CO software to improve the simulation accuracy. Experiments were conducted using a
custom-built High Pressure Spray Chamber (HPSC). The experimental results provided
verification of the simulation results.
Literature reviews showed that limited research has been done on long duration l-IFO sprays.
Most literature is focused on high speed diesel sprays with shott injection durations using low
viscosity fuel with light components. The low fuel viscosity has negligible effect on the droplet
breakup process and numerical modelling requires only a single component fuel. Such studies
can not be applied in HFO due to the high viscosity, complex molecular structure, presence of
liquid phase soot, and variable fuel density. As a result, this project aimed to perform a thorough
study of the fundamental dynamics of such sprays.
Throughout this project, the spray was studied at the gas density equivalent to combustion
chamber density of approximately 35 kg/m3 and at room temperature. This allowed the
dynamics of the spray to be studied in the absence of combustion and evaporation. In the case of
the HFO combustion spray, the presence of high molecular weight components and the
formation of carbonaceous residue means that the spray remains as a multiphase flow
thJoughout the combustion period.
The first phase of the project involved evaluating Lagrangian-Eulerian multiphase numerical
models. In each evaluation, the models were isolated so that only the effects from the model of
interest were shown in the results without unwanted influence of other models. The evaluation
found that the inter-droplet collision model required corrections which resulted in the
development of the mesh independent O'Rourke collision model (MIOC). The collision model
studies showed that the nozzle exit region and the initial droplet cluster region contained the
highest collision rate. This was because the droplet population was dense and the droplet velocities were high in these regions. The Kelvin-Helmholtz/Rayleigh-Taylor (KH-RT) hybrid
breakup model and Tnylor Analogy Breakup (TAB) based dynamic droplet drag model were
programmed into Star-CD v3.26.
The second phase of the project involved conducting experimental analysis of the spray. The
experiment was broken into three parts, namely: spray penetration and cone angle, light sheet
Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) and dropsize shadowgraphy using a long-distance
microscope. The macro spray structure (penetration experiments) and PIV experiments showed
evidence that surface instabilities from the shearing of the jet against the surrounding gas, and
the in-flow of air into the low pressure region of the spray jet, forms the overall !'pray structure.
The experiment confirmed that increasing gas density results in a lower penetration rate and
larger cone angle. The increase of fuel viscosity had a negligible effect on the spray penetration
but increased the cone angle. PIV measurements were performed on the spray droplets because
it was difficult to externally introduce seeding particles. As a result, it was not possible to adjust
the seeding particle population density directly. The measured droplet velociti es can be
considered equivalent to the gas velocities in the sparse region of the spray because the
numerical results suggested that there is minimal difference between the gas and droplet
velocity. The spray images and the macro-PJV analysis showed the presence of high velocity
regions and the presence of droplet clusters. The dropsize shadowgraphy experiments provided
point velocity measurements that could be analysed using Particle Tracking Velocimetry (PTV)
and f..I.-PJV methods. The results were compared with the macro-PIV resu lts. The dropsize
shadowgraphy re~u lts provided valuable dropsize data and confi1med that high fuel viscosity
had a significant effect on the dropsize of the spray.
The third phase of the project involved the full numerical simulation of the diesel spray and
validation with the HPSC experimental results. The validation confirmed that the KH-RT
breakup model was able to reasonably predict the effects of fuel viscosity on dropsize, which
was not the case with the Reitz-Diwakar breakup model. The penetration and cone angle
validation showed very similar penetration rates in both numerical and experimental results, but
the cone angle of the numerical simulation was narrower compared to the experimental results.
The PIV measurements and simulation velocity proriles showed similar velocity patterns and
velocity magnitudes at the sparse region of the spray. In the dense region, the velocity patterns
remained si milar but the magnitude of the predicted spray velocity was higher. This was
because the experimental results were erroneous in the dense region, due to higher particle
density leading to multiple scattering. The drop10ize validation showed that the numerically
predicted dropsize was slightly larger than the experimental results but consistent under all conditions. It was concluded that the set-up using Large Eddy Simulation (LES) with Blob
atomisation, Kl-1-RT breakup model, MIOC model. TAB based droplet drag model and vertex
based interpolation, produced the most accurate simulation when validated against the
experimental results.
The full spray simulation suggested that the spray structure could be divided into two regions.
The disintegration region showed that most of the breakup process and momentum transfer
(from droplets to gas) occurred here. The stable region showed the formation of droplet clusters
and volumetric expansion of the spray. The numerical simulation result~ showed that a high
viscosity fuel spray contained significantly different internal structures compared to a low
viscosity fuel spray. This was also partly supported by the experimental results. The high
viscosity fuel spray droplet dispersion rate was significantly lower and the formation of droplet
clusters occurred much further away from the nozzle, when compared to low viscosity fuel
spray. The results also showed that an increase in gas density shortened the length between
cluster formations.
The outcome of this project is improved understanding of long duration, high fuel viscosity
diesel sprays. It is concluded that the use of LES as the turbulence model produces good
qualitative internal spray structures that predict the instantaneous turbulent jet instability and the
formation of droplet clustering. The project highlights the limitations in the current state of
numerical prediction methods and recommendations are made for future work to improve
numerical predictions.


Strategic programming is a generic programming idiom for processing compound data such as terms or object structures. At the heart of the approach is the separation of two concerns: basic dataprocessing computations vs. traversal schemes. Actual traversals are composed by passing the former as arguments to the latter. Traversal schemes can be defined by the strategic programmer using a combinator style that relies on primitives for layered traversal.In this paper, we take a look at strategic programming from an aspect-oriented programming perspective. Throughout the paper, we compare strategic programming with adaptive programming, which is a well-established aspectual approach to the traversal of object structures. We start from the observation that aspect-oriented programming terms, e.g., crosscutting, join point, and advice can be instantiated for aspectual traversal approaches.


SUMMARY We asked whether the occurrence and the extent of host gender-biased parasitism vary among higher parasite taxa, among individual species within these taxa and within parasite species among localities. To answer this question, we studied prevalence, abundance, species richness and the level of aggregation of ectoparasites (ticks, mites, lice and fleas) collected from male and female striped mice (Rhabdomys pumilio) in 9 localities of the Western Cape Province of South Africa. We used meta-analyses to compare parasitological variables between male and female hosts across localities for individual parasite species and higher taxa as well as across parasite species within a higher taxon. Whenever gender-biased parasitism was found, it indicated higher infestation of male than female hosts (except 1 low abundant mite species). We found that the occurrence and extent of gender-biased infestation varied mainly within a parasite species among localities and among parasite species within a higher taxon but not among parasite taxa. Our results suggest that the extent of a gender-biased pattern of parasite infestation of the same host may not only involve host-related mechanisms but also depends on biological features of a particular parasite species.


The focus of the current study is on the temporal relation of simultaneity between events. Investigating the expression of simultaneity, and the development thereof, reveals interesting insights concerning the use of a particular grammatical aspectual marker in Dutch. Adult native speakers of Dutch and 4-7-year-old children acquiring Dutch as their only L1 were set to the task of retelling simple animated clips depicting either simultaneous or sequential events. The data provide an overview of linguistic means available in Dutch for expressing various types of simultaneity. A main finding is that the Dutch progressive construction - aan het + V-inf zijn - is widely used when expressing simultaneous events, already from an early age onwards. Furthermore, when examining children's production data, several age-specific temporal linking strategies can be described. For example, children do not always adhere to the Principle of Natural Order in their narrations. Instead, children, especially at the early developmental stages, are mainly concerned with changes of state in the depicted event. That means, changes of state have a direct impact on children's cognitive development of temporality. We speculate that the concept of simultaneity is therefore easier to acquire than that of sequentiality.


This paper demonstrates how the translucency of glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) laminates allows the derivation of their mechanical properties through optical measurements. Spectrophotometric, goniophotometric and tensile experiments were performed on unidirectional and cross-ply hand lay-up GFRP laminates with fiber volume fractions ranging from 0.15 to 0.45. An analytical model to predict the directional fiber volume fractions—and thus the mechanical properties of GFRP laminates—has been developed based on the total and diffuse transmittance and directional light scattering of the laminates. It is demonstrated that structurally optimized GFRP laminates can meet the requirements for GFRP skylights and the encapsulation of photovoltaic cells into translucent GFRP laminates.


C protein is a component of the thick filament of striated muscles. Although the function of C protein remains unknown, a variety of evidence suggests that C protein may regulate actin-myosin interaction or be involved in structural support or elasticity of the sarcomere. We have previously proposed (Hartzell, H. C., 1984, J. Gen. Physiol., 83:563-588) that C protein is involved in regulating twitch relaxation in cardiac muscle. To gain further insight into the function of C protein, we have studied the structure of C protein purified from chicken heart. C protein was purified from extracts of detergent-washed myofibrils by sequential hydroxylapatite and DEAE-Sephacel chromatography. C protein was judged greater than 95% pure by SDS PAGE. The polypeptide subunit had a molecular weight of 155,000 and the native molecule sedimented on linear sucrose or glycerol gradients at 4- 5S. For electron microscopy, purified C protein was dialyzed and diluted into a volatile buffer in 50% glycerol, aspirated onto mica, dried under vacuum, and rotary platinum-shadowed. Replicas revealed particles of relatively homogeneous overall dimensions. Over half of the particles were V-shaped. The "arm" lengths of the V-shaped particles were 22 +/- 4.5 nm (SD). Gel filtration on Sephacryl S-300 demonstrated that purified C protein had a Stokes' radius of 5.07 nm. Measurements of viscosity gave an intrinsic viscosity of 16.5 cm3/g. These data are consistent with the electron microscopic data and suggest that C protein in heart muscle is asymmetric. The C protein molecule is large enough to extend from the surface of a thick filament to adjacent thin or thick filaments.


Background: Cutaneous adverse drug reactions (CADRs) are common, comprising 10%–30% of all reported adverse drug reactions (ADRs) and its incidence in hospitalized patients is 2%–3%. Aims: The aim is to study the different clinical spectrum of CADRs in outpatient and inpatient and to find out the offending drug. Settings and Design: A prospective observational, nonrandomized hospital-based study was conducted at a tertiary care hospital over a period of 12 months. Materials and Methods: Patients presenting with suspected drug-related cutaneous lesions were included if drug identity could be ascertained. Clinical profiling was done. The severity of the reaction was assessed using modified Hartwig and Siegel ADR severity assessment scale. Statistical Analysis Used: Data were analyzed using Stata Version 13. Results: Out of the total study population, most commonly observed cutaneous ADRs were fixed drug reaction in 28.75%, followed by maculopapular drug rash in 26.3%, and urticarial rash in 20.6%. Few less frequently observed CADRs were a lichenoid eruption, acneiform eruption, and baboon syndrome, generalized pruritus, pityriasis rosea, and vasculitis. Antimicrobials accounted for 37.5% of the total followed by nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs 25%, anti-epileptics 12.5%, and antifungal 6.25%. Anti-retroviral therapy contributed 3.125%, whereas 1.875% were due to Anti-Koch's therapy. About 28.1% of patients were taking monotherapy, whereas 71.9% of patients were received polytherapy. Conclusions: Wide spectrums of drug reaction were observed in this study. Sound knowledge of these drug eruptions may help the clinician to diagnose and effectively manage their cases. Polypharmacy is a well-known predictor of ADRs in children and adults.


This paper examines the potential of posthumanism to enable a reconceptualisation of young children's literacies from the starting point of movement and sound in the more-than-human world. We propose movement as a communicative practice that always occurs as a more complex entanglement of relations within more-than-human worlds. Through our analysis, an understanding of sound emerged as a more-than-human practice that encompasses children's linguistic and non-linguistic utterances, and which occurs through, with, alongside movement. This paper draws on data from two different research studies: in the first study, two-year-old children in the UK banged on drums and marched in a museum. In the second study, two young children in Australia chose sites for their own research and produced a range of emergent literacies from vocalisation and ongoing stories to installations. We present examples of ways in which speaking, gesturing and sounding, as emergent literacy practices, were not so much about transmitting information or intentionally designed signs, but about embodied and sensory experiences in which communication about and in place occurred through the body being and moving in place. This paper contributes to the field of posthuman early childhood literacies by foregrounding movement within in-the-moment becoming. Movement and sound exist beyond the parameters of human perception, within a flat ontology in which humans are decentred and everything exists on the same plane, in constant motion. Starting from movement in order to conceptualise literacy offers, therefore, an expanded field of inquiry into early childhood literacy. In the multimodal literacy practices analysed in this paper, meaning and world emerge simultaneously, offering new forms of literacy and representation and suggesting possibilities for defining or conceptualising literacy in ways that resist anthropocentric or logocentric framings.


Science, at its best, is supposed to be a set of tools, constructed by humanity for use in improving our quality of life, our chances for survival, and the survival and welfare of our progeny. In all of those pursuits, sustainability really is not optional; it is required. Sustainability must be the cornerstone for any kind of planning for future outcomes that we want to use our science to achieve. To do other than that is both irresponsible and foolish.

However, even when our intentions are planted firmly on the tenets of sustainability, we still need to be able to trust the tools we intend to use to do the jobs we are asking of them. Chief among those jobs is scientific modeling and prediction. Any proposed therapy we want to consider implementing in local or global ecosystems, for example, will need to be tested in models first—before we decide to risk implementing such a therapy in the natural world. We need to know that the models used are actually capable of accurately predicting what would happen in ecosystems, in social systems, physiologies, psychologies, etc. All of these systems involve living organisms and/or interactions between living organisms in critically important ways.

Currently, our science is based on a presumption, buried deep in the foundational theory upon which all science rests, that all systems in the universe are "just like machines" and, therefore, have only the behavior potentials that machines have. All machines are purely reactive in their behavior potentials: In such a world, causality flows from past through present towards future—just as time is also presumed to do—in a linear, unidirectional fashion. In that scenario, there is no way for the future to act, in any causal way, on the present. But, that is clearly not how life works (The fact that this paper is being written now, months before the conference it is to be presented at, offers one proof of that.)

If life is not "purely reactive", what does that mean for science? Do we hold on to our scientific presumptions about the universe and conclude that aspects such as life and the human mind must therefore be supernatural in origin and potential? Or do we turn around and take a hard look at our tools, instead. What happens if we discard the notion of "The Machine" as an appropriate model for all systems in the universe? The reactive paradigm of science need not be discarded: It will remain just as applicable to certain types of systems as it ever was— BUT—we are no longer limited to ONLY that. We are then free to expand our scientific capacity in order to study relations between interacting "things", study the impact of changes in such relations on causal outcomes, and to develop some new tools that will be capable of helping us truly learn about the anticipatory nature of living systems. This will allow us to build far better models of them, as individual organisms or as populations within environments, which can accurately represent their true capabilities in interactions of myriad types, in the natural world.

Only then will we really have a hope of being able to trust in the predictions our tools offer us as we try to decide how to proceed. In short: We need to think ahead, individually and collectively—more so now than ever before in human history. The margin for error is growing thinner as our population increases. The old dictum from carpentry applies: Measure twice, cut once. Just as importantly, we will need the right tools for the job. It is a salient truth that the issue of "sustainability" is not a reactive concept; it is an anticipatory one.


This paper studies the existence of elements of gender justice in the ongoing land restitution process in Colombia, in order to analyse the potential of the Land Restitution Programme to contribute to the elimination of structural violence against women and the resulting gender inequalities. In this context, the sources of the analysis comprises the Victims' and Land Restitution Law of 2011, the implementation programmes by the Land Restitution Unit, and the sentences by the specialized judges for land restitution. The paper argues that the land restitution programme could contribute to the elimination of structural forms of discrimination and exclusion of women in the Colombian society, if the elements of gender justice are applied in a coherent and systematic way and if it is accompanied by additional measures aimed at reducing the high security risks for internally displaced women in the land restitution process and changing the patriarchal system deeply rooted in the Colombian society.


Environmental planning and management require comprehensive and interdisciplinary information as the scientific and technical information basis for what are, ultimately, political decisions. The volume and complexity of this information, uncertainty in the data and the understanding of processes, as well as the often very large number of alternatives to be considered require specific data processing tools. Electronic data processing and in particular, the simulation and analysis of environmental problems and possible measures of environmental management require the development and implementation of the required data and numerical models, but also of appropriate user interfaces. The user interface allows interactive control of the software, the graphical display and visualization of results, and the integration of models and data bases, multiple models, or expert systems components. It also facilitates customization of the system for specific institutional applications. Important components are graphical and symbolic user interaction, the graphical display of results that are dynamic or spatially distributed, the integration of geographical information systems as a source of data, but also as a tool for further analysis, and the use of AI components that allow efficient systems behavior and easy, error-free use of the software. The role of integrated systems is not only to model selected aspects of the environment, but to offer a broader view of the overall problems, and to provide tools and methods of analysis that distill the most critical features of decision-oriented information bases and explicit decision support. Using a number of practical examples from application domains such as air quality, ground and surface water, hazardous chemicals, technological risk and environmental impact assessment, a number of interactive and integrated information and decision support systems, implemented in a number of countries for environmental planning and management, are described and discussed together with the architecture of their implementation and the basic approach.


The use of contextually aware, pervasive, distributed computing, and sensor networks to bridge the gap between the physical and online worlds is the basis of mobile social networking. This book shows how applications can be built to provide mobile social networking, the research issues that need to be solved to enable this vision, and how mobile social networking can be used to provide computational intelligence that will improve daily life. With contributions from the fields of sociology, computer science, human-computer interaction and design, this book demonstrates how mobile social networks can be inferred from users' physical interactions both with the environment and with others, as well as how users behave around them and how their behavior differs on mobile vs. traditional online social networks.


In this paper, a new effect of pitch proximity is reported. Subjects were presented with patterns consisting of octave-related complexes. Each pattern was composed of four tones, which constituted two simultaneous melodic lines, one of which ascended by a semitone while the other descended by a semitone. The subjects judged whether the line that was higher in pitch ascended or descended, and from these judgments it was inferred which line was heard as higher and which as lower. It was found that the patterns were perceptually organized so that the simultaneous tones formed proximal relationships. The findings provide evidence that, just as successions of tones tend to be organized perceptually in accordance with pitch proximity, so simultaneous tones tend to be organized in accordance with this principle also.


Frank Parsons (1909) founded the vocational guidance movement more than 100 years ago within the context of a shift from an agricultural to an industrial workplace. Today, globalization, workforce diversity, and the financial instability related to the Great Recession present numerous challenges to workers across the economic spectrum. In addition to highlighting Parsons's continued influence on career counseling practice, the authors draw on David Blustein's (2006) psychology of working to enhance the understanding of the needs of dislocated workers. Using case examples, the authors demonstrate how to incorporate insights from the psychology of working to address social justice, financial, relational, and self-determination concerns among this vulnerable population. Counseling strategies for clients in transition, especially those considering educational options, are provided.Today's workers often struggle to cope with and adapt to situations over which they have little or no control (Blustein, 2008). Frank Parsons, who founded the field of vocational guidance at the turn of the 20th century (Parsons, 1909), focused on educational issues for those transitioning from school to work and displaced immigrant workers, emphasizing social justice to address issues of equality, oppression, and human rights within society during a time of reformation (Zytowski, 2001). He laid the foundation for conceptualizing how individuals make and manage career decisions (Hartung & Blustein, 2002), emphasizing understanding one's self, knowing the career environment, and identifying the relationship between self and environment (Parsons, 1909). Numerous factors (e.g., globalization, technology, diversity) are again changing the nature of work, bringing counselors full circle to an era of reform where social justice can once again address the needs of workers as they adapt to a dynamic, ever-shifting workplace (Blustein, 2008). Professional groups such as the American Counseling Association's Counselors for Social Justice view the construct of social justice as focusing on the empowerment of individuals by addressing the essential elements of equity, access, participation, and harmony within the context of cultural and societal systems (Counselors for Social Justice, 201 1 ). Parsons addressed these aspects as a scholar, educator, and reformer by implementing his philosophy into action through his Boston's North End organization. To this end, counselors must work together with community leaders to advocate for the needs of clients within the context of contemporary challenges (Santos, Ferreira, & Chaves, 2001).To frame the plight of dislocated workers, we use insights from David Blustein's (2006) psychology of working perspective in conceptualizing present-day career challenges (e.g., outsourcing, downsizing, global competition) involving modern at-risk populations, namely, dislocated working-class individuals returning to school. We seek to bolster the understanding of unplanned career transitions and to inform career interventions for these workers. Several relevant case examples from individuals involved in mass layoffs at two manufacturing compames are provided. Blustein's (2006, 2008) psychology of working is emphasized herein because it complements Parsons's perspective related to transitional issues and addresses concerns of less privileged individuals (Hartung & Blustein, 2002; Zytowski, 2001). Although complex market forces are typically involved in mass layoffs, recent changes in the economy have made certain workers especially vulnerable because of slowdowns in certain business sectors and changing educational and skills requirements. Counselors have always provided important support to dislocated workers by connecting them with resources necessary to maintain or restore employability. Workers requiring additional education are not necessarily members of traditionally underprivileged groups (e.g., mistreated migrant workers, victims of racism), yet not having the necessary employability to compete in such a challenging economy may indirectly create another less obvious at-risk population. …


This study was conducted to identify environmental tracers using water chemistry and stable isotopes in the Moulton Road area adjacent to the Yankee Doodle tailings impoundment north of Butte, Montana. The water level of the tailings lake is being raised as tailings slurry is pumped up to the impoundment, and numerous residential wells are located in close proximity. Although it has an alkaline pH (> 9), the water in the tailings lake is much higher in some chemical constituents than the wells and some of these constituents could be used as tracers to determine if lake water is migrating out of the impoundment due to the rising level. Tracers examined in this study include the Oand H-isotopic composition of water and the concentration and Sand Oisotopic compositions of dissolved sulfate. Although water in the tailings lake is partly evaporated, the contrast between the isotopic signature of the lake and the groundwater wells is relatively small, making it a less powerful tracer. On the other hand, sulfate concentrations are more than an order of magnitude higher in the lake than in the groundwater. Whereas the Sisotope compositions of dissolved sulfate in lake and groundwater samples are similar, the Oisotope compositions of sulfate for the two end members are very different (-2.8 and -14.0 ‰, respectively). A conservative mass balance model was used to predict changes in the concentration and isotopic composition of sulfate in background groundwater as water sourced from the tailings lake is mixed in. As little as 5% mixing of lake water is enough to cause a substantial shift in the δ18O of dissolved sulfate in a long-term groundwater monitoring well. This study also reports new data on the geochemistry of the active tailings slurry, the shallow sediment in the tailings lake, and the shallow sediment pore water of the lake. Acid-base accounting tests show that the solid fraction of the tailings slurry is net acidic, and will generate acid leachate if allowed to completely oxidize. The shallow sediment in the lake is also net acidic, but has somewhat higher neutralization potential compared to the slurry due to precipitation of calcite in the lake. Results from sediment pore water samplers (peepers) and piezometers show very little change in the chemistry of the pore water as the sediment is buried, at least to a depth of 8 feet. Vertical gradients in the pore waters are directed upwards, consistent with an increase in pore-water pressure as the tailings sediments consolidate. Based on the results of this study it is recommended that δ18O-sulfate should be added to the list of analytes obtained from long-term monitoring wells in the Moulton Road area. This parameter is the most powerful tracer of potential mixing of lake water and background groundwater.


Welcome to the second issue of the Journal of Spine Surgery for 2017. JSS is rapidly growing and expanding its readership, receiving submissions internationally from a broad scope of research including clinical studies, basic laboratory research, case reports and Masters of Surgery videos. JSS had a very successful event at the recent 2017 Spine Society of Australia meeting held in Hobart, Australia. We would like to express our sincere gratitude and appreciation for the enthusiastic and energetic support from all the editorial board members, authors, reviewers and readers.


In this article, I provide a comparative historical account on the debate of whether corporations should exclusively be run by the company in the interest of shareholders, or whether managers should be permitted or required to take the interests of others groups (stake-holders) into account. The comparison focuses on the US, Germany and France and traces the debates through the most important formative periods of these countries' corporate governance systems.It is generally assumed that shareholder primacy has a stronger following in the US and the UK than in Continental Europe, where the stakeholder view is thought to be more influential. Without doubt, the respective political histories and cultures of these countries have influenced this divergence. Without ignoring the significance of these factors, this article emphasizes a core issue that has so far been largely overlooked in comparative analysis. I argue that the respective historical debates exhibited important differences that can be attributed to the shareholder-manager balance of powers and differences in stock ownership structure across countries. Scholars in the US, Germany and France were therefore arguing about different issues due to different economic circumstances, which is why it is problematic to equate adherents of shareholder primacy or a stakeholder view of the firm with their counterparts in other corporate governance systems.In the US, Berle and Means famously identified the prevalence of a strong separation of ownership and control in 1933. US-style dispersed ownership has always generated debates about the question of how to best address what is today described as an agency cost problem, but also to what extent managerial power is legitimate.By contrast, larger blocks of share ownership prevailed around 1930 in Continental Europe, as they still do today. Participants in the German and French debates were therefore concerned with issues of controlled companies and corporate groups, which undermined the power of the board of directors. At the same time, the comparatively strong influence of shareholders raised other concerns that were rarely an issue in large US corporations, such as blockholders' private benefits of control and conflicts between competing groups of shareholders that arguably harmed business development. Institutional theories of the corporation, which are traditionally hospitable to stakeholder concerns, seemed to provide a defense of the corporation against its shareholders.The different nature of the main issues put pro-management and pro-shareholder on different sides of the shareholder-stakeholder debate on the two sides of the Atlantic. In the US, reformers typically had the goal of limiting the power of management to the benefit of shareholders, thereby "taming" the large corporations, whose power was (and is) often identified with that of top management. In France and Germany, critics of the prevailing allocation of control advocated an institutional theory of the corporation to protect the "business in itself" in Continental Europe, and by proxy, its stakeholders from destructive shareholder influence. Continental critics of the status quo therefore sought to limit allegedly excessive influence of shareholders and capital on corporate management.


In this paper, signal reduction due to the presence of water content formed on a radome has been studied at low-THz frequencies. The effect of obscurants on signal reduction has been characterized by measuring the ratio of reflected signals from a reference target through the radome, with contaminant and without contaminant. All the measurements have been compared to theoretical models, demonstrating a reasonable agreement. Water is the most common obscurant in outdoor applications and the main cause of performance deterioration in rainy, snowy, and foggy weather. This paper concentrates on the attenuation caused by different forms of distribution of water as a radome contaminant. Both a thin uniform layer of water and randomly distributed water droplets are studied at 150 and 300 GHz. The results show strong signal reduction due to the presence of uniform thickness of water and higher signal reduction with increasing frequency. However, the measured transmissivity through distributed water droplets, which occur in practice due to the surface tension of water, shows lower transmission loss at the shorter wavelength, due to transmission through the distribution of gaps between droplets.


Debt sustainability is fundamentally a probabilistic concept: Debt is rarely sustainable with probability one. We propose an index of external debt sustainability that reflects this uncertainty. Namely we construct the index as the probability that, at the current exchange rate, net external debt is equal to or less than the present value of net exports. Constructing this index involves three steps: (1) deriving the distribution of the present value of net exports at the current exchange rate; (2) deriving the distribution of exchange rates associated with the condition that, for each realization, the present discounted value of net exports is at least equal to the value of current net debt; and (3) assessing where the current exchange rate stands in the distribution of exchange rates and thus the probability that debt is sustainable. Having shown how this can be done, we then compute the index for two countries, the United States and Chile. Our main conclusion is the large degree of uncertainty implied by the presence of large gross asset and liability positions, together with uncertainty about rates of return on these assets and liabilities. The size of the distribution of exchange rate adjustments implies that one should be careful in concluding that debt is or is not sustainable at the current exchange rate and that strong measures are potentially needed to reestablish sustainability. Exchange rates that appear overvalued in the baseline may still imply a reasonably high probability that debt is sustainable at the current exchange rate; symmetrically, exchange rates that appear undervalued in the baseline may still come with a reasonably low probability that debt is unsustainable at the current exchange rate.


This study uses Ajzen's (1991) Theory of Planned Behavior as a theoretical framework to examine state and local government (SLG) financial managers' intentions to modify internal controls when implementing e-services. The primary objective of this study is to determine whether SLG financial managers' decision (intention) to support modification of internal controls is a function of his/her beliefs toward proper accounting internal controls. Results indicate significant support for a decision process based on attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control for modifying internal controls after adopting e-services. A priori, one would expect changes in business processes to lead to appropriate changes in internal controls; however, the mean response for intention in this study indicates only a mild propensity to make such changes. The data in this study suggest that financial managers of state and local governments are aware of their responsibilities for maintaining appropriate internal controls but express only slight interest in, willingness to, or belief they are able to modify internal controls to address the changes in accounting systems as a result of the adoption of e-services. Implications of electing to forego internal control modifications after business process changes are provided, along with suggestions for future research.


Several techniques exist for extracting useful content from web pages. However, the definition of 'useful' is very broad and context dependant. In this research, several techniques – existing ones and new ones – are evaluated and combined in order to extract object data in a fully automatic way. The data source used for this, are mostly web shops, sites that promote housing, and vacancy sites. The data to be extracted from these pages, are respectively items, houses and vacancies. Three kinds of approaches are combined and evaluated: clustering algorithms, algorithms that compare pages, and algorithms that look at the structure of single pages. Clustering is done in order to differentiate between pages that contain data and pages that do not. The algorithms that extract the actual data are then executed on the cluster that is expected to contain the most useful data. The quality measure used to assess the performance of the applied techniques are precision and recall per page. It can be seen that without proper clustering, the algorithms that extract the actual data perform very bad. Whether or not clustering performs acceptable heavily depends on the web site. For some sites, URL based clustering outstands (for example: nationalevacaturebank.nl and funda.nl) with precisions of around 33% and recalls of around 85%. URL based clustering is therefore the most promising clustering method reviewed by this research. Of the extraction methods, the existing methods perform better than the alterations proposed by this research. Algorithms that look at the structure (intra page document structure) perform best of all four methods that are compared with an average recall between 30% to 50%, and an average precision ranging from very low (around 2%) to quite low (around 33%). Template induction, an algorithm that compares between pages, performs relatively well as well, however, it is more dependent on the quality of the clusters. The conclusion of this research is that it is not possible yet using a combination of the methods that are discussed and proposed to fully automatically extract data from websites.


On July 20, 2006, in New York City, Resources for the Future convened a workshop of stakeholders and state officials engaged in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) together with experts on various aspects of using auctions. The workshop provided technical assistance to states for the development of a plan to satisfy the requirement for an allocation of emissions allowances to benefit consumers or for strategic energy purposes. The workshop included an overview of auction theory, a panel on concerns of stakeholders about using an allowance auction in the RGGI, a panel on the motivations for and lessons from using auctions in other applications, and one on past experiences with auctions of emissions allowances. This workshop summary presents the main ideas presented by speakers and the audience. The summary concludes by drawing on the discussion to compile a suggested roadmap identifying steps for planners in moving toward implementation of the auction.


This research examines the history and structure of the Urdu press discourse on Pakistan-US relations since the 1971 War in order to understand its perceptions of US betrayal. Two of the most popular Urdu newspapers in Pakistan have been studied with reference to three alleged cases of US betrayal. These are: the US failure in the 1971 War to provide sufficient military support to Pakistan to prevent its disintegration; US opposition to Pakistan's nuclear program and ignoring of the security concerns of its ally in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s; and the unilateral US operation conducted on 2 May 2011 targeting Osama bin Laden which violated Pakistan's sovereignty. The Urdu press has not only been identifying examples of US betrayal of Pakistan since the 1971 War, but also has developed a structure for that discourse. The dominant voices of the discourse generally argue that the US not only betrays but also conspires against Pakistan's security. The discourse offers certain modalities of US conspiracy, such as pressurising tactics like sanctions and attaching conditions onto economic and military aid to Pakistan, or interfering in Pakistan's domestic affairs through diplomatic or undiplomatic means. Further, US conspiracy and betrayal is also rationalised by mainly offering three types of causes. First, it is argued that the US betrays Pakistan in order to pursue its own strategic interests in South Asia. Second, it is argued that the US is a hegemonic, capitalistic force, which conspires against Pakistan in collaboration with the Pakistani ruling elite and betrays it in order to protect its own material interests. Third, it is argued that the US is an anti-Islamic force, which conspires against and repeatedly betrays a Muslim country. Interviews with some of the prominent journalists and politicians conducted for this research also identified some excluded voices within Pakistan which did not agree with this discourse of a US politics of betrayal. Thus, this study analyses the history of the Urdu press discourse which contributes to the social construction of the idea of a US politics of betrayal, but in so doing, it also builds understanding of its structure, and helps to rationalise the perception of a US politics of betrayal since the 1971 War.


This Paper presents a model of international trade that features heterogeneous firms, relative endowment differences across countries, and consumer taste for variety. The Paper demonstrates that firm reactions to trade liberalization generate endogenous Ricardian productivity responses at the industry level that magnify countries' comparative advantage. Focusing on the wide range of firm-level reactions to falling trade costs, the model also shows that, as trade costs fall, firms in comparative advantage industries are more likely to export, that relative firm size and the relative number of firms increases more in comparative advantage industries and that job turnover is higher in comparative advantage industries than in comparative disadvantage industries.


Many organizations are currently becoming more environmentally friendly. Eco-efficiency maximizes the effectiveness of a business operation while reducing its impact on the environment; with the necessary skills, organizations can create more value while using less input. Prior empirical studies have suggested that firms engaging in eco-efficient activities are better valued than those without such activities. Therefore, this will enhance business efficiency and excellence. This study investigates the link between eco-efficiency, as environmental policy, and firm value in the United Kingdom (UK) for the period 1999 to 2008. We generate new insights into environmental–financial performance by using different definitions of the term 'eco-efficiency'. In the UK context our results support that eco-efficient firms have higher market values than those lacking environmental strategies. Hence, we recommend that firms become involved in environmental polices since the adoption of these polices will have a positive impact on firm value. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.


The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of the rare earth element neodymium on the phase formation and microstructural development of relaxor ferroelectric lead magnesium niobate, Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3 (PMN) system. Perovskite phase PMN powders were prepared using the sol–gel method and the effect of neodymium doping was investigated at different doping levels ranging from 0.1 mol% to 30 mol%. The precursors employed in the sol–gel process were lead (II) acetate, magnesium ethoxide, and niobium (V) ethoxide. All the experiments were performed at room temperature while the calcination temperatures ranged between 800 C and 1,100 C. Results showed that it was possible to obtain the pure perovskite phase at 950 C using the sol–gel method. Nd addition influenced the phase formation and microstructure of the multicomponent system. Pyrochlore was detected along with the perovskite phase above 10 mol% Nd. Results also demonstrated that grain size of the synthesized powders depended on the Nd concentration.


The purpose of this paper is to emphasize the improvement of Zr-based ceramics properties as a function of addition of Ce ions in the structure of the original ceramics. The structural investigations proposed in this paper cover X-ray, and neutron diffraction offered the first indication of the variation of the phase composition and the structural parameters, micro-hardness measurements as well as non-destructive evaluations in order to analyze the structural properties of these materials with utmost importance in fields such as medicine, where these composite materials are used in hip-implants or dental implants/coatings. In combination of Resonant Ultrasound Spectroscopy, which makes use of the resonance frequencies corresponding to the normal vibrational modes of a solid in order to evaluate the elastic constants of the materials, we emphasize a unique approach on evaluating the physical properties of these ceramics, which could help in advancing the understanding of properties and applications in medical fields.


Contemporary democratic theories that draw on Socrates for inspiration have addressed his method of investigation too narrowly because there has been insufficient attention to the need for authority, which Socrates also identifies. Because his appeals to authority initially appear antidemocratic, we cannot overlook this aspect of his thought. I describe a virtue, civic competence, which is the excellence of citizens who critically engage with the norms of the community, but who also recognise that authority is politically necessary. Deliberation requires elenctic-like scrutiny, but also a willingness to accept some arguments as authoritative. My overarching claim is that failure to exhibit such character traits can appear in more than one form, a point neglected in recent literature, and that not all such forms are antidemocratic. Civic competence is susceptible to corruptions that may never result in citizenship that is simply undemocratic. I define two corruptions of civic competence: 'disagonism' and 'eristicism'. The former treats disagreement as signalling either confusion or wickedness and deliberation as a process of clarifying and tidying discourse. The latter treats disagreement as ineliminable and deliberation as gaming with words in order to defeat an opponent in argument.


Many applications require sparse neural networks due to space or inference time restrictions. There is a large body of work on training dense networks to yield sparse networks for inference, but this limits the size of the largest trainable sparse model to that of the largest trainable dense model. In this paper we introduce a method to train sparse neural networks with a fixed parameter count and a fixed computational cost throughout training, without sacrificing accuracy relative to existing dense-to-sparse training methods. Our method updates the topology of the sparse network during training by using parameter magnitudes and infrequent gradient calculations. We show that this approach requires fewer floating-point operations (FLOPs) to achieve a given level of accuracy compared to prior techniques. We demonstrate state-of-the-art sparse training results on a variety of networks and datasets, including ResNet-50, MobileNets on Imagenet-2012, and RNNs on WikiText-103. Finally, we provide some insights into why allowing the topology to change during the optimization can overcome local minima encountered when the topology remains static. Code used in our work can be found in this http URL.


In this paper, we report the results concerning electron beam irradiation of mid-IR windows and mid-IR detectors for possible use in trace gas detection systems, in the 1 μm to 5 μm spectral range under ionizing radiation conditions. Four windows materials (CaF2, BaF2, ZnSe, and sapphire) for the mid-IR were tested as they were exposed to electron beam irradiation at a dose rate of 4 kGy/min, for doses from 0.5 kGy to 2.2 kGy. Two IR detectors (photoconductive – PbSe, photovoltaic – InAs) were subjected to the same type of irradiation at dose rate of 4 kGy/min, in three subsequent exposures, for a total dose up to 6.8 kGy. Before the irradiation and after each irradiation step the windows were measured as it concerns the spectral optical transmittance, spectral optical diffuse reflectance, and, in the THz range (0.06 THz – 3 THz), the dielectric constant and the refractive index were evaluated. THz imaging analysis of the irradiated samples was done. For the IR detectors we measured at different irradiation stages the spectral responsivity and the dark current. The most affected by electron beam irradiation was the CaF2 window, in the spectral interval 250 nm – 800 nm. The spectral transmittance of the four windows remained unchanged after their exposure to ionizing radiation in the near-IR and mid-IR. Noticeable variations of the spectral responsivity appeared upon electron beam irradiation in the case of the InAs detector.


Property boundary points define the extent of property rightsin the field. For this reason, the precision of these coordinates is one of the most crucial factors which decide in both cases: the surface area of the property and the accuracy of this field and about the reliability limits and therefore the credibility of the cadastral system of the state. The ongoing process of cadastre modernization in Poland allows to improve the accuracy of the position of property boundary points. The coordinates of the boundary points can be fixed by various methods. Method of direct measuring in the field is preceded by the fixing of the boundaries in the presence of the owners . A photogrammetric method of marking out the boundaries basis of aerial photographs, the boundary points are or are not previously determined and indicated. The cartographic method for determining the coordinates of border points uses existing cadastral maps analogue, which has undergone a process of scanning and vectorization. The article presents an assessment of the accuracy of the coordinates designate the border points using the traditional method. It has been shown that the extent to which the accuracy of the coordinates is affected by the accuracy and establish the configuration points.


In May 1993 in France, Doctors without Borders, Epicentre, and INSERM met to develop a practical protocol for treatment of severely malnourished children in refugee camps and to discuss use of WHO's oral rehydration solution (ORS) for treating the children who may be dehydrated. The suggested treatment formula for catch-up growth for severely malnourished children is 80 gm dried skimmed milk; 50 gm sugar; and 60 gm oil, minerals, and vitamins per liter of feed (energy density; 1 kcal/ml). Adequate potassium, magnesium, zinc, copper, selenium, iodine, and each of the vitamins must be part of this diet. (Concentrations adequate for repletion and rapid recovery of malnourished children ingesting 100-200 ml/kg/day are tabulated in the article.) The various vitamins and minerals must be packaged separately to assure stability. During the early treatment stages, refugee workers should give this formula, diluted 3:1, either orally or through a nasogastric tube. They should administer 100 ml/kg/day of the formula (133 ml with water) during the first few days. Once the children regain their appetite, refugee workers should increase the undiluted feed to about 200 ml/kg/day. Refrigeration or lactobacillus fermentation prevent pathogenic contamination of the formula. Fermentation reduces the pH and the risk of lactose intolerance and generates antibacterial products. The potassium concentration of WHO-ORS is too low and the sodium concentration too high for severely malnourished children, especially those with kwashiorkor and marasmic-kwashiorkor. Further, it does not contain the minerals needed to stop diarrhea. Refugee workers can mix 1 WHO-ORS packet, 1 sachet of each mineral used in making the formula, and 50 gm sugar in 2 l of water to make an isotonic rehydration solution. A field trial in refugee camps in Ethiopia showed that this formula and modified WHO-ORS are practical and acceptable. Participants also suggested administering broad-spectrum antibiotic treatment, parenteral vitamin A, and measles vaccine to all children, regardless of HIV status.


In a world where nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and social entrepreneurs are becoming increasingly significant in the development of disadvantaged communities around the globe, specific methodological research in the field is more important than ever before. With heightened demand, however, also comes greater responsibility for such organizations to successfully and efficiently ignite positive change in the communities they serve. This paper broadly explores the structures and intentions of NGOs and social enterprises in international community development, particularly discussing steps taken by two comparable case study organizations attempting to establish trusting relationships with community members and respond appropriately to their needs. This paper examines in detail one nongovernmental organization and one social enterprise working to improve public health conditions in rural Guatemala. Curamericas Global, Inc. is an NGO dedicated to improving overall health standards of families through creating self-sustaining, community-run maternal and neonatal health clinics in remote, impoverished communities; Tiendas de Salud is a social enterprise which builds micro-pharmacies in isolated communities, engaging in microlending to employ locals in order to bolster household economic autonomy and improve the access and affordability of medicines for these populations. In this most-similar focused comparison analysis, evaluations of each organization's projects are closely studied to understand their procedures when intervening in communities.


About 60% of the world's salmon production is farmed. Supply of Atlantic salmon has more than doubled since 2000 with an annual growth of 7%. The EU and the US are by far the largest markets for Atlantic salmon. However, emerging markets are growing at significantly higher rates than these traditional markets, resulting in increasing demand for salmon. In Norway, the history of salmon farming is a history of an expansive and dynamic export industry. Since the beginning of salmon farming in the 1970's, the salmon farming industry in Norway has moved from a local small-scale industry to a global multinational, billion-dollar industry exporting about 90-95% of its production to more than 100 countries all over the world. Historically, the spot price of salmon has been very volatile. The main cause for high volatility is inelastic short-run supply, which is a consequence of biological factors and a quite long production cycle. The biological nature of the production cycle implies that the desired output does not always meet its target, and therefore there will be periods of over- and undersupply, which cause salmon prices to fluctuate. Unstable supply and volatile salmon price has led to unpredictable cash flows and variability in profits for salmon farmers. Also, uneven supply of salmon from farmers have created distortions in the value chain and affected other agents in the salmon industry. In this master thesis a mathematical model for optimal harvest time of salmon given different harvest strategies is developed. The most important characteristic of the model is that it enables distribution of harvest over certain months in order to investigate the difference in profits between a non-smooth harvest profile and a smooth harvest profile. In order to ensure solvability, some simplifications of the model have been made, the most important being that seasonal variations are only incorporated in prices and not in production costs and fish growth. Also, an analysis of the salmon farming value chain is conducted based on interviews and information from agents in the industry. The goal of this thesis work is to investigate the hypothesis that a smoother harvest of salmon provides the salmon farming value chain with additional value. We have used the mathematical model to find the potential loss or benefit the farmer would face by implementing a smooth harvest strategy rather than harvesting only a few times each year. Then in order to investigate whether a smoother harvest of salmon is value-adding or costly, we have conducted an analysis of the salmon farming value chain. The analysis was performed through interviews with different agents in the value chain. We combine our model results and findings from our value chain analysis to decide if smoother harvest indeed generates additional value. Our findings show that with a smoother harvest of salmon, the salmon farmer loose approximately 9% of potential profits generated from its operations. Hence, a smoother harvest is costly for the salmon farmer viewed in isolation. Also, findings show that the biomass development in the sea is less fluctuating with a smoother harvest compared to a scenario when harvesting is performed only 2 times per year. Findings show that it is the processors in the value chain that would profit the most from a smoother harvest. Interestingly, results show that retail chains do not experience variations in supply of salmon, indicating that the Norwegian market for salmon are saturated before salmon is exported. Other interesting findings are the industry concern of high salmon prices and its consequences. We have found that high salmon prices may lead to international competition and higher cost levels, which make higher prices a threat to the industry in the future. Also, with the government not issuing more licenses in the near future, high salmon prices are expected to continue. Through a new regulation proposal, called rolling MAB, the government wants to facilitate a more market oriented production of salmon, and hence more stable supply. We have found that the main motivation behind a rolling MAB is to facilitate more value creation in terms of processing in coastal areas.


To mobilize savings and credit with earmarked priority to implement development strategies,
financial depression and policy-driven financial institutions dominated the rural financial
system in China. The ongoing reforms encourage the entry of private capitals into the rural
economy to liberalize the rural financial market. By making a retrospective review on the
evolution of the rural financial system in China, we find that there has been negligible
progress. The policy-led financial institutions ended up as merely a disbursement window
and a costly drain on state budget. Institutional changes were blocked by patching up the existing
institutions. Current reform faces challenges for a sustainable and pro-poor financial
system.


ABSTRACT The invasion of Iraq by the United States led allied forces in April 2003 without explicit authorisation of the United Nations Security Council raised many questions about the legal basis of unilateral armed intervention. This article considers rules based on the Charter of the United Nations pertaining to intervention and poses the question whether existing rules of international law are adequate to contain international conflict and uphold peace and security. Recent examples of state practice of unilateral armed intervention appear to be in violation of international law. Since state practice presents an important formative force of rules of international law, existing rules regulating armed intervention are under increased pressure due to their restrictive nature. The question is examined whether or not the phenomenon of unilateral intervention points to the development of new rules of international law. Alternative options are suggested on how to address unilateral intervention within the confines of international law. 1. INTRODUCTION The invasion of Iraq by armed forces of the United States (US), the United Kingdom (UK) and Australia during April 2003 led to mixed reaction from the world's international law community. Reactions ranged from outright condemnation of the war as unlawful to careful attempts to identify a legal basis for unilateral armed intervention. This difference of opinion calls for an assessment of the rules of international law. A lack of legitimacy of existing rules amongst the most important role players in world politics may point to a need for reassessment. The international political landscape has undergone dramatic and irreversible changes since the end of the Cold War which include the fragmentation of the former Soviet Union; the emergence of the US as the world's only superpower; rapid globalisation; and an increase in large-scale terrorist attacks epitomised by the September 11, 2001 attack on the US. The achievement of world peace and security in a post-Cold War world presents challenges which were not foreseen when the United Nations (UN) was established after the Second.World War. (1)) The war in Iraq is the most recent in a series of events questioning the sufficiency of the existing rules of international law particularly those embodied in the Charter of the United Nations, designed to maintain peace and security in a changed world. The recurring inability of the UN to react speedily to resolve international conflicts has resulted in intervention by the US and other major powers to deal with such events without prior approval of the UN. Such intervention can be labelled unilateral intervention. International reaction to unilateral intervention has varied from case to case. On the one hand, many states have reacted favourably to unilateral intervention where the UN retained some form of involvement in resolving the relevant international disputes even if it manifested in ex post facto approval by the Security Council. The ex post facto legalisation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's (NATO) military intervention in Yugoslavia by the UN serves as an example. On the other hand, there has been mixed reaction where the US has acted or sought to act outside the UN framework. One such example is the military intervention in Afghanistan. Although the world was unanimous in its condemnation of the terrorist attacks on the US by al-Qaeda on 11 September 2001, the legality of the US armed attacks in Afghanistan were questioned in the face of international law principles. (2)) This was especially the case in so far as the military intervention was geared towards removing the incumbent regime and replacing it with a government partisan to the US and its allies. (3)) Without doubt, recent actions by the US and other major powers have raised many issues in international law, which warrant an in-depth consideration. (4)) This article investigates the legality in terms of existing international law of recent unilateral actions by the US, its allies and NATO to preserve international peace and security. …


The mandate of historic preservation is to maintain vestiges of diverse cultural heritage, a task that is becoming increasingly difficult in rapidly globalizing India. Much of the country's urban heritage outside of the "monument-and-site" framework is threatened by massive restructuring of cities facilitated by neoliberal urban policies. Mumbai has a rich cultural heritage, associated with diverse sociocultural and economic groups. Much of this is threatened by development practices pursued by various forces with a particular vision of Mumbai as an emerging "global city." In this work Chalana examines Girangaon, an early industrial district of Mumbai, currently being transformed by forces of domestic and global capital. He argues that Girangaon's urban industrial heritage is a significant piece of the city's development history, which future visions of a global metropolis should embrace. While the expansion of Mumbai's economy has benefited some avenues of preservation practice in Mumbai, in Girangaon its consequences have also been negative, as a working-class neighborhood is restructured into a hypermodern district for the elite. The current forms of preservation practice in the city have been insufficient in addressing the complexity around managing heritage in low-income neighborhoods. Girangaon, and Mumbai overall, reveal the many ways that economic, cultural, and political globalization can impact historic preservation practice.


In 1993, a group of national forest stakeholders, the Quincy Library Group, crafted a proposal that intended to reduce wildfire risk, protect the California spotted owl (Strix occidentalis occidentalis), restore watersheds, and enhance community stability by ensuring a predictable supply of timber for area sawmills and biomass for energy plants. The Herger-Feinstein Quincy Library Group Forest Recovery Act of 1998 codified this proposal, directing the USDA Forest Service to conduct forest treatments on 40,000 – 60,000 acres per year by creating defensible fuel profile zones and logging by groupand individual tree-selection methods. The law also designated an Independent Science Panel to review monitoring studies, administrative studies, and research to assess efficacy of the implementation and achievement of goals. Although several goals were achieved, implementation fell short of treatment and volume goals, and evidence was lacking to make conclusive judgments about environmental impacts. Shortcomings were due to differing interpretations of the Act's prescriptive intent, changes in management direction, compounding economic factors, appeals and litigation, variation in site-specific forest conditions, and variation in approaches among national forests and districts. Most notable was a lack of monitoring of the treatment effects on California spotted owl populations and other environmental concerns. These findings suggest that attempts to legislate prescriptive, collaboratively developed proposals may not account for the complex biophysical, management, social, and economic contexts within which national forest management occurs. These findings also suggest that current national forest policies and directives promoting collaboration should also be accompanied by a commitment to monitoring and adaptive management.


Single-molecule detection schemes offer powerful means to overcome static and dynamic heterogeneity inherent to complex samples. Probing chemical and biological interactions and reactions with high throughput and time resolution, however, remains challenging and often requires surface-immobilized entities. Here, utilizing camera-based fluorescence microscopy, we present glass-made nanofluidic devices in which fluorescently labelled molecules flow through nanochannels that confine their diffusional movement. The first design features an array of parallel nanochannels for high-throughput analysis of molecular species under equilibrium conditions allowing us to record 200.000 individual localization events in just 10 minutes. Using these localizations for single particle tracking, we were able to obtain accurate flow profiles including flow speeds and diffusion coefficients inside the channels. A second design featuring a T-shaped nanochannel enables precise mixing of two different species as well as the continuous observation of chemical reactions. We utilized the design to visualize enzymatically driven DNA synthesis in real time and at the single-molecule level. Based on our results, we are convinced that the versatility and performance of the nanofluidic devices will enable numerous applications in the life sciences.


Recurrent neural networks (RNNs) have represented for years the state of the art in neural machine translation. Recently, new architectures have been proposed, which can leverage parallel computation on GPUs better than classical RNNs. Faster training and inference combined with different sequence-to-sequence modeling also lead to performance improvements. While the new models completely depart from the original recurrent architecture, we decided to investigate how to make RNNs more efficient. In this work, we propose a new recurrent NMT architecture, called Simple Recurrent NMT, built on a class of fast and weakly-recurrent units that use layer normalization and multiple attentions. Our experiments on the WMT14 English-to-German and WMT16 English-Romanian benchmarks show that our model represents a valid alternative to LSTMs, as it can achieve better results at a significantly lower computational cost.


Speech acts are a very important part of pragmatics in any language. There are many types of acts (e.g., request, complain, question, etc.) associated with the speaker's utterances. Searle (1972) calls production of linguistic communication 'a speech act' (137). The present study examines how two Arab learners of English at two levels of proficiency modify requests compared to a native speaker. The performances by the three informants were compared in terms of internal modification (lexical and phrasal downgraders) and external modification (supportive moves) used. The data were collected by means of a Discourse Completion Test (DCT). Overall, the results revealed that although the advanced-level learner outperformed the intermediate-level learner in using lexical and syntactic mitigators, both learners underuse internal and external modifiers compared to the native speaker. This study addressed three questions that are associated with three directional hypotheses: Hypothesis 1, intermediate or advanced learners of a second language underuse internal modifiers compared to L2 native speakers. Hypothesis 2, advanced learners could vary the syntactic form of the request while the intermediate learners relied heavily on modals and the politeness marker 'please'. Hypothesis 3, second language learners have been said to display verbose pragmatic behavior by producing frequent and lengthy supportive moves (Hassel, 2001).


The Ten Lectures by Alan Cienki consider what it means to apply theoretical approaches from cognitive linguistics to the dynamic phenomena of speech and gesture. Taking the usage-based commitment seriously with audio-visual data raises new theoretical questions for cognitive linguistics.