Immature grape embryos from early ripening genotypes of Vitis vinifera were successfully cultured in vitro on Difco orchid agar or a modified White's agar medium. Germination was increased in vitro for five genotypes from 0%, 7%, 11%, 12%, and 16% in vivo to 15%, 24%, 23%, 34%, and 24%, respectively. Subculturing embryos onto liquid culture from seeds that failed to germinate on agar also was possible. Differences in germination rates, as affected by pollen, were significant. This method will allow accelerated development of early ripening cultivars by allowing breeders to use such genotypes as females, as well as males.


Crime has been identified as one of the major problems confronting the new democracy in post-apartheid South Africa. In order to deal with this problem effectively, the new government adopted a blueprint against crime in the form of the National Crime Prevention Strategy (the NCPS) in 1996. The overall intention of the government was to create a society in which individuals could live in peace and safety, free from fear of crime and violence.


Considering the current magnificent increase in the incidence of the restatements in capital market, encourage the researchers to study the causes and consequences of restatements. However, among of these factors, the role of corporate governance mechanism attracted more attention. This paper seeks to examine the relationship between of the corporate governance and the financial restatement in the companies listed in Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE). This study evaluates the effects of various independent variables on the financial restatement using a logistic regression analysis approach for 111 companies over a 10 year period (2001-2010). The results indicate that the boards of director independent and auditor tenure are negative significant with financial restatements. Also, the results show that the audit type and the change number of the boards of director are associated with financial restatements positively. However, the empirical evidence indicates that CEO change, CEO tenure, institutional ownership, and the size of the boards of director do not have significant impact on the likelihood of financial restatement. Overall, the results presented in the paper indicate that the week corporate governance can increase financial restatement and decrease financial statement quality probability.


John R. Gerdy knows sports inside-out. He has been an All-American Basketball Player whose college jersey was retired. He was briefly a professional player. Later he served as an associate commissioner in the NCAA's Southeastern Conference, and as a legislative and ethical advisor to the NCAA and the Knight Commission. Currently he teaches courses on sports administration. Now, in Sports: The All-American Addiction, he brings his insights and observations together in a radical, critical evaluation of the impact of sports on American life. This book argues that our society's huge investment in organized sports is unjustified. Ardent boosters say that sports embody the "American Way," developing winners by teaching lessons in sportsmanship, teamwork, and discipline. In fact, Gerdy writes, modern sports are eroding American life and undermining traditional American values essential to the well-being of the nation and its people. Like a drug, this obsession allows Americans to escape problems and ignore issues. Gerdy asks tough questions. Have sports lost their relevance? Is it just mindless entertainment? Is our enormous investment in sports as educational tools appropriate for a nation that needs graduates to compete in the information-based, global economy of the twenty-first century? Do organized sports continue to promote positive ideals? Or, do sports, in the age of television, corporate sky boxes, and sneaker deals, represent something far different?Boldly making his case, Gerdy detects five causes for alarm. A violent, win-at-all-cost mentality exists. A greater number of spectators are idly watching the few elite athletes. An athletic culture that is anti-intellectual systematically creates "dumb jocks." While bridges, inner-cities, and schools are crumbling, tremendous sums of tax dollars vanish to wealthy owners, millionaire players, and to college athletic programs. Studies show that sports are no more effective in promoting equality than any other American institution. Can organized sports be restructured? The author concludes with a series of daring suggestions for change.


From Columbus to Computers: Automation at Oxford University's Bodleian Library The Bodleian Library's collections reflect four centuries of acquisitions and almost as many uniquely Bodleian cataloging practices. Since September 1988 all cataloging has been done online using the DOBIS/LIBIS system and following AACR2R, MARC format, and LC subject headings. This gigantic leap from cataloging rules that date from 1939 or earlier to full conformity with standard Anglo-American cataloging practice has not been achieved without problems. Oxford University's Bodleian Library celebrated its 500th anniversary in 1988 by going online. Although one may marvel at the library's age, one may wonder why its going online is at all remarkable. The Library of Congress (a mere infant of less than 200 years) has had an online catalog for two decades now, and even the University of Arizona Library installed online public access catalogs last year in one of its libraries. Most libraries are going online--or are at least working toward that goal. What is remarkable, however, is the Bodleian Library itself, one of the greatest research libraries of the western world, with a collection of more than five million books, 5,000 of these dating from the fifteenth century, and several million more maps, manuscripts, and other nonbook items. Its original building, Duke Humphrey's Library, still in use as a working part of the library, was completed in 1488. The collection itself dates from 1602, the year that Sir Thomas Bodley, a graduate of Merton College, refounded the Bodleian Library as a reference and research library for Oxford University. The earlier collection had been destroyed in midsixteenth century by the King's Commissioners after Henry VIII's break with the Catholic church. What would seem to American librarians, indoctrinated as we are with the necessity of cooperation, uniform cataloging standards, and networking with other libraries, even more remarkable than the size and age of the Bodleian is its half-millenium of insularity. In the course of the Bodleian's long history it chose to develop its own cataloging rules and standards, with little regard for what the rest of the library world might do. Thus, while other English and American libraries explored cooperation in cataloging with a series of Anglo-American codes beginning in 1908 and culminating some eighty years later with AACR2 revised, the Bodleian stood aside, confident in its unique status, enveloped in the mystique that accompanies the serene and rarified atmosphere of higher learning that permeates Oxford University. The first catalog of the Bodleian Library, a printed book catalog, was issued in 1605. Five more book catalogs followed, until in 1860, overwhelmed by the enormous task of keeping a printed catalog up to date for one of the largest libraries in the world, sublibrarian Henry Coxe began what he called the "transcribed catalog," usually referred to as the "slip catalog." This consisted of several hundred large folio guard books in which were pasted, in approximate alphabetic order, slips of paper, one for each book in the library. Ample space was left between slips for later acquisitions; in addition, the slips were fastened in such a way that they could be moved if it became necessary. In 1920 the huge folio slip catalog was closed and another folio slip catalog for books published after 1920 was started. Cataloging was done according to the Bodleian Library's own rules, the latest revision dating from 1939. Main entry, formulated by Bodleian rules, was normally under author. This entry was supplemented by references (not added entries) from editors and individuals involved in the intellectual content of the work. Since the catalog was based on the assumption that people knew what book they were looking for when they came to the library, no subject access was provided. …


Osteoporosis is an emerging degenerative bone disorder threatening the ageing population worldwide. Palm vitamin E has been proven effective in preventing bone loss, but the interaction between vitamin E isomers of varying efficacy may hamper its therapeutic potential. This study aimed to determine the most biologically active palm vitamin E isomers on bone using an innovative 3D bone cell culture model. Palm vitamin E mixture containing 22.0% α-tocopherol, 26.7% α-tocotrienol, 4.0% β-tocotrienol, 31.3% γ-tocotrienol and 15.6% δ-tocotrienol (60 mg/kg/day) was first tested on adrenalectomized male rats given dexamethasone (120 μg/kg/day), an in vivo model of secondary osteoporosis, for two months. It was effective in preventing bone loss in these rats. Human osteoblasts per se or co-cultures of human osteoblasts and osteoclast-like cells were incubated with each individual isomer (α-tocopherol, α, β, γ and δ-tocotrienol; 100 nM) using an in vitro 3D culture model for 28 days. It was observed that γ- and δ-tocotrienols showed the best results in improving the trabecular structure and biomechanical strength of the bone scaffold. As a conclusion, palm vitamin E possesses anti-osteoporotic effects and γ- and δ-tocotrienol may be the most active isomers acting on bone.


Abstract. The paper describes the early history of EISCAT, from the very first ideas and Nordic contacts in the late 1960s to the end of the main development phase, when the facility had become a very advanced and reliable research instrument and its users had developed full competence in the second half of the 1980s. The preparation of the ''Green Book'', the Beynon meeting in London in 1973 and the activities started there, the first EISCAT Council meeting, the ''technical period'' 1976–1981, the inauguration in 1981 and the decade of improvements in most of the 1980s are described as seen from the Swedish point of view.


In this paper we compare one single-screen touch interaction with an automated teller machine (ATM) against two alternative second-screen ATM interactions using a smartphone. In an experimental laboratory study, those three ATM interactions were compared by means of workload (NASA-TLX), usability (SEQ, UMUX) and technology acceptance (selected TAM3-scales and additional scales for trust and security) in a randomized, controlled within-subjects design (n=24). In one smartphone ATM interaction the Personal Identification Number (PIN) was entered on the mobile phone, in the other smartphone ATM interaction the PIN was entered on the PIN-pad of the ATM. The results indicate that overall second-screen ATM interaction all interaction done on the mobile phone -- performed best.


School discipline disparities in U.S. education is accompanied by a litany of literature that focuses on African Americans in low-performing urban schools (Civil Right Project, 2000; Losen, 2011; Mendez & Knoff, 2003; Skiba, Michael, Nardo & Peterson, 2002; Wilson, 2014). Public K-12 institutions in the U.S. report that African Americans are suspended at three-times the rate of White students (23% for African Americans as compared to 7% for Whites). Furthermore, the most recent Civil Rights Discipline Collection report (Office of Civil Rights, 2014) indicates that students who receive one suspension have a much greater chance of being suspended multiple times, ultimately leading to expulsion and or involvement in the juvenile justice system (Allen & White-Smith, 2014; Gregory, 1995; Office of Civil Rights, 2014; Pane & Rocco, 2014). A significant amount of research focuses on public education institutions' dismal outcomes in this area (Skiba et al., 2002; Office of Civil Rights, 2014; Wilson, 2014), without examining charter schools to determine if discipline disparities are endemic in them as well. This study examined two urban, high achieving charter schools. Urban Preparatory Academies in Chicago and Harlem Children's Zone in New York. The school characteristics are assessed through critical race theory to better understand the relationship between teacher quality and student discipline. The findings of the study indicate that while both schools had similar student demographics, lower rates of discipline infractions were reported in the individual campuses that employed a higher number of qualified teachers. These findings have implications for teacher preparation and urban education.


Colloidal porous hosts in the form of microporous aluminosilicate (zeolite) or mesoporous silica nanoparticles are attractive materials for a wide range of potential applications, i.e. controlled release drug delivery systems. However, many fundamental challenges still remain in this relatively young research field. The following work focuses on overcoming some of the present limitations by developing new concepts for the synthesis and functionalization of porous nanoparticles.
The number of zeolite structures available for the synthesis of stable colloidal suspensions is very limited when compared to the large number of known frameworks in bulk materials. A novel class of zeolite templates in the form of metal ammines was developed by taking advantage of the unique synthesis conditions typical in colloidal zeolite systems, i.e. low temperatures and low alkalinity. Square planar copper(II) tetraammine complexes were employed as co-templates in the synthesis of nanosized EDI-type molecular sieves. It was shown that the complexes are the key elements responsible for formation and growth of the zeolite nanoparticles, and their role in the crystallization process was thoroughly investigated.
Substitution of the copper complexes by isostructural palladium and platinum species was demonstrated. By employing templates with similar shapes but different effects on the nucleation rate it was possible to drastically decrease the particle size by several factors in comparison to previously known colloidal zeolite systems and to generate stable suspensions of non-agglomerated EDI-type nanocrystals with diameters below 20 nm.
The size and morphology of mesoporous silica nanoparticles was controlled by co-condensation with additives, i.e. phenyltriethoxysilane, and subsequent simultaneous removal of the functional groups and template molecules by oxidation with hydrogen peroxide in a simple one-pot reaction.
Conversion of colloidal mesoporous silica systems with metalorganic reagents was demonstrated. The key step for avoiding particle agglomeration and coalescence processes involves the removal of water from the mesopores at temperatures below 90 °C either by hydrolysis of triethyl orthoformate or by vapour adsorption from the gas phase.
In a joint project with Alexander Darga from our group, thin films of different phenyl-substituted mesoporous silica nanoparticles were deposited on quartz crystal microbalance chips in order to probe the intrapore surfaces by toluene sorption. It was shown that samples prepared by grafting and co-condensation approaches bearing similar surface densities of functional groups display considerably different toluene heats of adsorption.
Furthermore, a novel concept for the selective functionalization of mesoporous silica nanoparticles was developed. By using a time-delayed co-condensation approach, functional groups can be completely dispersed inside the channels, concentrated in parts of the mesopores, or exclusively placed on the external surface depending on the time of addition. Aminopropyl was used as a representative functionality in order to determine the density of functional groups on the outer surface via zeta potential measurements. Staining with iridium cations and subsequent scanning transmission electron microscopy studies allowed the visualization of metal clusters with different radial distributions depending on the addition time of the organosilane component. In contrast to grafting approaches, it was possible to easily adjust the concentration of functional groups on the outer surface by variation of the organosilane to silane ratio.


In 2011, the Victorian Transport Accident Commission (TAC) obtained new data and software designed to validate, correct and geographically code address information in large volumes. These new tools have enabled the TAC to enhance its datasets with more complete and accurate address information and allow the appending of geo-demographic information (such as Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Census data) down to neighbourhood level. These dataset enhancements have already had a significant impact on key areas of the TACrs road safety research program including an ongoing risk modelling project aimed at identifying key target markets, and key drivers of road trauma, injury severity and TAC compensation costs. The addition of geo-demographic information to input datasets have enabled conclusions to be drawn about crash risks associated with factors such as ancestry, language background, education, employment industry and income. The dataset enhancements have also benefited TACrs social and market research survey program with improvements in sample representativeness, mail out address accuracy and phone number matching processes. The addition of geo-demographic data has opened up analytical opportunities for survey results with insight into behavioural and attitudinal differences by geo-demographic factors such as socio-economic disadvantage. This paper discusses the TACrs new geospatial information tools and its applications to date within the road safety research program.


In this paper, we present a novel packet delivery mechanism called Multi-Path and Multi-SPEED Routing Protocol (MMSPEED) for probabilistic QoS guarantee in wireless sensor networks. The QoS provisioning is performed in two quality domains, namely, timeliness and reliability. Multiple QoS levels are provided in the timeliness domain by guaranteeing multiple packet delivery speed options. In the reliability domain, various reliability requirements are supported by probabilistic multipath forwarding. These mechanisms for QoS provisioning are realized in a localized way without global network information by employing localized geographic packet forwarding augmented with dynamic compensation, which compensates for local decision inaccuracies as a packet travels towards its destination. This way, MMSPEED can guarantee end-to-end requirements in a localized way, which is desirable for scalability and adaptability to large scale dynamic sensor networks. Simulation results show that MMSPEED provides QoS differentiation in both reliability and timeliness domains and, as a result, significantly improves the effective capacity of a sensor network in terms of number of flows that meet both reliability and timeliness requirements up to 50 percent (12 flows versus 18 flows).


This work aims to highlight the differences between the use of 2D and 3D cell culture systems for the growth of samples of primary embryonic mesenchymal tissue derived from facial processes. In the developing embryo, these regions of tissue go on to form the cartilaginous template of the craniofacial skeleton. The tissue used in these experiments was derived from the frontonasal mass and mandible of chick embryos, which form parts of the upper and lower beak respectively. I have shown that explanted pieces of mesenchymal tissue from the frontonasal mass and the mandible of chick embryos display different cell behaviours in both traditional 2D cell culture and when grown in alvetex®, a 3D cell culture system that uses a polymer scaffold, developed by Reinnervate Ltd.
In 2D culture, as previously described in the literature, populations that expand from explanted frontonasal mass form sheets of cartilaginous material, whereas mandible cultures seem to expand into two different populations of cells, a sheet-like population as seen in frontonasal mass cultures as well as a population that is fibrous in appearance.
3D counterparts invaded and populated the alvetex®, and again there appeared to be one population of cells expanding from frontonasal mass explants and two populations in the case of explanted mandible tissue. 3D populations had dramatically higher levels of Alcian blue staining (indicative of the presence of cartilaginous material) than 2D cultures, suggesting that alvetex® provides a more permissive environment for the production of cartilage than traditional 2D substrates used in cell and tissue culture. It was also shown that the alvetex® appears to separate the two different populations of cells observed in mandible cultures, in that the two populations occupy the internal surface of the polymer at 7 days culture, but by 14 days one population remains within the internal surface whilst the other has grown along the top surface of the polymer.
These results suggest that alvetex® provides an environment that is suitable for the growth of primary embryonic tissue and may be suitable for the culture of other samples of primary tissue from which cell lines that have been established in a 3D environment could be derived.


Reforming regulation of the financial sector is currently among the most immediate concerns of domestic and international policymakers. Proposals for such reform are proliferating, and the official sector appears committed to adopting at least some meaningful reforms in the near-term. Broadly speaking, this movement toward regulatory reform has emphasized the need for structural reforms, though it has also yielded numerous narrower substantive proposals, most of which target the perceived causes of the current crisis. Most notably, this movement has been carried along by a strong sense of the moment. Against this tide of policymaking energy, this symposium contribution urges caution and restraint. Rather than add to the still-growing body of institutional and substantive proposals, this article articulates a strategic approach to regulatory reform. It argues that the process of reforming financial regulation should begin with a comprehensive, granular study of emergent post-crisis financial markets. While such an approach would be time-consuming and labor-intensive, it is essential for identifying and measuring the on-going risks within financial markets and for responding to changes in private behavior wrought by the current crisis. Without such an inventory-taking, policymakers will run the risk of commingling crisis-containment with regulatory reform and may end up designing a retrospective framework for financial regulation. A comprehensive post-crisis inventory of financial markets would provide a meaningful basis for articulating the desirable substance and scope of financial regulation and for comparing the optimal framework with the existing one. These steps would ideally precede consideration of reforms to the institutional structure of financial regulation. Ideally, such a process of regulatory reform would reduce the potential for unnecessary or unproductive reforms and help policymakers achieve the right balance between efficient regulation and crisis-prevention going forward.


A therapeutic goal in the treatment of certain CNS diseases, including multiple sclerosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and Parkinson disease, is to down-regulate inflammatory pathways. Inflammatory molecules produced by microglia are responsible for removal of damaged neurons, but can cause collateral damage to normal neurons located close to defective neurons. Although estrogen can inactivate microglia and inhibit the recruitment of T cells and macrophages into the CNS, there is controversy regarding which of the two estrogen receptors (ERs), ERα or ERβ, mediates the beneficial effects in microglia. In this study, we found that ERβ, but not ERα, is expressed in microglia. Using the experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) model in SJL/J mice, we evaluated the benefit of an ERβ agonist as a modulator of neuroinflammation. Treatment of EAE mice with LY3201, a selective ERβ agonist provided by Eli Lilly, resulted in marked reduction of activated microglia in the spinal cord. LY3201 down-regulated the nuclear transcription factor NF-κB, as well as the NF-κB–induced gene inducible nitric oxide synthase in microglia and CD3+ T cells. In addition, LY3201 inhibited T-cell reactivity through regulation of indoleamine-2,3-dioxygenase. In the EAE model, treatment with LY3201 decreased mortality in the first 2 wk after disease onset, and also reduced the severity of symptoms in mice surviving for 4 wk. Our data show that ERβ-selective agonists, by modulating the immune system in both microglia and T cells, offer promise as a useful class of drugs for treating degenerative diseases of the CNS.


The frequency of mitogen-reactive B cells yielding an IgG plaque- forming cell (PFC) response has been determined in vitro by limiting dilution analysis under culture conditions which allow every growth- induced B cell to grow and mature into a clone of Ig-secreting cells. The frequencies of lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-and lipoprotein-reactive precursors for IgG-secreting cells in the spleen of 6--8 wk old C3H/Tif and of C57BL/67 mice were found to be between 1 in 30 and 1 in 40 B cells and, therefore, only one tenth of the frequencies of mitogen- reactive precursors of clones secreting IgM. All IgG-secreting cells developed by switching in clones which previously contained IgM- secreting cells. This was shown in two experiments where the total number of mitogen-reactive precursor yielding IgM-secreting cell clones was limited such that 82 or 90% of all responding cultures originated from one precursor. Thus, of 480 cultures in the first and 720 cultures in the second experiment, 86 and 98 cultures were found positive, yielding IgM-secreting cells at day 5. When the same cultures were assayed at day 7 for IgG-secreting cells 9 and 10 cultures were found positive. All 19 cultures with IgG-secreting cells previously had contained IgM-secreting cells. The probability that IgG-secreting cells and IgM-secreting cells would have arisen from independent precursors can be calculated using Fisher's exact test of independence. For the two experiments those probabilities are 3.4 X 10(-7) and 4.0 X 10(-9). Since we have previously shown that each cell in a mitogen-stimulated, growing B-cell clone divides, and that each dividing cell secretes Ig, we conclude from these experiments that the large majority--in our experiments all--of the IgG-secreting cells in mitogen-stimulated B- cell clones develop by switch from IgM-secreting cells. IgG-secreting cells develop either early or late during growth of a single IgM- secreting cell clone. The switch to IgG secretion, therefore, is not fixed in the time of clonal growth after mitogenic stimulation.


Journal of Psychopathology 2016;22:55-61 Summary I propose a new dichotomy within these formerly called "endogenous" diseases, which bases on the phenomenological level of analysis: logopathies and tymopathies. The first would include all forms of schizophrenias, while the second correspond to the affective disorders and also to the great part of currently labelled anxiety disorders. In this contribution, the subject of logopathy is developed. This author tries to demonstrate the legitimacy of this conception, upon the basis of three fundamental arguments: 1. alteration of the thought/language as a nucleus of the schizophrenic suffering; 2. schizophrenia as a constitutive element of human condition; and 3. schizophrenia appears as a perturbation of Verstehen (understanding) in Heidegger's sense. Understanding represents one of the two fundamental ways Dasein (human being) is in the world, while the other, Befindlichkeit (state-ofmind), is precisely what would be altered in tymopathy.


Tropical rivers in northern Australia are largely unregulated with intact hydrological connectivity, however, the region is likely to face future developments that will threaten this connectivity. It is important then, to understand the role of river connectivity to productivity and biodiversity to help decision makers maintain the ecological values of these rivers. This study investigated the role of hydrological connectivity in the life history of the newly described species, Macrobrachium spinipes. This research used a combination of multi-year field sampling and laboratory experiments to determine patterns of reproduction, abundance, early life history characteristics (including larval distribution, salinity requirements, transport to the estuary, and juvenile upstream migration) and habitat use of M. spinipes in the Daly River in northern Australia. This research found that reproduction occurred and larvae were produced in high numbers across a 400 km length of the river. To develop, the larvae require salt water within 5-7 days of hatching. This is achieved by drifting to the estuary, making flow a critical determinant in successful recruitment. Once larvae develop to post-larval juveniles, they migrate upstream throughout the wet season but primarily once the hydrograph is receding to base flow. This migration consisted of approximately 18 million individual shrimp and transported approximately 100 kg of carbon and 28 kg of nitrogen upstream. There was no evidence of marine carbon in migrating individuals. As juveniles, their habitat use was strongly associated with well-structured bank environments early in the dry season. By the mid dry season, they switched to using sand habitats recently colonised with macrophytes and filamentous algae. This thesis confirms the amphidromous life history of M. spinipes, identifies a novel life history strategy that enables larvae to survive long drift times and advances our understanding of amphidromy in large tropical rivers. These findings will provide crucial information for the development of environmental flow requirements in northern Australia.


This Article examines the extent to which financial holding companies formed under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLB Act) will bear the costs of the failure of their bank subsidiaries. Pre-GLB Act banking law provided numerous ways to impose liability on bank holding companies for bank failure. The GLB Act itself added some provisions dealing with holding company liability, providing protections for receivers of failed institutions and adding ammunition to the regulators' "source of strength" theory for imposing liability on bank holding companies, and, by extension, on financial holding companies. But despite tinkering at the edges, the GLB Act did not provide a comprehensive new approach to resolving failed banking institutions. Instead, the GLB Act is essentially an overlay on top of the existing bank holding company act. Resolution of failed banks will continue to be conducted primarily under the pre-GLB Act regime, but changes in the financial services industry may change the application of those resolution techniques. Passed as it was during a time of strong performance in the banking sector, it is perhaps not surprising as a political matter that the GLB Act is silent on an issue that will not arise again until the next period of banking industry distress. This Article discusses the modest changes to the bank resolution scheme implemented by the GLB Act and raises some unanswered questions about the resolution of failed banks in the GLB Act era. It concludes by suggesting that the goals of the failed bank resolution process ought to be clarified and the rules of the process spelled out and respected.


Red Wing Creek field is located near the center of the Williston basin in McKenzie County, North Dakota. The discovery well was drilled by True Oil Co. in August 1972. The primary trapping mechanism is structural. Seismic and subsurface data indicate that Triassic, Permian, and Pennsylvanian formations are missing over the center of the structure. Replacing these are rocks of Mississippian age which have undergone intensive deformation in an uplifted structural cone approximately 3,000 ft (914 m) high and 3 mi (4.8 km) in diameter at its base. Formations above and below the structure show very little tectonic disturbance. Mission Canyon Limestone of Mississippian age is the primary producing horizon. The discovery well has over 1,600 ft (438 m) of net pay which is the best well in the field. Porosities range as high as 25% but most of the reservoir has porosities in the range of 6 to 10%. Oil-water contact is placed at a subsea depth of 7,600 ft (2,316 m). Reservoir studies indicate approximately 100,000,000 bbl of oil in place. To date the field has 11 wells capable of production. There are eight dry holes. Two wells have been drilled to the Red River Formation of Ordovician age. At present there has been no commercial production above or below the Mississippian. Present data have indicated that the field is producing from the central peak of an astrobleme, or meteorite impact structure of Jurassic age. Proof of this origin is based on geometry and shock deformation features, which include monolithologic breccia, shatter cones, and shock deformed quartz. The feature has been modified by subsequent salt collapse and differential compaction. End_of_Article - Last_Page 961------------


As mobile technologies become more affordable and more advanced in function, researchers suggest that using mobile apps to assist English language learning are appropriate. This three-step evaluation study (designing a theory-driven rubric, selecting apps, and evaluating the apps) aims to investigate and evaluate the affordances of English language learning mobile apps for adult learners. The results of this evaluation study contribute to the literature of mobile learning targeting adult learners, and also broaden the knowledge body of integrating mobile learning into English Language Learning (ELL) classes.


Distributed key generation (DKG) has been studied extensively in the cryptographic literature. However, it has never been examined outside of the synchronous setting, and the known DKG protocols cannot guarantee safety or liveness over the Internet. In this work, we present the first realistic DKG protocol for use over the Internet. We propose a practical system model for the Internet and define an efficient verifiable secret sharing (VSS) scheme in it. We observe the necessity of Byzantine agreement for asynchronous DKG and analyze the difficulty of using a randomized protocol for it. Using our VSS scheme and a leader-based agreement protocol, we then design a provably secure DKG protocol. We also consider and achieve cryptographic properties such as uniform randomness of the shared secret and compare static versus adaptive adversary models. Finally, we implement our DKG protocol, and establish its efficiency and reliability by extensively testing it on the PlanetLab platform. Counter to a general non-scalability perception about asynchronous systems, our experiments demonstrate that our asynchronous DKG protocol scales well with the system size and it is suitable for realizing multiparty computation and threshold cryptography over the Internet.


Microsatellites, or simple sequence repeats (SSRs), have long played a major role in genetic studies due to their typically high polymorphism. They have diverse applications, including genome mapping, forensics, ascertaining parentage, population and conservation genetics, identification of the parentage of polyploids, and phylogeography. We compare SSRs and newer methods, such as genotyping by sequencing (GBS) and restriction site associated DNA sequencing (RAD-Seq), and offer recommendations for researchers considering which genetic markers to use. We also review the variety of techniques currently used for identifying microsatellite loci and developing primers, with a particular focus on those that make use of next-generation sequencing (NGS). Additionally, we review software for microsatellite development and report on an experiment to assess the utility of currently available software for SSR development. Finally, we discuss the future of microsatellites and make recommendations for researchers preparing to use microsatellites. We argue that microsatellites still have an important place in the genomic age as they remain effective and cost-efficient markers.


This thesis is a theological and practical reflection on the practice of adoption in contemporary Britain, as it affects Christian adoption agencies, Christian social workers, Christian parents and adopted children.

The first three chapters set the background context to the research by examining the history, theology, legal and sociological context. This enables the contemporary situation to be established, particularly the potential for tension between the thinking of many Christians about constructing adoptive families and the open, liberal stance of the state and Local Authorities. This tension was heightened with the passing of the Adoption and Children Act 2002 that drew attention to radically different viewpoints within adoption work.

The theological reflection methods employed were the pastoral cycle and canonical narrative, both of which were subordinate to an overall theology of engagement that enabled the interface between the Christian and non-Christian work in adoption to be investigated. The methodological approaches taken enabled quantitative and qualitative material to be combined. Three surveys were distributed: two to Christian groups, agencies and parents, involved in adoption work and one to adoption social workers. Secondly, telephone interviews were conducted. Data was also collected from a wide range of Internet websites. Fourthly, data was gathered from literature distributed by adoption agencies.

A chapter (4) on Christian Adoption Agencies develops a theoretical agency that relates to the Church and the contemporary adoption system. Differences between historically different denominational emphases in adoption work and the present day reality is described. It continues to be possible for Christian adoption agencies to be relevant and specialised in this work.

Central to all adoption work is the child: their future stability and happiness. This is examined by focussing upon the impact of the Christian faith on the potential for healing and wholeness for an adopted child (chapter 5). Three specific aspects of life are explored: an adopted child's spirituality, identity and nurture. This discussion naturally leads into a further discussion about prospective and actual adoptive parents: the manner in which the Christian faith has a bearing upon adoption before, during and after the adoption of a child (chapter 6).

Finally, Christian people within and without adoption work have been challenged about the nature of the family in the adoptive context. 'Families' that are accepted by the general population can be tolerated by some Christians yet discredited by others. The question is asked whether newly created adoptive families can have forms that are radically different from traditional patterns (chapter 7).

This thesis concludes that Christians are making a contribution to adoption work that could be said to be distinctive. This said the Church should work to promote adoption of children with more confidence and debate less about adopters. This is a bold and contentious statement yet I contend that adoption could and should be a characterising motif of Christian family life.


Although many impressive
metallo-supramolecular architectures have been reported, they tend towards high
symmetry structures and avoid extraneous functionality to ensure high-fidelity
in the self-assembly process. This minimalist approach, however, limits the
range of accessible structures and thus their potential applications. Herein is
described a late stage diversification strategy towards ligand scaffolds that
are both low symmetry and incorporate exohedral functional moieties. Key to
this design is the use of CuAAC chemistry, as the triazole is capable of acting
as both a coordinating heterocycle and a tether between the ligand framework
and functional unit simultaneously. In this manner a common precursor was used
to generate ligands with various functionalities, allowing control of electronic
properties, whilst maintaining the core structure of the resultant cis-Pd2L4
nanocage assemblies. The isostructural nature of the scaffold frameworks
enabled formation of combinatorial libraries from the self-assembly of ligand
mixtures, generating multi-functional, low-symmetry architectures.


According to our knowledge, no examination has been made regarding the triangle relationship between Quality, Innovation and Differentiation, QID, and what significance has QID for a firm's competitive position.This article aims to theoretically and empirically develop an understanding of the role of quality, innovation and differentiating in the competitiveness of an organization and proposes a holistic, cross-disciplinary model of the quality, innovation and differentiation QID). A case study shows that linking QID is necessary for sustaining competitive advantage in the hyper-competitive world. The features and essentials in the attainment of such an approach are tentatively constructed through the total relationship management (TRM) and the 5Qs (five qualities) models. It shows that that QID and competitiveness are all linked. QID and total relationship management are strongly related to competitive advantages. Thus we argue that TRM can be seen as administrative and process innovation, which facilitate technological innovation.


This paper describes the phonetic form, the distribution and the possible functions of ejectives in English and German, proposing that ejectives are on the increase in different varieties in English. The problems of teasing apart the different contributions of allophonic regularity, interactional function, sociophonetic variability and epiphenomenal inevitability in accounting for ejectives in English are discussed. Possible production mechanisms behind ejectives in both languages are explored and doubt is cast on previous epiphenomenal accounts which have ignored the importance of a pulmonic component in creating the necessary intra-oral pressure increase. This, in turn, raises questions about possible production mechanisms behind ejectives in languages in which they play a regular part in the phonological inventory.


A simple, precise, rapid and accurate RP-HPLC-PDA method has been developed for the simultaneous estimation of Drotaverine HCl (DRT) and Etoricoxib (ETR) in tablet formulations. The chromatographic separation was achieved on Waters Kromosil C18 column (250 mm x 4.6 mm, 5.0 μ particle size) using methanol: THF: acetatebuffer (51:09:40 v/v) pH adjusted to 6.0 with acetic acid, flow rate was 0.9ml/min and column was maintained at 55 0C. Quantification and linearity was achieved at 244 nm over the concentration range of 1.6 – 80μg/ml for Drotaverine HCl and 1.8 – 90μg/ml for Etoricoxib. The method was validated for specificity, linearity, accuracy, precision, LOD, LOQ and robustness. The proposed method was optimized and validated as per the ICH guidelines. Method was used to test dissolution sample successfully. Thiocolchicoside and Hydrochlorthiazide were used as internal standard.


The 16th-century motet Absalon, fili mi has long been scrutinized by modern scholars. The current effort to reassign its authorship to Pierre de la Rue, fueled largely by an interest in removing it from Josquin9s canon, relies paradoxically upon aspects of the work that were celebrated as evidence of Josquin9s genius by earlier scholars. These aspects, however, depend solely on our acceptance of a peculiar reading in an early manuscript version of the piece, a version that is indeed radical and unprecedented in its notation but is also internally inconsistent and marked by signs of scribal intervention. The author speculates on a mechanism by which such a flawed version of the motet could have arisen. If correct, this mechanism points to an original notated version of the motet that was clefless, while the much celebrated "incomparable modulation" of the end turns out to be neither a modulation nor incomparable. In themselves, these observations do not support either side of the authorship debate; however, they do suggest that some of the arguments levied against Josquin9s authorship have little meaning if the pitch level and signatures present in the early manuscript source resulted from scribal decisions and not the composer9s thought.


We investigate the effect of scale on performance in the active money management industry. We first document that fund returns, both before and after fees and expenses, decline with lagged fund size, even after accounting for various performance benchmarks. We then explore a number of potential explanations for this relationship. This association is most pronounced among funds that have to invest in small and illiquid stocks, suggesting that these adverse scale effects are related to liquidity. Controlling for its size, a fund's return does not deteriorate with the size of the family that it belongs to, indicating that scale need not be bad for performance depending on how the fund is organized. Finally, using data on whether funds are solo-managed or team-managed and the composition of fund investments, we explore the idea that scale erodes fund performance because of the interaction of liquidity and organizational diseconomies.


The authors of this report explain how French policy toward NATO has changed since 1992. Importantly, they discuss how these changes have been effected. However, certain key elements of French external policy have not changed. In effect, therefore, the authors argue that while France may wish to cooperate with NATO, this does not imply that there will be a more cooperative French attitude toward the Alliance.


The US Department of Energy's Distributed Wind Resource Assessment Workshop identified predicting the annual energy production of a kilowatt-sized wind turbine as a key challenge. This article presents the methods and results for predicting the annual energy production of two 2.1 kW Skystream 3.7 wind turbines using computational fluid dynamics, in this case Meteodyn WT. When compared with actual production data, annual energy production values were uniformly underpredicted, with errors ranging from 1% to in excess of 30%, depending on the solver settings and boundary conditions. The most accurate of the simulations with errors consistently less than 10% were achieved when using recommended solver settings of neutral atmospheric stability, and roughness values derived from the US National Land Cover Database. The software was used to create an annual energy production map for the modeling domain, which could be a valuable tool in estimating the energy output and economic value of a proposed wind turbine.


In the severe and dynamic battle to win a market share only strategic companies that
have incorporated a high level of flexibility and innovativeness in their business activities
survive. Finding convenient ways of creating competitive advantage in accordance with the
existing as well as with the anticipated situation on the market and the resources they draw on
is of outstanding importance for the survival of partnership. Helped by strategy of innovation,
companies that form strategics partnerships are finding ways to withstand competitive attacks
and achieve sustainable competitive advantage.
Technological innovation and technology are tangent to every aspect of functioning of
companies and their strategic partnerships. For the process of technological innovation to be
completely successful it is necessary to use new knowledge or a new combination of old
ones. By transferring knowledge its value increases, activities that represent mutual
satisfaction of all partner are stimulated, which helps in creating a solid knowledge base. By
forming the solid knowledge base, conditions for carrying out the process of technological
innovation are created.
Future business will requires bulk of innovations that can be, on the one hand
destabilizing force because they require changes within the company and strategic
partnership itself, but on the other hand, if they are verified on the market, they can provide
sustainable competitive advantage. Relating to these contrasting strengths of the present and
the future, managers should create a two-fold policy of strategic partnership innovativeness,
i.e. a policy for managing strategic partnership which supports stability and incremental
changes, on the one hand, as well as a policy which supports experimenting and
discontinuous changes, on the other. One of the ways of sustaining this healthy tension is to
create a system, which is focused on innovativeness. Hereby, attention to, importance and
position of strategic partnerships in the future will be increased, while still running
contemporary businesses.
Attracting and keeping foreign direct investments is the main goal of numerous
countries, considering they play an important role in creating new jobs, increasing export,
transferring of technology and business knowledge, achieving competitiveness, production
improvement, and finally reduction of poverty through overall economic growth and
development. Therefore, the objectives of development in Serbian economy have to include
more intensified foreign investments through strategic partnerships with the goal of growing
innovative activities and creating better domestic as well as the international market
positioning for our companies.


Historians' standard narrative arc of sectional politics from the Missouri Crisis of 1819-1821 through the Civil War – a tale of recurring and increasingly polarizing sectional conflicts – has enormous benefits, but also encourages a uniform picture of the political impact in the North of debates centered on slavery. In this rendering, Northern politicians who voted for compromise with the South ("doughfaces"), being at least functionally proslavery, suffered at the hands of an antislavery electorate whenever slavery formed the subject of national debates. But taking doughfaces seriously shows that their popularity ebbed and flowed across space and time depending on the priority voters assigned to slavery amongst the mix of political questions vying for their attention. Indeed, looking at the Missouri Crisis from the Maine point of view necessitates a change in something as fundamental as this episode's name. The local dynamics of the struggle allowed Maine's doughfaces to negotiate their stance from a position of strength that most doughfaces did not enjoy. This essay not only sheds light on aspects of well-known events in American history – from the Missouri Crisis in general to Jefferson's famous "firebell" letter in specific – but also offers a case study meant to exemplify the advantages of attention to particular Northern sub-regions and states. Moreover, by attending as much to the middle ground as to the diverging sectional poles in their study of slavery debates, scholars will come to a more complete understanding of the complexity of the United States' politics of slavery.


Introduction Tourniquets are routinely used during total knee replacement (TKR) surgery. They could increase the risk of thromboembolic events including cerebral emboli, cognitive decline, pain and other adverse events (AEs). A randomised controlled trial to assess whether tourniquet use might safely be avoided is therefore warranted but it is unclear whether such a trial would be feasible. Methods In a single-site feasibility study and pilot randomised controlled trial, adults having a TKR were randomised to surgery with an inflated tourniquet versus a non-inflated tourniquet. Participants underwent brain MRI preoperatively and within 2 days postoperatively. We assessed cognition using the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) and Oxford Cognitive Screen (OCS) and thigh pain using a Visual Analogue Scale at baseline and days 1 and 2, and 1 week postsurgery. AEs related to surgery were recorded up to 12 months. Results We randomised 53 participants (27 tourniquet inflated and 26 tourniquet not inflated). Fifty-one participants received care per-protocol (96%) and 48 (91%) were followed up at 12 months. One new ischaemic brain lesion was detected. Of the cognitive tests, MoCA was easy to summarise, sensitive to change with lower ceiling effects compared with OCS and MMSE. There was a trend towards more thigh pain (mean 49.6 SD 30.4 vs 36.2 SD 28 at day 1) and more AEs related to surgery (21 vs 9) in participants with an inflated tourniquet compared with those with a tourniquet not inflated. Conclusion A full trial is feasible, but using MRI as a primary outcome is unlikely to be appropriate or feasible. Suitable primary outcomes would be cognition measured using MoCA, pain and AEs, all of which warrant investigation in a large multicentre trial. Trial registration number ISRCTN20873088.


Low-pressure, Cooled Exhaust Gas Recirculation (LPC EGR) brings significant fuel economy , NOx reduction and knock suppression benefits to a modern, boosted, downsized Spark Ignition (SI) engine. As a prerequisite to design an engine control system for LPC EGR, this paper presents development of a set of estimation algorithms to accurately estimate the flow rate, pressure states and thermal states of the LPC EGR-related components.


Background. Although survival of kidney regrafts is similar to that of primary grafts, risk factors associated with regraft survival have not been defined clearly. The aim of this study was to investigate risk factors for regraft outcome, including characteristics of the previous and current transplant, and time to retransplant. Methods. In a historical cohort study, 966 primary and 176 repeat deceased donor kidney graft recipients transplanted between January 1, 1990 and December 31, 2004 were studied. Cox regression analysis was used to estimate graft loss hazard ratios (HR) for regrafts versus primary grafts. Adjustments were made for recipient and donor demographics, transplant-related factors (transplant era, panel reactive antibodies, human leukocyte antigens mismatches, immunosuppression, delayed graft function, acute rejection [AR]), previous transplant characteristics (graft survival, graft loss because of AR), and time to retransplant. Results. A total of 508 kidney grafts were lost in the period between January 1990 and May 2007: 427 primary grafts and 81 regrafts. Regraft recipients had a covariate-adjusted 6% increase in graft loss (HR=1.06; P=0.69). Regraft loss was significantly associated with previous graft survival less than or equal to 1 year (HR=2.01; P=0.004), previous graft loss because of AR (HR=2.26; P=0.017) and time to retransplant more than 1 year (HR=2.42; P=0.002). Other significant predictors of regraft loss were diabetes (HR=1.81), donor age more than 50 years (HR=1.86) and delayed graft function after retransplant (HR=1.95). Conclusions. Kidney regrafts seem to have similar long-term outcome as primary grafts. However, additional risk factors significantly associated with regraft survival are previous graft survival, graft loss because of rejection, and time to retransplant.


As of 2014 United States' women entrepreneurs own 9.1 million businesses creating the fastest growing business segment. This phenomenological study highlights how women entrepreneurs can learn to be more objective while managing their company through a leadership position. The main themes emerging from the study were the value of a mentorship experience and how a transformational leadership style may help women entrepreneurs grow their businesses and develop personally and professionally. Seventy-five per cent of women leaders maintain that mentoring plays an integral part in their career. This study may contribute to positive social change by encouraging women entrepreneurs to establish on-going mentoring relationships.


Understanding and characterizing the mechanical behaviour of soils is an important area of engineering for geotechnical engineers. This is for a good reason. Soils, as engineering materials, carry structures of different sorts where safety depends on the stability of the soil mass the various structures rest on. Soils are also used as building materials.Soils, as aggregate materials, are able to sustain loads of various kinds through friction, cohesion, and interlocking. Soils that mainly sustain loads through friction and interlocking are referred to as frictional materials in this thesis and the particular focus is on sand-like materials. The load carrying capacity and the deformation characteristics of such materials depend not only on the mineralogy and grain characteristics of the aggregants but also on the condition at which the particles are arranged. The arrangement depends on the configuration of particles, void proportions, and the effective stress level.The stress-strain behaviour of soils, and hence frictional materials, is highly non-linear and depends on the state of deposition (void-solid proportion and arrangement or fabric), effective stress state, and the history of loading conditions they have been subjected to. The constitutive behaviour of soils in general is thus complex, as the variables that affect it are complex and random. However, through careful observations, important frameworks have been deciphered. Two of the most successful frameworks are the critical state/ steady state theory and the stress-dilatancy theory.According to the critical state/steady state theory, there exists an ultimate state that can be described independently of the configuration state. The evolution tendency of various state variables during continuous monotonic deformation is towards this ultimate state which is a target reference state. Such an approach relies on the following four key ingredients. First, state variables must be defined. This is to some extent arbitrary. Nevertheless, the void ratio and the effective stress are the main ones in the list. Fabric and intergranular strain may also be considered to obtain a more complete picture. Second, the initial values of each state must be specified. Third the evolution of the various state variables must be established. Fourth, the ultimate state must be investigated and defined.The stress-dilatancy theory considers the coupling between shear and volume changes in several materials, especially in soils, rocks and concrete. Such materials undergo volumetric changes when sheared. This behaviour is best described by Osborne Reynolds who initiated the scientific enquiry of shear-volume coupling in granular materials, "distortion necessitates volume change". These volumetric changes give rise to deformation and energy dissipation behaviour that is characteristic for such materials. Mathematical formalisms that describe volumetric changes are generally known as stress-dilatancy theories. The stress-dilatancy formalisms can be established in different ways. Some theoretical abstractions consider certain principles in the energy dissipation mechanism while in others arbitrary empirical equations are defined. From the stress-dilatancy formalisms, the so-called plastic potential functions which define the "flow" of direction of plastic strains can be constructed. Plastic potential functions may also be arbitrarily defined. Often it is possible to decipher the implied stress-dilatancy relation. Plastic potential functions are generally distinguished into associated and nonassociated. Flow rules are defined associated when the plastic potential is the same as the yield function(s), a (set of) constraint(s) that a stress state is assumed to obey. If the plastic potential function is different from the yield function(s) then the flow condition is called nonassociated. Such is often the case with the deformation behaviour of several geomaterials and thus frictional materials.In this thesis, state variables and important states of soils are investigated. Some empirical and theoretical foundations of the resistance of soils are investigated. A flow rule which accommodates non-associativity is established. Several yield functions that were proposed for frictional materials are presented and discussed. Empirical equations that relate plastic distortional strain to mobilization of the yield functions are proposed. Both loading and unloading conditions are considered. Employing the concepts of plasticity theory, a tangent stiffness tensor is composed. Then, an extended stress-dilatancy and plastic flow theory called adaptable cyclic stress-dilatancy and non-associated flow theory is proposed. Both loading and unloading are considered such that the proposed theory can be applied for cyclic loading conditions. The proposed theory can be adapted to describe the stress-dilatancy behaviour of a wide range of geomaterials. This is demonstrated by establishing novel stress-dilatancy formalism for Hoek-Brown materials. The theory is further improved by considering the noncoaxiality between the axes of principal stresses and principal plastic strain rates. Novel inequalities are proposed. Furthermore, a novel evolution rule is established for the degree of non-coaxiality. Finally, a new constitutive framework named C-StaD is proposed and evaluated in simple element tests. The model is developed by hierarchically building from a simple elastoplastic model. The model development targets both the small and the large strain ranges. The model framework is organized such that further extension is easier.


Data is an expensive and expansive asset. Information capture has forced storage capacity from megabytes to terabytes, exabytes and, pretty soon, zetabytes of data. So the need for accessible storage space for this data is great. To make this huge amount of data usable and relevant, it needs to be organized effectively. Database Base Management Systems, such as Oracle, IBM's DB2, and Microsoft SqlServer are used often, but these are being enhanced continuously and auxiliary tools are being developed every week; there needs to be a fundamental starting point for it all. That stating point is Data Architecture, the blueprint for organizing and structuring of information for services, service providers, and the consumers of that data. Data Architecture: From Zen to Reality explains the principles underlying data architecture, how data evolves with organizations, and the challenges organizations face in structuring and managing their data. It also discusses proven methods and technologies to solve the complex issues dealing with data. The book uses a holistic approach to the field of data architecture by covering the various applied areas of data, including data modelling and data model management, data quality , data governance, enterprise information management, database design, data warehousing, and warehouse design. This book is a core resource for anyone emplacing, customizing or aligning data management systems, taking the Zen-like idea of data architecture to an attainable reality. Presents fundamental concepts of enterprise architecture with definitions and real-world applications and scenariosTeaches data managers and planners about the challenges of building a data architecture roadmap, structuring the right team, and building a long term set of solutions Includes the detail needed to illustrate how the fundamental principles are used in current business practice


Cultural differences have been shown to be social phenomena, arising in a complex reciprocal relationship between social actors and historical context. National character descriptions have also been shown to do ideological work. Language plays a crucial role in the construction of perceived reality, including perceived differences, and in the support of power structures. This study uses critical language analysis to uncover ideological frameworks behind cultural descriptions Americans have constructed of Russians. First, I will argue that American images of Russians became reified during the Cold War forming crucial building blocks in the ideological war between communism and anti-communism. I will show that linguistic strategies known to be used to gain symbolic control over the Other shaped these descriptions. I will then turn to the post-Cold War era and examine whether the change in ideological climate is reflected in current descriptions. The analysis shows the old descriptions and their familiar vocabulary to persist. Underlying reasons for the continued acceptance of the old descriptions are explored.


Since the Victorian era, London's Underground has had played a vital role in the daily life of generations of Londoners. In The Subterranean Railway, Christian Wolmar celebrates the vision and determination of the nineteenth-century pioneers who made the world's first, and still the largest, underground passenger railway: one of the most impressive engineering achievements in history. From the early days of steam to electrification, via the Underground's contribution to twentieth-century industrial design and its role during two world wars, the story comes right up to the present with its sleek, driverless trains and the wrangles over the future of the system. The Subterranean Railway reveals London's hidden wonder in all its glory and shows how the railway beneath the streets helped create the city we know today.


Fractionally integrated models with the disturbances following a Bloomfield (1973) exponential spectral model are proposed in this article for modelling the U.K. unemployment. This enables us a better understanding of the low-frequency dynamics affecting the series, without relying on any particular ARMA specification for its short-run components, which, in general, requires many more parameters to estimate. The results indicate that this exponential model, confounded with fractional integration, may be a feasible way of modelling unemployment, also showing that its order of integration is much higher than one and thus, leading to the conclusion that the standard practice of taking first differences may lead to erroneous results.


The project aim is the discovery of historical identity through the cultural and functional residential garden of the Royal House of Romania. This work is necessary given the considerable reduction of historical landmarks and national cultural identity. The study shows the approach, analysis and strategy of the development project aiming to revitalize the Elisabeta Palace Garden, and the landscaping solution for the residential garden. The study of the monument as a whole involves detailed research that displays the potential landscape value of the space accompanying the royal residence in Romania and possibly its inclusion on the list of historical landscape monuments. Knowing the main aspects regarding the accounting and inventory of the elements that compose the historical garden also includes a range of information that would help the sustainable management strategy for the future. Not only the preservation and conservation but also the restoration and revitalization of the cultural heritage that was left to us is a paramount concern in the development of a cultural society. These testimonies of the past are very important milestones, necessary for understanding the value of the Romanian people. Maintaining and developing the landscape, in conjunction with the architectural values belonging to the historical monument, may lead to the future possibility of self-financing of all maintenance work required by the historical assembly. That imperative self-financing is present in all current studies of sustainable development and can be embedded in the marketing strategies of the monument.


Abstract Background Praziquantel mass drug administration (MDA) is recommended in schistosomiasis-endemic areas. Animal models demonstrate Schistosoma parasite resistance to praziquantel after repeated exposure. Methods We conducted a parasitological survey in 26 fishing communities in Uganda after 4 years of quarterly (13 communities) or annual (13 communities) praziquantel MDA, with Schistosoma infection detected by single-stool-sample Kato-Katz. A test of cure was done in participants who were positive on both urine circulating cathodic antigen test and 3-sample Kato-Katz. We calculated cure rates (CRs) and egg reduction rates (ERRs) based on 3-sample Kato-Katz and infection intensity using worm-specific circulating anodic antigen (CAA) in blood, comparing these between quarterly and annually treated participants. Results Single-sample Kato-Katz Schistosoma mansoni prevalence was 22% in 1,056 quarterly treated participants and 34% in 1,030 annually treated participants (risk ratio, 0.62; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.40 to 0.94). Among 110 test-of-cure participants, CRs were 65% and 51% in annually and quarterly treated villages, respectively (odds ratio, 0.65; 95% CI, 0.27 to 1.58); ERRs were 94% and 81% (difference, –13%; 95% CI, –48% to 2%). There was no impact of quarterly vs annual praziquantel on S. mansoni by CAA. Conclusions In this schistosomiasis hot spot, there was little evidence of decreased praziquantel efficacy. However, in the absence of alternative therapies, there remains a need for continued vigilance of praziquantel efficacy in the MDA era.


Reflecting on the public role of academics, this issue of JCOM includes a set of commentaries exploring public intellectuals and intellectualism. The commentaries explore the role of academics in public debates, both as bringers of facts and passion. These pieces, together with past commentaries and letters to JCOM raise interesting questions about the role of academics in public debates that are, perhaps not those usually trodden in the academic literature. Abstract


Background Bacterial vaginosis and genital mycoplasmas are reproductive tract infections that are associated with several infections and adverse pregnancy outcomes, such as pelvic inflammatory disease, preterm birth and spontaneous abortions in affected women. Bacterial vaginosis (BV), a polymicrobial condition, is reported to be prevalent in 15% to 20% of pregnant women while mycoplasmas colonise up to about 70% of sexually active women and antenatal patients. Methods Self-collected vaginal swabs were obtained from 221 pregnant women. Bacteria vaginosis was diagnosed using the Nugent scoring system and a multiplex PCR assay was performed to detect genital mycoplasmas. Mycoplasma hominis, M. genitalium, Ureaplasma urealyticum and U. parvum were targeted, respectively, for the 16S rRNA gene, 140-kDa adhesion protein and the multiple-banded antigen genes. Results The prevalence of bacterial vaginosis was 17.6% (39/221) with a total of 23.1% (9/39) of all BV-positive cases (score 7 to 10) being HIV positive. An intermediate grading according to the Nugent system (score 4 to 6) was given to 14.9% (33/221) of samples. Ureaplasma parvum was isolated from the majority of samples with a prevalence of 72.4% (160/221) followed by M. hominis, which was present in 50.7% (112/221) of all samples. The prevalence of M. genitalium and U. urealyticum was 14.5% (32/221) and 2.3% (5/221), respectively. Mycoplasma hominis was detected in 75% (27/36) of all HIV positive cases with U. parvum also present in 75% (27/36) of these cases. Conclusions The overall prevalence of genital mycoplasmas in antenatal patients was relatively high when compared to previous studies, while BV prevalence correlated with other reports. Ureaplasma parvum and M. hominis were notably present in HIV positive patients. The diagnosis of genital mycoplasmas and BV in pregnant women in HIV-prevalent South Africa is vital to allow early intervention and minimise complications, such as undesirable pregnancy outcomes.


Technology is inherently neutral and can be used in equal measure for good or evil. Interestingly, this determination is a matter of perspective. Technology enables or enhances a number of activities. Fundamentally, technology can be used to improve teaching and learning, to make administrative operations more efficient and effective, to help discover knowledge and to help improve access to information. The problem, of course, is how these things relate to the role of humans. While traditionalists may contend that technology detracts from the essence of humanism, there is abundant evidence to show that today's students are doing quite well, as both learners and as people. A fundamentally important issue today involves a dichotomy concerning whether it is the inputs or the outputs that determine the effectiveness of institutions. Although education is timelier and its impacts are gradual, it is far too often underplayed when it comes to a nation's security by the size of military and present economic growth. Education has never been more central to the security of Middle East countries.


We propose a new family of neural networks to predict the behaviors of physical systems by learning their underpinning constraints. A neural projection operator liesat the heart of our approach, composed of a lightweight network with an embedded recursive architecture that interactively enforces learned underpinning constraints and predicts the various governed behaviors of different physical systems. Our neural projection operator is motivated by the position-based dynamics model that has been used widely in game and visual effects industries to unify the various fast physics simulators. Our method can automatically and effectively uncover a broad range of constraints from observation point data, such as length, angle, bending, collision, boundary effects, and their arbitrary combinations, without any connectivity priors. We provide a multi-group point representation in conjunction with a configurable network connection mechanism to incorporate prior inputs for processing complex physical systems. We demonstrated the efficacy of our approach by learning a set of challenging physical systems all in a unified and simple fashion including: rigid bodies with complex geometries, ropes with varying length and bending, articulated soft and rigid bodies, and multi-object collisions with complex boundaries.


Author(s): Katyal, SK | Abstract: There is a fundamental revolution under way regarding the relationship between gender and the state, both domestically and internationally. Across the world, the rise and visibility of transgender rights movements have forced a persistent rethinking of the cornerstone legal presumptions associated with science, sex, and gender. As many people, along with multiple courts, colleges, and workplaces, now recognize, the binary presumptions of male and female identity are largely outdated and often fail to capture the complexity of identity and expression. The question for legal scholars and legislatures is how the law can and should respond to this complexity. Taking this observation as an invitation, this Article provides a different way to conceive of the relationship between sex and gender that might provide another vantage point in demonstrating the limits of our jurisprudence. Drawing on Professor Cheryl Harris's groundbreaking article exploring whiteness as property published in the Harvard Law Review over twenty years ago, this Article argues that, in order to understand the relationship between sex and gender, it might be helpful to explore a parallel type of affiliation between identity, property, and intellectual property. My thesis is that sex is to gender as property is to intellectual property. Unpacking this further, this Article argues that, instead of thinking of sex as a construct of biology alone, it might be helpful for us to reconceptualize state-assigned sex along the lines of tangible property - bordered, seemingly fixed, rivalrous, and premised on a juridical presumption of scarcity in terms of its rigid polarities of male and female. In contrast, regarding gender, I argue that thinking through gender as a performance, if taken seriously, also suggests that gender is more akin to intellectual property - permeable, malleable, unfixed, nonrivalrous - and ultimately deeply nonexclusive. Normatively, I argue that a model of gender pluralism is an important framework with which to examine the importance of gender diversity and fluidity.


When performing local polynomial regression (LPR) with kernel smoothing, the choice of the smoothing parameter, or bandwidth, is critical. The performance of the method is often evaluated using the Mean Square Error (MSE). Bias and variance are two components of MSE. Kernel methods are known to exhibit varying degrees of bias. Boundary effects and data sparsity issues are two potential problems to watch for. There is a need for a tool to visually assess the potential bias when applying kernel smooths to a given scatterplot of data. In this dissertation, we propose pointwise confidence intervals for bias and demonstrate a software tool to implement the confidence bands in practice. The effectiveness of the proposed bias assessment tool is demonstrated using simulated data and is illustrated by its application to classical data sets. To reduce the bias of LPR while keeping other good properties of it, as well as to mitigate the sparsity and boundary issues, this thesis extends the technique of double-smoothing from the local linear regression context to higher order local polynomial regression, with particular focus on local quadratic and local cubic regression. Double-smoothing is a technique that involves two levels of smoothing and is known to reduce bias in nonparametric regression while maintaining control over variance. What was not known is that the method is often sub-optimal when the bandwidths at both levels of smoothing are equal. In this thesis, we propose a simple method for obtaining the second-level smoothing bandwidth while using a cross-validation method for the first level. The proposed tools in this dissertation are employed to address real problems related to wildfire management: one is for modelling the time to initial attack using fire case records for the years from 1930 to 2012 in a Northeastern Ontario area. Another one is for the experimental results of burning debris as a randomized component in a firebrand spotting simulator.


This dissertation concerns the principles and techniques for scalable evolutionary computation to achieve better solutions for larger problems with more computational resources. It suggests that many of the limitations of existent evolutionary algorithms, such as premature convergence, stagnation, loss of diversity, lack of reliability and efficiency, are derived from the fundamental convergent evolution model, the oversimplified "survival of the fittest" Darwinian evolution model. Within this model, the higher the fitness the population achieves, the more the search capability is lost. This is also the case for many other conventional search techniques.
The main result of this dissertation is the introduction of a novel sustainable evolution model, the Hierarchical Fair Competition (HFC) model, and corresponding five sustainable evolutionary algorithms (EA) for evolutionary search. By maintaining individuals in hierarchically organized fitness levels and keeping evolution going at all fitness levels, HFC transforms the conventional convergent evolutionary computation model into a sustainable search framework by ensuring a continuous supply and incorporation of low-level building blocks and by culturing and maintaining building blocks of intermediate levels with its assembly-line structure. By reducing the selection pressure within each fitness level while maintaining the global selection pressure to help ensure exploitation of good building blocks found, HFC provides a good solution to the explore vs. exploitation dilemma, which implies its wide applications in other search, optimization, and machine learning problems and algorithms.
The second theme of this dissertation is an examination of the fundamental principles and related techniques for achieving scalable evolutionary synthesis. It first presents a survey of related research on principles for handling complexity in artificially designed and naturally evolved systems, including modularity, reuse, development, and context evolution. Limitations of current genetic programming based evolutionary synthesis paradigm are discussed and future research directions are outlined. Within this context, this dissertation investigates two critical issues in topologically open-ended evolutionary synthesis, using bond-graph-based dynamic system synthesis as benchmark problems. For the issue of balanced topology and parameter search in evolutionary synthesis, an effective technique named Structure Fitness Sharing (SFS) is proposed to maintain topology search capability. For the representation issue in evolutionary synthesis, or more specifically the function set design problem of genetic programming, two modular set approaches are proposed to investigate the relationship between representation, evolvability, and scalability.


Fundamentally, measurements of the temperature and pressure within a cavern are required to estimate the gas inventory. To obtain these measurements, downhole wireline logging has been the conventional industry standard, and several calculation methods have been developed to esti-mate the gas inventory based on wireline measurements. However, wireline logs only measure the temperature at the centerline of the cavern, which requires an assumption that the temperature at the cavern centerline represents the entire gas temperature at that particular depth. If horizontal variations in temperature exist at that measurement depth, particularly near the cavern walls (which may be significantly warmer or cooler than the gas), the calculated inventory may be inaccurate. Therefore, this study presents an initial computational fluid dynamics investigation into the appro-priateness of wireline temperature logging for gas inventory calculations.

This report has a related webinar.


Research question: While the literature on sponsorship of sport has gained interest among scholars in diverse fields such as management, marketing, and psychology in recent years, scant attention has been paid to the extent in which sponsoring may serve as a strategic lever that is mutually beneficial for sponsors and sponsees. We, therefore, ask: What constitutes strategic sponsoring in professional sport? Research methods: In addressing our research question, we selectively review the literature on sport sponsoring, link it to the basic tenets of the resource-based view, and conceptualize this literature into a framework for strategic sponsoring in professional sport. Results and findings: In developing our framework, we consider the concept of regime as the key defining working principle of strategic sponsorship activities. We then elicit six different regimes: the cause regime, loyalty regime, appropriability regime, value-differential regime, heuristics-based regime, and associational regime. Each one of these regime types is further related to the six sponsorship activities identified in our literature review. Implications: In proposing how various regimes serve as generative mechanisms for altering the resource and knowledge-bases of sponsors and sponsees, we provide a conceptually rigorous framework of strategic sponsoring that expands the limits of extant views of sport sponsorship. Hence, our multilevel framework advances sponsorship theory through a more rigorous framing, and it provides practitioners clues for rethinking their sponsorship programs.


This thesis represents work conducted over 40-years initially with Australian
surveys on cardiac pacing and later ICDs. During the late 1990's, the author took
on the responsibility of also organizing the world surveys, which are conducted
each four years. The last two Australian and World (2005 and 2009) surveys were
conducted and published under the banner of the Department of Epidemiology and
Preventive Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash
University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia and forms the nucleus of the
dissertation.
The thesis has been prepared as an epidemiological work that can be readily
understood by both medical and non-medical readers. All medical terminology has
been carefully explained in simple English in Chapter 1. This was originally the
Appendix, but the author felt that this represented a vital link in the development of
the thesis and was promoted to the beginning. Although, probably too simple for
the examiners, it nevertheless will be important to readers who are involved in
taking on the arduous task of developing sophisticated pacemaker and ICD
registries. Finally, each chapter has been written as a single entity with its own
references. Consequently, there are areas of repetition in the text.


SETTING
Hospital in-patients with suspected tuberculous meningitis (TBM), predominantly in India.

OBJECTIVE
To determine whether interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma) secreting Mycobacterium tuberculosis antigen-specific T-cells are present in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of patients with TBM and to evaluate the feasibility of CSF enzyme-linked immunospot (ELISpot) for the diagnosis of active TBM.

DESIGN
Prospective blinded hospital-based study.

RESULTS
The overnight ELISpot assay detected M. tuberculosis antigen-specific IFN-gamma secreting T-cells in CSF from nine of 10 prospectively recruited patients with TBM, and zero of seven control patients with meningitis of other aetiology. This corresponds to a diagnostic sensitivity of 90% (95%CI 56-100) and specificity of 100% (95%CI 59-100).

CONCLUSION
This pilot study demonstrates proof-of-principle for a new T-cell-based diagnostic test for TBM which is rapid, sensitive and specific.


Objective. To assess the extent to which children may be falsely diagnosed as HIV-infected, using data from an antiretroviral therapy (ART) site in Pretoria, South Africa.

Methods. This was a retrospective patient record review of all ART-naive children referred to Kalafong hospital's paediatric HIV clinic between April 2004 and March 2010, with detailed review of those found to be HIV-uninfected.

Results. There were 1 526 patient files analysed, with a male-to-female ratio of 1.01:1 and median age at first visit of 20 months (range 26 days - 17.5 years). Nearly half (n=715; 47%) of the children were aged <18 months. Fifty-one children were found to be HIV-uninfected after repeated diagnostic tests. Incorrect laboratory results for children aged <18 months included false-positive HIV DNA PCR tests (40), detectable HIV viral loads (4) and a false-positive HIV p24Ag test (1). One child above 18 months had false-positive HIV ELISA results. An additional 4 children were inappropriately referred after being incorrectly labelled as HIV-infected and 1 child aged <18 months was referred after an inappropriate diagnostic test for age was used. In summary, 1 in every 30 (3.3%) children was discharged HIV-uninfected, and below age 18 months, 1 in 16 children (6.3%) had false-positive HIV virological tests.

Conclusions. Urgency in ART initiation in HIV-infected children is life-saving, especially in infants. However, HIV tests may produce false-positive results leading to misdiagnosis of children as HIV-infected, which has serious consequences. Meticulous checking of HIV-positive status is of utmost importance before committing any child to lifelong ART.


Anything You Want is Derek Sivers' iconic manifesto on lessons learned while becoming an entrepreneur. You don't need a visionary master plan, loads of funding or a brilliant team to start a business. All you really need is Generosity. When Derek Sivers started CD Baby, he wasn't planning on building a major business. He was a successful independent musician who just wanted to sell his CDs online. He started in 1998 by helping his friends sell their CDs too. In 2000, he hired his first employee. Eight years later, he sold CD Baby for $22 million. Sivers didn't need a business plan, and neither do you. You don't need to think big; in fact, it's better if you don't. Anything You Want will inspire you to start with what you have, care about your customers more than yourself, and run your business like you don't need the money. "A true manifesto, a guidebook with clear signposts, and a fun ride you'll return to again and again." (Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek).


Summary Grokking Algorithms is a fully illustrated, friendly guide that teaches you how to apply common algorithms to the practical problems you face every day as a programmer. You'll start with sorting and searching and, as you build up your skills in thinking algorithmically, you'll tackle more complex concerns such as data compression and artificial intelligence. Each carefully presented example includes helpful diagrams and fully annotated code samples in Python. Learning about algorithms doesn't have to be boring! Get a sneak peek at the fun, illustrated, and friendly examples you'll find in Grokking Algorithms on Manning Publications' YouTube channel. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the Technology An algorithm is nothing more than a step-by-step procedure for solving a problem. The algorithms you'll use most often as a programmer have already been discovered, tested, and proven. If you want to understand them but refuse to slog through dense multipage proofs, this is the book for you. This fully illustrated and engaging guide makes it easy to learn how to use the most important algorithms effectively in your own programs. About the Book Grokking Algorithms is a friendly take on this core computer science topic. In it, you'll learn how to apply common algorithms to the practical programming problems you face every day. You'll start with tasks like sorting and searching. As you build up your skills, you'll tackle more complex problems like data compression and artificial intelligence. Each carefully presented example includes helpful diagrams and fully annotated code samples in Python. By the end of this book, you will have mastered widely applicable algorithms as well as how and when to use them. What's InsideCovers search, sort, and graph algorithms Over 400 pictures with detailed walkthroughs Performance trade-offs between algorithms Python-based code samplesAbout the Reader This easy-to-read, picture-heavy introduction is suitable for self-taught programmers, engineers, or anyone who wants to brush up on algorithms. About the Author Aditya Bhargava is a Software Engineer with a dual background in Computer Science and Fine Arts. He blogs on programming at adit.io.


Severely eroded beaches on low lying islands in Indonesia were grown back in a few months—believed to be a record—using an innovative method of shore protection, Biorock electric reef technology. Biorock shore protection reefs are growing limestone structures that get stronger with age and repair themselves, are cheaper than concrete or rock sea walls and breakwaters, and are much more effective at shore protection and beach growth. Biorock reefs are permeable, porous, growing, self-repairing structures of any size or shape, which dissipate wave energy by internal refraction, diffraction, and frictional dissipation. They do not cause reflection of waves like hard sea walls and breakwaters, which erodes the sand in front of, and then underneath, such structures, until they collapse. Biorock reefs stimulate settlement, growth, survival, and resistance to the environmental stress of all forms of marine life, restoring coral reefs, sea grasses, biological sand production, and fisheries habitat. Biorock reefs can grow back eroded beaches and islands faster than the rate of sea level rise, and are the most cost-effective method of shore protection and adaptation to global sea level rise for low lying islands and coasts.


The business judgement rule was developed in the United States of America 'because of a desire to protect honest directors and officers from the risks inherent in hindsight reviews of their unsuccessful decisions, and because of the desire to refrain from stifling innovation and venturesome business activity.' The English common law shows that the courts were unwilling to intervene in board decisions as far back as 1742. Then, in 1829, the business judgement rule was formally recognised by the Louisiana Supreme Court as a corporate law defence.


ABSTRACT Whereas the importance of information system (IS) certifications is increasing to prove compliance with regulatory and industry requirements, research reveals inconsistent findings concerning the effectiveness of IS certifications. Prior studies have concluded that such inconsistent findings stem partly from users' limited understanding of the nature and role of certifications due to ineffective certification presentations. We follow a three-phase, theory-driven design science approach to examine how to design effective certification presentations. First, we identified sources of users' limited understanding and formulated a revised certification presentation that facilitates users' peripheral information processing. We tested our design proposal in an online experiment with 300 participants. Second, we derived meta-requirements and design guidelines by validating a theory-driven model of certification presentations through an online survey with 352 participants. Third, we implemented three certification presentations complying with example guidelines and ran an online experiment with 400 participants to test whether these presentations are effective. We contribute to research and practice by proposing a design theory for certification presentations composed of peripheral cues inducing authority, social proof and likeability to increase users' trust perceptions.


Being able to select decoy structures that are closest to the native one is
essential to any folding simulation. Indeed, modern algorithms use heuristics to
quickly sample the conformational space, and as such, will generate a large
number of candidate structures.
In this thesis, we create a new statistical energy function to correctly discriminate
near-native decoy structures, using three complementary approaches to derive
energies from known conformations and decoys.
First, we used a classical definition, where the observed state is modelled by
taking a set of 1078 short, well-resolved, non-redundant crystal structures from
the PDB, and the reference state is taken as the distribution expected at random.
In our second method, which we call "hybrid", we used the native structures as
the observed state, just as in the classical formulation, but this time using the
worse generated decoys as the reference state. Finally, our third method, called
"decoy-based", uses only decoys, taking the better than average models as the
observed state, and the worse than average as the reference state.
Using the three methods above, we generated potentials to model solvation,
hydrogen bonding, and pairwise atomic distances and orientation. We found that
overall, combining solvation, atomic distance and orientation using the decoy-based
method produced the best results, with a 10% enrichment score of 0.73
versus 0.51 for the classical formulation, and 0.41 for our benchmark potential,
DFIRE2.
Our final potential, called the DOS potential, was created by combining the
classical, hybrid and decoy-based potentials, and achieved a 10% enrichment
score of 0.75 versus 0.41 for DFIRE2.


ABSTRACT The Paris Agreement, which entered into force in 2016, sets the ambitious climate change mitigation goal of limiting the global temperature increase to below 2°C and ideally 1.5°C. This puts a severe constraint on the remaining global GHG emissions budget. While international shipping is also a contributor to anthropogenic GHG emissions, and CO2 in particular, it is not included in the Paris Agreement. This article discusses how a share of a global CO2 budget over the twenty-first century could be apportioned to international shipping, and, using a range of future trade scenarios, explores the requisite cuts to the CO2 intensity of shipping. The results demonstrate that, under a wide range of assumptions, existing short-term levers of efficiency must be urgently exploited to achieve mitigation commensurate with that required from the rest of the economy, with virtually full decarbonization of international shipping required as early as before mid-century. Key policy insights Regulatory action is key to ensuring the international shipping sector's long-term sustainability. For the shipping industry to deliver mitigation in line with the Paris Agreement, virtually full decarbonization needs to be achieved. In the near term, immediate and rapid exploitation of available mitigation measures is of critical importance. Any delay in the transition will increase the risk of stranded assets, or diminish the chances of meeting the Paris Agreement's temperature commitments.


Who are the Taliban? Are they a militant movement? Are they religious scholars? The fact that these and other questions are still raised with frequency is testimony to the way the movement has been studied, often at arm's length and with scant use of primary sources. The Taliban Reader forges a new path, bringing together an extensive range of largely unseen sources in a guide to the Afghan Islamist movement from a unique insider perspective. Ideal for students, journalists and scholars alike, this book is the result of an unprecedented, decade-long effort to encourage the emergence of participant-centered accounts of Afghan history. This ground-breaking collection, ranging from news articles and opinion pieces to online publications and poems transcribed by hand in the field, sets the stage for a recalibration of how we understand and study the Afghan Taliban. It challenges researchers to forge new norms in the documentation of conflict and provides insight into the future trajectory of political Islamism in South Asia and the Middle East.


Luminescence excitation spectra of active centers in bismuth-doped vitreous SiO(2) and vitreous GeO(2) optical fibers under the two-step excitation have been obtained for the first time. The results revealed only one bismuth-related IR active center formed in each of these fibers. The observed IR luminescence bands at 1430 nm (1650 nm) and 830 nm (950 nm), yellow-orange (red) band at 580 nm (655 nm), violet (blue) band at 420 nm (480 nm) belong to this bismuth-related active center in the vitreous SiO(2) (vitreous GeO(2)), correspondingly.