The aim of this paper is to determine the earthquake behaviour of the Komurhan Highway Bridge, located at the 51st kilometre of the Elazig-Malatya highway over the Firat River, after finite element model updating using operational modal analyses. Finite element models of the bridge are built with the SAP2000 program to obtain analytical dynamic characteristics such as natural frequencies and mode shapes. The ambient vibration tests are performed using operational modal analysis under traffic loads to attain experimental dynamic characteristics. Vibration data is gathered from both the box girder and bridge deck to compare the results. Measurement time, frequency span, and effective mode number are determined following similar studies and literature. The peak picking method in the frequency domain is used for output-only modal identification. The finite element model of the bridge is updated by changing some uncertainties in the parameters such as material properties and boundary conditions to eliminate the differences between analytical and experimental dynamic characteristics. An analytical model of the bridge after finite element model updating is analyzed using the 1992 Erzincan, Turkey earthquake record, which occurred near the region, to determine the earthquake behaviour of the bridge. At the end of the study, the maximum differences in the natural frequencies are reduced on average from 10 % to 2 %, and a good agreement is found between analytical and experimental natural frequencies and mode shapes by model updating. Also, the variation of internal forces such as bending moment, axial forces, and shear forces for the bridge deck and columns are presented in detail.


In this paper, we present a novel System on Chip design for real time lane detection approach on low-quality grayscale images. The proposed method leverages the sequential read out from image sensors to progressively build clusters. The decision to allocate pixels to existing lines (clusters) is made on the fly as pixels flow from the image sensor into the system. We propose a hardware/software partitioning that places low-level computational intensive parts in a pipelined chain in hardware. The pipeline first applies morphological operations on incoming images to enhance their quality. Later canny edge detection followed by Probabilistic Hough Transform is used for accurate line detection. The lines are then filtered and clustered before being fitted into road lanes using weighted least squares method. We prototype our design on a system on FPGA with a precision above 90% and demonstrate a speedup of 2.09x compared to a software only implementation on an embedded processor.


p53 protein is a transcription factor involved in multiple tumor‐suppressor activities including cell cycle control and apoptosis. TP53 gene is frequently mutated in glioblastoma, suggesting the importance of inactivation of this gene product in gliomagenesis. Restoration of p53 function in glioblastoma cell lines deficient for p53 has shown that p53 induces growth arrest or apoptosis depending on the cell line and vector used to transduce wild‐type TP53 alleles. Considering that astrocytes grow and express p53, it is not clear whether these results reflect physiologic responses or the result of p53 overexpression in combination with cellular responses to viral vector infection. Here, we reassessed this issue using a glioblastoma cell line (LN382) that expresses an endogenous temperature‐sensitive mutant p53. This cell line expresses TP53 alleles (100% as determined by a p53 transcriptional assay in yeast) mutated at codon 197 GTG (Val) > CTG (Leu). We found that the p53 protein in these cells acted as an inactive mutant at 37°C and as a functional wild‐type p53 below 34°C as demonstrated by several lines of evidence, including (i) restoration of transactivating ability in yeast, (ii) induction of p53‐modulated genes such as CDKN1p21 and transforming growth factor‐α, (iii) disappearance of accumulated p53 protein in the nucleus and (iv) decrease in steady state p53 protein levels. This temperature switch allowed p53 levels, which were close to physiological levels to dramatically reduce LN382 cell proliferation by inducing a G1/S cell cycle block, but not to induce apoptosis. The lack of apoptosis was considered to be a result of the low level p53 expression, because increasing wild‐type p53 levels by adenoviral‐mediated gene transfer caused apoptosis in these cells. The LN382 cell line will be extremely useful for investigations into the roles of p53 in cellular responses to a variety of stimuli or damages. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


Wireless communications are experiencing an unprecedented expansion. The
increasing mobility of the communication society and the pace of
technological change are growing pressure for more spectrum to support
more users, more uses and more capacity. Thus, spectrum management has
become an extremely important part of wireless communications. A few
regulators are changing their traditional 'command and control' approach.
Nevertheless, many features of optimal spectrum management are still
widely discussed. This work is aimed at contributing to that discussion.
The key insight is that spectrum management can benefit from more
liberal spectrum sharing. This work set out to answer three main research
questions: (i) whether there is a theoretical framework which can be used to
analyze and guide spectrum policy reform, when moving from a traditional
'command and control' regime to a market-inspired one; (ii) whether it is
possible to design a plausible mechanism which can promote efficient
allocation and assignment of spectrum commons; (iii) whether (and how)
technological developments could enable band sharing methods outside the
traditional management framework and without harmful interference.
The literature on transition economics and policy was used to help
answer the first research question. Evidence from liberalizing countries was
positively analyzed to discuss reforms of spectrum allocation and
assignment methods. Most countries have adopted strategies that gradually
change their spectrum policies and started by using more liberal methods to
assign spectrum. It is also argued that future spectrum reforms might benefit
from insights presented in the transition economics literature.
A translation of a model on cartel quotas under majority rule is
proposed to answer the second research question. The work verifies, firstly,
that an analogous set of properties is satisfied under our assumptions and
that the median-index theorem applies, mutatis mutandis, to our setting.
Thus firms bidding to acquire spectrum commons contribute a minimum
amount of their wealth; the sum of contributions offered is then compared to
other bids for the same spectrum, which is allocated to the highest bidder.
The last research question considers novel ways of spectrum sharing
that might be enabled by technological developments. The work explores
contributions, from various research areas, regarding management of scarce
resources. Those contributions are discussed with respect to shared spectrum
access. It is suggested that spectrum management might benefit from
methods which enable the management of pooled (intermittent) demands for
access, especially methods in line with fair sojourn protocols.


Abstract Jurisdictional REDD+ (JR) is based on the premise that results-based flows of finance can drive changes in complex land-use systems across entire nations or subnational jurisdictions to achieve large-scale reductions in carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. The early JR experiments demonstrate that the promise of payments is, alone, insufficient to drive a jurisdictional land-use system transition. Effective JR strategies are needed that translate finance – or the prospect of finance – into forest-friendly changes in the land-use system that are embedded in public policies and programs aligned to achieve that end. Adaptive management has yet to be incorporated into JR programs and could potentially improve the performance of JR. To address this gap, we present a methodology for adaptively managing JR programs that features (a) a "living" mechanistic model of the jurisdictional land-use system, (b) an operational theory of change that describes how the JR strategy will intervene in this system to lower emissions, (c) an annual or biennial assessment process that revisits the theory of change through an independent group of experts and quantitative analysis of spatially-explicit components of the strategy, and (d) a decision-making body for adaptively refining the strategy based on the assessment. The methodology is illustrated for Ecuador's national JR program, the "REDD + Action Plan" (AP), that has secured commitments of results-based payments and international cooperation funds totaling ∼ US $120 million.


The universities of Deakin, Tasmania (UTAS) and Wollongong (UOW) are not aligned with any university groups or networks. This paper presents their cross-institutional benchmarking relationship as a case study in building the necessary trust, collaboration and shared methodology. The partnership was distinguished by the way it tapped into a collegial quality improvement culture. It had its genesis at the 2009 AUQF conference and the partners adapted and 'test-drove' a framework previously developed by an ALTC Teaching Quality Indicators Project team. UTAS and UOW had formerly been involved in a trial benchmarking project on academic transition support in 2009 and extended this partnership to Deakin. The universities are comparable in terms of establishment, discipline areas, regional presence and experience of the AUQA audit cycle, with some significant contextual differences that needed to be recognised, such as structures and terminology. They are at similar stages in relation to the development of their benchmarking policy and processes. The focus on assessment ensured the project would explore the issues central to the Cycle 2 AUQA audits, such as standards, learning outcomes and student feedback. The explicit benchmarking of assessment processes made transparent the areas of improvement and areas of good practice in relation to assessment standards. Outcomes included action plans for each university and a robust framework for benchmarking assessment.


Under the Household Electrification Program ofthe Philippines' Department of Energy, 530 solar home systems (SHSs) with 30Wp capacity were installed in individual households in four island barangays (villages) in Leyte and Southern Leyte from 2013 to 2015. Aside from lighting with four LED bulbs,the SHS can also be used to listen to the radio or MP3 player, and charge a mobile phone. This paper examines household use of the SHS thru data collected from 299 beneficiaries interviewed in the period 2017-2018. Results indicated that while all households use the SHS for lighting, its other applications are not utilized as much. A sizable percentage of households are now using only the SHS for lighting in each island barangay. The use of the generator set (for a limited time at night) in partnership with the SHS remains dominant to be able to use the SHS lights longer. Kerosene lamp is now rarely used for lighting except in the absence of a barangay-owned generator set.
With a substantial percentage of households using the SHS for lighting only amidst its other applications, classification trees by island barangay were generated to identify the variables which will explain SHS use with both quantitative and qualitative household characteristics making up the predictor space. Although the classification trees grown are unique to each island barangay, age of the household head and annual household income are the consistent significant predictors (up to the third most important) followed by median age of the household members.


Bark beetles (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Scolytinae) have been an important historic and current factor affecting pine forest production in the southern United States. Although tree mortality to bark beetles often detracts from forest management goals, the natural role of bark beetles is canopy opening, thinning, and diversification of stand structure and composition, effects that contribute to some ecosystem services in forests managed for multiple uses. Strategies to prevent bark beetle outbreaks exploit their sensitivity to host tree spacing and reliance on pheromones to attract sufficient numbers to overwhelm tree defenses. Tree species selection at planting or through selective thinning can favor pine species that are more tolerant of site conditions and resistant to bark beetles. Precommercial or commercial thinning improves tree condition and creates barriers to beetle population growth and spread. Remedial options include salvage harvest, pheromones for trap-out or disruption of host location, and white paint to disrupt the dark silhouette of the tree bole. Given the labor costs and trade-offs among tactics and the marginal profitability of fiber and timber production, harvest in advance of, or salvage harvest after, bark beetle attack often is the favored management strategy. However, this strategy is not as appropriate in public forests managed for values provided by older, more vulnerable trees. High-value sites for cultural or endangered species protection may require use of more expensive management options.


Citrus fruits usually processed into juice. The main residues are peel and seeds for citrus fruits after juice production. In order to evaluate the seeds for alternative usages; the oil content and fatty acid compositions of four mandarin (Citrus reticulata) and three lemon cultivars (Citrus limon) were determined with respect to their harvesting times. Oil content and fatty acid compositions of the samples were significantly (P<0.05) varied depends on cultivars and their harvesting times for each citrus species. Oil content ranged from 21.66 to 37.75% for these seeds. These results revealed that citrus seeds contain much more oil than many oil seeds. The citrus seeds oil combined from eight different fatty acids. The highest fatty acid was determined as linoleic acid (35.64-37.39%) for mandarin and oleic acid (32.99-36.39%) for lemon seed oil. These results revealed that citrus seeds could be valued as an edible oil source and other industrial area with respect to fatty acid composition.


This article reviews a wide range of research literature and makes the argument that the existence of "cognitive load" is not necessarily a bad thing in the design of educational multimedia-as opposed to the design of software applications! tools. It also presents a model of educational multimedia learning that delineates different types of cognitive load induced by multimedia and evaluates their differential contributions-or, alternatively, hindrances-to successful learning. Suggested design solutions and techniques are offered based on empirical data, as well as logical outcomes of the proposed model. ********** The model presented in this article integrates a myriad of research regarding--or indirectly related to-designing educational multimedia for optimal user comprehension and learning. This model is squarely based on theories/ideas/models running through the research literature in cognitive psychology, but does not hesitate to borrow from other lines of research--for example, in educational psychology, cognitive science, human-computer interaction, human factors, and so forth-when and where considered productive. The author believes one of the reasons the development of such a model is so complicated has to do with the existence of parallel-though not necessarily independent-design considerations. Thus, it appears it is necessary to construct multimedia to fall within different constraints along different dimensions that are acting both individually and in concert with one another. Simplifying the model to contain only a few critical dimensions requires a great deal of integration and condensation of existing studies and their findings, but can yield some rather complex-though reasonably functional-design dimensions. Three broad factors or dimensions to consider when designing educational multimedia have been distinguished: * regulating total cognitive load; * regulating relative dominance of load types; and * maximizing concurrent activation (i.e., simultaneous conscious attention) of relevant features of incoming information and (at the same time) relevant prior knowledge. REGULATING TOTAL COGNITIVE LOAD A commonly accepted principle in cognitive psychology and other social science disciplines is that working memory capacity-and attention-is fairly limited in humans, and when this limited capacity is overwhelmed, decreased levels of cognitive performance result (Sweller, 1988). The time-tested finding that working memory can contain or maintain around seven "chunks" of information, plus or minus two (Miller, 1956) is accepted, where these chunks might be thought of as schemata and where a more greatly articulated or developed schema can contain a greater amount of information than a lesser articulated or developed schema (Chi, 1988; Simon, 1974). A common theme in software and multimedia design is minimizing cognitive load for the purposes of usability and learn-ability. The thinking is that keeping cognitive load low allows the user to interact with the software or multimedia without becoming overwhelmed or confused by the options or information being presented. When a software application imposes a large cognitive load on the user, it becomes difficult for the user to learn and/or use the application. When a piece of software is an application or tool, this thinking makes sense because the application or tool is only a means for interacting with and/or creating content that can stand on its own independently of the application or tool. A user learns the application or tool to allow them interact with it and produce the actual content they are ultimately interested in. Since the capacity of working memory is limited (Miller, 1956), any load imposed by the tool reduces the amount of working memory capacity available for content-related thinking and processing. In contrast to software applications and tools, educational multimedia actually contains content the user is interested in learning. …


The threat of terror, which flares in Africa and Indonesia, has given the problem of failed states an unprecedented immediacy and importance. In the past, failure had a primarily humanitarian dimension, with fewer implications for peace and security. Now nation-states that fail, or may do so, pose dangers to themselves, to their neighbors, and to people around the globe: preventing their failure, and reviving those that do fail, has become a strategic as well as a moral imperative. State Failure and State Weakness in a Time of Terror develops an innovative theory of state failure that classifies and categorizes states along a continuum from weak to failed to collapsed. By understanding the mechanisms and identifying the tell-tale indicators of state failure, it is possible to develop strategies to arrest the fatal slide from weakness to collapse. This state failure paradigm is illustrated through detailed case studies of states that have failed and collapsed (the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, the Sudan, Somalia), states that are dangerously weak (Colombia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan), and states that are weak but safe (Fiji, Haiti, Lebanon).


Obesity is one of the most common disorders and major health concern worldwide. There are many standard procedures to assess obesity. Though body mass index is the most commonly used method, there are many other methods like bioelectric impedance analysis (BIA), waist to hip ratio, near -infrared measurement, Skin fold thickness, under water weighing, dual energy x-ray absorptiometry, Air displacement plethosmography, and Computed tomography. The main objective of the study was to establish a correlation between the BIA and skin fold thickness measurement so that BIA can also be routinely used in clinical practice for body fat measurement. All healthy obese and overweight college students and faculty of well known University who volunteered to participate were recruited in to the study. The cross-sectional study included 30 participants using sample of convenience and the assessment was performed by a qualified physical therapist. The instruments used in this study were Bioelectric impedance analyzer (OMRON, HBF – 361), Bioelectric impedance analyzer (TANITA, BC-571), Bioelectric impedance analyzer (OMRON, HBF-302), Weighing machine, Skin fold caliper. There was a positive correlation between skin fold thickness (SKF) and other methods of body impedance analyzer (BIA) while estimating the body fat percentage. The correlation of SKF with LBIA, CBIA and HBIA was high with r=0.069, 0.796, 0.859 respectively. Hand BIA has the highest correlation with SKF compared to the other two BIA methods; therefore HBIA can be used for body fat analysis in clinical practice with greater accuracy and reliability.


Objective. We sought to determine the validity, reliability and ranking ability of an interviewer-administered physical activity questionnaire (PAQ), measuring physical activity (PA) and inactivity history over a 1-week and 1-year period in South African primary school-aged children.
Methods. Criterion validity of the PAQ was tested against PA movement counts as measured with an Actical accelerometer in 30 children. Agreement between the two instruments was measured with a weighted Kappa statistic. Test-retest reliability of the past week and past year PAQ was also tested.
Results. A positive, significant (r=0.53, p=0.004) relationship was found between total time spent being physically active as measured by the Actical and PAQ. A similar relationship was found for time spent doing sedentary (r=0.63, p<0.001) and vigorous activities (r=0.47, p<0.001), but not for activities of a moderate intensity (r=0.001, p=0.88). The ability of the PAQ to correctly categorise children into activity levels was moderate (κ=0.41, p<0.001). The PAQ was found to be reliable and reproducible with significant (p<0.001) intraclass correlation coefficients for both the past week and past year administrations.
Conclusion. The interviewer-administered PAQ is a useful assessment tool in this population of children, as evidenced by its good correlation with Actical measurements. The best application of the questionnaire lies in its ability to qualitatively rank subjects according to activity level.


In 1951, the United Nations defined a refugee as a person who "owing to well-founded fear of being-persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country." Given this emphasis on nationality and country, research on 20th century refugees focused on states, revolutions, and international relations. Among the many legacies of this literature are ecological metaphors--uprooting, flow, wave, boat people--to describe forced migration from political violence. While hackneyed, these phrases indicate an unconscious attempt to use the social-ecological paradigm to understand refugee crises. This paradigm explains social conflicts by analyzing how power and resource allocation mediate humans' ability to sustain themselves from nature. We explicitly use social ecology to argue that the violent development of natural resources is the distinctive feature of 21st century refugees. Rather than oceanography, we draw ecological metaphors from geology in order to identify' the world's refugee fault lines: regions where the friction of ethnic diversity, political disunity, and the abundance or scarcity of natural resources perennially destabilize the territorial nation-state. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Refugee Fault Lines There are some 200 territorial nation-states on earth. But fewer than ten of these geo-political units account for most of the world's 13.6 million refugees. Two-thirds of all refugees are Afghani, Palestinian, Iraqi, Burmese, Sudanese, and Somali. Add the central Africans from Congo-Kinshasa and Burundi to this sad list and the proportion reaches 70 percent. To appreciate the density of the world's refugees, consider that all international land borders add up to about 242,000 kilometers. But a mere 3,300 kilometers account for Afghanistan's borders with Iran and Pakistan, and nearly the same distance accounts for Myanmar's borders with Bangladesh, India, and Thailand. Those are the "long refugee borders." An international line of 1,300 kilometers separates Chad from Sudan. About 700 kilometers demarcate Somalia from Kenya; Iraq from Syria and Jordan; and Eritrea from Sudan. Only 400 kilometers mark the difference between homeland and host for the 240,000 Burundians in Tanzania, virtually the same linear distance that defines Gaza and the West Bank. This geographic concentration suggests the existence of refugee fault lines. The world's grand refugee fault line runs north from Lake Tanganyika to the mouth of the Nile, then east to Kashmir, and then southeast to the Mekong Delta. A more parsimonious delineation reveals four major refugee fault lines (see Table 1). The World's 4 Major Refugee Fault Lines TABLE I Fault Line Approximate Length Refugee Population * Sinai-Kashmir 3,500 km 7.500 mil Congo Sources-Ogaden Plateau 2,500 km 1.000 mil Mt. Everest-Mekong Delta 3,000 km 1.000 mil Darfur-Danakil Desert 2,000 km .800 mil WORLD 12,700 km** 13.600 mil Global Distribution of Refugee Population Sinai-Kashmir 55% Congo Sources-Ogaden Plateau 8% Mt. Everest-Mekong Delta 8% Darfur-Danakil Desert 6% Rest of the world 24% * Within an approximately 500 km belt left and right of fault line. ** Diameter from pole to pole. Note: Table made from pie chart. [GRAPHIC OMITTED] Our use of rivers, glaciers, and deserts to measure refugee axes is intentional. Today's forced migrations are inextricably tied to valued natural resources. Conversely, during the Cold War, places such as Cuba and former Indochina had geo-political--not economic--value. …


Malaria control strategies are often targeted at individuals who suffer most morbidity, not at those driving transmission. This is in part due to our limited understanding, described in Chapter 1, of the human infectious reservoir of falciparum malaria – i.e. individuals responsible for human-to-mosquito transmission of Plasmodium falciparum parasites in endemic areas. This work, whose objectives are listed in Chapter 2, assessed the prevalence of infectiousness in naturally exposed human populations during dry and wet seasons. Exposure to Anopheles mosquitoes, a measure of transmission opportunities, was also quantified; and to determine the value of infectiousness-reducing interventions, the use of primaquine to block transmission from infectious individuals was investigated.
Experimental infections of mosquitoes were performed to determine malaria infectivity of randomly selected individuals in two villages in Burkina Faso. Molecular assays were used to quantify parasite, including gametocyte, densities. Less than 10% of the population was infectious to mosquitoes. These results are presented in a manuscript that included data from other study sites (Chapter 3).
To assess exposure to malaria vectors, bloodfed mosquitoes were collected indoors in one of the study villages in Burkina Faso. A multiplex PCR assay targeting nine human microsatellites and a gender-specific marker was used to identify the human sources of mosquito blood meals. Although there was substantial variation in the number of mosquito bites each individual received (Chapter 4), on average adults received more mosquito bites than children. This suggests that, despite their lower infectiousness, adults are major contributors to malaria transmission in endemic areas.
An efficacy trial of single low dose primaquine was performed in Burkina Faso and pre- and post-treatment infectiousness were quantified by mosquito feeding experiments to assess primaquine's infectiousness-reducing activity (Chapter 5). Individuals receiving primaquine cleared gametocytes faster than individuals who received artemether-lumefantrine alone. Feeding assays, however, suggest that artemether-lumefantrine blocks most parasite transmission after treatment administration.
In Chapter 6, these findings, and how they can inform future control strategies, are discussed.


APPLICATION OF MICROWAVE TECHNOLOGY TO EFFECT ON-SITE REGENERATION OF GAC K.C. Mahesh, Master of Science in Environmental Science(Tox), 1989 Thesis directed by: Dr. Leonard Dauerman The off-site regeneration of granulated activated charcoal(GAC), spent as a result of stripping of organics from aqueous waste streams, represents a burdensome cost both because of the actual cost of regeneration and legal liability associated with shipping a hazardous waste off-site: that liability is reflected in huge potential costs associated with mishaps enroute for the self-insured or high premiums paid to the casualty insurance companies for those generators that are insured by third parties. Thus there is a need for the development of a process to effect on-site regeneration of spent GAC cost-effectively. This thesis mainly focuses on the technical feasibility of microwave treatment to effect regeneration of GAC. This study has shown that microwave treatment of spent GAC can effect the on-site regeneration in a potentially cost-effective process. The regeneration of GAC with an adsorbed organic compound was studied. The compound was a toxic dye, namely, methylene blue. This is a polyaromatic compound containing chlorine, sulfur, and nitrogen atoms. It is a chloride salt. It is non-volatile and decomposes at 1900C. Our experiments showed that GAC with methylene blue adsorbed can be regenerated up to 100%; thus, even when a non-volatile compound is adsorbed on GAC, microwave technology can effect regeneration. The regeneration is effected utilizing microwave technology in a manner consistent with its application on-site, scaled-up. The regenerability of spent GAC was investigated for three successive cycles of adsorption and regeneration. The results showed a good regeneration capacity, even at the end of fourth adsorption and, on an average, 98.2% removal of the adsorbed organic was achieved by microwave treatment. The process appears to proceed by the following stages: water in the GAC pores are directly heated up by the microwaves leading to volatilization; the steam, thus formed, forces the air out of the pores creating an inert atmosphere; the GAC, a strong microwave energy absorber, heats the organic to its pyrolysis temperature; the pyrolyzed organic fuses into the GAC skeleton. This mechanism explains the observed results. More importantly, this mechanism suggests that the most intractable soil contaminants, namely, dioxins and PCBs, can be treated by microwave technology. Assuming that soil and GAC behave similarly, it is possible that the aforementioned contaminants which are polyaromatic compounds will pyrolyze. This investigation is suggested, but not undertaken, in this thesis. To my wife, Asha and my Parents.


This paper describes the experiences of twenty-four Bosnian refugees resettled in the US and explores how achieving integration relates to the US policy contexts and programs. Juxtaposing refugee perspectives and policies, "lived experience" was compared with policies on paper. Central themes included participants' language and employment struggles, social support networks that included Americans, congregational sponsorship, and participants' faith in their belief that they could fully belong in American society. Implications included a reevaluation of American resettlement policy regarding language and employment, formal support for sponsorship, and an inclusion of refugee voices in planning and implementing resettlement programs.


Dense medium cyclones (DMCs) have become the workhorse of the coal preparation industry due to their high efficiency, large capacity, small footprint and low maintenance requirements. Although the advantages of DMCs make them highly desirable, size-by-size partitioning data collected from industrial operations suggest that DMC performance can suffer in response to fluctuations in feed coal quality. In light of this problem, a multi-stream monitoring system that simultaneously measures the densities of the feed, overflow and underflow medium around a DMC circuit was designed, installed and evaluated at an industrial plant site. The data obtained from this real-time data acquisition system indicated that serious shortcomings exist in the methods commonly used by industry to monitor and control DMC circuits. This insight, together with size-by-size partition data obtained from in-plant sampling campaigns, was used to develop an improved control algorithm that optimizes DMC performance over a wide range of feed coal types and operating conditions. This document describes the key features of the multi-stream monitoring system and demonstrates how this approach may be used to potentially improve DMC performance.


Entering Youth work Through Love's Many Pathways is a text that wanders and digresses to places where, through poetic inquiry and a Spinozist and Sufi framework, the concepts of immanence, love and becoming can be explored. This thesis is framed as a walk through which the researcher / youth worker along with the reader, traverses through five pathways that she considers necessary in cultivating a meaningful relationship with the youth: opening, strength, listening, trust and unconditional compassion. By means of engaging the "self", this thesis approaches youth work as a field that is relational and socially interconnected. In this sense, this poetic inquiry seeks to rupture predictable patterns of behaviour. One of the ways I do this is through found poetry. Through this specific form of poetic inquiry, I bring together various voices, an assemblage – Rumi, Rilke, Whitman, Lalla, Mirabai and Song of Songs – in order to find my voice and by extension, to help the youth find their voice through a human connection that goes beyond colour, race, gender etc. In other words, my aim is to actualize the experiences of becoming youth worker while being in a field of immanence where similarities are understood and differences respected. My hope is that this project may offer an example of understanding, celebration, and engagement of our mutual differences, while still being able to relate to one another through the many pathways of love. Entering Youthwork 3


One of the key figures in Christian history, St. Ignatius of Loyola (c. 1491-1556) was a passionate and unique spiritual thinker and visionary. The works gathered here provide a first-hand, personal introduction to this remarkable character: a man who turned away from the Spanish nobility to create the revolutionary Jesuit Order, inspired by the desire to help people follow Christ. His Reminiscences describe his early life, his religious conversion following near-paralysis in battle, and his spiritual and physical ordeals as he struggled to assist those in need, including plague, persecution and imprisonment. The Spiritual Exercises offer guidelines to those seeking the will of God, and the Spiritual Diary shows Ignatius in daily mystical contact with God during a personal struggle. The Letters collected here provide an insight into Ignatius' ceaseless campaign to assist those seeking enlightenment and to direct the young Society of Jesus.


Although probiotics have been used for many years by those who suffer from what would now be defined as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), a scientific rationale for their use in this indication and clinical evidence to support their benefits have only emerged very recently. Evidence to support considering strategies, such as probiotics, that modulate the gut microbiome, in IBS, has been provided by laboratory studies implicating the microbiome and the host response to the enteric microenvironment in IBS, as well as in vitro and in vivo studies demonstrating the ability of various commensal bacteria to influence such relevant functions as motility, visceral sensation, gut barrier integrity, and brain-gut interactions. Clinical studies supporting a role for probiotics in the management of IBS predated such experimental data, and randomized controlled trials of probiotics in IBS continue to be reported. Their interpretation is hampered by the less than optimal quality of many studies; nevertheless, it is apparent that probiotics, as a category, do exert significant effects in IBS. Defining the optimal strain, dose, formulation, and duration of therapy is more challenging given the limitations of available data. There is also an urgent need for appropriately powered and rigorously designed clinical trials of appropriate duration of probiotics in IBS; such studies should also help to define those who are most likely to respond to probiotics. Future laboratory and translational research should attempt to define the mechanism(s) of action of probiotics in IBS and explore the response to bacterial components or products in this common and oftentimes troublesome disorder.


The nexus of security, migration and development in Africa is crucial, but certainly not only because of the flows of migrants coming to Europe. It is evident that development, migration, peace and security are connected in several ways, but more light needs to be shed on the concrete effects of their interactions. In this complex framework, the Sahel region represents an important region where the security– migration–development nexus is particularly present and deserves further analysis. This research aims at re-conceptualizing this nexus through the analysis of this linkage in the Sahel region, and in particular vis-a-vis three case countries: Niger, Senegal and Sudan. The publication also recasts the European Union and the United States approaches to these dynamics and explores current and potential partnerships in the region.


Shibboleth is an open source implementation of the OASIS standard Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML). Shibboleth Access Management Federations (AMFs) are used daily around the globe by millions of users – mainly in the academic realm – in order to securely exchange the identity information necessary to make authorisation decisions concerning protected web resources. AMFs are typically comprised of a number of entities, eg, organisations working together to achieve a set of shared objectives while each member retains control over its own internal affairs. There are three main categories of entities: identity management is devolved to individual member organisations who act as Identity Providers, Service Providers are established by organisations wanting to make protected resources available, and finally, there is a small Coordinating Centre. Principally through the European Spatial Data Infrastructure Network (ESDIN) project and the OGC Web Service (OWS) Shibboleth Interoperability Experiment, it has been established that Shibboleth provides a production strength, standards based, open source, interoperable mainstream IT solution to the problem of how to implement AMFs around the OWS central to SDI's. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated using a prototype federation of INSPIRE compliant services established under ESDIN that this can be done without modifications to either mainstream Shibboleth or OWS. However, non browser based clients require adaptation. Various options exist as to how the main actors within a European SDI/Federation may organise themselves in order to realise the objective of allowing authorised users from key organisations, eg, EU bodies concerned with environmental policy formation, seamless access to harmonised protected geospatial information through OWS. This paper proposes that a parallel security infrastructure is necessary to realise SDI where protected resources are involved and gives an account of work undertaken demonstrating how Shibboleth based AMF's meet this need.


BACKGROUND
The presence of nerves in heart valves was first depicted decades ago and identified into subpopulations: sympathetic, parasympathetic. So valves are expected to be greatly affected by the autonomic nerves. However, few studies have focused on the regulation of heart valves by the autonomic nervous system.

OBJECTIVE
We sought to identify the role of the autonomic nervous system in the regulation of the mechanical properties of porcine mitral valve tissues.

METHODS
Mechanical properties of porcine mitral valve leaflets were evaluated in response to norepinephrine (NE) and acetylcholine (ACH), the main neurotransmitters. At the same time, phentolamine (Phent), metoprolol (Metop), atropine (Atrop) and endothelial denudation were added to the reactive system.

RESULTS
Under physiological conditions, the stiffness was not affected by endothelial denudation (p > 0.05). NE elevated the valve stiffness significantly per 10-fold increase in concentration (10(-6) vs 10(-7), p < 0.05; 10(-5) vs 10(-6), p < 0.05). This response was mitigated by Phent, Metop or endothelial denudation (p < 0.05), however, it was still increased significantly when compared to Controls (p < 0.05). ACH caused a decrease in stiffness accompanied by an increase in its concentration (significant change in stiffness per 10-fold increase in ACH concentration, 10(-6) vs Control, p < 0.05; 10(-5) vs 10(-6), p < 0.05), which were reversed by endothelial denudation and Atrop (p > 0.05 vs Control).

CONCLUSION
These findings highlight the role of the autonomic nervous system in the regulation of the mechanical properties of porcine mitral valve cusps, which underline the importance of autonomic nervous status for optimal valve function.


This study examines the means by which four South African woman artists, namely Penny Siopis, Jo Ractliffe, Lien Botha and Tania Kühl use memory and history as themes to represent social and political events in South Africa. The foundation of this investigation is a critical study of the meaning of history and memory within the context of the candidate's contemporary social and political milieu. This investigation is facilitated by a number of published and unpublished works by various authors relating to the issues in visual arts; particularly social and political history as applied to personal memory and history. Chapter one explores these terms particularly in relation to the visual arts. Chapter one identifies terms that are vital to the dissertation and some of the literature and methodologies used in the research. These are divided into the subheadings of: terms; women, politics and art; art and documentary photography; literature review; methodology and conclusion.. Examples of each artist's work are selected for a comprehensive analysis in chapter two. These examples are methodically studied by media and techniques used to produce the artworks and include a critical analysis of the subject matter of the artwork. The examples were selected primarily for their content in connection with the candidate's own productions of practical work towards the MAFA degree. Chapter two is divided into four main sections, one dedicated to each artist: Penny Siopis, Jo Ractliffe, Lien Botha and Tania Kühl. These four sections are divided into three subsections: medium and techniques; subject matter and conclusion. Chapter three points out similarities and differences in the work of the four selected artists in order to conclude the candidate's findings during the dissertation. URI http://hdl.handle.net/10413/1043 Collections Masters Degrees (Media, Visual Arts and Drama) [89] DSpace software copyright © 2002-2013 Duraspace Contact Us | Send Feedback Theme by Personal history and collective memory: images of social and political history in the art of four South African women artists 


Traditional systems for image creation and enhancement are completely reliant on user input, either to generate content directly or to evaluate and tune algorithms. The input must be generated by talented artists, and it is applicable only to the image for which it was originally intended. This poses scalability challenges for such traditional image generation and editing systems. An alternative paradigm, which is being researched in a variety of contentgeneration domains, is to exploit the large amount of data made available by users over the Internet. This data may take many forms: images, image keywords, and even judgments about image quality. Although the data is noisy and was not originally intended for the task at hand, it nevertheless serves as a useful source of "prior information." These priors make it possible to build image creation and enhancement systems that require only a small amount of user input, and do not require the users to be professional artists or designers. This thesis describes three such systems, including low-level image-processing (motion deblurring), high-level editing (keyword-based image stylization), and image creation (sketch-driven iconification). First, by learning based on a massive online user study, we develop a metric for automatically predicting the perceptual quality of images produced by motion deblurring algorithms, without access to the original images. Second, by leveraging online image search engines, we investigate an approach to photo filtering that only requires the user to provide one or more keywords. Third, we develop a system that synthesize a variety of pictograms by remixing portions of icons retrieved from a large online repository.


We previously reported monocyte-derived multipotential cells (MOMCs), which include progenitors capable of differentiating into a variety of mesenchymal cells and endothelial cells. In vitro generation of MOMCs from circulating CD14+ monocytes requires their binding to extracellular matrix (ECM) protein and exposure to soluble factor(s) derived from circulating CD14− cells. Here, we investigated the molecular factors involved in MOMC generation by examining the binding of monocytes to ECM proteins. We found that MOMCs were obtained on the fibronectin, but not on type I collagen, laminin, or poly-L-lysine. MOMC generation was followed by changes in the expression profiles of transcription factors and was completely inhibited by either anti-α 5 integrin antibody or a synthetic peptide that competed with the RGD domain for the β 1-integrin binding site. These results indicate that acquisition of the multidifferentiation potential by circulating monocytes depends on their binding to the RGD domain of fibronectin via cell-surface α 5 β 1 integrin.


The water access in any planet of the universe can be considered a crucial evidence for life existence. The study of Mars has special importance where it has a complex preserved geological record of a time period longer than on Earth. Many regions of Mars planet are subjected to observations through the obtained satellite images in comparison to similar areas from the Earth (Egyptian deserts). The present study presents observations from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) and Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) colorized digital terrain model (DTM), indicate that many existed landforms could reveal the palaeohydrology of Mars. The regional structural lineaments (joints and/or faults) are extracted and mapped where the main trend is NE-SW. These lineaments are thought to be responsible with erosion processes about the origination of the drainage network of Mars. The hydrogeomorphology of Mars planet suggests past wetter conditions where the transition from wet to dry surface conditions is evidenced through a variations in the spatial distribution of drainage networks. It can be thought that the selected landforms in this study (drainages, deltas, gorges, paleo-lakes, paleo-channel), are revealing an ancient wet climates where precipitation was leading to surface runoff with main role of the tectonic influences existed on structural lineaments and rifts. The current study suggests two landing sites (Jazero delta and Eberswalde Delta) for the next Mars 2020 mission taking in consideration that these sites had potential of water resources that may be provide chances for past life existence until the microbial level.


Bioenergy deployment offers significant potential for climate change mitigation, but also carries considerable risks. In this review, we bring together perspectives of various communities involved in the research and regulation of bioenergy deployment in the context of climate change mitigation: Land‐use and energy experts, land‐use and integrated assessment modelers, human geographers, ecosystem researchers, climate scientists and two different strands of life‐cycle assessment experts. We summarize technological options, outline the state‐of‐the‐art knowledge on various climate effects, provide an update on estimates of technical resource potential and comprehensively identify sustainability effects. Cellulosic feedstocks, increased end‐use efficiency, improved land carbon‐stock management and residue use, and, when fully developed, BECCS appear as the most promising options, depending on development costs, implementation, learning, and risk management. Combined heat and power, efficient biomass cookstoves and small‐scale power generation for rural areas can help to promote energy access and sustainable development, along with reduced emissions. We estimate the sustainable technical potential as up to 100 EJ: high agreement; 100–300 EJ: medium agreement; above 300 EJ: low agreement. Stabilization scenarios indicate that bioenergy may supply from 10 to 245 EJ yr−1 to global primary energy supply by 2050. Models indicate that, if technological and governance preconditions are met, large‐scale deployment (>200 EJ), together with BECCS, could help to keep global warming below 2° degrees of preindustrial levels; but such high deployment of land‐intensive bioenergy feedstocks could also lead to detrimental climate effects, negatively impact ecosystems, biodiversity and livelihoods. The integration of bioenergy systems into agriculture and forest landscapes can improve land and water use efficiency and help address concerns about environmental impacts. We conclude that the high variability in pathways, uncertainties in technological development and ambiguity in political decision render forecasts on deployment levels and climate effects very difficult. However, uncertainty about projections should not preclude pursuing beneficial bioenergy options.


The intention of this work is to provide a deeper understanding of the engineering geological behaviour of granite saprolite and how this affects the engineering of such material, with specific reference to the construction of Injaka Dam in the north eastern portion of South Africa Whilst extensive investigation of weathered granites has been carried out internationally, very little detailed research on the nature of this material is documented locally. The construction of Injaka Dam afforded the opportunity to investigate the saprolite in detail. This study was initially submitted to the Department of Geology and Applied Geology at the University of Natal, Durban (renamed the University of KwaZulu-Natal in 2004) to fulfill the requirement of a Master of Science degree in 200 I. Following this submission, and supported by recommendations made by the external examiners and the project supervisor, it was agreed to upgrade the work and submit this thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Intensive chemical weathering of granite at Injaka Dam site has resulted in the formation of thick saprolitic deposits overlying the weathered bedrock. The granite forms part of the 3 075 Ma Nelspruit Suite which has been intersected by the African erosion surface. The extensive, multicyclic period of weathering and erosion that formed this surface has resulted in deep (up to 35 m) chemical weathering of the underlying bedrock in this area. The construction of Injaka Dam on this material necessitated a thorough engineering geological investigation to understand the nature of the weathering and the possible influences it exerts on the engineering behaviour of the saprolite. This was accomplished by analysing the weathering of the granite and relating the effects of these weathering processes and changes to the engineering behaviour of the material. By applying various chemical and mineralogical indices to the weathered granite, the intensity of weathering and related changes could be quantified and compared with the engineering behaviour of the material. This was achieved by applying a series of engineering indices to the material and relating these to the quantified weathering changes. In this way tentative extrapolation of the engineering behaviour of the material could be gained and used to predict engineering performance. The resultant effects of the engineering behaviour of the material on the design and construction of the dam are also discussed.


Embodied cognitive agents must be able to process two very different kinds of inputs: interoceptive stimuli (stimuli originating inside of the body) and natural language. To support these complex functionalities, developers must address, among other issues, two kinds of paraphrase: a) reformulation of the representation of physiological events (e.g., symptoms) in "lay" terms that can be understood and remembered by the cognitive agent and b) representation of the meaning of verbal messages in terms compatible with how related content is stored in the cognitive agent's memory. In this paper we describe how these types of paraphrase are treated within a system that uses the same knowledge representation language throughout while permitting different agents to have idiosyncratic ontologies and fact repositories (memories).


This paper examines how the materialization of credit defaults affects the real economy. I estimate a DSGE model including banks, firms and financial frictions using euro area data. The estimation results show that a positive credit default shock, which is identified as an unanticipated increase in credit default losses, complicates monetary policy because output falls while inflation goes up. The monetary authority must choose between stabilizing output and inflation and is therefore less effective. Inflation increases slightly because firms experience besides a demand contraction also a cost-push effect when banks increase the lending rate. Countercyclical capital buffers can in this case complement conventional monetary policy but there is a trade-off: they effectively attenuate macroeconomic fluctuations, but increase the persistence of the slump as banks rebuild their capital more slowly. A bank recapitalization overcomes this trade-off and significantly reduces macroeconomic fluctuations.


In 1970 the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entered into force. Since then, it has been regarded as one of the important international legally binding regimes with respect to nuclear weapons, and has proven to be a solid foundation for many subsequent (nuclear) arms
control related measures. The NPT makes a distinction between Nuclear Weapon States (NWS; the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China), and Non-Nuclear Weapon States (NNWS; all the other state parties to the NPT), of which the latter promised not to (attempt to) acquire nuclear weapons. As part of this bargain, the NNWS gain access to the technology of the peaceful use of nuclear energy, while the NWS have an obligation to negotiate nuclear disarmament. This is phrased in Article VI of the NPT, which states that "[e]ach of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control".
At present however, around 27,000 nuclear weapons continue to exist, which casts doubts on the merit of this specific Article. Especially since the end of the Cold War, many NNWS and nongovernmental organisations (NGO's) also question the necessity of possessing nuclear weapons,
for they argue that the risk on (accidental or intentional) nuclear war should be reduced to zero.
The topical research question for this thesis is therefore: What is the merit of Article VI within
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty for nuclear disarmament? Four additional sub questions have been devised to answer this research question, and are structured to narrow the discussion from broad (nuclear) disarmament towards the nuclear disarmament negotiations of
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and more specifically nuclear disarmament under Article
VI and the NWS' degree of compliance with it. The first sub question deals with the measures that have been taken outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty framework as part of the overall disarmament and arms control discussion. While the two concepts are sometimes used
interchangeably and have evolved since the 1940's and 1950's, disarmament can be defined as the reduction of weapons in a specific category of weapons in order to be protected against the threat of weapons. Arms control on the other hand, intends to seek security through a more strict control of weapons. Three concepts of measures taken for nuclear disarmament outside of the NPT framework are addressed in this section. Depending on the perspective of looking at a NWFZ treaty, from a 'local' perspective the concept of a NWFZ is defined as a clear example of
disarmament, since it completely prohibits the deployment of nuclear weapons in a localised area.
Moreover, the concept itself does not merely intend to control nuclear weapons, but to seek its
total abolishment in the given area. This fits the theoretical rationale underlying the concept for disarmament, for supporters of disarmament want to be protected against the threat of weapons
(i.e. negative security assurances), while the supporters of arms control seek security through a
more strict control of weapons. The two other measures, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
and the No-First-Use principle, fit the description of arms control, since they intend to restrict
nuclear weapons by prohibiting NWS from nuclear testing or using, not from prohibiting or
restricting the possession of nuclear weapon. Nuclear disarmament in Article VI of the NPT
however, is the result of long negotiations between many states with all of them having different
agenda's. The result therefore, is an ambiguous provision with several interpretations possible.
Since Article VI calls for all states to pursue negotiations in good faith, this can be strictly legally
interpreted as merely a party�s intention, and not as a legal obligation for it is not stated in such
manner. As a result, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has presented an Advisory Opinion
(which in itself is not legally binding), to also conclude these negotiations. The last ten to fifteen
years have also demonstrated a strong willingness on behalf of the NNWS, NGO's, and the ICJ
to opt for a broader legal-political interpretation of the Article as part of a broader campaign to
call for complete nuclear disarmament. In addition, the Final Documents of the 1995 and 2000
NPT Review Conferences have provided a blueprint for achieving nuclear disarmament, although
the NWS' record on this leaves much to desire for. It is however evident, that broad international
opinion is clearly pitted against the possession of nuclear weapons. The last sub question analyses
the degree of compliance with Article VI with respect to the five Nuclear Weapon States. This is
analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Strictly from a quantitatively perspective, all
Nuclear Weapon States have decreased their nuclear arsenals considerably (with the possible
exception of China). From a qualitative perspective, the outcome is less promising. All NWS
continue to modernise their nuclear arsenals, and continue to regard nuclear weapons as a vital
component of their nuclear security strategies. Although the NPT provides a rigid international
non-proliferation regime of which a substitute is at present hard to imagine, many challenges
remain to be addressed. Some of these challenges are how to deal with states that are not party to
the NPT and how to deal with non-state actors. For as long as the NPT is not universally
applicable and a credible terrorism threat (with regards to weapons of mass destruction)
continues to be present, it is hard to envisage any short-term general and complete nuclear
disarmament. And for as long as the NPT is in place, NNWS and NGO's will continue to remind
the NWS of their (legal-political) obligation to disarm with respect to Article VI.


This research paper investigates the need for emotional and psychosocial support for people infected and affected by HIV and AIDS in the workplace. Most employees infected and affected by HIV and AIDS, as well as their families, often need assistance to cope with stigma, rejection, and discrimination, as well as having to adjust to the diagnosis, to confront the fear of losing independence, and to prepare themselves for the changes that might happen to their lives. Hence, through counseling and support, they can have more knowledge about HIV and AIDS and reduced fears and misconceptions about living with HIV and AIDS. Some research organizations, such as the Perinatal HIV Research Unit, do provide emotional and psychosocial support, and advice for people infected and affected by HIV and AIDS. An attitude survey was conducted with about 400 employees at the Unilever Company in Boksburg, Johannesburg, in September and October 2005 to determine whether emotional and psychosocial support could play a role in motivating people infected and affected by HIV and AIDS to live positively with the virus, in eliminating related stigma and fears. Employees from this organization were chosen as the population for this survey as a prevalence study and VCT was carried out with them in August and September 2005, so they knew and trusted the councilors who were giving results to them and they had established a relationship with them. I booked appointments for follow-up counseling sessions of 45 minutes after VCT (Voluntary Counseling and Testing) and then told them about the support group at their workplace. The findings indicate that there is indeed a need for emotional and psychosocial support for people infected and affected by HIV and AIDS in the workplace. Among other findings, respondents, especially those infected, reported that they had learned that being HIV positive is not the end of the world but the beginning as long as you look after yourself you can live a normal and productive life for many years, as long as you take extra care of yourself. Most of the affected respondents reported that they had never done an HIV test before due to their own fear of the prognosis. Having acquired more facts about HIV and AIDS, those that had not been tested stated that they now planned to do so. Both groups – those who tested negative and those who tested positive – reported that they also learned about the importance of disclosing your one's status as a means of getting support.


Comprehensive results are presented from a full-scale testbed of a prototype automated venetian blind/lighting system installed in two unoccupied, private offices in Oakland, California. The dynamic system balanced daylight against solar heat gains in real-time, to reduce perimeter zone energy use and to increase comfort. This limited proof-of-concept test was designed to work out practical "bugs" and refine design details to increase cost effectiveness and acceptability of this innovative technology for real-world applications. We present results from 14 months of tuning the system design and monitoring energy performance and control system operations. For this southeast-facing office, we found that 1-22% lighting energy savings, 13-28% cooling load reductions, and 13-28% peak cooling load reductions can be achieved by the dynamic system under clear sky and overcast conditions year round, compared to a static, partly closed blind with the same optimized daylighting control system. These energy savings increase if compared to conventional daylighting controls with manually-operated blinds. Monitored data indicated that the control system met design objectives under all weather conditions to within 10% for at least 90% of the year. A pilot human factors study indicated that some of our default control settings should be adjusted to increase user satisfaction. With these adjustments, energy savings will decrease. The final prototype design yielded a 10-year simple payback for this site. If mechanical system downsizing opportunities and qualitative improvements to worker's comfort are included, this innovative technology could be more cost effective. Marketing information for commercializing this technology is given.


Effective and efficient removal of snow and ice from public roadways is a key outcome for winter road maintenance operations. This outcome depends on the severity of the wintry weather as well as the quality and quantity of resources used to treat the roadways. Wintry weather conditions vary substantially from hour‐to‐hour, storm‐to‐storm, and season‐to‐season. Many different transportation departments have used empirical statistical models and machine learning methods based upon weather parameters to develop indices to estimate the severity of winter weather. Many of these previous studies used summary statistics, such as the number of days with certain events (snowfall, freezing rain, frost), to provide a seasonal index of winter severity. While summarizing the winter severity for the entire season is quite useful, providing information over shorter time periods will allow for more precise evaluation of maintenance performance during a winter season. A winter weather severity index has been developed that can be used to evaluate the performance of winter weather maintenance. This project involves the development of a physically‐based analysis of winter severity, using estimates of the hourly rate of deposition of new snow/ice and the energy required to melt it. The "Road Weather Severity Based on Environmental Energy" (RWSBEE) index can be considered an accumulation of energy, beyond that which is available from the environment, needed to melt snow/ice that has been deposited on the road surface on an hourly basis. The energy not provided by the environment that would be required to melt new snow can be thought of as a measure of the work required to remove the new snow from the road surface. The authors expect that RWSBEE will provide a clearer understanding of the severity of the weather, allowing Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) to better evaluate their performance, assist with after‐action review of recent storms, and improve the reaction to future weather events. Measurable improvements in the winter maintenance decision‐making process are expected as a result. Winter weather conditions that occur across different regions vary substantially from hour‐to‐hour, storm‐to‐storm, and season‐to‐season. The methods of road maintenance for fighting snow and ice can also vary between different maintenance units. It is important for organizations that perform road maintenance to be able to quantify the severity of the winter weather conditions, for purposes of monitoring, planning, and evaluating their performance. INDOT currently uses estimates of winter weather hours to quantify the severity of winter weather. The definition of a "weather hour" is fairly straightforward: any hour when wintry precipitation (snow, ice pellets, freezing rain) is falling with air temperatures below 35 °F. While this definition is reasonable, it does not take into account numerous factors that can strongly affect road conditions and subsequent efforts needed for road treatment, such as: precipitation rate, wind speed, and availability of sunshine. Consequently, INDOT has determined that the information provided by the weather hour estimates result in wide variations in roadway treatment expenses across Indiana. In order to more accurately and effectively evaluate the performance of winter maintenance, it is important to have detailed data related to winter weather conditions that provide useful information regarding the impact of winter weather on road conditions. State‐of‐the‐art weather information can provide a clearer understanding of the severity of the weather, allowing INDOT to better evaluate their performance, assist with after‐action review of recent storms, and improve the reaction to future weather events.


The transient receptor potential (subfamily M, member 8; TRPM8) is a nonselective cation channel localized in primary sensory neurons, and is a candidate for cold thermosensing, mediation of cold pain, and bladder overactivity. Studies with TRPM8 knockout mice and selective TRPM8 channel blockers demonstrate a lack of cold sensitivity and reduced cold pain in various rodent models. Furthermore, TRPM8 blockers significantly lower body temperature. We have identified a moderately potent (IC50 = 103 nM), selective TRPM8 antagonist, PF-05105679 [(R)-3-[(1-(4-fluorophenyl)ethyl)(quinolin-3-ylcarbonyl)amino]methylbenzoic acid]. It demonstrated activity in vivo in the guinea pig bladder ice water and menthol challenge tests with an IC50 of 200 nM and reduced core body temperature in the rat (at concentrations >1219 nM). PF-05105679 was suitable for acute administration to humans and was evaluated for effects on core body temperature and experimentally induced cold pain, using the cold pressor test. Unbound plasma concentrations greater than the IC50 were achieved with 600- and 900-mg doses. The compound displayed a significant inhibition of pain in the cold pressor test, with efficacy equivalent to oxycodone (20 mg) at 1.5 hours postdose. No effect on core body temperature was observed. An unexpected adverse event (hot feeling) was reported, predominantly periorally, in 23 and 36% of volunteers (600- and 900-mg dose, respectively), which in two volunteers was nontolerable. In conclusion, this study supports a role for TRPM8 in acute cold pain signaling at doses that do not cause hypothermia.


Although urban agriculture as a way to come to sustainable urban food systems can be questioned and we have to be aware not falling into a 'local trap' regarding its benefits (Born & Purcell, 2006), initiatives for urban agriculture emerge all over the world. Some of these primarily focus on achieving social and educational goals while others try to become an (high tech) alternative to existing food supply chains. Whichever the goals of urban agriculture, in practice many of these initiatives have difficulties in their (logistics) operations. Research on urban agriculture and local‐for‐local food supply chains mainly focuses on environmental and economic benefits, alternative production techniques, short food supply chains (logistics infrastructure) or socio‐economic benefits of urban agriculture. So far, the alignment of urban agriculture goals with the chosen logistics concept – which includes more aspects than only infrastructure – has not gained much attention. This paper tries to fill this gap through an exploration of urban agriculture projects – both low and high tech – from around the world by using the integrated logistics concept (Van Goor et al., 2003). The main question to be answered in this paper is: to what extend can the integrated logistics concept contribute to understanding logistics drivers and barriers of urban agriculture projects? To answer this question, different urban agriculture projects were studied through information on their websites and an internet based questionnaire with key players in these projects. Our exploration shows that the ILC is a useful tool for determining logistics drivers and barriers and that there is much potential in using this concept when planning for successful urban agriculture projects.


Adjuvant chemotherapy has reduced the risk of tumor recurrence and improved survival in patients with resected colorectal cancer. Potential utility of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) prior to and post surgery has been reported across various solid tumors. We initiated a new type of adaptive platform trials to evaluate the clinical benefits of ctDNA analysis and refine precision adjuvant therapy for resectable colorectal cancer, named CIRCULATE‐Japan including three clinical trials. The GALAXY study is a prospectively conducted large‐scale registry designed to monitor ctDNA for patients with clinical stage II to IV or recurrent colorectal cancer who can undergo complete surgical resection. The VEGA trial is a randomized phase III study designed to test whether postoperative surgery alone is noninferior to the standard therapy with capecitabine plus oxaliplatin for 3 months in patients with high‐risk stage II or low‐risk stage III colon cancer if ctDNA status is negative at week 4 after curative surgery in the GALAXY study. The ALTAIR trial is a double‐blind, phase III study designed to establish the superiority of trifluridine/tipiracil as compared with placebo in patients with resected colorectal cancer who show circulating tumor–positive status in the GALAXY study. Therefore, CIRCULATE‐Japan encompasses both "de‐escalation" and "escalation" trials for ctDNA‐negative and ‐positive patients, respectively, and helps to answer whether measuring ctDNA postoperatively has prognostic and/or predictive value. Our ctDNA‐guided adaptive platform trials will accelerate clinical development toward further precision oncology in the field of adjuvant therapy. Analysis of ctDNA status could be utilized as a predictor of risk stratification for recurrence and to monitor the effectiveness of adjuvant chemotherapy. ctDNA is a promising, noninvasive tumor biomarker that can aid in tumor monitoring throughout disease management.


This article examines a problem faced by a firm procuring a material input or good from a set of suppliers. The cost to procure the material from any given supplier is concave in the amount ordered from the supplier, up to a supplier‐specific capacity limit. This NP‐hard problem is further complicated by the observation that capacities are often uncertain in practice, due for instance to production shortages at the suppliers, or competition from other firms. We accommodate this uncertainty in a worst‐case (robust) fashion by modeling an adversarial entity (which we call the "follower") with a limited procurement budget. The follower reduces supplier capacity to maximize the minimum cost required for our firm to procure its required goods. To guard against uncertainty, the firm can "protect" any supplier at a cost (e.g., by signing a contract with the supplier that guarantees supply availability, or investing in machine upgrades that guarantee the supplier's ability to produce goods at a desired level), ensuring that the anticipated capacity of that supplier will indeed be available. The problem we consider is thus a three‐stage game in which the firm first chooses which suppliers' capacities to protect, the follower acts next to reduce capacity from unprotected suppliers, and the firm then satisfies its demand using the remaining capacity. We formulate a three‐stage mixed‐integer program that is well‐suited to decomposition techniques and develop an effective cutting‐plane algorithm for its solution. The corresponding algorithmic approach solves a sequence of scaled and relaxed problem instances, which enables solving problems having much larger data values when compared to standard techniques. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2013


ABSTRACT Hawaii's current economic base is built upon military spending, tourism, and agriculture. During the decade of the '90s, all three segments have long-term problems that could bode ill for Hawaii if she continues to depend upon them for her economic foundation. Governmental and private planners are examining other alternatives, one of which is to make Hawaii the high technology east-west bridge between the United States and East Asia. This paper reviews those ingredients necessary for an innovative hot spot to be started and maintained, examines them in light of the current Hawaiian state, and provides recommendations on the steps necessary if Hawaii really does want to partake of the high tech scenario. INTRODUCTION Hawaii's current economic base is built upon an extensive military presence, tourism, and agriculture. That Hawaii has been successful is indicative in the extremely low unemployment seen in the isles. However, success could be fleeting in the decade to come. High land prices, high labor costs, and lower priced foreign competition have made agriculture an iffy proposition for the '90s. Within the next decade, even with expensive price supports, long term intensive agricultural pursuits, especially on Oahu, could well all but disappear, their economic importance minimized by the end of the decade. By way of contrast, military expenditures have been increasing. With the closing of Clark and Subic Bay in the Philippines, Hawaii appears the only secure long-term base the U.S. has in the Pacific. However, with the end of the cold war, overall military spending will only decrease. Even if the military presence on the island increased, the effect on the local labor force would be minimal. Most of the increase would be in transient military or civilian specialists from the mainland. Additional local jobs would be mainly in service or support functions. Tourism has boomed during the eighties and reaches nearly 8 million visitors a year. Eastbound tourism (mainly from Japan) is increasing rapidly as Hawaii becomes the major foreign destination for the Japanese. Tourism, though, is not a constant predictable force. The Japanese trade is erratic. In the mid-eighties, Japanese tourism to the Philippines vanished overnight due to one incident concerning a Japanese businessman. The impact of the Japanese economic slowdown, stock market crash, and real estate free-fall may mean the number of Japanese tourists to Hawaii may substantially slow down or even come to a sudden halt. If one major negative incident occurs (say, for example, a bombing in a Waikiki hotel by Hawaiian sovereignty forces), Japanese tourists may stay away in droves. The economic health of a resort is a fragile thing, as Atlantic City and many past glory spots now realize. If not kept up and in tune with tourists' expectations, those tourists leave forever. With the three currently strong legs of the Hawaiian economy displaying very fragile and weak long-term potential, other sectors of the economy must be examined. Grant Thornton of Bechtel Civil Inc., in his March 1989 report "Hawaii As An International Business Center," listed 21 potential business opportunities. The list included the development of Corporate Regional Headquarters, Education/Training Center, Pacific Islands Center, Convention and Conference Center, and Research Centers. The Governor's Congress on Hawaii's International Role held on December 6-7, 1988, provided a similar list of potential opportunities including the establishment of an Asia-Pacific Institute of Business and Commerce, an International Banking and Finance Center, a Honolulu Stock Exchange, a Cross-Cultural Center, a Sports/Wellness Fitness Center, and an International Training, Consulting and Research center. One idea focuses on Hawaii as a research center, a high tech East-West bridge between the United States and East Asia. High Tech has been shown to be a growth force in other parts of the United States. …


Purpose: The objective of this study is twofold. Firstly, to examine the extent of social and environmental reporting in Australia, selected Global Reporting Initiative (GRI, 2002) social and environmental reporting guidelines were used to determine the extent; secondly, to analyse the association between firm characteristics and Levels of Social and Environmental reporting (SER), regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses.Design/methodology/approach: This study investigated SER practices of 47 small and large Australian companies drawn from five industries. Using seventeen social and eighteen environmental disclosure indicators, the study evaluates disclosure information presented in annual reports. Regression analysis was used to empirically examine the determinants of SER.Findings: The results indicated that the extent of SER by Australian Companies was fairly low and the extent of total disclosure was significantly higher for large organisations in the Industrial Transport industry. Companies with negative return on total assets reported significantly higher social information. The extent of total disclosure was unrelated to an organisation's age and external auditor size.Originality/value: The study provided a detailed analysis of the SER from the developing economy perspective using GRI social and environmental performance indicators.Research limitations/implications: The study was limited by the use of selected GRI social and environmental indicators.Practical and Social implications: The paper argues for greater social and environmental accounting researcher engagement with SEA practice. The study showed the gap and challenge still lies ahead in improving the quantity and quality of SEA from a developed economy perspective.


Compounds from 36 commercial supplier libraries and the NCI open database were analysed to address the bias in structural features for the selection of small molecules for high-throughput screening (HTS). Initially a meta dataset consisting of 11.8 million unique structures was identified from 15.6 million compounds by eliminating redundant molecules from individual libraries. Then the selection of the HTS compounds from these libraries was accomplished using common structural filters, physicochemical filters and recently emerged descriptors. Compound libraries from different suppliers were also analysed according to their exclusiveness, 'drug-likeness' and scaffold similarities (using asymmetrical metrics). The results show that large libraries offer the biggest pool of 'drug-like' molecules with an optimal trade-off between the diversity of chemotypes and the variety of analogous compounds for biological screening.


This article examines the changing views of Israel in democratic Spain and its historical background. History plays an important part in the Spanish relationship to Israel: not only have Jewish people been for centuries an "absent presence" but, during the long period of the Franco dictatorship, Israel, as a model, has played an important role in the Spanish path to democracy. That democracy has been and still is the key point in Spain's relationship to Israel explains why democratic Spain is not essentially different from the rest of Europe in what relates to Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Even if manifestations of antisemitism are present in Spanish public opinion, many of the criticisms of Israel are not about antisemitism but of specific Israeli policies.


The article construes a modern concept of human dignity and factors influencing it. On the grounds of the Antique Greek-Roman notion of a human being as in-dividuus (Lat. not divisible, integral) and per-sona (Lat. mask, role played by an actor), the ambiguity of the human dignity is revealed: on one hand, every human being enjoys an unchangeable and non-deprivable dignity of the human being, on the other hand, the human being, as a creature and participant of social relations, himself/herself creates the dignity of a person. On the grounds of the hermeneutical attitude, it is shown that that human dignity (within the meaning of individuum) may be protected only by means of the guarantees of particular human rights and, vice versa, only by ensuring particular human rights one may also guarantee the protection of human dignity.


The way the vast majority of us think about the self, consciousness and free will is incorrect – dramatically out of step with what the majority of neuroscientists, cognitive psychologists scientists and analytic philosophers have to say about those subjects. One consequence of these erroneous views is that the manner in which the majority of us understand 'freedom' – as a metaphysical term and as a political concept -is sharply at odds with how things actually are. We replicate similar kinds of errors when we think about how various forms of human association are constructed and how change actually occurs within such associations. Once again, epistemological fallacies with regard to social theory have the consequence of leading us to attribute far greater 'freedom' to groups than they actually possess. This second misattribution of autonomy results in institutional political arrangements and constitutional doctrines at odds with what we know about the human condition. As things stand, the various models of political theory with which the South African Constitutional Court operates rest upon a belief that the rights and freedoms enshrined in the Final Constitution should enable individuals to exercise relatively unfettered control over decisions about the intimate relationships and the various practices deemed critical to their self-understanding. However, individual autonomy as a foundation for constitutional theory overemphasizes dramatically the actual space for self-defining choices. In truth, our experience of personhood, of self-consciousness, is a function of a complex set of narratives over which we exercise little in the way of (self) control. The involuntary and arational nature of identity formation – at the level of both the individual and the social -requires a constitutional theory that supplants the model of a rational individual moral agent which undergirds much of our current jurisprudence with a vision of the self that is more appropriately located within and determined by the associations to which we all belong. Despite the involuntary and arational nature of identity formation, we can live within communities that determine the greater part of the meaning we make, and still remain committed to the possibility of significant change (for the better) within those communities. This thesis then goes on to explain how a commitment to experimentalism in the political domain, when married to a robust conception of basic entitlements and citizenship, services human flourishing. (To expand the conditions for flourishing, however, is not to make us metaphysically 'free' to 'will' our actions: a commitment to flourishing reflects an attempt to create an environment in which all inhabitants of South Africa have the opportunity to live lives worth valuing.) Experimental constitutionalism dovetails with a very modest, naturalized account of flourishing because both accounts (1) take the radical givenness of existing constitutive attachments seriously; (2) recognize the boundedness of individual and collective rationality; and (3) describe various kinds of feedback mechanisms that allow for error correction and the enhancement of the conditions of being. Experimental constitutionalism, in particular, enables more citizens to see what 'works' and what doesn't – both with respect to the means and the ends of our existence. Experimental constitutionalism offers the promise of improving the conditions for being by suggesting a range of alterations in constitutional doctrine and a host of changes in the manner in which many political institutions operate. In South Africa, the innovations associated with experimental constitutional design embrace: (1) a doctrine of constitutional supremacy that maintains a meaningful equilibrium with a doctrine of separation of powers, and thus sets relatively clear guidelines for how authority for constitutional interpretation might best be shared by the judiciary, the legislature, the executive and non-state-actors; (2) the use of various standard judicial mechanisms – such as cost orders, court procedures, amici and intervenors, expanded constitutional jurisdiction and structural injunctions – to create bubbles of participatory democracy better able (than courts or legislatures) to resolve various kinds of polycentric conflict; (3) an approach to limitations analysis that provides a better process than 'balancing' for experimentalist adjudication; and (4) greater roles for Chapter 9 Institutions with respect to investigation, information-sharing and norm-setting; and (5) a principle of democracy that invites public participation in law-making that will both elicit better information about which government policies work best and effect widespread reflection about the meaning of those constitutional norms that govern our lives. The thesis then (a) mines the brief historical record of two important policy areas – Housing and Education – to show how the principles of experimental constitutionalism have already been put to work and (b) re-examines six Constitutional Court cases to demonstrate how the dual commitment to experimental constitutionalism and flourishing might generate more optimal outcomes.


The dependency between an adequate question formulation and correct answer selection is a very intriguing but still underexplored area. In this paper, we show that question rewriting (QR) of the conversational context allows to shed more light on this phenomenon and also use it to evaluate robustness of different answer selection approaches. We introduce a simple framework that enables an automated analysis of the conversational question answering (QA) performance using question rewrites, and present the results of this analysis on the TREC CAsT and QuAC (CANARD) datasets. Our experiments uncover sensitivity to question formulation of the popular state-of-the-art question answering approaches. Our results demonstrate that the reading comprehension model is insensitive to question formulation, while the passage ranking changes dramatically with a little variation in the input question. The benefit of QR is that it allows us to pinpoint and group such cases automatically. We show how to use this methodology to verify whether QA models are really learning the task or just finding shortcuts in the dataset, and better understand the frequent types of error they make.


Logistics is one of the main sectors in Greece and constitutes an important source of income, representing 10.85% of GDP, and amounts to 19.8 billion euro (according to a study EEL in 2014). The developments that have been observed in the logistics sector in relation to the ports over the last years have created the need to make ports part of the supply chain in order to provide value added services to customers. Ports and especially those for container ships are evolving rapidly, providing integrated solutions for the improvement of logistics. The free trade zones, the freight transport centers and container transport hubs are part of the ports with an ever-increasing role in the management of supply chain and logistics. During last years, the port of Piraeus has become a central gateway to the European market from third countries. In addition to the port's location, the warehouse center within the Piraeus Free Zone is also an important asset. The Free Zones are part of the customs territory of the European Community where non-Community goods which are under suspension of payment of import duties, taxes and commercial policy measures may enter and be stored until they are assigned a new customs regime [1]. Moreover, an important percentage of 3PL companies in Greece have been assigned as Authorized Economic Operators. This characteristic provides them the jurisdiction to use simplified customs procedures during import and export procedures. More and more companies are keen on using special customs regimes in Piraeus Port, as they intend to use Greece as their strategic hub in logistics in Europe or start trading within the country. Efficient procedures prior and during customs clearance can have a significant impact on eliminating delays, reducing administrative costs and improving the overall management of the supply chain. The benefits that will arise in favor of logistics by the use of special customs regimes are following: 1) Facilitating foreign trade by providing incentives for the collection and distribution of goods, thus contributing to the development of transit trade. 2) Support for business in logistics. 3) Possibility to provide VAT-exempt services in storage areas. 4) Possibility of transferring the ownership of goods, with VAT exemption, into storage areas. 5) Liquidity savings for firms. 6) Storage capacity of large quantities of goods. 7) Possibility of combining VAT facilities and simplified customs procedures. 8) Facilitating the channeling of domestic goods into international markets. 9) Investment and growth in work positions.


This paper addresses the question whether triple arrays can be constructed from Youden squares developed from difference sets. We prove that if the difference set is abelian, then having −1 as multiplier is both a necessary and sufficient condition for the construction to work. Using this, we are able to give a new infinite family of triple arrays. We also give an alternative and more direct version of the construction, leaving out the intermediate step via Youden squares. This is used when we analyse the case of non-abelian difference sets, for which we prove a sufficient condition for giving triple arrays. We do a computer search for such non-abelian difference sets, but have not found any examples satisfying the given condition.


This paper used a SET lens to firstly examine whether the quality of supervisor-subordinate relationships affects nurses" perceptions of wellbeing, and in turn, their level of affective commitment. Secondly, the paper examines whether the baby boomer cohort behaved differently from x-generation nurses. The findings indicate that both baby boomers (m=4.8) as well as generation x (m=4.3) nurses were at least somewhat satisfied with the quality of supervisor-subordinate relationships and that LMX in addition to wellbeing accounted for the variance of 17.9% of affective commitment. This means that the quality of the supervisorsubordinate relationship was somewhat instrumental in fostering effective sharing of information, resources and emotional support because they trust and respect one another. The major contribution of this paper is that it has identified that generational differences do exist in nursing and that has major implications for HR managers in retaining different generations of professionals that are already in limited supply today. It maybe that xgeneration nurses require other empowering processes and mechanisms so as to promote a positive perception of wellbeing. Such a position would be challenging to HR health managers who have not really addressed the possibility of different management strategies for different generations of professionals. In terms of the shortage of nurses in many OECD countries, it needs to be recognized that when nurses have a low perception of wellbeing, the costs become evident in terms of increased sick leave, decreased efficiency on the job, early retirement, resignation, and the cost of trying to find new staff members Hence, a generational stratified approach to HR maybe the future for retaining both baby boomers and x-generation professionals longer. More research is required to explore similar themes across OECD countries and for different professionals


In the present study, the methanol, acetone and chloroform extracts of the lichen Usnea florida (L.) were tested for antibacterial, antifungal and antituberculosis potential. The disk diffusion method was used for the investigation of antimicrobial activity and the minimal inhibitory concentration was identified against thirteen species of bacteria, four species of yeasts, and eight species of fungi. Strong activity toward bacteria and yeasts was determined in all extracts. However, there was no strong activity toward filamentous fungi. Bioactive substances of lichen Usnea florida were demonstrated with the bio autography in thin layer chromatography. Thamnolic acid was found to be an active substance with 200-400 μg/ml concentration. As a result, the lichen may be used as a possible antimicrobial agent in various applications in the food industry and for the purpose of controlling different diseases.


SUMMARY A pulmonary cavity is a gas-filled area of the lung in the center of a nodule or area of consolidation and may be clinically observed by use of plain chest radiography or computed tomography. Cavities are present in a wide variety of infectious and noninfectious processes. This review discusses the differential diagnosis of pathological processes associated with lung cavities, focusing on infections associated with lung cavities. The goal is to provide the clinician and clinical microbiologist with an overview of the diseases most commonly associated with lung cavities, with attention to the epidemiology and clinical characteristics of the host.