This paper examines the European Commission's draft plans to introduce a Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB) for EU group companies. It analyses the basic features of the draft proposal, as published in the draft Directive of 16 March 2011 and the possible effects of these on the UK tax system. The paper focuses on areas such as formulary apportionment, loss relief, intra-group transfers, reorganisations, the administration of the new system, taxation of inbound and outbound investment and anti-abuse rules. Throughout this paper, there is a comparison of the proposed rules with the UK provisions. Even though the Commission does not, for political reasons, acknowledge the possibility of Member States abstaining from the CCCTB, it is very likely that unanimity will not be reached in Council and any proposal will have to proceed via enhanced co-operation. The paper examines the application of enhanced co-operation in this context and considers how the rules of the CCCTB will be modified vis-a-vis non-CCCTB Member States. The paper also considers how non-CCCTB Member States such as the UK will be affected especially by the CCCTB anti-abuse provisions and the rules on the taxation of inbound and outbound investment (as drafted and as potentially modified). The paper concludes by questioning whether it would be desirable for the UK to adopt the CCCTB or whether it should opt out. The repercussions of each course of action are summarised.


The present thesis draws on postcolonial theory to analyze a selection of narratives
wntten by Elena Poniatowska (b. 1932), and two of her former students, Silvia Molina (b.
1946) and Rosa Nissan (b. 1939). More specifically, this study has taken several different
components of the theory related to Latin American Subaltern Studies and applied them
to the work of these three authors. This has been done with the two-fold purpose of
creating test cases that strive to interrogate several tenets linked to Subaltern theory as
well as utilizing these ideas, and others closely related to them, to elucidate the texts in
question. Using the insights provided by Gayatri Spivak's essay, "Can the Subaltern
Speak?", this thesis carefully examines the portrayal of the subaltern within each of the
narratives examined, focusing above all on the inclusion or exclusion of the marginal
voice therein. In particular this thesis analyzes the portrayal of subaltern groups, such as
those marginalized as a result of disability or religious preference, a field not often
covered in Latin American Subaltern Studies. This thesis also provides a short history
and study of the writer's workshop named 'El girupo' that brought these three writers
together. The origins and achievements of this institution, unofficially known as 'El taller
de Elena Poniatowska', are traced, and several of the principles that the students learned
from the workshop are identified. Chapter three evaluates the narratives created by 'the
mentor' Ponlatowska: Hasta no verte Jesus mio, Querido Diego te abraza Quiela, and
Gaby Brimmer, the fourth chapter examines 'Mentira piadosa', El amor que me juraste,
and 'Ascension Tun' by Silvia Molina, and the final chapter considers the first two novels published by Rosa Nissan, Novia que te vea and Hisho que te nazca. Though these three
authors do share some common themes and tendencies, distinct conclusions are drawn
with regard to each writer in question.


In this study, we determined the gene and/or protein expression of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis regulatory molecules following synthetic glucocorticoid exposures. Pregnant sheep received intramuscular saline or betamethasone (BET) injections at 104 (BET-1), 104 and 111(BET-2) or 104, 111 and 118 (BET-3) days of gestation (dG). Samples were collected at numerous time-points between 75 dG and 12 weeks postnatal age. In the BET-3 treatment group, fetal plasma cortisol levels were lower at 145 dG than controls and gestational length was lengthened significantly. The cortisol:adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) ratio in fetal plasma of control and BET-3 fetuses rose significantly between132 and 145 dG, and remained elevated in lambs at 6 and 12 weeks of age; this rise was truncated at day 145 in fetuses of BET-3 treated mothers. After BET treatment, fetal and postnatal pituitary proopiomelanocortin mRNA levels were reduced from 109 dG to 12 weeks postnatal age; pituitary prohormone convertase 1 and 2 mRNA levels were reduced at 145 dG and postnatally; hypothalamic arginine vasopressin mRNA levels were lowered at all time-points, but corticotrophin-releasing hormone mRNA levels were reduced only in postnatal lambs. Maternal BET increased late fetal and/or postnatal adrenal mRNA levels of ACTH receptor and 3β hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase but decreased steroidogenic acute regulatory protein and P450 17-α hydroxylase. The altered mRNA levels of key HPA axis regulatory proteins after maternal BET injections suggests processes that may subserve long-term changes in HPA activity in later life after prenatal exposure to synthetic glucocorticoids.


According to the standard definition of anticipatory systems, anticipation is based on a predictive model of the system itself and its environment. The paper abandons this perspective of weak anticipation in favor of what has been called strong anticipation. It is proposed that anticipation is a consequence of canalization caused by the organization of the structural building-blocks of which the system in question consists. Strong anticipation can account for the anticipatory behavior in animals to which we would not impute the ability of creating internal models of themselves.


Online intermediaries—search engines, social media platforms, even e-commerce businesses—are increasingly required to make critical decisions about free expression, individual privacy, and property rights under domestic law. These requirements arise in contexts that include the right to be forgotten, hate speech, "terrorist" speech, and copyright and intellectual property. At the same time, these disputes about online speech are increasingly borderless. Many laws targeting online speech and privacy are explicitly extraterritorial in scope. Even when not, some courts have ruled that they have jurisdiction to enforce compliance on a global scale. And governments are also demanding that platforms remove content—on a global scale—that violates platforms' terms of service, leading to the deletion of information that is legal in one jurisdiction and illegal in the next.

Existing accounts of platforms' governance role are incomplete and unsatisfying. These accounts tend to neglect the impact of cross-border and transnational pressures upon company policies that affect user rights. Observers have also tended to mischaracterize or underspecify the kinds of action that platforms take as governments outsource certain decision-making functions and attempt to extend domestic law and norms beyond territorial limits.

The Article contends that platforms are operating as privately owned bureaucracies charged with overseeing and implementing complex statutory and constitutional schemes. Platforms are engaged in both rulemaking and adjudication: they develop and promulgate regulations, statements of policy, and guidance that govern free expression and privacy online, and adjudicate disputes concerning those fundamental rights.

That these governance mechanisms rely on private actors to be carried out does not, by itself, suggest that they are not legitimate. But basic principles of administrative law—transparency, participation, reason-giving, and review—remain essential to ensure that platform governance is accountable to the public. These protections are largely, if not entirely, absent from the status quo, due in part to longstanding industry practice—and in part to legal obstacles that prevent platforms from instituting the kinds of rigorous safeguards that are urgently needed.


Early in 2005, a Florida intermediate appellate court ruled that a trial court adjudicating a divorce proceeding had properly excluded evidence that the wife obtained by installing a spyware program on the husband's computer. The court held that the evidence was an intercepted electronic communication that violated a Florida statute modeled after the Federal Wiretap Act. The Florida court ruled that exclusion fell properly within the discretion of the trial court, despite the fact that the relevant Florida statute did not contain an exclusionary rule for intercepted electronic communications. This Article provides a short overview of the federal and state prohibitions on intercepting electronic communications before examining the Florida court's analysis of how the spyware violated state law. The Article will also examine the scope of the court's holding and whether information obtained from spyware could ever be admissible in court.


Conformance testing is a formal and structured approach to verifying system correctness. We propose a conformance testing algorithm for cyber-physical systems, based on the notion of hybrid conformance by Abbas and Fainekos. We show how the dynamics of system specification and the sampling rate play an essential role in making sound verdicts. We specify and prove error bounds that lead to sound test-suites for a given specification and a given sampling rate.


ABSTRACT The age of most temperate tree species can be estimated accurately by counting the annual rings revealed by concentric changes in their wood anatomy. In the tropics and sub-tropics, this growth periodicity is seldom clearly and unambiguously defined. This research investigates whether a wood anatomical feature is present that delimits annual periods in one of the most widely distributed genera in the semi-arid and arid areas of Africa, Acacia. Most research on this topic has been based on sample trees from natural stands, often the largest and putatively oldest trees. In contrast, the trees sampled for this study were actively sought from material of known age, particularly those for which the history of management was known. Several African Acacia species were examined for growth rings. These were apparent in most species as narrow bands of marginal parenchyma filled with long crystal chains. The crystals were sub-sequendy identified as calcium oxalate through the use of a scanning proton microprobe. The number of bands formed annually corresponded to the number of peaks in the annual rainfall distribution. Ring widths were highly correlated with total annual rainfall.


Objective: To examine the tobacco industry's efforts to influence public policy and block the legislative process on tobacco control in Hong Kong, 1973 to 1997. Method: Systematic review of relevant tobacco industry documents made public via the Master Settlement Agreement. Results: The tobacco industry in Hong Kong has sought to manipulate the policymaking process and delay the introduction of tobacco control legislation in Hong Kong from at least 1973. The industry ensured that each of the government's initial meagre steps toward tobacco control were delayed and thwarted by drawn out "cooperation" followed by voluntary concessions on issues the industry regarded as minor. By the 1980s the government had became increasingly active in tobacco control and introduced a number of initiatives, resulting in some of the tightest legislative restrictions on smoking in Asia. The tobacco industry was successful in thwarting only one of these initiatives. Conclusions: Throughout the 1980s and 1990s two factors played a significant role in hindering the tobacco industry from successfully blocking policy initiatives: a growing political imperative, and an active and sophisticated tobacco control movement. Political will to promote public health and a strong tobacco control advocacy presence can enable governments to resist the enormous pressure exerted upon them by multinational tobacco companies.


Historically, interspecific hybridisation with Pinus radiata D. Don had limited success. The effect of environmental conditions and position of pollination bags in the tree were investigated as possible hybridisation barriers. The study was conducted in a P. radiata seed orchard in the Southern Cape (South Africa). Field data were compared to the climatic conditions at natural and commercial provenances of seven Mesoamerican Pinus species identified as possible hybrid partners. In vitro pollen studies were used to confirm whether interspecific crosses with P. radiata might be feasible within predefined climatic parameters. The temperature ranges for both top and northern side of P. radiata pine trees in the seed orchard was similar to the natural distribution of P. radiata, P. elliottii Engelm. and P. taeda L. in the USA. Results suggested that pollen of P. elliottii and P. taeda might be more suited to result in the successful pollination of P. radiata than the other Mesoamerican pine species tested in this study.  Furthermore, the combination of minimum temperature and precipitation also showed a closer correlation to successful hybridisation with P. radiata for both P. elliotii and P. taeda. However, pollen tube elongation studies did not support these results, suggesting that mean temperature might not be the only determining factor of hybridisation success. Three circadian temperature models that mimic natural conditions were developed for Karatara and Sabie (Tweefontein, Witklip and Spitskop).  These models will be tested in future in vitro studies to further evaluate temperature fluctuations between day and night regimes as a possible reproductive barrier limiting hybridisation success between P. radiata and other Mesoamerican pine species.


Acute-onset, severe systolic hypertension; severe diastolic hypertension; or both can occur during the prenatal, intrapartum, or postpartum periods. Pregnant women or women in the postpartum period with acute-onset, severe systolic hypertension; severe diastolic hypertension; or both require urgent antihypertensive therapy. Introducing standardized, evidence-based clinical guidelines for the management of patients with preeclampsia and eclampsia has been demonstrated to reduce the incidence of adverse maternal outcomes. Individuals and institutions should have mechanisms in place to initiate the prompt administration of medication when a patient presents with a hypertensive emergency. Treatment with first-line agents should be expeditious and occur as soon as possible within 30-60 minutes of confirmed severe hypertension to reduce the risk of maternal stroke. Intravenous labetalol and hydralazine have long been considered first-line medications for the management of acute-onset, severe hypertension in pregnant women and women in the postpartum period. Although relatively less information currently exists for the use of calcium channel blockers for this clinical indication, the available evidence suggests that immediate release oral nifedipine also may be considered as a first-line therapy, particularly when intravenous access is not available. In the rare circumstance that intravenous bolus labetalol, hydralazine, or immediate release oral nifedipine fails to relieve acute-onset, severe hypertension and is given in successive appropriate doses, emergent consultation with an anesthesiologist, maternal-fetal medicine subspecialist, or critical care subspecialist to discuss second-line intervention is recommended.


Dried ground leaves of Solanum villosum, Mill. were extracted with 5 different solvents [petroleum ether, benzene, choloform:methanol (1:1 v/v), acetone, and absolute alcohol] to determine the best extractant for subsequent isolation and characterization of larviciding compounds. Each batch of larvae (10 per batch) was treated with 30 ppm, 50 ppm, and 100 ppm of each extract in 3 replicates. All eluted fractions were found to induce significant mortality in test mosquito species. The petroleum ether eluted fraction was the least toxic, whereas the chloroform:methanol (1:1 v/v) eluted fraction was the most toxic to the larvae. A very high mortality rate (86.67%) was observed at 100 ppm test solution after 24 h of exposure. LC50 values of the leaves with biologically active different solvent extracts like petroleum ether, absolute alcohol, benzene, acetone, and chloroform:methanol (1:1 v/v) were 645.745 ppm, 321.890 ppm, 204.302 ppm, 107.657 ppm, and 39.192 ppm, respectively, after 24 h of exposure period. Mortality rate with chloroform:methanol (1:1 v/v) extract was significantly higher (P < 0.05) in 100 ppm than in other extracts. The bioactive fraction of chloroform:methanol (1:1 v/v) was isolated by thin layered chromatography (TLC), and the LC50 value was determined as 3.179 mg/100 ml after 24 h of study period.


Organizational image management is a theoretically-driven process model, which postulates that organizations must create, maintain, and in many cases regain a legitimate image of themselves in the eyes of their stakeholders. The theory is explicated and important variables in the process are examined, including organizational credibility, identity, image, and reputation. The model provides integrated marketing communication (IMC) scholars and practitioners a theoretical model on which to base their work. KeywordsImage, Legitimacy, Reputation, Integrated Marketing.


We develop the formalism of fermionic matrix product states (fMPS) and show how irreducible fMPS fall in two different classes, related to the different types of simple ${\mathbb{Z}}_{2}$ graded algebras, which are physically distinguished by the absence or presence of Majorana edge modes. The local structure of fMPS with Majorana edge modes also implies that there is always a twofold degeneracy in the entanglement spectrum. Using the fMPS formalism, we make explicit the correspondence between the ${\mathbb{Z}}_{8}$ classification of time-reversal-invariant spinless superconductors and the modulo 8 periodicity in the representation theory of real Clifford algebras. Studying fMPS with general onsite unitary and antiunitary symmetries allows us to define invariants that label symmetry-protected phases of interacting fermions. The behavior of these invariants under stacking of fMPS is derived, which reveals the group structure of such interacting phases. We also consider spatial symmetries and show how the invariant phase factor in the partition function of reflection-symmetric phases on an unorientable manifold appears in the fMPS framework.


Purpose This study aimed to compare complications, perioperative parameters, and oncologic outcomes between robot-assisted radical cystectomy (RARC) with extracorporeal urinary diversion (ECUD) and RARC with intracorporeal urinary diversion (ICUD). Materials and Methods Between 2007 and 2017, 362 patients who underwent RARC with ECUD or ICUD at multiple tertiary referral institutions were assessed. The primary endpoints were complication rates. The secondary outcomes were perioperative recovery parameters and oncological outcomes including estimated recurrence-free survival (RFS) and recurrence pattern between the 2 groups. Additionally, the complication rates of 2 expert surgeons with experience of >100 RARCs were analyzed. Results The ICUD group showed lower overall, gastrointestinal, and genitourinary complications (p=0.001, p=0.036, and p=0.036, respectively) than the ECUD group. Concerning perioperative outcomes, the ICUD group had a significantly longer operation time (p=0.002), although recovery parameters such as time to flatus passage, oral intake, and length of hospital stay were significantly shorter in this group (p=0.001, p<0.001, and p<0.001, respectively). There was no difference in oncologic outcomes such as positive margin rate (p=0.944) and 2-year RFS (p=0.496), and in the recurrence pattern between groups. In the comparison of the expert surgeons' complication rates, the major and total complication rates did not show differences (p=0.814 and p=0.102, respectively) while the minor complication rates were lower in the ICUD group (p=0.058). Conclusions This multi-institutional cohort study demonstrated the benefits of the ICUD approach, as indicated by lower complication rates and better recovery parameters, although the oncological results were similar to those of ECUD.


The aim of this chapter is to develop a new concept of internal logistics, its components parts and how to evaluate it. To quantify the level of performance of the internal logistics of a company is an important issue to gain competitiveness. There are few papers now at days that analyze how to quantify this issue. In recent years, it has been developed numerous applications of Fuzzy logic and Neural Networks to solve diverse problems of Engineering. Fuzzy logic is a mathematical tool that emulates the method used for humans for managing and processing information and Neural Networks are computing systems inspired by the biological neural networks that constitute human brains. Such systems "learn" to perform tasks by considering examples, generally without being programmed with task-specific rules. This chapter offers a new definition of internal logistics and shows the procedure to evaluate its level in a company. This procedure for assessing the internal logistics was developed through an Excel tab, a fuzzy inference system and a neural network. To validate this procedure, it was applied to 93 companies in the Industrial Pole of Manaus. Results obtained by different approaches are very similar, demonstrating the validity of the procedure developed.


This examination of the law in action of WTO dispute settlement takes a developing-country perspective. Providing a bottom-up assessment of the challenges, experiences and strategies of individual developing countries, it assesses what these countries have done and can do to build the capacity to deploy and shape the WTO legal system, as well as the daunting challenges that they face. Chapters address developing countries of varying size and wealth, including China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Thailand, South Africa, Egypt, Kenya and Bangladesh. Building from empirical work by leading academics and practitioners, this book provides a much needed understanding of how the WTO dispute settlement system actually operates behind the scenes for developing countries.


The study was conducted from November, 2013 to March, 2014 at Hawassa municipal abattoir, Southern Ethiopia with the aim of identifying the major causes of liver and lung condemnation and assessing possible risk factors associated with organ condemnation. Standard ante-mortem and post-mortem procedures were followed throughout the study and abnormalities were recorded. A total of 399 cattle were considered for ante mortem and post-mortem examination by systematic random sampling technique. In ante mortem inspection the most commonly encountered abnormalities were 3 (0.75%) lameness, 4 (1%) nasal discharge, 2 (0.5%) skin lesions and 4 (1%) rough hair coat. During post mortem inspection, 224 (56.1%) of lungs were condemned due to hydatidosis, calcification, emphysema and marbling and 207 (51.8%) of livers were condemned due to fasciolosis, hydatidosis, calcification, hardening and haemorrhage. The condemnation rate of lung with respect to each risk factor was found to be 35.3, 0.78, 9.7 and 10% for hydatidosis, calcification, emphysema and marbling, respectively. The condemnation rate of liver with respect to each risk factor was also found to be 20.5, 17.2, 4.2, 10.2 and 0.5% for fasciolosis, hydatidosis, hardening, calcification and hemorrhage, respectively. The study indicated that hydatidosis (35.5%) for lung and fasciolosis (20.7%) for liver were the major cause of condemnation, respectively. Many risk factors such as age, body condition, origin and breed of animal determined liver and lung condemnation rate. But among these only body condition showed statistically significant difference (x2= 11.524, P=0.003) with condemnation rate of each organ. The results of this study showed that condemnation of liver and lungs at the abattoir is very high, thereby preventive measure need to be designed to overcome further loss by applying appropriate treatment control and preventive measures of slaughter animals.

 Key words: Abattoir, cattle, condemnation, Hawassa, liver, lungs, municipal.


The digital transient torque measuring device presented in this paper is able to make a "real time" calculation in steady-state and transient conditions of the electromagnetic torque or force of an extremely wide range of ac electrical machines supplied with sinusoidal voltages or through frequency converters with frequencies up to 30 kHz. The device needs no shaft position or speed sensors, it uses exclusively the acquisition of the stator currents and voltages. The main fields of applications are: test shop, control, measurement, integration in a control or regulation unit, element of a monitoring system.


Species introduced to novel regions often leave behind many parasite species. Signatures of parasite release could thus be used to resolve cryptogenic (uncertain) origins such as that of Littorina littorea, a European marine snail whose history in North America has been debated for over 100 years. Through extensive field and literature surveys, we examined species richness of parasitic trematodes infecting this snail and two co-occurring congeners, L. saxatilis and L. obtusata, both considered native throughout the North Atlantic. Of the three snails, only L. littorea possessed significantly fewer trematode species in North America, and all North American trematodes infecting the three Littorina spp. were a nested subset of Europe. Surprisingly, several of L. littorea's missing trematodes in North America infected the other Littorina congeners. Most likely, long separation of these trematodes from their former host resulted in divergence of the parasites' recognition of L. littorea. Overall, these patterns of parasitism suggest a recent invasion from Europe to North America for L. littorea and an older, natural expansion from Europe to North America for L. saxatilis and L. obtusata.


Process mining is a technology to gain knowledge of the business process by using the event logs and achieve a model of the process, which contributes to the detection and improvement of the business process. However, most existing process mining algorithms have drawbacks associated with managing uncertain data, and the method of using the frequency threshold alone needs to be enhanced. This paper improves correlation measures in heuristic mining to build a correlation matrix based on an improved frequency matrix. Combined with the maximum entropy principle, a self-adaptive method to determine the threshold is given, which is used to remove the uncertain data relationship in the logs. Furthermore, this study identifies a selective and parallel structure through a modified frequency matrix, and we can get a Petri net-based process model from a directed graph. The recognition of parallel structures contributes to eliminating imbalances when calculating the threshold to deal with the uncertain data. Finally, this paper presents an algorithm framework for adaptively removing uncertain data. This study represents a new attempt to use entropy to remove uncertain data in the field of Business Process Management (BPM). The threshold to deal with the uncertain data does not need to set the parameters in advance. Therefore, the proposed algorithm is self-adaptive and universal. Experimental results show that the algorithm proposed in this study has a higher degree of behavioral and structural appropriateness, and fitness, for the uncertain log data compared to traditional algorithms.


Crystallographic studies have offered understanding of how receptor tyrosine kinases from the ErbB family are regulated by their growth factor ligands. A conformational change of the EGFR (ErbB1) was shown to occur upon ligand binding, where a solely ligand-mediated mode of dimerization/activation was documented. However, this dogma of dimerization/activation was revolutionized by the discovery of constitutively active ligand-independent EGFR mutants. In addition, other ligand-independent activation mechanisms may occur. We have shown that oxidative stress (ox-stress), induced by hydrogen peroxide or cigarette smoke, activates EGFR differently than its ligand, EGF, thereby inducing aberrant phosphorylation and impaired trafficking and degradation of EGFR. Here we demonstrate that ox-stress activation of EGFR is ligand-independent, does not induce "classical" receptor dimerization and is not inhibited by the tyrosine kinase inhibitor AG1478. Thus, an unprecedented, apparently activated, state is found for EGFR under ox-stress. Furthermore, this activation mechanism is temperature-dependent, suggesting the simultaneous involvement of membrane structure. We propose that ceramide increase under ox-stress disrupts cholesterol-enriched rafts leading to EGFR re-localization into the rigid, ceramide-enriched rafts. This increase in ceramide also supports EGFR aberrant trafficking to a peri-nuclear region. Therefore, the EGFR unprecedented and activated conformation could be sustained by simultaneous alterations in membrane structure under ox-stress.


Precambrian granulites are representative of the lower continental crust. They are, relative to upper crustal gneisses, refractory and low in heat-producing elements, being 'depleted' in K, Rb, Cs, U and Th; they have normal or even higher than normal abundances of Zr, Sr, and Ba, highly fractionated REE patterns and high Ba/Rb, Ba/Sr, Ce/Yb, K/Cs and K/Rb ratios. Having low Rb/Sr, U/Pb and Sm/Nd ratios they are likely to be unradiogenic with respect to Sr, Pb and Nd isotopes. They do not seem to have marked positive Eu anomalies which might compensate for the significant negative Eu anomalies observed in upper crustal granitic rocks and sediments. The granulites formed largely under an intermediate goethermal gradient with P of 7–12 kbar and T of 700–1000°C. The continental crust completed a substantial part of its growth by 2500 Ma ago. We suggest that growth took place at Cordillerantype continental margins with underthrusting of oceanic crust, generation and underplating of extensive calc-alkaline tonalitic-granodioritic material containing early remnants of hornblende gabbro/calcic anorthosite complexes, and that it was associated with widespread nappe stacking and imbricate interthrusting. This crustal generation process culminated in the granulite metamorphism deep in the tectonically and magmatically thickened continents.


The article analyses parliamentary oversight exercised by the Seimas (Lithuanian parliament). As a legal institute of a constitutional status, parliamentary oversight is complex in its nature in that it influences the executive branch by means of established oversight instruments in a systemic and independent manner and ensures the continuous and effective functioning of the executive power. Based on the doctrine of the sovereignty of the nation, the Seimas is the only governmental body that can exercise parliamentary oversight. This function of the Seimas is therefore very significant. In the article, the author analyses the function of parliamentary oversight exercised by the Seimas and the legal and practical conditions necessary for the permanent committees of the Seimas to exercise the function effectively and continuously.


According to many traditional accounts, one important difference between international and domestic law is that international law depends on the consent of the relevant parties (states) in a way that domestic law does not. In recent years this traditional account has been attacked both by philosophers such as Allen Buchanan and by lawyers and legal scholars working on international law. It is now safe to say that the view that consent plays an important foundational role in international law is a contested one, perhaps even a minority position, among lawyers and philosophers. In this paper I defend a limited but important role for actual consent in legitimating international law. While actual consent is not necessary for justifying the enforcement of jus cogens norms, at least when they are narrowly understood, this leaves much of international law unaccounted for. By drawing on a Lockean social contract account, I show how, given the ways that international cooperation is different from cooperation in the domestic sphere, actual consent is both a possible and an appropriate legitimating device for much of international law.


Abstract. "Hyperthermals" are past intervals of geologically rapid global warming that provide the opportunity to study the effects of climate change on existing faunas over thousands of years. A series of hyperthermals is known from the early Eocene (~ 56–54 million years ago), including the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) and two subsequent hyperthermals (Eocene Thermal Maximum 2 – ETM2 – and H2). The later hyperthermals occurred during warming that resulted in the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum (EECO), the hottest sustained period of the Cenozoic. The PETM has been comprehensively studied in marine and terrestrial settings, but the terrestrial biotic effects of ETM2 and H2 are relatively unknown. Two carbon isotope excursions (CIEs) have been described in the northern part of the Bighorn Basin, WY, USA, and related to ETM2 and H2. An ~ 80 m thick zone of stratigraphic section in the extraordinarily dense, well-studied terrestrial mammal fossil record along the Fifteenmile Creek (FC) in the south–central part of the basin spans the levels at which the CIEs occur in the northern Bighorn Basin. High-resolution, multiparameter paleoecological analysis of this part of the FC section reveals two episodes of significant faunal change – faunal events B-1 and B-2 – characterized by significant peaks in species diversity and turnover and changes in abundance and relative body size. Faunal events B-1 and B-2 are hypothesized to be related to the CIEs in the northern part of the basin and hence to the climatic and environmental change of ETM2 and H2. In contrast with the PETM, change at faunal events B-1 and B-2 is less extreme, is not driven by immigration and involves a proliferation of body sizes, although abundance shifts tend to favor smaller congeners. The response at faunal events B-1 and B-2 is distinctive in its high proportion of species losses, potentially related to heightened species vulnerability in response to changes already underway in the lead-up to the EECO. Faunal response at faunal events B-1 and B-2 is also distinctive in that it shows high proportions of beta richness, suggestive of increased geographic dispersal related to transient increases in habitat (floral) complexity and/or precipitation or seasonality of precipitation.


Using university capstone courses to teach agile software development methodologies has become commonplace, as agile methods have gained support in professional software development. This usually means students are introduced to and work with the currently most popular agile methodology: Scrum. However, as the agile methods employed in the industry change and are adapted to different contexts, university courses must follow suit. A prime example of this is the Kanban method, which has recently gathered attention in the industry. In this paper, we describe a capstone course design, which adds the hands-on learning of the lean principles advocated by Kanban into a capstone project run with Scrum. This both ensures that students are aware of recent process frameworks and ideas as well as gain a more thorough overview of how agile methods can be employed in practice. We describe the details of the course and analyze the participating students' perceptions as well as our observations. We analyze the development artifacts, created by students during the course in respect to the two different development methodologies. We further present a summary of the lessons learned as well as recommendations for future similar courses. The survey conducted at the end of the course revealed an overwhelmingly positive attitude of students towards the integration of Kanban into the course.


Measurement invariance is a fundamental assumption in item response theory models, where the relationship between a latent construct (ability) and observed item responses are of interest. Violation of this assumption would render the scale misinterpreted or cause systematic bias against certain groups of people. While a number of methods have been proposed to detect measurement invariance violations, they all require definition of problematic model parameters and respondent grouping information in advance. However, these "locating" pieces of information are typically unknown in practice. As an alternative, this dissertation focuses on a family of recently-proposed tests based on stochastic processes of casewise derivatives of the likelihood function (i.e., scores). These score-based tests only require estimation of the null model (when measurement invariance assumption holds), with problematic subgroups of respondents and model parameters being identified in a factor-analytic, continuous data context. In this dissertation, I aim to generalize these tests to item response theory models for categorical data. The tests' theoretical background and implementation are detailed. The tests' ability to identify problematic subgroups and model parameters is studied via simulation. An empirical example involving the tests is also provided. In the end, potential applications and future development are discussed.


The measurement of direct photons is a unique tool for the study of early phases of ultra- relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions. Since photons do not interact with the strong-coupling medium created in these collisions, they carry undistorted information about the system at their production time. During the hydrodynamic expansion of the fireball, pressure gradients turn inhomogeneities in the initial energy density distribution into azimuthal anisotropies in the produced particle spectra. Recent hydrodynamic calculations predict a substantial portion of direct photons from early phases of the collision, where the anisotropic flow has not fully devel- oped. Thus, the direct-photon azimuthal anisotropy is generally expected to be small compared to the anisotropy of hadrons. However, measurements by the PHENIX experiment at RHIC revealed a direct-photon anisotropic flow with a magnitude similar to that for pions. This thesis presents the first measurement of the direct-photon anisotropic flow in Pb-Pb collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 2.76TeV per nucleon at the LHC. In particular, its dependence on the collision centrality and the triangular component were measured for the first time. Photons were measured by their conversion in the ALICE detector material. Background contributions of photons from hadron decays were determined in a cocktail simulation and subtracted. The results provide evidence for a hadron-like direct-photon anisotropic flow and are thus qualitatively consistent with the observations at RHIC. These findings challenge our present theoretical understanding of the time evolution of heavy-ion collisions and might indicate a significantly enhanced direct-photon emission from late stages of the system evolution.


The origin of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) has been an open question for decades. Here, we use a combination of hydrodynamic simulations and general physical arguments to demonstrate that UHECRs can in principle be produced by diffusive shock acceleration (DSA) in shocks in the backflowing material of radio galaxy lobes. These shocks occur after the jet material has passed through the relativistic termination shock. Recently, several authors have demonstrated that highly relativistic shocks are not effective in accelerating UHECRs. The shocks in our proposed model have a range of non-relativistic or mildly relativistic shock velocities more conducive to UHECR acceleration, with shock sizes in the range 1 − 10 kpc. Approximately 10% of the jet's energy flux is focused through a shock in the backflow of M > 3. Although the shock velocities can be low enough that acceleration to high energy via DSA is still efficient, they are also high enough for the Hillas energy to approach 1019−20 eV, particularly for heavier CR composition and in cases where fluid elements pass through multiple shocks. We discuss some of the more general considerations for acceleration of particles to ultra-high energy with reference to giant-lobed radio galaxies such as Centaurus A and Fornax A, a class of sources which may be responsible for the observed anisotropies from UHECR observatories.


Aims and Objectives: This paper aims to present a critical review of socio-ecological models of work stress as related to healthcare staff alongside a parallel review of literature relating to satisfaction with office work environments. A model is then presented which attempts to synthesise research from the sociological and architectural disciplines to provide an integrated evaluation tool for analysis of the impact of the built environment on stress and coping mechanisms of healthcare staff. Context and Background literature: Schaefer and Moos proposed a theoretical model of work stressors in healthcare settings indicating relationships between self schema, organisational culture, work stressors, coping mechanisms and wellbeing with reference to Karasek (Schaefer & Moos 1993; Karasek 1979). Jones and Johnston amended this model to address the transactional association of the variables (Jones & Johnston 2000) still identifying their model as socio-ecological while making little reference to the impact of the built environment. Workplace evaluation theories have been largely developed in office environments by Becker, Brill and Sundstrom among others (Becker, 1981; Brill, 1998; Sundstrom 1986). Archea addressed the relationship between the built environment and social behaviour, although not specifically behaviour in the workplace (Archea, 1977). Studies of the healthcare environment have largely focussed on patient facilities or on the organisational culture and working practices of staff. This paper is an attempt to interpret and apply theories from the various domains to understand the impact of the built environment on staff wellbeing in healthcare environments. Method of Inquiry or Argument: An extensive literature review examining models of work stress and satisfaction in nursing, sociology, psychology, environment and behaviour and architectural domains was undertaken. Over 500 nurses in ten different locations throughout UK were given self report questionnaires with questions relating to wellbeing, satisfaction, perceived stress, control, working environment, staff facilities and organisational culture. Data was analysed for evidence supporting an amended model of the relationship between work stress and the built environment. Conclusion: Statistical analysis revealed significant correlation between satisfaction with staff facilities and job satisfaction. Access to staff rest areas was ranked closely behind air quality and lighting as a factor contributing to personal health problems. In open comments, interviews and focus groups the provision of appropriate staff rest areas was highlighted as indicative of the value management placed on nursing staff.


The role of converters play a vital role in improving power production in renewable energy resource. As per the above aspects, the processing of various converters withappropriate control topology will help to convert low magnitude into higher voltage voltage range us mandatory. In accordance with gaining of higher magnitude, differential converter topologies are handled in this proposed work.There are numerous converters avaliable in nature. But depending upon the voltage requirement the converters are chosen. So that the topologies handling in proposed topology are cuk, SEPIC, zeta, and landsman converter. To resolve switching stress a proper gate triggering portion is essential. Thus FUZZY logic control system is preferred due to its advantages like robust in nature, able to handle non-linearities,and able to work witofvague input voltage to attain finite output. To concern high voltage and satisfies load requirement the fuzzy controller is interfaced with above mentioned converter to examine which one is perfect with low switching stress and deducing harmonics is essential one in this analysis. The experimental analysis is carried out with low voltage range to determine the performance of individual converters are examined.


This study explores the effects of exposure to regular paternal childcare (without the mother present) in the first three years of life on the academic and social capabilities of boys and girls when they begin school. Innovations in this paper are the use of data on children's early attributes to explore the issue of reverse causation, and a bootstrap technique that allows us to estimate standard errors on the change in the paternal care coefficient when additional groups of controls are included. The rich nature of our data (the ALSPAC UK cohort) allows us to eliminate many potential sources of bias in the estimates, and identify effects that are robust to numerous different specifications. Fathers are the most widely used form of non-maternal childcare in this period. We find that the effects of paternal childcare, relative to maternal-only parental care, depend on the gender of the child, the age at which care occurred and the weekly hours of paternal care. We find evidence that children's social development may be enhanced by time alone with fathers, but that boys seem to suffer academically from long hours of paternal care when they are toddlers. Our findings show that the changing social roles of mothers and fathers may have implications for child as well as adult well being.


In the United States, about 28 lives are lost daily in motor vehicle accidents that involve an alcohol-impaired driver. While most states have enacted traffic-safety laws to address this phenomenon, little consensus exists on the causal impact of these laws in reducing drunk-driving fatalities. This paper exploits quasi-random variation in state-level laws to estimate the causal effect of select traffic laws on the frequency of fatal accidents involving a drunk driver. This is identified from the discontinuities in policy treatments among homogeneous contiguous-counties that are separated by a shared state border. This approach addresses the econometric issues created due to spatial heterogeneity that may have biased previous studies. We present convincing evidence that the estimates in the literature are prone to an upward bias. Further, if the effective laws were adopted as a federal mandate in 1986, they could have prevented about 24% of drunk-driving motor-vehicle fatalities.


Mentoring is too important to be left to chance (Ganser, 1996), yet mentoring expertise of teachers varies widely, which may present inequities for developing preservice teachers' practices. Five factors for mentoring have been identified herein: personal attributes, system requirements, pedagogical knowledge, modelling, and feedback, and items associated with each factor have also been justified in context of the literature. An original, literature‐based survey instrument gathered 446 preservice teachers' perceptions of their mentoring for primary teaching. Data were analysed within the above‐mentioned five factors with 331 final‐year preservice teachers from nine Australian universities responding to their mentoring for science teaching and 115 final‐year preservice teachers from an urban university responding to their mentoring for mathematics teaching. Results indicated similar Cronbach alpha scores on each of the five factors for primary science and mathematics teaching; however percentages and mean scores on attributes and practices aligned with each factor were considerably higher for mentoring mathematics teaching compared with science teaching.


Extensive use has been made of seismic-derived quantitative interpretation for mapping and predicting reservoir properties in the Sea Lion Field, North Falkland Basin. The Sea Lion sands are acoustically hard compared to the encasing shales, with fairly constant rock properties. The fans are typically 20–60 m in thickness and are predominantly seismically tuned events. Detection of hydrocarbon fluid effects from seismic data has proved elusive to date. Extended elastic impedance (EEI) was selected as the appropriate seismic analysis tool. Almost all sands are visible on the full-stack seismic data. Coloured inversion of an EEI volume with a rotation angle (χ) of −70° (henceforth shown as EEI(−70)) was found to be an optimal sand predictor and is primarily sensitive to the shale volume of the sands. This EEI χ angle also allows detection of sand that is not observed on the full-stack seismic. The EEI(−70) coloured inversion data were also used to estimate net sand thickness and the net-to-gross maps of the fans. Subsequently, a new algorithm termed DT-AMP was used to apply seismic amplitude detuning to the full three-dimensional (3D) seismic volume. This has proved useful in the evaluation of new exploration targets beyond the Sea Lion Field area. A sand classification was performed using multiple EEI attributes, including lithology and fluid cubes. This indicates that there are differences in the amplitude v. offset (AVO) response across the main Sea Lion fan complex. Pre-stack simultaneous inversion was also performed using both deterministic and stochastic schemes. A three-term inversion was tested but density estimation was considered to be unreliable. Seismic data were tested at several stages to constrain the static reservoir model, using coloured, deterministic and stochastic inversion methods. The final static model incorporated a set of scenarios using net-to-gross maps inferred from the quantitative analysis of the EEI(−70) data.


Objects variously called bipolar cores, pièces esquillées and other things are abundant in the record. Some interpret them as the exhausted remnants of bipolar reduction, others as wedges used with antler or bone. I propose that we call them "splintered pieces" to avoid functional connotations. Splintered pieces illustrate the problem of equifinality, different causes producing like consequences. A growing but uncertain consensus regards most splintered pieces as cores. Reviewing the latest expression of a different interpretation, I conclude that experimental, ethnographic, and archaeological data continue to support the view that most—not all—splintered pieces are cores. Nevertheless, the need remains urgent to search ethnographic accounts for support of the wedge view, to conduct further experiments, and to seek conclusive archaeological association of splintered pieces with wedging.


The phase reduction method is a dimension reduction method for weakly driven limit-cycle oscillators, which has played an important role in the theoretical analysis of synchro- nization phenomena. Recently, we proposed a generalization of the phase reduction method [W. Kurebayashi et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 2013]. This generalized phase reduction method can robustly predict the dynamics of strongly driven oscillators, for which the conventional phase reduction method fails. In this generalized method, the external input to the oscillator should be properly decomposed into a slowly varying component and remaining weak fluctua- tions. In this paper, we propose a simple criterion for timescale decomposition of the external input, which gives accurate prediction of the phase dynamics and enables us to systematically apply the generalized phase reduction method to a general class of limit-cycle oscillators. The validity of the criterion is confirmed by numerical simulations.


Abstract This paper introduces a concept of robustness of an air distribution method, which is defined as being capable of meeting the ventilation requirements during varying operational conditions. The robustness performance may be particularly important when the system allows individual control of the supply air parameters. As a preliminary example, plenum–based (ductless) air distribution methods are studied using computational fluid dynamics. Among the four basic air distribution methods in plenum–based systems, it is found that the floor supply and ceiling return system does not always produce the conventional displacement ventilation system performance when the heat sources are not concentrated. The ceiling supply with ceiling return produces the best robustness performance over a wide range of supply velocities.


The development of the winter pea crop represents a major challenge to expand plant protein production in temperate areas. Breeding winter cultivars requires the combination of freezing tolerance as well as high seed productivity and quality. In this paper we present data obtained from the F3 and F4 lines of winter peas from the four hybrid combinations (Specter/F95-927; F98-492/Windham; F95-927/CHECO; Specter/CHECO) obtained in theNARDIFundulea. A number of 121 lines (81 F3 lines and 40 F4 lines descendants from F3) selected from winter/winter and winter/spring crosses pea genotypes, have been tested in two years 2015 and 2016 in the field of NARDI Fundulea. At these lines were determined winter hardiness, earliness, yield and plant height comparing with the winter peas control (Specter, Checo and Windham). The results of this preliminary study suggested that it is possible in the breeding of winter peas to realize, in the same time, a genetic progress for high yield, good level of winter hardiness, plant height and earliness.


As the potential emerging technology for next generation integrated resonant sensors and frequency references as well as electronic filters, micro-electro-mechanical resonators have attracted a lot of attention over the past decade. As a result, a wide variety of high frequency micro/nanoscale electromechanical resonators have recently been presented. MEMS resonators, as low-cost highly integrated and ultra-sensitive mass sensors, can potentially provide new opportunities and unprecedented capabilities in the area of mass sensing. Such devices can provide orders of magnitude higher mass sensitivity and resolution compared to Film Bulk Acoustic resonators (FBAR) or the conventional quartz and Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) resonators due to their much smaller sizes and can be batch-fabricated and utilized in highly integrated large arrays at a very low cost. In this research, comprehensive experimental studies on the performance and durability of thermally actuated micromechanical resonant sensors with frequencies up to tens of MHz have been performed. The suitability and robustness of the devices have been demonstrated for mass sensing applications related to air-borne particles and organic gases. In addition, due to the internal thermo-electro-mechanical interactions, the active resonators can turn some of the consumed electronic power back into the mechanical structure and compensate for the mechanical losses. Therefore, such resonators can provide self-sustained-oscillation without the need for any electronic circuitry. This iii unique property has been deployed to demonstrate a prototype self-sustained sensor for air-borne particle monitoring. I have managed to overcome one of the obstacles for MEMS resonators, which is their relatively poor temperature stability. This is a major drawback when compared with the conventional quartz crystals. A significant decrease of the large negative TCF for the resonators has been attained by doping the devices with a high concentration of phosphorous, resulting in even slightly positive TCF for some of the devices. This is also expected to improve the phase noise characteristics of oscillators implemented utilizing such frequency references by eliminating the sharp dependence to electronic noise in the resonator bias current. Finally it is well known that non-uniformities in fabrication of MEMS resonators lead to variations in their frequency. I have proposed both active (non-permanent) and permanent frequency modification to compensate for variations in frequency of the MEMS


We present an approach to track several subjects from video sequences acquired by multiple cameras in real time. We address the key concerns of real time performance and continuity of tracking in overlapping and nonoverlapping fields of view. Each human subject is represented by a parametric ellipsoid having a state vector that encodes its position, velocity and height. We also encode visibility and persistence to tackle problems of distraction and short-period occlusion. To improve likelihood computation from different viewpoints, including the relocation of subjects after network blind spots, the colored and textured surface of each ellipsoid is learned progressively as the subject moves through the scene. This is combined with the information about subject position and velocity to perform camera handoff. For real time performance, the boundary of the ellipsoid can be projected several hundred times per frame for comparison with the observation image. Further, our implementation employs a particle filter, developed for parallel implementation on a graphics processing unit. We have evaluated our algorithm on standard data sets using metrics for multiple object tracking accuracy (MOTA) and speed of processing, and can show significant improvements in comparison with published work.


This work explores the use of a Multi-Objective Genetic Algorithm (MOGA) for both, feature selection and cluster count optimization, for an unsupervised machine learning technique, K-Means, applied to encrypted traffic identification (SSH). The performance of the proposed model is benchmarked against other unsupervised learning techniques existing in the literature: Basic K-Means, semi-supervised K-Means, DBSCAN, and EM. Results show that the proposed MOGA, not only outperforms the other models, but also provides a good trade off in terms of detection rate, false positive rate, and time to build and run the model. A hierarchical version of the proposed model is also implemented, to observe the gains, if any, obtained by increasing cluster purity by means of a second layer of clusters. Results show that with the hierarchical MOGA, significant gains are observed in terms of the classification performances of the system.


While policymakers pay much attention to copyrights, exceptions to copyright protection also promote innovation and are a major catalyst of U.S. economic growth. Specific exceptions to copyright protection under U.S. and international law, generally classified under the broad heading of Fair Use, are vital to many industries and stimulate growth across the economy. Companies benefiting from fair use generate substantial revenue, employ millions of workers, and, in 2006, represented one-sixth of total U.S. GDP. Under guidelines published by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), economic activity associated with copyrights has been studied extensively. To date, however, the economic contribution of industries dependent on fair use has not been quantified. Thus, a primary objective of this study is to fill the gap and provide an initial assessment of the economic contribution generated by companies benefiting from fair use. Fair use is an important restriction to the rights conferred on original works by the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976: 'The fair use of a copyrighted work ? is not an infringement of copyright.' The fair use doctrine, and other limitations and exceptions, have grown in importance with the rise of the digital economy, as fair use permits a range of activities that are critical to many high technology businesses and are an important foundation of the Internet economy. The beneficiaries of fair use encompass a broad range of companies, particularly those whose business activities involve the Internet, as well as consumers. The ubiquity of the Internet means that its benefits are widespread as well.


This paper is a contribution to research on iconicity and diagrammatic transparency in the lexicon. The focus lies on the potential contribution of polysemy to iconicity that is generally neglected by iconicity researchers. The three Peircean icon types of images, diagrams and metaphors are scrutinised with respect to their relationship to polysemy. It is shown that polysemy is diagrammatic and also closely connected to Peircean metaphor, since the icon types of metaphor and diagrams considerably overlap. Consequently, polysemy also plays a role in diagrammatic transparency and therefore must be considered as a distinct degree on scales of diagrammatic transparency. Existing scales of diagrammatic transparency should be revised. The most important problem with them is that they concentrate on the formal part of word transparency and neglect the semantic part of transparency issues. Evidence from questionnaire studies on lexical motivation suggests that diagrammatic transparency is not only a formal issue, but strongly depends on the semantic relation connecting a stimulus and its motivational base. Stimuli that are related by metaphorical similarity to a potential motivational partner are perceived more easily as motivated than stimuli that are potentially motivated by contiguity.


The essays in this Social Thought and Commentary section are exercises in a tried and true anthropological trick, albeit one that these days is perhaps not so often performed. The trick involves taking some very focused, one might even say " small," bits of ethnography and using them to unsettle major doctrines of social thought. Among famous David and Goliath efforts along these lines, one thinks of Malinowski's deployment of the details of Trobriand social structure and personal life to cast doubt on the universality of the Oedipus complex, or, closer thematically to our focus here, of Michelle Rosaldo's Ilongot-based assault on speech act theory (to which we return below). Neither of these efforts even approached complete success in unseating the paradigms they took on-entrenched ideas die hard-but they did stimulate a lot of valuable social-theoretical debate. Our aim here is to try to do the same. The focused bit of ethnography which all of the contributors to this special section have in hand is the assertion, widespread in the societies of the Pacific, that it is impossible or at least extremely difficult to know what other people think or feel. We have called this idea the doctrine of "the opacity of other minds." The opacity doctrine is not limited to the Pacific (as noted in several of the essays that follow), and it is likely that in most societies one can occasionally find people ruminating on how difficult it is to see into the hearts and minds of others. But the opacity doctrine is unusually well developed in many of the cultures of the Pacific, where it is not so much a matter of episodic personal reflection as it is a widely shared and taken-for-granted fact about the world, and one that shapes normative orders and everyday practice. In Pacific societies where the opacity doctrine is present, for example, people are often expected to refrain from speculating (at least publicly) about what others may be thinking, and penalties for gossip about other people's intentions are often very high (see Schieffelin, this collection). For related reasons, people tend to put little store in the veracity of what others say about their own thoughts, rarely expecting that they can take such reports as reliable guides to how those who make them will behave in the future. Many other examples of the way opacity ideas shape the course of daily life appear in the papers collected here. But these brief observations should be enough to carry the point that such ideas have real ramifications in the Pacific societies in which they appear. If our privileged piece of data is quite focused, the social theoretical target at which we aim it is broader. It is the contention of our essays that Pacific opacity doctrines ought to force a rethinking of some fairly settled approaches to topics such as the nature of theories of mind, the role of intention in linguistic communication and social interaction more generally, and the importance of empathy in human encounters and in anthropological method. In all of these areas, Pacific assumptions about the impossibility of knowing the minds of others fundamentally contradict social scientific models that assume such knowledge is possible, and that further assume that gaining such knowledge stands universally as a regulating ideal for human beings in engagement with their fellows. Can our theories imagine that we might approach other people without assuming that we can know something about what goes on in their heads? Or that we might interpret their speech without explicitly making guesses about their intentions in producing it? Or that we can get along with others without assuming that we can replicate their thoughts and feelings within ourselves as a way of understanding how things are with them? Could we ever cooperate with each other without being able to mind-read on all these levels? At least as they talk about their lives, many people in the Pacific appear to answer yes to these questions. …


Ethnonationalist Conflict in Postcommunist States investigates why some Eastern European states transitioned to new forms of governance with minimal violence while others broke into civil war. In Bulgaria, the Turkish minority was subjected to coerced assimilation and forced expulsion, but the nation ultimately negotiated peace through institutional channels. In Macedonia, periodic outbreaks of insurgent violence escalated to armed conflict. Kosovo's internal warfare culminated in NATO's controversial bombing campaign. In the twenty-first century, these conflicts were subdued, but violence continued to flare occasionally and impede durable conflict resolution.

In this comparative study, Maria Koinova applies historical institutionalism to conflict analysis, tracing ethnonationalist violence in postcommunist states to a volatile, formative period between 1987 and 1992. In this era of instability, the incidents that brought majorities and minorities into dispute had a profound impact and a cumulative effect, as did the interventions of international agents and kin states. Whether the conflicts initially evolved in peaceful or violent ways, the dynamics of their disputes became self-perpetuating and informally institutionalized. Thus, external policies or interventions could affect only minimal change, and the impact of international agents subsided over time. Regardless of the constitutions, laws, and injunctions, majorities, minorities, international agents, and kin states continue to act in accord with the logic of informally institutionalized conflict dynamics.

Koinova analyzes the development of those dynamics in Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Kosovo, drawing on theories of democratization, international intervention, and path-dependence as well as interviews and extensive fieldwork. The result is a compelling account of the underlying causal mechanisms of conflict perpetuation and change that will shed light on broader patterns of ethnic violence.


Preventable diseases pose a serious problem worldwide. The role of primary healthcare professionals is especially significant in promoting health. Aim: It is aimed to determine the health care professionals working in family health centres have on health education and health promotion skills. Method: The study sample included 144 health care professionals employed in one of 33 family health centres in Ankara Province. The study data were collected using a survey developed on the health education and health promotion skills included in the family medicine specialty education and curriculum from 2008. Results: It was found that 33.3% of the health care professionals had planned to receive health education, and that approximately half of the health care professionals had actively practiced health education and health promotion skills. Considering that time constraints were reported to be the most significant barriers to health promotion, primary health care professionals, most particularly the nurses, should be provided with comprehensive continuing educative training on health promotion and health education skills to foster their professional development. Health promotion and health education trainings shall serve to help them become more active and take on the responsibility of assuming counselling and training roles in health education.


Greenhouse cultivations are high input systems with respect to water and fertiliser usage. Worldwide increasing water shortages and competition for freshwater is raising the awareness that water use efficiency is a necessity in greenhouse horticulture. Releasing drain water from the greenhouse into the environment can also compromise surface and ground water quality due to the emissions of fertilisers and plant protection products. In soilless cultivation the nutrient solution can be recirculated; consequently they are highly efficient and sustainable production systems. Dutch growers have to realise zero emission by 2027 due to agreements made with government. However most are hesitant to fully recycle nutrient solutions, despite the many studies that have been conducted to resolve technical (installation) and physiological (growth) problems related to recycling drain water. In this study we demonstrate that with current best practice zero-emission crop production can become a reality. In the first trial (cucumber; July-November 2014) and up to the mid-season evaluation point of the second trial (sweet pepper; Dec-July 2015) no differences in production and fruit quality were found between the zero-emission cultivation and the reference cultivation grown to the agreed emission standards of 2015. Technology and cultivation strategy implemented are described and discussed and compared to common practice.


The experience of an independent hydroelectric power developer, STS HydroPower, Ltd. (STS), involved in the full scope of hydroelectric activities is desribed. The purpose of the paper is to examine those options and procedures available to the developer when a utility is encountered with negative predisposition towards independent projects. The basic issues discussed include: overcoming initial reservations, overcoming negative utility publicity, contract negotiations, defining and coordinating utility construction criteria, enforcing construction schedules, maintaining a long term working relationship to assist in the operational coordination of the functioning site. Examples of problems encountered in dealing with utilities and guidelines for working with a difficult utility are presented. Patience and perseverance are stressed.


The distribution of demersal fishes over heterogeneous seafloor habitats: An application oflandscape ecology to video imagery collected in a Central California State Marine Conservation Area by Ashley Knight Master of Science in Coastal and Watershed Science and Policy California State University Monterey Bay, 2011 Using landscape ecology approaches, this study investigated the importance of structural patterning in the seafloor landscape and the scales at which demersal fishes associate with different habitats. The following document describes the project in three parts: 1) The circumstances surrounding the management of the study site and the methodological approaches used; 2) The analytical framework and results; 3) Potential applications of these results in management. By describing the landscapes across which demersal fish are distributed at the Piedras Blancas State Marine Conservation Area (PBSMCA), within the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, we evaluated fish-habitat associations in the context of other central California deepwater studies. Quantifying and monitoring the distribution of fishes over the habitats at this site is critical to understanding how this marine protected area (MP A) may function as a conservation measure. Imagery surveys are ideal for collecting data on seafloor habitats and observing fishes in these habitats; these data are becoming an increasingly important contribution to marine conservation management. We examined imagery collected at the PBSMCA with a towed camera system. Surveys were conducted in 2007 and 2008 in water depths ranging from 30 120 m. Video imagery gathered with the sled was viewed as a set of non-overlapping video quadrats (frames). We compared generalized linear models to estimate the probability of response (detection) of selected demersal fish groups to a number of habitat variables, assuming a uniform probability ofdetection. Results suggested that, for all fish groupings, there is evidence that seafloor substrate plays a very strong role in determining distributions. Depth also played an important role, while biogenic structure and soft-sediment bedforms were rarely of importance to the distributions. Our results are consistent for the most part with fish distribution studies conducted at other sites within the central California region. These results highlight the importance of using imagery to collect monitoring data about marine landscapes. Use of a simple, low-cost camera system enabled us to address complex ecological questions about demersal fish-habitat associations across a heterogeneous landscape and provided useful results in the form of baseline data to MP A managers and site characterization to the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.


Gaze movements play a crucial role in human-computer interaction (HCI) applications. Recently, gaze tracking systems with a wide variety of applications have attracted much interest by the industry as well as the scientific community. The state-of-the-art gaze trackers are mostly non-intrusive and report high estimation accuracies. However, they require complex setups such as camera and geometric calibration in addition to subject-specific calibration. In this paper, we introduce a multi-camera gaze estimation system which requires less effort for the users in terms of the system setup and calibration. The system is based on an adaptive fusion of multiple independent camera systems in which the gaze estimation relies on simple cross-ratio (CR) geometry. Experimental results conducted on real data show that the proposed system achieves a significant accuracy improvement, by around 25%, over the traditional CR-based single camera systems through the novel adaptive multi-camera fusion scheme. The real-time system achieves <;0.9° accuracy error with very few calibration data (5 points) under natural head movements, which is competitive with more complex systems. Hence, the proposed system enables fast and user-friendly gaze tracking with minimum user effort without sacrificing too much accuracy.


Cognition is a general term describing the mental capacities of an animal, and often includes the ability to categorize, remember, and communicate about objects in the environment. Numerous regions of the telencephalon (cerebral cortex and limbic system) are responsible for these cognitive functions. Although many researchers have used traditional laboratory animals such as rodents and pigeons in the study of animal cognition, an increasing number of studies focus on species such as non-human primates, dolphins, and domestic dogs (Canis familiaris). Such studies can provide insight into the evolution of cognitive processes in humans (Miklssi et al., 2004; Gomez, 2005). Here we describe a laboratory exercise we have used with great success with college students, although the exercise would be equally effective at the middle- or high-school levels. The primary objective of this exercise is to use an animal familiar to all students, the domestic dog, to examine the phenomena of object permanence and social cueing. More specifically, the approach described here will teach students about the importance of careful experimental design and the interpretation of data. In this regard, the activity is consistent with the National Science Education Standards (National Research Council, 1996) in that it encourages the skills of scientific inquiry (Standards B and E), allows students to engage in extended investigations (Standard D), and nurtures collaboration among students (Standard E). In addition, this exercise aligns with the National Standard that secondary science teachers should be able to demonstrate "Measurement as a way of knowing and organizing observations of constancy and change." Object Permanence A relatively simple form of cognition is illustrated by the phenomenon known as object permanence, the awareness that objects exist even when they are not visible. Object permanence is a universal characteristic among primates (Gomez, 2005). Most studies of object permanence utilize the scheme originally conceived by the Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget from his studies of human infants and toddlers (e.g., Piaget & Inhelder, 1969; Table 1). In the 1980s and 1990s, comparative psychologists began applying this same scheme to dogs (Triana & Pasnak, 1981; Gagnon & Dori, 1992, 1993). Some studies found that dogs perform at a level consistent with a one- to two-year-old human toddler, meaning that they usually score better than 50% on Visible and Invisible Displacement Tests (see below). Other studies have suggested that dogs may simply associate the location of the hidden object with some fixture of the environment (Collier-Baker et al., 2004). Thus, the degree of object permanence in domestic dogs is still very much a question of scientific debate. Social Cueing A separate but equally interesting area of research focuses on the ability of animals to follow social cues from humans. The most frequently investigated cue is pointing toward a hidden object, which has been studied in a diverse array of mammals including non-human primates, dogs, wolves, goats, and cetaceans (Miklssi & Soproni, 2006). Interestingly, dogs perform much better at this task than do either wolves (Canis lupus) or chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), which originally led some researchers (Hare et al., 2002) to speculate that domestication selects for a particular set of cognitive abilities that allow for human-dog communication. More recent work (Hare et al., 2005) suggests that social cueing may simply be a byproduct of the domestication process itself. At a minimum, dogs' ability to follow social cues means that they quickly learn to associate human pointing with rewards such as food or toys. A more intriguing possibility, however, is that dogs might possess what cognitive psychologists call a "theory of mind," the ability to recognize another individual--in this case a human--as a separate, sentient being in possession of information different from what the dog possesses. …


The electrical resistance change of CFRP composite under mechanical loading condition can be used as an effective parameter to evaluate the accumulated internal damage. The internal electrically conductive network, which is constructed by the contacts between conductive carbon fibers, is very important in correlating the resistance change to mechanical damage state. The electrical ineffective length (delta) ec, the mean distance between adjacent contact points, can be used as a useful parameter to evaluate the internal conductive network. In this study, a new methodology for the evaluation of the internal conducting network is proposed. For this purpose, the electrically anisotropic characteristics of the CFRP composite are measured using the DC 4 probe and the DC 6 probe methods and the values of (delta) ec are estimated using the mechanical tensile test for various fiber volume fractions. Based on the experimental results, the empirical relationship between the electrical anisotropy and (delta) ec is established. We also conduct the DC network circuit analysis using Kirchhoff's rule and the Monte Carlo simulation of the contact point distribution, and calculate the (delta) ec for various contact configurations. By comparing the analytical and experimental results, the distribution configuration and the number of contact points, which constitute the internal electrically conductive network of CFRP composites, can be evaluated quantitatively.


An intact embryo-maternal communication in the pre-implantation period is particularly critical for establishment of pregnancy and early embryonic losses have been identified as the major cause of reproductive failure in cattle. Thus, to gain deeper insight into this complex embryo-maternal crosstalk, a combination of subtracted cDNA libraries and cDNA array hybridization was applied to identify mRNAs differentially regulated genes in the bovine endometrium by the presence of a conceptus. One cDNA library was constructed according the suppression subtractive hybridization method (Diatchenko et al., 1996) with minor modifications; a second cDNA library was constructed of subtracted cDNA purchased from the vertis Biotechnologie AG. As biological model endometrial tissue samples of monozygotic twins (generated by embryo splitting) collected at day 18 of gestation were used, which is a unique possibility to eliminate genetic variability as a factor potentially affecting the results of gene expression analyses. Array hybridization was carried out using 33P-labeled cDNA probes obtained from five monozygotic twin pairs. Sequence analysis revealed 87 different genes or mRNAs, respectively, which displayed a difference in signal intensity of 2.0 fold or more in at least four out of five twin pairs. Eighty genes corresponded to genes with known or inferred function, either the bovine gene or the human orthologue. For 7 mRNAs a match with bovine ESTs was obtained only. For nine selected genes the expression in the bovine endometrium was quantified by the use of quantitative real-time RT-PCR to verify the results obtained by array hybridization and to perform more precise quantitative measurements for these genes. Overall, the results of array hybridization and real-time RT-PCR correlated very well.
Almost half of the identified genes are known to be stimulated by type I interferons reflecting the response to IFNt, which is the pregnancy recognition signal in ruminants. Of particular interest among the interferon stimulated genes is ISG15, one of the most markedly upregulated genes in the present study, which is hypothesized to stabilize intracellular endometrial proteins through conjugation processes. For the ISG15ylation system mRNAs of four potential components (IFITM1, IFITM3, HSXIAPAF1, and DTX3L) were found in addition to ISG15 and UBE1L, and in situ hybridization revealed similar mRNA expression patterns of these genes. It is therefore suggested, that modification of endometrial proteins through ISG15ylation plays a fundamental role in the IFNt signaling.
A classification of the identified genes according to their assignment to Gene Ontologies revealed the orchestrated interaction of various processes and mechanisms with regard to the preparation of the maternal endometrium for embryonic implantation. As particular interesting, genes were identified involved in modulation of the maternal immune system at the humoral and cellular level, cell adhesion, cell communication, regulation of transcription, cell differentiation, cell growth, and cell proliferation. These findings underline that an intense embryo-maternal dialogue takes place during the pre-implantation period, which culminates in a receptive endometrium prepared for implantation of the conceptus.
To conclude, this is the first study of its kind for cattle in the pre-implantation stage of embryonic development and revealed the orchestrated upregulation of genes important for embryonic implantation during the pre-implantation period in the bovine endometrium. The presented results provide new starting points for detailed investigations of the embryo-maternal dialogue by which the endometrium is prepared for conceptus attachment.


Background: The peripheral blood neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) is a cytologic marker of both inflammation and poor outcomes in patients with cancer. DNA methylation is a key element of the epigenetic program defining different leukocyte subtypes and may provide an alternative to cytology in assessing leukocyte profiles. Our aim was to create a bioinformatic tool to estimate NLR using DNA methylation, and to assess its diagnostic and prognostic performance in human populations. Methods: We developed a DNA methylation–derived NLR (mdNLR) index based on normal isolated leukocyte methylation libraries and established cell-mixture deconvolution algorithms. The method was applied to cancer case–control studies of the bladder, head and neck, ovary, and breast, as well as publicly available data on cancer-free subjects. Results: Across cancer studies, mdNLR scores were either elevated in cases relative to controls, or associated with increased hazard of death. High mdNLR values (>5) were strong indicators of poor survival. In addition, mdNLR scores were elevated in males, in nonHispanic white versus Hispanic ethnicity, and increased with age. We also observed a significant interaction between cigarette smoking history and mdNLR on cancer survival. Conclusions: These results mean that our current understanding of mature leukocyte methylomes is sufficient to allow researchers and clinicians to apply epigenetically based analyses of NLR in clinical and epidemiologic studies of cancer risk and survival. Impact: As cytologic measurements of NLR are not always possible (i.e., archival blood), mdNLR, which is computed from DNA methylation signatures alone, has the potential to expand the scope of epigenome-wide association studies. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 26(3); 328–38. ©2016 AACR.


Abstract: We define a text-object by pinpointing the differences between "a text" and "some text". Our objective is "to make the text speak by itself", by the means of a textual analysis able, when the object is "a text", to highlight "one" meaning. We present the theoretical framework of Applicative (actions and operations) and Cognitive (abstract and conceptual representations) Grammar (GA&C), in which this textual analysis is carried out. "One" meaning can be proposed regarding the text, both locally and at a more global level. Then, to fulfil this objective, we propose a textual analysis method, based on identification of the markers from a "point of view", or a main language operation. An epistemological control of the results is necessary, added to the method of analysis, to make clearer the main concepts and actions in the text. We focus here both on determining the "point of view" to identify predication with relevant markers, and at a conceptual level, from the identified markers of this "point of view", with two examples of cartography from the first chapter of the European Constitution.


I congratulate the Journal of Robotics and Mechatronics (JRM) on the publication of its 30th anniversary issue. As one of JRM's past Editors-in- Chief, I am extremely pleased and proud of this great achievement. JRM was the first journal dealing with robotics and mechatronics in the world when it was launched thirty years ago. Since then, the journal has made a strong impact on the robotics and mechatronics field. It has been hard for the journal to provide high quality issues for so many years. I would like to sincerely express my great respect to Mr. Hayashi, founder and former president of Fuji Technology Press Ltd.; former Editors-in-Chief Prof. Yamafuji, Prof. Fukuda, and Prof. Kaneko; the current Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Takita; and our colleagues, including the editorial board and editorial staff, for their hard work. I would also like to express my great appreciation to all the authors, reviewers, and readers for their superb contributions. This grand thirty-year achievement could not have been attained without all their contributions.
 I was Editor-in-Chief for seven years ‒ volumes 19 through 25 ‒ beginning in January 2007. I enjoyed my role as Editor-in-Chief, since many young, talented researchers and engineers took part in the editorial process, and I could discuss with them how we would achieve a high-quality journal. I remember clearly how hard they worked to edit superlative volumes by proposing and organizing special issues with up-to-date topics. During that period, we had the good fortune of collaborating with the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers (JSME). They supported us in providing committee members for our editorial board, and in collecting and reviewing the many excellent papers. I would also express my thanks to JSME for their abundant and generous support. Because of it, JRM achieved a high reputation and contributed to both academia and industry.
 Today there are many relevant journals in the world. Competing with them and producing an even higher quality journal than ever before are the most critical issues in the next step of JRM's advancement. I applaud the current editorial board members and staff and expect JRM to become the very top journal in the field. In conclusion, I hope I can celebrate with you ten and twenty years from now, again and again! Tatsuo Arai


'Substance Misuse in the Undergraduate Medical Curriculum' is a national curriculum development project is funded by the Department of Health (England), and coordinated by the International Centre for Drug Policy at St Georges, University of London. This presentation focuses on the implementation at the University of East Anglia of the project, which has focused on the following key aims, indicating that on graduation students should be able to: • recognise, assess and understand the management of substance misuse and associated health and social problems and contribute to the prevention of addiction. • be aware of the effects of substance misuse on their own behaviour and health and on their professional practice and conduct. • challenge the stigma and discrimination that are often experienced by people with addiction The project takes a patient centred approach in recognising that substance misuse is not just a specialised area of practice concerned with treating addicts or an abstract issue of public health; it is one of the worst health problems doctors encounter many times a day. It impacts not just on the health but also the wider lives of those misusing substances, their families, their colleagues and wider society. Those who misuse substances will inevitably at some stage be seen by doctors, who therefore have a vital role to play, in recognising substance misuse, and in assessing and managing the associated problems. This applies equally to hospital doctors and general practitioners, as much as to specialists in addiction; because all these staff will encounter substance misuse every day. Part of the government's response to this problem is to address the education of professionals who will deal with substance misuse. This presentation summarises the process of curriculum mapping, review and implementation of nationally coordinated substance misuse learning objectives at the University of East Anglia.


This is the first demonstration of receptor-mediated delivery of mRNA and establishes a new approach to gene therapy. Messenger RNA (mRNA) provides a promising alternative to plasmid DNA as a genetic material for delivery in non-viral gene therapy strategies. Since it does not require access to the nucleus and is less dependent on the cell cycle for expression, mRNA delivered using cationic lipids or short cationic polymers can be effectively translated within target cells. In this study, mRNA formed discrete nanoparticles following self assembly with a range of cationic polymers. Based on transfection activities, the low molecular weight polycations were more efficient than high molecular weight, while protamine and polyethylenimine were far more efficient than poly(L-lysine). Receptor-mediated delivery of mRNA was demonstrated using the synthetic polyamino acid (K)16GACDCRGDCFCA designed to promote cell entry following interaction with cell surface αυ integrins. RGD-bearing mRNA complexes showed very high levels of expression, reaching over 60% transduction of B16F10 cells.


Background: Better healthcare outcomes in health services are obtainable from frequently observing ongoing healthcare activities, gathering data, and assessing outcomes. Objectives: This study aimed to establish the basic principles of nursing care standards and practices in wards, develop a nursing audit tool for periodically monitoring and controlling ongoing nursing activities, and evaluate nursing care quality. Methods: A methodological investigation of field visit data gathered between November 2017 and April 2019 was conducted. A nursing service audit tool was used to collect data. Based on the literature and expert consideration, a conceptual structure of the nursing audit criteria containing 63 items and four factors (patient care, indirect care, unit criteria, and head nurse) was developed. The hospital supervisors visited all the wards and evaluated all the items of the tool accordingly. Nursing outcomes of units were used for determine the predictive validity of the tool. Two supervising nurses collected the data using the tool during their shifts. Supervisors were trained on the use of the tool to avoid any differences between evaluators. Each supervisor collected 309 tools. A total of 618 data were collected. Results: The level of validity and reliability of the tool is within acceptable limits; thus, it can be regarded as a valid and reliable tool for monitoring nursing care processes in the general wards of the hospital. Conclusion: The developed tool will help nurse managers monitor the nursing care process in accordance with the quality standards.


Dealing with non-stationarity in environments (e.g., in the transition dynamics) and objectives (e.g., in the reward functions) is a challenging problem that is crucial in real-world applications of reinforcement learning (RL). While most current approaches model the changes as a single shared embedding vector, we leverage insights from the recent causality literature to model non-stationarity in terms of individual latent change factors, and causal graphs across different environments. In particular, we propose Factored Adaptation for Non-Stationary RL (FANS-RL), a factored adaption approach that learns jointly both the causal structure in terms of a factored MDP, and a factored representation of the individual time-varying change factors. We prove that under standard assumptions, we can completely recover the causal graph representing the factored transition and reward function, as well as a partial structure between the individual change factors and the state components. Through our general framework, we can consider general non-stationary scenarios with different function types and changing frequency, including changes across episodes and within episodes. Experimental results demonstrate that FANS-RL outperforms existing approaches in terms of return, compactness of the latent state representation, and robustness to varying degrees of non-stationarity.


Background & objectives: Terfezia boudieri (TB) has more than 15 types of proteins, gallic acid, catechins, flavonoids, tannins and other compounds such as beta-carotene and linoleic acid. Some of these compounds have antioxidant and anti-hyperlipidemia effects. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the antioxidant and protective effects of this fungus on the liver injury induced by carbon tetrachloride. Methods: 30 male Wistar rats were divided randomly into 5 groups (each group containing 6). Group 1 (normal control group) and group 2 (control CCl4) were given normal saline for 14 days. Group 3, 4 and 5 received 500, 1000 and 1500 mg/ kg doses of methanol extract of TB for 14 days, respectively before the injection of carbon tetrachloride. In the fourteenth day, all groups except group 1 were given 1.5 ml/kg of carbon tetrachloride (V / V 1: 1 dissolved in olive oil). Group 1, instead of carbon tetrachloride, received 1.5 ml/kg of olive oil on the fourteenth day. Results: Injection of carbon tetrachloride in rats increased serum activity of ALT, AST, ALP and serum degrees of triglycerides, VLDL, LDL, HDL, total cholesterol, glucose, and reduced HDL and total antioxidant capacity (TAC); while pre-treatment with methanol extract of TB significantly reversed the changes. Conclusion: The results of this study showed that methanol extract of TB can protect the liver against oxidants and free radicals produced by carbon tetrachloride metabolism.


This Note raises taxation issues pertaining to a gift tax on the transfer of property by nonresidents under current United States tax rules. It further illustrates patterns and trends to evade a gift tax using transaction maneuvers. These issues are defined in three categories: a gift tax on the transfer of property situated only within the United States by a nonresident, no gift tax on the transfer of intangible assets, and transferee liability. In response to such issues, this Note calls for corresponding proposals to resolve gift taxation problems. It proposes that a gift tax should be imposed on the transfer of property by a nonresident whether the property is situated inside or outside of the United States. It also proposes that intangible assets transferred by a nonresident should not be exempt from gift taxation. Lastly, this Note proposes that in a gift transaction made by a nonresident, a U.S. donee should be required to withhold a tentative amount of gift tax from the nonresident donor to enhance taxpayer compliance with tax regulations.