Extensive amenability is a property of group actions which has recently been used as a tool to prove amenability of groups. We study this property and prove that it is preserved under a very general construction of semidirect products. As an application, we establish the amenability of all subgroups of the group $\text{IET}$ of interval exchange transformations that have angular components of rational rank less than or equal to two. In addition, we obtain a reformulation of extensive amenability in terms of inverted orbits and use it to present a purely probabilistic proof that recurrent actions are extensively amenable. Finally, we study the triviality of the Poisson boundary for random walks on $\text{IET}$ and show that there are subgroups $G<\text{IET}$ admitting no finitely supported measure with trivial boundary.


Thermoplastic composite pipes (TCPs) are increasingly used to transport hydrocarbons and water in the oil and gas industry due to their superior properties including corrosion resistance, thermal insulation, light weight, etc. The cross-section of TCPs generally consists of three layers: inner liner, composite laminate, and outer jacket. Three layers are bonded together and form a solid-wall construction. Inner liner and outer jacket made of thermoplastic polymer provide protective barriers for the laminate to against the inner fluid and outer environment. The laminate is constructed by an even number of helically wounded continuous fiber reinforced thermoplastic composite tapes. In this study, mechanical behaviors of a TCP under an internal pressure were investigated by using analytical and finite element analysis (FEA) methods. The analytical method which is based on the three-dimensional (3D) anisotropy elastic theory can take account of non-uniformly distributed stress and strain through the thickness of the pipe wall. FEA models were setup by using the software ABAQUS to predict the stress distribution of the pipe. 3D Tsai-Wu failure criterion was used to predict the maximum internal pressure of the pipe. Effects of some critical parameters, such as the winding angle of composite tapes and the number of reinforced plies, on the internal pressure capacity of TCPs were studied. Results obtained from the analytical and FEA methods were fairly agreed with each other, which showed that with the increasing of the number of reinforced plies the internal pressure capacity of a TCP gradually increases and approaches to an extreme value. In addition, the optimal winding angle which results the maximum internal pressure is not a constant value, instead, it varies with the increasing thickness of the laminate layer. This study provides useful tools and guidance for the design and analysis of TCPs, and is currently under validation through experiments.


Coinciding with a national trend toward the localization of immigration law and policy, the city of Dayton, Ohio, passed the "Welcome Dayton—Immigrant Friendly City" resolution in 2011. This article focuses on the central role played by a coalition of local organizations, staffed by or advocating on behalf of immigrants and refugees, that led up to the initiative's passage and during its implementation. Characterized by collaboration, such efforts laid the groundwork for a policy that is attentive to the needs of immigrants and refugees. When they subsequently worked alongside city officials, local organizations also managed to affect meaningful local-level institutional changes. Dayton, as a result, became a leader in regional and national efforts to create more welcoming cities. Drawing mostly on several years of participant observation, the article adds to the literature on immigrant integration a rich description of the role local organizations play in the process of becoming welcoming. It also shows how an approach rooted in the humanitarian concerns of immigrants/refugees and their allies can pose a meaningful challenge to the exclusionary rhetoric and inaction that currently plague immigration law and policy.


Sleep arousal is a common health problem that negatively affects the quality of sleep. This study investigates the use of a compact convolutional neural network (CNN) to classify apnea and non-apnea sleep arousal categories. The experiments are conducted on a randomly selected subset of the physiological signals provided by the PhysioNet 2018 challenge dataset. In particular, three electroencephalography (EEG) channels, two electromyography (EMG) channels, electrooculography (EOG), and airflow data are used to build the classification model. Physiological signals are down-sampled by a factor of 2 and then split into two-second long non-overlapping window segments. A data augmentation technique is then applied to overcome the large class imbalance ratio between two sleep arousal categories. The network is trained on 80% of the segments extracted from the data of 100 subjects. With only 594 trainable parameters, our approach achieves an area under the precision-recall curve (AUPRC) of 0.677 for the intra-subject test (20% of the data from the 100 subjects), and 0.183 on the inter-subject test on the data of another 12 unseen test subjects. This result falls within the range of the official scores of the challenge winners, indicating a promising application in using this lightweight CNN model for automated classification of sleep arousal.


The interpretation of deep learning models is a challenge due to their size, complexity, and often opaque internal state. In addition, many systems, such as image classifiers, operate on low-level features rather than high-level concepts. To address these challenges, we introduce Concept Activation Vectors (CAVs), which provide an interpretation of a neural net's internal state in terms of human-friendly concepts. The key idea is to view the high-dimensional internal state of a neural net as an aid, not an obstacle. We show how to use CAVs as part of a technique, Testing with CAVs (TCAV), that uses directional derivatives to quantify the degree to which a user-defined concept is important to a classification result--for example, how sensitive a prediction of "zebra" is to the presence of stripes. Using the domain of image classification as a testing ground, we describe how CAVs may be used to explore hypotheses and generate insights for a standard image classification network as well as a medical application.


Contemporary societies are bound in a fiscal social contract between citizens and their elected governments who administer the states in the interest of all members. The fiscal social contract implies that citizens should pay tax which is utilized by government to execute programs for the collective good. While the advanced countries have done a better job of mobilizing tax as a resource for societal development, developing countries have performed poorly. A large number of high-income earners in developing countries avoid the tax system thus hampering development efforts. Previous studies have alluded to a culture of tax evasion among citizens of developing countries as a key factor influencing noncompliance. However, this study argues that these studies did not reach the best conclusion as their methodology excluded the taxpayers' narratives. We interviewed self-employed taxpayers in Nigeria's capital city, Abuja. Results of the analysis revealed taxpayers' frustration with an opaque tax system, deplorable socioeconomic condition, and nonfunctioning of the tax audit system. We argue that the massive tax noncompliance in developing countries may be better understood as "tax boycott" arising from taxpayers' frustration with the fiscal social contract of governance. Policy implications of the findings were discussed in the concluding section.


The rising prevalence of fake news and its alarming downstream impact have motivated both the industry and academia to build a substantial number of fake news classification models, each with its unique architecture. Yet, the research community currently lacks a comprehensive model evaluation framework that can provide multifaceted comparisons between these models beyond the simple evaluation metrics such as accuracy or f1 scores. In our work, we examine a representative subset of classifiers using a very simple set of performance evaluation and error analysis steps. We demonstrate that model performance varies considerably based on i) dataset, ii) evaluation archetype, and iii) performance metrics. Additionally, classifiers also demonstrate a potential bias against small and conservative-leaning credible news sites. Finally, models' performance varies based on external events and article topics. In sum, our results highlight the need to move toward systematic benchmarking.


Deep neural networks are susceptible to learn biased models with entangled feature representations, which may lead to subpar performances on various downstream tasks. This is particularly true for under-represented classes, where a lack of diversity in the data exacerbates the tendency. This limitation has been addressed mostly in classification tasks, but there is little study on additional challenges that may appear in more complex dense prediction problems including semantic segmentation. To this end, we propose a model-agnostic and stochastic training scheme for semantic segmentation, which facilitates the learning of debiased and disentangled representations. For each class, we first extract class-specific information from the highly entangled feature map. Then, information related to a randomly sampled class is suppressed by a feature selection process in the feature space. By randomly eliminating certain class information in each training iteration, we effectively reduce feature dependencies among classes, and the model is able to learn more debiased and disentangled feature representations. Models trained with our approach demonstrate strong results on multiple semantic segmentation benchmarks, with especially notable performance gains on under-represented classes.


We examine the effect of information asymmetry on equity prices in the local A- and foreign B-share market in China. We construct measures of information asymmetry based on market microstructure models, and find that they explain a significant portion of cross-sectional variation in B-share discounts, even after controlling for other factors. On a univariate basis, the price impact measure and the adverse selection component of the bid-ask spread in the A- and B-share markets explains 44% and 46% of the variation in B-share discounts. On a multivariate basis, both measures are far more statistically significant than any of the control variables.


The purpose of this thesis is to characterize, compare and contrast four network-centric software architectures, namely Client-Server Architecture (CSA), Distributed Objects Architecture (DOA), Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Peer-to-Peer Architecture (PPA) and seven associated frameworks consisting of .NET, Java EE, CORBA, DCOM, Web Services, Jini and JXTA with respect to a set of derived criteria. Network-centric systems are gaining in popularity as they have the potential to solve more complex problems than we have been able to in the past. However, with the rise of SOA, Web Services, a set of standards widely used for implementing service-oriented solutions, is being touted as the "silver bullet" to all problems afflicting the software engineering domain with the danger of making other architectures seem obsolete. Thus, there is an urgent need to study the various architectures and frameworks in comparison to each other and understand their relative merits and demerits for building network-centric systems. The architectures studied here were selected on the basis of their fundamentality and generality. The frameworks were chosen on the basis of their popularity and representativeness to build solutions in a particular architecture. The criteria used for comparative assessment are derived from a combination of two approaches – by a close examination of the unique characteristics and requirements of network-centric systems and then by an examination of the constraints and mechanisms present in the architectures and frameworks under consideration that may contribute towards realizing the requirements of network-centric systems. Not all of the criteria are equally relevant for the architectures and frameworks. Some, when relevant, are relevant in a different sense from one architecture (or framework) to another. One of the conclusions that can be drawn from this study is that the different architectures are not completely different from each other. In fact, CSA, DOA and SOA are a natural evolution in that order and share several characteristics. At the same time, significant differences do exist, so it is clearly possible to judge/differentiate one from the other. All three architectures can coexist in a single system or system of systems. However, the advantages of each architecture become apparent only when they are used in their proper scope. At the same time, a sharp difference can be perceived between these three architectures and the peer-to-peer architecture. This is because PPA aims to solve a totally different class of problems than the other three architectures and hence has certain unique characteristics not observed in the others. Further, all of the frameworks have certain unique architectural features and mechanisms not found in the others that contribute towards achieving network-centric quality characteristics. The two broad frameworks, .NET and Java EE offer almost equivalent capabilities and features; what can be achieved in one can be achieved in the other. This thesis deals with the study of all the four architectures and their related frameworks. The criteria used, while fairly comprehensive, are not exhaustive. Variants of the fundamental architectures are not considered. However, system/software architects seeking an understanding of the tradeoffs involved in using the various architectures and frameworks and their subtle nuances should benefit considerably from this work.


The Natih Formation in Oman is an exceptionally well–exposed and studied example of a large (>1000 km [621 mi]) epeiric, shallow marine, tropical carbonate platform system with adjacent organic-rich intrashelf basins. It serves as an outcrop analog for many of the mid-Cretaceous giant oil reservoirs as well as for unconventional reservoirs in the Mesozoic of the Arabian plate. A key feature of the Natih Formation is its strict hierarchical stratigraphic organization at multiple orders of depositional sequences (third to fifth), which was first demonstrated in outcrop and subsequently adopted in the seismic and log data sets of the nearby subsurface. It has provided a high-resolution time framework for the robust sequence stratigraphic model that has been developed for an area of 6000 km2 (2317 mi2). Deposited in a calm tectonic setting, the Natih Formation provides an excellent example to demonstrate the principles of carbonate systems' response to eustatic sea level change and some fundamental differences with siliciclastic systems. Key aspects that are addressed include the influence of the rate of sea level rise on the transition from ramp to platform, the creation of organic-rich intrashelf basins through differential accumulation rates, changing facies models within third-order sequences, and the importance of different platform top channel types. The economic relevance of this case study is the improved prediction of reservoir, seal, and source rock facies distribution and the associated early diagenetic overprint, insights that have been applied in the reservoir modeling of nearby oil fields as well as in exploration-scale studies.


Probably the most uncontroversial thing that one can say about international taxation is that it is a mess. Sophisticated planning techniques, which seem beyond the power of taxing authorities to control, enable highly profitable multinational enterprises (MNEs) to pay little or no tax on their income. Efforts by transnational organizations to coordinate action in an attempt to rescue the international tax regime from collapse have hitherto proven ineffective. Some commentators have speculated that any attempt to impose tax on MNEs in a globalized economy is doomed to failure.
The focus of this article is in the taxation of foreign MNEs by the countries in which they operate, and its thesis is that the choice of income as a base for taxing foreign MNEs is inappropriate both normatively and practically. It asserts that the normative grounding for income tax in the domestic arena is inapplicable to foreign MNEs. It suggests that, relative to other tax bases, income tax increases the chances that the host country will deter investments that could have contributed to the welfare of its residents and that it will attract investments that constitute a net drain on its economic resources. It posits that, relative to alternative tax bases, income tax destroys economic value. Perhaps most importantly, it argues that the planning techniques exploited by MNEs are essentially an agency cost deriving from the use of income as a tax base and that the best, perhaps the only, way to prevent this agency cost is to abandon the income tax and to adopt an alternative tax base.


ABSTRACT To understand the interactions between production patterns common to children regardless of language environment and the early appearance of production effects based on perceptual learning from the ambient language requires the study of languages with diverse phonological properties. Few studies have evaluated early phonological acquisition patterns of children in non-Indo-European language environments. In the current study, across- and within-syllable consonant–vowel co-occurrence patterns in babbling were analyzed for a 6-month period for seven Ecuadorean Quichua learning children who were between 9 and 17 months of age at study onset. Their babbling utterances were compared to the babbling of six English-learning children between 9 and 22 months of age. Child patterns for both languages were compared with Quichua and English ambient language patterns. Babbling output was highly similar for the child groups: Quichua and English children's babbling demonstrated similar predicted within-syllable (coronal-front vowel, labial-central vowel, dorsal-back vowel) patterns, and across-syllable manner variegation patterns for consonants. These patterns were observed at significantly greater rates in the child groups than in the respective adult language input patterns, suggesting production system influences common to children across languages rather than ambient language perceptual learning effects during these children's babbling period.


Mean-Field Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MF-MARL) is attractive in the applications involving a large population of homogeneous agents, as it exploits the permutation invariance of agents and avoids the curse of many agents. Most existing results only focus on online settings, in which agents can interact with the environment during training. In some applications such as social welfare optimization, however, the interaction during training can be prohibitive or even unethical in the societal systems. To bridge such a gap, we propose a SAFARI (peSsimistic meAn-Field vAlue iteRatIon) algorithm for off-line MF-MARL, which only requires a handful of pre-collected experience data. Theoretically, under a weak coverage assumption that the experience dataset contains enough information about the optimal policy, we prove that for an episodic mean-field MDP with a horizon H and N training trajectories, SAFARI attains a sub-optimality gap of O(Hde↵/ p N), where de↵ is the effective dimension of the function class for parameterizing the value function, but independent on the number of agents. Numerical experiments are provided.


The ability to determine what day-to-day activity (such as cooking pasta, taking a pill, or watching a video) a person is performing is of interest in many application domains. A system that can do this requires models of the activities of interest, but model construction does not scale well: humans must specify low-level details, such as segmentation and feature selection of sensor data, and high-level structure, such as spatio-temporal relations between states of the model, for each and every activity. As a result, previous practical activity recognition systems have been content to model a tiny fraction of the thousands of human activities that are potentially useful to detect. In this paper, we present an approach to sensing and modeling activities that scales to a much larger class of activities than before. We show how a new class of sensors, based on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags, can directly yield semantic terms that describe the state of the physical world. These sensors allow us to formulate activity models by translating labeled activities, such as 'cooking pasta', into probabilistic collections of object terms, such as 'pot'. Given this view of activity models as text translations, we show how to mine definitions of activities in an unsupervised manner from the web. We have used our technique to mine definitions for over 20,000 activities. We experimentally validate our approach using data gathered from actual human activity as well as simulated data.


To maximize the returns on a real estate investment, it is essential that property owners intelligently manage all the variables that could negatively impact the long-term value of the asset. Occupancy costs have historically represented a large percent of what is spent over the lifetime of a real estate investment. Therefore, to maximize the returns on their investment, it is important that property owners, first, make a cost benefit analysis of various options, and second, reduce the occupancy costs associated with the chosen option by either eliminating or better managing the underlying drivers. This study is addressed to facilitate the decisions made around the second point by gaining a better understanding of the causal relationships between identified drivers and occupancy cost indictors. In refer to Pfarr (1976) and Stoy (2005) the amount of occupancy costs always depends on the following factors: usage, building characteristics, strategies, location and market dynamics. By examining the costs of 150 municipal buildings (schools, sport facilities) and all the factors that go into those costs, the research looks to both build on the investment versus occupancy cost analyses done by GSD (2003) and Stoy (2005, 2008) and help property owners identifying how they can better reduce occupancy expenditures and manage their investments more intelligently. The current collection of data forms the main part over the course of the study and comprises the investigation of occupancy costs (dependent variables) and the definition of relevant cost drivers (independent variables). Subsequently the collected data will be analysed by conducting a series of univariate analysis. First results will be presented in spring 2010. Cost-optimized and financially sustainable real estate can only be planned, built and used if the causal relationships existing between occupancy costs and their identified drivers can be confirmed and translated into practice. This empirical study seeks to make such a confirmation by quantifying the relevant drivers of occupancy costs. Based on these findings it will be possible to create occupancy cost benchmarks for early project phases and to specify design rules and basic conditions for planning, building and using financially sustainable real estate.


In the mid 90s, a joint enterprise from the Institute of British Geographers and the American Association of Geographers called for unveiling and exploring the various aspects of the subtle relationship that exists between geography and ethics. Bridging over the Atlantic, a group of Anglo-Saxon geographers lead by J. Proctor and D.M. Smith pointed out the necessity to further develop the bounds between the study of space and moral philosophy. Questions were directly addressed in the beginning of 1997 through the first volume of Philosophy and Geography: Ethics, Place and Environment, concerned with the uprising attention brought to environmental changes. This contribution was only briefly later continued in Progress in Human Geography. Within this initiative, which further developments quickly felt short in the years 2000 to the profit of other research interests, the notion of care had been pointed out as key to approach what was regarded as both an epistemological and ontological challenge for geography. First developed in the 1980's by philosophers C. Gilligan and J. Tronto as a feministic approach to ethics, the notion of care became increasingly central to a whole set of disciplines concerned with the central role of woman as care givers. However, today, with the emerging of the postfeminist critic, the sense given to the notion of care tends to shift from 'taking care of' to 'caring about'. Through this shift, I suggest the possibility to approach a spatial understanding of the social bounds individuals maintain throughout their youth—binding in kinfolks, friends, acquaintances and strangers—in a sole field of affect, cognitively linking themselves to a World shaped by care, concern and empathy. The relationship between care, spatial practices, degree of urbanity and level of exposure to otherness are then revealed in an ethnographic fieldwork using friendship as a method, and recurrent interviews with actors of this affect-based network.


The redistribution of matter in the deep-sea depends on water-flow currents and turbulent exchange, for which breaking internal waves are an important source. As internal waves and turbulence are essentially three-dimensional '3D', their dynamical development should ideally be studied in a volume of seawater. However, this is seldom done in the ocean where 1D-observations along a single vertical line are already difficult. We present the design, construction and successful deployment of a half-cubic-hectometer (480,000 m3) 3D-T mooring array holding 2925 high-resolution temperature sensors to study weakly density-stratified waters of the 2500-m deep Western Mediterranean. The stand-alone array samples temperature at a rate of 0.5 Hz, with precision <0.5 mK, noise level <0.1 mK and expected endurance of 3 years. The independent sensors are synchronized inductively every 4 h to a single standard clock. The array consists of 45 vertical lines 125 m long, at 9.5 m horizontally from their nearest neighbor. Each line is held under tension of 1.3 kN by a buoyancy element that is released chemically one week after deployment. All fold-up lines are attached to a grid of cables that is tensioned in a 70 m diameter ring of steel tubes. The array is build-up in harbor-waters, with air filling the steel tubes for floatation. The flat-form array is towed to the mooring site under favorable sea-state conditions. By opening valves in the steel tubes, the array is sunk and its free-fall is controlled by a custom-made drag-parachute reducing the average sinking speed to 1.3 m s-1 and providing smooth horizontal landing on the flat seafloor.


Here is the Naked Ape at his most primal - in love, at work, at war. Meet man as he really is: relative to the apes, stripped of his veneer as we see him courting, making love, sleeping, socialising, grooming, playing. Zoologist Desmond Morris's classic takes its place alongside Darwin's Origin of the Species, presenting man not as a fallen angel, but as a risen ape, remarkable in his resilience, energy and imagination, yet an animal nonetheless, in danger of forgetting his origins. With its penetrating insights on man's beginnings, sex life, habits and our astonishing bonds to the animal kingdom, The Naked Ape is a landmark, at once provocative, compelling and timeless.


Extracted from text ... SA PHARMACIST'S ASSISTANT ? september / october 2005 4
PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
Gary Black
Director: Cape Western Province
Branch of the PSSA
Society has developed elevated expectations of professional behaviour
on the parts of all of its health care professionals. These expectations
include competence, integrity, a caring attitude, and an engaging
manner. The public also expects professionals to maintain high standards
of language, communication skills, hygiene, and professional
appearance. The health care professional's appearance is an extension
of the culture of the organisation and will reflect on how customers,
patients, and colleagues view the health care professional and the
profession of Pharmacy.
Dress code
for professionals Suzanne Bornman
In a professional environment, we
cannot only concentrate on ..


Background: Migration is considered as one of the major risk factor for HIV/AIDS transmission. Inadequate knowledge and misconceptions about HIV/AIDS transmission are still the major challenges in developing countries. Aim: This study aimed to explore the knowledge and risk perceptions about HIV/AIDS among a sample of Nepalese migrants working in three Gulf countries. Method and Material: A cross-sectional study was performed among a sample of 408 adult Nepalese migrants who had a work experience of at least six months in one of the three Gulf countries, (Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates). An interview-based questionnaire was used to obtain the information from these migrant workers. Results: The respondents in this study were from different parts of Nepal and the majority were adult males, most frequently of age 26-35. More than half of the respondents were involved in construction related works. The majority of the respondents were aware that HIV virus is transmitted through sexual intercourse without using condoms and having sex with many people. The most prevalent misconceptions about HIV/AIDS transmission was that a person can get HIV/AIDS from a mosquito bite. More than a quarter of the respondents perceived that they were not at risk of being infected with HIV/AIDS due to their sexual activities. Conclusions: There is still a lack of adequate awareness and risk perceptions about HIV/AIDS among some of the Nepalese migrants. We can suggest to government of Nepal and employers to provide proper preventive health information regarding HIV/AIDS to migrant workers in both home and destination countries.


It has been conjectured that all properties of language beyond recursion can be motivated by interface requirements. One component in this setup is the parser, which is thought to give rise to a preference for computational parsimony. I discuss a mathematical result on reference-set computation, an (allegedly) nonparsimonious piece of machinery, that challenges this assumption and suggests that syntax can sometimes "trick" the parser in order to escape its demands. If reference-set constraints are construed as so-called tree transducers, they do not increase the power of the syntactic machinery. This in turn entails that they can be expressed purely in terms of the Minimalist feature calculus regulating Merge and Move, so it cannot be ruled out that syntax employs reference-set constraints, whereas the parser operates on their less demanding equivalents. In order to demonstrate the viability of this approach for the kind of reference-set constraints found in the literature, I give an implementation of Merge-over-Move. Keywords: Transderivationality; Merge-over-Move; Minimalist grammars; tree transducers


In modern times markets are very dynamic. This situation requires agile enterprises to have the ability to react fast on market influences. Thereby an enterprise' IT is especially affected, because new or changed business models have to be realized. However, enterprise architectures (EA) are complex structures consisting of many artifacts and relationships between them. Thus analyzing an EA becomes to a complex task for stakeholders. In addition, many stakeholders are involved in decision-making processes, because Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) targets providing a holistic view of the enterprise. In this article we use concepts of Adaptive Case Management (ACM) to design a decision-making case consisting of a combination of different analysis techniques to support stakeholders in decision-making. We exemplify the case with a scenario of a fictive enterprise.


This SLH Learning Brief presents work undertaken by WaterAid Bangladesh and Rupantar in collaboration with the Sanitation Learning Hub (SLH), at the Institute of Development Studies, and the University of Technology Sydney - Institute for Sustainable Futures (UTS-ISF). A sanitation-focused climate lens was added to existing ward vulnerability assessment tools due to the increasing WASH-related climate impacts in the study site. The aim was to understand climate induced impacts on WASH and feed this into programmatic guidance through the preparation of locally-led comprehensive ward development plans. This SLH Learning Brief is intended to provide inspiration to practitioners and WASH experts on how to adapt existing vulnerability assessment tools to integrate climate considerations. This study engaged several stakeholders including climate vulnerable populations, development practitioners, researchers, and local government across Krishnanagar Union under Sathkhira subdistrict, to create evidence-based approaches to address climate induced WASH vulnerabilities in coastal Southwest Bangladesh. This research sought to answer the following questions: 1. What is the current status of WASH facilities in nine wards across in rural southwest Bangladesh? 2. How are climatic conditions impacting water, sanitation and hygiene practices? 3. What actions can be undertaken by various stakeholders to address climate induced WASH problems?


A phylogenetic analysis of sequences from 503 species of hylid frogs and four outgroup taxa resulted in 16,128 aligned sites of 19 genes. The molecular data were subjected to a maximum likelihood analysis that resulted in a new phylogenetic tree of treefrogs. A conservative new classification based on the tree has (1) three families composing an unranked taxon, Arboranae, (2) nine subfamilies (five resurrected, one new), and (3) six resurrected generic names and five new generic names. Using the results of a maximum likelihood timetree, times of divergence were determined. For the most part these times of divergence correlated well with historical geologic events. The arboranan frogs originated in South America in the Late Mesozoic or Early Cenozoic. The family Pelodryadidae diverged from its South American relative, Phyllomedusidae, in the Eocene and invaded Australia via Antarctica. There were two dispersals from South America to North America in the Paleogene. One lineage was the ancestral stock of Acris and its relatives, whereas the other lineage, subfamily Hylinae, differentiated into a myriad of genera in Middle America.


Improvement of Image Reconstruction Speed with GPU in Cone Beam CT Breast Imaging by Shuaiping Ge Breast cancer is the most common and the second lethal cancer among women in the United States. Our group is constructing a dedicated cone beam breast CT (CBCT) system to provide true 3D image to improve the screening and diagnostic of breast cancer. Our result shows that dedicated CBCT out-perform a lot than conventional CT when detecting micro-calcification which is essential to the detection of early stage breast cancer. I also explored the possibility of using the super parallel computing power of GPU with CUDA environment to deal with data-immense and computationally-intensive image reconstruction process of CBCT. My results show that FDK algorithm image reconstruction with GPU is over 10 times faster than that with our PC cluster system. The faster and accurate image reconstruction implies potential new applications in diagnostic and therapy technology.


Doppler ultrasound systems, used for the noninvasive detection of the vascular diseases, normally employ a high-pass filter (HPF) to remove the large, low-frequency components from the vessel wall from the blood flow signal. Unfortunately, the filter also removes the low-frequency Doppler signals arising from slow-moving blood. In this paper, we propose to use a novel technique, called the empirical mode decomposition (EMD), to remove the wall components from the mixed signals. The EMD is firstly to decompose a signal into a finite and usually small number of individual components named intrinsic mode functions (IMFs). Then a strategy based on the ratios between two adjacent values of the wall-to-blood signal ratio (WBSR) has been developed to automatically identify and remove the relevant IMFs that contribute to the wall components. This method is applied to process the simulated and clinical Doppler ultrasound signals. Compared with the results based on the traditional high-pass filter, the new approach obtains improved performance for wall components removal from the mixed signals effectively and objectively, and provides us with more accurate low blood flow.


For two years, post-treatment regrowth of herbaceous and woody species was sampled on two adjoining areas in the southern Piedmont where they had been either sheared and piled into windrows or chopped by a single pass of a single-drum roller-chopper. Windrowing yielded 55% less total standing crop of woody trees, shrubs, and vines after 2 years than chopping did. But shearing and windrowing with a KG-blade gave no additional control of sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua L.) and blackgum (Nyssa sylvatica Marsh.). No differences between treatments were found in the standing crop of grasses and forbs. Legumes were more abundant on the windrowed site. Sheet and rill erosion, resulting in topsoil loss, persisted after 2 years on the windrowed area but not on the chopped area. Windrowing treatments should be restricted to gentle slopes and level sites; for sloping terrain chopping is more advisable.


This article focuses on technological discontinuities and late shakeouts in mature industries. The empirical case is combined cycle gas turbine technology in the power generation industry, where two of four main incumbents (GE, ABB, Siemens, and Westinghouse) exited the industry after several years of competition. We show that the vast differences in firm performance are strongly related to variation in technological capabilities, such as sourcing and integration of knowledge from related industries and after-launch problem solving. The findings from this case may also be of general interest for studies of dynamics in other mature, complex industries.


The interaction of YBCO and PbO2 particles suspended in acetone were determined using particle size and zeta potential measurements. Results show that YBCO particles are positively charged when mixed in acetone, while PbO2 particles were determined to be negatively charged. In addition, upon testing the suspension of YBCO+PbO2 in acetone, zeta potential measurements show a decrease in magnitude with respect to settling time. The addition of more PbO2 into the YBCO-acetone suspension also pushed its zeta potential values to the unstable region (|ζ| < 30 mV). This explains why the sedimentation deposition fails to produce high quality films because of the relatively strong Coulombic attraction of YBCO and PbO2 particles when mixed in acetone. The agglomeration of particles during the sedimentation deposition results to a non-uniform substrate surface coverage.


Introduction and aim Surfactant replacement is a corner stone therapy for respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) and has been shown to be both safe and efficacious for premature infants. The aim of this study was to assess the immediate changes in lung mechanics caused by administration of two different natural surfactants. Secondary aim of this study was to determine the relationship between initial lung mechanics and occurrence of bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD). Method Preterm infants who were Results 10 premature infants were studied. Mean gestational age was 28.4 ± 1.6 (26–31) weeks and mean birth weight was 955 ± 155 (710–1250) g. Five infants received beractant and the other five received poractantalpha. The alteration of lung mechanics after surfactant administration was summarized in Table 1. Abstract PO-0771 Table 1 Conclusion Surfactant therapy significantly reduced the resistance and improved the lung compliance. These effects were not directly related to the type of surfactant administered.


BACKGROUND
A Congenital Muscular Dystrophy (CMD) Working Group (WG) consisting of international experts reviewed common data elements (CDEs) previously developed for other neuromuscular diseases (NMDs) and made recommendations for all types of studies on CMD.

OBJECTIVES
To develop a comprehensive set of CDEs, data definitions, case report forms and guidelines for use in CMD clinical research to facilitate interoperability of data collection, as part of the CDE project at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS).

METHODS
One working group composed of ten experts reviewed existing NINDS CDEs and outcome measures, evaluated the need for new elements, and provided recommendations for CMD clinical research. The recommendations were compiled, internally reviewed by the CMD working group, and posted online for external public comment. The CMD working group and the NIH CDE team reviewed the final version before release.

RESULTS
The NINDS CMD CDEs and supporting documents are publicly available on the NINDS CDE website (https://www.commondataelements.ninds.nih.gov/CMD.aspx#tab=Data_Standards). Content areas include demographics, social status, health history, physical examination, diagnostic tests, and guidelines for a variety of specific outcomes and endpoints. The CMD CDE WG selected these documents from existing versions that were generated by other disease area working groups. Some documents were tailored to maximize their suitability for the CMD field.

CONCLUSIONS
Widespread use of CDEs can facilitate CMD clinical research and trial design, data sharing and retrospective analyses. The CDEs that are most relevant to CMD research are like those generated for other NMDs, and CDE documents tailored to CMD are now available to the public. The existence of a single source for these documents facilitates their use in research studies and offers a clear mechanism for the discussion and update of the information as knowledge is gained.


A selection of nonlinear materials for use in various frequency—doubled dye lasers is studied. Lithium Formate Monohydrate is operated intracavity in a Coumarin 102 dye laser for the first time. A maximum of 70 microwatts of tunable ultraviolet light was generated over the range 237nm to 248nm, representing an improvement of an order of magnitude on previously reported work with this material. A pulsed xenon ion laser of high efficiency has been built and the design optimised, giving an output power of 1B5W. The laser is used to pump a Rhodamine 6 8 dye laser containing a crystal of Ammonium Dihydrogen Arsenate, to generate 280 milliwatts of tunable UV over the range 291nm to 297nm and this is the first time that a detailed study of this type of laser has been reported. A crystal growing system for water based crystals is described. A crystal of Urea grown in the apparatus has been cut for use in a dye laser and tested with the beam from an argon ion laser. A value of the nonlinear coefficient of 0.90pm/V is reported.


In this thesis, the field of study related to the stability analysis of fluid saturated porous media is investigated. In particular the contribution of the viscous heating to the onset of convective instability in the flow through ducts is analysed. In order to evaluate the contribution of the viscous dissipation, different geometries, different models describing the balance equations and different boundary conditions are used. Moreover, the local thermal non-equilibrium model is used to study the evolution of the temperature differences between the fluid and the solid matrix in a thermal boundary layer problem.

On studying the onset of instability, different techniques for eigenvalue problems has been used. Analytical solutions, asymptotic analyses and numerical solutions by means of original and commercial codes are carried out.


As one of the most vibrant democracies in Asia, and as a country experiencing continuous economic growth, Indonesia is emerging as a leader in the region. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's appointment as the co-chairman of UN chief Ban Ki-moon's High Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda further indicates that Indonesia is increasingly seen as an example. As it emerges into the spotlight, Indonesia indeed faces the responsibility of setting a good example, particularly in terms of the Millennium Development Goals. One of the MDGs is promoting gender equality across the globe. This goal makes women's empowerment and gender parity top priorities to achieve by 2015. To achieve these objectives, countries are aiming to give women and men equal access to education and economic participation at all levels.


Behavior of deep neural networks can be inconsistent between different versions. Regressions during model update are a common cause of concern that often over-weigh the benefits in accuracy or efficiency gain. This work focuses on quantifying, reducing and analyzing regression errors in the NLP model updates. Using negative flip rate as regression measure, we show that regression has a prevalent presence across tasks in the GLUE benchmark. We formulate the regression-free model updates into a constrained optimization problem, and further reduce it into a relaxed form which can be approximately optimized through knowledge distillation training method. We empirically analyze how model ensemble reduces regression. Finally, we conduct CheckList behavioral testing to understand the distribution of regressions across linguistic phenomena, and the efficacy of ensemble and distillation methods.


This Article uses historical and legal analysis to demonstrate how U.S. domination over Puerto Rico's tax and fiscal policies has been the centerpiece of a colonial system and an especially destructive form of economic imperialism. Specifically, this Article develops a novel theory of U.S. tax imperialism in Puerto Rico, chronicling the sundry ways in which the United States has used tax laws to exert economic dominance over its less developed island colony. During the colonial period, U.S. officials wrote and revised Puerto Rican tax laws to serve U.S. economic interests. In more recent years, U.S. tax laws have disadvantaged Puerto Ricans, who still lack voting rights and full democratic representation in Congress. A theory of tax imperialism may also have application far beyond the U.S.-Puerto Rican experience. For instance, it may help us understand the relationships between the United States and its other possessions and territories throughout history, and between the United Kingdom and its British Crown dependencies, overseas territories, and newly-independent colonies.


Modeling of supply interruptions and voltage dips caused by component failures and scheme reconfigurations in an electrical distribution scheme is considered in a Smart Grid scenario. Explicit reference is made to a MV/LV transformer substation supplying an industrial load. The modeling difficulties due to the contemporaneous presence of fast switching actions together with slow repair procedures are discussed. A simple technique based on the decomposition of a complete Markov model, fully describing the system is presented. The different simplified models resulting from the decomposition are solved sequentially. The application to the MV/LV substation shows the technique suitability. The importance of accounting for voltage dips and short interruptions further than for long interruptions is also evidenced. This is a consequence of the ability of such brief duration disturbances to cause damages of longer duration such as industrial process shut-down.


The article considers arguments that address the changing forms of governance within which education and in particular English further education is set, focusing on the relationship of these to professionalism. Specifically the article draws upon and critiques analyses of the changing forms of governance which are considered to carry progressive possibilities. These changes are thought to prefigure new forms of inter-professionality that herald democratic relations with constituents. The danger with such arguments is that neoliberalism and its performative regime become conflated with capitalism. Any move away from neoliberalism towards a different education settlement is deemed progressive, rather than merely a different modality through which state power can be exercised and contested. At the time of writing a coalition of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats has assumed governmental power in the United Kingdom. Their policies represent some continuity with those of New Labour but place a greater emphasis on marketisation. All educational settlements carry limitations and possibilities for the development of radical practice, with these deriving from political struggle at the site of educational practice and beyond.


During cell division, microtubules in the mitotic spindle form antiparallel overlaps near the center of the spindle. Kinesin motor proteins alter microtubule polymerization dynamics to regulate the length of these overlaps to maintain spindle integrity. Length regulation of antiparallel overlaps has been reconstituted with purified microtubules, crosslinkers, and motors. Here we develop a theory of steady-state overlap length which depends on the filament plus-end motor concentration, determined by a balance between motor arrival (motor binding and stepping in the overlap) and motor departure (motor unbinding from filament tips during depolymerization) in the absence of motor-driven sliding. Assuming that motors processively depolymerize and exhibit altered binding kinetics near MT plus-ends improves the agreement between theory and experiment. Our theory explains the origin of the experimentally observed critical concentration, a minimum motor concentration to observe a steady-state overlap length.


QR code, for its recognition robustness and data capacity, has been often used for Augmented Reality applications as well as for other commercial applications. However, it is difficult to enable tangible interactions through which users may change 3D models or animations. It is because QR codes are automatically generated by the rules, and are not easily modifiable. Our goal was to enable QR code based Augmented Reality interactions. By analysis and through experiments, we discovered that some parts of a QR code can be altered to change the text string that the QR code represents. In this paper, we introduced a prototype for QR code based Augmented Reality interactions, which allows for Rubik's cube style rolling interactions.


Based on a formal model of how investments in corporate social responsibility act upon firm value through goodwill, we derive the hypothesis that under uncertainty bad news are detrimental to goodwill, and subsequently have a negative impact on value. We examine by event study methodology whether bad news in the form of environmental (EV) incidents affect firm value negatively as measured by abnormal returns using a global data set. An EV incident is a company incident allegedly in violation of international norms on environmental issues. We analyse 142 EV incidents 2003-2006. The EV incidents are generally associated with loss of value, but which are not statistically significant, except for incidents for firms in Europe. Furthermore, results indicate that firms with low goodwill capital (high EV risk rating) are associated with relatively larger negative abnormal returns in case of an EV incident.


The distribution of the labour force by sectors and the country economic structure indicate the economic development level of countries. The traditional sectoral transformation is observed in all countries during the economic development process. Since the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, industrialization has been one of the fundamental development policies to be achieved. As an inevitable result of the development, the sectoral distribution of production and employment changed in Turkish economy over the years. This structural transformation is associated with the transition from primary sector to capital intensive production structure in which the manufacturing and the service sectors expand while the agricultural sector shrinks. However, the agricultural sector is still important in Turkey. Today, approximately one-fifth of the labour force is employed in the agricultural sector. This ratio shows the developing country feature of Turkish labour market despite the industrialization and urbanization policies and the structural changes in recent years. In this context, the aim of this study is to analyze the sectoral transformation of the Turkish economy within the scope of the sectors share in the GDP of Turkey and the share of sectors in the total employment, within the changing structure of the labour market and the level of urbanization.Keywords: economic development, structural transformation, Turkish economy


OBJECTIVE
This article describes the rationale, design, and baseline findings from an ongoing study of collaborative care for chronic musculoskeletal pain and comorbid depression.

DESIGN
Cluster randomized clinical trial.

PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING
Forty-two clinicians and 401 patients from five Veterans Affairs primary care clinics.

INTERVENTION
The intervention was based on the chronic care model, and included patient and provider activation and education, patient assessment, outcomes monitoring, and feedback to providers over 12 months. The intervention team consisted of a full-time psychologist care manager and a part-time physician internist. Approaches included goal setting emphasizing function, patient activation and educating about fear avoidance, and care management.

OUTCOME MEASURES
Main outcomes are Roland-Morris Disability Questionnaire (RMDQ) score, depression severity (Patient Health Questionnaire-9), and pain severity (Chronic Pain Grade Severity subscale) at 6 and 12 months.

BASELINE RESULTS
Fifteen percent of primary care patients mailed a study advertisement letter requested screening for the study. The mean age of enrolled patients was 62. Back and neck or joint pain diagnoses were present in 67% and 65% of patients, respectively. Mean pain duration was 15 years, and mean RMDQ score (range 0-24) was 14.7 (standard deviation = 4.4). Sixty-five percent of patients were receiving disability. Eighteen percent of patients met criteria for major depression, 17% for posttraumatic stress disorder, and 9% for alcohol misuse. Thirty-nine percent of patients felt strongly that experiencing pain was a sign of damage, and 60% reported strong avoidance of painful activities.

CONCLUSIONS
These baseline data support the rationale to develop a multifaceted approach to treat chronic pain in primary care that includes detection and treatment of psychiatric comorbidity.


Companies in collaborative networks require intermediation to perform. The collaborative network forms the breeding environment for the configuration of a Virtual Enterprise that can handle a business request. This configuration task can be supported by IT services. For collaborative networks such as production networks focused on non-digital services and products we propose to assign specific intermediation tasks to a human network moderator supported by these IT services. The obvious support is targeted for the configuration of the Virtual Enterprise i.e. the search and selection from the available products, services, and competences found among the network participants. The configuration decision can jeopardize the network performance by harming the trust necessary to build new Virtual Enterprises. Through a further intermediation task trust can be inspired and promoted in the network. This article shows how the configuration is supported by a Decision Support Service and how a Transparency Support Service supports the downloading and acceptance of decisions in collaborative networks. The article outlines the IT supportive service system and exemplifies the use by a scenario example. Results on intermediation in collaborative networks can prove helpful for general service science problems.


Adoption research for many years has considered individual farmer as the basis of analysis, whereas, the effect of networks governing a farmer's decision-making has received limited attention. Moreover, the spread of technology over different generation of adopters has not been addressed adequately. Hence, farmers' position within the agricultural information networks and their adoption decision, may be studied to formulate some lower order propositions regarding the diffusion of agricultural innovations within social networks. The present study was conducted at Nadia District of West Bengal, India to study the spread of banana (Musa paradisiacal L.) and guava (Psidium guajava L.) cultivation among the farmers of selected villages. Case study method and focused group discussion was used to track this spread over different generations of adopters. Sociometric technique was employed to find out the network score of farmers in the agricultural information network. The fractional ranking of network scores of farmers was then compared with their relative earliness in the spread of banana and guava cultivation. It was found that both in the spread of banana and guava cultivation, most of the farmers who had higher network scores were earlier adopters of banana and guava cultivation practices and vice versa. This indicates the possible relations between farmers' adoption-decision regarding new crops and their position in social networks.


The purpose of this paper is to discuss how regional integration processes may contribute to statebuilding and promote exit from fragility for countries characterised by weak state institutions. After presenting a simple conceptual framework to discuss the effects of external and regional integration on fragile states, we analyse the policy trade-offs that may arise in such contexts. The paper then reviews the specific regional experiences of Sub-Saharan countries and their inter-actions with fragility issues. Finally, we discuss policy implications for the EU in the context of its regional trade and development policies with African fragile countries. The central conclusions of the analysis are the following: I) a two-tier approach to regional integration, which combines both top-down and bottom-up processes, is necessary; 2) the EU approach to regional integration in Africa should promote "Building-Blocks" and not "Stumbling-Blocks"; and 3) specific considerations should be given to make the trade integration strategy "fragility responsive".


Around the world, there are growing efforts to involve boys and men in the prevention of violence against women: as participants in education programs, as targets of social marketing campaigns, as policy makers and gatekeepers, and as activists and advocates. Efforts to prevent violence against girls and women now increasingly take as given that they must engage men. While there are dangers in doing so, there also is a powerful feminist rationale for such work. This article provides a review of the variety of initiatives, which engage or address men to prevent violence against women. It maps such efforts, locating them within a spectrum of prevention activities. Furthermore, the article identifies or advocates effective strategies in work with men to end violence against women.


In recent years, the increasing sophistication of embedded multimedia systems and wireless communication technologies has promoted a widespread utilization of video streaming applications. It has been reported in 2013 that youngsters, aged between 13 and 24, spend around 16.7 hours a week watching online video through social media, business websites, and video streaming sites. Video applications have already been blended into people daily life. Traditionally, video streaming research has focused on performance improvement, namely throughput increase and response time reduction. However, most mobile devices are battery-powered, a technology that grows at a much slower pace than either multimedia or hardware developments. Since battery developments cannot satisfy expanding power demand of mobile devices, research interests on video applications technology has attracted more attention to achieve energy-efficient designs. How to efficiently use the limited battery energy budget becomes a major research challenge. In addition, next generation video standards impel to diversification and personalization. Therefore, it is desirable to have mechanisms to implement energy optimizations with greater flexibility and scalability.
In this context, the main goal of this dissertation is to find an energy management and optimization mechanism to reduce the energy consumption of video decoders based on the idea of functional-oriented reconfiguration. System battery life is prolonged as the result of a trade-off between energy consumption and video quality. Functional-oriented reconfiguration takes advantage of the similarities among standards to build video decoders reconnecting existing functional units. If a feedback channel from the decoder to the encoder is available, the former can signal the latter changes in either the encoding parameters or the encoding algorithms for energy-saving adaption.
The proposed energy optimization and management mechanism is carried out at the decoder end. This mechanism consists of an energy-aware manager, implemented as an additional block of the reconfiguration engine, an energy estimator, integrated into the decoder, and, if available, a feedback channel connected to the encoder end. The energy-aware manager checks the battery level, selects the new decoder description and signals to build a new decoder to the reconfiguration engine. It is worth noting that the analysis of the energy consumption is fundamental for the success of the energy management and optimization mechanism. In this thesis, an energy estimation method driven by platform event monitoring is proposed. In addition, an event filter is suggested to automate the selection of the most appropriate events that affect the energy consumption. At last, a detailed study on the influence of the training data on the model accuracy is presented.
The modeling methodology of the energy estimator has been evaluated on different underlying platforms, single-core and multi-core, with different characteristics of workload. All the results show a good accuracy and low on-line computation overhead. The required modifications on the reconfiguration engine to implement the energy-aware manager have been assessed under different scenarios. The results indicate a possibility to lengthen the battery lifetime of the system in two different use-cases.


The mode-coupling properties of tunable long-period fiber gratings (LPGs) formed in photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) are presented. The mode coupling from the fundamental core mode to a cladding mode of a PCF is obtained by use of periodic mechanical pressure. The strength and the wavelength of the resonant peak are tuned by adjusting the grating period and the pressure applied on the PCF. Contrary to the conventional fiber case, the resonant wavelength of the PCF LPG is decreased by increasing the periodicity.


The effects of sludge application on soil properties and cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) response were investigated in an Inseptisol in central Greece. Digested sludge was incorporated in the 0 to 15 cm soil depth at rates of 10, 30, and 50 Mg ha -1 , and repeated for four consecutive years. Sludge treatments were compared to an inorganic fertilizer application and an untreated control in a completely randomized design with four replications. Sludge application increased soil organic matter, associated nutrients and improved physical properties. However, soil electrical conductivity increased with increasing sludge application to levels that may affect growth of salt-sensitive crops and warns against long-term application that may impair essential soil functions. The multifold increase ofOlsen P and nitrate N beyond crop needs is a reason of concern for surface runoffand nitrate leaching below the root zone at the higher sludge application rates. Sludge application of 10 Mg ha -1 was sufficient to improve soil chemical properties with less risk of water contamination. Cotton responded to sludge application by increased nutrient uptake and yield, which indicated that sludge could replace inorganic fertilizer needs even at the lower application rate. However, fluctuations of nutrient uptake and yield between growing seasons were of greater magnitude than those caused by sludge application. Multiple regression analysis revealed that P uptake was the major limiting factor for determining cotton yield.


In this paper, simulation studies are carried out to enhance the understanding of the mechanisms for the reported improvements in breakdown strength of nanocomposites. Electric field driven partial discharges and temperature rise can lead to electrical breakdown and hence it is important to study the electric field distribution and temperature rise in nanocomposites. An FEM based software, COMSOL V4.1, has been used to carry out the simulations. The nanocomposite has been modeled as two cores around the nanoparticle in a polymer. The interface between the particle and polymer is called as 1st core and a shell around the 1st core is called as 2nd core. The mechanisms in the 2nd core are characterized by its electrical conductivity and dielectric constant. Various models are used for modeling the 2nd core. The electric field, resistive losses and temperature rise have been computed for static and quasi-static fields for the linear and nonlinear materials. For many models, it is tough to simultaneously get both |E|-fields and resistive losses and hence temperature rise lower than unfilled material both inside and outside the 2nd core region. Based on the magnitude of electric field, resistive losses and temperature rise under transient fields, two linear models of 2nd core support the argument of enhanced dielectric strength whereas most other models do not. Possible hypotheses have been proposed. The results reinforce the idea that interfaces are critical for the reported breakdown strength improvements.


To analyse visual systems, the concept of an ideal observer promises an optimal response for a given task. Bayesian ideal observers can provide optimal responses under uncertainty, if they are given the true distributions as input. In visual search tasks, prior studies have used signal to noise ratio (SNR) or psychophysics experiments to set the distributional parameters for simple targets on backgrounds with known patterns, however these methods do not easily translate to complex targets on natural scenes. Here, we develop a model of target detectability in natural images to estimate the parameters of target-present and target-absent distributions for a visual search task. We present a novel approach for approximating the foveated detectability of a known target in natural backgrounds based on biological aspects of human visual system. Our model considers both the uncertainty about target position and the visual system's variability due to its reduced performance in the periphery compared to the fovea. Our automated prediction algorithm uses trained logistic regression as a post processing phase of a pre-trained deep neural network. Eye tracking data from 12 observers detecting targets on natural image backgrounds are used as ground truth to tune foveation parameters and evaluate the model, using cross-validation. Finally, the model of target detectability is used in a Bayesian ideal observer model of visual search, and compared to human search performance.


Excerpt] The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) provides an array of benefits to veterans and to certain members of their families. These benefits include, but are not limited to, disability compensation, education and training benefits, dependent and survivor benefits, medical treatment, life insurance and burial benefits, and home loan guaranty.1 In order to apply for these benefits, in most circumstances, the claimant will send an application to his or her local VA office. The local VA Regional Office (RO) will review the application and make an initial determination as to whether the claimant is entitled to the benefit. If, after the local VA makes a determination on the claim, the claimant is not satisfied with the results, he or she has the right to appeal that decision. This report provides an overview of the VA appeal process from the first stages of the appeal through review by the Supreme Court of the United States.


In a standard analysis, the history of civil liberties is characterized by a series of security panics. A range of mechanisms - cognitive heuristics and biases, various forms of cascading and herding, conformity and preference falsification, and so on - cause periodic panics in which aroused publics demand repressive measures to curtail the civil liberties of perceived enemies of the nation, particularly noncitizens or other outsiders. Government officials may themselves panic, or will at least supply the panicky measures that constituents demand. The standard remedy is to urge changes to legal doctrine or institutions, in order to curtail government's power to repress civil liberties in response to security panics. The standard model of security panics has been criticized on several grounds. Sometimes security panics are justified, even if produced by disreputable mechanisms; fear can motivate beneficial action as well as detrimental action. In any event, legal doctrines, and perhaps even institutional design, will prove incapable of constraining a genuinely panicked public. In what follows I will sketch a different criticism of the standard model. Even if that model is right as far as it goes, it is fatally incomplete. My central claim is that the mechanisms underlying security panics have no necessary or inherent pro-security valence. The very same mechanisms are equally capable of producing libertarian panics: episodes in which aroused publics become irrationally convinced that justified security measures represent unjustified attempts to curtail civil liberties. I will suggest that libertarian panics have been a regular occurrence in American history, and that we may be living through one now, in the form of a widespread and thoroughly irrational, even hysterical, reaction to small legal changes adopted after 9/11. Indeed, the tendency to diagnose the existence of a security panic can itself be symptomatic of a libertarian panic. The existence of libertarian panics undermines the institutional reforms urged by the advocates of the standard model. The very reforms that would minimize the risks and harms of security panics will maximize the risks and harms of libertarian panics. The institutional-design problem, then, is to optimize in light of these offsetting risks; whatever legal and institutional arrangements turn out to be optimal, they will necessarily prove less protective of civil liberties than the arrangements favored by advocates of the standard model.


The perfluorocarbons (PFCs), tetrafluoromethane (CF4) and hexafluoroethane (C2F6), are potent greenhouse gases with very long atmospheric lifetimes. They are emitted almost entirely from industrial sources, including the aluminum and rare earth metal smelting industries that emit them as by‐products, and the semiconductor and flat panel display manufacturing industries that use them and vent unutilized amounts to the atmosphere. Despite extensive industrial efforts to quantify and curb these emissions, "top‐down" PFC emission estimates derived from atmospheric measurements continue to rise and are significantly greater than reported process‐ and inventory‐based "bottom‐up" emissions. In this study, we estimate emissions of CF4 and C2F6 from East Asia, where PFC emitting industries are heavily concentrated, using a top‐down approach (a Bayesian inversion) with high‐frequency atmospheric measurements at Gosan (Jeju Island, South Korea) for 2008–2019. We also compile and analyze the available bottom‐up CF4 and C2F6 emissions in East Asia from industrial and government reports. Our results suggest that the observed increases in global PFC emissions since 2015 are driven primarily by China's aluminum industry, with significant contributions from Japan's and Korea's semiconductor industry. Our analysis suggests that Chinese emissions occur predominantly from the aluminum industry, although their emissions per production ratio may be improving. Our results for Japan and Korea find significant discrepancies between top‐down and bottom‐up emissions estimates, suggesting that the effectiveness of emission reduction systems (abatement) used in their semiconductor industries may be overestimated. Overall, our top‐down results for East Asia contribute significantly to reducing the gap in the global PFC emission budgets.


Selenium has aroused much interest in the last decade. It is an essential trace element for man and animals and has been found to be the cofactor in two enzyme systems. The first, glutathionine peroxidase, acts as an anti-oxidant by destroying peroxides which attack cellular membranes. The second, iodothyronine 5'-deiodinase, converts thyroxine to triiodothyronine with the release of iodine. Selenium is obtained in the diet from plant and animal products and the amount present is dependent largely on the Se content and the chemical species present in local soils. Soils low in Se can lead to deficiency problems to the grazing ruminants, and have necessitated the use of Se fertilisers or direct Se injection into the livestock. The disposal of sewage sludge onto agricultural land will increase as new EC legislation comes into force in 1998. This may alleviate Se deficiency in soils or result in toxicity problems. The aims of this project were firstly to develop and validate a method to accurately measure SE in plants, soils and sewage sludges, examine which soil fractions Se was associated with and finally to study the uptake of Se by plants grown on sewage sludge amended soils. The Se concentration in samples was determined using isotope dilution - mass spectrometry by gas chromatography - mass spectrometry (GC-MS). This was the first application of the determination of Se in environmental samples and the use of a benchtop GC-MS for those analyses. Samples were spiked with 76-Se isotope solution. Plants were digested using nitric acid and hydrogen peroxide initially on a heating block and latterly by microwave oven digestion techniques. Soils and sewage sludges were digested using nitric acid and hydrofluoric acid. Selenium in the digests was reduced to Se(IV) and derivatised to 5'-nitropiazselenol. Validation of the methodology was achieved by the use of certified reference materials which gave results within the certified range with a low standard deviation. The Se content of four different freely drained acid Scottish soils under grasslands was in the range 0.5-0.8 mg-1 air dried soil and three sewage sludge samples contained between 1.1 and 3.5 mg g-1 dry matter. The ability of the digestion techniques to release organically bound Se as selenomethionine and selenocysteine was found to be around 100% efficient and the use of a microwave oven increased the number of samples which could be processed. A sequential extraction procedure was used to determine the soil fractions with which Se was associated. The four soils and the sewage sludge examined were all found to have less than 5% of the total Se available for plant uptake. The uptake of Se by plants grown in soils to which Se had been added as sodium selenate or sodium selenate was studied using both stable and radio isotopes of Se. Results obtained showed that the uptake of Se by plants grown in soils treated with selenite could be related to the soil characteristics, with ferric oxide levels, clay levels and organic matter content being the important factors. The uptake of Se by plants in the soils treated with selenate were less obviously related to soil properties but pH and P levels both appear to be important factors. Good reproducibility was obtained in all cases. Plants grown on sewage sludge amended soils were not found to contain measurable amounts of Se.


Online reputation systems enable the providers and consumers of a product or service to rate one another and also allow others to rely upon those reputation scores in deciding whether to engage with a particular provider or consumer. Reputation systems are an intrinsic feature of the platform workplace, in which a platform operator, such as Uber or TaskRabbit, intermediates between the provider of a service and the consumer of that service. Operators typically rely upon consumer ratings of providers in rewarding and penalizing providers. Thus, these reputation systems allow an operator to achieve enormous scale while maintaining quality control and user trust without employing supervisors to manage the vast number of providers who engage consumers on the operator's platform. At the same time, an increasing number of commentators have expressed concerns that the invidious biases of raters impact these reputation systems.

This Article considers how best to mitigate reputation systems bias in the platform workplace. After reviewing and rejecting both a hands-off approach and the anti-exceptionalism approach to regulation of the platform economy, this Article argues in favor of applying what the author labels a "structural-purposive" analysis to regulation of reputation systems discrimination in the platform workplace. A structural-purposive analysis seeks to ensure that regulation is informed by the goals and structure of the existing workplace regulation scheme but also is consistent with the inherent characteristics of the platform economy. Thus, this approach facilitates the screening out of proposed regulation that would be inimical to the inherent characteristics of the platform economy and aids in the framing of regulatory proposals that would leverage those characteristics. This Article then demonstrates the merits of a structural-purposive approach in the context of a regulatory framework addressing reputation systems discrimination in the platform workplace. Applying this approach, the Article derives several principles that should guide regulatory efforts to ameliorate the prevalence and effects of reputation systems bias in the platform workplace and outlines a proposed regulatory framework grounded in those principles.


After decades of literary criticism that is solely focused on one dimensional reading of literary texts, some of the relatively recent studies are turning towards a more comprehensive analysis that lies at the intersection of numerous literary theories. Eco criticism and post-colonial analysis for example can form a dual prospective that open the doors for a deeper understanding and appreciation of literary texts that can never be reached via the traditional one dimensional reading. Post-colonial theory, for instance, provides very specific critical tools that help to explore the ways in which black literature as an example, addresses the intersection between racial oppression and the exploitation of nature. Nature is usually pictured in literature as a place of pose and meditation, yet due to the long history of discrimination and abuse it is represented differently in African American Literature. However, recent analysis of African American poetry like Katherine Lynes' (2015) for instance, refers to the ecopoetics of nature reclamation. Selected examples from African American poetess Audre Lord are to be examined here via this particular scope. Black dragon fish, angry trees, shattered branches, black unicorns and buried diamonds are only few examples of Lorde's ecological angry "others" and ecopoetics of reclamation. What is the role played by nature in the African American struggle of self- definition and liberation? How does ecocriticism as a form of literary critique respond to the post-colonial interrogation of equity and sustainability? How can literature and poetry in particular enable African American poets to reclaim their voice and textual authority over nature? These are the questions that come at the core of the ecopostcolonial dual critical reading employed in this study.


Correlation of late Miocene volcaniclastic strata across the northern Gulf of California shows that the Pacific–North America plate boundary localized east of the Baja California peninsula ca. 6 Ma. Dextral offset of the 12.6 Ma Tuff of San Felipe and a pair of overlying ca. 6.3 Ma pyroclastic flows indicate at least 255 ± 10 km of displacement along an azimuth of 310°. Isopach and facies trends of the Tuff of San Felipe support no more than a few tens of kilometers of additional dextral displacement between 12.6 and 6.3 Ma. These constraints indicate that nearly all of the dextral displacement between the Pacific and North American plates prior to 6.3 Ma was accommodated outside of the gulf region, and by 4.7 Ma, the plate boundary motion was localized in the Gulf of California. Although continental extension has accounted for a component of plate boundary motion in northwestern Mexico since cessation of subduction offshore of southern Baja California at 12.5 Ma, transfer of Baja California to the Pacific plate was delayed by at least 6–7 m.y.


The medial Oxford unicompartmental knee arthroplasty uses a fully congruent mobile bearing, varying in thickness from 3.5-11.5 mm. Impressive clinical and survival results have been achieved by the designing surgeon, but can they be reproduced by an independent center and does the use of bearings less than 6 mm thick reduce the implant's survival? Between November 1983 and May 2000, 439 medial Oxford prostheses were implanted by three surgeons in Skövde, Sweden. One hundred fourteen knees (89 patients) were reviewed clinically at a minimum of 10 years postoperatively, using the Hospital for Special Surgery knee score. Ninety-one percent of the knees had good or excellent results, with no poor results, and 82% were reported as pain free. The 15-year survival rate for the entire cohort was 93%, and for the 432 knees (344 patients) that met the current indications for using the device, the survival rate was 94%. The 10-year survival rate for bearings less than 6 mm thick was 95%, compared with 94% with bearings greater than 6 mm. The results show that an independent center can achieve excellent long-term clinical and survival results in patients implanted with the Oxford prosthesis. Survival of the implant was not reduced by the use of thin polyethylene bearings. Level of Evidence: Therapeutic study, Level IV (case series-no, or historical, control group). See the Guidelines for Authors for a complete description of levels of evidence.


Abstract— In earlier studies, the 65‐75 km diameter Siljan impact structure in Sweden has been linked to the Late Devonian mass extinction event. The Siljan impact event has previously been dated by K‐Ar and Ar‐Ar chronology at 342‐368 Ma, with the commonly quoted age being 362.7 ± 2.2 Ma (2 s̀, recalculated using currently accepted decay constants). Until recently, the accepted age for the Frasnian/Famennian boundary and associated extinction event was 364 Ma, which is within error limits of this earlier Siljan age. Here we report new Ar‐Ar ages extracted by laser spot and laser step heating techniques for several melt breccia samples from Siljan (interpreted to be impact melt breccia). The analytical results show some scatter, which is greater in samples with more extensive alteration; these samples generally yield younger ages. The two samples with the least alteration yield the most reproducible weighted mean ages: one yielded a laser spot age of 377.2 ± 2.5 Ma (95% confidence limits) and the other yielded both a laser spot age of 376.1 ± 2.8 Ma (95% confidence limits) and a laser stepped heating plateau age over 70.6% 39Ar release of 377.5 ± 2.4 Ma (2 s̀). Our conservative estimate for the age of Siljan is 377 ± 2 Ma (95% confidence limits), which is significantly different from both the previously accepted age for the Frasnian/Famennian (F/F) boundary and the previously quoted age of Siljan. However, the age of the F/F boundary has recently been revised to 374.5 ± 2.6 Ma by the International Commission for Stratigraphy, which is, within error, the same as our new age. However, the currently available age data are not proof that there was a connection between the Siljan impact event and the F/F boundary extinction. This new result highlights the dual problems of dating meteorite impacts where fine‐grained melt rocks are often all that can be isotopically dated, and constraining the absolute age of biostratigraphic boundaries, which can only be constrained by age extrapolation. Further work is required to develop and improve the terrestrial impact age record and test whether or not the terrestrial impact flux increased significantly at certain times, perhaps resulting in major extinction events in Earth's biostratigraphic record.


Abstract:Russia's support for illiberal movements in Europe has received wide attention. Yet this promotion of illiberalism should not be seen as merely a cynical political ploy by the Putin regime. For Russian elites and for a large part of the population, illiberalism supplies an appealing framework for making sense of the world and structuring a rebellion against the liberal order. Illiberal views existed in Russian society before being coopted by the regime, and there exists a lively school of thought—known as the "Young Conservatives"—arguing that the country's future can be secured only by embracing the illiberal project. In foreign policy, Russia's illiberal credo has been successfully translated into an agenda of "sovereignism" that speaks to diverse audiences and challenges the conventional definition of soft power.


A field study was performed to assess the drug residue level in edible tissues after a therapeutic application of the synthetic glucocorticoids dexamethasone and flumethasone. Three diseased calves were injected intramuscularly with a commercial batch of dexamethasone esters and slaughtered 72 h after treatment. Another three calves were injected intramuscularly with an aqueous flumethasone preparation and slaughtered 24 h later. Residues of synthetic glucocorticoids in liver, muscle, kidney, and urine were assessed by competitive enzyme immunoassay. All dexamethasone concentrations exceeded the maximal residue level of 0.75 microg/kg in muscle and kidney and 2 microg/kg in the liver. The presence of both dexamethasone and flumethasone in the liver was confirmed by liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). These results indicate that liver tissue provides a suitable matrix to monitor the presence of illegal residues of synthetic glucocorticoids in slaughtered animals.


Scanning tunneling microscopy has been used to study the formation of a Bi monolayer deposited on the fivefold surface of $i{\text{-Al}}_{70}{\text{Pd}}_{21}{\text{Mn}}_{9}$. Upon deposition of low submonolayer coverages, the nucleation of pentagonal clusters of Bi adatoms of edge length $4.9\text{ }\text{\AA{}}$ is observed. The clusters have a common orientation leading to a film with fivefold symmetry. By inspection of images where both the underlying surface and the Bi atoms are resolved, the pentagonal clusters are proposed to nucleate on pseudo-Mackay clusters truncated such that a Mn atom lies centrally in the surface plane. The density of these sites is sufficient to form a quasiperiodic framework, and subsequent adsorption of Bi atoms ultimately leads to the formation of a quasicrystalline monolayer. The suggested nucleation site is different from that proposed on the basis of recent density-functional theory calculations.


The Virtual Lightbox for Museums and Archives (VLMA) is a tool for collecting and reusing, in a structured fashion, the online contents of museums and archive datasets. It is not restricted to datasets with visual components although VLMA includes a lightbox service that enables comparison and manipulation of visual information. With VLMA, one can browse and search collections, construct personal collections, annotate them, export these collections to XML or Impress (Open Office) presentation format, and share collections with other VLMA users. VLMA was piloted as an e-Learning tool as part of JISC's e-Learning focus in its first phase (2004-2005) and in its second phase (2005-2006) it has incorporated new partner collections while improving and expanding interfaces and services. This paper concerns its development as a research and teaching tool, especially to teachers using museum collections, and discusses the recent development of VLMA.


Indian women, have come up a long way during the past 50 years. Gone are the days when the leadership positions in dentistry and health care professions were occupied solely by males and the women in-charge were looked down upon as anomalies. The staff rooms in dental and medical schools, the research laboratories in India today are employing women, who have quietly begun challenging the conventional male ideas that had shaped the policies earlier on. Women have advanced considerably in academic dentistry but like every coin, this story too, has two sides. In spite of the considerable gain in equity of status, women in research and academic careers related to health care professions still face innumerable barriers to their careers. This study was conducted with an aim to highlight the various barriers being faced by women in leadership positions in academic dentistry in India and this paper also suggests issues which require global concern for unbiased advancement of women. This was a questionnaire-based study in which the subjects were women in leadership positions in the various dental colleges in India. The questions are related to the various barriers like family commitments, attitude of the society, sexual harassment, gender bias and lack of cooperation from spouse which hinders the development of the careers of such women with tremendous potential. The results show that 67% of the subjects feel there are more barriers to their careers as women than men and health care professions definitely need more women leaders for improvement in women's health status globally. 63.5% of women in dentistry feel their family commitments are barriers to rising in their careers and 64.7% report that a marriage is happier if the husband's career graph is better than wife's. The survey results indicate that the same salary is paid to 93.5% women as their male colleagues. The results of the study show that there certainly has been a change in outlook of Indian women as they have broken the traditional norms and taken up careers in academic dentistry. There certainly is a positive side to this story but numerous challenges especially in the form of family commitments still remain for women in leadership positions in the dental colleges in India.


Objective: Anxiety is common among older adults and is associated with multiple negative outcomes. Late-life anxiety is usually unrecognized by providers and undertreated, although evidence supports the effectiveness of psychosocial treatment. Access to mental health care is especially poor among African American seniors. New treatment models are needed to expand the reach of mental health care to minority elders. Methods: Our article outlines a study designed to test the effectiveness and implementation potential of Calmer Life (CL), a community-based, person-centered, flexible and culturally tailored intervention for late-life anxiety and worry, offered in low-income, mental health-underserved and predominantly African American communities. CL is skills-based, but also includes resource counseling and an option to integrate religion/spirituality. The study population includes individuals 50 years of age and older who are experiencing high levels of worry. The program was developed in the context of a community-academic partnership with organizations that provide services for seniors in underserved communities, and it trains nontraditional community providers to deliver the intervention. Results: Study progress to date, challenges, and lessons learned are discussed. Data collection is ongoing, and study findings will be available in late 2017. Conclusions: CL will offer valuable information to help expand the reach of anxiety treatment among minority seniors living in underserved neighborhoods.


Although considerable efforts have been pursued in studying online news no studies so far have investigated how the actual news topics is affected by digitalization in general, if at all, or compared different media traditions. Instead, changes in content are assumed or illustrated anecdotally rather than systematically assessed. This empirical study, covering Swedish and UK news sites with a tabloid, quality morning, and local/regional background between 2002-2012, shows that there is a tabloidization effect in general but that it is stronger in tabloids and in Sweden compared to the UK. Further, this tabloidization can be more precisely described as a lifestylization and de-politization process as it is in these areas where the biggest growth and decline are. In addition, the study reveals that it is the slower news that increases most suggesting that the immediate character of online news is mediated by production conditions.


If an oscillating neural circuit is forced by another such circuit via a composite signal, the phase lag induced by the forcing can be changed by changing the relative strengths of components of the coupling. We consider such circuits, with the forced and forcing oscillators receiving signals with some given phase lag. We show how such signals can be transformed into an algorithm that yields connection strengths needed to produce that lag. The algorithm reduces the problem of producing a given phase lag to one of producing a kind of synchrony with a teaching signal; the algorithm can be interpreted as maximizing the correlation between voltages of a cell and the teaching signal. We apply these ideas to regulation of phase lags in chains of oscillators associated with undulatory locomotion.


Several theorists have noticed the prevalence of disability in Australian national cinema during the 1990s and its symbolic value. (1) However, few have proceeded from a minority group standpoint, that views disability as a viable identity, or indeed a minority group. Perhaps this is because, when it comes to the Australian media, producers are encouraged not to view people with disability as a discrete group. Indeed, the Australian Press Council has argued that "people with disabilities are most empowered when they are treated as fully participating members of the wider community" (2). Yet the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 stipulates indirect discrimination to demonstrate that expecting people with disability to participate as non-disabled without any special consideration can amount to discrimination.


In an effort to control flows of unauthorized information, the major copyright industries are pursuing a range of strategies designed to distribute copyright enforcement functions across a wide range of actors and to embed these functions within communications networks, protocols, and devices. Some of these strategies have received considerable academic and public scrutiny, but much less attention has been paid to the ways in which all of them overlap and intersect with one another. This article offers a framework for theorizing this process. The distributed extension of intellectual property enforcement into private spaces and throughout communications networks can be understood as a new, hybrid species of disciplinary regime that locates the justification for its pervasive reach in a permanent state of crisis. This hybrid regime derives its force neither primarily from centralized authority nor primarily from decentralized, internalized norms, but instead from a set of coordinated processes for authorizing flows of information. Although the success of this project is not yet assured, its odds of success are by no means remote as skeptics have suggested. Power to implement crisis management in the decentralized marketplace for digital content arises from a confluence of private and public interests and is amplified by the dynamics of technical standards processes. The emergent regime of pervasively distributed copyright enforcement has profound implications for the production of the networked information society.


Taking into account the Euler-Heisenberg effective Lagrangian of one-loop nonperturbative quantum electrodynamics (QED) contributions, we formulate the Einstein-Euler-Heisenberg theory and study the solutions of nonrotating black holes with electric and magnetic charges in spherical geometry. In the limit of strong and weak electromagnetic fields of black holes, we calculate the black hole horizon radius, area, and total energy up to the leading order of QED corrections and discuss the black hole irreducible mass, entropy, and maximally extractable energy as well as the Christodoulou-Ruffini mass formula. We find that these black hole quantities receive the QED corrections, in comparison with their counterparts in the Reissner-Nordstr\"om solution. The QED corrections show the screening effect on black hole electric charges and the paramagnetic effect on black hole magnetic charges. As a result, the black hole horizon area, irreducible mass, and entropy increase; however, the black hole total energy and maximally extractable energy decrease, compared with the Reissner-Nordstr\"om solution. In addition, we show that the condition for extremely charged black holes is modified due to the QED correction.