Based on the empirical study of recent Polish and Lithuanian migrants in London, this thesis challenges the conventional understanding of home and explores the ways in which transnational migration and home construction constitute one another. First, it explores how the notion of 'home' is constructed by recent Polish and Lithuanian migrants, and how it contributes to the making of migrant identity. Second, it demonstrates the importance of 'home' for understanding migrants' behaviour and attitudes.

The key starting point of my thesis is that home is constructed on the basis of everyday social practices. Therefore I investigate strategies which these migrants use to make themselves feel at home in their immediate living and working environment in the UK, but also in the wider British society. The thesis also considers the relationship of migrants with the home country while in the UK and after return. I utilise secondary/contextual data, in-depth interviews with young recent Polish and Lithuanian migrants in London, and ethnography, to carry out my study.

This thesis develops the scholarship on middling transnationalism by highlighting the self-developmental set of migration motivations and their significance for the overall migration experience and migrants' future plan. My study also advances existing understanding of 'home' by exploring a very specific meaning of home, i.e. home for a highly fluid population of young and ambitious East European transnationals. I also show the contributions of my research to theoretical perspectives on gender and 'whiteness'. Although my empirical findings focus on the Polish and Lithuanian case study, I argue that this research has broader implications for theoretical formulations of transnational migration and construction of 'home'.


We study a simple voter model with two competing parties. In particular, we represent the case of political elections, where people can choose to support one of the two competitors or to remain neutral. People interact in a social network and their opinion depends on those of their neighbors. Therefore, people may change opinion over time, i.e., they can support one competitor or none. The two competitors try to gain the people's consensus by interacting with their neighbors and also with other people. In particular, competitors define temporal connections, following a strategy, to interact with people they do not know, i.e., with all the people that are not their neighbors. We analyze the proposed model to investigate which network strategies are more advantageous, for the competitors, in order to gain the popular consensus. As result, we found that the best network strategy depends on the topology of the social network. Finally, we investigate how the charisma of competitors affects the outcomes of the proposed model.


Background The linkages between neuroinflammation and Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathogenesis are well established. What is not, however, is how specific immune pathways and proteins affect the disease. To this end, we previously demonstrated that transgenic over-expression of CCL2 enhanced microgliosis and induced diffuse amyloid plaque deposition in Tg2576 mice. This rodent model of AD expresses a Swedish β-amyloid (Aβ) precursor protein mutant. Methodology/Principal Findings We now report that CCL2 transgene expression accelerates deficits in spatial and working memory and hippocampal synaptic transmission in β-amyloid precursor protein (APP) mice as early as 2–3 months of age. This is followed by increased numbers of microglia that are seen surrounding Aβ oligomers. CCL2 does not suppress Aβ degradation. Rather, CCL2 and tumor necrosis factor-α directly facilitated Aβ uptake, intracellular Aβ oligomerization, and protein secretion. Conclusions/Significance We posit that CCL2 facilitates Aβ oligomer formation in microglia and propose that such events accelerate memory dysfunction by affecting Aβ seeding in the brain.


Anticoagulants are routinely used in stroke, embolism, infarct, etc. Blood clotting profile in such patients needs to be monitored frequently. Anticoagulants which can be administered orally such as warfarin and dicoumarol are preferred in such patients. Injectable anticoagulants such as heparin are prescribed when anticoagulation therapy is required for short duration. Absence of oral form of heparin makes it impractical for long-term use. Currently, warfarin and coumarone derivatives are the best available oral anticoagulants in market. They act by inhibiting decarboxylation of blood clotting factors II, VII, IX, and X. Pharmacological response of warfarin and dicoumarol needs to be monitored by frequent assessments of prothrombin time (PT) and international normalized ratio (INR). There is a need for a drug which can overcome these limitations. Apixaban is an oral anticoagulant which acts by inhibiting factor Xa. It does not require laboratory monitoring of PT and INR. Hence, it overcomes the limitations of heparin and warfarin. It acts by selectively inhibiting the activated factor Xa in a reversible manner. Apixaban has an oral bioavailability of ~50%. It is administered as twice daily dose. It is excreted in urine and feces. Apixaban is useful in atrial fibrillation, venous thromboembolism, and pulmonary embolism. Bleeding is the major side effect of apixaban. It has been found that apixaban has superiority over warfarin and aspirin in terms of efficacy and safety. Further studies are required to monitor and assess the pharmacokinetics, efficacy, adverse effects, and drug interaction data in many populations and sub-populations throughout the world.


When individuals negotiate, they must initially use the Information Stage to create value by discussing the different issues to be addressed and by exploring the interests underlying those items. They must be willing to disclose their basic interests if progress is to be made, but they are usually not entirely candid for strategic purposes. They may over-state the degree to which they want items they think the other side values and under-state the degree to which they want items they believe the other side does not value. They then move into the Distributive Stage to decide how their joint surplus is to be divided. This is usually a highly competitive part of their interaction as each side endeavors to claim a greater share of the surplus. Once they have reached a tentative agreement, they should use the Cooperative Stage to see if they can still expand the overall pie and improve their respective positions. The inherent tension between value creation and value claiming results from the need for the participants to be sufficiently open during the Information Stage to let the parties know what they have to share, but not so open that they cannot use skilled techniques to let them claim a greater share of the surplus during the Distributive Stage.


On the Members of the Livonian Public Welfare and Economic Society in 1792–1918 From 1792 to 1918 altogether 123 people were accepted as active members of the Livonian Public Welfare and Economic Society; eight members were admitted twice, thus, the organisation had altogether 115 members. The enrolment of new members can be considered quite steady: as a rule, 10 new members were admitted within a decade. It was only in the first decade after founding the Society that 17 active members were admitted, 13 of them in 1792. A remarkable number of members enrolled in the 1860s—in relation to a generational shift, 18 estate owners became members of the organisation. Peter Heinrich von Blanckenhagen, the founder of the Society, had determined that the members of the Society should be members of the Livonian gentry, i.e., the knightage. Most of the 115 members were registered in the matricles of the knightage of Livonia, except Wassili von Zuckerbecker admitted in 1862. The society can be therefore rightfully considered to have united the gentry of Livonia. The estate owners of the neighbouring governorate were ppointed honorary members, as a rule. An exception was Otto Magnus von Gruenewaldt, who was a land councillor in Estonia and had estates in both governorates. The presidents of the Society were mostly from the Estonian district of Livonia, first and foremost from Tartumaa. The members were originally from vastly varied geographic locations. After 1813 and the transferral of the Society to Tartu the membership was dominated by members from the Estonian district, while estate owners from the Latvian district composed 46% of the members. The greatest number of active members was contributed by the Sivers family (13), whose estates were mainly located in Viljandimaa and Tartumaa. One of the largest land owners of the early 20th century Livonia was the Freiherr von Wolff family, who was represented with seven members. The Samson–Himmelstjernas contributed five members. The honorary members were significantly more diverse in their origins. In 1796 the first honorary members were admitted. 316 honorary members were elected until 1918. Besides estate owners; Livonian governors, renowned scientists, church ministers, etc. belonged to the ranks of honorary members. Several former active members also acquired the status of an honorary member. Several well-known agriculturalists, however, never became active members, e.g., the Sangaste estate owner Friedrich von Berg remained an honorary member.


—LinkedIn is the largest professional network with more than 350 million members. As the member base increases, searching for experts becomes more and more challenging. In this paper, we propose an approach to address the problem of personalized expertise search on LinkedIn, particularly for exploratory search queries containing skills. In the offline phase, we introduce a collaborative filtering approach based on matrix factorization. Our approach estimates expertise scores for both the skills that members list on their profiles as well as the skills they are likely to have but do not explicitly list. In the online phase (at query time) we use expertise scores on these skills as a feature in combination with other features to rank the results. To learn the personalized ranking function, we propose a heuristic to extract training data from search logs while handling position and sample selection biases. We tested our models on two products-LinkedIn homepage and LinkedIn recruiter. A/B tests showed significant improvements in click through rates-31% for CTR@1 for recruiter (18% for homepage) as well as downstream messages sent from search-37% for recruiter (20% for homepage). As of writing this paper, these models serve nearly all live traffic for skills search on LinkedIn homepage as well as LinkedIn recruiter.


Simsoft is a serious game— one that trains or educates— at the centre of a research project designed to see if and how games can contribute to better software engineering management education by helping software engineers and project managers explore some of the dynamic complexities of the field in a safe and inexpensive environment. A necessary precursor for this project was to establish what games already existed in the field and how effective they had been. To this end a systematic review of the literature was conducted using a collection of online science, engineering, education, and business databases looking for games or simulations used for educational or training purposes in software engineering or software project management across any of the SWEBOK knowledge areas. The initial search returned 243 results, which was filtered to 36 papers by applying some simple quality and relevance inclusion/exclusion criteria. These remaining papers were then analysed in more depth to see if and how they promoted education in the field of software engineering management. The results showed that games were mainly used in the SWEBOK knowledge areas of software engineeringmanagement and development processes, and most game activity was in Europe and the Americas. The results also showed that most games in the field have learning objectives pitched at the first rung of Bloom's taxonomy (knowledge), most studies followed a non-experimental design, and many had very small sample sizes. This suggests that more rigorous research is needed into the efficacy of games in teaching software engineering management, but enough evidence exists to say that educators could include serious games in their courses as a useful and interesting supplement to other teaching methods.


A new integrated framework for source and channel rate allocation is presented for video coding and transmission over wireless channels without feedback channels available. For a fixed total channel bit rate and a finite number of channel coding rates, the proposed scheme can obtain the near-optimal source and channel coding pair, and corresponding robust video coding scheme such that the expected end-to-end distortion of video signals can be minimized. With the assumption that the encoder has the stochastic information such as average SNR and Doppler frequency of the wireless channel, the proposed scheme takes into account robust video coding, channel coding, packetization, and error concealment techniques altogether. An improved method is proposed to recursively estimate the end-to-end distortion of video coding for transmission over error-prone channels. The proposed estimation is about 1-3 dB more accurate compared to the existing integer-pel based method. Rate-distortion optimized video coding is employed for the trade-off between coding efficiency and robustness to transmission errors.


The edge of the Internet is increasingly becoming wireless. Understanding the wireless edge is therefore important for understanding the performance and security aspects of the Internet experience. This need is especially necessary for enterprise-wide wireless local-area networks (WLANs) as organizations increasingly depend on WLANs for mission-critical tasks. To study a live production WLAN, especially a large-scale network, is a difficult undertaking. Two fundamental difficulties involved are (1) building a scalable network measurement infrastructure to collect traces from a large-scale production WLAN, and (2) preserving user privacy while sharing these collected traces to the network research community. In this dissertation, we present our experience in designing and implementing one of the largest distributed WLAN measurement systems in the United States, the Dartmouth Internet Security Testbed (DIST), with a particular focus on our solutions to the challenges of efficiency, scalability, and security. We also present an extensive evaluation of the DIST system. To understand the severity of some potential trace-sharing risks for an enterprise-wide large-scale wireless network, we conduct privacy analysis on one kind of wireless network traces, a user-association log, collected from a large-scale WLAN. We introduce a machine-learning based approach that can extract and quantify sensitive information from a user-association log, even though it is sanitized. Finally, we present a case study that evaluates the tradeoff between utility and privacy on WLAN trace sanitization.


Like all museums, punishment museums and sites of penal tourism are inherently political and moral institutions, offering cultural memories of a collective past. As environments of narrativity, these are significant spaces in which the public 'learn' about the past and how it continues to inform the present. In line with recent studies about 'dark' tourist sites, this article argues that the crime/punishment museum and jail cell tour can – and should – be understood as an ethnographic opportunity for narrative analysis. Rather than focus on just the findings of such an analysis, this article seeks to provide a practical guide to data collection and analysis in the context of criminological museum research. Offering illustrative examples from a study of Texan sites of penal tourism, it demonstrates how the history of punishment – as represented in museums – is an important part of cultural identity more broadly, playing a significant role in how we conceptualise (in)justice, morality and the purpose of punishment. In short, this article discusses how we can evoke the ethnographic tradition within museum spaces in order to interrogate how crime and punishment are expressed through narratives, images, objects and symbols.


This project involves a comprehensive generalizable and transferable evaluation of the Courseware Development Project (CDP) at Dalhousie University's School of Business Administration. This C$3 million, three-year project is divided into four levels over three time phases. The results of the study of the impact of this unique project are expected to be both relevant and applicable to other universities in Canada and throughout the world. This on-going evaluation of the CDP centers around a systems model where: inputs are divided into drivers and materials; throughputs are the conversion processes on a matrix composed of six parties (faculty, students, staff, administrators, organizational structure and processes, and contributing/participating corporations) as the rows and the four levels of the CDP as the columns; and outputs are divided into manifest and latent variables. Demographic, attitudinal, behavioral, and organizational variables will be used in a time series analysis. Using an action research model over the proposed three-year full study, the researchers will assess which elements Of the project are effective at the end of each year of the evaluation. Based on this information the researchers will keep the effective elements in place for the next year and modify any ineffective elements based on the first year's results and competing theory. This cycle will be repeated after year two. Thus the proposed study will contribute to evaluation methodology as described in this paper by treating simultaneously both a case study and a quasiexperiment of the impact of computers on (business) education. A preliminary description of the effects arising from Level 0, the integration of computers in the business school, and Level 1, courseware development. is given here. The general impact of the project upon faculty, staff, and students is described and preliminary findings are presented.


An achromatic Fourier transformer working with spatially coherent but temporally incoherent light is described both theoretically and experimentally. The achromatic Fraunhofer diffraction pattern results from the incoherent superposition of the monochromatic diffraction patterns generated by every spectral component of light. Wavelength compensation is achieved by a specific configuration combining airspaced zone plates and lenses. Several parameters, such as the spectral resolution of the setup or the spectral broadness of the source, govern the accuracy of coincidence of the various monochromatic patterns. Experimental results demonstrate the broadband operation of the system; the error on the achromatic Fourier transformation is 2% over the visible spectrum. Applications in colored image processing are also reported.


Context: Environmental exposure to herbicides has been hypothesized to contribute to the long-term increase in non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). Objective: To estimate the effects of residential herbicide exposure on NHL risk. Design: Population-based case-control study. Setting: Iowa and metropolitan Detroit, Los Angeles, and Seattle, 1998 to 2000. Participants: NHL patients ages 20 to 74 years and unaffected residents identified by random digit dialing and Medicare eligibility files. Main Outcome Measures: Computer-assisted personal interviews (1,321 cases, 1,057 controls) elicited data on herbicide use at each home occupied since 1970. Levels of 2,4-dichlorophenoxy-acetic acid and dicamba were measured in dust taken from used vacuum cleaner bags in the current home (679 cases, 510 controls who had owned at least half of their carpets for ≥5 years). Results: Herbicide use on the lawn or garden was similar among cases and controls (adjusted relative risk, 1.02; 95% confidence interval, 0.84-1.23). Estimated risk did not increase with greater duration, frequency, or total number of applications of herbicides to the lawn, the garden, or to both combined. Risk was not elevated for respondents who applied the herbicides themselves and not for those exposed during the 1970s, 1980s, or 1990s. We detected 2,4-dichlorophenoxy-acetic acid equally often in homes of cases and controls (78%). We found dicamba in homes of 15% of cases and 20% of controls. We also found no elevation in risk among the respondents who had the highest dust levels and highest self-reported exposures. We found no consistent patterns for specific histologies. Conclusions: We found no detectable excess associated with residential exposures. Residential herbicide exposures are unlikely to explain the long-term increase in NHL.


Restricted access to consumption of cultural goods and services is one of the major problems faced by this sector in Brazil. To address this issue, the federal government created the Vale-Cultura, a voucher in which individuals receive an income transfer to be used exclusively for purchasing cultural goods and services. The aim of this study is to analyze the impacts of the Vale-Cultura in the cultural sector and in the economy in general. The methodology applied is the Brazilian Recursive Dynamic General Equilibrium model (BRIDGE). Our simulations found that GDP growth is driven mainly by the increase in household consumption. There is a positive variation in welfare, assessed by the equivalent and compensating variations in income for beneficiaries of the vouchers. Finally, a positive growth is projected at the level of activity of cultural sectors and negative growth in others, showing a reallocation of productive factors.


Theory of neutron scattering and moderation in matter explains many of the characteristics of calibration curves of neutron moisture probes. Characteristics include effect of atomic species on scattering and absorption of neutrons and concentration and distribution of atoms in the medium, which is the soil and access tube material in our case. Soil characteristics which effect meter calibration include bulk density, bound hydrogen, content of clay minerals and atomic species in the soil solution and affixed to the clay crystal complex of the soil.


Similar to other science subjects, basic technology recorded poor secondary school students' performance both in national and international examination. Furthermore, there are large variations in performances of Nigerian students that raise concerns. These differences in performance may be caused by multiple factors that need to be identified. The aim of this study is to identify the factors that influence students' performance in basic technology. Four research questions guided the study and four hypotheses were tested at the .05 level of significance. The study used the survey research design method with 218 principals of secondary schools in Delta South Senatorial District in Delta State of Nigeria as the target population. The stratified random sampling technique was used to select 65 principals (32 from public and 33 from private secondary schools) as sample of the study. The instrument for data collection was a questionnaire which was content and face validated by three lecturers. The test-retest method was used to ascertain the reliability based on 20 principals who were not part of the population under study. The estimated reliability r= 0.73. Data was collected personally by the researcher and was analysed using ANOVA (Analysis of variance). The result revealed that multiple factors; schools', students', government, and parents' factors influenced students' performance in basic technology with lack of resources underlying these factors.  Hence, it was recommended among others that Delta State Ministry of Basic Education should adequately provide the required resources for the teaching and learning of basic technology in secondary schools in Delta State.


Background: Course plan is among the useful tools to improve the quality of education. This study is conducted to analyze the content of course plans presented by teachers in the School of Health of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences. Methods:In this cross - sectional study, 98 out of 102 course plans of second semester of the academic year 2012-2013 were evaluated. The data was collected using a checklist containing 11 dimensions. Data was analyzed using descriptive and analytical statistics . Results:The average score of evaluation was 23.2 ± 3.2. A significant correlation was observed between faculty gender, employment status and evaluation scores of their course plans (P<0.001). The greatest shortcomings were related to dimensions of educational assistance tools (64.3%), objectives (51%). The dimensions of Goals in the lesson plans (92.9%), outline (90.8%), gained the highest scores. Conclusions: Most of the course plans contents were in an acceptable level although there is a room for improvement in the quality of the course plan content.


Due to their wide field of view, omnidirectional cameras are frequently used by autonomous vehicles, drones and robots for navigation and other computer vision tasks. The images captured by such cameras, are often analyzed and classified with techniques designed for planar images that unfortunately fail to properly handle the native geometry of such images and therefore results in suboptimal performance. In this paper we aim at improving popular deep convolutional neural networks so that they can properly take into account the specific properties of omnidirectional data. In particular we propose an algorithm that adapts convolutional layers, which often serve as a core building block of a CNN, to the properties of omnidirectional images. Thus, our filters adapt their shape and size to the location on the omnidirectional image. We show that our method is not limited to spherical surfaces and is able to incorporate the knowledge about any kind of projective geometry inside the deep learning network. As depicted by our experiments, our method outperforms the existing deep neural network techniques for omnidirectional image classification and compression tasks.


There are two kinds of legal rules for communications networks, such as the Internet and the telephone system. Interconnection rules define how and when networks must exchange traffic with each other, and non-discrimination rules prevent networks from favoring some customers' traffic over others. Each approach has unique strengths and weaknesses. The distinction has never been fully appreciated, even though regulators have imposed both requirements many times. Non-discrimination questions predominate in communications and Internet policy today, thanks to the high-profile battle over "network neutrality" rules for broadband networks. Yet both sides in the network neutrality debate are mistaken. The central challenge of our era of digital convergence is not non-discrimination, but interconnection. Technological and marketplace developments threaten to undermine the open connectivity that feeds the Internet's extraordinary dynamism. A renewed emphasis on interconnection could better address the concerns that animate the network neutrality debate. At the same time, it could avert a disastrous balkanization of the Internet, which otherwise looms as a real possibility. In short, non-discrimination was crucial in the old era of scarcity; interconnection is the essential input of the new age of abundance. The central mandate for the emerging field of network infrastructure policy should be the one eloquently articulated by E.M. Forster: Only connect.


Kocho and Bula are fermented product of Enset (Ensete ventricosum). It is the staple food for 20 million people in Ethiopia. The aim of study was to isolate, identify and characterize yeast species from fermented kocho and bulla by using Biolog Micro station. 300 Kocho samples were collected from Angacha District. 0.1ml of serially diluted samples were Streaked on yeast pepton dextrose agar and incubated at 280C. Pure yeast colony inoculum were prepared at 9ml distilled water at 49% +2 turbidometer and transferred in to YT micro plate. Incubated for 24-72 hours at 28oC and micro plate reading were carried out using MicroLog 3 Software version. 4.20.05. Seven yeast species were identified from study samples. Biolog Micro station 100% probability and >0.5 Similarity read identify Cryptococcus albidus Var aerus, Guilliermondella selenospora, Rhodotorula acheniorum and Trichosporon beigelii. 99% Cryptococcus terreus A, 98% Candida zylandase, 86% Kluyveramyces delphensis respectively. Characterization of yeast involved in kocho fermentation is very important for formulation of starter culture, improving, standardizing and modernizing quality of traditional Enset fermentation and preparation.


The Symposium in which this essay is published features recent developments in the law of intellectual property (IP) in Asia. In this essay, I focus on the Association of South East-Asian Nations (ASEAN), a region that I have had the opportunity to visit extensively in the past several years. In particular, I analyze the enforcement of IP rights in the context of the application of the principle of IP exhaustion in individual ASEAN Members, and the relationship between this principle and free movement of goods within the ASEAN region. In the past, I have addressed the same topic with respect to the laws applicable in the European Union (EU) and the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA). As the principle of IP exhaustion states that the owners of IP rights are no longer entitled to control the distribution of their products after the first lawful sale in the marketplace, the extent of the application of this principle to cross border trade is crucial for the free movement of goods in free trade areas.

The essay proceeds as follows. In Part II, I offer a brief review of ASEAN and emphasize how ASEAN members follow the socalled ASEAN Way, a general policy based on consensus and noninterference into other ASEAN Members' national policies. In this Part, I additionally describe the principle of IP exhaustion in general. In Part III, I survey the approaches adopted by individual ASEAN Members regarding trademark, patent, and copyright exhaustion and note the lack of any harmonization with respect to this principle within ASEAN Members. In Part IV, I build on the survey in Part III, and criticize the lack of consistent policies on IP exhaustion as a barrier to the effective free movement of goods in ASEAN. I thus take the view that ASEAN Members should consider adopting individual domestic policy on international IP exhaustion, which would permit the imports of goods from all countries worldwide, not only other ASEAN Members. This solution would both allow ASEAN Members to have autonomy over their respective traderelated agendas with non-ASEAN countries as well as it would permit the free movement of goods across ASEAN Members. To the contrary, I support that adopting a common policy on ASEAN regional exhaustion—similar to the approach currently adopted by the European Union (EU)—would be less advisable for ASEAN Members. This solution would allow parallel trade within ASEAN Members, yet it would permit blocking of imports from outside the region, which could run against the principle of non-interference in ASEAN.


We present an efficient exact algorithm for estimating state sequences from outputs or observations in imprecise hidden Markov models (iHMMs). The uncertainty linking one state to the next, and that linking a state to its output, is represented by a set of probability mass functions instead of a single such mass function. We consider as best estimates for state sequences the maximal sequences for the posterior joint state model conditioned on the observed output sequence, associated with a gain function that is the indicator of the state sequence. This corresponds to and generalises finding the state sequence with the highest posterior probability in (precise-probabilistic) HMMs, thereby making our algorithm a generalisation of the one by Viterbi. We argue that the computational complexity of our algorithm is at worst quadratic in the length of the iHMM, cubic in the number of states, and essentially linear in the number of maximal state sequences. An important feature of our imprecise approach is that there may be more than one maximal sequence, typically in those instances where its precise-probabilistic counterpart is sensitive to the choice of prior. For binary iHMMs, we investigate experimentally how the number of maximal state sequences depends on the model parameters. We also present an application in optical character recognition, demonstrating that our algorithm can be usefully applied to robustify the inferences made by its precise-probabilistic counterpart.


State Succession and Commercial Obligations sets out to answer once and for all the age-old question: Do commercial obligations survive state succession? Tai-Heng Cheng accomplishes this goal via careful analyses of efforts by the United Nations to codify the law of state succession, as well as of recent state successions involving East Timor, Hong Kong, Macau, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. The insightful text identifies a common thread running through these seemingly disparate events. Because of globalization and our interdependence, transnational decision-makers have collectively shaped international law to protect the international infrastructure from being disrupted by state succession and to protect entities from being debilitated by post-succession obligations. State Succession and Commercial Obligations makes another major breakthrough by showing that the policy considerations and decision-making processes are similar in both state and government successions. Unlike prior theories that were bound by technical distinctions between state and government succession, this book?s approach helps decision-makers bring order to both state and government successions that continue to be problematic today, such as the "regime changes" in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo. State Succession and Commercial Obligations is the only major treatise in fifty years to appraise the global development of the law of state succession and commercial obligations. This treatise is indispensable to legal scholars seeking to understand contemporary international law, judges and arbitrators adjudicating succession disputes, and transactional and trial lawyers representing financial institutions, corporations and states when succession is imminent or has occurred. Because this book distills complex legal concepts into elegant ideas, it is also fascinating reading for a general audience that has an interest in global affairs and the transformative successions since the end of the Cold War.


Conventional wisdom holds that C. S. Lewis was uninterested in politics and public affairs. The conventional wisdom is wrong. As Justin Buckley Dyer and Micah J. Watson show in this groundbreaking work, Lewis was deeply interested in the fundamental truths and falsehoods about human nature and how these conceptions manifest themselves in the contested and turbulent public square. Ranging from the depths of Lewis' philosophical treatments of epistemology and moral pedagogy to practical considerations of morals legislation and responsible citizenship, this book explores the contours of Lewis' multi-faceted Christian engagement with political philosophy generally and the natural-law tradition in particular. Drawing from the full range of Lewis' corpus and situating his thought in relationship to both ancient and modern seminal thinkers, C. S. Lewis on Politics and the Natural Law offers an unprecedented look at politics and political thought from the perspective of one of the twentieth century's most influential writers.


We study an islanded microgrid system designed to supply a small village with the power produced by photovoltaic panels, wind turbines and a diesel generator. A battery storage system device is used to shift power from times of high renewable production to times of high demand. We build on the mathematical model introduced in [14] and optimize the diesel consumption under a "no-blackout" constraint. We introduce a methodology to solve microgrid management problem using different variants of Regression Monte Carlo algorithms and use numerical simulations to infer results about the optimal design of the grid.


Complementing the efforts towards the realization of ITER, KIT is pursuing, within the overall EURATOM fusion program, a number of important long-term technology developments towards a magnetic confinement fusion power plant (FPP), taking into account the features that will distinguish such facility from ITER. To this end, structural materials on the basis of both low-activation steels and refractory metals, as well as concepts for breeding blankets and divertor designs, are being developed along with suitable manufacturing and joining technologies. In parallel, KIT contributes to the engineering design and validation phase of the International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility (IFMIF) necessary for qualifying the materials to be used in an FPP. The specific characteristics of an FPP fuel cycle, i.e., substantial tritium quantities within huge mass flows of gases and the related tritium compatible high throughput vacuum and pumping technologies, are being translated into viable engineering approaches. High temperature superconducting magnet solutions are being developed, with a view to overall plant efficiency. In order to increase the wall-plug efficiency of plasma heating, advanced gyrotron tubes with power levels significantly beyond what is envisaged for ITER are being developed along with a frequency tunability option for efficiently counteracting plasma instabilities.


With their national origins in Spanish and US imperialism, and in the subsequent wake of intense waves of cultural colonisation, educated Filipinos are often at a loss about what their roots are. In order to bring much needed clarity to the ongoing debate about what it means to be Filipino, this essay will relate the past to the present by tracing the evolution of, and the continuities in, the essence of Filipino social organisation and worldview, drawing frequent comparisons with Indonesian and Thai data. The core approach taken – wherein these issues are examined through the lens of culture – is complemented with (i) reflections on common Southeast Asian principles of social construction and (ii) with the pinpointing of the systemic divides that prevent Filipinos from identifying with the collective whole and from growing into a nation of committed citizens. The paper is of relevance both to scholarly researchers and to others with practical interests in the region, as it will enable them to better know the people that they are or will be dealing with.


Fire-prone tropical savanna and grassland systems are a significant source of atmospheric emissions of greenhouse gases. In recent years, substantial research has been directed towards developing accounting methodologies for savanna burning emissions to be applied in Australia's National Greenhouse Gas Inventory, as well as for commercial carbon trading purposes. That work has focused on woody savanna systems. Here, we extend the methodological approach to include tussock grasslands and associated Melaleuca-dominated open woodlands ( 1,000 mm/annum) regions of northern Australia. Field assessments under dry season conditions focused on deriving fuel accumulation, fire patchiness and combustion relationships for key fuel types: fine fuels − grass and litter; coarse woody fuels − twigs 6 mm diameter; and shrubs. In contrast with previous savanna burning assessments, fire treatments undertaken under early dry season burning conditions resulted in negligible patchiness and very substantial consumption of fine fuels. In effect, burning in the early dry season provides no benefits in greenhouse gas emissions and emissions reductions in tussock grasslands can be achieved only through reducing the extent of burning. The practical implications of reduced burning in higher rainfall northern Australian grassland systems are discussed, indicating that there are significant constraints, including infrastructural, cultural and woody thickening issues. Similar opportunities and constraints are observed in other international contexts, but especially project implementation challenges associated with legislative, political and governance issues.


Every antenna requires a feed network to supply its RF energy. In the case of a simple dipole antenna, this could be a coaxial cable with a tuning element and matching balun. For mostly omnidirectional antennas, currents can easily couple to metallic surfaces inside an antenna's near field that includes the outer conductor of the coaxial feed line. These outer conductor currents can radiate into the far field to skew overall antenna radiation patterns. Other parameters such as VSWR may also be significantly affected. Electromagnetic field absorbers placed on the coaxial waveguide pose other problems where multiple RF carriers exist and non-linear dielectric materials can cause issues. Coil structures can also lead to radiation problems. This leads towards a metallic resonating choke solution, which will allow the antenna to radiate without affecting performance. The primary goal of this research is to integrate a metallic resonant choke structure that will prevent currents from travelling down the feed line outer conductor. In this work, an in-depth analysis is performed on each antenna component. This includes the feed network elements (waveguide coaxial line, tuning element, matching balun) and the radiator (dipole arms, resonant choke, outer feed). Each element is analyzed and designed to allow the manufactured antenna to have similar performance to its ideal center-fed counterpart for a tuned frequency band. To predict the performance of the manufactured antenna, several simulation models are constructed. To model the radiator and resonant choke structure, a Method of Moments code is written with Matlab. These results are compared with HFSS and measurements with good correlation. Specifically, the axisymmetric MoM code uses a KVL approach to integrate the internal choke structure that works well to reduce simulation time to a fraction of that taken by FEM solvers. To design the feed components, a combination of circuit models and HFSS allows for quick design with accurate results when compared with measured values. This systems design approach has the flexibility to add complexity to improve accuracy where needed.


Using data on mobile Internet usage of thousands of individuals, we provide some of the first analyses linking mobile usage to key demographics such as income. We find a reverse-U relationship between mobile Internet usage and income – notably different than the monotonically declining relationship found on home devices. This pattern suggests that data caps are particularly binding on low-income users. We then construct a simple model of mobile Internet usage that incorporates demand features suggested by our empirical finding and prior empirical findings on device adoption and usage. After abstracting away from cost and two-sided market considerations, we solve the model, and through comparative statics, identify demand conditions for which usage-based pricing (via a data cap) is, or is not, revenue enhancing. Key insights from this analysis are: 1) the tendency toward demand-driven price discrimination is hill-shaped (increasing then decreasing) in the number of low-income users and eventually declining in high-income users, and 2) a relatively high (low) proportion of total value attained from relatively low usage levels by low-income (high-income) users increases the tendency toward demand-driven price discrimination. Hence, to the extent that a market has a large number of low-income users and/or high-income users attain a higher proportion of their total value at the cap than low-income users, the use of caps by providers is more likely driven by cost (or other non-demand-side) considerations than by revenue enhancement. Lastly, additional analysis shows a largely monotonically increasing relationship between income and usage intensity (measured as page views in a session), suggesting that, ceteris paribus, price discrimination strategies may be more effective if tied to usage intensity rather than duration.


Molecular tools have been extensively used in recent decades to examine biological invasion processes, and are increasingly being adopted as efficient tools to support non-indigenous species surveys, notably through barcoding approaches, i.e. the use of a reference sequence specific to a given species to validate its identification. The technique is easy to use but requires reliable reference sequences to be available in public databases. In addition, the increasing discovery of cryptic species in marine taxa may complicate taxonomic assignment. We illustrate these two issues in the ascidian genus Botrylloides, in which at least three global marine invaders have been recognized, including B. violaceus and B. diegensis. We obtained COI sequences from >750 colonies of Botrylloides spp. sampled in W Europe or provided by expert colleagues from other regions. Phylogenetic trees clearly distinguished our targeted taxa (i.e. B. violaceus, B. diegensis and B. leachii (native)). They also revealed another discrete lineage apparently related to a recently-described eastern Mediterranean species. By examining public databases, we found sequences of B. diegensis erroneously assigned to B. leachii. This observation has major implications as the introduced B. diegensis can be misidentified as a putatively native species. We also checked published sequences of the genus Botrylloides in the Mediterranean Sea, complemented with new samples. Based on our custom reference database, all published sequences of B. leachii corresponded to B. diegensis, although this NIS has hardly been reported at all in the Mediterranean region. Such database errors are unfortunate, as the barcoding approach is a powerful tool to identify the recognized Botrylloides species currently present in European seas. This is of particular importance because a trait often used during field assessment, i.e. single-color vs two-color colonies, is misleading to distinguish B. violaceus and B. diegensis respectively: a substantial proportion of the single-color morph are actually B. diegensis in both the Mediterranean Sea and the English Channel. Altogether, this study exemplifies the advantages and disadvantages of molecular barcoding in NIS surveys and studies. The limitations that were identified are all easy to resolve once proper vouchers and collections are set up.


Over the last 50 years or so, a large body of empirical research has demonstrated the importance of a variety of low-level spatiotemporal factors in the multisensory integration of auditory and visual stimuli (as, for example, indexed by research on the ventriloquism effect). Here, the evidence highlighting the contribution of both spatial and temporal factors to multisensory integration is briefly reviewed. The role played by the temporal correlation between auditory and visual signals, stimulus motion, intramodal versus crossmodal perceptual grouping, semantic congruency, and the unity assumption in modulating multisensory integration is also discussed. Taken together, the evidence now supports the view that a number of different factors, both structural and cognitive, conjointly contribute to the multisensory integration (or binding) of auditory and visual information.


ABSTRACT Chinese herbal medicine has attracted increasing attention because of the unique and significant efficacy in various diseases. In this paper, three types of Chinese herbal medicine, the roots of Angelica pubescens, Codonopsis pilosula, and Ligusticum wallichii with different places of origin or parts, are analyzed and identified using laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) combined with principal component analysis (PCA) and artificial neural network (ANN). The study of the roots of A. pubescens was performed. The score matrix is obtained by principal component analysis, and the backpropagation artificial neural network (BP-ANN) model is established to identify the origin of the medicine based on LIBS spectroscopy of the roots of A. pubescens with three places of origin. The results show that the average classification accuracy is 99.89%, which exhibits better prediction of classification than linear discriminant analysis or support vector machine learning methods. To verify the effectiveness of PCA combined with the BP-ANN model, this method is used to identify the origin of C. pilosula. Meanwhile, the root and stem of L. wallichii are analyzed by the same method to distinguish the medicinal materials accurately. The recognition rate of C. pilosula is 95.83%, and that of L. wallichii is 99.85%. The results present that LIBS combined with PCA and BP-ANN is a useful tool for identification of Chinese herbal medicine and is expected to achieve automatic real-time, fast, and powerful measurements.


Interest has grown in the concept of using Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT)
during attempts at smoking reduction (SR) and temporary abstinence (TA). This is partially
due to data from clinical trials showing that the concurrent use of NRT and cigarettes can
result in significant reductions in cigarette consumption, and increases the propensity of
smokers to quit. However, it is not clear whether similar findings will emerge outside of that
structured setting. Data are also limited on the acceptability among smokers of using NRT in
these ways, and whether healthcare professionals will be opposed to offering such a strategy.
This thesis aimed to address these issues using three methodologies: population-based surveys
of English smokers; in-depth telephone interviews with smokers; and surveys of stop smoking
practitioners and managers. More than 1/10th of smokers in England were found to be using
NRT for SR and/or TA. Prevalence did not appear to have changed since 2007. The use of
NRT for SR and/or TA was associated with greater probability of reporting a quit attempt and
of subsequently stopping smoking, but any reduction in concurrent cigarette consumption was
very small. Nicotine intake was similar whether smokers were or were not using NRT whilst
smoking. This suggests that smokers may have instead been compensating for the additional
nicotine attained from NRT by adapting the way they smoked their cigarettes. The interview
study indicated a number of factors which may account for the lack of reductions in cigarette
intake, including smokers' failure to set specific goals. A significant proportion of those
working in stop smoking services did not agree with offering NRT for SR. Overall, the
research reported in this thesis supports the idea that the use of NRT for SR and/or TA may
promote cessation in the general population, but in itself is currently conferring little health
benefit. Future research should examine the range of methods smokers use to reduce smoke
exposure, and whether interventions which promote clear goal setting and monitoring of
intake, such as through the use of expired carbon monoxide readings, can lead to effective SR.


End-to-end (E2E) speech-to-text translation (ST) often depends on pretraining its encoder and/or decoder using source transcripts via speech recognition or text translation tasks, without which translation performance drops substantially. However, transcripts are not always available, and how significant such pretraining is for E2E ST has rarely been studied in the literature. In this paper, we revisit this question and explore the extent to which the quality of E2E ST trained on speech-translation pairs alone can be improved. We reexamine several techniques proven beneficial to ST previously, and offer a set of best practices that biases a Transformer-based E2E ST system toward training from scratch. Besides, we propose parameterized distance penalty to facilitate the modeling of locality in the self-attention model for speech. On four benchmarks covering 23 languages, our experiments show that, without using any transcripts or pretraining, the proposed system reaches and even outperforms previous studies adopting pretraining, although the gap remains in (extremely) low-resource settings. Finally, we discuss neural acoustic feature modeling, where a neural model is designed to extract acoustic features from raw speech signals directly, with the goal to simplify inductive biases and add freedom to the model in describing speech. For the first time, we demonstrate its feasibility and show encouraging results on ST tasks.


Handbook of the Psychology of Aging, Eighth Edition, tackles the biological and environmental influences on behavior as well as the reciprocal interface between changes in the brain and behavior during the course of the adult life span. The psychology of aging is important to many features of daily life, from workplace and the family, to public policy matters. It is complex, and new questions are continually raised about how behavior changes with age. Providing perspectives on the behavioral science of aging for diverse disciplines, the handbook explains how the role of behavior is organized and how it changes over time. Along with parallel advances in research methodology, it explicates in great detail patterns and sub-patterns of behavior over the lifespan, and how they are affected by biological, health, and social interactions. New topics to the eighth edition include preclinical neuropathology, audition and language comprehension in adult aging, cognitive interventions and neural processes, social interrelations, age differences in the connection of mood and cognition, cross-cultural issues, financial decision-making and capacity, technology, gaming, social networking, and more. Tackles the biological and environmental influences on behavior as well as the reciprocal interface between changes in the brain and behavior during the course of the adult life spanCovers the key areas in psychological gerontology research in one volumeExplains how the role of behavior is organized and how it changes over timeCompletely revised from the previous editionNew chapter on gender and aging process


PURPOSE
CNGB3 encodes the beta-subunits of cyclic nucleotide-gated channels in the photoreceptor plasma membrane. CNGB3 mutations cause a channelopathy that results in impaired cone function manifesting achromatopsia. The clinical physiology and phenotype of three affected sisters and three carriers were evaluated in a family with a homozygous CNGB3 mutation and an unrelated male harboring both CNGB3 and CNGA3 mutations.

METHODS
Index patients were screened for mutations in CNGA3 and CNGB3 by DNA sequencing. Visual examination included acuity, color vision, Goldmann visual fields (GVF), dark-adapted absolute thresholds (DAT), electroretinography, and fundus photography.

RESULTS
The three affected sisters were homozygous for a 1-bp deletion (c.1148delC) in CNGB3 that induces a frame shift after Thr383, whereas the carriers were heterozygous for this mutation. The unrelated male carried a heterozygous 8-bp deletion (c.819_826del8bp) in exon 6, as well as a heterozygous base substitution (c.1208G-->A) in exon 11 that causes an Arg403Gln exchange. All affected subjects had acuity ranging between 20/200 and 20/400, moderately constricted GVFs, normal DATs, reduced rod b-wave amplitudes, and extinguished photopic b-wave and flicker responses. Rod photoreceptor sensitivity and amplitude, calculated by fitting the rod a-waves by a model of activation of phototransduction were below normal mean. Carriers had mildly decreased acuity (20/25-20/40), normal rod and cone ERGs, and normal color vision. The fundi of the affected subjects showed macular atrophy by middle age, while the carriers showed peripheral RPE granularity in childhood and macular atrophy in late middle age.

CONCLUSIONS
Foveomacular atrophy can occur in CNGB3-affected subjects, and even heterozygous carriers can exhibit maculopathy. Cone ERG responses in affected subjects are nearly extinguished, but some retain residual function into middle age and then progressively lose even this remnant. Rod responses are impaired in some CNGB3-affected subjects.


Previous studies of anatomical changes associated with tinnitus have provided inconsistent results, with some showing significant cortical and subcortical changes, while others have found effects due to hearing loss, but not tinnitus. In this study, we examined changes in brain anatomy associated with tinnitus using anatomical scans from 128 participants with tinnitus and hearing loss, tinnitus with clinically normal hearing, and non-tinnitus controls with clinically normal hearing. The groups were matched for hearing loss, age and gender. We employed voxel- and surface-based morphometry (SBM) to investigate gray and white matter volume and thickness within regions-of-interest (ROI) that were based on the results of previous studies. The largest overall effects were found for age, gender, and hearing loss. With regard to tinnitus, analysis of ROI revealed numerous small increases and decreases in gray matter and thickness between tinnitus and non-tinnitus controls, in both cortical and subcortical structures. For whole brain analysis, the main tinnitus-related significant clusters were found outside sensory auditory structures. These include a decrease in cortical thickness for the tinnitus group compared to controls in the left superior frontal gyrus (SFG), and a decrease in cortical volume with hearing loss in left Heschl's gyrus (HG). For masked analysis, we found a decrease in gray matter volume in the right Heschle's gyrus for the tinnitus group compared to the controls. We found no changes in the subcallosal region as reported in some previous studies. Overall, while some of the morphological differences observed in this study are similar to previously published findings, others are entirely different or even contradict previous results. We highlight other discrepancies among previous results and the increasing need for a more precise subtyping of the condition.


This paper suggests that international roaming markets suffer from structural flaws in the way that roaming agreements are established in Europe. The initial roaming interventions by the European Commission in 2007 have been very welfare enhancing and the transfer of producer surplus to consumers has brought significant benefits to end users. Nevertheless, there are clear opportunity costs of maintaining and/or extending the current roaming Regulation. The price for wholesale roaming services in a given country is driven principally by the amount of traffic that an operator is willing to send back to the country requesting a price offer and not on the basis of the roaming services requested. The paper suggests that by breaking the link between the prices offered in one country and the volume of returned traffic will enable the wholesale market for international roaming to operate competitively. It is further suggested that retail price regulation is unwarranted when the wholesale market can operate competitively irrespective of the issue of the retail elasticity of demand for these services. Preliminary, suggestions are put forward as to how policy makers could transition from the current regime to a future market based regime by putting a number of required enablers in place.


It gives me great pleasure to introduce this issue, my first since being appointed co-editor of the journal. Our lead article, "Pilgrims of the Night: The American Catholic Church Responds to the Post-World War II Displaced Persons Crisis," comes to us from Todd Scribner (USCCB). In this fascinating piece, he describes how church officials in the United States mobilized political support and material resources to aid the resettlement of those displaced by the war. These efforts laid the foundation for the establishment of Catholic Relief Services, the official international humanitarian agency of the Catholic Church in the United States. Our next two articles together turn our attention to the development of Catholic parish and monastic life in rural regions of the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first, "John Ireland, St. Eloi Parish, and the Dream of an American Catholic Church" by Anita Talsma Gaul (Southwest Minnesota State University), tells how the struggle to establish a parish in the small town of Ghent, Minnesota stemmed not only from internal, inter-ethnic discord, but also from a more fundamental disagreement between immigrant communities and church leaders over the character that the "American" church should take. The second, "Monastic Evangelization?: The Sacramental Vision of America's Early Benedictine Monks" by Paul G. Monson (Marquette University), revisits a dispute between two pioneering Benedictines, Boniface Wimmer and Martin Marty, to reveal how their differing visions for monastic life in the United States nevertheless shared a common missionary impulse. Alongside these articles, this issue includes an essay by Debra Campbell (Colby College) in which she reflects on her experience "Teaching the Catholic Novel: What Took Me So Long?" and a cover essay by Wendy M. Wright (Creighton University), which explores the visual theology of a Marian altar located at one parish in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. These two pieces bookend our regular selection of book reviews and our semi-annual listing of dissertation abstracts. Finally, we congratulate our many authors who received awards from the Catholic Press Association. We thank them and all the contributors who helped American Catholic Studies earn first place for general excellence among scholarly magazines.


Antecedentless pronouns provide a key to understanding the cognitive processing of texts, since, in the absence of antecedents, interpretation of these pronouns relies on inference-making based on general knowledge and/or text-specific knowledge (e.g. Yule 1982; Sanford et al. 1983; Gerrig 1986; Greene et al. 1994; Cornish 1996, 1999; Wales 1996; Emmott 1997, 1999; Gundel et al. 2005; Sanford et al. 2008; Gerrig et al. 2011). I examine examples of antecedentless pronouns in narratives and argue that interpretation depends on many factors, including scenario-mapping (Sanford & Garrod 1981, 1998; also Sanford & Emmott 2012) and world-building processes such as entity-linking, perspective-tracking and contextual monitoring (Emmott 1997). I also discuss the implications for anaphoric theory of knowledge-based approaches to pronoun interpretation.


How Did They Survive? Mechanisms of Defense in Nazi Concentration Camps* Death in a Nazi concentration camp requires no explanation. Survival does. Detailed knowledge of the techniques of torture and extermination has made us "understand" the outcome of nine to ten million dead. What bewilders us are the survivors. Through the flogging and the shooting, the cold and the hunger, the sixteen hours working day and the epidemics, through individual tortures and mass murder, thousands of them lived for years, three, five, eight years, and longer. What was it that enabled them to survive? Death reached out for them ever so often. How did their urge to live win over the wish to die? What kept them from suicide and insanity? Some of the survivors have begun to speak. In books and articles they have tried to communicate an experience which "is impossible to communicate"-as one of them put it (Rousset). The following study is based on twelve such autobiographical accounts. (For a complete list see Bibliography). They have been written by authors of greatly different background: among them a German poet (Wiechert), an Austrian economist (Kautsky), a French professor of philosophy (Rousset), a Polish-Jewish businessman (Szalet), a British officer (Burney), two psychologists (Bettelheim and Frankl), two journalists (Karst and Kalmar), a Polish girl student (Szmaglewska). The authors include political and non-political prisoners, Germans and non-Germans, men and one woman; the terms of their imprisonment range from several months to seven years. The character of the books is as different as the background of their authors. There are grim accusations, such as Kalmar's Zeit ohne Gnade ("Time without Mercy") and Karst's Beasts of the Earth, there is Wiechert's Forest of the Dead,-a poetic story which is like a stream of never ending sadness; there is Kautsky's Teufel und Verdammte ("The Devil and the Damned")-actually a comprehensive sociology of the concentration camp, written in a highly detached and scholarly way; there is, furthermore, Szalet's Experiment E, a detailed and realistic report of facts, and Bettelheim's revealing psychological analysis My Life in a Concentration Camp. Apart from the books on which this study is based, other biographical reports on concentration camps have been written and still more are coming out. They may add to the insight to be gained from our selection; the essence of this insight, however, does not depend on the completeness of the underlying material. The topic of this study is the mental mechanisms of survival, i.e., the mechanisms of defense developed by the ego in order to protect the individual from physical death and mental disintegration. But this prevalence of psychological interest must not make us overlook the great number of other circumstances on which survival in a concentration camp has depended, circumstances which have little to do with mental phenomena of the type mentioned. There was, first of all, the factor of physical stamina: the sick, the old, and the weak were those most likely to perish; there was also the difference in locality and time: in some camps, the food, housing, working, and hygienic conditions were much worse than in others, and it also happened that in the same camp periods of deterioration alternated with periods of improvement. Likewise significant was the kind of work to which the inmate had been assigned: Wiechert, for instance, seems to owe his life to the fact that he was transferred from working in a quarry to mending stockings. Of greatest importance was, furthermore, the official classification of the prisoner. The camp was a rather complicated setup of many divisions and sub-divisions, and every prisoner belonged to several official categories.l As far as living conditions were concerned, it made all the difference, whether the internee was a German or a non-German, an "Aryan" or a Jew. In general, German "Aryans" fared best. …


This paper aims to look at the problem of the micro-macro link in sociology from the new prospective of social simulation. The adoption of a sociology modelling perspective allows us to sidestep typical domain problems (e.g. individualism vs. holism, action vs. structure, micro vs. macro sociology), for a more pragmatic approach. The first section summarises (due to shortage of space, not exhaustively) the present debate in sociology. The second briefly introduces social simulation as a field of research. The third section presents the analytical constructions that computational social scientists use in dealing with the micro-macro link. The fourth section introduces some clear examples of agent-based models of social outcomes, without entering into technicalities. These examples allow us to pin down some particular mechanisms that can help to map the micro-macro link. The last section summarises our findings and looks forward to questions and challenges that should be explored in the near future.


Problem statement: Many problems in scientific computing can be formulated as inverse problem. A vast majority of these problems are ill-posed problems. In Electrical Charge Tomography (EChT), normally the sensitivity matrix generated from forward modeling is very ill-condition. This condition posts difficulties to the inverse problem solution especially in the accuracy and stability of the image being reconstructed. The objective of this study is to reconstruct the image cross-section of the material in pipeline gravity dropped mode conveyor as well to solve the ill-condition of matrix sensitivity. Approach: Least Square with Regularization (LSR) method had been introduced to reconstruct the image and the electrodynamics sensor was used to capture the data that installed around the pipe. Results: The images were validated using digital imaging technique and Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) method. The results showed that image reconstructed by this method produces a good promise in terms of accuracy and stability. Conclusion: This implied that LSR method provides good and promising result in terms of accuracy and stability of the image being reconstructed. As a result, an efficient method for electrical charge tomography image reconstruction has been introduced.


The impact properties of the traditional 12 % Cr AISI D2 steel and a family of new generation 8 % Cr cold work tool steels (average chemical composition fulfilling the following ranges: C = 1.00 ± 0.20; Cr = 8.00 ± 0.50; Mo = 1.75 ± 0.75; V = 1.10 ± 0.70; Nb = 0.50 ± 0.45; Si = 0.95 ± 0.10; Mn ≤ 0.50; P≤0.03; S ≤ 0.015) have been investigated. All steels have been vacuum heat treated simultaneously after austenitization at 1030°C, 1060°C, and 1120°C, followed by a cryogenic treatment and triple tempers at 520°C of 2 h each. The results showed for all steels that the higher the austenitizing temperature the higher the hardness and the lower the impact properties. For the same impact value, the 8 % Cr steels presented a 3–4 Hardness Rockwell C (HRC) points higher than the AISI D2 steel. The average impact values of the 8 % Cr steels were 33 %–45 % superior to the 12 % Cr steels, but only after austenitizing at 1030°C and 1060°C. At 1120°C, the impact values dropped dramatically for both 12 % Cr and 8 % Cr steels due to the higher hardness and grain growth differences between the investigated steels. The surfaces of the fractured impact tested samples were investigated via scanning electron microscopy + energy dispersive spectroscopy techniques. The fractographic analysis showed that at 1030°C the much coarser and higher volume fraction of primary chromium carbides found in the AISI D2 than in the 8 % Cr have contributed to its lower toughness. However, as the austenitizing temperature increased to 1060°C, and in particular at 1120°C, significant grain growth, higher hardness, and consequently, high strength of the matrix, took place and played the more important roles in dropping the toughness as shown by quasi-cleavage brittle fracture appearance. Austenitizing at 1060°C and tempering at 520°C showed the best compromise for toughness and hardness. Increasing the tempering temperature to 570°C and, in particular, to 620°C, remarkably increased the toughness of the 8 % Cr steels, when the % C is kept below 1 %. For the D2 and % C > 1.15 % the increase is negligible.


Excerpt] What does culture mean in cross-cultural studies? Much of the comparative management literature has adopted vague and atheoretical approaches to conceptualizing and measuring culture. It is no wonder that the literature has yielded little cumulative knowledge about management in different cultures (Miller, 1984; Kelley & Worthley, 1981; Negandhi, 1983). While many explanations can be offered for the lack of consistency and clarity in comparative studies, one explanation is the nature of the societal culture and the degree to which individual organizational cultures reflect or conflict with the overarching societal culture. The degree of societal heterogeneity and the congruence or fit between societal and organizational cultures will be examined in this paper in an attempt to offer suggestions for future cross-cultural research. Societal cultures are likely to vary in the degree to which they have a dominant set of values and beliefs. One way of examining cultural diversity within any society is to identify the nation on a continuum ranging from homogeneous to heterogeneous. In a homogeneous societal culture the underlying values and beliefs are shared and pervasive; thus a dominant set of cultural beliefs exist. In a more heterogeneous societal culture many different values and beliefs are held by diverse population groups. This situation is characterized by a multicultural society.


Understanding the causes and consequences of rapid environmental change is an essential scientific frontier, particularly given the threat of climate- and land use-induced changes in disturbance regimes. In western North America, recent widespread insect outbreaks and wildfires have sparked acute concerns about potential insect–fire interactions. Although previous research shows that insect activity typically does not increase wildfire likelihood, key uncertainties remain regarding insect effects on wildfire severity (i.e., ecological impact). Recent assessments indicate that outbreak severity and burn severity are not strongly associated, but these studies have been limited to specific insect or fire events. Here, we present a regional census of large wildfire severity following outbreaks of two prevalent bark beetle and defoliator species, mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) and western spruce budworm (Choristoneura freemani), across the US Pacific Northwest. We first quantify insect effects on burn severity with spatial modeling at the fire event scale and then evaluate how these effects vary across the full population of insect–fire events (n = 81 spanning 1987–2011). In contrast to common assumptions of positive feedbacks, we find that insects generally reduce the severity of subsequent wildfires. Specific effects vary with insect type and timing, but both insects decrease the abundance of live vegetation susceptible to wildfire at multiple time lags. By dampening subsequent burn severity, native insects could buffer rather than exacerbate fire regime changes expected due to land use and climate change. In light of these findings, we recommend a precautionary approach when designing and implementing forest management policies intended to reduce wildfire hazard and increase resilience to global change.


ABSTRACT This paper investigates returns to women's education by applying an optimal IV selection approach, post-Lasso IV estimation, which improves the first-stage predictive relationship between an endogenous regressor and instruments. Using the 2010 American Community Survey, we find that an extra year of education increases married women's own income by $4,480 and spouse income by $8,822. Our findings indicate that 53% of the increase in women's consumption by education is attributed to the marriage market, and thus, we conclude that the marriage market is the primary channel through which education improves women's well-being. The results demonstrate the advantages of the post-Lasso approach: The resulting two-stage least squares estimator maintains efficiency without increasing finite sample bias and is less subject to the inconsistency problem when some instruments are invalid; This differs from the results using the instrument of birth quarters only, which is mostly applied in studies on returns to education.


Abstract Non-alcoholic fat liver disease (NAFLD) is an urgent problem of modern healthcare and ranks first among all liver diseases worldwide, assuming the nature of an epidemic. The pathogenesis of NAFLD is complex and insufficiently studied, and therefore pharmacological therapy is not always effective and causes negative side effects (or complications). Treatment with mineral waters (MW) is one of the most effective methods of treating diseases of the digestive system and metabolic disorders. Objective: to study the effect of sulphate MW on metabolic disturbances in rats with the experimental NAFLD model for the purpose of scientifically substantiating its use in the complex of treatment of patients. Morphological studies have established that the use of sulfate MW in healthy animals causes an increase in the functional activity of the liver and stomach, which indicates a pronounced biologic activity of this MW. In animals under the influence of sulphate MW was determined a significant reduction in hepatic steatosis according to the morphological study of biopsy specimens, restoration of the processes of bile formation and bile secretion, positive dynamics in the restoration of energy-dependent transmembrane ion transport. Clinical studies in the complex treatment of NAFLD with the use of sulphate MW established normalization of lipid metabolism, improvement of the functional state of the liver, decreased insulin resistance, recovery of adiponectin secretion.


We develop inference methods about long-run comovement of two time series. The parameters of interest are defined in terms of population second-moments of lowfrequency trends computed from the data. These trends are similar to low-pass filtered data and are designed to extract variability corresponding to periods longer than the span of the sample divided by q/2, where q is a small number, such as 12. We numerically determine confidence sets that control coverage over a wide range of potential bivariate persistence patterns, which include arbitrary linear combinations of I(0), I(1), near unit roots and fractionally integrated processes. In an application to U.S. economic data, we quantify the long-run covariability of a variety of series, such as those giving rise to the "great ratios", nominal exchange rates and relative nominal prices, unemployment rate and inflation, money growth and inflation, earnings and stock prices, etc.


SCIRIA 'OpenMind' was a regular seminar series for University of the Arts London staff, MA and PhD students and the public. The seminars were hosted at Camberwell College of Arts and Chelsea College of Art and Design. The footage, audio and flyers offer an insight into the research processes and activities of SCIRIA members, associates and external speakers.


There has been a flood of recent publications and media coverage on the current crisis relating to drug-resistant microorganisms. The Antibiotic Era: Reform, Resistance, and the Pursuit of a Rational Therapeuticstakes a unique approach by presenting a well-documented history, starting in the earliest days with the introduction of antimicrobial drugs to the present time. It is built around those reformers who recognized problems relating to the irrational use of these agents and the difficulties these reformers experienced over many years.

Early chapters provide a firm foundation for the many issues that follow. They trace the development of the sulfa drugs and penicillin up to the period of World War II, and more important, the postwar introduction of the group of broad-spectrum "wonder-drug" antibiotics. The introduction of these drugs changed the practice of medicine but also stimulated the need for infectious disease experts to clarify their use and help counter the extreme and extensive marketing of these drugs by the pharmaceutical companies in the form of journal advertisements, supplements, and free physician samples.

As the author notes, experts like Maxwell Finland became "therapeutic rationalists" or "reformers" to help fill the vacuum left by the American Medical Association and the Food and Drug Administration because they only dealt with drug safety, not efficacy, and did not want to dictate therapeutic choices to practicing physicians. It was the introduction of the fixed-dose combination antibiotics in the 1950s, especially Panalba (tetracycline/novobiocin), that reinforced the need for real reform, a movement that dragged on for several decades before coming to fruition with the acceptance of the requirement for controlled clinical studies to prove the efficacy, as well as the safety, of antimicrobial agents.

Except for the last chapter, this well-researched book focuses exclusively on issues debated in the United States. This easy to read book is arranged in a logical chronologic order, and traces the complexity of newer antimicrobial drug classes and their related policy issues. The author provides 105 pages of references and documentation that makes this book a valuable source of information for historians of science, clinical microbiologists, and infectious disease physicians. If for no other reason, the extensive reference sections makes this book a wise investment for anyone researching or writing on these issues now or in the future, especially because many of the past issues are still being argued today.


We report on Holocene surface-level variations of Lake Fryxell, Antarctica, as determined from multi-proxy analyses of 18 sediment cores. During this time accumulating sediments were predominantly aeolian sand with algal and carbonate laminae. Based on stratigraphy, mineralogy and diatom assemblages we suggest some carbonate laminae were deposited when lake level dropped, leading to concentration and subsequent precipitation of salts. Although lake level appears to have remained relatively stable throughout the Holocene, minor (<4.5 m below present) lowstands occurred at approximately 6400, 4700, 3800 and ~ 1600 cal. yr BP. The stability of Lake Fryxell during the Holocene contrasts with large-scale variability at other Dry Valleys lakes (eg, Lake Vanda) and with suggestions from chemical diffusion models of a near-desiccation at ~1200 cal. yr BP. The reason for the comparative stability of Lake Fryxell is uncertain, but may be the result of basin morphology and the number, aspect and proximity of meltwater sources.


This study focuses on the determination of best location for bus stops  to enhance public transport in Ibadan north, Oyo State.The significance of having suitable locations for Bus stop is recognised as a crucial element in the drive to improve the quality of bus services and public transport in general.This study employs the tools of Geographic Information System (GIS) in the determination of the suitability of the bus stops location, stop spacing and the evaluation of characteristics of the existing stops in the study area. The major roads and bus stops in Ibadan North Local Government were identified and the roads were digitized as line features. Garmin 12 Global Positioning System Receiver (GPS) was used to get the locations of the bus stop. The GPS was calibrated to Geographic Coordinate System (GCS) and World Geodetic System 84 (wgs84) as the datum. For this study, determination of best locations for the bus stop is based on three (3) criteria; these are four hundred (400) meters bus stop interval on the major road, available setback from the road ideal for bus Stop shelter and slope. Thereafter, poorly located bus stops were identified by adding the existing bus stop layer on the suitability map derived from determination of best locations for the bus stops. In all, seventy two (72) existing bus stops were identified, using the stated criteria for classifying the already existing bus stops. The analysis showed that there are four (4) very good bus stops, thirty five (35) good bus stops and thirty three (33) bad bus stops. The paper recommends that guidelines for locating stops should be followed to reduce the risk, accessibility to stops should be considered by standard spacing and by considering marginal walking distance. The conclusion was that giving bus stops location a thorough consideration would help in a long way in enhancing public transport system by boosting the principle of good access which is Safety, Affordability, Accessibility and Reliability. Keywords: Public Transport, GIS, Bus-stops Locations


ABSTRACT Within the continuum of spoken and written English some variations, c. g. the varying usage of negation and the opposition of pronominal usage, can be explained with reference to the varying characteristics of speech and writing. The origins of these variations, however, cannot be explained along these lines. After rendering some basic concepts, I would like to propose a view which accounts for the given variations with regards to the mentioned period of the history of the Standard English dialect. The paper will show that quite a lot of the variations which nowadays occur along the spoken/written divide equal those features which early grammarians, such as Robert Lowth or Joseph Priestley, discussed referring to good or bad language use. Therefore. I would like to argue that the grammatical structures found in spoken or written Present Day English originate from suggestions for seventeenth- and eighteenth-century norms of English. 1. Introduction In 1986 Bertil Sundby stated: "Most linguists would agree that the study of historical English may be a help in describing and analyzing current English syntax and style. But scholars have been slow to recognize the linguistic potential of the old grammar-books, which may give clues to grammatical or stylistic problems precisely because of their normative approach ..." (1986: 397). Now, 20 years later, his words lend themselves readily to introducing this contribution which touches on similar sources and treats variation in English in the way the quotation describes. Of course, language variation has always been a major concern of linguists, and whatever their starting point, whatever their approach, whatever their factual conclusions, it seems clear that variation is a fundamental feature of languages. It is just as undisputed that Present Day English differs in many respects: there is regional variation, there is social variation, and there is--this is essential for my paper--variation between the spoken and the written variety of the generally assumed common core. With respect to variation between the spoken and the written, it is frequently noted that speech draws one way, writing another, i.e. within the scope of my presentation speech prefers other grammatical constructions than writing. A further point which may be discovered is that speakers (1) use the different constructions along the spoken/written divide without giving much thought to it. However, plain reasons for how this came about do not seem to exist. Therefore the focus of this paper is on possible origins of the matter. Also I would like to suggest reasons why some of the grammatical structures found in spoken and written Present Day English originate from normative proposals for seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English. 2. Notional preliminaries So far I have referred to notions and concepts which, in some respects, appear quite distant from one another: variation, speech and writing, prescription, Present Day English and seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English. That these issues are still quite closely related in a number of aspects can be seen in the numerous discussions whose study has helped to shape the present paper, and because of the many concepts, it appears sensible to begin with brief remarks which, I hope, will give orientation amongst my paper's presuppositions. I will start with a short discussion of spoken and written language. Apparently, they are well-discussed, and, obviously, they relate to the medial distinction. Yet, twenty years ago Koch and Oesterreicher have suggested to go beyond this medial divide, i.e. speech and writing ought to be seen as conceptual genres within a continuum (1986: 17). In this continuum the conceptual poles waver between the naturalness, swiftness, structural simplicity and situatedness of orality and the artificiality, inertia, structural complexity and desituatedness of literacy (cf. …


It is well known that hydraulic machines experience various types of flow instabilities causing a negative influence on the system under off-design operations. The transfer matrix method correlating the flow properties in upstream and downstream of hydraulic machines is widely adopted as a first step to investigate dynamical characteristics of flow. Transfer matrix elements are the key to understand hydraulic system stability. This study focuses on measurements of transfer matrix elements for a hydraulic turbine. The oscillations of the flowrate are produced by two flow exciters located in upstream and downstream of the turbine, and evaluated from the fluctuations of the pressure difference across two streamwise locations. It is shown that the transfer matrices are successfully evaluated at part load and full load operations in the presence and absence of cavitation. In particular, cavitation compliance and mass flow gain factor, which determine the dynamical response of cavitation to the change of pressure and flowrate, are calculated from the measured transfer matrix elements. The absolute value of both cavitation compliance and mass flow gain factor is found to increase with respect to the decrease of the cavitation number. The phase of the mass flow gain factor is delayed as the excitation frequency increases. This suggests that hydraulic systems may be stabilized when the oscillation frequency increases. As a result of stability analyses, it is demonstrated that the mass flow gain factor plays a crucial role, especially in the full load cavitation surge.


Abstract This study is an examination of two forensically important but previously neglected issues in interpersonal deception. First, which cues do lie catchers—who have access to repeated interrogations—pay attention to in order to detect deception? Second, do face-to-face interacting interrogators differ from noninteracting observers in terms of how they perceive a suspect? After watching a staged event, 24 suspects (12 liars and 12 truth tellers) were interrogated three times over a period of 11 days. After the final interrogation, the veracity of each suspect was assessed by his or her interrogator and by 6 observers who had watched the interrogations on video only. The results of the experiment showed that consistency over time was by far the most commonly used cue for justifying veracity judgments. Critically, the predictive accuracy for this cue was alarmingly low. As opposed to results from previous research, the interrogators used verbal cues to a significantly greater extent than did the observers. Furthermore, a probing effect was shown (i.e., probed suspects were perceived as significantly more honest than nonprobed suspects). Finally, limited support for a previously reported honesty effect was obtained (i.e., that interrogators perceive suspects to be more honest than do observers).


Panoramic photo of the 314th Aero Squadron which was stationed at Stonehenge during World War I. They wear the customary uniform of the American Expeditionary Forces, with most of the enlisted men wearing leg wraps or spiral puttees; the officers wear leather puttees. Printing on the front of image is "314th Aero Squardron, U.S. Air Service, Stonehenge, England, Nov.; 1918." Also, "Photo by Panora Ltd, 60 Doughty St. W.C. No. 3061." Two people are identified in the photo. Fred Oscar Weinell is located on the back row, fourth in from the right. An "x" is marked over his head. 2nd Lt. Donald S. Mooney is located on the front row, 17th from the left.


A familiar refrain in U.S. history, "leave me alone" has long been the preferred locution with which one affirms one's right to privacy. Insko's essay investigates a conceptual incoherence at the heart of the various, incompatible definitions and applications of the right to privacy in U.S. history by describing a persistent and paradoxical U.S. cultural logic: the logic of left alone. The essay argues that James Fenimore Cooper's 1823 novel The Pioneers contributes to an inchoate discourse of privacy rights, the contours of which continue to define present-day understandings of the relations between privacy and personhood, as inscribed by the recent Supreme Court decision Lawrence v. Texas and the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Rather than tracking the curve along which U.S. notions of privacy transformed during the antebellum period and after, Insko's essay explores the extent to which the often-contradictory coordinates that delineate this curve animate modern philosophical and legal conceptions of privacy in the same ways they animate The Pioneers-a novel that presciently narrates the fraught conditions of the right to privacy in U.S. history.


We consider regression with square loss and general classes of functions without the boundedness assumption. We introduce a notion of offset Rademacher complexity that provides a transparent way to study localization both in expectation and in high probability. For any (possibly non-convex) class, the excess loss of a two-step estimator is shown to be upper bounded by this offset complexity through a novel geometric inequality. In the convex case, the estimator reduces to an empirical risk minimizer. The method recovers the results of \citep{RakSriTsy15} for the bounded case while also providing guarantees without the boundedness assumption.


Abstract. In 2014, a large, comprehensive field campaign was conducted in the densely populated North China Plain. The measurement site was located in a botanic garden close to the small town Wangdu, without major industry but influenced by regional transportation of air pollution. The loss rate coefficient of atmospheric hydroxyl radicals (OH) was quantified by direct measurements of the OH reactivity. Values ranged between 10 and 20 s−1 for most of the daytime. Highest values were reached in the late night with maximum values of around 40 s−1. OH reactants mainly originated from anthropogenic activities as indicated (1) by a good correlation between measured OH reactivity and carbon monoxide (linear correlation coefficient R2 = 0.33) and (2) by a high contribution of nitrogen oxide species to the OH reactivity (up to 30 % in the morning). Total OH reactivity was measured by a laser flash photolysis–laser-induced fluorescence instrument (LP-LIF). Measured values can be explained well by measured trace gas concentrations including organic compounds, oxygenated organic compounds, CO and nitrogen oxides. Significant, unexplained OH reactivity was only observed during nights, when biomass burning of agricultural waste occurred on surrounding fields. OH reactivity measurements also allow investigating the chemical OH budget. During this campaign, the OH destruction rate calculated from measured OH reactivity and measured OH concentration was balanced by the sum of OH production from ozone and nitrous acid photolysis and OH regeneration from hydroperoxy radicals within the uncertainty of measurements. However, a tendency for higher OH destruction compared to OH production at lower concentrations of nitric oxide is also observed, consistent with previous findings in field campaigns in China.


The Joukowsky equation has been used as a first approximation for more than a century to estimate water hammer pressure surges. However, this practice may provide incorrect, nonconservative, pressure calculations under several conditions. These conditions are typically described throughout fluid transient text books, but a consolidation of these issues in a brief paper seems warranted to prevent calculation errors in practice and to also provide a brief understanding of the limits and complexities of water hammer equations. To this end, various issues are discussed here that result in the calculation of pressures greater than those predicted by the Joukowsky equation. These conditions include reflected waves at tees, changes in piping diameter, and changes in pipe wall material, as well as frictional effects referred to as line pack, and the effects due to the collapse of vapor pockets. In short, the fundamental goal here is to alert practicing engineers of the cautions that should be applied when using the Joukowsky equation as a first approximation of fluid transient pressures.


Recent cellular studies have revealed a novel form of inhibitory information processing in the siphon withdrawal reflex of the marine mollusc Aplysia: Motorneuronal output is significantly reduced by activity-dependent potentiation of recurrent inhibition within the siphon withdrawal network (Fischer and Carew 1991, 1993). This inhibitory modulation is mediated by two types of identified interneurons, L29s and L30s. In an effort to describe and analyze this and other forms of inhibitory information processing in Aplysia, and to compare it with similar processing in other nervous systems, we have constructed a neural network model that incorporates many empirically observed features of these interneurons. The model generates important aspects of the interactions of cells L29 and L30, and with no further modification, exhibits many network level phenomena that were not explicitly incorporated into the model.


Abstract. We present the characteristics of a major sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) by using the composite analysis method and ERA Interim reanalysis data from 1979 to 2014. The anomalies of the parameters total ozone column density (TOC), temperature (T), potential vorticity (PV), eastward wind (u), northward wind (v), vertical wind (w), and geopotential height (z) are derived with respect to the ERA Interim climatology (mean seasonal behaviour 1979 to 2014). The composites are calculated by using the time series of the anomalies and the central dates of 20 major SSWs. Increases of up to 90 Dobson units are found for polar TOC after the SSW. Polar TOC remains enhanced until the summer after the major SSW. Precursors of the SSW are a negative TOC anomaly 3 months before the SSW and enhanced temperature at 10 hPa at mid-latitudes about 1 month before the SSW. Eastward wind at 1 hPa is decreased at mid-latitudes about 1 month before the SSW. The 1 hPa geopotential height level is increased by about 500 m during the month before the SSW. These features are significant at the 2σ level for the mean behaviour of the ensemble of the major SSWs. However, knowledge of these precursors may not lead to a reliable prediction of an individual SSW since the variability of the individual SSWs and the polar winter stratosphere is large.