The research problem is that the land-use (re-)planning process in the existing Egyptian cities
does not attain sustainability. This is because of the unfulfillment of essential principles within
their land-use structures, lack of harmony between the added and old parts in the cities, and
other reasons. This leads to the need for developing an assessment system, which is a
computational spatial planning support system-SPSS. This SPSS is used for identifying the
degree of sustainability attainment in land-uses plans, predicting probable problems, and
suggesting modifications in the evaluated plans.
The main goal is to design the SPSS for supporting sustainability in the Egyptian cities. The
secondary goals are: studying the Egyptian planning and administrative systems for designing
the technical and administrative frameworks for the SPSS, the development of an assessment
model from the SPSS for assessing sustainability in land-use structures of urban areas, as well
as the identification of the improvements required in the model and the recommendations for
developing the SPSS.
The theoretical part aims to design each of the administrative and technical frameworks of the
SPSS. This requires studying each of the main planning approaches, the sustainability in urban
land-use planning, and the significance of using efficient assessment tools for evaluating the
sustainability in this process. The added value of the planning support systems-PSSs for
planning and their role in supporting sustainability attainment in urban land-use planning are
discussed. Then, a group of previous examples in the sustainability assessment from various
countries (developed and developing countries) are selected, which have used various
assessment tools. This is to extract some learned lessons to be guides for the SPSS. And so,
the comprehensive technical framework for the SPSS is designed, which includes the suggested
methods and techniques that perform various stages of the assessment process.
The Egyptian context is studied regarding the planning and administration systems within the
Egyptian cities, as well as the spatial and administrative problems facing the sustainable
development. And so, the administrative framework for the SPSS is identified, which includes
the entities that should be involved in the assessment process.
The empirical part focuses on the design of a selected assessment model from the
comprehensive technical framework of the SPSS to be established as a minimized version from
it. This model is programmed in the form of a new toolbox within the ArcGIS™ software through
geoscripting using Python programming language to be applied for assessing the sustainability
attainment in the land-use structure of urban areas. The required assessing criteria for the model
specialized for the Egyptian and German cities are identified, for applying it on German and
Egyptian study areas.
The conclusions regarding each of PSSs, the Egyptian local administration and planning
systems, sustainability attainment in the land-use planning process in Egyptian Cities, as well as
the proposed SPSS and the developed toolbox are drawn. The recommendations are regarding
each of challenges facing the development and application of PSSs, the Egyptian local
administration and planning systems, the spatial problems in Egyptian cities, the establishment
of the SPSS, and the application of the toolbox. The future agenda is in the fields of sustainable urban land-use planning, planning support science, and the development process in the
Egyptian cities.


With the popularity of Chinese education and the progress and development of higher education, in order to further enhance their own school-running level and teaching quality as well as improve the level of the teachers, universities has been constantly introducing advanced teaching laboratory equipments. On the one hand, it not only can help the teachers with their teaching, but also can well improve the students' learning efficiency. However, there are also many problems existed in management of the large number of laboratory equipments, for the traditional artificial unintelligent managing way of using pen and paper in daily record already cannot meet the needs of the presented situation. Collecting data by manhood will cause such problems as collecting not in time or collecting incorrectly. And collecting data by manhood puts forward higher request for laboratory managers in equipment management. But if increase the laboratory management personnel, it also causes problems such as the waste of human resources and the increased cost of school management, etc. The presented research, mainly by using the experience and thought in management of logistics field for reference, makes a research on the application of laboratory equipment management in colleges and universities based on RFID logistics technology to solve the problems exited in the management of laboratory equipments. Using real-time monitoring laboratory equipment and intelligent tracking laboratory equipments to record and verify information can reduce the workload of lab manager and strengthen the way and the level of the laboratory management. At the same time, it also can enables the superior managers to timely master the status of school laboratory equipments, accelerating the informational construction of universities and colleges, further optimizing the configuration of teaching laboratory equipments, and fully improving usage rate of the school laboratory equipments.


This thesis was written as a supporting paper for a graphic design exhibit for a Master of Fine Arts Degree. The focus of my design is the creation of successful pieces of expressive graphic design that defy many traditional or formal rules of design. This thesis begins with a brief explanation of my methods and what I feel makes for good expressive design. These include a heavy reliance upon intuition, the necessity of traditional design education, historical and contemporary influences. I then characterize my motivations and methods of creating graphic design. Followed by the relation of my work to historical and contemporary influences. I conclude with a summary of the design work achieved in pursuit of this degree.


Physicians' duties to their patients traditionally have been construed narrowly in time and scope to focus on the specific episode of care or clinical encounter. Physicians generally have had no ethical or legal duty to notify patients about new medical information discovered after a visit, notwithstanding the health care benefits to patients that might flow from receiving the information.


Various saponins have demonstrated allelochemical effects such as bactericidal impacts as well as antimycotic activity against some plant pathogenic fungi, thereby acting to benefit plant growth and development. A commercial saponin solution was evaluated for bactericidal effects against Escherichia coli and growth of lettuce (Lactuca sativa) in a hydroponic system. E. coli (P4, P13, and P68) inoculum at final concentration of 108 colony-forming units (cfu)/mL was added to 130 L of a fertilized solution recirculating in a nutrient film technique (NFT) system used to grow 'Rex' lettuce. After 5 weeks in the NFT system, E. coli populations were lowest in the inoculated treatment that did not contain any saponin addition (0.89 log cfu/mL) when compared with all other inoculated treatments (P < 0.001). The treatment containing 100 µg·mL−1 saponin extract had an E. coli population of 4.61 log cfu/mL after 5 weeks that was higher than treatments containing 25 µg·mL−1 or less (P < 0.0001). Thus, higher E. coli populations were observed at higher saponin concentrations. Plant growth was also inhibited by increasing saponin concentrations. Fresh and dry shoot weight were both higher in the inoculated and uninoculated treatments without the saponin addition after 5 weeks in the NFT system (P < 0.0001). Lettuce head diameter was smaller when exposed to saponin treatments with concentrations of 50 and 100 µg·mL−1 (P < 0.0001). Lettuce leaves were also tested for the potential of E. coli to travel systemically to the edible portions of the plant. No E. coli was found to travel in this manner. It was concluded that steroidal saponins extracted from mojave yucca (Yucca schidigera) are not an acceptable compound for use in mitigation of E. coli in hydroponic fertilizer solution due to its ineffectiveness as a bactericide and its negative impact on lettuce growth.


The joint analysis of data from different programs represents a good opportunity to improve knowledge about the condition of any exploited populations. This note investigates the influence of lag-time in sample characteristics (growth rate and recruitment) by following a simple and quick exploratory procedure. In order to illustrate this approach, the Greater Fork-beard (Phycis blennoides Brunnich, 1768), a species with discrete recruitment pattern and available to the capture process in the first years of life, was considered . The length-frequency distributions (LFD), obtained during five spring (MEDITS - International) and successive autumn (GRUND - Italian) bottom trawl surveys, conducted from 1994 to 1998, in the Strait of Sicily and Southern Tyrrhenian Sea (Mediterranean) were analysed. The procedure was divided into three steps. Firstly, the LFD were analysed in order to estimate the mean length of the first component in each survey. Secondly, for each survey, the difference between the standardized mean lengths of the first components in the LFD of the two areas was compared with the corresponding lag-time in order to assess any systematic temporal effect in recruitment periodicity. Thirdly, for each area, the absolute and instantaneous growth rates between the spring and autumn surveys of the same year were computed on the base of the lag-time, to evaluate any difference in growth rate between the areas. The results show that the earlier the surveys begin in the Strait of Sicily, the smaller is the difference in mean length. Since the growth rates between the two areas are practically indistinguishable, the higher mean lengths observed in samples from the Strait of Sicily mainly reflect the lag-time. The reference mean growth rate found (1.03 and 0.93 cm per month in the Strait of Sicily and Southern Tyrrhenian Sea, respectively) agreed with the literature. In spring, the recruits of 0 group represent up to 90% of the whole trawl catch, and the smallest length class observed (4.5-5.0 cm) is close to the size of transition from the pelagic to the demersal one. The proposed exploratory procedure shows that systematic differences between the two investigated sub-areas in mean size and growth rate suggested by actual data are strongly reduced after having included the lag-time in the analysis.


Along with the ever-increasing number of motor vehicles in current transportation systems, intelligent video surveillance and management becomes more necessary which is one of the important artificial intelligence fields. Vehicle-related problems are being widely explored and applied practically. Among various techniques, computer vision and machine learning algorithms have been the most popular ones since a vast of video/image surveillance data are available for research, nowadays. In this thesis, vision-based approaches for vehicle detection, recognition, and re-identification are extensively investigated. Moreover, to address different challenges, several novel methods are proposed to overcome weaknesses of previous works and achieve compelling performance.
Deep visual feature learning has been widely researched in the past five years and obtained huge progress in many applications including image classification, image retrieval, object detection, image segmentation and image generation. Compared with traditional machine learning methods which consist of hand-crafted feature extraction and shallow model learning, deep neural networks can learn hierarchical feature representations from low-level to high-level features to get more robust recognition precision. For some specific tasks, researchers prefer to embed feature learning and classification/regression methods into end-to-end models, which can benefit both the accuracy and efficiency. In this thesis, deep models are mainly investigated to study the research problems.
Vehicle detection is the most fundamental task in intelligent video surveillance but faces many challenges such as severe illumination and viewpoint variations, occlusions and multi-scale problems. Moreover, learning vehicles' diverse attributes is also an interesting and valuable problem. To address these tasks and their difficulties, a fast framework of Detection and Annotation for Vehicles (DAVE) is presented, which effectively combines vehicle detection and attributes annotation. DAVE consists of two convolutional neural networks (CNNs): afastvehicleproposalnetwork(FVPN)forvehicle-likeobjectsextraction and an attributes learning network (ALN) aiming to verify each proposal and infer each vehicle's pose, color and type simultaneously. These two nets are jointly optimized so that the abundant latent knowledge learned from the ALN can be exploited to guide FVPN training. Once the model is trained, it can achieve efficient vehicle detection and annotation for real-world traffic surveillance data.
The second research problem of the thesis focuses on vehicle re-identification (re-ID). Vehicle re-ID aims to identify a target vehicle in different cameras with non-overlapping views. It has received far less attention in the computer vision community than the prevalent person re-ID problem. Possible reasons for this slow progress are the lack of appropriate research data and the special 3D structure of a vehicle. Previous works have generally focused on some specific views (e.g. front), but these methods are less effective in realistic scenarios where vehicles usually appear in arbitrary view points to cameras. In this thesis, I focus on the uncertainty of vehicle viewpoint in re-ID, proposing four different approaches to address the multi-view vehicle re-ID problem: (1) The Spatially Concatenated ConvNet (SCCN) in an encoder-decoder architecture is proposed to learn transformations across different viewpoints of a vehicle, and then spatially concatenate all the feature maps for further fusing them into a multi-view feature representation. (2) A Cross-View Generative Adversarial Network (XVGAN)is designed to take an input image's feature as conditional embedding to effectively infer cross-view images. The features of the inferred and original images are combined to learn distance metrics for re-ID.(3)The great advantages of a bi-directional Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) loop are investigated of modeling transformations across continuous view variation of a vehicle. (4) A Viewpoint-aware Attentive Multi-view Inference (VAMI) model is proposed, adopting a viewpoint-aware attention model to select core regions at different viewpoints and then performing multi-view feature inference by an adversarial training architecture.


Evaluating the potential of new drugs and their metabolites to cause drug‐drug interactions (DDIs) is critical for understanding drug safety and efficacy. Although multiple analyses of proprietary metabolite testing data have been published, no systematic analyses of metabolite data collected according to current testing criteria have been conducted. To address this knowledge gap, 120 new molecular entities approved between 2013 and 2018 were reviewed. Comprehensive data on metabolite‐to‐parent area under the curve ratios (AUCM/AUCP), inhibitory potency of parent and metabolites, and clinical DDIs were collected. Sixty‐four percent of the metabolites quantified in vivo had AUCM/AUCP ≥ 0.25 and 75% of these metabolites were tested for cytochrome P450 (CYP) inhibition in vitro, resulting in 15 metabolites with potential DDI risk identification. Although 50% of the metabolites with AUCM/AUCP < 0.25 were also tested in vitro, none of them showed meaningful CYP inhibition potential. The metabolite percentage of plasma total radioactivity cutoff of ≥ 10% did not appear to add value to metabolite testing strategies. No relationship between metabolite versus parent drug polarity and inhibition potency was observed. Comparison of metabolite and parent maximum concentration (Cmax) divided by inhibition constant (Ki) values suggested that metabolites can contribute to in vivo DDIs and, hence, quantitative prediction of clinical DDI magnitude may require both parent and metabolite data. This systematic analysis of metabolite data for newly approved drugs supports an AUCM/AUCP cutoff of ≥ 0.25 to warrant metabolite in vitro CYP screening to adequately characterize metabolite inhibitory DDI potential and support quantitative DDI predictions.


This project offers an initial evaluation of using the online learning platform Prezi as a tool for increasing student learning within a MA unit in human geography. It does this by comparing the use of Prezi to four other learning activities conducted during the course. The aim of the project is to see whether the use of this technology became an end in itself, thereby distracting students and detracted from their learning, or whether it added some value to the course. Data comes mainly from five semi-structured interviews with participants. The qualitative data suggests that students appreciated Prezi because it allowed them to be more creative, to select and condense knowledge and to offer a new dimension to presenting knowledge. But, overall, lectures, discussion and group presentations were more important than Prezi in terms of their learning process. The only activity which was less important than Prezi was the other addition to the course: formal debates. Prezi appears to be able to complement students' learning when they have been able to acquire knowledge through other teaching activities. In essence, it can enhance learning based on more traditional, tried and tested teaching techniques. (Less)


Book description: This book uses the EM (expectation maximization) algorithm to simultaneously estimate the missing data and unknown parameter(s) associated with a data set. The parameters describe the component distributions of the mixture; the distributions may be continuous or discrete. The editors provide a complete account of the applications, mathematical structure and statistical analysis of finite mixture distributions along with MCMC computational methods, together with a range of detailed discussions covering the applications of the methods and features chapters from the leading experts on the subject. The applications are drawn from scientific discipline, including biostatistics, computer science, ecology and finance. This area of statistics is important to a range of disciplines, and its methodology attracts interest from researchers in the fields in which it can be applied.


Communication and Professional Relationships in Healthcare Practice focuses on the crucial role that spoken interactions play in shaping relationships in contemporary healthcare practice. The authors apply theoretical concepts of communication to the workplace of healthcare, drawing upon scenarios based in the settings of clinical experience. The book presents a range of interactions (including consultations, team meetings, dialogues and casual conversations) between health professionals, their colleagues and their clients or patients in a variety of settings. Drawing on the latest research in applied linguistics and professional communication, the authors introduce readers to a number of approaches that can be used to analyse these interactions. Using these techniques, readers will discover exactly how central themes of healthcare practice (including trust, empathy, expertise and breaking bad news) are constructed through the communicative choices that participants make in these interactions. Designed specifically for medical, nursing and allied health practitioners with an interest in communication, this book makes the techniques of discourse analysis accessible and provides ample opportunities for individual practitioners to apply this knowledge to their own professional contexts.


Background Participation in youth sports is increasing. Yet, limited research on the incidence and severity of injuries within middle school sports(MSS) exists. Objective Describe the epidemiology of injuries in MSS within a large metropolitan school system located in the US. Design Prospective descriptive epidemiology. Setting Injury data collected in 9-MSS programs during 2015–2016. Patients (or Participants) Boy(n=1194) and girl(n=1008) athletes(age=11–14 years) participating in 12 school sponsored sports. Interventions (or Assessment of Risk Factors) Each of the 9 schools was assigned an athletic trainer(AT) who attended all practices and games during the fall, winter, and spring sports seasons of 2015–2016. Main Outcome Measurements ATs collected injury and athlete-exposure(AE) data. Injury frequencies and rates with 95% confidence intervals(95%CI) for practices and games were described by sport for all injuries (no-time-loss and time-loss). Injury proportions were described by body region. Results 1643 injuries(182.6±64.8 injuries/school) were reported. Highest rates of injury were: Girls' basketball (39.4/1000AE 95% CI: 34.7–44.1), American football (30.7/1000AE 95% CI: 27.3–34.1), wrestling (28.7/1000AE 95% CI: 24.4–32.9), and girls' soccer (26.3/1000AE 95% CI: 22.1–30.6). Lowest rates of injury were: Girls' volleyball (9.1/1000AE 95% CI: 6.7–11.6), boys' baseball (10.2/1000AE 95% CI: 6.8–13.5), cheerleading (10.6/1000AE 95% CI: 8.5–12.8), and boys' soccer (14.7/1000AE 95% CI: 11.8–17.7). Most injuries occurred during practice (n=889, 54%) compared with games (n=390, 24%). The top three injured body regions injured were: lower extremity (n=744, 45%), upper extremity (n=409, 25%), and head (n=297, 18%). The highest rates of concussion were: football (2.9/1000AE 95% CI: 1.9–4.0), girls' soccer (2.2/1000AE 95% CI: 0.9–3.4), and cheerleading (1.1/1000AE 95% CI: 0.4–1.8). Most concussions occurred during practice (47.3%) compared with games (34.5%). Conclusions Consistent with previous research a greater proportion of MMS injuries occurred during practices than games. However, our finding that girls' basketball had the highest injury rate differs from prior research. Overall, our rates were higher than those previously reported, yet more precise given our sample size and detailed documentation AE. Our findings highlight the need for medical care at MMS practices and games.


Public shareholders likely have suffered billions of dollars in losses in recent years as a result of collusion among potential purchasers in change-of-control transactions. Unfortunately, the federal courts have been unable to devise an appropriate antitrust approach to collusion in change-of-control transactions. This article proposes a new approach to the antitrust regulation of the market for the control of public and private companies. Collusion among purchasers in that market has occurred in nearly every American industry. The proposed approach will effectively deter the three types of anticompetitive conduct most likely to occur in these circumstances: (1) express agreements to allocate bids among potential purchasers, (2) implicit bid rigging by potential purchasers, and (3) consortiums among potential purchasers to submit single bids in company auctions. This Article illustrates the advantages of the proposed approach by applying it to "going private" transactions, which in recent years have become the most popular—and the most controversial—of all types of acquisitions.


It has become almost customary to begin discussions of Victorian poetry with a lament. Whether the occasion is formal or simply that of everyday conversation among colleagues, we tend to bemoan the low profile of the field, the misunderstandings and inadequate attention to which Victorian poets have been subjected, and the tyrannical dominance of the field's neighbors, Romantic and modern poetry and the Victorian novel. (1) Although many of the intellectual movements that initially gave rise to this lament have passed (clearly we no longer feel the need to argue with T. S. Eliot and Cleanth Brooks), the mood of pessimism has proved remarkably resilient. Today, that structure of feeling is driven not by a widespread criticism of the aesthetic value of our subject but rather by a curious incongruity: while Victorian poetry was central to the life of the Victorians, it remains marginal to the study of modern Britain. We need to claim for Victorian poetry a vital, pivotal place within the larger field--and to make good on that claim, not by adopting the methods, hermeneutics, and debates developed within the study of Romanticism or the Victorian novel but instead by reshaping them. Victorian poetry itself, and its presence in every arena of Victorian culture and society, points the way forward. To say poetry permeated Victorian life is to insist upon a fact doubtless endorsed by most if not all the readers of this journal, but it also is to remind ourselves about the deep texture of the world we are engaged in trying to understand and describe. Claims about the autonomy of the aesthetic realm notwithstanding, we know that poetry and ideas about poetry were fundamental to the time. This is true not of canonical verse alone but of all poetry, canonical and forgotten, high and low, avant garde and conventional, hortatory and anti-didactic, philosophical and psychological. To recognize this is to see that the importance of Victorian poetry to British studies rests not so much upon the popularity or the intellectual reach of its finest writers as it does upon the way they and their fellow poets together helped create their age. The Victorian social whole was often imagined as a congeries of interconnected spheres, as a house with as many nooks and crannies and hidden staircases as the architectural style that took its name. The study of Victorian poetry can enter all these spaces of Victorian life. To do so, we need to develop the interdisciplinary and trans-generic methods that are beginning to flourish in our field and to understand them in a new way. The value of interdisciplinary work resides in its dialectical processes, its capacity both to enrich our analysis of a particular literary text and to complicate our understanding of the topics, discourses, and modes of expression upon which it bears. The outward movement represented by interdisciplinarity is most effective as an extended visit: for instance, when a study not only brings ideas about geology to the analysis of In Memoriam but also brings Tennyson's ideas to the history of scientific thought. Of course, this is easy to say and excruciatingly difficult to do. Yet studies of Victorian poetry in particular have had a tendency toward a narrow and inward-looking conceptualization of their aims and ends, not to mention an occasional stance of dogged resistance to the "trendy" preoccupations motivating work elsewhere in Victorian and British studies. These tendencies no doubt emerge from, as they reinforce, a sense of the marginality of the field. To the extent that this is the case, a simple reorientation in perspective and ambition alone may enable a richer engagement with larger debates. Victorian poetry scholarship deserves an expanded sense of the conversations in which it participates and a more capacious understanding of the aims to which it is directed. (2) Recent studies of aestheticism might serve as a model in this regard. In Linda Dowling's foundational Language and Decadence in the Victorian Fin de Siecle (1986), as in more recent works such as Yopie Prins's Victorian Sappho (1999), Talia Schaffer's Forgotten Female Aesthetes (2000), and the pieces in Schaffer and Kathy Psomiades' collection Women and British Aestheticism (1999), poetry figures centrally in a scholarly project geared toward the reconceptualization of Victorian culture from the 1860s into the 1890s. …


The structural stratification of a solar-type main sequence star primarily depends on its mass and chemical composition. The surface heavy element abundances of the solar-type stars are reasonably well determined using conventional spectroscopy, however the second most abundant element helium is not. This is due to the fact that the envelope temperature of such stars is not high enough to excite helium. Since the helium abundance of a star affects its structure and subsequent evolution, the uncertainty in the helium abundance of a star makes estimates of its global properties (mass, radius, age etc.) uncertain as well. The detections of the signatures of the acoustic glitches from the precisely measured stellar oscillation frequencies provide an indirect way to estimate the envelope helium content. We use the glitch signature caused by the ionization of helium to determine the envelope helium abundance of 38 stars in the {\it Kepler} seismic LEGACY sample. Our results confirm that atomic diffusion does indeed take place in solar-type stars. We use the measured surface abundances in combination with the settling predicted by the stellar models to determine the initial abundances. The initial helium and metal mass fractions have subsequently been used to get the preliminary estimates of the primordial helium abundance, $Y_p = 0.244\pm0.019$, and the galactic enrichment ratio, $\Delta Y / \Delta Z = 1.226\pm0.849$. Although the current estimates have large errorbars due to the limited sample size, this method holds great promises to determine these parameters precisely in the era of upcoming space missions.


There is no doubt that security mechanisms, such as authentication, are required in Information and Communication Technology, but they come at a price: Users need to spend additional time and effort to authenticate themselves. With this in mind, user perception of authentication is an important factor for successful use of authentication solutions. If users perceive an authentication procedure as time-consuming and difficult, they might ignore or try to bypass it. Therefore, user-perceived Quality of Experience (QoE) should be investigated. QoE is a challenging area as it, in this case, covers network performance and security as well as Human Computer Interaction and user experience. Throughout this work, authentication performance is investigated, starting with a framework for evaluating security architectures and authentication solutions in general. Criteria for user-friendliness, security and simplicity are described and the evaluation methods span from theoretical to practical, and qualitative to quantitative methods. The latter two aspects are investigated by a study of user experience of web authentication with OpenID using the EAP-SIM authentication method. The user experiments resulted in several user models of QoE. One particular user model for QoE, the exponential relationship between QoE and network level performance, was then used in further experiments on performance evaluation of OpenID authentication using EAP-SIM. The latter was done to determine the decisive factors for QoE of the authentication method in use. The results from these experiments show that the combination of OpenID and EAP-SIM for authentication over a secure tunnel is not appropriate to use over networks with high delays. The latter implies the need for improvements of the authentication procedure of OpenID using EAP-SIM, which should be addressed in the future. The user model of QoE obtained in this study will even help to quantify the performance aspects of future authentication procedures.


The new mineral species disulfodadsonite, Pb11Sb13S30(S2)0.5, has been discovered in a cavity of the Liassic marbles quarried in the Ceragiola area, near the town of Seravezza, Apuan Alps, Tuscany, Italy. It occurs as acicular crystals, up to 3–4 mm in length and a few micrometers in width, associated with boulangerite, calcite, and sphalerite. Disulfodadsonite is metallic black. Under the ore microscope, it is white with red internal reflections visible on the grain edges; no pleochroism could be distinguished. Anisotropy is weak but distinct, with rotation tints from brown to dark blue. Electron microprobe analyses collected on two different grains give (wt %): Pb 46.42(20), Sb 32.29(32), As 0.41(2), S 20.19(13), Cl 0.03(2), total 99.34(58), and Pb 46.76(55), Sb 32.30(32), As 0.40(4), S 20.64(9), Cl 0.02(1), total 100.12(35). On the basis of ∑ Me = 48 apfu, the structural formulae are respectively Pb21.74(8)(Sb25.73(8)As0.53(2))∑=26.26S61.11(24)Cl0.08(4) and Pb21.83(25)(Sb25.66(25)As0.51(4))∑=26.17S62.27(41)Cl0.06(2), close to Pb22Sb26S62 (against Pb23Sb25S60Cl for dadsonite). The crystal structure study gives a triclinic unit cell, space group P-1 , with a 4.1192(3), b 17.4167(14), c 19.1664(16) A, α 96.127(6), β 90.015(7), γ 91.229(7)°, V 1366.9(2) A3. Main diffraction lines of the powder diagram, corresponding to multiple hkl indices, are (relative visual intensity): 3.820 (ms), 3.649 (s), 3.416 (s), 3.381 (vs), 2.857 (ms), 1.897 (ms). The mean crystal structure of disulfodadsonite has been solved by X-ray single-crystal study on the basis of 3389 reflections with a final R 1 = 0.102. It agrees with the general features of dadsonite but without any visible superstructure. The unit-cell content is Pb11Sb13S30(S2).5 (Z = 1). There are five pure Pb and five pure Sb sites, two mixed (Sb/Pb) sites, and sixteen S positions. The structure can be described as formed by rod-layers, with two types of rod-layers alternating along the b stacking direction. Disulfodadsonite is the Cl-free homeotype of dadsonite, Pb23Sb25S60Cl, stabilized by the disulfide ion (S2)2−, and related by the coupled substitution Pb2+ + Cl− → Sb3+ + (S2)2−. Its formation is dependent upon a high value of f (S2), like other associated minerals at Seravezza (native sulfur, enargite, moeloite, etc ).


The ability to use tools is one of the hallmarks of intelligence. Tool use is fundamental to human life and has been for at least the last two million years. We use tools to extend our reach, to amplify our physical strength, and to achieve many other tasks. A large number of animals have also been observed to use tools. Despite the widespread use of tools in the animal world, however, studies of autonomous robotic tool use are still rare.
This dissertation examines the problem of autonomous tool use in robots from the point of view of developmental robotics. Therefore, the main focus is not on optimizing robotic solutions for specific tool tasks but on designing algorithms and representations that a robot can use to develop tool-using abilities.
The dissertation describes a developmental sequence/trajectory that a robot can take in order to learn how to use tools autonomously. The developmental sequence begins with learning a model of the robot's body since the body is the most consistent and predictable part of the environment. Specifically, the robot learns which perceptual features are associated with its own body and which with the environment. Next, the robot can begin to identify certain patterns exhibited by the body itself and to learn a robot body schema model which can also be used to encode goal-oriented behaviors. The robot can also use its body as a well defined reference frame from which the properties of environmental objects can be explored by relating them to the body. Finally, the robot can begin to relate two environmental objects to one another and to learn that certain actions with the first object can affect the second object, i.e., the first object can be used as a tool.
The main contributions of the dissertation can be broadly summarized as follows: it demonstrates a method for autonomous self-detection in robots; it demonstrates a model for extendable robot body schema which can be used to achieve goal-oriented behaviors, including video-guided behaviors; it demonstrates a behavior-grounded method for learning the affordances of tools which can also be used to solve tool-using tasks.


Abstract The Strait of Istanbul connecting the Black Sea to the Aegean Sea, is one of the major trade artery in the World with an average of 132 transits a day, second to the Straits of Malacca. The Montreux Convention of 1936 relating to the regime of the Turkish Straits establishes freedom of passage and navigation with certain formalities for merchant vessels of any flag and with any kind of cargo, by day and by night, and the Strait is kept open for shipping traffic. Hence the Bosphorus serves as an international seaway of economic and strategic importance. Due to angular windings transit shopping either way, requires at least 12 major course alterations as much as 80°, with severely limited vision around these bends. Geographical and oceanographic conditions as well as navigational constraints are the main parametres making the navigation through difficult and risky. Additionally, since passage through the Strait, entails a run by about 17 nautical miles all the way and takes almost two hours, utmost vigilance is necessary in order to maintain safe standards of navigation and to conduct vessels. ' Turkey introduced the traffic separation schemes, in full compliance with the Rule 10 of the ColRegs 72, in the Turkish Straits Region, the Strait of Istanbul inclusive, to enhance safety of navigation. The new schemes have been in use since 01 July 1994. One of the contemporary safety measures that Turkish Republic has taken recently is to install the use of the VTMIS, Vessel Traffic Management and Information System. The System based on 7 radar stations is fully operational as from 01 July 2003. A The Strait faces dense shipping transits. Mean figure to cover 1994-2002 period indicates that 132 vessels a day navigate the Bosphorus. Taking 1936 figure as the basis, shipping traffic has increased by almost ten times. The Strait faced 461 marine casualties of different types - i.e 209 collisions, 138 groundings, 77 strandings, 28 fires / explosions and 9 others (such as rudder blockade, vessel's list, or engine breakdown) - in 1953-2002 period. Safe navigation in the Bosphorus is a matter. of vital importance to Turkey as well as to all nations using the Strait. Therefore, the dangers posed by ever increasing shipping traffic to the surrounding inhabited areas and to the environment have compelled Turkey to take immediate action and to reinforce existing regulations of maritime traffic in the Strait.


This study investigates the variations by older people's socio-economic status (SES) (i.e. educational level and social class) in the use of informal and formal help from outside the household in Great Britain, Italy, Belgium and The Netherlands. In all these countries, it was older people in low SES groups who mostly used such help. Multinomial logistic regression analyses showed that, in each country and for both types of help, there were SES gradients in the utilisation of both formal and informal care, and that differences in age, health and marital status largely accounted for the former but not the latter. Cross-national differences in the use of both informal and formal help remained when variations in sex, age, SES, health, marital status, home ownership and the use of privately-paid help were taken into account. Significant interaction effects were found, which indicated that older people in low SES groups in Great Britain and The Netherlands had higher odds of using informal help from outside the household than their counterparts in Italy, and similarly that those in The Netherlands were more likely to use formal help than their Italian peers. The results are discussed in relation to the cultural differences and variations in the availability of formal services among the countries.


The acclaimed biography of one of England's great eccentrics and leading fashion designers, reissued in an updated edition to coincide with a major exhibition of Westwood's work at the Victoria & Albert Museum. * For three decades, Vivienne Westwood has been Britain's most consistently original, outrageous, eccentric and controversial designer. In that time she has evolved from an iconoclastic outsider to an internationally revered figure, with two British Designer of the Year awards, an OBE, her own successful fashion label and an unrivalled reputation for leading where other designers follow. * Her lifestyle could scarcely be in greater contrast to the opulence which surrounds other leading designers: until recently she lived in a modest council flat in South London, and she still travels around the capital by bicycle, dressed in her own flamboyant creations, with a plastic bag protecting her hair from the elements. How did an awkward girl from a conventional and provincial background become one of world fashion's most influential and respected designers? How has she managed to remain true to her own idiosyncratic vision, refusing to conform to the fashion industry's, and society's, expectations? * Speaking to Westwood herself, her friends, lovers, colleagues, rivals, admirers and detractors, Jane Mulvagh has created a portrait as rich, distinctive and constantly surprising as her subject's character and work.


The inclusive jet cross-section is measured in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV using a data set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.5 fb−1 collected with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider in 2011. Jets are identified using the anti-kt algorithm with radius parameter values of 0.4 and 0.6. The double-differential cross-sections are presented as a function of the jet transverse momentum and the jet rapidity, covering jet transverse momenta from 100 GeV to 2 TeV. Next-to-leading-order QCD calculations corrected for non-perturbative effects and electroweak effects, as well as Monte Carlo simulations with next-to-leading-order matrix elements interfaced to parton showering, are compared to the measured cross-sections. A quantitative comparison of the measured cross-sections to the QCD calculations using several sets of parton distribution functions is performed.


Abstract A study is presented on the rise of qualitative research in psychology over the 20th century. The incidence of qualitative research as indicated by several search terms (i.e., "qualitative research," "grounded theory," "discourse analy*," "empirical phenomenological," and "phenomenological psychology") was traced through the PsycINFO and Dissertation Abstracts International databases. It was found that, with the exception of the search terms having to do with phenomenology, records containing these search terms were basically non-existent until the 1980s, when there was a sharp rise that intensified in the 1990s. The PsycINFO records were sorted according to (1) whether they came from psychology or other social and health science disciplines; (2) region of origin; (3) the types of document to which they referred; and (4) whether they focused on the methodology or the application of qualitative research. A number of interesting differences emerged from this comparative analysis. Implications of the findings for the supposition that a paradigm shift may be underway are discussed. The term "qualitative research" refers to a variety of approaches to enquiry in the health and social sciences that address the meaning of verbal text in verbal rather than numerical terms. More fundamentally, qualitative research is more subjective than quantitative research; more exploratory than confirmatory; more descriptive than explanatory; more interpretive than positivist (see Denzin & Lincoln, 1994). Thus, in many ways qualitative research cuts across the grain of accustomed research practice. Accordingly, there is resistance to accepting it in many quarters. Nevertheless, a path has been cleared for it in part by the postmodern critique of the modern quest for objective knowledge. More fundamentally, perhaps, the appeal of qualitative research is so great for some investigators that they are engaging in it despite the resistance to it (McMullen, 2002; Stoppard, 2002). There seems to have been an uptake of qualitative research in psychology in recent years. It also seems that no one has examined the extent of this uptake. A number of questions are of interest: When did the turn to qualitative research in psychology begin and how has its growth developed? What kinds of publications constitute the resulting literature? Are there regional differences in the use of qualitative research? How much emphasis has been placed on qualitative research methodology as opposed to its application? It appeared to us that the answers to questions like these would have a bearing on the most interesting question of all: What is to be made of the arrival of qualitative research on the scene in terms of the predominance of the natural science approach to enquiry? Is its presence now large enough that it can be considered a major movement - the emergence of an alternative "paradigm," as Kuhn (1970; cf. McMullen, 2002; O'Neill, 2002) might put it? Or alternatively, is it the case that, under close scrutiny, it becomes evident that qualitative research has yet to make a significant impact on the psychology research infrastructure? In an attempt to address these questions, we decided to study the psychological literature produced in the 20th century. This decision presented a number of difficulties having to do with changes in the use of language over that period of time. This problem could have been addressed through the study of whole documents. To do that would have necessitated sampling in order to handle the volume of them, however. The alternative was to apply search terms to an electronic database. This approach had the appeal of being more comprehensive. Even here, though, such a study would be limited by the scope of the particular database and by the particular search terms used. Thus, neither approach is ideal but, on balance, given that we wished to do an exploratory study, we decided that the latter strategy is the better of the two and so turned to PsycINFO, produced by the American Psychological Association (APA). …


Abstract. The late Paleozoic ice age (LPIA) had a profound effect on the biota. Despitemuch research having been focused on paleotropical regions or global-scale analyses, regional ecological changes have seldom been studied in ice-proximal basins. Here, I study the compositional turnover and diversity structure across the main Carboniferous glacial event recorded in western Argentina and the subsequent nonglacial interval. Brachiopod and bivalve data from western Argentina suggest that the transition from glacial to nonglacial climates caused major compositional changes. Turnover, however, was not uniform across the bathymetric gradient, being higher in deep environments. Because extirpation was concentrated in brachiopods, but immigration was similar in both clades, the taxonomic structure of the region was significantly modified. Although regional hierarchical diversity structure and occupancy distributions remained stable, dissecting the analysis in brachiopods and bivalves underscores that both clades had different responses to climate change. Brachiopods, on the one hand, show stability in the diversity structure and a very slight decrease in occupancies of intermediate genera, while bivalves showan important rise in diversity, both at the environment and regional scale, and an increase in genera with intermediate occupancies. The bathymetric diversity gradient was also modified from hump shaped with maximum diversity in the deep subtidal to a linear gradient with maximum values toward the offshore. However, relative compositional differences within environments remained stable, with maximum values at intermediate depths both in glacial and nonglacial intervals. Moreover, local-scale coexistence between brachiopods and bivalves changed in the nonglacial interval, showing significant segregation, which indicates relevant modifications in community assembly dynamics. Results from western Argentina highlight the magnitude of regional-scale ecological changes during the LPIA in ice-proximal regions, suggesting that the waxing and waning of glaciers was able to cause regional taxonomic turnover and mediumscale ecological changes even during intervals of relative macroevolutionary quiescence.


The Vienna Hours, illuminated by the artist known as the "Master of Mary of Burgundy", was originally commissioned by Margaret of York. The later parts of the manuscript commemorate the love and marriage between Mary of Burgundy and Maximilian of Habsburg, and their (newborn or expected) child.The miniatures and texts in question convey the same idea expressed on several occasions by the official historian, Jean Molinet: in the Burgundian court, the duchess was venerated as the Virgin Mary (and in consequence of this, Maximilian – and Philip – came to be revered as the Saviour, and Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor, as the Father). Underlying the tendency to identify Mary of Burgundy with the Virgin Mary was the situation of Burgundy and its heiress, which was understood by means of salvation-historical analogies. In the book of hours, the figures of the two Marys are conflated several times in a variety of ways (fols. 14v, 19v, 43v, 94v, 99v). The hymn in praise of the heavenly joys of the Virgin Mary, which is organically related to the frontispiece image, is thus (also) a chanted sequence for the eternal beatitude of the young bride. The painter conjured up the imaginary figure of Maximilian in the foreground of the two miniatures with window scenes, while the jewels in the border around the image of the Crucifixion scene allude to Margaret of York. These miniatures have a playful tone (as evidenced by the role-swapping between the Marys, the book-within-a-book, picture-within-a-picture, vision-within-a-vision, trompe l'oeil solutions, and the complex dialogue between objects, materials and locations).There are a number of factors supporting the argument that the miniatures, hitherto attributed to the Master of Mary of Burgundy, were illuminated by Hugo van der Goes, who was a resident of the Red Cloister at the time, and that he was commissioned by the Austrian Archduke. The date of 1478 is rendered likely by stylistic and biographical factors (the paintings Hugo made in the cloister, both before and after, his later illness, the visit of Maximilian, the birth of Philip the Handsome). It was also at this time that Jean Molinet wrote Le Chappellet des dames, which makes multiple comparisons between the duchess and the Virgin Mary, and whose imagery is often echoed in the folios of the Vienna Hours. It is possible that the first (co-)owner of the manuscript was Maximilian of Habsburg.


After outlining some comparative features of poverty in India, this article reviews critically recent literature on the dynamics of poverty. On economic efficiency grounds, it rejects the view that the chronically poor are more deserving than the non-chronic poor of poverty assistance. Mechanisms of households and communities for coping with poverty are discussed. The possibility is raised that where poverty has been persistent that rational methods for coping with it are likely to be well established, and less suffering may occur than for households and communities thrown temporarily into poverty. However, situations can also be envisaged where such rational behaviours deepen the poverty trap and create unfavourable externalities for poverty alleviation. Conflict can arise between programmes to alleviate poverty in poor communities and the sustainability of these communities and their local cultures. Problems posed by this are discussed. Furthermore, the impact of market extension on poor landholders is considered. In contrast to the prevailing view that increased market extension and liberalisation is favourable to poor farmers, it is argued that inescapable market transaction cost makes it difficult for the poor to survive as landholders in a fluid and changing market system. The likelihood of poor landholders joining the landless poor rises, and if they migrate from the countryside to the city they face further adjustment hurdles. Consequently, poor landholders may be poorer after the extension of the market system and only their offspring may reap benefits from market reforms.


A series of 3,3-ethylenedioxy-exoand endobornyl esters have been prepared and subjected to α-benzylation using lithium diisopropylamide and benzyl bromide. In the exo-series of esters the diastereofacial selectivity of benzylation was found to improve (up to 34% d.e.) as the steric bulk of the O-alkyl group increased, whereas in the endo-series, a surprising decrease in stereoselectivity was observed as the steric bulk increased – an observation attributed to flexibility of the metal-coordinated endo-enolate system, compared to the relative rigidity of the exo analogues. The conformational options for each series was explored at the density functional theory level. Reductive cyclization of a range of specially prepared N-carbobenzyloxy-amino acid esters has been shown to afford the corresponding derivatives, contrary to previous reports that the cyclization is limited to the glycine derivative. The cyclization sequence has been explored in detail, and the yield has been shown to be critically dependent on the stereochemistry of the α-amino acid moiety. Moreover, it seems that reductive cyclization occurs more readily with the endorather than the exo-bornyl N-CBZ-amino acid esters. Molecular modelling of relevant transition states at the DFT levels indicates that L-amino acid-derived systems should cyclize preferably in the exo-series and D-amino acid-derived systems should cyclize preferably in the endo series. Studies of alkylation of an iminolactone system have reported an interesting anomaly exo-methylation is observed while endo-alkylation predominates for larger alkyl groups. This has been studied in detail at the DFT level, and the anomaly is attributed to thermodynamic control in the methyl case, whereas kinetic control is the norm in this system. Preliminary computer modelling of the intramolecular rearrangement of a 3,3-xylylbornyl system at the HF/STO-3G level raised doubts concerning the structure assigned by Evans to one of the rearrangement products, prompting an X-ray crystallographic analysis and leading to the revision of its structure from a pinene to a camphene derivative. The previously elusive spiro[bornane-3,2'-indan]-2-exo-tosylate has been successfully isolated, and the kinetics of its ready decomposition to the two camphene products has been followed by 1H NMR spectroscopy. The endo-tosylate analogue, on the other hand, was found to be remarkably stable. Kinetic data obtained for rearrangement of this exo-bornyl tosylate have indicated the operation of tandem autocatalytic and pseudo-first-order transformations leading sequentially to the two isomeric camphene products. An extensive coset analysis of all possible rearrangement processes of the initially-formed cation formed from decomposition of the exo-tosylate has afforded a graph containing 336 classical cations (modelled at the AM1 and B3LYP levels) and 526 transition-state complexes (modelled at the AM1 level). This analysis afforded a viable 4-step classical mechanism connecting the first camphene product with the second. A more realistic study, involving non-classical carbocations, has afforded a graph of all possible (classical and non-classical) cations that could be formed by rearrangment of the initiallyformed cation. The resulting graph confirms that the only energetically feasible path corresponds to the classical mechanism, but simply involves two steps, including a novel, concerted Wagner-Meerwein – 6,2-hydride shift – Wagner-Meerwein rearrangement.


High splitting, optically amplified, passive optical networks (SuperPONs) are investigated in terms of redundancy provision and protection mechanisms. Options for redundancy, including the important special case of dual homing, are detailed, and it is determined as to which of these options (duplication of the feeder and first distribution section, and N+1 protection of the optical amplifiers in the amplified splitter) would be required to be provided to all attached users to facilitate appropriate availability of the basic telephony service. The distributed amplified splitter dual homing solution is found to outperform the single amplified splitter solution in terms of its survivability. The protection mechanisms necessary to automatically switch to the redundant provision are discussed and it is seen that with the aid of suitable regular precautionary procedures protection switching can generally be provided rapidly (<50 ms). Finally, an availability, and cost versus availability, study confirms the aforementioned redundancy assessment for fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) implementations, but shows fiber-to-the-curb (FTTC) as needing additional redundancy.


Point patterns and stochastic structures lie at the heart of Monte Carlo based numerical integration schemes. Physically based rendering algorithms have largely benefited from these Monte Carlo based schemes that inherently solve very high dimensional light transport integrals. However, due to the underlying stochastic nature of the samples, the resultant images are corrupted with noise (unstructured aliasing or variance). This also results in bad convergence rates that prohibit using these techniques in more interactive environments (e.g. games, virtual reality). With the advent of smart rendering techniques and powerful computing units (CPUs/GPUs), it is now possible to perform physically based rendering at interactive rates. However, much is left to understand regarding the underlying sampling structures and patterns which are the primary cause of error in rendering. This course surveys the most recent state-of-the-art frameworks that are developed to better understand the impact of samples' structure on the error and its convergence during Monte Carlo integration. It provides best practices and a set of tools for easy integration of such frameworks for sampling decisions in rendering. We revisit stochastic point processes that offers a unified theory explaining stochastic structures and sampling patterns in a common principled framework. We show how this theory generalizes spectral tools developed over the years to analyze error and convergence rates, and allows for analysis of more complex point patterns with adaptive density and correlations. At the end of the course, the audience will have a comprehensive understanding of both theoretical and practical aspects of point processes that would guide them in choosing and designing sampling strategies for applications specific to Monte Carlo rendering. A codebase and web application for easy use of the introduced techniques will also be made available on https://github.com/sinbag/SamplingAnalysisWithCorrelations.


In recent years significant effort has been focused on improving the safety culture amongst fleet buyers; however around half of all new vehicles sold in Australia are for private use. In attempts to highlight the importance of vehicle safety amongst private consumers of both new and used cars, a number of consumer information programs have been developed. These include the Australian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP), the Used Car Safety Ratings (UCSR) Program and the howsafeisyourcar.com.au web site. Surveys have identified an increase during the past decade in the level of consumer interest in vehicle safety. Despite this, the priority private consumers place on vehicle safety within their purchasing decision remains unclear. A comprehensive review revealed a paucity of public information regarding consumer understanding of specific safety features or ratings, and the importance placed on safety features relative to other features such as convenience and comfort. The aim of this research was to explore the key mechanisms driving private consumer choice in vehicle selection, particularly regarding safety within Australia. A total of 2,013 participants from Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland who were in the market for a vehicle, completed pre and post vehicle purchase surveys (n=1,009 and n=1,004 respectively) designed to establish purchasing behaviours and priorities across the vehicle purchasing process. The factors: age, gender, concern about crash involvement, and sourcing ANCAP ratings were found to be significant factors in the identification of a "safe vehicle purchaser" profile. Females, participants aged 50 years or older, those with greater levels of concern about being involved in a crash, and those who sourced ANCAP information were identified as being more likely to place high priority on secondary safety features in their vehicle purchase. The results of this project provide valuable insights which can be employed to encourage private vehicle buyers to purchase the safest possible vehicles.


The Moon's changeable aspect during a lunar eclipse is largely attributable to variations in the refracted unscattered sunlight absorbed by the terrestrial atmosphere that occur as the satellite crosses the Earth's shadow. The contribution to the Moon's aspect from sunlight scattered at the Earth's terminator is generally deemed minor. However, our analysis of a published spectrum of the 16 August 2008 lunar eclipse shows that diffuse sunlight is a major component of the measured spectrum at wavelengths shorter than 600 nm. The conclusion is supported by two distinct features, namely the spectrum's tail at short wavelengths and the unequal absorption by an oxygen collisional complex at two nearby bands. Our findings are consistent with the presence of the volcanic cloud reported at high northern latitudes following the 7–8 August 2008 eruption in Alaska of the Kasatochi volcano. The cloud both attenuates the unscattered sunlight and enhances moderately the scattered component, thus modifying the contrast between the two contributions.


To whom does the past belong? Is the archeologist who discovers a lost tomb a sort of hero - or a villain? If someone steals a relic from a museum and returns it to the ruin it came from, is she a thief? Written in his trademark lyrical style, Craig Childs's riveting new book is a ghost story - an intense, impassioned investigation into the nature of the past and the things we leave behind. We visit lonesome desert canyons and fancy Fifth Avenue art galleries, journey throughout the Americas, Asia, the past and the present. The result is a brilliant book about man and nature, remnants and memory, a dashing tale of crime and detection.


Energy is fundamental to maintain comfort and it shapes our modern life. With the excess demand for energy, home energy management systems are appearing with time. They aim at reducing or modulating energy consumption while keeping an acceptable level of comfort. Efficient home energy management systems should embed a behavioral representation of a home system, including inhabitants. It establishes relationships between different environmental variables and heterogeneous phenomena present in a home. Therefore, those systems are complex to build and to understand for inhabitants. For this reason, the designers did try to automatize as much as possible the HVAC systems, the lightings ... so they promoted the concept of "doing instead". This was justified as it was nearly impossible to implicate occupants and to create a relation between occupants and energy systems. This concept does create different problems as occupants are detached from the energy system and they don't understand its functionality nor how it is working.To overcome this difficulty this work promotes the concept of "doing with" as it tries to implicate the occupant in the loop with their energy management system. This is where the explanation is needed to allow occupants to discover the knowledge in the energy system and to develop their capacity of understanding how the system is working and why it is recommending different actions. The explanation is the way to discover new knowledge and consequently, to involve occupants. For humans, explanation plays an important role in life. It is one of the main tools for learning and understanding. It is even used in communication and social aspects. People tend to use it besides learning to show their knowledge about a subject to gain the confidence of others or to clarify a situation. But generating explanations is not an easy task. It is one of the ongoing scientific problems from several decades. Explanations have numerous forms, types, and level of clearness. This study is focusing on the causal explanations. As it is the most intuitive form of explanation to be understood by occupants and is adapted to transfer the knowledge from complex systems like energy models. The scientific challenge is how to construct causal explanations for the inhabitants from a flow of observed sensor data.


Cytochrome c (cyt c) acts as an electron shuttle in biological respiration and photosynthesis. Although the understanding of this protein and its electron transfer (ET) reaction is relatively highly developed, many of its aspects remain unclear. We use supramolecular assemblies of cytochrome c to understand its ET at an interface in terms of how the ET depends on solution composition, SAM composition, temperature, immobilization methods and the nature of the electron tunneling pathway. From these studies we have learned: (1) the formal potential and the surface charge of cytochrome c are modified when binding to a negatively charged surface; (2) cytochrome c molecules assume a wide distribution of geometries when electrostatically binding to a negatively charged surface, which leads to a wide distribution of ET rate constants; (3) when the protein is within 14 A of the electrode, the ET rate is controlled by local frictional motions rather than by electron tunneling; (4) the binding-inactive sites, the diluent molecules on the SAM can provide alternative electron tunneling pathways from electrode surface to the heme of cytochrome c, and in suitable conditions the diluent molecules dominate in the electron tunneling pathway. Poly (phenylethynylene) (PPE) based conjugated polyelectrolytes are a class of polyions having rigid backbones. We present a fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) study on the hydrodynamic properties of complexes formed by two PPE-SO3- polymers, having different charge density, with octadecyl trimethylammoniumbromide (OTAB) below the critical micelle concentration. The concentration ratio COTAB /Cmonomer ranges from 0.2 to 1800. The hydrodynamic radius of the complexes as a function of OTAB concentration has three regimes. In the low concentration regime, the complex has a comparable size with the polymer in deionized water. In the intermediate concentration regime the complexes have the largest size and substantial heterogeneity. In the high concentration regime, the complexes have a size that is about three times larger than that in the low concentration regime. The results significantly extend the understanding of the interaction between polyelectrolyte and ionic surfactant, and indicate that the rigidity of polymer backbone and COTAB /Cmonomer concentration ratio act to determine the composition of polyelectrolyte/surfactant complexes.


Abstract. This study examines the multi-decadal to centennial variability of benthic ecosystems, depositional environments and biogeochemical processes in the Gulf of Taranto (Italy) over the last millennium. Our study is based on sediment cores from two sites in the eastern Gulf of Taranto (Mediterranean Sea), and benthic foraminifera data of 43 surface sediment samples from the western Adriatic Sea reflecting modern conditions. We use the data to unravel relative contributions of natural and anthropogenic forcing to conditions at the sediment-water interface in a marine setting with a long history of human impacts in river catchments. High abundances of infaunal foraminifera in surface sediments trace the nutrient-rich Po river outflow and display an area of high organic matter deposition in the north-eastern Gulf of Taranto. Decreasing Ca / Ti ratios suggest increasing terrigenous fluxes at ~ 1300 AD driven by wetter conditions during persistent negative phases of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). A strong NAO connection is also evident in high-resolution clay mineral data. The smectite / illite ratio reflects variable Po river runoff, and correlates well with NAO strength for the past 300 years. Benthic ecosystem variability as reflected by foraminifera is closely linked to the Northern Hemisphere temperature evolution during the past millennium. Spectral analysis reveals a quasi-periodic variability of ~ 50 to ~ 70 years suggesting an Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) forcing of Italian hydrology. Coeval with increasing anthropogenic activity, the effects of rising temperatures and nutrient discharge during the past 200 years further enhanced nutrient and organic matter fluxes. This is reflected by a substantial rise in the abundance of shallow to intermediate infaunal benthic foraminifera (SIIBF) and a concurrent decrease of Uvigerina mediterranea δ13C since at least 1800 AD. The SIIBF decrease in the youngest samples likely reflects environmental effects of stricter regulations on fertilizer use in Italy and the reduction of sediment transport due to the stabilization of river banks.


Purpose: Greater participation in international trade is an essential element of economic growth. Trade and transport facilitation (TTF) measures and instruments are seen as important initiatives to smooth the progress of trade volumes. The measurement of TTF performance provides the basis for the development of initiatives aimed at accelerating the flow of goods across borders as well as optimising customs processes. A key problem is that there is neither uniformity nor standard frameworks or methodologies for measuring the operations performance of trade and transport facilitation. This scenario leads us to the following questions: which performance factors can be considered as general key operational elements for the facilitation of trade and transport? Can these factors be expressed in terms of performance objectives that are strategic for operations in general? This study focused upon operational aspects of TTF. Its main purpose was to identify and categorise factors that represent key operations performance aspects on the field.

Research approach: The research approach used to identify key TTF performance factors was Delphi study. This method was adopted because it allows the achievement of reliable consensus on complex issues, in circumstances where accurate information does not exist or is impossible to obtain economically. It also allows reliable and creative exploration of ideas as the basis for the production of suitable information for decision making. Delphi technique is an exercise of group communication interspersed with controlled opinion feedback involving a panel of geographically dispersed experts. In order to avoid influences, the group interaction in Delphi is anonymous. A knowledgeable group of eleven academics, consultants, and practitioners with large experience in the area of global logistics and supply chain management formed the group of experts in this study.

Findings and Originality: This paper reports the findings of a Delphi study involved in a research project funded by the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT) UK. Critical operations performance elements such as speed, dependability, flexibility, quality, and cost provided the basis for the categorisation of the key TTF performance factors identified in the study. Those performance elements are well established performance aspects in the operations management discipline. This classification framework provides clarification, sound referential basis, and a more structured and consistent way to represent key performance factors on TTF operations.

Research impact: The framework developed in this study can be a useful reference for regional comparisons, helping the assessment of trade and transport facilitation operations performance at port and country level. The study also contributes to the definition of more standardised indicators that can potentially assist in designing and implementing effective and targeted programs to increase agility, dependability, flexibility, quality, and lower the cost of moving goods and services across borders. Finally, it provides a basis for the development of further indicators for the analysis of performance aspect of trade and transport facilitation, as well as a basis for the development of further studies involving comparative analysis of operations performance aspects in the field.

Practical impact: The main outcome of the study provides a useful managerial framework for the analysis of the performance of trade and transport facilitation at the operational level. In practical terms, the framework can be used as a basis for monitoring, benchmarking, and detecting specific areas with poor operational performance. This way, port managers and government customs officers can develop more targeted and straightforward initiatives to improve the agility (speed), reliability (dependability), responsiveness (flexibility), quality, and cost effectiveness of their trade and transport facilitation processes. The framework can also be used as a common reference for the comparison of the operational performance of different ports, supporting strategic decisions such as government prioritisation plans to improve the infrastructure of ports with poor performance as well as logistics service providers' decisions to operate, or not, with a particular port.


Recent theory suggests that firms incorporate synergistic interrelationships among executives into optimal incentive design (Edmans et al. 2013). We focus on Pay Performance Sensitivities (PPS) and use dispersion in PPS across top executives as a proxy for the incentive design component shaped by an executive team's synergy profile. We model optimal PPS dispersion and use residuals from this model to measure deviations from optimal. We find that firm performance is increasing (decreasing) in the residual when PPS dispersion is too low (too high). We conjecture that deviations from optimal are sustained by adjustment costs, finding that firms only close around 60% of the gap between target and actual PPS dispersion over the subsequent year. Viewing a team's equity grants as a vector, we provide evidence that firms use subsequent equity grants to actively manage PPS dispersion towards optimality. Cross-sectional analysis reveals that the deleterious effect of deviations from optimal is decreasing in the duration of a team's tenure together, and increasing in the importance of effort coordination across team members for firm performance.


One of the major challenges facing society today is increasing proportion of its elderly population. Nowadays, elderliness along with its all psychological, socio-cultural, ideological and economic aspects have become a serious and challenging issue affecting families in developing and developed countries. Thus, the current study aimed to examine families' experiences of putting their elders in nursing homes. A phenomenological research method was employed to pursue this qualitative study. The samples of the study were selected through purposive sampling method; and data collection proceeded until it reached to the data saturation within 10 participants. The instruments adopted by the researcher include note-taking and in-depth and unstructured interviews with the families of the elderly who put their elders in nursing homes. The obtained data were analyzed using Colaizzi's seven-step process of analysis. The four general themes derived include isolation, peace, abusiveness, children's inability to look after their elders and guilty conscience; each of which contained some sub-themes. According to the results, it is essential to take the social, economic and health support of the elderly into consideration and to provide the necessary context for improving the life quality of the elderly residing in nursing homes through formulating, planning and making appropriate policies.


Complementary and alternative medicine, for reasons varying from a desire to control symptoms and prevent and treat cancer to high accessibility, has assumed significant importance in cancer treatment and care for many patients. An estimated 14% to 65% of Australian adult cancer patients use complementary and alternative medicine (compared with up to 80% to 91% in Europe and the US). Cancer patients who use complementary and alternative medicine are typically female, younger, more educated and of higher socioeconomic status. Moreover, 33% to 77% of patients do not disclose complementary and alternative medicine use to their physicians. Particular complementary and alternative medicine (eg. herbal medicines, nutritional supplements) have drawn steadfast opposition from clinicians, primarily because they remain unproven in clinical trials. However, some complementary therapies (eg. relaxation, massage) used as adjuncts to conventional medical treatments, have proven beneficial in reducing disease or treatment symptoms and improving quality of life and psychological functioning in high quality cancer clinical trials. Nevertheless, cancer patients problematically perceive complementary and alternative medicine as more 'natural' and safer than conventional treatments. Indeed, there is evidence of harm. Herbal medicine, nutritional supplements and other natural therapies, for instance, may pose direct safety risks because of their potential adverse effects or interactions with conventional anti-cancer treatments and other medications. Consequently, some complementary therapies should not be used under any circumstances irrespective of potential benefit (eg. St John's wort), while others may be beneficial when cancer patients are not undergoing conventional treatments and have no other contraindications. Complementary and alternative medicine may also cause indirect harm (eg. resultant delays in conventional treatment potentially compromise treatment outcomes, quality of life and survival). It is therefore imperative that those involved in the medical care of cancer patients are equipped with the skills and knowledge to help patients appropriately evaluate complementary and alternative therapies. Additionally, due to the safety risks involved, clinicians are strongly encouraged to routinely ask patients about complementary and alternative medicine use. In conclusion, whether termed integrative cancer care or complementary medicine, health professionals in Australia should strongly consider offering evidence-based complementary therapies (or at least safe forms of them) alongside conventional treatments through their own cancer services. Conceivably, this will influence patients to continue with mainstream care and help them avoid any potential harm that may occur with autonomous complementary and alternative medicine use. In this way, optimal holistic care will be ensured for cancer patients by clinicians providing conventional oncology treatment and care.


Abstract Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is a way to promote ethical and socially desirable research. The concept of RRI has recently become more important. Public research funders have embedded RRI principles in their policies and now it is time for higher education institutions to embrace this principles as well. With this in mind, the following editorial summarizes the work that has been done so far to integrate RRI principles into higher education. Since teaching RRI is one of the key activities to implement its principles in higher education, our focus will be also be on how to successfully deliver the teaching of responsible research. Finally, an overview of the major problems that the implementation of RRI in higher education encounters and possible suggestions will be discussed. These are important questions to be asked from the perspective of the ORBIT project, which aims to foster a culture of RRI in the UK ICT research community. Ensuring that RRI is adequately covered is a necessary condition of success for this culture shift.


Background Across Europe, transplant centers vary in the content of the psychosocial evaluation for eligible living organ donors. To identify whether a common framework underlies this variation in this evaluation, we studied which psychosocial screening items are most commonly used and considered as most important in current psychosocial screening programs of living organ donors. Methods A multivariate analytic method, concept mapping, was used to generate a visual representation of the "psychosocial" screening items of living kidney and liver donors. A list of 75 potential screening items was derived from a systematic literature review and sorted and rated for their importance and commonness by multidisciplinary affiliated health care professionals from across Europe. Results were discussed and fine-tuned during a consensus meeting. Results The analyses resulted in a 6-cluster solution. The following clusters on psychosocial screening items were identified, listed from most to least important: (1) personal resources, (2) motivation and decision making, (3) psychopathology, (4) social resources, (5) ethical and legal factors, and (6) information and risk processing. Conclusions We provided a conceptual framework of the essential elements in psychosocial evaluation of living donors which can serve as a uniform basis for the selection of relevant psychosocial evaluation tools, which can be further tested in prospective studies.


This study based on the effect of nisin on Listeria monocytogenes in white pickled cheese made from pasterurized milk during the ripening and storage period for 60 days. For this purpose, four groups of cheese were produced. All groups were inoculated with the L. monocytogenes 1/2a test strain at the levels of 10 4 -10 5 cfu/ml. Group I was remained as a control group (contained no starter culture and nisin). Group II was added a mixture culture of the commercial starter culture Lactococcus lactis and Lactococcus cremoris in a proportion of 2 % , while in group III was added the same starter culture with 30 µg/ml nisin, and group IV contained only 30 µg/ml of nisin. In this way, 3 productions were realized. FDA suggested method was used for the isolation of L. monocytogenes and the development of L. monocytogenes during this period was determined using Most Probable Number (MPN) technic. Regarding the group I cheeses, at the end of the first 24 hours, the number of L. monocytogenes increased 3-4 log; in the group II cheeses, with an increase of approx. 1 log, in turns it reached the level of 10 7 -10 8 MPN/g and 10 5 MPN/g without any important change during the ripening and storage period and it remained at this level until the end of 60th day. In the groups III and IV cheeses, after the first 24 hours there was a decrease of more than 2 and 3 log in the number of L. monocytogenes and in the group III cheeses, the number of L. monocytogenes gradually decreased and it was either totally eliminated or it remained at a level of 0.23 MPN/g, while in the group IV cheeses, the agent gradually decreased and it was totally eliminated at the end of the 60th day. As a result, it has been ascertained that nisin has a strong bactericid effect on the L. monocytogenes. So this important foodborne pathogens was eliminated from white pickled cheese during the ripening and storage period for 60 days with adding of 30g/ml nisin.


Objectives. We analyzed cervical cancer incidence and mortality data in American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) women compared with women of other races. Methods. We improved identification of AI/AN race, cervical cancer incidence, and mortality data using Indian Health Service (IHS) patient records; our analyses focused on residents of IHS Contract Health Service Delivery Area (CHSDA) counties. Age-adjusted incidence and death rates were calculated for AI/AN and White women from 1999 to 2009. Results. AI/AN women in CHSDA counties had a death rate from cervical cancer of 4.2, which was nearly twice the rate in White women (2.0; rate ratio [RR] = 2.11). AI/AN women also had higher incidence rates of cervical cancer compared with White women (11.0 vs 7.1; RR = 1.55) and were more often diagnosed with later-stage disease (RR = 1.84 for regional stage and RR = 1.74 for distant stage). Death rates decreased for AI/AN women from 1990 to 1993 (‐25.8%/year) and remained stable thereafter. Conclusions. Although rates decreased over time, AI/AN women had disproportionately higher cervical cancer incidence and mortality. The persistently higher rates among AI/AN women compared with White women require continued improvements in identifying and treating cervical cancer and precancerous lesions. (Am J Public Health. 2014;104:S415‐S422. doi:10.2105/AJPH.


Established in 1630, Watertown was among the original six towns of Massachusetts. Its early history was marked by frequent disputes, a penchant for questioning authority, and an atmosphere of tension and discord. In recounting the story of Watertown's formative years, Roger Thompson examines how the community managed to avoid descending into anarchy. He also explores the ways in which English settlers preserved their habits of behavior in a new-world environment, even as they were obliged to innovate and embrace change. Thompson describes Watertown's early government, its relations with Native Americans and neighboring communities, its religious and economic affairs, and the day-to-day experiences of its people. Conflict occurred over a wide variety of issues: land allocation, administrative accountability, religious orthodoxy and exclusivity, generational and gender differences, livestock and fencing haves and have-nots. Thompson brings these disputes to life through a series of vivid case studies drawn from the unpublished Middlesex County Court Records. Among others, we meet John Sawin, who despite his best efforts at subterfuge was convicted of stealing and selling a neighbor's horse; Susanna Woodward, whose pregnancy resulted in a fiercely contested paternity case; and Edward Sanders, whose punishment for child abuse was both a whipping and a ruling that when in public he must "wear a rope round his neck openly to be seen hanging down two feet." Throughout the book, the same themes reappear: continuity and change, the persistent conflicts of the first two generations, and the countervailing forces of communal cohesion.


This is the second of two theme issues of Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A, which together contain selected papers from the UK e-Science All Hands Meeting 2008. The conference was held in Edinburgh between 8 and 11 September 2008 (http:// www.allhands.org.uk/2008/). The papers that appear here have been through a rigorous peer review process, as described in the introduction to the first theme issue (Coveney & Atkinson 2009). Their quality serves to highlight the vibrant, interdisciplinary nature of the field and the impact it is having across an exceptionally wide range of endeavours, from the physical sciences all the way to the arts and humanities, as well as from the pure to the applied.


Excess sediment production in the upper parts of catchments may result in important impacts over morphodynamics of gravel bed-rivers. By changing morphodynamics, sediment overfeeding may induce important changes in the structure of near-bed flow, mainly in what concerns exchange of momentum and mass between flow within the roughness elements and flow in the upper regions. It is not well-known how turbulent statistics, including those characterizing the bursting cycle, are affected by bed load transport, for mobile but geometrically similar beds. This study addresses this issue. It is aimed at evaluating the impacts of sediment transport on flow hydrodynamics, namely on statistics of turbulent coherent structures. In order to accomplish the proposed objective, laboratory tests were undertaken. Two-dimensional instantaneous flow velocity fields in the stream-wise and vertical directions were measured with Particle Image Velocimetry. Two laboratory tests simulated a framework gravel bed with sand matrix and a framework gravel bed with sand matrix but with sediment transport imposed at near capacity conditions. The framework consists of coarse gravel whose diameters range between 0.5 cm and 7 cm and is kept immobile under the imposed flow conditions. The mobile sediments are sand with a mean diameter of 0.9 mm. For both tests, the quadrant threshold analysis technique was employed and shear stress distribution statistics were analyzed and discussed in what concerns their contribution and persistence. In the case of mobile conditions, sweep events tend to govern the flow in the near-bed region. Relevant differences between mobile and sub-threshold beds are found in the wake of roughness elements, mostly for sweep statistics. In the presence of bed-load, ejection events decrease their participation in the shear stress production processes. This decrease in the ejection events contribution is partially balanced with an increase in the frequency of inward events.


In this dissertation, I provide a left-to-right incremental parsing approach for Headdriven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG; Pollard and Sag (1987, 1994)). HPSG is a lexicalized, constraint-based theory of grammar, which has also been widely exploited in computational linguistics in recent years. Head-final languages are known to pose problems for the incrementality of head-driven parsing models, proposed for parsing with constraint-based grammar formalisms, in both psycholinguistics and computational linguistics. Therefore, here I further focus my attention on processing a head-final language, specifically Turkish, to highlight any challenges that may arise in the case of such a language. The dissertation makes two principal contributions, the first part mainly providing the theoretical treatment required for the computational approach presented in the second part. The first part of the dissertation is concerned with the analysis of certain phenomena in Turkish grammar within the framework of HPSG. The phenomena explored in this part include word order variation and relativization in Turkish. Turkish is a head-final language that exhibits a considerable degree of word order freedom, with both local and long-distance scrambling. I focus on the syntactic aspects of this freedom in simple and complex Turkish sentences, detailing the assumptions I make both to deal with the variation in the word order, and also to capture certain restrictions on that variation, within the HPSG framework. The second phenomenon, relativization in Turkish, has drawn considerable attention in the literature, all accounts so far being within the tradition of transformational grammar. Here I propose a purely lexical account of the phenomenon within the framework of HPSG, which I claim is empirically more adequate than previous accounts, as well as being computationally more attractive. The motivation behind the work presented in the second part of the dissertation mainly stems from psycholinguistic considerations. Experimental evidence (e.g. MarslenWilson (1973)) has shown that human language processing is highly incremental, meaning that humans construct aword-by-word partial representation of an utterance as they hear each word. Here I explore the computational effectiveness of an incremental processing mechanism for HPSG grammars. I argue that any such processing mechanism has to employ some sort of nonmonotonicity in order to guarantee both completeness and termination, and propose a way of doing that without violating the soundness of the overall approach. I present a parsing approach for HPSG grammars that parses a string of words from left to right, attaching every word of the input to a global structure as soon as it is encountered, thereby dynamically changing the structure as the parse progresses. I further focus on certain issues that arise in incremental processing of a "free" word order, head-final language like Turkish. First, I investigate how the parser can benefit from the case values in Turkish in foreseeing the existence of an embedded phrase/clause before encountering its head, thereby improving the incrementality of structuring. Second, I propose a strategy for the incremental recovery of filler-gap relations in certain kinds of unbounded dependency constructions in Turkish, which further enables one to capture a number of (strong) preferences that humans exhibit in processing certain examples with potentially ambiguous long-distance dependency relations.


Light absorption by carotenoids is known to vary substantially with the shape or conformation of the pigment molecule induced by the molecular environment, but the role of interactions between carotenoid pigments and the proteins to which they are bound, and the resulting impact on organismal coloration, remain unclear. Here, we present a spectroscopic investigation of feathers from the brilliant red scarlet ibis (Eudocimus ruber, Threskiornithidae), the orange-red summer tanager (Piranga rubra, Cardinalidae) and the violet-purple feathers of the white-browed purpletuft (Iodopleura isabellae, Tityridae). Despite their striking differences in colour, all three of these feathers contain canthaxanthin (β,β-carotene-4,4′-dione) as their primary pigment. Reflectance and resonance Raman (rR) spectroscopy were used to investigate the induced molecular structural changes and carotenoid–protein interactions responsible for the different coloration in these plumage samples. The results demonstrate a significant variation between species in the peak frequency of the strong ethylenic vibration (ν1) peak in the rR spectra, the most significant of which is found in I. isabellae feathers and is correlated with a red-shift in canthaxanthin absorption that results in violet reflectance. Neither polarizability of the protein environment nor planarization of the molecule upon binding can entirely account for the full extent of the colour shift. Therefore, we suggest that head-to-tail molecular alignment (i.e. J-aggregation) of the protein-bound carotenoid molecules is an additional factor.


The İzmir‐Ankara suture represents part of the boundary between Laurasia and Gondwana along which a wide Tethyan ocean was subducted. In northwest Turkey, it is associated with distinct oceanic subduction‐accretion complexes of Late Triassic, Jurassic, and Late Cretaceous ages. The Late Triassic and Jurassic accretion complexes consist predominantly of basalt with lesser amounts of shale, limestone, chert, Permian (274 Ma zircon U‐Pb age) metagabbro, and serpentinite, which have undergone greenschist facies metamorphism. Ar‐Ar muscovite ages from the phyllites range from 210 Ma down to 145 Ma with a broad southward younging. The Late Cretaceous subduction‐accretion complex, the ophiolitic mélange, consists of basalt, radiolarian chert, shale, and minor amounts of recrystallized limestone, serpentinite, and greywacke, showing various degrees of blueschist facies metamorphism and penetrative deformation. Ar‐Ar phengite ages from two blueschist metabasites are ca. 80 Ma (Campanian). The ophiolitic mélange includes large Jurassic peridotite‐gabbro bodies with plagiogranites with ca. 180 Ma U‐Pb zircon ages. Geochronological and geological data show that Permian to Cretaceous oceanic lithosphere was subducted north under the Pontides from the Late Triassic to the Late Cretaceous. This period was characterized generally by subduction‐accretion, except in the Early Cretaceous, when subduction‐erosion took place. In the Sakarya segment all the subduction‐accretion complexes, as well as the adjacent continental sequences, are unconformably overlain by Lower Eocene red beds. This, along with the stratigraphy of the Sakarya Zone, indicates that the hard collision between the Sakarya Zone and the Anatolide‐Tauride Block took place in Paleocene.


DEEP FEATURE REPRESENTATIONS AND MULTI-INSTANCE MULTI-LABEL LEARNING OF WHOLE SLIDE BREAST HISTOPATHOLOGY IMAGES Caner Mercan Ph.D. in Computer Engineering Advisor: Selim Aksoy March 2019 The examination of a tissue sample has traditionally involved a pathologist investigating the case under a microscope. Whole slide imaging technology has recently been utilized for the digitization of biopsy slides, replicating the microscopic examination procedure with the computer screen. This technology made it possible to scan the slides at very high resolutions, reaching up to 100, 000 × 100, 000 pixels. The advancements in the imaging technology has allowed the development of automated tools that could help reduce the workload of pathologists during the diagnostic process by performing analysis on the whole slide histopathology images. One of the challenges of whole slide image analysis is the ambiguity of the correspondence between the diagnostically relevant regions in a slide and the slide-level diagnostic labels in the pathology forms provided by the pathologists. Another challenge is the lack of feature representation methods for the variable number of variable-sized regions of interest (ROIs) in breast histopathology images as the state-of-the-art deep convolutional networks can only operate on fixed-sized small patches which may cause structural and contextual information loss. The last and arguably the most important challenge involves the clinical significance of breast histopathology, for the misdiagnosis or the missed diagnoses of a case may lead to unnecessary surgery, radiation or hormonal therapy. We address these challenges with the following contributions. The first contribution introduces the formulation of the whole slide breast histopathology image analysis problem as a multi-instance multi-label learning (MIMLL) task where a slide corresponds to a bag that is associated with the slide-level diagnoses provided by the pathologists, and the ROIs inside the slide correspond to the instances in the bag. The second contribution involves a novel feature representation method for the variable number of variable-sized ROIs using the activations of deep convolutional networks. Our final contribution includes a more advanced MIMLL