India's growing affluence has led experts to predict a major rearmament effort. The second-most populous nation in the world is beginning to wield the economic power expected of such a behemoth. Its border with Pakistan is a tinderbox, the subcontinent remains vulnerable to religious extremism, and a military rivalry between India and China could erupt in the future. India has long had the motivation for modernizing its military uit now has the resources as well. What should we expect to see in the future, and what will be the likely ramifications? In Arming without Aiming , Stephen Cohen and Sunil Dasgupta answer those crucial questions. India's armed forces want new weapons worth more than $100 billion. But most of these weapons must come from foreign suppliers due to the failures of India's indigenous research and development. Weapons suppliers from other nations are queuing up in New Delhi. A long relationship between India and Russian manufacturers goes back to the cold war. More recently, India and Israel have developed strong military trade ties. Now, a new military relationship with the United States has generated the greatest hope for military transformation in India. Against this backdrop of new affluence and newfound access to foreign military technology, Cohen and Dasgupta investigate India's military modernization to find haphazard military change that lacks political direction, suffers from balkanization of military organization and doctrine, remains limited by narrow prospective planning, and is driven by the pursuit of technology free from military-strategic objectives. The character of military change in India, especially the dysfunction in the political-military establishment with regard to procurement, is ultimately the result of a historical doctrine of strategic restraint in place since Nehru. In that context, its approach of arming without strategic purpose remains viable as India seeks great-power accommodation of its rise and does not want to look threatening. The danger lies in its modernization efforts precipitating a period of strategic assertion or contributing to misperception of India's intentions by Pakistan and China, its two most immediate rivals.


Many species of fish, bird, and insect form groups of individuals that move together, called schools, flocks, or swarms, of characteristic shape and speed. Here, we study a model of animal group formation on a plane, in which each individual changes its swimming angle in response to its neighbors within a radius of interaction. Outside of a short range of separation (or repulsion), each individual changes swimming direction to achieve a similar swimming direction as its neighbors (alignment) and to swim toward them (cohesion). Depending on the relative strength of alignment and cohesion, the model produces groups of two distinct patterns: marches and circles. We introduce several statistics for the swimming patterns of individuals. As the strength of alignment relative to cohesion increases, the shapes of groups change in the following order: (1) circles, (2) mixture of circles and marches, (3) short marches, (4) long marches, (5) wide marches. We derived a formula for the spatial size of circles, which explains that the radius of circles does not change with the number of individuals, but it increases with swimming speed and decreases with the sensitivity of swimming direction to neighbors. We also discuss how the length and width of marches depend on the relative strength of alignment and cohesion.


This paper tests empirically the strategic explanation of budget deficits suggested by Tabellini and Alesina [13] and Persson and Svensson [12]. Tabellini and Alesina suggest that governments with different political orientation provide different public goods. The model predicts that: a) public good provision follows a political pattern; b) the incumbent that anticipates her defeat at the next election runs budget deficits to tie the hands of the future government. Persson and Svensson suggest that liberal governments prefer more public good provision than conservative ones. The model predicts that: a) the conservative (liberal) incumbent that anticipates her defeat at the next election runs budget deficits (surpluses); b) budget imbalances have a political color. Using U.S. and pooled data for sixteen OECD countries, we find little evidence that the incumbent's probability of being voted out of office explains budget deficits, that the provision of public goods follows a political pattern or that budget imbalances have a political color.


A method to suppress polarization-fluctuation induced drift in resonator fiber optic gyro (R-FOG) is demonstrated by a polarization-maintaining fiber (PMF) resonator with twin 90 degrees polarization-axis rotated splices. By setting the length difference of the fiber segments between two 90 degrees polarization-axis rotated splicing points to a half of the beat-length of the fiber, a single eigen-state of polarization (ESOP) is excited with incident lightwave linearly polarized along the polarization-axis of the fiber. Compared to the previously reported resonator employing single 90 degrees polarization-axis rotated splice [1], in which two ESOPs are excited, our new scheme avoids the effect from the unwanted ESOP and thus suppresses the polarization-fluctuation induced drift in R-FOG output significantly.


Outliers in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are sensor nodes that issue attacks by abnormal behaviours and fake message dissemination. However, existing cryptographic techniques are hard to detect these inside attacks, which cause outlier recognition a critical and challenging issue for reliable and secure data dissemination in WSNs. To efficiently identify and isolate outliers, this study presents a novel outlier detection and countermeasure scheme (ODCS), which consists of three mechanisms: (i) abnormal event observation mechanism for network surveillance; (ii) exceptional message supervision mechanism for distinguishing fake messages by exploiting spatiotemporal correlation and consistency and (iii) abnormal behaviour supervision mechanism for the evaluation of node behaviour. The ODCS provides a heuristic methodology and does not need the knowledge about normal or malicious sensors in advance. This property makes the ODCS not only to distinguish and deal with various dynamic attacks automatically without advance learning, but also to reduce the requirement of capability for constrained nodes. In the ODCS, the communication is limited in a local range, such as one-hop or a cluster, which can reduce the communication frequency and circumscribe the session range further. Moreover, the ODCS provides countermeasures for different types of attacks, such as the rerouting scheme and the rekey security scheme, which can separate outliers from normal sensors and enhance the robustness of network, even when some nodes are compromised by adversary. Simulation results indicate that our approach can effectively detect and defend the outlier attack.


Traditional knowledge from the ancient techniques and practices of a territory passed on through the generations and used for water harvesting, soil management, use and protection of natural areas, rural architecture, and for organising urban centres. Today, traditional knowledge is in danger and its disappearance would not only cause the loss of people9s capability to keep and pass on the artistic and natural heritage, but also the loss of an extraordinary source of knowledge and cultural diversity from which appropriate innovative solutions could be derived today and in the future. UNESCO launched a global programme for an inventory assigned to IPOGEA -Research Centre on Traditional and Local Knowledge. The project gathers and protects historical knowledge and promotes and certifies innovative practices based on the modern re-proposal of tradition as well. The main targets are the firms, the natural areas, and the historical centres which will be assigned quality trademarks and acknowledgements of international excellence in production or use of good practices and innovative solutions. Each technology, proposition and experience achieved will provide a spin-off on an international scale and each good practice will contribute to safeguarding the whole planet.


The rise of Web 2.0 social sites, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube has brought significant changes and opportunities for both online consumers and governments. These tools have changed the ways Internet users communicate with each other and their governments, and allow for greater social participation. The number of worldwide users is growing significantly and their expectations for more services are rising. However, this has not translated into Asian governments totally encompassing the implementation functions and services using these tools. This research investigates the level of government participation of 50 Asian governments of three social media sites. The results show that a minority of Asian governments (approximately 30 percent) are using Web 2.0 tools for communication and information dissemination. The study found that if social sites were utilised, most governments used them for a) information dissemination on official government channels, b) education and c) tourism. The implications are that governments are missing opportunities to better server their citizens and reach the growing number of Internet users. Instead of avoiding these new technologies, governments should develop an overall strategic plan for all agency levels to participate in social networks, and develop a coordinated effort to develop and implement the tools.


In an oft-quoted statement, the Surgeon General of the United States of America, William Stewart, said in 1967: "The time has come to close the book on infectious diseases. We have basically wiped out infection in the United States." This influential comment has, however, been contradicted by subsequent events. For example, Jones et al. recently reported that from 1940 to 2004 several hundred new infectious diseases emerged, many of which are zoonotic and bacterial.1 More than half of these new diseases have emerged since the 1970s, with the 1980s being the decade with the most new infections. Clearly, infectious diseases are still an open book.

Humans and pathogens share a long co-evolution, and infections have exerted a remarkable influence on the course of historical events and human societies. This has been abundantly well documented by historians. Yet somehow, infectious diseases have not attracted a great deal of attention from bioethicists.

This volume of essays is a welcome attempt to remedy that deficit. It stems from a thematic issue of the journal Bioethics devoted to ethics and infectious disease, published in 2005. A point of departure for the book is the so-called 10:90 divide, whereby less than 10% of medical research is devoted to diseases that account for more than 90% of the global burden of disease. Driving this agenda is a concern for the most disadvantaged populations, which are disproportionately affected by infectious diseases.

Selgelid, in the introductory essay, points out that a review of the bioethics literature demonstrates a paucity of serious ethical reflection on infectious diseases. He elucidates several reasons for this neglect. First, he argues that bioethicists have been overly concerned with the ethical issues associated with the use of high technology such as reproductive technologies and intensive care units. Second, he points out that optimism has given rise to the belief that infectious diseases are no longer the dominant threat to global health, a sentiment captured by the quotation in the first paragraph of this review. Third, infectious diseases entail "otherness". Individuals with infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS or tuberculosis are often stigmatized. The fourth, and perhaps the most important, point that he makes is the complex nature of infectious diseases. A true understanding of the implication of the impact of an infectious organism on individuals and communities requires the integration of microbiology, immunology, clinical medicine, epidemiology, psychology, geography, anthropology, zoology and many other disciplines. Unfortunately, there are few individuals who can achieve this with sufficient expertise.

The introductory essay superbly establishes the framework for those that follow. The book is extremely well laid out, the 22 chapters are pertinent, and the authors are first rate. It is divided into six parts. Part I explores the relationship between bioethics and infectious disease in three chapters that examine some of the special features of infectious diseases and the unique ethical issues pertaining to them. Part II covers ethics and infectious disease control, introducing the ethical challenges of drug-resistant tuberculosis, wildlife diseases, pandemic preparedness, and public health and the use of restrictive measures for disease control. Part III deals with the issues and dilemmas associated with the treatment of individuals with infectious disease. Part IV is a welcome contribution to the emerging and surprisingly limited literature on the ethical issues raised by mass vaccination programmes. Part V focuses attention on developing countries and global health, with stimulating essays by Paul Farmer, Nicole Gastineau-Campos, Thomas Pogge and Tim Anderson. Finally, part VI tackles the bioethical dimensions of security and bioterrorism.

Altogether this set of essays would make compelling reading for any public-health practitioner or clinician interested in infectious diseases. I can give it an unreserved recommendation. However, there is one small caveat. As timely as this book is, it already shows signs of needing updates. The emergence of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) makes many of the book's essays on tuberculosis control no longer completely relevant, since XDR-TB raises a whole host of ethical questions that are of the utmost importance for global health. Finally, there is little coverage of hospital-borne infections, such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE), which raise significant ethical issues. The concept linking these last two topics is drug resistance, a largely human-made phenomenon that has had a catastrophic impact on hospital care and the health of communities.

In short, infectious diseases are still with us and they are likely to remain an eternal aspect of human existence. It is time that the bioethical issues relevant to the impact and control of infectious diseases on individuals, communities and populations receive the type of robust ethical reflection that other aspects of health care have received. The publication of this book is a welcome addition to the bioethics literature; it will be particularly suitable for use in postgraduate courses on infectious diseases, public-health ethics or clinical ethics. The authors are to be commended for their attention to this topic and for inviting some of the best minds in bioethics to address some of the most difficult, but neglected, ethical issues in public health and medicine. ■


Background/Context The role of race in the university continues to be a contentious issue. Proponents of college diversity often cite the importance of fostering a diverse and deliberative democratic society, but the link between student experiences and postcollege citizenship has received limited attention. Purpose/Objective This study explores the extent to which two types of college diversity experiences (cross-racial interaction and curricular/co-curricular diversity engagement) predict aspects of informed citizenship associated with supporting a deliberative democracy six years after graduation (i.e., following the news, discussion of racial issues, and importance of keeping up to date with politics). Participants The dataset for this study came from UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute. We utilized the 1994–1998–2004 cohort of students/alumni, which included a postcollege survey administered six years after graduation. The total sample consisted of 8,634 alumni from 229 institutions. Research Design This study utilized secondary data analysis of the 1994–1998–2004 CIRP dataset. Data Collection and Analysis Path analysis was particularly useful for this study to examine the direct and indirect effects of the college diversity experiences on senior-year and longer-term outcomes. Results College diversity experiences have direct effects on postcollege discussions of racial issues, which suggests that these forms of engagement may have long-lasting effects on college graduates. Moreover, curricular/co-curricular diversity engagement also has positive, indirect effects on keeping up to date with politics, news consumption, and discussing racial issues well after graduation. The pattern of findings differed when analyzed separately by racial/ethnic group (i.e., Whites/Caucasians, Asian Americans, and underrepresented students of color). Conclusions/Recommendations This study adds to the existing knowledge base by making a key contribution to the limited research on the long-term benefits of diversity experiences as well as the dimensions of higher education that inform active citizenship in a deliberative democracy. This study examined the complex relationships—both direct and indirect effects—associated with these college diversity experiences and outcomes after college and how these relationships vary by racial/ethnic group. The current findings point to the particular importance of maximizing opportunities for cross-racial interaction and curricular/co-curricular diversity engagement for all students regardless of their race/ethnicity.


Graphs have attracted researchers in various fields in that many different kinds of real-world entities and relationships between them can be represented and analyzed effectively and efficiently using graphs. In particular, researchers in data mining and machine learning areas have developed algorithms and models to understand the complex graph data better and perform various data mining tasks. While a large body of work exists on graph mining, most existing work does not fully exploit attributes attached to graph nodes or edges.In this dissertation, we exploit node attributes to generate better solutions to several graph data mining problems addressed in the literature. First, we introduce the notion of statistically significant attribute associations in attribute graphs and propose an effective and efficient algorithm to discover those associations. The effectiveness analysis on the results shows that our proposed algorithm can reveal insightful attribute associations that cannot be identified using the earlier methods focused solely on frequency. Second, we build a probabilistic generative model for observed attributed graphs. Under the assumption that there exist hidden communities behind nodes in a graph, we adopt the idea of latent topic distributions to model a generative process of node attribute values and link structure more precisely. This model can be used to detect hidden communities and profile missing attribute values. Lastly, we investigate how to employ node attributes to learn latent representations of nodes in lower dimensional embedding spaces and use the learned representations to improve the performance of data mining tasks over attributed graphs.


The topic of the present work are non-Brownian particles in shear flow. As reported in
literature, the occurring phenomenon in this context is shear-induced diffusion which
takes place in the absence of the well-known Brownian diffusion. Diffusive processes
can be described stochastically in terms of a stochastic differential equation (Langevin
equation or Langevin-like equation) or a differential equation for the probability
density, in second order referred to as Fokker-Planck equation. It is known that in
contrast to Brownian diffusion, the shear-induced diffusion is a long-time diffusion
which poses a challenge to the stochastic description of this phenomenon. The present
work analyzes the problem of non-Brownian particles in shear-induced diffusion
with regard to the Markov property of the treated variables. This concludes that the
Fokker-Planck equation so far derived in pure position space may not be sufficient. In
order to ensure the Markov process property, a Fokker-Planck equation extended to
coupled position colored-noise velocity space is derived. Throughout the extension,
the colored-noise velocity is modeled as an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process. These first
two steps were also treated in the author's Master thesis (Lukassen 2012). A detailed
substantiation of this approach is published in (Lukassen & Oberlack 2014b) including
a new multiple time scale analysis and a Gaussian solution. The multiple time scale
analysis results in the dimensionless form of the equation of motion which serves as a
starting point for the derivation of the new colored-noise Fokker-Planck equation. As
a next step, this coupled Fokker-Planck equation is integrated over velocity space and
approximated to yield a reduced position-space Fokker-Planck equation. It is shown
that such a reduction as in the present work is only possible under certain conditions
concerning the correlation time. The resulting position-space equation is analyzed
and compared to the traditional position-space models. The reduced form exhibits
additional correction terms. In an outlook, possible extensions of the presented model
are discussed with exemplary simulation results. Chapter 5 and 6 as a whole are based
on the author's publication (Lukassen & Oberlack 2014b).


A newly designed conical spot profile analyzing low-energy electron diffraction (LEED) allows optimized access to the sample up to an angle of 45° with respect to the surface plane. This allows in vivo LEED measurements during deposition or adsorption. The electron optics of the electrostatic deflection unit and the newly designed entrance lens were simulated and optimized using an electron-beam ray-tracing algorithm. Different sample distances can be accommodated by adjusting the deflection voltage between the front and rear section. A new "real-image" SPA-LEED operation mode is presented allowing simple control of the instrument and accurate electron-beam positioning on the sample.


Abstract Two coarse-grained Gilbert-type deltas in the Lower Badenian deposits along the southern margin of the Western Carpathian Foredeep (peripheral foreland basin) were newly interpreted. Facies characterizing a range of depositional processes are assigned to four facies associations — topset, foreset, bottomset and offshore marine pelagic deposits. The evidence of Gilbert deltas within open marine deposits reflects the formation of a basin with relatively steep margins connected with a relative sea level fall, erosion and incision. Formation, progradation and aggradation of the thick coarse-grained Gilbert delta piles generally indicate a dramatic increase of sediment supply from the hinterland, followed by both relatively continuous sediment delivery and an increase in accommodation space. Deltaic deposition is terminated by relatively rapid and extended drowning and is explained as a transgressive event. The lower Gilbert delta was significantly larger, more areally extended and reveals a more complicated stratigraphic architecture than the upper one. Its basal surface represents a sequence boundary and occurs around the Karpatian/Badenian stratigraphic limit. Two coeval deltaic branches were recognized in the lower delta with partly different stratigraphic arrangements. This different stratigraphic architecture is mostly explained by variations in the sediment delivery and /or predisposed paleotopography and paleobathymetry of the basin floor. The upper delta was recognized only in a restricted area. Its basal surface represents a sequence boundary probably reflecting a higher order cycle of a relative sea level rise and fall within the Lower Badenian. Evidence of two laterally and stratigraphically separated coarse-grained Gilbert deltas indicates two regional/basin wide transgressive/regressive cycles, but not necessarily of the same order. Provenance analysis reveals similar sources of both deltas. Several partial source areas were identified (Mesozoic carbonates of the Northern Calcareous Alps and the Western Carpathians, crystalline rocks of the eastern margin of the Bohemian Massif, older sedimentary infill of the Carpathian Foredeep and/or the North Alpine Foreland Basin, sedimentary rocks of the Western Carpathian/Alpine Flysch Zone).


Varied forms of mobility are rapidly transforming communities across the world. In Africa's cities and urban peripheries, the results of human movements include ever more diverse sets of new arrivals living alongside longer-term residents as they seek protection, profit, and passage elsewhere. Some move on and others return home, while still others shift within in search of new opportunities or security. In the absence of muscular state institutions or dominant cultural norms, these areas have become estuarial zones in which varied communities of convenience are taking shape. Unlike well-documented urban gateways or ghettos, these communities range from radical forms of exclusion to remarkable modes of accommodation that enable people to extract usufruct rights: to live in but not become fully part of the cities they occupy. Using examples from Maputo, Johannesburg, and Nairobi, this article explores the nature of these estuaries in ways that challenge the conceptual foundations typically informing debates over migrant rights, integration, and the boundaries of belonging. This means eroding clear distinctions between hosts and guests along with a call to reevaluate the relative importance of state institutions and policies. Most fundamentally, it questions new residents' interests in localized political and social recognition and participation. The article concludes by suggesting the need to reconsider the forms and scale of community through which the newly urbanized claim rights and the nature of the rights they desire.


The dendritic tree provides the surface area for synaptic connections between the 100 billion neurons in the brain. 90% of excitatory synapses are made onto dendritic spines which are constantly changing shape and strength. This adaptation is believed to be an important factor in learning, memory and computations within the dendritic tree. The environment in which the neuron sits is inherently noisy due to the activity in nearby neurons and the stochastic nature of synaptic gating. Therefore the effects of noise is a very important aspect in any realistic model. This work provides a comprehensive study of two spiny dendrite models driven by different forms of noise in the spine dynamics or in the membrane voltage. We investigate the effect of the noise on signal propagation along the dendrite and how any correlation in the noise may affect this behaviour. We discover a difference in the results of the two models which suggests that the form of spine connectivity is important. We also show that both models have the capacity to act as a robust filter and that a branched structure can perform logic computations.


High-end servers that can be partitioned into logical subsystems and repartitioned on the fly are now becoming available. This development raises the possibility of reconfiguring distributed systems online to optimize for dynamically changing workloads. This paper presents the initial steps towards a system that can learn to alter its current configuration in reaction to the current workload. In particular, the advantages of shifting CPU and memory resources online are considered. Investigation on a publically available multi-machine, multi-process distributed system (the online transaction processing benchmark TPC-W) indicates that there is a real performance benefit to reconfiguration in reaction to workload changes. A learning framework is presented that does not require any instrumentation of the middleware, nor any special instrumentation of the operating system; rather, it learns to identify preferable configurations as well as their quantitative performance effects from system behavior as reported by standard monitoring tools. Initial results using the WEKA machine learning package suggest that automatic adaptive configuration can provide measurable performance benefits over any fixed configuration


Transaction programs are comprised of read and write operations issued against the database. In a shared database system, one transaction program con icts with another if it reads or writes data that another transaction program has written. This thesis presents a semi-automatic technique for pairwise static con ict analysis of embedded transaction programs. The analysis predicts whether a given pair of programs will con ict when executed against the database. There are several potential applications of this technique, the most obvious being transaction concurrency control in systems where it is not necessary to support arbitrary, dynamic queries and updates. By analyzing transactions in such systems before the transactions are run, it is possible to reduce or eliminate the need for locking or other dynamic concurrency control schemes.


In "Why the South Lost the Civil War," four historians considered the dominant explanations of southern defeat. At end, the authors found that states' rights disputes, the Union blockade, and inadequate southern forces did not fully account for the surrender. Rather, they concluded, the South lacked the will to win. Its strength sapped by a faltering Confederate nationalism and weakened by a peculiar brand of evangelical Protestantism, the South withdrew from a war not yet lost on the field of battle.Roughly one-half the size of its parent study, "The Elements of Confederate Defeat" retains all the essential arguments of the earlier edition, forming for the student a book that at once follows the events of the war and presents the major interpretations of its outcome in the South.


The transmembrane receptor for immunoglobulin G immune complexes on natural killer (NK) cells and macrophages, Fc gamma RIIIA (CD16), mediates cellular activation through a tyrosine kinase-dependent pathway. We show that Fc gamma RIII crosslinking results in activation of the src-related kinase p56lck in NK cells and demonstrate a physical association of p56lck with Fc gamma RIIIA in immunoprecipitates from NK cells obtained using anti-Fc gamma RIII antibodies or immune complexes. Our studies show that the zeta chain, the signal transducing subunit of Fc gamma RIIIA and of T cell receptor, associates with p56lck and, in NK cells, is a substrate for this kinase. Such direct association of p56lck with the zeta subunit as confirmed by demonstrating the interaction in heterologous cells transfected with cDNA expressing p56lck and zeta. Our findings demonstrate both functional and physical association of p56lck with Fc gamma RIIIA, through direct interaction of the kinase with the zeta and/or the gamma signal transducer subunits of the receptor. These data suggest a possible mechanism by which activation via Fc gamma RIIIA occurs.


With the intention of successfully meeting the challenges of an increasingly complex competitive environment, organizations in many industries are rethinking their performance measurement systems. More effective performance measurement features identified include linking operations to strategic goals, and presenting a balance of indicators. Traditional performance measurement systems, meanwhile, typically stress the short term, focusing on past achievements while largely ignoring the drivers of future performance. Concern has been expressed that UK hotels are still focusing on these traditional performance measures – and so may be overlooking important issues, potentially leading to detrimental outcomes. This concern is supported by new empirical evidence obtained regarding the current range of performance measures used within UK hotels. This evidence suggests that although they appear to monitor performance in great detail, with few notable exceptions, UK hotels do appear to emphasize traditional measures and therefore still seem to have some considerable rethinking to do.


Within the micro and nano world, tiny membrane-enclosed bits of material are more or less free to move and act as communication tools within cells, between cells, between different tissues and between organisms in global environment. Based on the mechanism of membrane budding and vesiculation that includes all types of cells, in this review, we attempted to present a review on SARS-CoV-2 virus actions in compartments of different scales (cells and their surroundings, tissues, organisms and society). Interactions of the virus with cells on a molecular level, with neural system, endothelium, hematopoietic system, gastrointestinal system and genitourinary system. Transmission route between organisms and between mother and fetus are considered. Also, transmission of virus through contact with materials and with environment, the suggested measures to prevent contamination with the virus and to support the organism against the disease are given.


Nowadays, medicinal plants used in folk medicine are being increasingly studied and used on pharmaceutical, food and nutraceutical fields. Yarrow (Achillea millefolium L.) is widely used in both folk and official medicine. Therefore, in the present paper different extracts of yarrow inflorescences and upper leaves were investigated for their total polyphenolic content and antioxidant activity using several reliable assays, namely DPPH-, ABTS-, FRAPand CUPRAC assays. The phytochemical profile of the extracts was assessed by RP-HPLC methods as well in order to evaluate the influence of the single constituents. The total polyphenolic content of the extracts was established to be in range 2.74 ± 0.01 and 7.92 ± 0.09 mg GAE/g dw. Among the four applied techniques for extraction the decoction seems to be still the most effective ones. However, the results revealed that the extracts of the Achillea millefolium could be used as easily accessible source of natural antioxidants, but also as a possible food supplement or in pharmaceutical industry.


We define Voronoi cells and centroids based on heat diffusion. These heat cells and heat centroids coincide with the common definitions in Euclidean spaces. On curved surfaces they compare favorably with definitions based on geodesics: they are smooth and can be computed in a stable way with a single linear solve. We analyze the numerics of this approach and can show that diffusion diagrams converge quadratically against the smooth case under mesh refinement, which is better than other common discretization of distance measures in curved spaces. By factorizing the system matrix in a preprocess, computing Voronoi diagrams or centroids amounts to just back‐substitution. We show how to localize this operation so that the complexity is linear in the size of the cells and not the underlying mesh. We provide several example applications that show how to benefit from this approach.


A magnitude-limited sample of nearly 9000 early-type galaxies, in the redshift range 0.01 ≤ z ≤ 0.3, was selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey using morphological and spectral criteria. The sample was used to study how early-type galaxy observables, including luminosity L, effective radius Ro, surface brightness Io, color, and velocity dispersion σ, are correlated with one another. Measurement biases are understood with mock catalogs that reproduce all of the observed scaling relations and their dependences on fitting technique. At any given redshift, the intrinsic distribution of luminosities, sizes, and velocity dispersions in our sample are all approximately Gaussian. A maximum likelihood analysis shows that σ ∝ L0.25±0.012, Ro ∝ L0.63±0.025, and Ro ∝ I-0.75±0.02 in the r* band. In addition, the mass-to-light ratio within the effective radius scales as Mo/L ∝ L0.14±0.02 or Mo/L ∝ M, and galaxies with larger effective masses have smaller effective densities: Δo ∝ M. These relations are approximately the same in the g*, i*, and z* bands. Relative to the population at the median redshift in the sample, galaxies at lower and higher redshifts have evolved only little, with more evolution in the bluer bands. The luminosity function is consistent with weak passive luminosity evolution and a formation time of about 9 Gyr ago.


Abstract. We validate the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) ozone
profile (PROFOZ v0.9.3) product including ozone profiles between
0.22 and 261 hPa and stratospheric ozone columns (SOCs) down to 100, 215, and
261 hPa from October 2004 through December 2014 retrieved by the Smithsonian
Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) algorithm against the latest Microwave Limb
Sound (MLS) v4.2x data. We also evaluate the effects of OMI row anomaly (RA)
on the retrieval by dividing the data set into before and after the
occurrence of serious RA, i.e., pre-RA (2004–2008) and post-RA (2009–2014).
During the pre-RA period, OMI ozone profiles agree very well with MLS data.
After applying OMI averaging kernels to MLS data, the global mean biases (MBs) are within 3 % between 0.22 and 100 hPa,
negative biases are within 3–9 % for lower layers, and the standard deviations (SDs) are
3.5–5 % from 1 to 40 hPa, 6–10 % for upper layers, and 5–20 %
for lower layers.
OMI shows biases dependent on latitude and solar zenith angle (SZA), but MBs and SDs are
mostly within 10 % except for low and high altitudes of high latitudes and SZAs.
Compared to the retrievals during the pre-RA period, OMI retrievals during
the post-RA period degrade slightly between 5 and 261 hPa with MBs and SDs
typically larger by 2–5 %, and degrade much more for pressure less than ∼  5 hPa, with larger MBs by up
to 8 % and SDs by up to 15 %,
where the MBs are larger by 10–15 % south of 40 ∘  N due to the
blockage effect of RA and smaller by 15–20 % north of 40 ∘  N due
to the solar contamination effect of RA. The much worse comparisons at high
altitudes indicate the UV1 channel of pixels that are not flagged as RA is
still affected by the RA. During the pre-RA period, OMI SOCs show very good
agreement with MLS data with global mean MBs within 0.6 % and SDs of
1.9 % for SOCs down to 215 and 261 hPa and of 2.30 % for SOC down to
100 hPa. Despite clearly worse ozone profile comparisons during the post-RA
period, OMI SOCs only slightly degrade, with SDs larger by 0.4–0.6 %
mostly due to looser spatial coincidence criteria as a result of missing
data from RA and MBs larger by 0.4–0.7 %. Our retrieval comparisons
indicate significant bias trends, especially during the post-RA period. The
spatiotemporal variation of our retrieval performance suggests the need to
improve OMI's radiometric calibration to maintain the long-term stability and
spatial consistency of the PROFOZ product.


An ambitious synthesis, "Positive Theories of Congressional Institutions" attempts to reconcile a number of rational choice viewpoints to produce a comprehensive look at congressional institutions. While most theorists have presented their work as exclusive alternatives for understanding Congress, this volume reconsiders that basic premise. If in fact these approaches are mutually exclusive, what evidence favors one over the other? Could it be that these views focus on different aspects of a more complex puzzle?Kenneth A. Shepsle and Barry R. Weingast have assembled leading proponents of rational choice approaches to debate these issues. Some emphasize the problems of legislative decisionmaking under uncertainty and the role institutions play in providing incentives for relevant actors to provide information. Other theorists focus on political parties and emphasize the conditions under which parties exercise institutional authority and monitor institutional practices (or fail to do so). Still others investigate legislative delegation, both within and without the legislature. In debating the relationships between these research strands, the contributors not only provide powerful evidence for the power of formal modelling but also invite those involved in other modes of research to join the discussion. Thus the volume suggests how a more satisfying and complete model might emerge. "Positive Theories of Congressional Institutions" is a timely volume that will provide the foundation for all future work in this area.Contributors include John H. Aldrich, David P. Baron, Gary W. Cox, John A. Ferejohn, Morris P. Fiorina, Thomas W. Gilligan, Keith Krehbiel, John Londregan, Arthur Lupia, Mathew D. McCubbins, Forrest Maltzman, David W. Rohde, Kenneth A. Shepsle, Barbara Sinclair, Steven S. Smith, James Snyder, and Barry R. Weingast.Kenneth A. Shepsle is Professor of Government, Harvard University. Barry R. Weingast is Professor of Political Science and Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University.


The uncertainties surrounding climate change are creating challenges for policy makers with regard to investments in water-related infrastructure. A promising new approach is the adaptation pathways approach. This article contributes to this approach by introducing an institutional and socio-cultural perspective. It presents an analytical framework to evaluate the necessary institutional and socio-cultural conditions, uncovering challenges with regard to the governance of adaptation and of keeping options open for the future. The framework has been applied to the case study of fresh water supply in the Netherlands. Based on an institutional and socio-cultural analysis, the feasibility, flexibility and governance of adaptation strategies are discussed. Reflecting on the presented framework, critical issues are addressed with regard to the further development of the adaptation pathways approach.


Gender is widely discussed in the context of language tasks and when examining the stereotypes propagated by language models. However, current discussions primarily treat gender as binary, which can perpetuate harms such as the cyclical erasure of non-binary gender identities. These harms are driven by model and dataset biases, which are consequences of the non-recognition and lack of understanding of non-binary genders in society. In this paper, we explain the complexity of gender and language around it, and survey non-binary persons to understand harms associated with the treatment of gender as binary in English language technologies. We also detail how current language representations (e.g., GloVe, BERT) capture and perpetuate these harms and related challenges that need to be acknowledged and addressed for representations to equitably encode gender information.


We show experimentally that under certain conditions the chaotic intensity dynamics of an optically pumped NH3 bidirectional ring laser could be well described in terms of Shil'nikov homoclinic orbits and chaos. We found that the mechanism that resulted in this kind of dynamics of the laser is the competition between effects caused by the mode interaction between the forward and the backward modes of the laser and by the intrinsic single-mode dynamics of the interacting modes.


Camera phones have penetrated every corner of society and have become a focal point for communications. In our research we extend the traditional use of such devices to help bridge the gap between physical and digital worlds. Their combined image acquisition, processing, storage, and communication capabilities in a compact, portable device make them an ideal platform for embedding computer vision and image processing capabilities in the pursuit of new mobile applications. This technical report is presented as a series of computer vision and image processing techniques together with their applications on the mobile device. We have developed a set of techniques for ego-motion estimation, enhancement, feature extraction, perspective correction, object detection, and document retrieval that serve as a basis for such applications. Our applications include a dynamic video barcode that can transfer significant amounts of information visually, a document retrieval system that can retrieve documents from low resolution snapshots, and a series of applications for the users with visual disabilities such as a currency reader. Solutions for mobile devices require a fundamentally dierent approach than traditional vision techniques that run on traditional computers, so we consider user-device interaction and the fact that these algorithms must execute in a resource constrained environment. For each problem we perform both theoretical and empirical analysis in an attempt to optimize performance and usability. The thesis makes contributions related to ecient implementation of image processing and computer vision techniques, analysis of information theory, feature extraction and analysis of low quality images, and device usability.


The propagation of a wave-packet in a nonlinear disordered medium exhibits interesting dynamics. Here, we present an analysis based on the nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation (Gross-Pitaevskii equation). This problem is directly connected to experiments on expanding Bose gases and to studies of transverse localization in nonlinear optical media. In a nonlinear medium the energy of the wave-packet is stored both in the kinetic and potential parts, and details of its propagation are to a large extent determined by the transfer from one form of energy to the other. A theory describing the evolution of the wave-packet has been formulated in [G. Schwiete and A. Finkelstein, Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 103904 (2010)] in terms of a nonlinear kinetic equation. In this paper, we present details of the derivation of the kinetic equation and of its analysis. As an important new ingredient we study interparticle-collisions induced by the nonlinearity and derive the corresponding collision integral. We restrict ourselves to the weakly nonlinear limit, for which disorder scattering is the dominant scattering mechanism. We find that in the special case of a white noise impurity potential the mean squared radius in a two-dimensional system scales linearly with t. This result has previously been obtained in the collisionless limit, but it also holds in the presence of collisions. Finally, we mention different mechanisms through which the nonlinearity may influence localization of the expanding wave-packet.


The original BGP design requires that all BGP speakers within an autonomous system be directly connected with each other to create a full mesh, and BGP update messages be propagated to directly connected neighbors only. This requirement leads to BGP session scalability problems in networks with large numbers of BGP routers. Route reflection was proposed as a quick fix to address this BGP session scalability problem and has been widely deployed in the operational Internet without a thorough analysis of its pros and cons. In this article, we first provide an overview of the route reflection design, summarize the discoveries from published literature, and discuss the trade-offs in using route reflection as compared to using a fully connected i-BGP mesh. Then we show that well engineered route reflector placement can overcome certain drawbacks, and that a few issues remain open for future study.


Introduction: In insulin resistance animal models, insulin uptake from periphery to the brain is impaired. While insulin is not involved in glucose transfer to the neurons, it is required for neuron survival and function through binding to its receptor. Furthermore, an insulin homologue called insulin like growth factor (IGF-I) is abundantly expressed in mature rats, acts in parallel with the insulin in brain, binds to the insulin receptor and its serum levels reduced in insulin resistance. In this study, we sought to investigate whether the expression of brain IGF-I is altered in the insulin resistant animal model. Materials and Methods Wistar rats were fed with 10% fructose in their drinking water up to 4 months and induced with the insulin resistance. The rats were killed, perfused with 4% PFA, and their brains were sectioned and studied for the immunoreactivity of the IGF-I. Results: Results showed that there is an increased intensity of IGF-I in most brain areas. Conclusion: Altogether, despite the low levels or lack of insulin in brain of the insulin resistant animal model, increased expression of the brain suggests a compensatory mechanism to maintain the insulin function.


Hemoglobin has a very strong affinity with oxygen and thus is a good catalyst to carry oxygen for many oxidation reactions. Many researchers have explored this property of hemoglobin to develop sensors for the detection of nitrite and peroxide that are important in biomedical and environmental monitoring. We have previously reported the development of biosensors that can detect nitrite and peroxide with a lower detecting limit below 1×10 -12 M, that were among the best detectors at the time. With a similar sensor platform, we have now developed a biosensor that can detect the oxidation reaction orders of magnitude better than the previous sensors. The sensor comprises layers of biocomposite made up of a polymer, nanogold particles, and a complex protein on the surface of an electrode. The performance of this electrode biosensor is compared with the previously developed sensors, the durability and other factors that can affect the performance and fabrication of this biosensor are discussed. Copyright © 2014 IFSA Publishing, S. L.


Most state-of-the-art iris recognition algorithms claim to perform with a very high recognition accuracy in a strictly controlled environment. However, their recognition accuracies significantly decrease when the acquired images are affected by different noise factors including motion blur, camera diffusion, head movement, gaze direction, camera angle, reflections, contrast, luminosity, eyelid and eyelash occlusions, and problems due to contraction and dilation. The main objective of this thesis is to develop a nonideal iris recognition system by using active contour methods, Genetic Algorithms (GAs), shape guided model, Adaptive Asymmetrical Support Vector Machines (AASVMs) and Game Theory (GT). In this thesis, the proposed iris recognition method is divided into two phases: (1) cooperative iris recognition, and (2) noncooperative iris recognition. While most state-of-the-art iris recognition algorithms have focused on the preprocessing of iris images, recently, important new directions have been identified in iris biometrics research. These include optimal feature selection and iris pattern classification. In the first phase, we propose an iris recognition scheme based on GAs and asymmetrical SVMs. Instead of using the whole iris region, we elicit the iris information between the collarette and the pupil boundary to suppress the effects of eyelid and eyelash occlusions and to minimize the matching error. In the second phase, we process the nonideal iris images that are captured in unconstrained situations and those affected by several nonideal factors. The proposed noncooperative iris recognition method is further divided into three approaches. In the first approach of the second phase, we apply active contour-based curve evolution approaches to segment the inner/outer boundaries accurately from the nonideal iris images. The proposed active contour-based approaches show a reasonable performance when the iris/sclera boundary is separated by a blurred boundary. In the second approach, we describe a new iris segmentation scheme using GT to elicit iris/pupil boundary from a nonideal iris image. We apply a parallel game-theoretic decision making procedure by modifying Chakraborty and Duncan's algorithm to form a unified approach, which is robust to noise and poor localization and less affected by weak iris/sclera boundary. Finally, to further improve the segmentation performance, we propose a variational model to localize the iris region belonging to the given shape space using active contour method, a geometric shape prior and the Mumford-Shah functional. The verification and identification performance of the proposed scheme is validated using four challenging nonideal iris datasets, namely, the ICE 2005, the UBIRIS Version 1, the CASIA Version 3 Interval, and the WVU Nonideal, plus the non-homogeneous combined dataset. We have conducted several sets of experiments and finally, the proposed approach has achieved a Genuine Accept Rate (GAR) of 97.34% on the combined dataset at the fixed False Accept Rate (FAR) of 0.001% with an Equal Error Rate (EER) of 0.81%. The highest Correct Recognition Rate (CRR) obtained by the proposed iris recognition system is 97.39%.


Switching between two modes of operation is a common property of biological systems. In continuous-time differential equation models, this is often realised by bistability, i.e. the existence of two asymptotically stable steady-states. Several biological models are shown to exhibit delayed switching, with a pronounced transient phase, in particular for near-threshold perturbations. This study shows that this delay in switching from one mode to the other in response to a transient input is reflected in local properties of an unstable saddle point, which has a one dimensional unstable manifold with a significantly slower eigenvalue than the stable ones. Thus, the trajectories first approximatively converge to the saddle point, then linger along the saddle's unstable manifold before quickly approaching one of the stable equilibria.


This book interrogates the ideas and practices of the New Beacon Circle's activists as relatively stable elements in the fast-changing scene of contemporary radical politics. Highlighting how biography and self representation have important cultural, theoretical and political implications, Alleyne succeeds in making an original contribution to a growing literature on autobiography as a rich resource for understanding social and political theory. He also provides an engaging account of a neglected area of British Activism. This book will be of interest to social anthropologists, sociologists, and anyone interested in the history of British activism or race and ethnic studies.


introduction: Although diverse factors associated with occupational stress have been examined, little is known about it among 9-1-1 Telecommunicators (TCs). As the first of the first responders, they experience post-traumatic stress disorder due to vicarious trauma and often work long-shifts and overtime. A more comprehensive assessment of the factors associated with stress among TCs is crucial for development of interventions to reduce occupational stress in call centers. objectives: We aimed to identify the multifaceted factors associated with symptoms of stress in 9-1-1 TCs. Methods: We analyzed data collected as part of a randomized controlled trial that evaluated a multilevel stress reduction intervention in 9-1-1 call centers across the United States and Canada. Multilevel mixed-effects linear regressions were conducted to assess the associations between individual and organizational levels of factors and self-reported symptoms of stress, accounting for the lack of independence within call-centers. results: At the individual levels, less resilience, less mindfulness, and greater overcommitment were significantly associated with higher levels of stress respectively (Coef. [95% CI]; -1.64 [-2.15, -1.14]; -23.07 [-25.53, -20.60]; 3.70 [2.96, 4.45]). At the organizational levels, less workplace social support and greater job requirement were significantly associated with higher level of stress respectively (-2.40 [-3.54, -1.26]; 7.87 [2.55, 13.19]). A multivariable analysis, controlling for all covariates, showed that mindfulness and workplace social support were protective factors to stress (-19.54 [-22.07, -17.02]; -0.97 [-1.77, -0.17]), while overcommitment and job requirement were risk factors for high levels of stress (1.60 [0.94, 2.26]; 4.20 [0.42, 7.98]). Conclusions: Our findings initially show that workplace social support plays a critical role in 9-1-1 TCs' stress as a protective factor. We suggest a future study of investigating social support at call centers to reduce 9-1-1 TCs' stress.


This study was a case study of two monolingual Norwegian children S and JK. Both children are born and raised in the same area, by parents with similar academic and economic backgrounds. S was 21 months old at the onset of the study, and JK was 20 months old. Their vocabulary development was measured on the Norwegian CDI developed by Kristoffersen et al. (2012), MLU was used in order to track their grammatical development. Their language development was tracked between May 2012 and June 2012.The aim of the study was to compare their development in vocabulary size and grammatical proficiency to determine whether a link between grammar and vocabulary, as proposed by Bates and Goodman (1997), can be found in Norwegian. Part of the aim was also to develop a Norwegian MLU protocol.An analysis of the results indicated that a link between grammar and vocabulary size exists in Norwegian, and that using the proposed MLU protocol gives valid results. This suggests that Bates and Goodman's (1997) claimed link between grammar and vocabulary size might be a cross-linguistic phenomenon, but data from more languages need to be analysed in order to determine this.


Background: Improvement of health in HIV/AIDS patients on Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART) is characterised by an increase in CD4 cell counts and a decrease in viral load to undetectable levels. In modelling HIV/AIDS progression in patients, researchers mostly deal with either viral load only or CD4 cell counts only as they expect these two variables to be collinear.
Methods: In this study, a cohort of 320 HIV/AIDS patients under HAART follow-up from a wellness clinic in Bela-Bela, South Africa is used. A time homogeneous Markov model is developed to explain and predict probability of death from HIV/AIDS. Principal component variables are created by fitting a regression model of viral load on CD4 cell counts.
Results: Inclusion of a viral load principal component improves the efficiency of the model. The new viral load covariate helps to explain the component of mortality/transition, which could not be explained by the CD4 cell counts alone. CD4 cell counts are categorised to define the states for the Markov model. Results show that the expected percentage prevalence gives almost a perfect fit of the observed data.
Conclusion: The orthogonal viral load covariate along with CD4 baseline, gender, non-adherence to treatment and age in years (y) variables play a significant role in modelling HIV/AIDS progression based on both CD4 cell counts and viral load monitoring.


The use of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) in consumer products and industrial applications, as well as their recent detection in waste streams, has created concern about potential impacts on aquatic ecosystems. The effect of complex environmental media on AgNP toxicity was investigated using wetland mesocosms and smaller scale microcosms. Mesocosms were dosed with 2.5 mg Ag/L as gum arabic (GA)‐coated AgNPs, polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP)‐coated AgNPs, or AgNO3. Water samples were taken from mesocosms 24 h after dosing for acute toxicity tests with embryos and larvae of Atlantic killifish (Fundulus heteroclitus) and the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Acute toxicity tests were also performed on Atlantic killifish with AgNO3, GA AgNPs, and PVP AgNPs prepared in the laboratory with similar water. For killifish embryos, mesocosm samples were much less toxic than laboratory samples for all types of silver. For larvae, in contrast, all 3 silver mesocosm treatments exhibited toxicity. Interestingly, mesocosm samples of AgNO3 were less toxic than laboratory samples; samples containing GA AgNPs were similar in toxicity, and samples containing PVP AgNPs were more toxic. For C. elegans, results were similar to killifish larvae. Results obtained from the mesocosms were not replicated on the smaller scale of the microcosms. These results indicate that environmental factors unique to the mesocosms acted differentially on AgNO3 to reduce its toxicity in a manner that does not translate to AgNPs for larval fish. Environ Toxicol Chem 2014;9999:1–9. © 2014 SETAC


Enzootic nasal adenocarcinoma (ENA), a contagious retroviral disease of sheep and goats, characterized by neoplastic growth of the ethmoidal mucosa in the nasal cavity is described in a West African Dwarf goat (WAD). A two-year old WAD goat, weighing approximately 20kg was observed in the Teaching and Research Farm of the University of Agriculture Abeokuta, Nigeria. The WAD goat was presented with a clinical history of 31/2 months seromucoid to mucopurulent nasal discharge, dyspnoea with audible rales, stertorous breathing with open mouth, coughing and sneezing. Cytological evaluation revealed anaplastic features such as hyperchromasia and binucleation with 2 or more nucleoli. Haematological profile revealed leukocytosis, due to lymphocytosis initially, which later changed to neutrophilia with left shift, however, the was absence of anaemia. Grossly, there was unilateral, left facial swelling, bilateral, separate and discrete nodular and papillary tumourous masses in each nasal cavity with concomitant inflammation, necrosis and distortion of the nasal bones, turbinates and the median septum. Microscopically, two forms of the tumour mass were observed, which include; polyploidy and papillary forms and characterized by well-differentiated tubulo-acinar and cystic glands with their content Periodic Acid Schiff positive for glycoprotein. This report, to the best of our knowledge, is the first reported case of ENA in WAD goats in Nigeria. Keywords : Enzootic nasal adenocarcinoma, West African Dwarf goat, Nigeria.


Aim/Purpose The objective of this research is to analyze the literature to-date thoroughly and conceptualize a born-global speculative start-up (BGSS) pervasive phenomenon model. Background The concept of 'Born-Global' or International New Venture (INV) firm was introduced into business theory in 1988. Over the last decades BGSSs such as Apple, IBM, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and many others have emerged effecting everyday life incomparably by contributing millions of people employment and making significant difference through corporate social responsibility (CSR) for the global community at large. Pervasive technologies and pervasive advertising has played a pivotal role informing the BGSS stakeholders, especially consumers, influencing pervasiveness in the contemporary society. Even though researchers have made invaluable contributions in the field of born – global and entrepreneurship, strikingly to date, the literature is void of a holistic model for BGSS pervasive phenomenon. Methodology A thorough literature is provided and a holistic model is conceptualized. Contribution This research makes several contributions to born-global and entrepreneurship literature. It identifies mantras to build and sustain ventures from scratch to global giants. BGSS pervasive phenomenon is a brand-new perspective in the academic research. This research contributes worthwhile insight on how the BGSS pervasive phenomenon is created by the application of pervasive technologies and pervasive advertising for various industries. Venture consonance comprising five essential elements and its interaction is presented to demonstrate the pervasive phenomenon process. The relevant insights described in this paper are useful lessons to entrepreneurs regarding BGSS A Quest For Born Global Speculative Start-Up 88 creation and success. This field of research and researchers interested in the phenomenon would benefit from having access to BGSS, as a common terminology. Findings This study is the first to validate that BGSSs are successful in creating the pervasive phenomenon through pervasive technologies applications and pervasive advertising. The findings of this research provide information and engagement with the stakeholders of various industries providing advantage to global community. Research shows special traits such as acumen, tenacity, passion, persistence and commitment with deeper conviction of the founder (s) is required to build and sustain BGSS. The research findings also indicate that the investors provide significant value-added attributes and engage with various stakeholders, particularly top leadership team (TLT), in addition to adequate funding for the success of BGSS. The key word is pervasive indicates that a phenomenon is experienced because of technologies permeates all aspects of human lives. Recommendations for Practitioners The process of pervasive technologies and pervasive advertising in practice need to be applied for the good of the society at large. The role of entrepreneurial incubators could be helpful to understand why they are significant to pursue BGSSs pervasive phenomenon. Entrepreneurs need to interact proactively with relevant geo-graphical government agencies to obtain access to logistics and resources in a seamless manner, particularly for the internationalization process, for BGSSs to provide value to various countries. Recommendation for Researchers Research on BGSSs for other industries that affects daily lives of the global community should be carried out to enrich the findings of the stakeholder engagement for the creation of pervasive phenomenon. Based on the above recommendation, a question is worthwhile to investigate: How are stakeholders in various industries engage in the creation of BGSS pervasive phenomenon. Impact on Society BGSSs are of great significance for the contemporary society from economic point of view making intrinsic difference in the lives of people. Sustainable BGSS is paramount because it can lead to a socially, environmentally sustainable society, and would increase awareness among various cultural communities globally. Future Research Scholars should embark upon creating a pervasive phenomenon theory and social critique on conspicuous consumption. Further research could be done on how BGSSs are engaging stakeholders to achieve sustainable competitive advantage through the stakeholder engagement for various industries.


Abstract Anamorph genera associated with Mycosphaerella are separated on a combination of characters such as conidiomatal structure, the nature and arrangement of conidiophores, conidiogenesis, dehiscence scars and pigmentation. To date 27 genera have been reported as anamorphs of Mycosphaerella, 19 of which were included in this study. Based on the phylogeny of the ITS1, 5.8S, and ITS2 rDNA sequence data, Mycosphaerella proved to be monophyletic. The major group consisted of several small clusters correlating to specific anamorph genera, as well as other clusters containing an assemblage of anamorph genera. Although Mycosphaerella is monophyletic, it appears that many of the morphological characters defining different anamorph genera evolved more than once and for the most part do not represent true groups within Mycosphaerella. Nevertheless, the anamorph generic concepts contain valuable information of practical use to plant pathologists and mycologists working with these organisms. Based on these results, as well as a re-evaluation of the criteria upon which anamorph genera are distinguished in this complex, a reduced set of informative criteria and genera are proposed. The degree of scar thickening, darkening and refraction, as well as the presence or absence of pigmentation in conidiophores and conidia still appear to be useful features delimiting anamorph genera of Mycosphaerella.


The three-wheeler tuk-tuk, popular in Asian cities is now a common feature in many cities worldwide, across all five continents. Their growth has been attributed to their distinctive flexibility, stylistic simplicity and modest operational costs. In Johannesburg, the tuk-tuk represents a relatively new mode of public transport which stemmed from suggestions made by the local area residents association and other stakeholders to revamp the neighbourhood. The objective of the paper is to determine the operational and user travel characteristics of tuk-tuks as well as assessing their impacts. In Johannesburg, where competition from private transport operators can result in serious confrontation, the paper ascertains whether tuktuks pose a threat to other operators. Data was collected through telephonic interviews and electronic questionnaires. The results reveal that the tuk-tuk has filled a public transport gap by providing a much needed 'first mile'/'last mile' service to community members.


INTRODUCTION
Taking into account that Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD) is a patient-reported symptom and that the disorder is in general the result of the interaction of biological and psychosocial factors (see part 1), it is necessary to provide healthcare professionals with an operating procedure that is patient centered and multidimensional.

AIM
Describing a patient-centered and multidimensional standard procedure to diagnose and manage HSDD on a primary care level.

METHODS
Review of the literature. Semistructured interview and description of process. RESULT.: The interactive process with the patient follows several steps: initiation, narrative of the patient to understand the individual profile of the disorder, differentiating questions, descriptive diagnosis, exploration of conditioning biomedical, individual psychological, interpersonal, and sociocultural factors (including biomedical examinations), establishment of a biopsychosocial comprehensive explanatory diagnosis, which can be summarized in a nine-field matrix. This matrix will serve as orientation for therapeutic interventions adapted to the individual person. These interventions should always be based on basic counseling as a basis of treatment. Then adapted to the individual condition specific hormonal treatments (mainly estrogen and testosterone alone or combined) can be used after exclusion of contraindications. In patients with predominant psychosocial factors contributing to HSDD individual or couple psychotherapy is indicated. Psychopharmacological drugs are in development and partially investigated and will add to the therapeutic possibilities in the future.

CONCLUSION
This model can serve as an ideal basis for the approach to the female patient with HSDD. It can be adapted to the individual clinical setting.


Many modelling languages have both a textual and a graphical form. The relationship between these two forms ought to be clear and concrete, but is instead commonly underspecified, weak, and informal. Further, processes and tool support for modelling often do not treat both forms as first-class citizens, instead choosing to favour one as the "real" representation and the other as a derivable representation.
As textual and graphical forms have their individual strengths and weaknesses, ideally one should be able to view and edit a model in whichever form is most desirable at the moment. Furthermore, we should be able to do so without having to worry about semantic differences between what is seen in a graphical view versus what is seen in a textual view. If we are to develop tools that allow dual-editing—simultaneous editing of both the textual and graphical forms—then it is essential that their relationship is clearly and precisely defined.
This paper details a formal relationship between the textual and graphical forms of a high-level modelling language called the Business Object Notation (BON). We describe the semantics of the graphical and textual representations and the relationship that holds between them. We also formally define a view on an underlying model as an extraction function, and model diffs as a means of tracking changes as a model evolves. This theoretical foundation provides a means by which tools guarantee consistency between textual and graphical notations, as well shows how to efficiently perform model updates, reason about model views, and interpret properties between modelling perspectives.


The formation, growth and detachment of gas bubbles on electrodes are omnipresent in electrolysis and other gas-producing chemical processes. To better understand their role in the mass transfer efficiency, we perform experiments involving successive bubble nucleations from a predefined nucleation site which consists of a superhydrophobic pit on top of a micromachined pillar. The experiments on bubble nucleation at these spots permit the comparison of mass transfer phenomena connected to electrolytically generated H2 bubbles with the better-understood evolution of CO2 bubbles in pressure-controlled supersaturated solutions. In both cases, bubbles grow in a diffusion-dominated regime. For CO2 bubbles, it is found that the growth rate coefficient of subsequent bubbles always decreases due to the effect of gas depletion. In contrast, during constant current electrolysis the bubble growth rates are affected by the evolution of a boundary layer of dissolved H2 gas near the flat electrode which competes with gas depletion. This competition results in three distinct regimes. Initially, the bubble growth slows down with each new bubble in the succession due to the dominant depletion of the newly-formed concentration boundary layer. In later stages, the growth rate increases due to a local increase of gas supersaturation caused by the continuous gas production and finally levels off to an approximate steady growth rate. The gas transport efficiency associated with the electrolytic bubble succession follows a similar trend in time. Finally, for both H2 and CO2 bubbles, detachment mostly occurs at smaller radii than theory predicts and at a surprisingly wide spread of sizes. A number of explanations are proposed, but the ultimate origin of the spreading of the results remains elusive.


Over the past few decades, the population and employment growth of small and large locations in the United States have diverged. Many smaller cities and rural areas saw declining population and employment from 2000 to 2017 as residents and jobs migrated to larger, more prosperous locations. This migration might suggest that the benefits of size, such as business productivity and urban amenities, have become greater over time. However, the migration might also reflect other factors, such as the disproportionate specialization of smaller locations in the declining manufacturing and agriculture sectors. {{p}} Jordan Rappaport documents the faster population and employment growth of medium and large metropolitan areas compared with smaller locations and finds growth is strongly positively correlated with population. Moreover, he finds that most of this correlation is driven by size itself rather than other characteristics. However, he also finds that this relationship breaks down for the largest metro areas. His results suggest that both the benefits and costs of size have increased over the past few decades.


Abstract How to live at multiple scales? Immersed in infrastructure, economics and politics functioning at a scale beyond our immediate experience, our capacities for reason and abstraction have led to the geological era of the Anthropocene. Yet it is also these capacities that mean we are the singular planetary species with any chance of developing systems that can assure less rather than more devastation as a result of these planetary shifts. This essay explores the ways in which we can use our capacity for reason, abstraction, to design what a future ought to be: open to regular revision in response to our practical behaviours given the persistent contingency of the conditions in which we are immersed.


We developed a new hand model for increasing the robustness of finger-based manipulations of virtual objects. Each phalanx of our hand model consists of a number of deformable soft bodies, which dynamically adapt to the shape of grasped objects based on the applied forces. Stronger forces directly result in larger contact areas, which increase the friction between hand and object as would occur in reality. For a robust collision-based soft body simulation, we extended the lattice-shape matching algorithm to work with adaptive stiffness values, which are dynamically derived from force and velocity thresholds. Our implementation demonstrates that this approach allows very precise and robust grasping, manipulation and releasing of virtual objects and performs in real-time for a variety of complex scenarios. Additionally, laborious tuning of object and friction parameters is not necessary for the wide range of objects that we typically grasp with our hands.


The Dutch Open Telescope is a high-resolution solar imager coming on-line at La Palma. The definition of the DOT science niche, strategies, and requirements resemble Solar Orbiter considerations and deliberations. I discuss the latter in the light of the former, and claim that multi-line observation emphasizing hydrogen diagnostics represents a key strategy.


One of the key challenges to health care access in Canadian hospitals is growing overcrowding of the Emergency Departments (EDs), leading to the medical personnel overload, and the excessive waiting times to receive proper care. These adverse effects directly impact the patient satisfaction levels, the ability of the medical professionals to attend promptly to patients¿ health issues, and generate unnecessary costs. Addressing the sources of waste and improving the process provides better care and higher patient satisfaction, as well as increases operational efficiency and the ability of the medical professionals to intervene on time. This paper describes an effort aimed at improvement of patients¿ experience over their ED stay. A combination of lean tools were used to analyze, assess and improve the current situation. Simulation models based on current and future (desired) states were developed. Comparative analysis of both enabled verification of feasibility of proposed solutions, and provided quantifiable results.


'The Politics of Ethnicity, Identity and Religion Among Turks in London' is a study
of a micro-Muslim community in Britain. Earlier research on Islam and Muslims in
Britain concentrated predominantly on Islam amongst South-Asian Muslims
although there is a large degree of diversity in the expression of cultural and
religious identity among Muslim communities in Britain. This thesis seeks to come
to an understanding of the politics of ethnicity, identity and religion among Turkish
Muslims who are a part of this diversity. The main objective of this research is to
analyse how Turkish identity is constructed and what are the roles of family,
culture, organisations and religious groups in the reproduction and transmission of
traditional values to the young generation. This research is expected to fill a gap in
research on micro-Muslim communities in Britain.
Research methods involved participant observation, in-depth interviews and a survey.
Seventeen months of fieldwork in the north-east London and two months fieldwork in
Berlin were carried out to collect ethnographic data. During the research, 77 people were
interviewed in-depth, 93 young Turks participated in a survey and 29 people took part
in group interviews.
The thesis begins with a brief account of immigration to Western Europe in general
and to Britain in particular. Then, a discussion of theoretical issues on migration,
ethnicity and the development of identity is presented where the major
anthropological and sociological theories are examined.
Turkish immigration to Western Europe in general and to Britain in particular is outlined
in Chapter Four and issues concerning family, kinship and reproduction of traditional
values are examined in Chapter Five wherein it is argued that Turkish identity is
reinforced by the reproduction of family values and kin relations in London. It is also
demonstrated in this Chapter that new types of relations are established which are based
on wider social networks.
Continuity and change in the identity construction of the young Turkish generation are
discussed by analysing their attitudes towards language, culture, family, sexuality and
religion in Chapters Six and Seven. The process of institutionalisation and analysis of the
influence of Turkish organisations on the politics of identity and its expression are
presented in Chapters Eight, Nine and Ten. The institutionalisation of Islam is analysed
in relation to identity and religious diversity within the Turkish community. The politics
of main Islamic groups are also analysed to explain how religion and politics are related
and the extent to which religious movements in the country of origin influence Islamic
organisations abroad.
This research shows that family relations and social networks have played an important
role on every stage of immigration and settlement Traditional values are constantly
reproduced within Turkish families as an expression of identity and every effort is made
to ensure that the young generation are not alienated from these values. However, there
is an emergent identity construction taking place among the young generation, generally
inspired by the 'local' experience. This suggests that the emergent Turkish identity
accommodates continuity and change in relation to Turkish culture, sometimes
producing tension between generations. For the young generation traditions, culture and
religion are increasingly becoming values for 'symbolic' attachment.


Approximately 70% of the world's population lives in coastal areas, and the majority of these people depend on coastal aquifers for freshwater. The fragility of these aquifers and their sensitivity to human activity demand informed, competent management to guarantee their survival. Significant knowledge and new technologies related to the subject have accumulated in the last two decades, and a need has emerged for a comprehensive reference that gathers and disseminates crucial information to engineering practitioners and policymakers. Coastal Aquifer Management-Monitoring, Modeling, and Case Studies provides the most advanced and up-to-date methods and tools for the study and protection of coastal aquifers. This "how-to" volume presents a worldwide perspective with contributions from an international panel of experts. They address topics such as geohydrology, optimization, uncertainty analysis, and GIS as they relate to geographically-specific case studies; knowledge from these examples can be applied to aquifer issues in other regions.


Architecture represents a creative, high profile and influential profession and yet remains under-theorized from a gender perspective. This article examines how gender is (re)produced in architecture, a profession that remains strangely under-researched given its status and position. The empirical work advances the theoretical concept of hegemonic masculinity via an analysis of gendered working practices and the agency of individuals through resistance and complicity with these norms. It reveals how architectural practice relies on long working hours, homosocial behaviour and creative control. However, whereas women perform their gender in ways which reproduce such gendered norms, white, heterosexual, middle class men can transgress them to challenge aspects of practice culture. This has significant implications for understanding the ways in which hegemonic masculinities are reproduced within creative workplaces.


Dr. Walker's Seminar is designed to provide students with a specific and global view of the diversity of literatures from the African continent. This libguide will offer supplementary resources on all of the texts used in the course.


This paper presents an insight into water service access and demand, with a numerical review of official data from the national household survey from 1995 to 2006, and the 1996 and 2001 census data. The findings show that in provinces (Eastern Cape, Limpopo and Mpumalanga) where the existing service base is low, with a relatively high level of outmigration leading to a decrease in household numbers, the annual rate of delivery is lower than in other areas and percentage access has risen marginally (from about 68% to 70%). In provinces (North West, Northern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal) where the existing service base is higher, with relatively lower levels of out-migration, there is a marginal change in household numbers and the annual rate of delivery is higher and percentage access has risen remarkably (from about 72% to 88%). In the provinces (Gauteng, Western Cape and Free State) with the most favourable initial conditions, that is, where the existing service base is the highest, there is a remarkable change in household numbers, possibly as a result of in-migration and the annual rate of delivery is quite sustainable. Percentage access rises at an early stage and remains stable at the limiting value of about 98%.


The use of contrast medium in cardiac MRI allows joining the high-resolution anatomical information provided by standard magnetic resonance with functional information obtained by means of the perfusion of contrast agent in myocardial tissues. The current approach to perfusion MRI characterization is the qualitative one, based on visual inspection of images. Moving to quantitative analysis requires extraction of numerical indices of myocardium perfusion by analysis of time/intensity curves related to the area of interest. The main problem in quantitative image sequence analysis is the heart movement, mainly due to patient respiration. We propose an automatic procedure based on image registration, segmentation of the myocardium, and extraction and analysis of time/intensity curves. The procedure requires a minimal user interaction, is robust with respect to the user input, and allows effective characterization of myocardial perfusion. The algorithm was tested on cardiac MR images acquired from voluntaries and in clinical routine.


The last twenty years have seen increased interest in animal-assisted therapy (AAT) and animal-assisted activity (AAA). However, there has been little research exploring these interactions as experienced by the animals themselves. In this paper, we bring a "more-than-human" lens to concepts and practices within AAA/T, synthesizing ideas about animal sentience and subjectivity that have emerged within animal geography scholarship and animal welfare science. We draw from empirical work with practitioners involved in donkey-facilitated learning (DFL) to examine the knowledge base of equine facilitators, including their beliefs, opinions, and assumptions about donkeys, their understanding of animal welfare, and their role in DFL. We discuss how knowledge of donkeys is mobilized to ensure more-than-human welfare during DFL; how animals' "choice" to participate is encouraged and centered; how ideas of nonhuman labor create opportunities for considering more-than-human welfare; and how practitioners advocate for animals and embed practices of care for humans and nonhumans.


Flexible automatic assembly is an emerging need in several industries in the developed countries, owing to the growing market request of small batch productions. This paper introduces a new class of flexible assembly systems, that we define as fully-flexible assembly systems (F-FAS), and addresses the problem of comparing their direct production costs to that of a generic flexible robotized work cell, whose reconfiguration for batch change requires time. Conversely, the F-FAS is a fully-flexible system, able to handle a highly mixed production order in which the size of the batch may be as small as one piece. Convenience analysis revealed that the F-FAS becomes more convenient in certain conditions, especially with complex assemblies and small batch sizes. First experimental data are presented to demonstrate the viability of the fully-flexible system.


Objective: The aim of the present study was to characterize the pharyngoesophageal segment in non functional tracheoesophageal speakers and to confirm that the patients responded to treatment with decreased pressures, better voice and increased neoglottis vibration.
Methods: Voice perceptual assessment, high-resolution videomanometry of swallowing and phonation and high-speed camera recording during phonation provided information about anatomy and function of the pharyngoesophageal segment before and 1 month after treatment with balloon dilatation and/or botulinum toxin.
Results: High resolution videomanometry revealed 12 patients with phonation pressure higher than 20 mm Hg before treatment: 2 patients with pressure between 20-45 mm Hg, 5 patients with pressure between 45-66 mmHg and 5 patients with pressure higher than 66 mm Hg. Eight of twelve patients reported clinical improvement after treatment. Their phonation index (defined as the ratio between phonation pressure at pharyngoesophageal segment and distal oesophagus), phonation pressure and residual pressure at the pharyngoesophageal segment decreased after treatment. There was no significant difference between voice variables values before and after treatment. High-speed camera recordings revealed a wide variation in the anatomical and functional characteristics of the neoglottis.
Conclusions: Normal pressure of the PES during phonation is an important factor for successful sound emission in TE speakers. Others aspects as fibrosis at pharyngoesophageal segment and oesophageal peristalsis should be considered.


This paper tracks the journey of a family from a remote rural area in South Africa – a 2 year old child born with a life threatening liver disease, and his unemployed mother – who, by a series of contingencies, are sent on the trail of organ transplantation to land at the door of a private organ transplant centre. This case brings into focus the dilemmas that social factors present for equitable distribution of organ transplantation. The paper focuses on two interconnected issues: the link between socio-economic status and access to treatment, and existing practices of rationing. The uncritical conjunction of socio-economic status and organ transplantation disadvantages vulnerable sectors of the population. Yet, social circumstances impact the management of specialized medical treatment, which in itself imposes burdens on those with limited resources.  Similarly, although this paper poses questions about indiscriminate practices, it accepts the inevitable rationing of health care.


This study was designed to determine the effects of age, parity, feeding practice, body condition score (BCS), blood nutritional parameters, types of anoestrus, and length of anoestrus on pregnancy rate of anoestrus buffaloes after their treatment with ovsynch protocol followed by fixed time artificial insemination. Blood samples were collected on the day ovsynch protocol and analyzed. The mean values of the nutritional parameters between different groups were compared by Students t test and pregnancy rate was compared by Fisher's exact test or Chi-square test. The overall pregnancy rate in buffaloes was 28.6%, when checked on day 41 and 64.3% on day 102 of FTAI. Blood glucose, cholesterol, calcium and phosphorus level was found to be significantly higher (p<0.05) in pregnant than in non-pregnant buffaloes. Pregnancy rate was higher in silent estrus buffaloes. Buffaloes with BCS ≥3 had higher pregnancy rate than those with BCS < 3. Similarly, pregnancy rate was higher in lactating than in non lactating buffaloes. While young buffaloes of age <10 year responded better than old buffaloes of age ≥10 year. Buffaloes which were free from gastrointestinal parasitic infection had higher pregnancy rate. In conclusion, ovsynch protocol produces a good pregnancy in anoestrus buffaloes; however state of true anoestrus, older age and poor BCS with poor nutritional management adversely affect the pregnancy outcome. The role of blood nutritional parameters requires further clarification.


Most of the many critics who denounce the Supreme Court's corporate-rights cases ground their complaint in consequentialist terms, at least in part. They see decisions such as Citizens United v. FEC and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., as entrenching corporate power, by constitutional or quasi-constitutional means, against what ought to be a supervening public will. This article argues that such a view of federal corporate rights is profoundly mistaken. Far from entrenching corporate power, the rights cases effectively delegate choices about corporate activities to a politically sensitive, if surprising, instrument: ordinary state legislation. In particular, this article advances two claims about the nature of states' rights against corporate rights: first, under existing law the states can subvert the federal rights of their own corporations; second, and more speculatively, the states can also frustrate the federal rights of foreign corporations that do local business. The analysis suggests that reformers would do well to look to the state capitols rather than the halls of Washington. It also yields implications for the theory of interstate corporate regulation more generally.


"David and Goliath", "The Call of Samuel", "The Witch of Endor", "David and Bathsheba" - such stories are among the most famous from the entire ancient world. Though these stories are memorable and easy to follow, however, the books of "1 and 2 Samuel", where they are recorded, are among the most difficult ones in the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew text is widely considered corrupt and sometimes even unintelligible. The social and religious customs are strange and seemingly divergent from the tradition of Moses. In this first volume of an ambitious two-volume commentary on the books of Samuel, David Tsumura sheds light on the background of "1 Samuel" by looking carefully at the Philistine and Canaanite cultures, and he untangles the difficult Hebrew text. Tsumura also discusses such fundamental matters as the date, literary structure, and purpose of "1 Samuel" - to show that obedience to the word of God is the necessary condition for a king to be acceptable to the God of Israel.


International agreements for the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) convention area imply that Atlantic tuna stocks should be managed by strategies based on maximum sustainable yield (MSY); however, there is concern whether this will actually ensure sustainability with sufficiently high probability consistent with the principals of the precautionary approach. Therefore, the performance of MSY management strategies based on current assessment procedures was evaluated using a computer simulation framework. The framework includes the data collection, assessment, prediction, and management processes, as well as the implementation of management regulations. It therefore provides an integrated way to evaluate the relative importance of and the interactions between each component of the system with regard to the overall success of the management strategy. The study elucidates guidelines about assessment and management that are general enough to be applied to all tunas in the Atlantic Ocean. It does so by comparing different hypotheses about management and assessment for three stocks (North Atlantic albacore, Atlantic bigeye and East Atlantic skipjack), which are representative of the variety encountered (i.e. from data rich to poor and tropical to temperate waters) in ICCAT stocks. Management performance was especially sensitive to the carrying capacity of the stock. The type of proxy used for MSY was more important to the success of the procedure than the frequency of assessment or the number of indices used in the assessment. Whilst the procedure was successful at achieving the management objectives for albacore, it was only partially successful for bigeye and was too conservative for skipjack.


The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest object in the earth's orbit and currently the only environment that harbors human life outside the planet. This habitable satellite operates as a sophisticated scientific laboratory and is a complex and costly technological endeavor in expanding our extraplanetary presence. The ISS constitutes a unique living space—a sociotechnical arrangement that encloses humans and nonhumans in a highly regulated and experimental setting that anticipates the orbital order of terrestrial ways of life. This article draws upon Michel Foucault's work on power and space to frame the ISS as a form of "heterotopia" and explore it as a site in which technologically inflected inscriptions of the human incubate distinct material and social relations. It suggests that these orbital effects configure the practices underpinning the strategic spatialization of life and its governance beyond the globe.


Recent work has shown that the chemical reactivity of osmium complexes can be finely tuned by the choice of osmium oxidation state, the ligands (including C- and N-bound), and the coordination geometry and stereochemistry, so opening up a wide range of new potential biological and medical applications. Osmium cancer therapeutics can have diverse modes of action and targets, including DNA interactions, redox modulation and protein inhibition. Polypyridyl Os(ii) compounds have potential advantages for luminescent cell imaging and photodynamic therapy due to their favourable photophysical and photochemical properties, such as long-wavelength metal-ligand charge transfer (MLCT) absorptions, high photostability and useful near-infrared (NIR) emission. Here we summarize recent progress in the design and application of innovative organo-osmium compounds as anticancer agents with novel mechanisms and as organelle-targeted imaging probes.


Kim criticizes non-reductive physicalism as a suitable metaphysics of mind among things because of its failure on the issue of mental causation. The failure is especially present in the thesis of supervenience physicalism. Kim concludes that the causal powers of mental states can be reduced to the causal powers carried by the physical states realizing them. Such causal reduction might involve identity between mental properties and physical properties. I think this is not a necessary conclusion. I try to clarify some premises behind Kim's analysis, regarding issues of irreducibility, downward causation and the structure of the physical domain. I think the main reason why Kim doubts the plausibility of non-reductive physicalism is his view that downward causation and non-reductive metaphysics indicate the physical domain being hierarchically divided into levels. It seems like Kim would take the opposite position regarding the structure of the physical: an undivided continuum. Yet, the question is if that position follows from the ontological tenet of physicalism. Finally, I conclude that not necessarily, and I develop some further implications and suggestions.