Peripheral endocannabinoid signaling contributes to the metabolic syndrome associated with chronic glucocorticoid administration. Glucocorticoids are hormones that regulate metabolism and inflammation. Because of their anti-inflammatory properties, they are used clinically. However, a major side effect of long-term glucocorticoid treatment is metabolic syndrome, which is characterized by weight gain, glucose intolerance, insulin insensitivity, and dyslipidemia. Bowles et al. used a mouse model of chronic glucocorticoid administration as a system to test the role of endocannabinoids (endogenous cannabinoids) in this drug-induced metabolic disorder. Changes associated with glucocorticoid-induced metabolic syndrome were attenuated in mice with a global knockout of the cannabinoid 1 receptor (CB1R) or mice administered a peripheral- and central-acting inhibitor of this receptor. Quantification of endocannabinoids in the circulation, white adipose tissue, liver, and brain showed that glucocorticoids induced an increase in two endocannabinoids [AEA (N-arachidonoylethanolamine) and PEA (N-palmitoylethanolamine)] specifically in the liver and circulation, but not in the brain or white adipose tissue. Consistent with this increase in endocannabinoids, in the liver glucocorticoids increased the abundance of mRNAs encoding the enzyme involved in AEA biosynthesis and the CB1R and reduced the abundance of the mRNA encoding an enzyme that metabolizes AEA. Supporting the importance of a peripheral endocannabinoid pathway, a peripherally restricted inhibitor of CB1R reduced the metabolic syndrome effects of glucocorticoids and liver-specific knockout of CB1R rescued glucocorticoid-induced dyslipidemia. Thus, peripheral endocannabinoid signaling mediates some of the metabolic effects of chronic glucocorticoid treatment. N. P. Bowles, I. N. Karatsoreos, X. Li, V. K. Vemuri, J.-A. Wood, Z. Li, K. L. K. Tamashiro, G. J. Schwartz, A. M. Makriyannis, G. Kunos, C. J. Hillard, B. S. McEwen, M. N. Hill, A peripheral endocannabinoid mechanism contributes to glucocorticoid-mediated metabolic syndrome. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 112, 285–290 (2015). [Abstract] [Full Text]


This Article considers the advantages and disadvantages of market-based program design, natural gas regulation, and enhanced international understanding. Transitioning to a green economy involves dedicating efforts towards environmentally sound energy innovation. RGGI, natural gas, and climate change represent sustainability challenges. Optimizing cooperative transboundary green innovation can facilitate inclusive decision-making just as public participation by civil society can help economies transition to environmentally sound energy use. Building upon progress made in the human rights and environment fields can advance both and enhance resilience.


Biobank research deals with personal information and data from blood and tissue analysis, making the questions of legitimate recruitment of participants and handling of their data to be intimately connected with the issue of privacy. Thus, identification of the privacy interests of biobank participants is vital to the legitimacy of biobank projects. In this article, we ask: How do participants articulate the nature of privacy issues in biobanking? Here we report from a focus group study on biobank participants' view of privacy and consent in relation to biobank research. Based on our analysis, we found that participants viewed privacy as a concept that describes several dimensions of the fundamental need to be recognized and respected as an individual and as a person. Interestingly, the needs to be recognized and respected were also viewed as the basic purpose of biobank consent


Short chain fatty acids, particularly butyrate, stimulate electroneutral NaCl absorption from the colon. Their effect in colonic epithelia lacking basal electroneutral NaCl absorption is unknown. Butyrate is also reported to inhibit active Cl− secretion in the colon. The present studies were undertaken to investigate the inter‐relationships between the effects of butyrate on active Na+ and Cl− transport in the colon. Studies were carried out in rabbit distal colon (known to have predominant electrogenic Na+ absorption), rat distal colon (characterised by electroneutral Na+ absorption), and hyperaldosteronaemic rat distal colon (characterised by electrogenic Na+ absorption). The effect of cholera toxin (CT) was also noted. Potential difference, short‐circuit current (ISC) and fluxes of Na+ and Cl− were measured in stripped mucosa under voltage‐clamp conditions. Butyrate stimulated electroneutral Na+ and Cl− absorption in distal colon of normal and salt‐depleted rats, and stimulated Na+ absorption in rabbit distal colon. Amiloride (10−4m) or CT did not inhibit this process. In rabbit distal colon, stimulation of Na+ absorption by butyrate was not dependent on the presence of Cl− in the medium. Butyrate significantly decreased conductance, decreased flux of sodium from serosa to mucosa (particularly in rabbit distal colon), and decreased ISC. Net Cl− secretion, induced by CT, was completely inhibited by butyrate. Stimulation of Na+ absorption was independent of exposure to CT. Bumetanide reversed net Cl− secretion to net absorption, but did not alter Na+ or Cl− fluxes in tissues exposed to butyrate. Thus butyrate stimulates active Na+ absorption in colonic epithelia, with or without expression of basal Na+‐H+ exchange. Independently, butyrate inhibits active Cl− secretion induced by cAMP in these epithelia.


The efficacy of the Job Guarantee (JG) as a strategy for sustained full employment has been the subject of ongoing debate between its advocates, who typically align themselves with the principles of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), and other heterodox economists. The latter group have raised issues, including the stabilisation of inflation, balance of payments constraints, political and intellectual constraints, invisible under-employment, and the sustainability of full employment. The focus of this paper is on the achievement and maintenance of full employment through the adoption of a JG in comparison to pump priming, which is advocated by a number of progressive economists. In particular, it is generally recognised that a reduced rate of growth of capacity during a recession can cause capacity constrained unemployment in the recovery which would be exacerbated if there was a significant pro-cyclical labour supply response, in addition to labour force increases driven by the rising working age population. Consequently an expansion in spending may have an insignificant real effect on employment and output and is likely to impact on inflation. In other words, the real output gap, which relief from the high unemployment is defined as the actual level of output minus potential output associated with the full utilisation of existing capacity, is not large enough to allow all the unemployed to gain productive jobs in the private sector. We shall argue that, while private sector investment, which is governed by profitability considerations, may be insufficient to expand potential output sufficiently in a recovery to re-absorb the unemployed who lost their jobs in the downturn, this contention does not apply to a currency-issuing government which introduces a JG. While a major planning exercise is required, when the JG is first implemented, which must address the prevailing rate of labour underutilisation, the creation of additional JG jobs simultaneously creates the extra productive capacity required for program viability. On the other hand, the prospective fluctuations in JG employment arising from the fluctuations in non-government employment are likely to be relatively modest within a fully employed economy, which makes the planning process less challenging.


The Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) method and the Genetic Algorithm (GA) were used to derive formulas for determining the velocity and concentration profiles in sheet flows. Specifically, these evolutionary optimization algorithms were used in conjunction with experimental data to determine coefficients and identify parameters for pre-selected formulas. The objective function, defined as the sum-of-squared errors between observed and predicted values of sediment velocity and concentration, was minimized by adjusting the parameter values in the formulas. Two well-known empirical formulas were also applied to the same data. The bias, root mean square error and scatter index were used to evaluate the comparison between predictions and measurements. The results indicated that the errors based on the PSO and GA approaches to predicting sediment parameters were less than those of the existing empirical formulas. Overall, both evolutionary approaches provided formulas that were in good agreement with the experimental data, giving improved descriptions of the vertical distribution of velocity and sediment concentration in the sheet flow for practical purposes. These models also described well the behavior of the velocity and sediment concentration above the sheet flow layer, in contrast with most existing formulas that are applicable only to the sheet flow layer.


This paper discusses the creation of typographic systems as artworks in three dimensional online builder's worlds, also known as the metaverse. An installation based upon text will be presented as an exemplar that will attempt to delineate the playful approach that has been taken whilst constructing a typographic art ecology that can be traversed and experienced through the agency of avatars. The focus is upon how such screen-based virtual three dimensional spaces may utilize text within a context that departs from the primary attribute with which writing has inherently been associated – namely the display of informational content. In such environments semantics may be displaced through the usage of text as a playful device, displayed as artifacts that are riddle-like configurations, or constructs that are meant to be understood through means other than straightforward reading; bringing about states of heightened engagement and 'play' through their manipulation or indeed simply by being immersed inside them. The awareness that providing a means for straightforward reading might not be an appropriate goal in this regard lead to a search for sources that would address a need for play, for personal readings and interpretations; in other words, text that is meant to be 'felt' as an artwork, rather than to be 'read' as informational content.


Optical methods for different type ultra-wideband (UWB) pulse generation based on cross-polarization modulation (CPM) are proposed and demonstrated in this paper. Two polarity-reverse pulses can be obtained by CPM and birefringence time delay to form a monocycle pulse. A semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) is placed after the monocycle pulse process for doublet pulse generation. These two kinds of pulses can be employed in single-band impulse radio UWB (IR-UWB) systems. Two kinds of multi-band UWB pulses can be generated based on monocycle pulse train with proper apodization profiles, realized by hybrid photonic microwave filter and synchronous polarization modulation respectively. Experimental results show that these pulses can be used in multi-band UWB (MB-UWB) over fiber systems.


1. Maximum motor nerve conduction velocities were determined under standard conditions for the median and ulnar nerves in the right forearm in males: (a) from the general population, (b) from a subnormality hospital, and (c) in males with the XYY sex chromosome abnormality. Distal latencies for these nerves were also measured. 2. No significant differences in maximum peripheral motor nerve conduction were found between the two control populations from the general population and from the subnormality hospital. 3. The maximum motor conduction velocity in the median nerve in the XYY group was significantly slowed when compared with both control groups. In the case of the ulnar nerve, maximum motor conduction was significantly slowed when compared with the general population, but not when compared with the subnormality hospital group. 4. There were no significant differences in the mean distal latencies of either the median or ulnar nerves between the two control groups. 5. In the XYY group, the distal latency in the ulnar nerve was significantly prolonged when compared with both control groups. In the case of the median nerve, the distal latency was prolonged significantly when compared with the general population; when the comparison was made with the subnormality hospital group significant prolongation was also observed but was less marked.


This study aimed to analyze how the various assessment systems affecting middle school English education has changed over the recent decade, investigate the effects of these assessment system changes on alignment between curriculum, teaching and assessment, and find implications for effective middle school English education. Document analysis was used to address the changes in the assessment system over the recent decade. It identified that there was a great change in the assessment system in that period. The assessment within middle schools was changed from NRTs to CRTs in 2012, which has affected the high school admission process since 2012. In the CSAT, the assessment of English subject has experienced a change from NRTs to CRTs since 2018. In addition, the NAEA has changed from assessing all 3 graders in middle school and 2 graders in high school to only assessing students from sampled schools since 2017. As a result, the assessment systems which were criticized as a significant barrier that distorted middle school English education due to negative washback effect have been improved. Secondly, a questionnaire survey showed respondents' positive perceptions regarding their practice to the alignment at all stages of planning, teaching, and assessment. However, issues not corresponding to their positive perception were identified in the implementation process. Thirdly, it was confirmed that there was a consistent difference in the perception among teachers by school levels as to the effect of changes in the assessment systems on the alignment. Particular attention needs to be paid to the significant difference between the results of middle and high school teachers in almost all the issues. This suggests that the difference between of middle and high school teachers should be reflected on English education policy along with the change in the assessment systems.


Five medicinal plants used by traditional medical health practitioners (TMP) in Meru central district namely: Piliostigma thonningii, Ajuga remota, Ocimum suave, Erythrina abyssinica and Harissonia abyssinica were investigated for their antibacterial activity against standard bacterial cultures namely; Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus cereus, Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa . The antibacterial activity of the methanolic and water extracts was determined using the minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) and minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC). Gram positive bacteria ( S. aureus and B. cereus ) were more susceptible to the plant extracts than Gram negative bacteria ( E. coli and P. aeruginosa ). The MIC and MBC of the positive control antibiotics (Ampicillin for gram positive and Gentamycin for gram negative) were less than 1mg/ml. The most susceptible bacteria was S. aureus followed by B. cereus while the most resistant was E. coli followed by P.aeruginosa . Methanolic extracts of P. thonningii stem and Ocimum suave leaves had the best antibacterial activity against the four bacterial species. There was no significant difference between the water and methanolic extracts of all the plants. These results justify the use of these plants by the traditional medical practitioners for management of bacterial conditions and further investigation on their safety and phytochemistry is needed.


During the Great Depression, rural American women began re-using empty
textile bags used to package animal feed, flour, sugar and other goods to make
clothing and home textiles. In a culture of material scarcity, excess cloth was a
valuable commodity for creative, thrifty women. In the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s,
cotton bag manufacturers targeted farmer's wives by printing stylish and colorful
patterns on the sacks to be used for homesewing. In this case study of Ashe County,
North Carolina, women's experiences with sewing and wearing textiles and apparel
made from feedsacks and other economical fabrics sources were examined. Located
in the Southern Appalachian Mountains, Ashe County has a unique sense of place
and community, which was particularly evident in the more rural parts of the
county. There, some residents did not have conveniences like running water or
electricity until as late as the mid-1950s.
Rural women's roles as producers and creators were explored, as larger
cultural changes, like an improving economy and modern technologies, affected the
mountain region. Local store record's revealed the transition to a full-fledged
consumer society, when women began to purchase more ready-made garments and
home textiles in the late 1940s and 1950s. Oral history interviews with rural Ashe
County women supplemented an analysis of extant objects made from feed and
flour sacks. A variety of attitudes were found about self-sufficiency, new
technologies, consumer behavior and the power of store-bought goods to convey
social status. It quickly became clear that rural women's relationships with dress
and textile goods were complex. Women became increasingly reliant on readymade
apparel and home textiles, and the meaning of the objects and the user's
relationship with the goods changed. Yet as they navigated social and technological
changes after the Second World War, one constant remained – rural women's
continued emphasis on fashion and appearance.


A monolithic carbon aerogel with a specific pore texture was used as benzene adsorbent. Adsorption was carried out under static conditions at 25 o C and at saturation, an adsorption capacity as high as 0.77 cm 3 .g �1 or 837 mg.g �1 was obtained. This work is devoted to the application of carbon aerogels for the removal of hydroquinone, catechol and resorcinol from aqueous solutions. These materials were tested and characterised regarding their morphology, particle size distribution, surface area and porous structure. Equilibrium tests were carried out at different adsorbate concentrations and the experimental data were correlated by means of Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms. The equilibrium data were well described by Langmuir and Freundlich in most cases. The maximum adsorption capacity of the Langmuir model was observed for the adsorption of benzene onto aerogel (242.33 mg/g), though the most promising results were obtained for toluene adsorption, owing to the greater adsorption energy involved. Comparing these results with other reported results, our carbon aerogel hydrophobics were found to exhibit a remarkable performance for the removal of benzene.


Shashi Deshpande is one of the most accomplished contemporary Indian women writers in English. Deshpande's novels are women-centred. Her women characters represent Indian middle-class society. Her novels are concerned with a woman's quest for self. This dissertation entitled "Limits, Protests and Self-Discovery" in Shashi Deshpande's "The Dark Holds No Terrors" and "Roots and Shadows" concentrates on Deshpande's sensitive portrayal of women and their mute, convoluted self-abnegation in her stories. "Shashi Deshpande's Espousal of Women's Rights deals with the writings of Deshpande. Deshpande has tried to show that the women, even after resisting the social taboos want to submit themselves to their conventional roles. "Restrictions and Sarita's Remonstrances" considers the age old customs imposed upon Saru by her mother and her outcries against it. "Traditional Impediments and Indu the non-conformist" presents the traditional norms and beliefs of the older generation and Indu's reactions against it. "Rectification through self-realization" compares the plight of Saru and Indu. It also deals with their self-realization. Finally, a summary of the study was done to enhance a quick understanding of the text.


Background: Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) identified variants at 19p13.1 and ZNF365 (10q21.2) as risk factors for breast cancer among BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation carriers, respectively. We explored associations with ovarian cancer and with breast cancer by tumor histopathology for these variants in mutation carriers from the Consortium of Investigators of Modifiers of BRCA1/2 (CIMBA). Methods: Genotyping data for 12,599 BRCA1 and 7,132 BRCA2 mutation carriers from 40 studies were combined. Results: We confirmed associations between rs8170 at 19p13.1 and breast cancer risk for BRCA1 mutation carriers [HR, 1.17; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.07–1.27; P = 7.42 × 10−4] and between rs16917302 at ZNF365 (HR, 0.84; 95% CI, 0.73–0.97; P = 0.017) but not rs311499 at 20q13.3 (HR, 1.11; 95% CI, 0.94–1.31; P = 0.22) and breast cancer risk for BRCA2 mutation carriers. Analyses based on tumor histopathology showed that 19p13 variants were predominantly associated with estrogen receptor (ER)-negative breast cancer for both BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation carriers, whereas rs16917302 at ZNF365 was mainly associated with ER-positive breast cancer for both BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation carriers. We also found for the first time that rs67397200 at 19p13.1 was associated with an increased risk of ovarian cancer for BRCA1 (HR, 1.16; 95% CI, 1.05–1.29; P = 3.8 × 10−4) and BRCA2 mutation carriers (HR, 1.30; 95% CI, 1.10–1.52; P = 1.8 × 10−3). Conclusions: 19p13.1 and ZNF365 are susceptibility loci for ovarian cancer and ER subtypes of breast cancer among BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation carriers. Impact: These findings can lead to an improved understanding of tumor development and may prove useful for breast and ovarian cancer risk prediction for BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation carriers. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 21(4); 645–57. ©2012 AACR.


Much has been written about Chinatowns in North America as a self-sustained community with fairly complete social institutions. Chinatowns emerged under an era of racism and discrimination and offered some degrees of protection and opportunity to the Chinese. Historically, Vancouver's Chinatown suffered from a public image of an unhygienic and immoral neighborhood where Chinese resided and where Chinese shops and businesses congregated. This image began to change in the 1930s as the Chinese reshaped Chinatown to suit the racial ideology of a culturally exotic neighborhood that offered Oriental cuisine and festivities to Canadians. As more Chinese immigrated to Canada after World War II, a new Chinese middle class began to emerge. Although Vancouver Chinatown continued to grow and to retain the image of a tourist attraction, it has ceased to be the choice residential and business location for the Chinese. In contrast, Richmond south of Vancouver has developed into a vibrant and affluent business and residential enclave for middle-class Chinese. This article argues that the emergence and decline of Vancouver's Chinatown have been shaped by the nature of race formation in society as well as the internal composition and social organization of the Chinese community.


Coagulation values (CVs) of cellulose/1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium acetate (EmimAc)/dimethyl-sulfoxide (DMSO) solutions for water, ethanol (EtOH) and 2-propanol (2-PrOH) were measured by using a light-scattering technique. Expressed in moles per mole, CVs of H2O were roughly twice as high as the CVs of EtOH and 2-PrOH at equal cellulose concentration for EmimAc solutions without the addition of a cosolvent. We explain this observation mainly in terms of alcohol alkyl chains efficiently obstructing EmimAc anions, preventing anions from simultaneously interacting with cellulose hydroxyls. DMSO was found to mitigate the coagulating effect of water and, to a lesser extent, the effect of alcohols. The explanation may be the different enthalpies of mixing for water and alcohols, with DMSO. An explanation on a more practical level, is based on how the solvatochromic a and beta parameters change due to small amounts of the different non-solvents. Small additions of methanol induce disproportionately large changes from basic towards acidic properties for DMSO, meanwhile, the same stoichiometric addition of water induces only minor changes. Precipitation occurred at concentrations of non-solvent much higher than the concentrations that limit dissolution. The most likely explanation for this is a metastable region in the phase diagram. It was also seen that the typically observed inhibitive effect of high M-w on solubility during dissolution did not apply to precipitation.


A typical trade-off in decision-making is between the cost of acquiring information and the decline in decision quality caused by insufficient information. Consumers regularly face this trade-off in purchase decisions. Online product/service reviews serve as sources of product/service related information. Meanwhile, modern technology has led to an abundance of such content, which makes it prohibitively costly (if possible at all) to exhaust all available information. Consumers need to decide what subset of available information to use. Star ratings are excellent cues for this decision as they provide a quick indication of the tone of a review. However there are cases where such ratings are not available or detailed enough. Sentiment analysis - text analytic techniques that automatically detect the polarity of text - can help in these situations with more refined analysis.
This study was performed in two interrelated phases. In the first phase the potential impact of Sentiment Scores (sentiment analysis outcomes) was investigated through a comparison between these scores with an already established numerical rating denoted as star ratings in three different domains. The results show that sentiment scores tend to fall into neutral areas and are not able to detect extremes that were reported to be more beneficial for information acquisition purposes. As a result, to use the current sentiment analysis results as a substitute for star ratings, a partial linear filter was applied to sentiment analysis results in a way to highlight the subtle differences away from the "neutral zone".
In the second phase, the impact of the extended version of sentiment scores on decision outcomes was examined through a controlled experiment. The examined decision was a purchase decision and the information provided was pages of reviews annotated with extended sentiment scores on each paragraph. Human subjects were used in the experiment and controlled data gathering sessions was designed. Results suggest that female consumers may use sentiment scores on review documents without other comparison aids to increase their confidence level in their purchase decisions.


Hegnelius, M. - Background. It would be beneficial to the society to bring more awareness about the health benefits that comes with physical activity. Resistance training is a form of physical activity that has positive health benefits for athletes as well as for the average person. Squat is a resistance training exercise that can be performed on one (unilateral) or two (bilateral) legs. Both bilateral and unilateral squat are exercises that are similar to a wide range of different athletic as well as everyday movements. Aim. The aim of this study was to investigate if there is a difference in muscle activity, with electromyography (EMG), in gluteus maximus, gluteus medius, rectus femoris and biceps femoris between bilateral and unilateral body weight squat. Method. Fifteen healthy students (8 women and 7 men) volunteered to participate in the study. EMG signals were collected using surface electrodes with a collection frequency of 1000Hz. EMG data was processed through average root mean square. The values were normalized to maximum voluntary isometric contraction (MVIC) and expressed as percent (% MVIC). Result. The result of the present study showed that there was statistically significantly higher muscle activity in unilateral compared to the bilateral body weight squat in gluteus medius and rectus femoris (p<0.05), together with a trend for higher muscle activity in unilateral body weight squat in gluteus maximus and biceps femoris (p=0.07). The present study also showed that the highest muscle activity during a bilateral squat was found in rectus femoris which had significantly higher muscle activation compared to the other three muscles. Furthermore, for the unilateral squat, rectus femoris and gluteus medius had the highest muscle activity and had significantly higher muscle activity compared to gluteus maximus and biceps femoris. Conclusion. Practical implications from this study was that more muscle activity was required when performing unilateral body weight squat although the bilateral body weight squat is a more stable exercise. Further practical implication is that gluteus medius works significantly higher in unilateral compared to bilateral body weight squat which strengthen GM and by this develops a more stable lower body.


Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) were once considered as altruistic groups which aim was to impartially influence public policy with no vested interests. Nevertheless, this perception has changed. They are increasingly perceived as groups that prioritize their own ideologies or that respond to the interests of their donors, patrons, and members rather than to those of the groups they represent. This article discusses the politics of NGOs in the present changing globalized world as agents concerned with social and environmental change as much as with their own causes. It argues that numerous NGOs are as much a part of national and international politics as any other interest group and that their practices and activities are not always in the search of a good society or the common good.


ABSTRACT The authors apply recent advances in creativity theory to discover perceptual differences in the factors of strategy, originality, and artistry among creatives and noncreatives. It was found that current advertising position influences subjective perceptions of what constitutes creative advertising. Creatives tend to perceive advertisements as more appropriate if they are artistic, but account executives tend to perceive advertisements as more appropriate if they are strategic. The study also indicates that creatives have a distinctive preference for a strong originality component to strategy. To be original within the confines of a tight strategy is perceived as the most creative by advertising creatives. Account executives are so focused on strategy, they will often accept artistic advertisements as a substitute for truly original work. The authors consider future research implications of the study and its limitations.


The Cayman Islands is well known to be the jurisdiction of choice for structured finance transactions due to its robust legislation and judicial framework, its creditor friendly nature, its familiarity to market participants (in particular, rating agencies), and the list goes on. What is less obvious, and arguably more intriguing, is the increased reliance on basic features of Cayman Islands corporate law to facilitate innovative structuring, particularly at the warehouse stage of a collateralized loan obligation transaction, and create greater efficiencies in transaction execution. The existence of these features is not novel; however, their increased adoption is. In this article, the authors explore the most commonly utilized features and the ways in which they support transaction innovation. TOPICS: CLOs, CDOs, and other structured credit; legal and regulatory issues for structured finance Key Findings • The flexibility of the Cayman Islands corporate regime allows for bespoke structuring. • There is an ever-increasing reliance on basic corporate law features to support transaction innovation. • Cayman as a jurisdiction is commercially responsive, facilitating efficient transaction execution through a robust statutory framework and evolving market practices.


"Lisbon: City of the Sea" is a beautifully written portrait of a much loved city, from its origins in Greek legend to the present day. Malcolm Jack vividly captures the rich and unique history of this haunting and attractive port whose prominent position on the Tagus estuary has inextricably bound its character with the sea. Lisbon is a city of steep inclines and complicated, unsymmetrical streets that criss-cross the hills only in the Baixa area near the river and in the more modern, northern part of the city does any form of a grid system appear. It has enjoyed a political history that has directed Portugal's focus more overseas than inland towards continental Europe, in part because of Spain's geographical position. Thus, the city has been stretched in one direction toward Brazil and in another toward the Cape of Good Hope and from there to Asia and the East. Beginning with its earliest inhabitants, Jack traces the city's life through its imperial success in the sixteenth century and the devastating earthquake that humbled the city and shocked Europe in 1755 to its current position as a vibrant and successful European capital. Lisbon's romantic atmosphere has captured the imaginations of foreigners through the ages. Poets, writers and musicians have all drawn inspiration from different parts of Lisbon. This sensitive exploration of the city's many aspects draws out its cosmopolitan nature, as well as its colourful culture and self-image and brings us closer to understanding its true spirit. Engaging and accessible, this book will appeal to Lisbon's many visitors as well as anyone interested in European history.


The world takes Canada's non-acquisition of nuclear weapons for granted. Though Canada does not pose a breakout threat from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the course of its nuclear weapons policy is far from simple, including at least two reversals and the electoral defeat of a sitting government. A careful observation of the history of Canada's nuclear weapons policy illuminates a better understanding of the nonproliferation norm. This author looks at Canada's restraint from acquisition of an independent nuclear weapons capability, which is often viewed as unremarkable. But the historical record is dense and interesting, shedding light on three important questions. First, why do states seek or reject nuclear weapons? Understanding the Canadian experience may help to explain other states' nuclear weapons acquisition behavior and support the development of more nuanced policy and international legal instruments for nonproliferation. Second, what specific behaviors constitute compliance with the nonproliferation norm, and can we shape them to promote international peace and security? The Canadian experience suggests that our understanding of nuclear weapons did not spring into existence fully formed. Third, what should NATO's role be with regard to preventing nuclear proliferation? As security threats evolve and nuclear proliferation increases in salience among threats to NATO members, response to this threat—whether it comes from one rogue state or the instability of the NPT regime—may move higher among alliance policy priorities. The author uses Canada as an example to improve our understanding of when the nonproliferation norm matters—and how competing priorities can be integrated with nonproliferation concerns within NATO.


Multi-objective Markov decision processes (MOMDPs) provide an effective modeling framework for decision-making problems involving water systems. The traditional approach is to define many single-objective problems (resulting from different combinations of the objectives), each solvable by standard optimization. This paper presents an approach based on reinforcement learning (RL) that can learn the operating policies for all combinations of objectives in a single training process. The key idea is to enlarge the approximation of the action-value function, which is performed by single-objective RL over the state-action space, to the space of the objectives9 weights. The batch-mode nature of the algorithm allows for enriching the training dataset without further interaction with the controlled system. The approach is demonstrated on a numerical test case study and evaluated on a real-world application, the Hoa Binh reservoir, Vietnam. Experimental results on the test case show that the proposed approach (multi-objective fitted Q-iteration; MOFQI) becomes computationally preferable over the repeated application of its single-objective version (fitted Q-iteration; FQI) when evaluating more than five weight combinations. In the Hoa Binh case study, the operating policies computed with MOFQI and FQI have comparable efficiency, while MOFQI provides a continuous approximation of the Pareto frontier with no additional computing costs.


This thesis sought to investigate the recent claim by Karnath et al. (2001) that the crucial locus of neurological damage in neglect patients Vies in the right superior temporal gyrus (STG), and not in the right posterior parietal cortex (PPC), as conventionally thought. In chapter 2, using Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), we first tested the involvement of the right STG in a task commonly used in the diagnosis of neglect, the landmark task. No evidence was found for a critical involvement of the right STG in the processing of this task, though evidence was found for the involvement of the right PPC. In contrast, however, when we examined the effects of TMS on exploratory search, a double dissociation between right STG and right PPC was found. When the processing of conjunction items was required, involvement of the right PPC (and not STG) was found, in accordance with previous research (Ellison et al, 2003). When difficult exploratory search through feature items was required however, the right STG (not PPC) was found to be involved In both cases, however, the deficit was present bilaterally across the search array, in contrast to the search deficits seen in patients with visual neglect, which are typically greater on the contralesional side. In chapter 3 we sought to determine whether it might be possible to induce such contralateral search deficits, using variations on the previous tasks. Experiment 1 required subjects to report the location of the search target (left or right) on each trial. We now found a significant deficit in contralateral search when TMS was applied to the PPC region. Experiment 2 used smaller, structured stimulus arrays, presented briefly to eliminate eye movements and to direct the target item to either the left or right hemisphere. This task was unaffected by TMS applied to either of the two sites. Experiment 3 presented similar small arrays for a longer duration, in either left, central, or right visual space. We found a contralateral within-array ('object-based') deficit when TMS was applied to the STG, whether the array was presented in the left or right hemispace, when a left/right response was required. There was, however, no relative 'hemispatial' deficit when the array was located on the contralateral left side. These results may indicate separate specializations for 'spatial' versus 'within-object' search in the two brain regions studied and are discussed in terms of the neglect and visual search literatures.


Background : Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a group of metabolic disorders such as DM I, DM II, secondary causes of DM and gestational diabetes mellitus characterized by hyperglycemic phonotype. The etiology of gestational diabetes mellitus is unknown. Recent studies address the chronic activity of immune system against infections (not autoimmunity) as an important cause of gestational diabetes mellitus. This study aimed to compare T-helper cells 1 and 2 cytokines and associated antibodies in patients with gestational diabetes mellitus and normal pregnant women. Methods : This cross-sectional study was performed on 45 female patients with GDM and 45 healthy pregnant women in Bandar Abbas, Iran, from 2008- 2009. The exclusion criteria were presence of any infectious diseases or autoimmune disorders such as SLE or RA. Present and past medical histories were taken from the participants thorough physical examination. Blood samples (10 mL) were drawn and sent to laboratory for measuring serum IgE, IgG1, IgG2, IgG3, IgG4, interleukin-10 (IL-10), interleukin-12 (IL-12), transforming growth factor-beta (TGF1), and interferon-gamma (IFN) measurements. T-test and Kolmogorov-Smirnov test were used for data analysis. Results : The mean age of the patients with GDM and healthy pregnant women was 32.5 and 27.9 yrs, respectively. T-helper 1 and 2 associated antibodies and cytokines had no significant differences between the case and control groups. Conclusion : The changes in T-helper 1 and 2 associated antibodies and cytokines are not associated with gestational diabetes mellitus and could not be considered as a predictor for gestational diabetes mellitus.


Further education colleges in England and Wales have offered government-recognised courses and qualifications which receive public funding and have included technical and vocational courses since their foundation in the early twentieth century. Yet developments in such curricula and qualifications are not new and they can be traced back to the first half of the nineteenth century when working-class adult education was first being offered through the then evolving mechanics' institutes. Historians have argued that nineteenth-century British mechanics' institutes failed to offer working-class adults education and qualifications, instead providing scientific lectures for the professional classes. The assumption has been that it was not until the early twentieth century that technical schools started to offer what is often referred to today as vocational education and training. This article questions these views, using the annual reports of the Yorkshire Union of Mechanics' Institutes between the 1830s and 1880s as evidence. The article highlights how several Yorkshire Union mechanics' institutes, many the forerunners of further education colleges, were responsive to offering curricula and qualifications relevant to British industrialisation and the working classes, a tradition which continues today through post-14 education and training.


Correctly-rounded implementations of some elementary functions are recommended by the IEEE 754-2008 standard, which aims at ensuring portable and predictable floating-point computations. Such implementations require the solving of the Table Maker's Dilemma which implies a huge amount of computation time. These computations are embarrassingly and massively parallel, but present control flow divergence which limits performance at the SIMD parallelism level, whose share in the overall performance of current and forthcoming HPC architectures is increasing. In this paper, we show that efficiently solving the Table Maker's Dilemma on various multi-core and many-core SIMD architectures (CPUs, GPUs, Intel Xeon Phi) requires to jointly handle divergence at the algorithmic, programming and hardware levels in order to scale with the number of SIMD lanes. Depending on the architecture, the performance gains can reach 10.5x over divergent code, or be constrained by different limits that we detail.


Thin organic and polymer layers on solid substrates play a key role in many processes
aimed at modifying surface properties. Both "grafting to" and "grafting from"
methods have been used in this project to modify a variety of surfaces including
cellulose, resins and carbon nanotubes (CNT) with functional polymers. Living
radical polymerisation and Huisgen [2+3] cycloaddition (often termed "click"
reaction) were used to carry out these modifications.
Living radical polymerisation was first used to synthesize different α-functional
polymers and used for surface modification. For example, Living radical
polymerisations of methyl methacrylate and a fluorescent comonomer with 2-bromo-
2-methyl-propionic acid 3-azido-propyl ester and 2-bromo-2-methyl-hept-6-yn-3-one
as initiators have been successfully employed for the synthesis of fluorescently tagged
azide and alkyne terminated PMMA with molecular weight (Mn) close to that
predicted and polydispersity index (PDi) less than 1.20 and good first order kinetics
that would be expected for living radical polymerisation. Cotton and organic resin
surfaces have been functionalised with alkyne groups using simple condensation with
4-chlorocarbonyl-butyric acid prop-2-ynyl ester. The surfaces have been further
modifies using a Huisgen [2+3] cycloaddition (click) reaction of both polymeric and
small molecule azides. Different functional azides, namely mono azido-PEG and a
new fluorescent hostasol derivative have also been prepared and tested as model
substrates for cotton surface modification. This approach is shown to be very general
allowing soft and hard surfaces with different geometries to be modified. In particular
it is an excellent method to alter the nature of organic resins allowing the
incorporation of many different functionalities.
The covalent immobilization of a range of carbohydrate derivatives onto resin beads
was then carried out. Copper-catalysed Huisgen [2+3] cycloaddition was used to graft
mannose-containing azides to complementarily functionalised alkyne surfaces,
namely: a) Wang resin or b) "Rasta" particles consisting of a "clickable" alkyne
polymer loose outer shell and a Wang resin inner core. For the second approach,
Wang resin beads were first converted into immobilized ATRP initiators, and then
polymerisation of trimethylsilanyl-protected propargyl methacrylate followed by
deprotection with TBAF·3H2O afforded the desired polyalkyne clickable scaffold. An
appropriated α-mannopyranoside azide was then clicked onto it, to give a mannose
functionalized "Rasta" resin. The binding abilities of these D-mannose-modified
particles were then tested using fluorescein labelled Concanavalin A (Con A), a lectin
known for its ability of binding certain mannose-containing molecules. Our
preliminary results indicated that the novel glycohybrid materials presented in this
work are able to efficiently recognize mannose-binding model lectins such as Con A,
opening the way for their potential application in affinity chromatography, sensors
and other protein recognition/separation fields.
Other functional polymers with antibiotic or chiral properties were also grafted from
surfaces. Living radical polymerisation of poly(ethylene glycol) methyl ether
methacrylate (PEGMA) and a metronidazole monomer (MTD-MA) has been
successfully employed for the synthesis of antibiotic metronidazole containing
polymers with Mn close to that predicted, narrow polydispersity and good first order
kinetics that would be expected for living radical polymerisation. Using the
monomers PEGMA and MTD-MA, with preformed immobilized initiator on cotton,
surface initiated LRP was carried out to give cotton bearing antibiotic polymers.
Surface initiated living radical polymerisation of GMA was then successfully carried
out for the synthesis of PGMA containing bead base on Aquagel resin. The hydroxyl
groups of the PGMA moiety were then reacted with a single enantiomer (R)-(+)-1-
phenylethyl isocyanate (EtPhNCO). This demonstrates a convenient way of
immobilise enantiomer moiety onto resin surface and the resulting solid support may
be used as chiral stationary phases (CSP) for HPLC chromatography.
To modify CNTs with functional polymers not only increase the dispersability of the
CNTs, it has also enlarged the application areas of CNT's due to the polymers' own
functional properties. MWCNTs were first converted to a solid support LRP initiator
by an esterification reaction and styrene was grafted from MWCNTs through surfaceinitiated
LRP, the PSt modified CNTs were then used to form isoporous membranes.
Similarly, Poly(amidoamine) (PAMAM) dendrons were covalently attached to
MWCNTs and dendron-MWCNT-Ag(0) hybrid materials were made afterwards
which occurred via Ag(I) coordination to the PAMAM dendron nitrogen donors,
followed by reduction with formaldehyde. Finally, noncovalent method was used to
make a thermo-sensitive water soluble CNTs. The homopolymerisations and
copolymerisation of poly(ethylene glycol) methyl ether methacrylate (PEGMA) and
di(ethylene glycol) methyl ether methacrylate (DEGMA) using a pyrene-containing
initiator and a Cu(0)/Me6-Tren catalyst system was investigated. The pyrenefunctionalised
polymers synthesised were then used to modify CNTs and thus thermosensitive
water-dispersible CNTs were made.


Building Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) applications today is a complex, repetitive, and error-prone endeavor, as IaaS does not provide abstractions on top of virtual machines. This article presents JCloudScale, a Java-based middleware for moving elastic applications to IaaS clouds, with minimal adjustments to the application code. We discuss the architecture and technical features, as well as evaluate our system with regard to user acceptance and performance overhead. Our user study reveals that JCloudScale allows many participants to build IaaS applications more efficiently, compared to industrial Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions. Additionally, unlike PaaS, JCloudScale does not lead to a control loss and vendor lock-in.


The banking system is highly interconnected and these connections can be conveniently represented as an interbank network. This survey presents a systematic overview of the recent advances in the theoretical literature on interbank networks and assesses our current understanding of the structure of interbank networks, of how network characteristics affect contagion in the banking system and of how banks form connections when faced with the possibility of contagion and systemic risk. In particular, I highlight how the theoretical literature on interbank networks offers a coherent way of studying interconnections, contagion processes and systemic risk, while emphasizing at the same time the challenges that must be addressed before general results on the link between the structure of the interbank network and financial stability can be established. The survey concludes with a discussion of the policy relevance of interbank network models with a special focus on macro-prudential policies and monetary policy.


Nowadays, the Waist-Hip Ratio is considered one of the most important indices in predicting the risk of cardiovascular diseases. The usual method for calculating this index is by measuring the waist and hip circumferences with a measuring tape. However, bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) devices are also capable of calculating this ratio. Hence, the goal of this study was to calculate this ratio with the BIA device and to compare it with the manual method done with measuring tape. A cross-sectional study was conducted on 270 individuals attending the Sports Medicine Department of Taleghani Hospital. Height, weight, waist and hip circumference were measured, and the body mass index (BMI) and waist-hip ratio (WHR) were calculated. Using the BIA technique, the body fat percentage (BFP) and WHR were calculated. The absolute and difference percentage between the values calculated by the device and measuring tape were calculated and the determinant factors of this difference were examined. The mean absolute difference between the two methods was 0.054 and the difference percentage was 0.064. Kappa's correlation coefficient between the two variables was 0.024, which indicates poor correlation between the findings of the two methods. Based on linear regression analysis, BFP, height, BMI, and total body water (TBW) significantly affected the difference percentage. On the contrary, age, waist circumference, hip circumference, and absolute body fat did not have such an effect. The absolute difference was 0.069 in women and 0.05 in men, which was statistically significant (p = 0.025). Taking the manual waist-hip ratio method as the gold standard, the BIA method lacks adequate accuracy. Many variables such as, gender, BFP, TBW, BMI and height affect the accuracy of this method. Hence, until this technique is modified based on the aforementioned variables, we recommend avoiding the application of this method for WHR calculation.


Solar photovoltaic (PV) technology provides the opportunity to generate electricity with very low greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Both utility-scale (large solar plant) and distributed (rooftop) systems have been growing in total installed capacity, and decreasing in cost, in the past decade [1]. However, solar PV has energy, GHG, hazardous material, water and land use impacts associated with mining, manufacturing, operational use, and endof-life. Below, we detail some of these environmental impacts, as well as approaches to minimizing these impacts. We first compare the material and land use impacts of utility versus distributed solar. We next describe the energy and material use associated with manufacturing and end-of-life. Finally, we identify barriers to solar deployment and offer some potential solutions.


The gap between the richest and the rest in Indonesia has grown faster in the past two decades than in any other country in South-East Asia. The four richest men in Indonesia now have more wealth than the poorest 100 million people. Inequality is slowing down poverty reduction, dampening economic growth and threatening social cohesion. President Jokowi has made fighting inequality his administration's top priority for 2017. This report shows how he could achieve this by enforcing a living wage for all workers, increasing spending on public services, and making big corporations and rich individuals pay their fair share of tax.


SAPS (still another production system), a specialized forward chaining production system developed to support research in planning and plan recognition systems, is described. This planning research is based on mixed initiative development of military logistic and tactical operations plans. To support it, SAPS was designed with a flexible, innovative control structure and an unusual use of active plan nodes and data structures. SAPS synthesizes networks of independent, active nodes that support planning activities, an approach that applies to problem solving in general. SAPS views computation as a network of cooperating, independent nodes, each able to perform arbitrary computation. Each node is controlled by activating and deactivating rule sets assigned to it. Even though the same rule set can be assigned to several nodes, the control is by rule sets in each node. As an example, SAPS is applied to the n queens problem.<<ETX>>


This thesis examines the implications for text and subject of the digital technology of hypertext. Focussing on the printed texts of Alasdair Gray, it explores the complex relationship between humans and technology depicted in his fictions. Gray's fictional examples provide the basis for a wider discussion regarding the impact of technology upon the lives of the subjects who engage with it and in particular who engages with the technologies of writing. It aims to illustrate how digital technologies of writing can be considered in light of some of the textual concerns raised by fiction and criticism in the late age of print, notably issues of narrative theory and the cultural function of linear stories and histories. Straining in many respects against the limitations of the printed form, Gray's boundary-pushing texts, whilst remaining firmly rooted in the aesthetic tradition of the book as object, perhaps anticipate a more flexible textual form. The digital space of hypertext can be seen to offer a new arena for the textual debate, but does it live up to the claims of some of its critics, particularly in terms of its rapport with aspects of contemporary theory? And what may be the consequences of text dematerialised in the digital medium? As well as considering the textual possibilities of hypertext, the thesis also looks at the ways in which subjects relate to technology as well as those by which technology – and particularly writing technology – relates to them. Given the ambiguous role of technology in the life of the subject – employed on the one hand as part of a project and promise of rational enlightenment through science and on the other as a military and ideological means of repression – the consequences of technological development and of the digital revolution for the written word must be closely considered. Finally, the thesis questions the types of texts that may be constructed through an engagement with the digital technology of hypertext and what types of subjects these in turn might construct.


The theoretical investigation of all parameter noises in repetition-rate laser pulse train was presented. The expression of power spectrum of laser pulse trains with all parameter noises was derived, and the power spectra of pulse trains with different noise parameters were numerically simulated. By comparing the power spectra with and without pulse-width jitter, we noted that pulse-width jitter could not be neglected compared with amplitude noise and timing jitter and contributed a great amount of noise into the power spectrum under the condition that the product of pulse width and angular frequency was larger than 1.


Cloud computing become most adoptable technology over the past few years, it is widespread for both at organizational level or for the person who use the services that are offered in the cloud. There are several technocrats currently researched on cloud related issues and soon cloud represents the modern computing. The cloud gave the prospect for the enterprise and allowing them to center on their work by providing hardware and software solution without developing them own. Now a day the database has also moved to cloud computing so we will look into the fine points of database as a service and it's servicing. While storing data on cloud there is a need to balance the load on datacenters because if user base always sends request on single data center then it becomes overloaded so load balancing techniques are applied to manage this problem. To manage geographic distribution in terms of computing servers and data workloads a tool termed as CloudAnalyst is used which is based on cloudsim technique. CloudAnalyst helps developers with the vision of distributing applications among cloud infrastructures. Currently tool having three algorithms for load balancing round robin, throttled load balancer, equally spread current execution and the proposed algorithm is weighted round robin which works better as comparison to round robin in various aspects.


Purpose: Matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) has been used to analyze tumor sections and can determine tumor type, nodal involvement, and survival, and shows promise in predicting therapeutic response. Our purpose was to develop a method compatible with MALDI-TOF MS that allows selective analysis of cancer cells in mixed clinical samples such as fine-needle aspirates. Experimental Design: Lung cancer cell lines were cytocentrifuged onto metal-coated, transparent glass slides and used for optimization of fixation, staining, and RBC lysis protocols. Fine-needle aspirates from human tumors and mouse model tumors were used to provide fresh tissue samples for determining the feasibility of this method. Results: The MALDI-TOF MS compatible fixation and staining techniques provided high-resolution cellular morphology, which allowed identification and selective spotting of tumor cells. The RBC lysis step efficiently removed contaminating RBC yielding spectra nearly free from hemoglobin peaks. Protein profiles of fine-needle aspirates were found highly reproducible and similar to the profiles of the tissue from which they were obtained. Using this method, we were able to differentiate between xenograft tumors derived from two different human cell lines, A549 and H460. Conclusion: This procedure results in the production of high-quality, cancer cell–specific protein profiles. This highly reproducible technique could be applied to many other types of mixed clinical samples and has the potential to be very useful in the clinical diagnosis, classification, and, potentially, the individualized treatment of cancer patients.


Introductions for ASCE's 2013 Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement award finalists along with the acceptance speech of the winner, the Alvarado Water Treatment Plant. Also shown are the introductions for and the acceptance speeches of the recipients of the Outstanding Projects and Leaders award, the Charles Pankow Award for Innovation, the Henry L. Michel Award for Industry Advancement of Research, and the ASCE Excellence in Journalism award. The winners include Robert Alger, Charles Thornton, Charles Ladd, Merdith Temple, Michael Loose, Gordon Dickson, SreenivasAlampalli, and HC Bridge Company, LLC/University of Delaware/Transportation Technology Center/Transportation Research Board. OCEA finalists include the Brightwater Treatment Plant, Lake Oswego Interceptor Sewer, William Jack Hernandez Sport Fish Hatchery, and My Waterway\x+ Punggol.


The security and privacy of future smart grid and smart metering networks is important to their rollout and eventual acceptance by the public: research in this area is ongoing and smart meter users will need to be reassured that their data is secure. This paper describes a method for securely anonymizing frequent (for example, every few minutes) electrical metering data sent by a smart meter. Although such frequent metering data may be required by a utility or electrical energy distribution network for operational reasons, this data may not necessarily need to be attributable to a specific smart meter or consumer. It does, however, need to be securely attributable to a specific location (e.g. a group of houses or apartments) within the electricity distribution network. The method described in this paper provides a 3rd party escrow mechanism for authenticated anonymous meter readings which are difficult to associate with a particular smart meter or customer. This method does not preclude the provision of attributable metering data that is required for other purposes such as billing, account management or marketing research purposes.


On the most important occasions of our lives, we often find ourselves at a loss for words; when we want to console, celebrate, explain, inspire, or thank, we end up repeating such uninspiring, uninformative phrases as "Words cannot express how I feel." To help us find the right words, Catherine Frank has compiled this handy compendium of quotations that capture the mundane and the magnificent, the everyday and extraordinary moments of our lives. The three sections of the book cover 150 occasions. "Every Year" offers quotations on all the special dates in the calendar from New Year's Day to New Year's Eve, including Martin Luther King Day, Valentine's Day, Ramadan, Mother's Day, Thanksgiving, Kwanzaa, and Christmas. "Occasionally" presents quotations on such occasions as giving a speech, having an interview, becoming a parent, getting engaged, welcoming someone, and saying goodbye. "Once in a Lifetime" provides quotations on such momentous events as confirmation, coming out, turning 16, graduation, and retirement. A sampling: * Plato, John Donne, and Woody Allen give their words of wisdom on death. * Betty Ford writes eloquently on recovery. * Martina Navratilova ruminates on her first sexual encounter...and Holden Caufield on his. * Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain, and Frederick Douglass ponder Independence Day. * Amy Tan reflects on the meaning of the Chinese New Year. * Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Susan Sontag offer poignant descriptions of pain and illness. Whether you are offering consolation or congratulations, condolences or confessions, Quotations for All Occasions has the perfect words for every occasion.


Synesthesia is an unusual blending of the senses that occurs in about four percent or more of the human population. Much effort has been devoted to establishing criteria to define what synesthesia is ever since the phenomenon reemerged as a fascination within the scientific community in the late 1970s. To date, the most common criteria for synesthesia are that synesthetic experiences be automatic, consistent, rely on an external stimulus that triggers the phenomenological experience, and that this experience is fully conscious to the mind. This framework allows for some differentiation of synesthetes compared to non-synesthetes within the human population, and yet it also creates a self-selecting bias in the synesthetic population; if the scientific community defines criteria for synesthesia, and then only studies people whom fit those criteria, the resulting data will likely validate the definitions if only because they have been defined that way. What is left unknown are ways that synesthetes, as a community of otherwise normal human beings, vary in subtle ways, both in their psychophysical behavior and in their neurobiological form and function in relation to other human beings who do not experience any form of conscious, unusual sensory blendings yet defined as synesthesia.The studies described in this thesis explore whether perception in the population of individuals currently defined as synesthetes is in fact uniquely different from perception in the rest of the human population. These unique differences in perception are also used here to better inform our understanding of the functions of the human brain. Chapter 2 introduces the concept of perceptual binding and its relation to synesthesia. Some synesthetes experience colors that are associated with letters and numbers, and these so-called grapheme-color synesthetes may rely on similar brain mechanisms to bind their synesthetic colors to space as the ones they (and most humans) use to bind color to space normally. Chapter 3 addresses the question of binding with regard to an unusual phenomenon specific to grapheme-color synesthetes: that it is possible for some of these synesthetes to experience two colors that are spatially co-localized without blending. The results of this behavioral study will be shown to correlate with the vividness of visual imagery, a measure that extends beyond synesthetic phenomenology. Finally, Chapter 4 demonstrates how synesthetes differ from well-matched non-synesthetes in relation to behavior and the anatomy of the brain. Specifically, synesthetes have more vivid visual imagery as a population, more arborized white matter, and show a positive correlation between vivid imagery and increased axonal branching that is absent in non-synesthete controls. Together, these studies suggest that the brains of synesthetes rely on attention-specific mechanisms used by most humans to bind color to space. However, synesthesia as a whole may not simply be one end of a continuum of brain differences. Rather, synesthetes may be unique both in their phenomenological experiences of the world, and in some ways, the organization of the brain that creates them.


Objectives
The multisystem manifestations of SSc can greatly impact patients' quality of life. The aim of this study was to identify factors associated with disability in SSc.

Methods
SSc patients from the prospective DeSScipher cohort who had completed the scleroderma health assessment questionnaire (SHAQ), a disability score that combines the health assessment questionnaire and five visual analogue scales, were included in this analysis. The effect of factors possibly associated with disability was analysed with multiple linear regressions.

Results
The mean SHAQ and HAQ scores of the 944 patients included were 0.87 (s.d. = 0.66) and 0.92 (s.d. = 0.78); 59% of the patients were in the mild to moderate difficulty SHAQ category (0 ⩽ SHAQ < 1), 34% in the moderate to severe disability category (1 ⩽ SHAQ < 2) and 7% in the severe to very severe disability category (2 ⩽ SHAQ ⩽ 3). The means of the visual analogue scales scores were in order of magnitude: overall disease severity (37 mm), RP (31 mm), pulmonary symptoms (24 mm), gastrointestinal symptoms (20 mm) and digital ulcers (19 mm). In multiple regression, the main factors associated with high SHAQ scores were the presence of dyspnoea [modified New York Heart Association (NYHA) class IV (regression coefficient B = 0.62), modified NYHA class III (B = 0.53) and modified NYHA class II (B = 0.21; all vs modified NYHA class I)], FM (B = 0.37), muscle weakness (B = 0.27), digital ulcers (B = 0.20) and gastrointestinal symptoms (oesophageal symptoms, B = 0.16; stomach symptoms, B = 0.15; intestinal symptoms, B = 0.15).

Conclusion
SSc patients perceive dyspnoea, pain, digital ulcers, muscle weakness and gastrointestinal symptoms as the main factors driving their level of disability, unlike physicians who emphasize objective measures of disability.


: Androgenetic Alopecia (AA), commonly referred to as male and female pattern baldness, is the most common cause of hair loss today. It affects approximately 50% male and 30-40% female population worldwide across varied ages. In the recent times, there has been a surge of patients asking for treatment of hair loss due to patterned hair loss. Though there has been a multitude of non-surgical treatment options available today, every modality has its own pros and cons. Adipocyte derived stem cells- condition media (ADSC-CM) is the growth factor rich media produced when adipose derived stem cells are cultured. During culturing, the adipocyte derived stem cells constantly release growth factors into the surrounding culture media. The stem cells are subsequently removed, leaving a cell free, growth factor rich solution which has been shown to exhibit regenerative potential similar to treatment using adipose derived stem cells The Conditioned media of Adipocyte derived stem cells (ADSC-CM), has emerged as a novel and effective noninvasive modality for managing hair loss and hair regrowth due to patterned hair loss. This review paper describes in details about various aspects of AA and the advantages of use of ADSC-CM in treating patients suffering with AA.


The dielectric microstructures act as ultrahigh Q factors optical cavities, which modify the spontaneous emission rates and alter the spatial distribution of the input and output radiation. The editors have selected leading scientists who have made seminal contributions in different aspects of optical processes in microcavities. Every attempt has been made to unify the underlying physics pertaining to microcavities of various shapes. This book begins with a chapter on the role of microcavity modes with additional chapters on how these microcavity modes affect the spontaneous and stimulated emission rates, enhance nonlinear optical processes, are used in cavity-QED and chemical physics experiments, aid in the single-molecule detection, and influence the design of microdisk semiconductor lasers; and how deformed cavities can be treated with classical chaos theory.


Abstract:The text-critical paradigm of Hebrew historical linguistics provides a new way of approaching the Archaic Biblical Hebrew poetry in the Hebrew Bible. Scholarship has generally proceeded on the assumption that certain non-standard linguistic features of these texts have been preserved over the course of 1000 years from the period when they were living linguistic forms, even though they were no longer used in the language after that very early time. This is not very likely, based on what we know of the history of the text of the Hebrew Bible. Detailed study of the textual evidence strongly supports the conclusion that distinctive, less common linguistic features, such as the archaisms of these poems, were not copied carefully or precisely in the textual tradition. A much more likely theory would be one that explains how such forms were included or continued to be included in the more recent transmission of these texts which led up to the current manuscripts in our possession. I use the analogy with Homeric poetry and South Slavic oral epic poetry, which exhibit a similar mixture of both archaisms and dialect forms alongside more contemporary language forms, to describe a register that is similar to the one that the Archaic Biblical Hebrew poems use


What were the conditions of possibility for art and music-making before the era of neoliberal capitalism? What role did punk play in turning artists to experiment with popular music in the late 1970s and early 1980s? And why does the art and music of these times seem so newly pertinent to our political present, despite the seeming remoteness of its historical moment?

Focusing upon the production of post-punk art, film, music, and publishing, this book offers new perspectives on an overlooked period of cultural activity, and probes the lessons that might be learnt from history for artists and musicians working under 21st century conditions of austerity.


he preliminary results obtained from the analysis in the micropulsation frequency range of high time resolution magnetic field data recorded at the Antarctic Italian geomagnetic observatory at Terra Nova Bay for 11 consecutive days in February 1994 are reported. The spectral index over the whole Pcl-Pc5 frequency range is of the order of 3.5 and its value significantly increases beyond about 50 mHz. Spectral peaks in the Pc3 frequency range are common, especially during the daytime hours, and are probably due to the direct penetration of upstream waves in the cusp region. From the local time distribution of the micro pulsation power, a signifi - cant activity enhancement around the local magnetic noon emerges, in agreement with previous observations. The analysis of the signal polarisation characteristics in the horizontal plane shows a predominant CW polarisation in the Pcl-Pc3 frequency ranges with the major axis of the polarisation ellipse in the first quadrant.


An ethical guide for clergy and laypersons who deal with "the vexing questions that arise in the daily life of a minister at work." The authors discuss salaries, truth-telling, surviving church politics, confidentiality, the unmarried pastor, the two-clergy family, accepting gifts, working with other church staff, and more.


Statespersons, scholars, and commentators of every political persuasion agree that we are currently witnessing a crisis of world order. It is widely assumed that the co-called 'Liberal World Order' that the United States constructed in the post-World War II years is collapsing. This Article interrogates and challenges this claim. This Article examines what it means to speak of 'world order'. It argues that to understand the notion of 'world order', it is necessary to investigate the normative foundations of the international system. Therefore, this Article develops a theoretical construct that I call the Constitutive Regime of the International System to conceptualize the notion of world order. It argues that the international system is predicated on and governed by a Constitutive Regime that embodies a grand worldview – i.e. a theory of world order – that prescribes policies, practices, and rules of international law that are considered necessary for maintaining global order and stability. This regime, which is designed by the Great Powers of each historical epoch, shapes international and domestic politics. It determines the criteria and preconditions of statehood, thereby affecting how societies are organized and governed. It promotes certain methods for the conduct of world politics, and it establishes mechanisms for international lawmaking, thus providing the constitutive foundation of international law. A crisis of world order occurs when these basic normative assumptions about the nature of the international system and the processes of global governance are challenged.

Having provided a conceptual framework for understanding the notion of 'world order', this Article then challenges the claim that the post-World War II 'Liberal World Order' is currently in a period of crisis. It argues that, beginning in the 1970s, the Liberal World Order of the post-World War II era was replaced by a neoliberal world order – in other words, a neoliberal Constitutive Regime. This Article shows how this neoliberal Constitutive Regime shaped virtually every aspect of world politics and provided the normative foundation of globalization during the closing decades of the twentieth century. The Article concludes with a discussion of the origins of the current crisis of world order and a reflection on the future of world order in an era of increased Great Power competition.


Tephra abundance data and geochemistry in Late‐glacial and Holocene sediments on the East Greenland shelf are presented. Two well‐known tephras were identified from electron microprobe analysis of tephra shards picked from ash peaks in the cores. These are the Vedde Ash and Saksunarvatn Ash, which probably were deposited on the shelf after transport on drifting ice. The radiocarbon dates (marine reservoir corrected by −550 yr) that constrain the timing of deposition of the tephra layers compare well with the terrestrial and ice‐core ages of the tephras without requiring additional reservoir correction to align them with the known tephra ages. Several prominent tephra layers with a composition of Ash Zone 2 tephra punctuate the deglacial sediments. These tephra peaks coincide with significant light stable isotope events (signifying glacial meltwater) and fine‐grained sediments poor in ice‐rafted detritus. We interpret the Ash Zone 2 tephra peaks as sediment released from the Greenland Ice Sheet during strong melting pulses of the deglaciation. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


In this paper, we compare the performance of the well-known RAIDS arrays to that of log-structured arrays (LSA ), on transaction-processing workloads. LSA borrows heavily from the log-structured file system (LFS) approach, but is executed in an outboard disk controller. The LSA technique we examine combines LFS, RAiD, compression and Non-Volatile cache. We look at sensitivity of LSA performance to amount of free space on the physical disks and to the compression ratic; achieved. We also evaluate a RAII>-S design that supports compression in cache.


In times of sustainable energy savings and steadily rising commodity
prices, life withoutflow measurements is unthinkable. Be it metering of
waste water, or gauging at a gas station,everybody insists on paying only
for what they consumed. Despite the variety ofexisting flow meters, some
applications remain where the volume flux can be measuredonly with high
uncertainty if at all. The measurement is particularly difficult if the
flow tobe measured is opaque, extremely hot, and chemically
aggressive.Lorentz force velocimetry (LKA or LFV) represents a solution to
these problems. This noncontactflow measurement method has been patented at
Ilmenau University of Technologyin 2005 and relies on the electromagnetic
interaction between an electrically conductingfluid and an externally
imposed magnetic field. Metallurgical applications of LFV areparticularly
promising due to the high electrical conductivities involved. Currently,
firstprototypes are being tested under industrial conditions.This thesis is
concerned with the question whether LFV can be extended to the
measurementof weakly conductive fluids. In contrast to metallurgy, Lorentz
forces in the orderof F < 1E-5 N must be resolved. In this thesis, two LFV
prototypes have been built whichhave been especially adapted for the
measurement of salt water flows. With these prototypesthe suitability of
LFV for the flow measurement of weakly conducting fluids hasbeen
demonstrated experimentally for the first time. The work confirms the
theoreticallypredicted linear dependence between the Lorentz force and the
flow rate as well as theelectrical conductivity of the weakly conductive
fluid (Thess et al.). Moreover, this thesisshows how different magnetic
fields and velocity fields affect the measured Lorentz force.


In a fast urbanizing Indonesia, the rural sector still plays an important role in the countrys economy. Although declining, the majority of the population still live and find employment in rural areas. However, rural areas lag behind urban areas in many aspects. As a result, around 80% of all the poor in the country are found in rural areas. Resolving this problem requires a clear and effective strategy to jump-start and sustain economic growth in rural areas. This study finds that the growth of the agricultural sector strongly induces the growth of the non-agricultural sector in rural areas. Although it has been fluctuating over time, it is estimated that, on average, one percent growth in the agricultural sector will induce 1.2% growth in the non-agricultural sector in rural areas. This finding vindicates the view that rising incomes in the agricultural sector stimulate demand for locally produced goods and services in rural areas, in particular those produced by the non-tradable sector. Formulated appropriately, a rural development strategy that develops the agricultural sector could provide a major impetus for achieving a fast growing and vibrant rural sector in Indonesia.


The adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) is an important step in the development of modern medicine. However, complete health records are not often available during treatment because of the functional problem of the EHR system or information barriers. This paper presents a deep-learning-based approach for textual information extraction from images of medical laboratory reports, which may help physicians solve the data-sharing problem. The approach consists of two modules: text detection and recognition. In text detection, a patch-based training strategy is applied, which can achieve the recall of 99.5% in the experiments. For text recognition, a concatenation structure is designed to combine the features from both shallow and deep layers in neural networks. The experimental results demonstrate that the text recognizer in our approach can improve the accuracy of multi-lingual text recognition. The approach will be beneficial for integrating historical health records and engaging patients in their own health care.


In the majority of the processes with which one is concerned in the study of the medical sciences, one has to deal with assemblages of individuals, be they living or be they dead, which become affected according to some characteristic. They may meet and exchange ideas, the meeting may result in the transference of some infectious disease, and so forth. The life of each individual consists of a train of such incidents, one following the other. From another point of view each member of the human community consists of an assemblage of cells. These cells react and interact amongst each other, and each individual lives a life which may be again considered as a succession of events, one following the other. If one thinks of these individuals, be they human beings or be they cells, as moving in all sorts of dimensions, reversibly or irreversibly, continuously or discontinuously, by unit stages or per saltum, then the method of their movement becomes a study in kinetics, and can be approached by the methods ordinarily adopted in the study of such systems.


The initial explorations of bronchial tree pathology can be traced back to the early part of the nineteenth century. Laennec was the first to demonstrate the so-called "catarrh pulmonaire" and its significance to the disease, but the attention of physicians centered upon tuberculosis and pneumonia up until the 1950s. The death of more than 4000 -- mainly older -- people during a catastrophic four-day smog in London (1952) and the realization that chronic bronchitis and its complications were the fatal causes has proved the importance of studying this group of diseases.

Intensive research has demonstrated the necessity for a more precise definition of the group of illnesses described under the general term chronic nonspecific lung diseases. Common efforts of specialists from all over the world have culminated in accepted definitions of chronic bronchitis, pulmonary emphysema and bronchial asthma by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Recently, a common term has been used by mostly American authors for all of these diagnostic units: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Numerous studies have shown an undesirable spread of COPD in the developed countries. The high and still growing prevalence of these diseases creates a burden on health-care systems, which leads to an associated growth in health care expenditures and in the number of sick-leave cases and disabled people.

It is generally understood that the causes of COPD are largely from within the society itself: life style (smoking), environmental (air) pollution, working conditions, and social and economic circumstances are believed to be responsible for the onsets of these chronic diseases. The growth in COPD prevalence is influenced by recent demographic trends, especially population aging.

The large proportion of people with these sicknesses makes a complete registration of all tine cases a practical impossibility. But COPD prevalence must be estimated in some way because of the necessity to forecaste and plan appropriate health care resources. We have developed an appropriate tool for the analysis of possible trends and describe COPD model in this paper. The authors hope that it will be of some help in answering specific questions about COPD development. The model uses data from the Slovak Socialist Republic and allows the user to test several scenarios.


Our linguistic history is full of myths. There is the myth of the national language, the one of a particular genius of each language. Insofar as national languages are artifacts built by centuries of language policy and by the careful equipping of the major culture's languages through language instruments that are (among others) translation manuals, dictionaries and grammars, we can assume that the idea of a "language" isotopic and regular before any human intervention is also a myth. In what follows, I shall endeavor to unravel a particular myth; that of the original mother tongue of mankind. This myth has one very special feature: it was created by the scientific community and has resurfaced again after seemingly having had its fate sealed.


Sustainable forest management is hugely dependent on high-quality estimates of forest site productivity, but it is challenging to generate productivity maps over large areas. We present a method for generating site index (a measure of such forest productivity) maps for plantation loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) forests over large areas in the southeastern United States by combining airborne laser scanning (ALS) data from disparate acquisitions and Landsat-based estimates of forest age. For predicting canopy heights, a linear regression model was developed using ALS data and field measurements from the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program of the US Forest Service (n = 211 plots). The model was strong (R2 = 0.84, RMSE = 1.85 m), and applicable over a large area (~208,000 sq. km). To estimate the site index, we combined the ALS estimated heights with Landsat-derived maps of stand age and planted pine area. The estimated bias was low (−0.28 m) and the RMSE (3.8 m, relative RMSE: 19.7%, base age 25 years) was consistent with other similar approaches. Due to Landsat-related constraints, our methodology is valid only for relatively young pine plantations established after 1984. We generated 30 m resolution site index maps over a large area (~832 sq. km). The site index distribution had a median value of 19.4 m, the 5th percentile value of 13.0 m and the 95th percentile value of 23.3 m. Further, using a watershed level analysis, we ranked these regions by their estimated productivity. These results demonstrate the potential and value of remote sensing based large-area site index maps.


The concept of formal pragmatics exhibits the potential for rationality that is supposed to be implicit in the everyday language practices of societies. It is located in certain idealisations that guide communicative action to the extent that communication is linked to validity. While this reconstructive theory seeks to identify universal presuppositions of everyday communication in modern societies, this paper will show that it can be transposed onto an ancient communication (Stephen's speech) as an example of communicative action. Interpreting Stephen's speech according to Habermas' formal pragmatics in the communicative framework, infers a conception of purpose and potential to build on this example for other speech acts and communicative processes in the Bible. The problem with communicative rationality is that it cannot be reduced to any local context without the risk of it becoming useless for universal application and falling into moral relativism. However, the Bible is full of idealised normative suppositions that can provide standards for justifiable purposive and illocutionary activity. Even though Habermas hopes to provide a post-metaphysical alternative to pre-modern ideals of normativity, it will be shown that the pre-modern biblical text can still be an inspiration for the communicative rationality he sought after. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to analyse the speech act of Stephen in Acts 6:8–7:60 in relation to his formal pragmatics within the context of communicative action, as an example of critical biblical interpretation.


ABSTRACT The legitimacy of wetland decisions depends on how science and values are integrated and reflected in wetland management decisions. Natural capital and ecosystem services (ES) have become integral to how we think about ecosystem management however there is no consensus on how these concepts should be applied in management. Through the example of Alberta's wetland policy, we show how policies designed to mainstream natural capital and ES in decision-making are aligned with liberal governance arrangements that emerged in the nineteenth century. There is a governance gap between individual wetland decisions and collective ecological outcomes. The Alberta wetland policy highlights three challenges to embracing the natural capital metaphor in a liberal government context: lack of consensus on policy objectives; case by case enforcement of policy leading to continued wetland drainage; and minimal consequences for non-compliance. The combination of norms about what is fair in terms of government intervention in land use decisions and scientific uncertainty about wetland ecosystem function makes it difficult to achieve consensus on limits to wetland loss contributing to continued loss of wetland ecological function. The discussion highlights the necessity of renewed political discourse about freedom, power, and justice in relation to collective economic and ecological security.


The present paper introduces an analytical ap- proach for the description of the soil water balance dynam- ics over a schematic river basin. The model is based on a stochastic differential equation where the rainfall forcing is interpreted as an additive noise in the soil water balance. This equation can be solved assuming known the spatial distribu- tion of the soil moisture over the basin transforming the two- dimensional problem in space in a one dimensional one. This assumption is particularly true in the case of humid and semi- humid environments, where spatial redistribution becomes dominant producing a well defined soil moisture pattern. The model allowed to derive the probability density function of the saturated portion of a basin and of its relative saturation. This theory is based on the assumption that the soil water storage capacity varies across the basin following a parabolic distribution and the basin has homogeneous soil texture and vegetation cover. The methodology outlined the role played by the soil water storage capacity distribution of the basin on soil water balance. In particular, the resulting probability density functions of the relative basin saturation were found to be strongly controlled by the maximum water storage ca- pacity of the basin, while the probability density functions of the relative saturated portion of the basin are strongly in- fluenced by the spatial heterogeneity of the soil water storage capacity. Moreover, the saturated areas reach their maximum variability when the mean rainfall rate is almost equal to the soil water loss coefficient given by the sum of the maximum rate of evapotranspiration and leakage loss in the soil water balance. The model was tested using the results of a continu- ous numerical simulation performed with a semi-distributed model in order to validate the proposed theoretical distribu- tions.


OBJECTIVE
This paper presents the results of a clinical study assessing the in vivo effects on plaque metabolism of a new dentifrice containing 1.5% arginine, an insoluble calcium compound, and 1450 ppm fluoride compared to a commercially available dentifrice containing 1450 ppm fluoride alone.

METHODS
A four-week, parallel, randomized, double-blind clinical study using 54 subjects was conducted at the New York University College of Dentistry Bluestone Center for Clinical Research. Two study groups used the following products for two weeks: 1) a dentifrice containing 1.5% arginine, an insoluble calcium compound, and 1450 ppm fluoride as sodium monofluorophosphate (MFP; test); and 2) a commercial silica dentifrice with 1450 ppm fluoride as sodium fluoride (NaF; control). In the following two-week period, all subjects used the control product. The effects of product use on plaque metabolism in vivo were assessed by conducting ex vivo analyses at baseline, after two weeks of assigned product use, and after two weeks of control product use. These plaque analyses comprised pH measurements before and after an in vivo sucrose rinse, and measurements of ammonia production and lactate production.

RESULTS
The study showed that subjects using the test dentifrice, containing 1.5% arginine, an insoluble calcium compound, and 1450 ppm fluoride, had significantly higher plaque pH values before the sucrose challenge than those using the commercially available control dentifrice (p < or = 0.01). Plaque samples from subjects using the arginine-containing dentifrice also produced significantly higher levels of ammonia (p < or = 0.01). Subjects using the arginine-containing dentifrice also had a directionally higher plaque pH after the sucrose challenge, and their plaque samples produced a directionally lower level of lactate during the two-week treatment period compared to subjects using the control dentifrice. Following two weeks of subsequent use of the control product, there were no significant differences in plaque metabolism measures between groups.

CONCLUSION
A new dentifrice containing 1.5% arginine, an insoluble calcium compound, and 1450 ppm fluoride has been shown in this study to modulate plaque metabolism, increasing ammonia production and decreasing lactate production, thereby increasing plaque pH to help restore a pH-neutral environment.


In the recent decade, there are many government efforts to develop rural area as a step to curb vast economic discrepancy status within community in the nation. This effort is in line with National Development Policy promoted by government shifting from New Economic Policy. Therefore, this study area also has impact done by development activities. The enormous economic developments have encourage growth in urbanization, tourism and recreation, public facilities, housing and so on. Furthermore, the area of cultivation land uses and foliages are becoming shrinking due to development growth, which is development needs to shift land use pattern hence denotes that human beings infuriate the environment to meet the life needs. In response to that, this research delves into the level of land use changes using the Geographic Information System (GIS) and Spatial Analyst to determine the actual area or vicinity and what is the type of rigorous changes in land use. This issue can be seen all the way through the study outcome via spatial analysis technique adapted from Patch Density & Size Metrics (Mean Patch Size), Edge Metrics (Total Edge (TE), Edge Density (ED), Mean Perimeter-Area Ratio (Mpar) and Shannons Diversity Index (SHDI). Results of the study show that, land use changes have occurred significantly in the study area for the period of 20 years, wher, all types of analysis verify that there is an increase in patch for every statistical test. The increase in patch is a picture of current land use changes, land use edge density and land use area in study area. Moreover, this study investigates the relationship between land use with rising flood disaster frequency and intensity variable which has always happened lately in Kelantan River Basin.


The purpose of this research was to examine the relationship between job autonomy and work outcomes (job performance, job satisfaction and job stress), self efficacy as a mediating variable. This research also investigated the impact of job satisfaction on job performance and job stress on job performance. Variables in this research were measured via a survey of 190 banking salespersons in D.I. Yogyakarta and Solo. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) were used to examine the effects of job autonomy on work outcomes, job satisfaction on job performance, and job stress on job performance. Results showed that the estimated model in this research is acceptable based on its score of the goodness of fit index. The structural relationship showed that job autonomy significantly related to job satisfaction and performance, but not significant with job stress. It also showed that self efficacy partially mediated the relationship between job autonomy and job satisfaction, and job performance. In addition, this research found that self efficacy not mediated the relationship between job autonomy and job stress. There was no significant relationship between job autonomy and job performance but this research showed that job satisfaction significantly related to job performance. Finally, these results had an important implication to managers in designing job.