Celebrity, Aspiration and Contemporary Youth uses the lens of celebrity to explore how young people think about their futures under austerity. Based on an interdisciplinary study, the book offers fresh insights into contemporary youth aspirations and inequalities. It helps us to understand young people's transitions into adulthood at a time of socio-economic 'crisis'. Drawing on original data, the authors examine what it means for young people to be forming their aspirations within the context of 'austere meritocracy'. The book addresses three central questions: What kinds of futures do young people desire and imagine for themselves? What is required of young people in the process of achieving these futures? And how are inequalities embedded and reproduced within these?
Using young people's 'celebrity talk' to explore their aspirations, the authors challenge stereotypes of young people as a fame-hungry, get-rich-quick generation. Instead, they show how young people engage critically with celebrity and its discourses. Key chapters focus on how young people talk about youth, work, authenticity, success, happiness, money and fame in relation to their own lives and those of celebrities. Each of these chapters contains a case study of an international celebrity, including, Beyonce, Will Smith, Bill Gates, Prince Harry and Kim Kardashian.
The authors conclude with possibilities for social change. They show that celebrity offers an important way of working with young people to critically explore what futures are possible and for whom.


We study the performance of a nonlinear lossless polarizer (NLP), the device that transforms an input arbitrary state of polarization (SOP) of a signal beam into one and the same SOP toward the output and, unlike conventional passive polarizers, performs this transformation without polarization-dependent losses. The operation principle of this device is based on the nonlinear rotation of the SOP of the strong signal beam under the interaction with a copropagating strong pump beam in a Kerr medium, which in our case is a telecom fiber. We quantify the performance of this NLP by introducing the notion of instantaneous degree of polarization, which is a natural extension of the conventional notion of the degree of polarization appropriate for CW beams to the case of pulses whose SOP is not constant across the pulse. We pay particular attention to the regime when signal and pump beams experience a walk-off in the dispersive medium. In particular, we demonstrate that a signal pulse experiences much stronger repolarization when the walk-off effect is present as compared with the case of no walk-off. We also study the degradation of the efficiency of the NLP in the presence of polarization mode dispersion.


The paper provides a description of the algorithm, an example of a specific task, and the results of the optimization of a 15-stage three-spool compressor for a ground-based GTU by the efficiency criteria of the engine. It can be performed by using the proposed algorithm to find such a compressor configuration that will be not just the optimum compressor, but the best option for working as part of the engine under the specified operating conditions and with various types of required restrictions. Using the proposed algorithm, varying only the stagger angles of the profiles, the authors managed to find a way to increase the overall efficiency of the NK-36ST engine by 0.43%. Obviously, it is possible to achieve a more impressive result and at the same time to increase reliability, reduce the weight and cost of the engine by applying more complex models by changing the shape of the blade profiles.


The most successful graduate program for the training and formation of Catholic school administrators is without a doubt the Institute for Catholic Educational Leadership (ICEL) at the University of San Francisco. This article describes the history and current structure of the ICEL program and provides a replicable model for other Catholic colleges and universities with the institutional commitment to offer graduate degree programs for Catholic school leaders.


The majority of biotech research and almost all of the commercialization of genetically engineered crops has been done by private firms based in industrialized countries. The dominance of the private sector in biotechnology research and product development has raised concern in developing countries that their farmers – particularly poor farmers – may not benefit from biotechnology either because it is not available or is too expensive. This paper examines the consequences of the emergence of a few large companies as the leaders in the commercialization of biotechnology and analyses a number of concerns about who benefits from biotech research. It reviews the status of crop biotechnology research worldwide and analyses the influence of intellectual property rights and market concentration on the development and diffusion of new technology. The paper explores the potential of public-private partnerships recommends policy measures and investments that could focus more biotechnology research on the problems of the poor and alleviate some of the concerns about the impacts of biotechnology. This paper was prepared as background material for the 2003 issue of The State of Food and Agriculture, which has the theme "Agricultural Biotechnology: Meeting the Needs of the Poor?" Several companion papers are also available in the ESA Working Paper series.


Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia affecting 47 million people worldwide and rising numbers are predicted for the future, as increasing life expectancy denotes increased risk of developing AD. The disease constitutes an enormous burden for our society. Despite numerous therapeutical approaches, a cure for AD has not been found yet.
One hallmark of AD is the accumulation of amyloid beta (Abeta) which is intensively studied and widely considered as molecular explanation for the synaptic pathology in AD. Today's therapeutic strategies target AD symptoms and first mechanistic approaches, including interference with Abeta production, are failing in clinical trials. Hence, it remains of utmost importance to further understand the fundamental biology of AD-related physiology in order to develop successful therapeutic strategies. Abeta is a cleavage product of the amyloid precursor protein (APP). However, the physiological functions of APP remain less well understood and previous investigations have been mainly confined to neurons.
Neuronal information flow between pre- and postsynapse is strongly dependent on the adjacent astrocytes that are involved in synaptic information processing, transmission and plasticity. Synaptic plasticity is considered to be the underlying mechanisms of learning and memory. In the present work, the physiological role of APP was investigated both in synaptic plasticity and associated astrocytes in a constitutive and conditional knock-out model of APP (APP-KO).
In the first part of this work, the role of APP in structural and functional synaptic
plasticity is characterised in the cortex and hippocampus. The density and morphology of postsynaptic compartments -the dendritic spines- display reduced plasticity when APP is lacking in both neurons and astrocytes of the cortex. The reduced plasticity does not involve excitatory receptor composition. Selective KO of APP in adjacent astrocytes results in decreased plastic spines in the cortex, while increased spine number and more stable spines are observed in the hippocampus. Additionally, APP-KO mice display functional plasticity deficits in the hippocampus manifested by reduced synaptic signalling strength. The gliotransmitter D-serine is released by astrocytes and potentiates functional plasticity in neurons. As extracellular levels of D-serine are reduced in APP-KO animals, application of D-serine was tested for rescue of the functional plasticity deficits.
The second part of this work focuses on the role of APP in astrocytes as active partners in synaptic activity. Spontaneous Ca2+ activity, that is responsible for numerous cellular processes and gliotransmission, was investigated in the astrocytic contact sites to synapses. Ca2+ transients are shown to be reduced in the perisynaptic sites of APP-KO astrocytes in the cortex and hippocampus. The Ca2+ activity is regulated by mitochondria that are dysfunctional in APP-KO astrocytes evidenced by fragmented morphology and prolonged Ca2+ uptake and release duration.
In summary, these findings ascribe a physiological role to APP in synaptic plasticity and in associated astrocytic function. These insights are crucial for understanding the biology of AD and for developing new therapeutic strategies.


This paper discusses the application of the new European rules for burden-sharing and bail-in in the banking sector, in view of their ability to accommodate broader policy goals of aggregate financial stability. It finds that the Treaty principles and the new discipline of state aid and the restructuring of banks provide a solid framework for combating moral hazard and removing incentives that encourage excessive risk-taking by bankers. However, the application of the new rules may have become excessively attentive to the case-by-case evaluation of individual institutions, while perhaps losing sight of the aggregate policy needs of the banking system. Indeed, in this first phase of the banking union, while large segments of the EU banking sector still require a substantial restructuring and recapitalisation, the market may not be able to provide all the needed resources in the current environment of depressed profitability and low growth. Thus, a systemic market failure may be making the problem impossible to fix without resorting to temporary public support. But the risk of large write-offs of capital instruments due to burden-sharing and bail-in may represent an insurmountable obstacle to such public support as it may set in motion an investors' flight. The paper concludes by showing that existing rules do contain the flexibility required to accommodate aggregate policy requirements in the general interest, and outlines a public support scheme for the precautionary recapitalisation of solvent banks that would be compliant with EU law.


Many theories of deep learning have shown that a deep network can require dramatically fewer resources to represent a given function compared to a shallow network. But a question remains: can these efficient representations be learned using current deep learning techniques? In this work, we test whether standard deep learning methods can in fact find the efficient representations posited by several theories of deep representation. Specifically, we train deep neural networks to learn two simple functions with known efficient solutions: the parity function and the fast Fourier transform. We find that using gradient-based optimization, a deep network does not learn the parity function, unless initialized very close to a hand-coded exact solution. We also find that a deep linear neural network does not learn the fast Fourier transform, even in the best-case scenario of infinite training data, unless the weights are initialized very close to the exact hand-coded solution. Our results suggest that not every element of the class of compositional functions can be learned efficiently by a deep network, and further restrictions are necessary to understand what functions are both efficiently representable and learnable.


I consider as misplaced the current emphasis on income and wealth inequalities as compared to the socially more relevant consumption inequalities, which have been significantly reduced over the last decades and most likely for a much longer period of time. One important factor has been the development of social transfers in kind which add significant resources to the lowest income quintile as compared to the highest quintile. I present the main characteristics of developments of income and wealth inequalities over time (since 1920): The share of the top 1% of earners followed a downward trend until the 1970-79 decade, and an upward trend afterwards, reaching in the 2010-19 decade a level similar to that of the 1920-29 decade. The share of the top 10% of earners followed a similar movement. The same picture is observed for wealth inequality. Similar increases in income inequality over the last four decades are also observed in music and sports.


1. Cholesteryl ester transfer protein activity may have a physiological effect on high-density lipoprotein levels. 2. We examined restriction fragment length polymorphisms associated with the cholesteryl ester transfer protein gene and the apolipoprotein AI gene in a group of 60 unrelated subjects selected from an initial survey of 5000 subjects on the basis of their high-density lipoprotein levels being high or low at the extremes of the distribution. The activities of cholesteryl ester transfer protein and lecithin:cholesterol acyltransferase (phosphatidylcholine-sterol acyltransferase, EC 18.104.22.168) were also determined. Analysis by selection of those with a low high-density lipoprotein cholesterol level (less than or equal to 1.1 for males, less than or equal to 1.2 for females) gave 32 individuals with 24% B2 alleles. Selection of subjects with a high-density lipoprotein cholesterol level (less than or equal to 2 mmol/l) gave 17 with 62% B2 alleles. 3. The group with low levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol had higher activity of cholesteryl ester transfer protein and significantly elevated triacylglycerol levels when compared with the group with high levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol. 4. A further significant finding was the correlation of the MspI restriction fragment length polymorphism detected by the apolipoprotein AI gene with lecithin:cholesterol acyltransferase activity.


One of the issues in tuning an output probability of a Bayesian network by changing multiple parameters is the relative amount of the individual parameter changes. In an existing heuristic parameters are tied such that their changes induce locally a maximal change of the tuned probability. This heuristic, however, may reduce the attainable values of the tuned probability considerably. In another existing heuristic parameters are tied such that they simultaneously change in the entire interval . The tuning range of this heuristic will in general be larger then the tuning range of the locally optimal heuristic. Disadvantage, however, is that knowledge of the local optimal change is not exploited. In this paper a heuristic is proposed that is locally optimal, yet covers the larger tuning range of the second heuristic. Preliminary experiments show that this heuristic is a promising alternative.


Research has downplayed the complex discursive processes and practices through which decisions are constructed and blurs the relationship between macro- and micro-levels. The article argues for a critical and ecologically valid approach that articulates how discursive practices are influenced by, and in turn shape, the organizational settings in which they occur. It makes a methodological contribution using decision-making episodes of a senior management team meeting of a multinational company to demonstrate the insights that can be obtained from embedding the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) within a longitudinal ethnography. The approach illuminates the latent and intricate power dynamics and range of potentials of agents, triangulating micro-level discursive strategies with macro-level historical sources and background knowledge on the social and political fields. The article also makes a theoretical contribution by demonstrating the dependency of decision outcomes on often unpredictable and subtle changes in the power—context relationship.


Social network sites are ubiquitous and now constitute a common tool people use to interact with one another in daily life. Here we review the consequences of interacting with social network sites for subjective well-being—that is, how people feel moment-to-moment and how satisfied they are with their lives. We begin by clarifying the constructs that we focus on in this review: social network sites and subjective well-being. Next, we review the literature that explains how these constructs are related. This research reveals: (a) negative relationships between passively using social network sites and subjective well-being, and (b) positive relationships between actively using social network sites and subjective well-being, with the former relationship being more robust than the latter. Specifically, passively using social network sites provokes social comparisons and envy, which have negative downstream consequences for subjective well-being. In contrast, when active usage of social network sites predicts subjective well-being, it seems to do so by creating social capital and stimulating feelings of social connectedness. We conclude by discussing the policy implications of this work.


Cash flow forecasting and cash budgeting have gained a great deal of popularity among entrepreneurs in recent years. Forecasting is now used by many managers as a basis for preparation of their plans including budgeting. While forecasts are hardly accurate, the inaccuracy in forecasts should not be used as an excuse for not realizing management's plans. In the retail automotive sector, poor cash management has been blamed as a major factor in the demise of many dealerships. In the first part of the 1980's alone, over 4,276 auto dealerships went out of business, many of the remaining saw profits skid to a near break-even level. Despite significant increases in dealership revenue, dealers are experiencing sizable declines in their profit margins. While revenues increased over the last decade, primarily from rising prices, dealership profits dropped considerably (an average dealership revenues increased from $10 million in 1985 to over $12 million in 1989, while profits dropped from $224 thousands to $123 thousands during the same period). Such anomalous behavior of the operating results is indeed symptomatic of automotive dealerships' serious managerial and financial problems. A major reason for this phenomenon, recognized by the dealers who participated in a recent survey, was poor cash budgeting and forecasting practices. Many dealers expressed great concerns about their inability to monitor their cash management and cash flow positions. Also, they showed a strong interest in using budgeting techniques for planning and controlling dealerships' cash operations. The primary purpose of this study is to demonstrate a sales forecasting and cash budgeting model for automobile dealerships which can be easily used with small scale microcomputers. For automobile dealerships "business as usual" is no longer satisfactory. Staying one step ahead of competitors, or at the very least moving along, requires appropriate planning and forecasting of future conditions. The proposed budgeting technique, although widely used by many large businesses, has not yet been fully utilized in the retail automotive sector. Dealers by using this computerized budgeting can better plan their cash disbursements including capital expansions, marketing activities and other operating expenses, as well as finding answers to their "what if" questions. An additional advantage of this budgeting tool is that it allows better coordination of dealership operations including new and used cars, parts and service. With this computerized system, cash balances, which are influenced not only by car sales but also by other aspects of dealership activities, can be evaluated with more ease than with conventional systems. In addition, since this type of budgeting can be used to test different fiscal policies, ways to improve business performance may also be investigated. CASH BUDGETING RESEARCH Cash flow planning and cash budgeting have received much attention in the literature in recent years. Gullapalli claims that cash budgeting and planning short-term financial requirements have become major responsibilities of financial management. More importantly, cash flow projections have been recognized as a key to long-term financial prosperity. There is ample evidence that larger and more successful companies have long realized the value of using cash budgeting to anticipate their cash needs and to ensure that their profits are not depressed by holding either too much or too little cash. Although previous studies have addressed computerized budgeting techniques, their methods generally involve complex mathematical forecasts and simulation techniques which can be used only with mainframe computers. These techniques, while useful for larger firms, may be of little benefit to automotive dealerships with no mainframe capabilities. In contrast, the current study focuses on a simple cash budgeting model that can be used by both small and large automotive outlets who have access to microcomputers, with perhaps no programming capability. …


This paper focuses on the development and evaluation of a haptic enhanced virtual reality system which allows a human user to make physical handshakes with a virtual partner through a haptic interface. Multimodal feedback signals are designed to generate the illusion that a handshake with a robotic arm is a handshake with another human. Advanced controllers of the haptic interface are developed to respond to user behaviors online. Techniques to achieve online behavior generation are presented, such as a hidden-Markov-model approach to human interaction strategy estimation. Human-robot handshake experiments were carried out to evaluate the performance of the system. Two different approaches to haptic rendering were compared in experiments: a controller in basic mode with an embedded curve in the robot that disregards the human partner, and an interactive robot controller for online behavior generation. The two approaches were compared with the ground truth of another human driving the robot via teleoperation instead of the controller implementing a virtual partner. In the evaluation results, the human approach is rated to be most human-like, with the interactive controller following closely behind, followed by the controller in basic mode. This paper mainly concentrates on discussing the development of the haptic rendering algorithm for the handshaking system, its integration with visual and haptic cues, and reports about the results of subjective evaluation experiments that were carried out.


Pioneer Day at the National Computer Conference (NCC) has been organized by the History of Computing Committee (HOCC) of the American Federation of Information Processing Societies (AFIPS) since 1974, and has been a formal part of the NCC operations since 1979. It differs from a "normal" program in that although the topic is well defined in the same manner as other NCC programs, solicitation of presentations does not necessarily imply the production of formal papers-nor an open invitation for any author to submit proposed topics for inclusion in the sessions. An essential part of the work of the person who chairs Pioneer Day is the research that forms a backdrop against which the NCC sessions are placed. In some sense, Pioneer Day is the result of an extensive research program sponsored by HOCC and NCC instead of being a vehicle for the presentation of independently supported activities.


Present theory of marine community structure includes the effect of environmental factors that act upon larval survival on distribution and abundance of benthic adults. The theory assumes that pre-settlement environmental factors produce a direct effect at the population level, determining the abundance of individuals that enter the benthic habitat. These are density effects that propagate from the larval to the benthic phase (abbreviated here as DEMPHs). However, recent information suggests that pre-settlement factors may also produce an effect on population abundance, mediated by changes in traits of settlers. For instance, larvae experiencing food stress may give rise to juveniles with reduced energy reserves, growth rate, and in consequence with a low life expectancy. Thus, such trait-mediated (e.g. life historical, physiological) effects propagate through different life phases of the complex life cycles of benthic invertebrates, ultimately affecting juvenile survival. In this paper, I discuss the potential role of this special kind of trait-mediated effect (abbreviated here as DELPHIs) on benthic communities. I show that DELPHIs may affect the shape of the stock-settlement function leading to an erroneous interpretation of the role of post-settlement factors on benthic communities. Mortality due to DELPHIs is the consequence of pre-settlement factors but may be confounded with mortality due to post-settlement factors. In this regard, I conclude that the only solution to avoid this error is to incorporate measurements of traits of individuals in settlement and recruitment studies. Besides, DELPHIs may allow for complex interactions between pre- and post-settlement processes, suggesting that dichotomous views about the role of pre- and post-settlement processes are not appropriate. Finally, I suggest that future field research in benthic communities should incorporate an estimation of DELPHIs as a tool to expand, and thus improve, marine community theory.


Constitutionalists believe that the Equal Protection Clause died during the early decades of the twentieth century. We aim to correct the record on this claim and, in the process, demonstrate equality's long held aspirations to political theory. Decades before Professor John Hart Ely and public choice, equal protection aspired to be a principle of governance as much as a principle of classification or discrimination. This tradition was not limited as is modern equality law to race, sex, or even caste, but aimed to tie equality to the duties of representatives to govern for all, not simply for some. This Article argues that early twentieth-century equal protection law strove in imperfect ways for a theory of abusive representation; it naively hoped that the generality of legislation could bind majorities to minorities. To resurrect and articulate an analogous modern theory would require far more than law-office history; it would require fleshing out what the old theory of equality failed to do: to construct a convergence-forcing method that would tie the fate of legislative majorities to that of minorities. In that spirit, we offer a proposal that emphasizes (a la the new governance literature) the power of "embedded constitutionalism," a proposal that combats abusive representation by forcing the active consideration and deliberation of constitutional values in more powerful institutions" in this case, legislatures.


The purpose of the study was to investigate the way in which resources were allocated within non-government schools in Australia. A particular emphasis was the study of the budgeting process in schools which had been identified as effective schools and the identification of the skills evident in those who were involved. The study formed the non-government schools component of the Effective Resource Allocation in Schools Project, a Project of National Significance funded by the Commonwealth Schools Commission.
The first stage of the study was a survey of systemic education offices to investigate the manner in which funds were allocated to schools. A questionnaire was sent to all offices in Australia and details sought on the extent to which budgetary decisions were decentralized to the schools. It was found that the extent to which the individual school was involved tended to vary according to the category of expenditure being considered, and that the individual school had more influence in the areas of teaching materials than in any other area. On the basis of the survey results Tasmania and South Australia were chosen as the two states for further study. Systemic offices in these two states gave individual schools a reasonable degree of autonomy in budgeting decisions.
The second stage of the study was a survey of a representative sample of the non-government schools in South Australia and Tasmania. The questionnaire sought information on budgeting within schools and, particularly, the involvement of various parties in the decision making process. Data were analysed to identify any variations in practice according to the type of school (systemic or non-systemic, large or small, primary or secondary). The survey package also sought opinions from principals, board members, teachers and parents on aspects of budgeting theory and practice, and indications of the satisfaction of these parties with their level of involvement in the budgeting process.
It was found that budgeting tended to be a centralized process in most schools, with the main parties involved being the principal, bursar and board of management. There was general satisfaction with the degree of involvement in the budgeting process, although teachers and parents wished to be more involved in some areas. The educational role of budgeting was accepted by most, and the importance of training in budgeting acknowledged.
The third stage of the study comprised case studies of eight schools in South Australia and eight in Tasmania. These schools had been identified as effective by a number of knowledgeable 'raters'. The purpose was to see how these schools allocated their resources and to identify the skills evident in those involved in the budgeting process.
The case studies showed that the schools had a well organized and timetabled budgeting process, and that an atmosphere of open communication existed in matters related to resource allocation. Teachers tended only to be involved in areas that closely affected them, such as teaching materials, library materials and furniture. There was generally a formalised procedure for evaluating the budget financially but that educational evaluation was carried out on a much more informal basis. Most principals had not had any training in financial management but saw training in the school situation as the main source of their expertise. There was no uniform pattern of resource allocation in these effective schools.
The implications of the results from the study concern the role of teachers in the resource allocation process. It was shown that although teachers tended not to be involved to a great degree, many of the respondents felt that involvement of teachers would be motivating and lead to greater efficiency. Many also felt that teacher education programs should contain a component on budgeting. Further implications concerned the provision of training in budgeting skills for others connected with schools, and the integration of financial and educational planning to ensure that educational goals are matched by the pattern of resource allocation.


This guide covers ancient and modern cultures of Brittany and Normandy and includes practical listings. It has detailed information on public transport of all kinds, plus helpful hints on getting around by bike and long-distance hiking holidays. The mainstream sites receive coverage, but the guide also singles out dozens of unexpected discoveries and unlikely attractions, and includes the practical requirements of eating and sleeping nearby. The third edition has been revised and updated and includes an entire new section on Breton music, placing it within the Celtic tradition and detailing festivals and other opportunities to experience it. The book includes up-to-date shopping details for every channel port and hotel and restaurant listings to cover every taste and budget.


Time is an important dimension in our physical world. Lots of facts can evolve with respect to time. For example, the U.S. President might change every four years. Therefore, it is important to consider the time dimension and empower the existing QA models to reason over time. However, the existing QA datasets contain rather few time-sensitive questions, hence not suitable for diagnosing or benchmarking the model's temporal reasoning capability. In order to promote research in this direction, we propose to construct a time-sensitive QA dataset. The dataset is constructed by 1) mining time-evolving facts from WikiData and aligning them to their corresponding Wikipedia page, 2) employing crowd workers to verify and calibrate these noisy facts, 3) generating question-answer pairs based on the annotated time-sensitive facts. Our dataset poses challenges in the aspect of both temporal understanding and temporal reasoning. We evaluate different SoTA long-document QA systems like BigBird and FiD on our dataset. The best-performing model FiD can only achieve 46\% accuracy, still far behind the human performance of 87\%. We demonstrate that these models are still lacking the ability to perform consistent temporal reasoning. Therefore, we believe that our dataset could serve as a benchmark to develop NLP models more sensitive to temporal shifts. The dataset and code are released in~\url{https://github.com/wenhuchen/Time-Sensitive-QA}.


The persistence of cold-adapted species along their equatorial range edge (i.e., southern range edge for species in the Northern Hemisphere and northern range edge for species in the Southern Hemisphere) is threatened by climate change. These species will be challenged not just by unfavorable climatic regimes, but also by changing biotic interactions, which may be more intense along equatorial edges. However, we currently have a poor understanding of the nature of biotic interactions at range edges and how climate may mediate those interactions, particularly for cold-adapted mammals. We studied the distribution of threatened Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis) at their southern range edge in northern Washington, United States from 2014 to 2016. Using data collected from 397 camera-trap stations in snow-on and snow-off seasons, and single- and 2-species occupancy models, we investigated seasonal patterns of habitat selection and spatial association of lynx with their primary prey (snowshoe hares, Lepus americanus) and potential competitors (bobcats, Lynx rufus; cougars, Puma concolor). Single-species occupancy models revealed lynx distribution was strongly associated with snowshoe hare abundance and topographic variables related to lower temperatures and increased moisture. In contrast, bobcats and cougars were more generalized in their habitat associations or displayed the reverse response to environmental variables. Spatial overlap of the 3 felid species increased during snow-off seasons. Two-species occupancy models showed a decrease in use of camera sites by lynx when bobcats were present, suggesting lynx were avoiding their warm-adapted competitor. Taken together, these results suggest that biotic interactions are partly shaping large-scale lynx distribution patterns along their southern range edge. Increasing temperatures and loss of snow may result in a combination of habitat isolation and potential for increased competitive interactions for lynx at the margins of their range.


In many European estuaries, extensive intertidal habitats could vanish in the future due to rising sea levels that squeeze tidal flats against established sea defences. The remaining intertidal area is likely to become steeper with coarser sediment, and saline water may intrude upstream due to increased water depth and enhanced wave energy. This paper investigates the impacts of sea-level rise on benthic macrofauna in an intertidal habitat in the Humber estuary, UK. Field surveys were conducted between 2003 and 2004 to examine spatial patterns of benthic macrofaunal biomass along the estuarine longitudinal gradient and the local beach width gradient. Multiple regression analysis revealed that >80% of the observed variation in biomass of the 2 dominant bivalve species Macoma balthica and Cerastoderma edule, and the total biomass of other macrobenthic species, could be explained by key environmental variables such as salinity, sediment characteristics and morphological factors. Physical data for the Humber estuary were assessed to predict the likely course of changes in these key environmental variables in response to sea-level rise. Model simulations showed that a sea-level rise of 0.3 m would result in a 6.7% loss of intertidal area and 6.9% loss of total macrobenthic biomass, and that saline intrusion could partly compensate for such loss of macrobenthic biomass. However, associated environmental changes, such as beach slope steepening and sedimentary shifts, could have overriding negative impacts with potential loss of macrobenthic biomass of up to 22.8%, depending on the extent of environmental changes.


Interspecific hybridization is a common mechanism enabling genetic diversification and adaptation; however, the detection of hybrid species has been quite difficult. The identification of microbial hybrids is made even more complicated, as most environmental microbes are resistant to culturing and must be studied in their native mixed communities. We have previously adapted the chromosome conformation capture method Hi-C to the assembly of genomes from mixed populations. Here, we show the method's application in assembling genomes directly from an uncultured, mixed population from a spontaneously inoculated beer sample. Our assembly method has enabled us to de-convolute 4 bacterial and 4 yeast genomes from this sample, including a putative yeast hybrid. Downstream isolation and analysis of this hybrid confirmed its genome to consist of Pichia membranifaciens and that of another related, but undescribed yeast. Our work shows that Hi-C-based metagenomic methods can overcome the limitation of traditional sequencing methods in studying complex mixtures of genomes.


Background: Most studies show that women with symptoms of acute coronary syndrome (ACS) delay seeking care longer than men do. Contributing factors include women being more likely to experience diverse symptoms, to experience symptoms that do not match preexisting symptom expectations, to interpret symptoms as noncardiac, and to minimize symptoms until they become incapacitating. Objective: The aim of the study is to identify factors influencing women's ability to recognize and accurately interpret symptoms of suspected ACS. Methods: This qualitative study used in-depth interviews with 18 women diagnosed with ACS to determine how they recognized, interpreted, and acted on symptoms. An interview guide developed from the author's initial research was used to provide structure for the process. Results: All of the women went through a process of recognizing and interpreting their symptoms. Eight women had symptoms arise abruptly. Most of these women recognized a change immediately, "knew" to go for treatment, and did so quickly. Three women had vague symptoms that started slowly, converting unexpectedly to intense symptoms prompting them to seek care urgently. The remaining 7 women had evolving symptoms, were more likely to interpret symptoms as unrelated to their heart, and avoided disclosing symptoms to others. Despite recognizing that the situation may be serious, women with evolving symptoms adopted a wait-and-see approach. Conclusion: Women with less severe, intermittent, or evolving symptoms are at increased risk for delayed presentation, diagnosis, and treatment for ACS. These women should be targeted for educational and behavioral interventions.


The sorting of high-ability workers is often advanced as one source of spatial disparities in economic outcomes. There are still few papers that analyze when human capital sorting occurs and whom it involves. Using data on 16 cohorts of university graduates in Sweden, we demonstrate significant sorting to urban regions on high school grades and education levels of parents, i.e., two attributes typically associated with latent abilities that are valued in the labor market. A large part of this sorting has already occurred in deciding where to study, because the top universities in Sweden are predominantly located in urban regions. The largest part of directed sorting on ability indicators occurs in the decision of where to study. Even after controlling for sorting prior to labor market entry, the "best and brightest" are still more likely to start working in urban regions. However, this effect appears to be driven by Sweden's main metropolitan region, Stockholm. We find no influence of our ability indicators on the probability of starting to work in urban regions after graduation when Stockholm is excluded. Studies of human capital sorting need to account for selection processes to and from universities, because neglecting mobility prior to labor market entry is likely to lead to an underestimation of the extent of the sorting to urban regions.


Lloyd's is analysed within the framework provided by Kay (1995) on 'distinctive capabilities' - architecture, innovation and reputation. An examination of Lloyd's reveals that a dominant feature of the Society is cooperation between syndicates which occurs via a method of trading - the subscription system - and as a consequence of the rulings of the Council of Lloyd's.
Lloyd's has a reputation for innovation and entrepreneurism. This research argues that this is a direct result of four distinctive aspects of its architecture - syndicates are entrepreneurial organisations, the subscription system of risk placement, the unique capital base of unlimited liability Names and the presence of the Central Fund. The research reveals that Lloyd's is centered on the primacy of underwriting and that the existence of the Central Fund encourages new syndicates to form. The dynamic of a Lloyd's syndicate is that of a small business - a small number of people working towards a common goal. Moreover the unique capital base, composed entirely of individuals, does not have a voice in the day-to-day underwriting affairs of the syndicates. This allows underwriters complete freedom to underwrite and to change underwriting policy if opportunities arise. The subscription system of risk placement encourages innovative underwriting and ensures information flows between underwriters.
This author suggests that the introduction of a new capital base, limited liability incorporated investors, may stifle the entrepreneurial nature of Lloyd's underwriters and pose a threat to the subscription system of risk placement. These investors are purchasing Managing Agents, the management structure of syndicates, as well as investing in syndicates. This research suggests that this new capital base challenges the appropriateness of the current regulatory structure and well as posing a threat to the continued existence of the Central Fund. This author recommends that Lloyd's should abandon self-regulation and should instead be regulated by the Department of Trade and Industry. Furthermore, this author suggests that the Market Board and Regulatory Board should be replaced by a Business Development Board.


In order to achieve efficient execution plans for queries comprising userdefined data types and predicates, the database system has to be provided with appropriate index structures, query processing methods, and optimization rules. Although available extensible indexing frameworks provide a gateway to seamlessly integrate user-defined access methods into the standard process of query optimization and execution, they do not facilitate the actual implementation of the access method itself. An internal enhancement of the database kernel is usually not an option for database developers. The embedding of a custom block-oriented index structure into concurrency control, recovery services and buffer management would cause extensive implementation efforts and maintenance cost, at the risk of weakening the reliability of the entire system. The server stability can be preserved by delegating index operations to an external process, but this approach induces severe performance bottlenecks due to context switches and inter-process communication. Therefore, we present in this paper the paradigm of relational access methods that perfectly fits to the common relational data model and is highly compatible with the extensible indexing frameworks of existing object-relational database systems.


Abstract. Knowledge of how uncertainty propagates through a hydrological land surface modelling sequence is of crucial importance in the identification and characterisation of system weaknesses in the prediction of droughts and floods at global scale. We evaluated the performance of five state-of-the-art global hydrological and land surface models in the context of modelling extreme conditions (drought and flood). Uncertainty was apportioned between model used (model skill) and also the satellite-based precipitation products used to drive the simulations (forcing data variability) for extreme values of precipitation, surface runoff and evaporation. We found in general that model simulations acted to augment uncertainty rather than reduce it. In percentage terms, the increase in uncertainty was most often less than the magnitude of the input data uncertainty, but of comparable magnitude in many environments. Uncertainty in predictions of evapotranspiration lows (drought) in dry environments was especially high, indicating that these circumstances are a weak point in current modelling system approaches. We also found that high data and model uncertainty points for both ET lows and runoff lows were disproportionately concentrated in the equatorial and southern tropics. Our results are important for highlighting the relative robustness of satellite products in the context of land surface simulations and identifying areas where improvements may be made in the consistency of simulation models.


The urban housing question in Zimbabwe has been debated for a long time yet without paying adequate attention to the plight of the life experienced by hostel dwellers in the former 'bachelor' hostels. These, in Mbare, Harare, now accommodate thousands of families. Such ambivalence to discourse has denied the inhabitants stake in a number of social well-being aspects, morality included. Morality emanates largely from both religious and cultural footings. It must be noted that almost three decades of such gendered-but-loose living has exposed these poor urban dwellers to serious challenges, not only moral but health, access to credit, and related socio-economic plights. The habitation has been nothing but a heinous experience. Yet, the hostellers have become so sucked up in the abnormality that to them it has become the norm. Most of the children have never experienced life except this kind. The question is: Why has it happened in this world where there is great sermonization about adequate housing, sustainable development, human rights and upright living? Matapi like most old hostels in Mbare harbours several hundreds of thousands of households living in complete disjunction of the postulations of the gospel preachers, human rights advocates and cultural custodians of the time. The rampancy of moral decadence and consequential demise of the people-hood of the dwellers is a total headache to any serious social scientist. The paper is a short treatise to describe, explain and critique the living conditions in the hostels. It is largely qualitative with very little inclination to quantitative data. 1 Lecturer, Department of Rural and Urban Planning, University of Zimbabwe 2 Lecturer, Department of Communication, Polytechnic of Namibia. 3 Chirisa, 2008


Pockmarks are one of the most obvious and abundant structural features of the North Sea seabed, yet their influence on fauna is virtually unknown. We report the distribution of benthic megafaunal assemblages in and around four "pockmark complexes" in the North Sea to determine the structure of megafaunal communities inside pockmarks and whether these ubiquitous topographical features acted as refuges against trawling and other disturbances. The study focuses on the large central pockmarks in each of the pockmark complexes. These large pockmarks had depths of around 10 m and diameters of 160‐235 m. Remotely operated vehicle video transects showed that megafauna increased in abundance, species richness, and diversity from outside (background seabed) toward the center of the pockmarks. The number of taxa present in the center of pockmarks was approximately double those of similar surrounding areas, and the centers had almost an order of magnitude more individuals than outside. Carbonate rocks were found in the centers of all the pockmarks and may be indicative of their formation (past methane seeps). These rocks also provide novel habitat to fauna: a complex hard substrate for colonization and shelter in an otherwise homogeneous soft sediment environment. Habitat enrichment and morphological protection are suggested to be the main reasons for the increased faunal abundance and species richness. Indeed, despite fishing data showing the area to be intensively disturbed, large slow‐growing (old) and vulnerable species, such as gorgonian corals, were found in the center of the pockmarks. Pockmarks may offer important refuges from trawling activity.


Lean from the Trenches is all about actual practice. Find out how the Swedish police combined XP, Scrum, and Kanban in a 60-person project. From start to finish, you'll see how to deliver a successful product using Lean principles. We start with an organization in desperate need of a new way of doing things and finish with a group of sixty, all working in sync to develop a scalable, complex system. You'll walk through the project step by step, from customer engagement, to the daily "cocktail party," version control, bug tracking, and release. In this honest look at what works--and what doesn't--you'll find out how to: Make quality everyone's business, not just the testers. Keep everyone moving in the same direction without micromanagement. Use simple and powerful metrics to aid in planning and process improvement. Balance between low-level feature focus and high-level system focus. You'll be ready to jump into the trenches and streamline your own development process.


The research of this thesis was performed to understand the vibrational dynamics of
stage 0&1 child safety seats and of the children who occupy them. Since no previous
vibration data for small children or child seats was found, the investigation took the
form of experiments designed to shed light on the behaviour of the system consisting
of child, child seat, vehicle safety belt and vehicle seat. To provide a background for
interpreting the results a literature review was performed of child seat characteristics,
of human whole-body response and of primate whole-body response. An industrial
test procedure for measuring the vibration isolation properties of vehicular seats is
also presented as an illustration of the concepts involved.
A whole-body vibration bench for testing children in the vertical direction was built
and apparent mass and absorbed power functions were measured for 8 children of
age less than 24 months and mass less than 13 kg. An algorithm was developed for
identifying the parameter values of a single degree of freedom mass-spring-damper
model of the seated body using Differential Evolution optimisation. The parameter
values were determined for each child and compared to those of adults and
primates. This thesis also presents the results of modal testing of 2 child seat units
and of operational deflection shape testing of 1 unit in an automobile under 3 loading
conditions (empty, sandbag or child). In-vehicle transmissibility measurements were
also performed in the vertical direction for 10 children and child seats using 9
automobiles. The floor-to-human transmissibilities were determined for each child
and driver when passing over a reference road surface at both 20 and 40 km/h.
Except for the damping ratio, all child mechanical response parameters were found
to differ with respect to those of adults or primates, with the differences being greater
with respect to adults. The first resonance frequency of children was found to be
located at 8.5 Hz as opposed to 4.0 Hz for adults, raising questions regarding the
applicability of standards such as ISO 2631 towards the evaluation of child
vibrational comfort. The child seats were found to have higher transmissibilities on
average than the vehicular seats occupied by adults. A characteristic low frequency
rigid body rocking motion was noted at 1.8 Hz as were multiple flexible body
resonances starting from frequencies as low as 15 Hz. Areas of possible
improvement and topics for further research have been identified.


Earnings management that is used to manipulate book earnings to an expected level has been one of the controversial topics in the accounting field. It occurs two ways: one is accrued earnings management and the other is real earnings management. Many studies show that these two methods have a reciprocal relationship based on the costs of using them. The accrued earnings management method is preferred when the accounting standards are flexible and the real earnings management is preferred when the legal systems are good. This paper verifies its findings by drawing a link to the new accounting standard announced by China on January 1, 2007. It uses the Jones Model and Margin ROE in empirical analysis and selects Chinese listed manufacturing companies as samples.


Leakage radiation spectroscopy has been applied to study surface plasmon polariton (SPP) generation by light scattered off aligned organic nanofibers deposited on a thin silver film. The efficiency of SPP generation was studied by angularly resolved leakage radiation spectroscopy as a function of excitation wavelength in the range 550–800 nm for both normal and oblique angles of incidence. For comparison, the differential transmission scattering cross section was calculated using Green's function integral equations. Both theory and experiments show highly directional and much more efficient SPP excitation at an oblique angle of light incidence.


The apparent mass of the seated human body and the transmissibility to the upper-body (i.e., the spine and the pelvis) during vertical vibration excitation have been reported to have resonance frequencies around 5 Hz. With fore-and-aft excitation the apparent mass shows a first peak around 1 Hz and second mode around 2 to 3 Hz. Little is known about how the motion of the upper-body during excitation in one direction is affected by the addition of vibration in an orthogonal direction (i.e., the cross-axis coupling). The principal objective of the research reported in this thesis was to identify how the resonances in the apparent mass and transmissibility, and their association, depends on the magnitude of the inline vibration excitation and the addition of an orthogonal vibration excitation. The research was also designed to investigate the characteristics necessary in mathematical models that represent the cross-axis coupling and nonlinearity evident in the biodynamic responses of the human body. The movement of the body (over the first, fifth and twelfth thoracic vertebrae, the third lumbar vertebra, and the pelvis) in the fore-and-aft and vertical directions (and in pitch at the pelvis) was measured in 12 seated male subjects during random vertical vibration excitation (over the range 0.25 to 20 Hz) at three vibration magnitudes (0.25, 0.5 and 1.0 ms-2 r.m.s.) and during fore-and-aft vibration excitation over the same frequency range and at the same three vibration magnitudes. At the highest magnitude of vertical excitation the effect of adding fore-aft excitation (at 0.25, 0.5, and 1.0 ms-2 r.m.s.) was investigated. Similarly, at the highest magnitude of fore-and-aft excitation the effect of adding vertical vibration (at 0.25, 0.5, and 1.0 ms-2 r.m.s.) was investigated. The forces in the fore-and-aft and vertical directions on the seat surface were also measured so as to calculate apparent masses. The subjects adopted a normal upright posture, an erect posture, and a slouched posture. Resonance frequencies in the apparent mass and transmissibility during vertical excitation decreased with increasing magnitude of vertical excitation and with the addition of fore-and-aft excitation. The modulus of the first peak in the apparent mass and transmissibility during fore-and-aft excitation decreased with increasing magnitude of fore-and-aft excitation and with the addition of vertical excitation. Complex vibration modes in the upper-body appear to be responsible for the resonances in both the vertical and the fore-and-aft apparent masses. Compared to the normal upright posture, the erect posture tended to increase the resonance frequency in the apparent mass and transmissibility associated with vertical excitation but decrease the resonance frequency in the apparent mass and transmissibility associated with fore-and-aft excitation. The association between resonances in the transmissibility to the upper body and the resonance in the apparent mass varied with vertical excitation but not with fore-aft excitation. A seven degree-of-freedom multi-body model indicated that the resonance frequency in the vertical apparent mass on the seat and the vertical transmissibility to the upper-body with either vertical or dual-axis excitation is sensitive to the vertical stiffness of tissues beneath the pelvis and closely related to the vertical motion of the upper body. It has also been shown that the first mode of the fore-and-aft apparent mass and the fore-and-aft transmissibility can be attributed to the fore-and-aft movement of the upper-body due to the pelvis pitch, while the second mode can be attributed to the fore-and-aft movement of the upper-body caused by shear deformation of the pelvis tissue. It is suggested that a mathematical model developed with single-axis excitation can represent the biodynamic response with dual-axis excitation by changing these sensitive parameters (e.g., the stiffness of the tissue beneath the pelvis). A finite element human body model with flexible bodies representing the tissue beneath the pelvis and thighs and rigid bodies representing other body segments provided sensible prediction of the first resonance frequencies and the associated modulus in the vertical inline and fore-and-aft cross-axis apparent mass on the seat and the transmissibility to the lumbar spine, as well as the pressure distribution on the seat surface. With the flexible bodies assigned the material properties of nonlinear low density foam, the model was allowed to reflect the softening effect (i.e., a reduce in the resonance frequency of the vertical apparent mass) when the when the magnitude of the vertical excitation was increased.


This paper gives an overview of the TPC's methodology for dynamic analysis of tax proposals. Following the practice of official government estimators, we use a Keynesian model to estimate the short-term effects of policy changes on output relative to its full-employment level. That model assumes tax policy can influence the economy by changing the demand for goods and services. For example, a tax cut could encourage consumers to spend more and businesses to invest more, raising demand and thus total employment. In the long-run, demand-side stimulus is ineffective because we assume the economy returns to full employment. We estimate the long-run effects on potential output using two models: a neoclassical growth model and the Penn Wharton Budget Model. Both of those models reflect how taxes can affect incentives to work, save, and invest, as well as the effects of budgetary policies on interest rates and the resultant effects on investment decisions.


Inhibitors of the serotonin transporter (SERT) are widely used antidepressant agents, but the structural mechanism for inhibitory activity and selectivity over the closely related norepinephrine transporter (NET) is not well understood. Here we use a combination of chemical, biological, and computational methods to decipher the molecular basis for high-affinity recognition in SERT and selectivity over NET for the prototypical antidepressant drug fluoxetine (Prozac; Eli Lilly, Indianapolis, IN). We show that fluoxetine binds within the central substrate site of human SERT, in agreement with recent X-ray crystal structures of LeuBAT, an engineered monoamine-like version of the bacterial amino acid transporter LeuT. However, the binding orientation of fluoxetine is reversed in our experimentally supported model compared with the LeuBAT structures, emphasizing the need for careful experimental verification when extrapolating findings from crystal structures of bacterial transporters to human relatives. We find that the selectivity of fluoxetine and nisoxetine, a NET selective structural congener of fluoxetine, is controlled by residues in different regions of the transporters, indicating a complex mechanism for selective recognition of structurally similar compounds in SERT and NET. Our findings add important new information on the molecular basis for SERT/NET selectivity of antidepressants, and provide the first assessment of the potential of LeuBAT as a model system for antidepressant binding in human transporters, which is essential for future structure-based drug development of antidepressant drugs with fine-tuned transporter selectivity.


This thesis aims at deciphering the complex and polyphase seismic deformation associated with two major pseudotachylyte-bearing fault zones, the pre-mesozoic Outer Hebrides Fault (OHF) in northwest Scotland, and the Mesozoic to Cenozoic Canavese fault zone and adjacent Ivrea zone in the Italian Alps. For both areas, the deformation was analysed from the field scale to scanning electron microscope scale to scanning electron microscope scale. In addition, Ar:Ar absolute dating was performed on Italian pseudotachylytes. The first part of this thesis shows that the OHF in the south Uist-Barra area is clearly segmented: the northern Stulabhal segment is characterized by quartz-feldspar gneisses (QF gneisses) in the foot wall and by two –pyroxene gneisses (Corodale gneisses) in the hanging-wall. The southern Eriskay segment is characterized by QF gneisses both in the hanging wal. Moreover, the Stulabhal segment is underlined by a continuous and mappable, several meters thick, pseudotachylyte sole at the base of the hanging wall, and by diffuse pseudotachylyte fault vein in the footwall, while the Eriksay segment consists of several faults outlined by pseudotachylyte-rich zones whose thickness never exceeds 1 m. […]In the second part of this thesis, we clarify the spatial and temporal distribution of pseudotachylyte in the Val Sesia area of the Ivrea zone. Pseudotachylytesin the Balmuccia periotite tectonic lens were formed during at least two periods:before Permian times and lateCretaceous to Tertiary. Pseudotachylytes in gabbroic rocks are randomly distributed over two-kilometrer-wide belt and were formed in the early Cretaceous. Pseudotachylytes in paragneisses distributed near the Canavese fault were formed in Eocene Times and are probably related to the thrusting of the Sesia zone over the Ivrea zone. This polyphase formation accompanied the exhumation of the Ivrea crust. […] This comparative analysis between the two fault zones brings information pertaining to the mechanical behavior of the continental crust.


European rabbit Oryctolagus cuniculus abundance was evaluated relative to habitat variables within two zones in Cadiz Province (south-east Spain), 2 years after the spread of rabbit viral haemorrhagic disease (RVHD). The study areas were low-lying regions of mixed pasture/agriculture, Mediterranean forest and matorral, west (Zone A) and east (Zone B) of the Sierra de Cadiz mountain chain. A total of 111 sites was selected to sample all existing habitat types. Relative rabbit density in each site was estimated using a pellet count method in one 50 x 2 m transect. Mean pellet densities were 21.05 pellet m in Zone B and significantly lower, 5.85 pellets m in Zone A. Physical variables, such as vegetation characteristics (density, height and patchiness of cover-layer vegetation, etc.), topographical characteristics and human influences, cover-layer vegetation species (woody stemmed shrub species or trees forming dense stands), and ground-layer vegetation species (herbaceous species forming a low-lying layer) were determined within transects. In addition to these variables, soil types, rock type and land form, as well as the presence of aquifers, irrigation, and the proximity of rivers, were determined for each site. Significantly higher pellet densities were found in mixed grassland/matorral and cork oak/matorral than in all other habitats. Pellet density was negatively correlated with density of ground-layer vegetation, while high pellet densities were associated with medium-height ground-layer vegetation (50-100 cm). The presence of Entisols was negatively associated with pellet density. The cover-layer species Pistacia lentiscus, Quercus coccifera, Quercus suber, Opuntia ficus-indica and the ground-layer grasses all showed positive associations with pellet density, while the ground-layer species Echium gaditana and Scorpiurus vermiculatus were negatively associated with pellet density. Multivariate analyses identified the mixed grassland/matorral and cork oak forest/matorral habitats as explaining most of the variation in pellet density. The height of cover-layer vegetation was negatively associated, while Opuntia and table-and/calcareous sandstone were positively associated, with mixed grassland/matorral. Distance from habitation and human impact were negatively associated and Quercus suber was positively associated with cork oak forest/matorral. Comparison with previous studies suggest that the low pellet counts in this study represent very low rabbit densities and the population as a whole appears depleted and fragmented.


Abstract Within a ∼60-Myr interval in the Late Triassic to Early Jurassic, a major mass extinction took place at the end of Triassic, and several biotic and environmental events of lesser magnitude have been recognized. Climate warming, ocean acidification, and a biocalcification crisis figure prominently in scenarios for the end-Triassic event and have been also suggested for the early Toarcian. Radiolarians, as the most abundant silica-secreting marine microfossils of the time, provide a control group against marine calcareous taxa in testing selectivity and responses to changing environmental parameters. We analyzed the origination and extinction rates of radiolarians, using data from the Paleobiology Database and employing sampling standardization, the recently developed gap-filler equations and an improved stratigraphic resolution at the substage level. The major end-Triassic event is well-supported by a late Rhaetian peak in extinction rates. Because calcifying and siliceous organisms appear similarly affected, we consider global warming a more likely proximate trigger of the extinctions than ocean acidification. The previously reported smaller events of radiolarian turnover fail to register above background levels in our analyses. The apparent early Norian extinction peak is not significant compared to the long-term trajectory, and is probably a sampling artifact. The Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event, previously also thought to have caused a significant radiolarian turnover, did not significantly affect the group. Radiolarian diversity history appears unique and complexly forced, as its trajectory parallels major calcareous fossil groups at some events and deviates at others.


We use the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) to study the relationship between marriage and health for working-age (20 to 64) individuals. In both data sets married agents are healthier than unmarried ones, and the health gap between married and unmarried agents widens by age. After controlling for observables, a gap of about 12 percentage points in self-reported health persists for ages 55-59. We estimate the marriage health gap non-parametrically as a function of age. If we allow for unobserved heterogeneity in innate permanent health, potentially correlated with timing and likelihood of marriage, we find that the effect of marriage on health disappears at younger (20-39) ages, while about 6 percentage points difference between married and unmarried individuals, about half of the total gap, remains at older (55-59) ages. These results indicate that association between marriage and health is mainly driven by selection into marriage at younger ages, while there might be a protective effect of marriage at older ages. We analyze how selection and protective effects of marriage show up in the data.


Alice Crary has recently developed a radical reading of J. L. Austin's philosophy of language. The central contention of Crary's reading is that Austin gives convincing reasons to reject the idea that sentences have context-invariant literal meaning. While I am in sympathy with Crary about the continuing importance of Austin's work, and I think Crary's reading is deep and interesting, I do not think literal sentence meaning is one of Austin's targets, and the arguments that Crary attributes to Austin or finds Austinian in spirit do not provide convincing reasons to reject literal sentence meaning. In this paper, I challenge Crary's reading of Austin and defend the idea of literal sentence meaning.


The aim of the study was to explore the process of the transition from junior to senior sports in Swedish athletes. Previous studies showed that the junior-to-senior transition (a) is initiated by a set of demands relevant to athletic and non-athletic development, (b) lasts for about two years, (c) known for a high dropout rate and often described by athletes as the most difficult within-career transition (e.g., Bruner et al., 2008; Stambulova, 2009; Vanden Auweele et al., 2004). This quantitative longitudinal study included five measurements that were conducted every six months, and altogether covered two-and-a-half-years with two measurements of the transition variables and one measurement of related personal variables each year. The following package of four instruments was used: the Transition Monitoring Survey (Stambulova, Franck, & Weibull, 2012), the Athletic Identity Measurement Scale (Brewer, Van Raalte, & Linder, 1993), the Task and Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnaire (Duda, 1989) and the Physical Self-Perception Profile – Revised (Lindwall, Hagger, & Asci, 2007). In the first measurement 101 club-based Swedish athletes (74 males and 27 females) of 15 -20 years old took part. The dynamics of participants was characterized by an increasing dropout rate from each measurement to the next, and as a result only 37 participants were left to the time of the final (fifth) measurement. Overall dynamics of transitional variables throughout the five measurements was characterized by an increase in motivation and perceived quality of adjustment on the senior athletic level from the first to the third measurement followed by a decrease in these variables across the last two measurements. Decrease in the athletes' perceived degree of adjustment was especially relevant to their adjustment to senior competitions and to combining sport and studies. Perceived importance of sport (especially of competitions) decreased progressively from the first to the fifth measurement. The other transitional variables (e.g., perceived demands, resources, coping strategies, stress level, need in support) were characterized by various types of dynamics. Meanwhile athletes' athletic identity and overall satisfaction with their sport and life were rather high and stable across all the five measurements. The next step in the data treatment will be based on the Multilevel Modeling and the Latent Growth Curve Analysis to identify successful and less successful transitional pathways with relevant dynamics and patterns of the transitional and personal variables.


This article presents a new approach to modeling information flows within today's information systems environments characterized by electronic commerce. We treat information as a resource whose value is fundamentally multidimensional in nature. In this article we consider the economic and psychological dimensions of the value of information. It is argued that it is meaningless to model the value of information in isolation away from the context and the specific parties between which this information is exchanged. We therefore focus exclusively on modeling information flows rather than information itself. To achieve this, we propose a formal framework for describing transactions involving information flows. The framework consists of a generalized model for representing information transactions and for defining a set of fundamental properties of multiparty transactions. These properties are fairness, constructiveness, and monopoly. Where applicable, they are defined for individuals, transactions, and a system of transactions. The proposed model reveals the nature of individual transactions and markets, and consequently has important implications for simulation of market scenarios and to help arrive at effective policies for pricing and market regulations.


The complexity of society's problems and workplaces means imagination and creative approaches are required in non-arts fields/disciplines where they have not traditionally been taught. I argue that a lack of clarity about what imagination is, impedes teachers fostering their students' imagination and creativity in higher education. I use a theory of imagination by Paul Ricoeur, which links imagination, reason, and language, and which argues that 'productive' imagination involves a form of combinatorial thinking which generates new ideas and shifts in perspectives, through the making of novel connections. I claim that Ricoeur's theory provides a useful framework to understand imagination's specific and teachable attributes, which are of particular relevance to higher education. I connect this theory to constructivist views of learning and thinking, in particular Vygotsky's notion of tool mediated action and Clark's 'extended mind' thesis. This link aims to account for creative insight in the conceptualisation of learning used in this research. The research questions are: What is the role of imagination in learning in higher education, and what learning experiences do educators devise to encourage the imagination of their students? How do the students experience learning that is focussed on engaging their imagination? Does Ricoeur's theory help us to understand how teachers' approaches encourage imagination as a facet of learning? The methodology of the research project was ethnography, and the data collected were notes from classroom observation and electronic student discussion forums, course materials and student assignments, and interviews with the educators and focus groups of students pre- and post-class. I tell three ethnographic stories about a fourth year physics course, a first year medieval European history course and a post-graduate finance course. Imagination combines heterogeneous things into new wholes and in the physics case study, this led me to the conclusion that the students were led in a cycle of diagrammatic, mathematical and linguistic forms of reasoning. Each of these thinking tools cumulatively and in combination synthesised the students' understanding of quantum concepts. In the history case study, I concluded that wielding the tools and techniques of historians involved the students in a constant interplay of imaginative conjecture and critical analysis, allowing new syntheses of ideas to arise that were grounded in evidence. In the Finance case study, I found that strategic reasoning is an imaginative process because it includes imagining the consequences of suggested courses of action if they were applied, and strategy involves mentally positing alternative plans, each designed to produce an outcome. Simulation pedagogy allows students to imaginatively take up at least two positions: banker and learner, and to construct different learnings by moving flexibly between them. Productive imagination entails an awareness of the fictiveness or constructedness of the created artefact. For learners, this means an openness to reconsider how knowledge may be reconstructed in the future. This suggests that imagination's importance for opening up possibilities has an important role to play in the renewal of knowledge and practices, and for lifelong learning.


Clinical signs of lymph node enlargement, limb edema, lymph duct fibrosis, and microfilaremia were monitored in dogs with chronic Brugia pahangi infections. During the study a single rear limb of each dog was reinfected with multiple low doses of infective larvae. The changing immune responses to parasite antigens prepared from three sources--Brugia pahangi adult worm homogenate extract, adult worm excretory-secretory products, and microfilaria excretory-secretory products--were monitored by Western blot ELISA of antigens fractionated on sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) and by microtiter plate ELISA. Assays were used to detect antibodies in both the the IgG and IgE classes. A wide range of clinical manifestations was demonstrated in response to reinfection: asymptomatic, amicrofilaremic; asymptomatic, microfilaremic; acute short duration node enlargement and/or limb edema with microfilaremia; and chronic limb edema, amicrofilaremic. On microtiter plate ELISA, the dogs demonstrating the highest anti-adult worm homogenate titers were amicrofilaremic and were asymptomatic or developed chronic limb edema, dogs with high anti-mf ES titers were persistently amicrofilaremic, and the most marked increases against all three antigen sources upon reinfection occurred in low or amicrofilaremic dogs. Quantitative changes in antibody levels against the three crude antigen sources following reinfection were often paralleled by distinct changes in recognition of specific bands of antigens fractionated by SDS-PAGE.


Decentralisation was one of the major reforms in the 1990s in Uganda, geared towards improving democratic governance and service delivery. However, districts have had variable performance, especially in  providing primary education through public schools. In this article, I ask what explains the difference in local governments' performance across two districts that were given similar powers and share a similar history. I explore this through in-depth interviews in the two districts and find that local governments are severely constrained in their performance by a lack of funds, which, along with development priorities, are controlled by the central government. Within this scenario, variable performance is explained to a great extent by the presence of donors and investments by the private sector, but that these funds are attracted to areas where greater capacity exists. While this improves education performance, it can contribute to growing inequality in educational attainment across districts.


Two approaches to control system design for constrained systems are studied. The first involves theoretical investigations of constrained model predictive control algorithms. The second involves extensions of robust linear control theory to handle the nonlinear control schemes commonly used in practice for constrained systems.

A novel model predictive control algorithm, with attractive functional and numerical characteristics is developed. This algorithm minimizes peak excursions in the controlled outputs and is particularly suited to regulatory control problems common in continuous process systems.

Model predictive control concepts are extended to uncertain linear systems. An on-line optimizing control scheme (RMPC) is developed which has as its objective the minimization of worst-case tracking error for an entire family of linear plants. For model uncertainty descriptions which provide plant impulse response coefficients as affine functions of uncertain parameters, it is shown that the required minimax optimization problem can be recast as a single linear program.

The discrete time optimal averaging level control problem is formulated and solved. A finite horizon approximation to the problem is introduced and analytical solutions are obtained in important special cases. A model predictive control formulation is introduced which provides optimal flow filtering and integral action. Analysis tools are provided to characterize the trade-off between flow filtering and rapid integral action.

A complete theory is developed for the multivariable anti-windup, bumpless transfer (AWBT) problem. The theoretical framework allows the consideration of any linear time invariant (LTI) control system subject to plant input limitations and substitutions. A general AWBT compensation scheme, applicable to multivariable controllers of arbitrary structure and order, is developed. Conditions are derived under which this general AWBT method reduces to any one of several well-known heuristics for AWBT (e.g., PI anti-reset windup and IMC). The design issues which affect AWBT performance are identified and quantitative analysis methods are developed. Sufficient conditions for nonlinear stability of the AWBT compensated system are provided. These results are a generalization of, and are less conservative than, those available in the AWBT literature. The definition of AWBT performance objectives which are independent of controller structure allows the formulation of a general AWBT synthesis problem. This formal synthesiproblem addresses each of the identified performance objectives in a quantitative manner. The synthesis problem is shown to be a special case of a constrained structure controller synthesis (CSCS) problem. A solution method via reduction to static output feedback is presented and the engineering trade-offs available in the AWBT design are discussed.


Vineland (1990) is a provocative, rambling meditation on the aftermath of that periodization of American history known as "the sixties." We are in 1984, after the Nixonian repression, at the height of Reagan's triumph. The surface of Pynchon's novel obsessively, distractingly (distressingly to some), bears witness to the impact of media and popular culture on those who would examine the recent past. A faultless ear for reminiscences and questions carries forward the soul-searching the predicament demands. We "listen" to the self-indulgence of zany and marginal types, hippies who were "turned" to work for the other side, as their would-be revolution fizzled. Pynchon pushes his characters to the edge of madness, through the discovery of the cynical manipulation and make-believe which brought down the dream.


To help establish a more scientific basis for security science, which will enable the development of fundamental theories and move the field from being primarily reactive to primarily proactive, it is important for research results to be reported in a scientifically rigorous manner. Such reporting will allow for the standard pillars of science, namely replication, meta-analysis, and theory building. In this paper we aim to establish a baseline of the state of scientific work in security through the analysis of indicators of scientific research as reported in the papers from the 2015 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy. To conduct this analysis, we developed a series of rubrics to determine the completeness of the papers relative to the type of evaluation used (e.g. case study, experiment, proof). Our findings showed that while papers are generally easy to read, they often do not explicitly document some key information like the research objectives, the process for choosing the cases to include in the studies, and the threats to validity. We hope that this initial analysis will serve as a baseline against which we can measure the advancement of the science of security.


Do EU citizens have an increased opportunity to improve their position in the distribution of lifetime earnings? To what extent does earnings mobility work to equalize/disequalize longerterm earnings relative to cross-sectional inequality and how does it differ across the EU? Our basic assumption is that mobility measured over a horizon of 8 years is a good proxy for lifetime mobility. We used the Shorrocks (1978) and the Fields (2008) index. Moreover, we explored the impact of differentials attrition on the two indices. The Fields index is affected to a larger extent by differential attrition than the Shorrocks index, but the overall conclusions are not altered. Based on the Shorrocks (1978) index men across EU have an increasing mobility in the distribution of lifetime earnings as they advance in their career. Based on the Fields index (2008) the equalizing impact of mobility increases over the lifetime in all countries, except Portugal, where it turns negative for long horizons. Thus, Portugal is the only country where mobility acts as a disequalizer of lifetime differentials. The highest lifetime mobility is recorded in Denmark, followed by UK, Belgium, Greece, Ireland, Netherlands, Italy, France, Spain, Germany, and the lowest, Portugal. The highest mobility as equalizer of longer term inequality is recorded in Ireland and Denmark, followed by France and Belgium with similar values, then UK, Greece, Netherlands, Germany, Spain and Italy.


Recently, Brian Ellis came up with a neat and novel idea about laws of nature, which at first I misunderstood. Then I participated, with Brian Ellis and Caroline Lierse, in writing a joint paper, "The World as One of a Kind: Natural Necessity and Laws of Nature" (Ellis, Bigelow and Lierse, forthcoming). In this paper, the Ellis idea was formulated in a different way from that in which I had originally interpreted it. Little weight was placed on possible worlds or individual essences. Much weight rested on natural kinds. I thought Ellis to be suggesting that laws of nature attribute essential properties to one grand individual, The World. In fact, Ellis is hostile towards individual essences for any individuals at all, including The World. He is comfortable only with essential properties of kinds, rather than individuals. The Ellis conjecture was that laws of nature attribute essential properties to the natural kind of which the actual world is one (and presumably the only) member.


This evaluation assesses the implementation of Inter-American Development Bank (IDB, or Bank) commitments related to the human resources (HR) policies set out in the 2007 realignment and IDB-9. Under these commitments, the Bank is required to continue improving its organizational efficiency and capacity, building on the organizational model set forth in the 2007 realignment. This report is a preliminary review of the topic; next year's evaluation of the realignment by the Office of Evaluation and Oversight will explore issues of efficiency and efficacy in greater depth. The evaluation finds that the IDB-9 results framework is insufficient to allow a full assessment of the "full and effective implementation" of the HR mandates. Nonetheless, it finds progress in the implementation of some of the commitments, such as the strengthening of capacity in country offices, the implementation of a results-based performance framework, the promotion of gender diversity, the improvement of talent management, and the reform of the process for contracting consultants. It is too soon to judge whether these reforms are yielding the expected results in terms of cost-effectiveness, client satisfaction, reduced time in project preparation and execution, improved project quality and evaluability, increased country knowledge and project origination, better technical dialogue with clients, increased employee motivation and performance, and better talent management.


We address the problem of general supervised learning when data can only be accessed through an (indefinite) similarity function between data points. Existing work on learning with indefinite kernels has concentrated solely on binary/multi-class classification problems. We propose a model that is generic enough to handle any supervised learning task and also subsumes the model previously proposed for classification. We give a "goodness" criterion for similarity functions w.r.t. a given supervised learning task and then adapt a well-known landmarking technique to provide efficient algorithms for supervised learning using "good" similarity functions. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our model on three important supervised learning problems: a) real-valued regression, b) ordinal regression and c) ranking where we show that our method guarantees bounded generalization error. Furthermore, for the case of real-valued regression, we give a natural goodness definition that, when used in conjunction with a recent result in sparse vector recovery, guarantees a sparse predictor with bounded generalization error. Finally, we report results of our learning algorithms on regression and ordinal regression tasks using non-PSD similarity functions and demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithms, especially that of the sparse landmark selection algorithm that achieves significantly higher accuracies than the baseline methods while offering reduced computational costs.


Associated bones of the trunk-armour belonging to a large brachythoracid arthrodire are described as Confractamnis johnjelli n.gen. and n.sp. The specimen comes from strata of probable Eifelian age in the Broken River Group of Queensland. It shows a range of derived brachythoracid features including reduction of dermal ornament, and strong development of the dermal neck joint articulation. The posterior dorsolateral and posterior lateral plates of the trunk armour were high and narrow, and the anterior lateral plate had a distinctive narrow bilobed dorsal angle as indicated by the shape of its overlap area on the anterior dorsolateral plate. A provisional reconstruction suggests that the bones came from a large fish over 2 m in length. A cross section of the trunk armour is compared with the large arthrodire Taemasosteus from the Early Devonian of Burrinjuck, New South Wales. A possible close relative of this new taxon has been illustrated from the Early Devonian of Morocco, supporting other indications of resemblance in placoderm fish assemblages between these regions of east and north Gondwana during the Early-Middle Devonian.


A paradigm instructs in how to do research successfully. Analytic philosophy of science, currently dominant, models paradigmatic rational science as a system of logical inferences. It is, however, an abundantly inadequate paradigm. This paper presents an alternative paradigm: science as an organized collection of problem solving processes. This position is backed, on the one side, by a cognitive model of problem solving process applicable to all problem solving circumstances and, on the other, by a non-formal conception of rationality that provides a wider enriched notion of rational research process than is available to the analytic paradigm. The result is a very different way of looking at science and of doing history and philosophy of science. The position is developed sufficiently to display its nature and merits.


The Bluetooth technology is still in an early stage of development. Much more research can and will be done before the performance of Bluetooth reaches its peak. During the recent years, ideas to integrate Bluetooth units in larger networks have arose, with the Bluetooth unit in the role as access point to the network. This behavior opens up for new possibilities but also increases the requirements on performance. In this thesis the main topic is improvement of piconet performance. The piconet, with the Master unit as access point, is studied from a teletraffic engineering point of view. Different performance attributes and behaviors have been found and investigated. With the outcome of these investigations in mind, new and more efficient policies and algorithms are proposed for both data and voice. A policy increasing the utilization of available bandwidth in a piconet is presented. Furthermore, a proposal is presented where multiple Bluetooth units are used in an efficient manner to support voice calls. The proposed solution does also enable creation of simple teletraffic models to be used for dimensioning.


Interactive data analysis applications have become critical tools for making sense of our world. We present a set of recommendations to improve the quality and quantity of user activity data logged from interactive data analysis systems. Such data is invaluable for improving our understanding of the data exploration process, for implementing intelligent user interfaces, for evaluating data mining and visualization techniques, and for characterizing how the broader ecosystem of data analysis tools are used in practice. Currently, much of the data logged by data analysis systems is intended for the purpose of debugging and system performance monitoring, not for understanding user behavior. As a result, researchers have to rely on labor-intensive techniques for extracting useful information from low-level event streams, or on collecting data through observation, interviews, experiments, and case studies. We present recommendations – derived from personal experience as well as examples from the literature – for logging user activity in interactive data analysis tools, to ensure that better information is collected, and ultimately, to enhance human problem-solving abilities and speed the pace of discovery. We illustrate these recommendations using examples from three widely-used but distinct systems for analyzing data: Tableau, an interactive visualization product, Excel, a spreadsheet application, and Splunk, an enterprise log management and analysis platform.


We observe that gradients computed via the reparameterization trick are in direct correspondence with solutions of the transport equation in the formalism of optimal transport. We use this perspective to compute (approximate) pathwise gradients for probability distributions not directly amenable to the reparameterization trick: Gamma, Beta, and Dirichlet. We further observe that when the reparameterization trick is applied to the Cholesky-factorized multivariate Normal distribution, the resulting gradients are suboptimal in the sense of optimal transport. We derive the optimal gradients and show that they have reduced variance in a Gaussian Process regression task. We demonstrate with a variety of synthetic experiments and stochastic variational inference tasks that our pathwise gradients are competitive with other methods.


There is debate about how the Aboriginal past can and should be memorialised. This paper utilises a series of example memorials to discuss the ways in which Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Australia are choosing to depict – in a physical, public form – Aboriginal perspectives of the past. The paper focuses on the issues of cultural evolution and the adoption of so-called 'European' ways of memorialising. It also looks at the role of landscapes and natural materials in memorials to the Aboriginal past and the evolving role of counter- and anti-memorials to commemorate the past. The examples of memorials from around Australia suggest that, above all, we must be open-minded about what constitutes an 'Aboriginal' memorial. Ways of memorialising the Aboriginal past can range, for example, from natural to constructed, from created by Indigenous people exclusively to otherwise, and from targeting an exclusively Indigenous audience, a non-Indigenous audience, or both. There is more than one way of memorialising the Aboriginal past.


Smoking results in a high mortality rate for Chinese Americans. Little is known, however, about the decisions members of this group make that lead to these unhealthy behaviors. Examining smoking decisions could help us understand these choices as well as develop effective prevention strategies. This grounded theory study was conducted to understand Chinese Americans' smoking decisions. Fifty-four individual interviews and three focus groups were conducted with Chinese Americans of different smoking statuses. The findings describe five smoking decisions including the trajectory of these behaviors. Optimistic bias is identified as one of the main reasons that regular smokers decide not to quit. Some Chinese Americans decide to smoke in order to protect themselves from secondhand smoke because of the perception that secondhand smoke is more dangerous than active smoking. Finally, many Chinese Americans change their smoking behaviors after immigration, with their social environment after immigration playing a key role.


This study aims to assess the utilization of built environment under healthy space model for physical activity as a measure of inequalities in Thai communities. The mothodology included a cross-sectional survey with face-to-face interviews with a total of 2,046 community members. About 48% of the residents who lived near a sports complex have used the facility, while 22% and 31% of the locals have participated in the creative city and elderly healthy community. Compared to non-participants, sufficient MVPA was significantly higher among those who participated in the healthy space program (t=6.387***). The results suggested that healthy space model could eliminate most socioeconomic inequalities but could not eliminate age-driven physical ability and social support inequalities in accessing PA amenities. The model could serve as an example for low-middle income countries where inequalities could not be neglected. The community engagement as the key of the model therefore is crucial, not only to make sure high participation but also in maintaining the built environment for PA.


Low cost, compact and robust single mode semiconductor laser diodes emitting at λ (cid:1) 1.6 – 2.1 μ m are highly desirable as light sources for trace gas spectroscopy and an increasing number of other applications, such as, high data-rate communications over hollow core photonic crystal fibre, noninvasive optical blood glucose monitoring. Indium phosphide based light sources provide a solid and flexible base for mid-infrared semiconductor diode lasers. This chapter provides an overview of the current state of the art in discrete mode InGaAs/InP long-wavelength quantum-well lasers emitting in the 1.6 – 2.1 μ m wavelength range. The discrete mode laser is essentially a regrowth free modified ridge waveguide Fabry-Pérot laser whose optical spectrum has a single wavelength mode. High-performance and cost-effective mid-infrared DM laser diode sources are well suited to a wide range of sensor applications. The current state of the art will also be outlined in this chapter.