Two experiments attempted to train pigeons to produce variable response sequences. In the first, naive pigeons were exposed to a procedure requiring four pecks on each of two keys in any order, with a reinforcer delivered only if a given sequence was different from the preceding one. In the second experiment, the same pigeons were exposed to this procedure after having been trained successfully to alternate between two specific response sequences. In neither case did any pigeon produce more than a few different sequences or obtain more than 50% of the possible reinforcers. Stereotyped sequences developed even though stereotypy was not reinforced. It is suggested that reinforcers have both hedonic and informative properties and that the hedonic properties are responsible for sterotyped repetition of reinforced responses, even when stereotypy is negatively related to reinforcer delivery.


HEIs are likely to face tight fiscal constraints in the future. This paper uses random effects and stochastic frontier techniques to estimate an output distance function over the period 1997/97 to 2007/08 in order to investigate the efficiency of higher education institutions (HEIs) and to examine the opportunities for substitution between inputs. Mean efficiency across the whole sector is estimated to be 70%, and further investigation reveals that the pattern of production in the typical institution in the highest efficiency quartile is closest to the pattern of production of the average pre-1992 university. The Morishima elasticities calculated from the parameter estimates suggest that the main possibilities for substitution are out of undergraduates into other inputs and from administration into other inputs (except academic services). Opportunities for substitution are generally much more limited from postgraduate inputs, staff and academic services. A simple examination of the effects of merger activity reveals that it takes place amongst institutions which are typically performing at the same level as non-merging HEIs, and that it has beneficial effects in terms of efficiency.


In the globalization era, organ trafficking has become quite synonymous with human sacrifice being witnessed by a widespread violation of human rights. Emergence of inherent issues like- the right to life of the patient and the recipient and the right to possess ownership of organs especially in the case of living donors as a dilemma and resolving such till date received mixed scholarly response. Like in other countries, in India too one can witness shortage of supply versus exceeding demand, issue of consenting mechanism with difficulty in pinpointing criminal liability in the criminal chain from donor to recipient lacking adequate data in spite of a enacted legislation like the Organ Transplantation Act, 1994 reflecting thereby the glimpse of an ever expanding illegality of the organ trade. The present doctrinal based research paper basing upon its main Hypothesis –For Legitimizing the Organ Transplant and overcoming socio-economic challenges in India, it is necessary along with public awareness proper coordination between Governments of all levels for fruitful enforcement of law. Thus, in attempting to meet up the present challenges in combating organ trafficking in India following Research Objectives have been formulated- (A) Scope of definitional aspects of organ trafficking, (B) Pointing out the bio-ethical arguments supporting legitimization of organ market, (C) Relevance of organ trafficking in global scenario, (D) Pinpointing the legislative inadequacies and other institutional factors hindering the organ transplantation in India and how to overcome the challenges.


With the rapid technology changes in today's world companies that depend on technology need to strategically choose and plan their technology path in order to maintain competitive advantage and avoid any future problems. In this case we have a popular company i.e. Intel Corporation, that provides its employees with a variety of laptops to choose from. We on the other hand, are going to let them choose from the new and advanced Tablets and notebooks so as to provide ease to the employees. We are doing this so as to give more new products available in the market to the employees of Intel Corporation and as it is a big brand name , new and advanced products should be available for its employees too. We assessed the company's expectations and did device and gadgets research in order to meet company expectations and find the best possible solution for the give situation. We have identified major orientations of Intel corporation and four possible alternatives (options), that we will explore using pair-wise comparisons. Intel intends to replace their current laptops for employees with anew and easy to carry products. This is going to span through the next couple years and making the right decision is imperative. Due to the variety of the devices and gadgets available in the market, we will go through a decision-making process in selecting the appropriate platform while keeping in mind the needs and wants of the company. The analysis showed us that one of the device was best fit for the company and people would be excited to use it. The experts weighted each criterion and the result is shown in the results.


With a great growing use of electronic products in many aspects of society, it is evident that these products must perform reliably. Their reliability depends on the testing whether or not they have been manufactured properly and behave correctly. To ease testing, digital systems are commonly designed with Built-In Self Test facility. For this reason, development of test pattern for BIST based on combination of Linear Feedback Shift Register (LFSR) and deterministic ATPG (DATPG) approach could provide more solutions, such as reduce testing time, high fault coverage and low area overhead.

One of the key challenges in BIST is the design of the Test Pattern Generation (TPG) that promised high fault coverage. The test pattern generation can be generated either manually or automatically. Problems related to ATPG are linked to the controllability and observability of the nodes in circuits. As far as the single stuck-at fault model is considered, efficient algorithms have been devised for combinational circuit. To illustrate that, the DATPG algorithm for digital combinational circuit using VHDL language is designed to generate the test patterns. Altera Max+plus II software is used to simulate the DATPG design to achieve the minimum test patterns for digital combinational circuit. The simulation result will be presented in the form of waveform.

The results of DATPG for digital combinational circuit show that the sequence of LFSR has been reduced significantly. In BIST application, the minimum test patterns are applied to the adder/subtractor (A/S) known as circuit under test (CUT). A parallel A/S is chosen as a CUT due to the simplicity of the circuit architecture. The A/S is used to verify the proposed DATPG performance. Only one basic cell of the parallel A/S is required to determine the test pattern by considering the data flow from one cell to another. Identical test data can then be applied to both A/S inputs simultaneously. By reducing the number of test pattern, the testing time to market and manufacturing time is expected to reduce leading to reduction in the product cost.


In this paper, we present a nearly tight analysis of the encoding length of the Burrows-Wheeler Transform (BWT) that is motivated by the text indexing setting. For a text T of n symbols drawn from an alphabet Σ, our encoding scheme achieves bounds in terms of the hth-order empirical entropy Hh of the text, and takes linear time for encoding and decoding. We also describe a lower bound on the encoding length of the BWT that constructs an infinite (non-trivial) class of texts that are among the hardest to compress using the BWT. We then show that our upper bound encoding length is nearly tight with this lower bound for the class of texts we described.

In designing our BWT encoding and its lower bound, we also address the t-subset problem; here, the goal is to store a subset of t items drawn from a universe [1..n] using just lg (nt)+O(1) bits of space. A number of solutions to this basic problem are known, however encoding or decoding usually requires either O(t) operations on large integers [Knu05, Rus05] or O(n) operations. We provide a novel approach to reduce the encoding/decoding time to just O(t) operations on small integers (of size O(lg n) bits), without increasing the space required.


This article examines how the attempt to pursue Security Council accountability relates to parallel efforts to strengthen the rule of law. The article argues that accountability and the rule of law are closely connected and that steps to promote one have the potential to reinforce initiatives that promote the other. The challenge for the accountability and rule of law agendas is to ensure that these closely linked waves of reform initiatives will have a cumulative impact that improves the capacity of the Security Council to act effectively and legitimately to maintain international peace and security. This means strengthening the Council's ability not just to pursue the accountability of other actors, but to model accountability itself, and not simply to promote the rule of law elsewhere, but to respect the rule of law in and through its own decision-making process. The article traces the evolution and meaning of both the rule of law and accountability in the Security Council's practice. It then examines the relationship between the two terms, arguing that at the end of the day they share a symbiotic relationship that is mutually reinforcing.


A conventional camera captures blurred versions of scene information away from the plane of focus. Camera systems have been proposed that allow for recording all-focus images, or for extracting depth, but to record both simultaneously has required more extensive hardware and reduced spatial resolution. We propose a simple modification to a conventional camera that allows for the simultaneous recovery of both (a) high resolution image information and (b) depth information adequate for semi-automatic extraction of a layered depth representation of the image. Our modification is to insert a patterned occluder within the aperture of the camera lens, creating a coded aperture. We introduce a criterion for depth discriminability which we use to design the preferred aperture pattern. Using a statistical model of images, we can recover both depth information and an all-focus image from single photographs taken with the modified camera. A layered depth map is then extracted, requiring user-drawn strokes to clarify layer assignments in some cases. The resulting sharp image and layered depth map can be combined for various photographic applications, including automatic scene segmentation, post-exposure refocusing, or re-rendering of the scene from an alternate viewpoint.


We have recently purposed the definition of a new syndrome: strenuous endurance exercise-related atrial fibrillation (AF) under the acronym of 'PAFIYAMA' ('paroxysmal AF in young and middle-aged athletes'). This syndrome may be the consequence, at least in part, of atrial fibrotic remodeling [increased left atrial (LA) size]. Although the management of this syndrome has deeply discussed, prevention is still in embryo. A number of circulation biomarkers, including proteins, cytokines and microRNA (miRNA) have been associated with cardiac adaptations to strenuous training and fibrosis. In particular, due to their involvement in a wide array of cardiac pathways under both physiological and pathological conditions, miRNA are deeply involved in cardiac biology, so that


Despite a large measured college premium, roughly one-third of all high-school graduates currently do not enroll in any form of college. Moreover, while recent increases in the premium have been accompanied by increases in enrollment, college attainment has remained flat. Our paper studies the roles played by college premia, college costs, and risk, ceteris paribus, for college enrollment and attainment in a simple quantitative model of risky college investment. Our results suggest that most U.S. high-school completers are currently inframarginal with respect to the college premium. We find, however, that the levels of current premia, costs, and uninsurable risks all matter for this. Our results imply that, barring improvements in collegiate preparedness and attrition rates, high and persistent college premia, with high attendant levels of earnings inequality, may accompany the shift in demand towards skilled labor, which recent work (e.g., Autor, Levy, and Murnane (2003)) suggests is under way.


The theme of this PhD thesis is related to the study of
minisuperspace cosmological models whose Lagrangians can be reduced to Lagrangian of
the free relativistic particle or to Lagrangian of the two oscillators of the same or dierent
frequencies.
After getting acquainted with the elements of p-adic and adelic mathematical analysis
and quantum mechanics, classical and quantum cosmology, the thesis discusses the aforementioned
cosmological models in classic, p-adic noncommutative approach. The study of
cosmological models within the p-adic noncommutative formalism is of particular importance
because both of these approaches suggest discreteness of the structure of space-time
at the Planck scale which is associated with the mechanism of signature transition within
Hartl-Hawking boundary condition.
After considering Milne model, in the classic section, rstly the classication of the
two-oscillator models according to the form of Lagrangian is performed, concrete examples
are given and then their Hamiltonians and classical actions are determined. The questions
of the Hamiltonian condition and classical signature transition are especially considered.
In the p-adic part, quantum p-adic and adelic forms of these models are presented and
the conditions of the existence of their vacuum p-adic states are determined.
After that noncommutative forms of the models are considered and their classical
noncommutative actions and propagators are determined.
In addition to a better understanding of the early stages of the universe evolution, the
study of these models will provide a better insight into the dynamics and thermodynamics
of the interior of non-charged and non-rotating (Schwarzschild) black hole whose Einstein-
-Hilbert action can be reduced to action one of the two-oscillator cosmological model
(which will be discussed in the eighth chapter of the thesis).
The original results presented in this thesis are of interest for further study of the
black holes, the early evolution of the universe and further research in the eld of quantum
gravitation in general.


While the European Union is striving towards harmonization among the member countries, interlocks (connections) are a social phenomenon that has an implication on the Corporate Code but it is more implicitly pointed out with words like "other relevant information" or "other significant board positions" that might affect the individual board member's independence and ability to fully commit to the company. Although the board often is referred to as one single entity, it consists of many board members that individually can have an agenda that might deviate from all stakeholders' goal. Every single director has a business network of social contacts, especially if they are elected to more than one company's board. These individual directors create interlocks (links) between the firms they work for, and form a social network on company level, while the Code only recommends the companies to provide independence information and other significant assignments one by one as if they operate in solitude. This exploratory study captures the corporate governance perspective about independence and the social networks of directors on supervisory corporate boards in Denmark, Finland and Sweden by investigating the interconnectedness of the directors and companies, and combines this data with the independence disclosure by companies. We employed deductive approach and a quantitative archival research strategy based on secondary data from annual reports and corporate governance documents in a total of 150 companies to gather a sufficient database about the independence disclosure and the corporate networks. We identified the most central companies and individuals in corporate framework, and found concentration of power to be evident. Identifying the director networks enabled us to focus on the structural aspects of the networks and what implications this has on the independence of the boards. Furthermore, this research analysed the disclosure independence by the companies and assessed, whether the current requirements on disclosure are adequate for their purpose. We also found, contrary to our expectations, that the independence disclosure is not harmonized between the studied countries and therefore we assessed the disclosure by using insider-outsider theory. This showed that the current corporate codes do not capture the independence very accurately, and that harmonization of the codes in addition to insider-outsider theory would help the relevant stakeholders to get a "truer and fairer view" of the directors' independence. This study has been written especially the legislators in mind and suggests the use of insider-outsider -theory approach to the legislators for providing a more comprehensive and accurate view of the independence.


A popular line of recent research incorporates ML advice in the design of online algorithms to improve their performance in typical instances. These papers treat the ML algorithm as a black-box, and redesign online algorithms to take advantage of ML predictions. In this paper, we ask the complementary question: can we redesign ML algorithms to provide better predictions for online algorithms? We explore this question in the context of the classic rent-or-buy problem, and show that incorporating optimization benchmarks in ML loss functions leads to significantly better performance, while maintaining a worst-case adversarial result when the advice is completely wrong. We support this finding both through theoretical bounds and numerical simulations.


Mate competition and mate choice are not mutually exclusive behaviors. Both behaviors may drive sexual selection in one or both sexes of a population. One of several factors affecting which behavior is exhibited by which sex is the operational sex ratio (OSR) in the study population. The present study combines behavioral observations in the field with controlled experiments in aquaria to investigate social interactions and mate choice in both male and female long-snouted seahorses Hippocampus guttulatus in the context of the population OSR. Compared with the more readily studied pipefishes, data on OSR and mate choice in seahorses are scarce in the published literature. Our field data provide novel evidence of social promiscuity, size-assortative mating, and an OSR that varies from being unbiased early and midseason to male biased at the end of the breeding season. Our mate choice experiments revealed intersexual differences in mate preference with males significantly preferring larger females to familiar ones. Taken together, our field and experimental results suggest that mate choice rather than intrasexual competition could drive sexual selection in seahorses. Copyright 2009, Oxford University Press.


Sources in the THz range are required in order for NASA to implement heterodyne instruments in this frequency range. The source that has been demonstrated here will be used for an instrument on the SOFIA platform as well as for upcoming astrophysics missions. There are currently no electronic sources in the 2 3- THz frequency range. An electronically tunable compact source in this frequency range is needed for lab spectroscopy as well as for compact space-deployable heterodyne receivers. This solution for obtaining useful power levels in the 2 3- THz range is based on utilizing power-combined multiplier stages. Utilizing power combining, the input power can be distributed between different multiplier chips and then recombined after the frequency multiplication. A continuous wave (CW) coherent source covering 2.48 2.75 THz, with greater than 10 percent instantaneous and tuning bandwidth, and having l 14 W of output power at room temperature, has been demonstrated. This source is based on a 91.8 101.8-GHz synthesizer followed by a power amplifier and three cascaded frequency triplers. It demonstrates that purely electronic solid-state sources can generate a useful amount of power in a region of the electromagnetic spectrum where lasers (solid-state or gas) were previously the only available coherent sources. The bandwidth, agility, and operability of this THz source has enabled wideband, high-resolution spectroscopic measurements of water, methanol, and carbon monoxide with a resolution and signal-to-noise ratio unmatched by other existing systems, providing new insight in the physics of these molecules. Further - more, the power and optical beam quality are high enough to observe the Lamb-dip effect in water. The source frequency has an absolute accuracy better than 1 part in 1012, and the spectrometer achieves sub-Doppler frequency resolution better than 1 part in 108. The harmonic purity is better than 25 dB. This source can serve as a local oscillator for a variety of heterodyne systems, and can be used as a method for precision control of more powerful but much less frequency-agile quantum mechanical terahertz sources.


With extensive knowledge and training in the prevention, management, and treatment of disease conditions in animals, veterinarians play a critical role in ensuring good welfare on swine farms by training caretakers on the importance of timely euthanasia. To assist veterinarians and other industry professionals in training new and seasoned caretakers, an interactive computer-based training program was created. It consists of three modules, each containing five case studies, which cover three distinct production stages (breeding stock, piglets, and wean to grower-finisher pigs). Case study development was derived from five specific euthanasia criteria defined in the 2015 Common Swine Industry Audit, a nationally recognized auditing program used in the US. Case studies provide information regarding treatment history, clinical signs, and condition severity of the pig and prompt learners to make management decisions regarding pig treatment and care. Once a decision is made, feedback is provided so learners understand the appropriateness of their decision compared to current industry guidelines. In addition to training farm personnel, this program may also be a valuable resource if incorporated into veterinary, graduate, and continuing education curricula. This innovative tool represents the first interactive euthanasia-specific training program in the US swine industry and offers the potential to improve timely and humane on-farm pig euthanasia.


Titanium dental implants are subjected to frictional stresses during insertion, which may lead to surface wear and modification of original surface topography. The main goal of this study was to comprehensively quantify the wear and topographical modification of dental implants suffered during insertion procedure. Two commercially available dental implant systems with differing topographies: acid etched (AE) and sandblasted+acid etched (SB) were analysed as real case studies. Different regions of the implants (neck, valley, top, flank) were monitored qualitative and quantitatively both before and after insertion in fresh cow rib bone. Wear and plastic deformation mechanisms were identified at the surfaces of the post-inserted implants. The wear mass loss was approximated by the functional volume parameter (Vm) variation analysis resulting in a total average of 36.5 and 1 μg of released particles for the AE and SB implants respectively. The developed interfacial ratio (Sdr) variation correlated positively with the material volume variation (Vm) and is considered the best damage indicator. This study quantified, for the first time, the wear and topographical modifications generated at different sites of dental implants, and illustrates the need to analyse different regions to correctly understand and quantify the effects of the insertion process on dental implant surfaces.


Market-based pipeline projects are initiated by the pipeline-owning company and require focused attempts to secure a customer or develop a market for the product transportation.The development of Market-based pipeline investments in the international arena has fundamental differences from projects sponsored by consumer or pipeline user needs, government endeavors or producers desiring to sell their product. Whereas these User-driven projects were the traditional way of developing projects in the past, current global political and economical trends are forcing private pipeline companies to develop new ways of creating business opportunities: the development of Market-based Pipeline Projects.A proactive strategy for developing energy transmission businesses (i.e. market-based projects) involves finding sufficient energy users and linking them with pipeline infrastructure to viable supplies of natural gas. These Market-based business opportunities are uniquely developed and require strong corporate vision and support before it can be successfully implemented.This paper will provide an insight to the challenges, risks and uncertainties to be faced when developing Market-based pipeline projects. The discussion focuses on the project development phase of the project, from the moment the business opportunity viability has been confirmed to the time when the decision is made to proceed with large capital commitments. The paper includes a description of the pipeline project development process and a review of the variables influencing important steps and decisions prior to commencement of project implementation and hence capital investments.While the content of this paper is mostly applicable to all types of pipeline projects, the discussion will focus on natural gas transmission pipelines.Copyright © 2000 by ASME


The knowledge of the nuclear matrix elements (NME) entering in the expression of the half-life of the neutrinoless double beta decay is fundamental for neutrino physics. Information on the nuclear matrix elements can be obtained by measuring the absolute cross section of double charge exchange nuclear reactions. The two processes present some similarities, the initial and final-state wave functions are the same and the transition operators are similar. The experimental measurements of double charge exchange reactions induced by heavy ions present a number of challenging aspects, since such reactions are characterized by very low cross sections. Such difficulties are discussed for the measurement of the 116Cd(20Ne,20O)116Sn reaction at 15 AMeV.


People unconsciously exhibit overconfident behaviour in the capital market. Previous empirical research demonstrates that there is no conclusive result whether male or female investors tend to be more overconfident. The purpose of this research is to investigate whether male investors tend to be more overconfident than female ones in an emerging capital market such as in Indonesian capital market. According to this experimental research design, all participants are classified into two groups based on their score of overconfidence, namely less informed investors, and more informed investors. This research employs three different types of treatments, but only two treatments will be analysed consisting of the state of no available market information, and the provision of good news. The result demonstrates that male and female investors perform the same level of overconfidence when there is no available market information. Male and female investors are more likely to perform higher mean of prediction errors when they are classified as less informed investors. Referring to both the more and the less informed investors, female investors tend to be more overconfident than male investors when the market provides a signal of good news.


Pyritized graptolites from the Welsh Basin (United Kingdom) slate belt acted as rigid bodies during cleavage formation, and epizonal white micas formed within the resulting. strain shadows, orthogonal to the principal stress orientation. Although the quantities of mica are small, they are a pure synkinematic mineral and have been dated by Ar-40-Ar-39 infrared laser microprobe as a means to dating cleavage. Four samples of strain-fringe mica from different hand samples yielded ages ranging from 394.4 +/- 3.1 to 397.8 +/- 1.8 Ma (2sigma), with a mean age of 396.1 +/- 1.4 Ma (2sigma). By focusing on minerals that are unequivocally synkinematic, this technique provides a novel solution to the problems of isotopically dating slaty cleavage. Previous studies have predominantly relied on dating whole-rock slate samples or separated illite grains by Ar-40-Ar-39 techniques; problems encountered included (1) separating the effects of isotopic contamination by detrital phases, (2) Ar-39 loss during the irradiation of illite mineral separates, and (3) thermally induced Ar-40 loss in nature from fine-grained minerals. By circumventing these problems, this new method provides the first unequivocal and high-precision age data for Acadian deformation in the well-characterized Welsh Basin slate belt. With such precision, the method may afford geologists the opportunity to track tectonic fronts across orogens and assess the rates of accretion processes in areas that are peripheral to sites of continent-continent collision.


BACKGROUND
Dermatomyositis is a rare inflammatory dermatosis for which an iatrogenic origin has been described in very few cases. We report a case of dermatomyositis occurring after fluvastatin intake.

CASE REPORT
A 76-year-old male patient sought medical attention for a photodistributed rash and considerable muscular weakness present for one month. Two months earlier, fluvastatin had been introduced following the discovery of dyslipidemia. Serum creatine phosphokinase levels were elevated. Histological examination of a muscle biopsy was consistent with a diagnosis of dermatomyositis. Investigation for neoplasia and associated autoimmune disease proved negative. All clinical and laboratory abnormalities diminished spontaneously without recourse to corticosteroids within one month of the final intake of fluvastatin. After a follow-up period of three years, no recurrence was observed and no signs of neoplasia or connectivitis were found.

DISCUSSION
Iatrogenic dermatomyositis has only been reported in rare cases. Certain drugs have been incriminated, notably D-penicillamine. Six cases of drug-induced dermatomyositis have been described with statins: simvastatin, atorvastatin, pravastatin and lovastatin. Of these cases, only one resolved spontaneously after withdrawal of the drug alone without use of corticosteroids. Our case concerns intake of fluvastatin, an HMG-CoA reductase inhibitor with rare though well-known muscular side effects: elevated serum CPK, myalgia and rhabdomyolysis. Six cases of polymyositis have also been reported. Ours is the first case of dermatomyositis described with this category of statins. It is also the second reported case showing improvement after withdrawal of the lipid-lowering agent and without corticosteroids. Thus in cases of dermatomyositis, this iatrogenic picture should be sought routinely.


Body composition is a good indicator of an individual's health and physical status. In addition to total body fat, fat distribution is a major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases and insulin resistance/diabetes in elderly. There are a limited number of studies focused on the body composition of elderly populations in Turkey. The primary objective of this study is to evaluate body composition in the Turkish elderly living in nursing homes. The sample included a total of 164 adults (91 females and 73 males), aged 65 years and over, living in Ankara nursing homes. According to the standard anthropometric protocols weight, height, skinfold thicknesses, and arm circumference were taken, and the body mass index (BMI), fat mass, fat free mass and arm fat area were calculated. The study results showed that males were significantly heavier and taller, whereas BMI were higher in females. The comparison of arm fat area between sexes showed that females have significantly (p<0.001) greater values. Total body fat (kg) was higher in females and decreases with age for both sexes, where this decline is greater in elderly females. In conclusion, the body composition of elderly can provide information on the general health status, and support clinicians to understand more in their treatment progress.


Abstract The study derives the conditions for the profitability of any enterprise. So long as all the products produced by an enterprise are sold or will be bought, in theory, there are no bounds on the profit an enterprise can make. In practice bounds exists, and it is shown that the region of profitability declines if some products are not sold or bought and that an optimal profit can still be attained in this case with proper combination of products produced.


BRIEF SESSION DESCRIPTION: This session will provide an alternative to the traditional annotated bibliography assignemnt that requires students to integrate and analyze their scholarly resources in a more productive and effective manner. ________________________________________________________________ FULL ABSTRACT: Developing a literature review requires students to not only review their scholarly sources, but also to integrate and critically analyze them. However, students often dump an annotated bibliography into their literature review without the necessary integration and critical analysis. This session presents an alternative assignment and tool that addresses these issues. It includes: 1) an introduction and review of the goals and learning outcomes of the assignment, 2) reviews and gives examples of how the tool scaffolds the learning process and addresses the challenges of integration and critical thinking in the development of the analysis, and 3) reviews the assessment rubric for the assignment. This alternative approach is adaptable to any course which requires the development of a research paper or project based on a scholarly literature review for one, or multiple, disciplines. They will be able to include this assignment in their courses as a replacement for the traditional annotated bibliography. Handouts will be available to those who attend the session. For more information about assignment design:  https://stearnscenter.gmu.edu/teaching/assignment-design


This thesis focuses on some important methodological issues in applied statistics. More precisely, the adequacy of data for empirical research is discussed. In particular, three stages of the process of producing and using official statistics are investigated and their degree of uncertainty is quantified. The stages are data processing, validation and analysis. At each of these three stages one of the following research questions is answered. First, the producer view is taken by asking "how should price indices be calculated from micro data in official statistics?" Second, the views of both users and producers are considered by posing the question "how reliable are timely published official statistics partially based on estimates?" Last, the problem "how should one estimate econometric models with micro data from official statistics?" is treated from the user perspective. In answering these questions the following significant contributions to the literature are made in each of the three main chapters.

The first main chapter analyses the processing of raw data in terms of calculating elementary price indices in foreign trade statistics. Most of the literature on elementary price indices discusses the choice of a particular index formula based on the axiomatic approach (cf. Eichhorn, 1978, and Diewert, 1995). This approach states properties which an index formula should desirably fulfil and checks which axioms are actually fulfilled. The importance of axioms in general depends heavily on the purpose of the index formula in question and, to some extent, on personal preferences. In any case, the axiomatic approach is of little guidance in choosing the elementary index (for which weights are not available) corresponding to the characteristics of the index at the second stage (where weights are actually available). It exclusively deals with the mathematical properties of an index formula. Thus, it is an all or nothing decision in favour of or against it. It consequently completely neglects the most relevant issue in practice as to what extent a condition is not fulfilled. The statistical approach newly developed in this chapter fills this void. It contributes to the literature by looking at how numerical equivalence between an unweighted elementary index and a weighted aggregate index can be achieved, independent of the axiomatic properties. It is shown that the solution to the problem of elementary indices that correspond to a desired aggregate index depends on the empirical correlation between prices and quantities, in particular on the price elasticity. Based on this, consistency between price and volume measurement is achieved. In addition to the analytical derivation, this is demonstrated empirically in an application using data from German foreign trade statistics.

In the second main chapter the validity of the data is checked by decomposition of revisions of real time data in a seasonal adjustment context. Revisions occur if preliminary data are updated and estimates are replaced with actual figures. Moreover, new data lead to revisions of the seasonally adjusted time series - even if old preliminary data remain unchanged. The limited literature on decomposition of revisions deals almost completely with the question of whether revisions are "news or noise" (cf. Mankiw and Shapiro, 1986). This strand of the literature discusses the informational content of revisions. Revisions are considered to be "news" if they are orthogonal to the full information set available at the time the first estimate was published, i.e. they are unpredictable. Vice versa, if revisions are indeed predictable, the first estimate is a "noisy" measure of the most recent one, hence it is an inefficient forecast as revisions correlate with a subset of the data available for the first estimate. In contrast, this chapter is concerned with decomposition of revisions into their sources. For that, a new procedure is developed and implemented within the framework of the seasonal adjustment method X-12-ARIMA which is the contribution to the literature. This is relevant because the ability of a seasonal adjustment method to produce low revisions from its technical procedure can be thought of as being a quality characteristic for it. In an empirical application to five important German business cycle indicators, revisions of unadjusted real time data are found to play a larger role than those stemming from the seasonal adjustment method. This result is not self-evident as, for example, for European time series it is frequently argued that the seasonal adjustment method is the main reason for revisions.

The focus of the third main chapter is on data analysis; here, dynamic panel data models are estimated by means of GMM with more robust, in this case factorised, instruments. Almost all of the empirical literature and the major proportion of the theoretical literature focus exclusively on the exogeneity assumption. Exogeneity means that the instruments are uncorrelated with the error term. If this were true, white noise processes would be ideal instruments as they per definitionem correlate with nothing. But in fact this is only half of the story: white noise processes as instruments are consistent with virtually any estimate of the parameters of interest. The other half of the story is the relevance assumption (cf. Staiger and Stock, 1997). This assumption states that the instruments correlate with the endogenous regressor(s). The weaker the instrument set becomes, the worse are the small-sample properties of any instrumental variables estimator, such as GMM. The contribution of this chapter to the literature is the proposition of a methodology that has improved finite-sample properties. In particular, the instrument set is factorised so that its informational content is condensed in a much lower number of instruments employed in the estimation. This results in lower biases and lower RMSEs which is shown by Monte Carlo simulations.


The growing quality of smartphone-based Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) chipsets opens a new frontier for scientific research in positioning, navigation and timing ap- plications. The portability and affordability of these instruments could enhance the current GNSS receiver global network for atmospheric monitoring purposes. However, the quality of the measurements gathered from smartphones have not yet been fully assessed. In this paper, an analysis of the quality of smartphone-based Total Electron Content (TEC) mea- surements is performed. The primary focus of this work is to provide a general analysis on the potential of using smartphone observations for ionospheric sciences. Dual-frequency phase observations are used to measure the relative TEC. For this experiment, GPS L1/L5 and Galileo E1/E5a observations acquired with the Xiaomi Mi8 and Huawei Mate20 X smartphones were considered. Both devices are equipped with the Broadcom BCM47755 chipset, which enables GNSS dual-frequency measurements. More than 100 hours of phase observations at mid-latitude during a low solar activity period were gathered. Three differ- ent setup configurations were defined to assess the effects multipath or signal strength may have in the quality of the phase observations. In addition, to detect and discard unrealistic fluctuating phase observations, a quality-check was performed. In the results, good agree- ment between the slant TEC (sTEC) measurements from the smartphone and the sTEC obtained from a co-located geodetic receiver is presented. Furthermore, the amount and quality of observations discarded by the quality-check are reported, which emphasises the use of the signal strength to indicate the quality of phase observations. The results indicate that the C/N0 and multipath are important —when gathering the data from a geodetic antenna, around 80% of the collected data passed a quality threshold. However, collecting data with the addition of an attenuator, or directly from the smartphone antenna, reduced the valid data to below 50%. However, given the ease of use of a smartphone for data collection, even at 50% of data being usable, this shows potential as a useful course of TEC for ionospheric observations.


The latter part of the fifteenth century B C saw Egypt's political power reach its zenith, with an empire that stretched from beyond the Euphrates in the north to much of what is now Sudan in the south. The wealth that flowed into Egypt allowed its kings to commission some of the most stupendous temples of all time, some of the greatest dedicated to Amun-Re, King of the Gods. Yet a century later these temples lay derelict, the god's images, names, and titles all erased in an orgy of iconoclasm by Akhenaten, the devotee of a single sun-god. This book traces the history of Egypt from the death of the great warrior-king Thutmose III to the high point of Akhenaten's reign, when the known world brought gifts to his newly-built capital city of Amarna, in particular looking at the way in which the cult of the sun became increasingly important to even 'orthodox' kings, culminating in the transformation of Akhenaten's father, Amenhotep III, into a solar deity in his own right.


The three water crises—dwindling freshwater supplies, inequitable access to water, and the corporate control of water—pose the greatest threat of our time to the planet and to our survival. Together with impending climate change from fossil fuel emissions, the water crises impose some life-or-death decisions on us all. Unless we collectively change our behavior, we are heading toward a world of deepening conflict and potential wars over the dwindling supplies of freshwater— between nations, between rich and poor, between the public and the private interest, between rural and urban populations, and between the competing needs of the natural world and industrialized humans This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website , where most recent articles are published in full. Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.


This paper presents a wideband common-gate (CG) LNA architecture that overcomes the fundamental tradeoff between power and noise match without compromising its stability. The proposed architecture can achieve the minimum noise figure (NF) over the previously reported feedback amplifiers in a CG configuration. The proposed architecture achieves broadband impedance matching, low noise, large gain, enhanced linearity, and wide bandwidth concurrently by employing an efficient and reliable dual negative-feedback. An amplifier prototype was realized in 0.18-μm CMOS, operates from 1.05 to 3.05 GHz, and dissipates 12.6 mW from 1.8-V supply while occupying a 0.073-mm2 active area. The LNA provides 16.9-dB maximum voltage gain, 2.57-dB minimum NF, better than - 10-dB input matching, and - 0.7-dBm minimum IIP3 across the entire bandwidth.


HAVE before me the current Volume of Proceedings of the Music Teachers National Association. This association, organized in 1876, has since 1906 issued an annual yearbook, and it is no exaggeration to say that these twentyeight volumes contain the finest source material easily accessible for the student of American music education dealing with the present century. They cover all fields of music teaching, private and public, college and conservatory. Dipping into the present volume at random as I did, the reader feels at once a growing interest for two reasons -the writers are highly qualified to represent their subject, and they know how to write. The book reads itself. Being interested in church music, organ, violin, voice and general music study, I read the articles on these subjects by Dunham, McCutcheon, Rosborough, Skilton, Titus, Burleigh, Samctini, Hanson, Strunk, Butler, Leighton, Morgan, Buck, Wilcox and BrinkmanI cannot mention them all-but these names certainly stand for authority. The article on the use of syllables in music reading by Karl W. Gehrkens should be read by all who have any intention of discussing this controversial subject. The second part of the book is devoted to committee reports, handled, not in a dry and matter-of-fact fashion, but so as to make clear the issues involved in such matters as American Music, Community Music, Musical Libraries, Organ and Choral Music, Applied Music Study, and Tests and Measurements. They are the result of study and research. There is also a splendidly written report by the secretary, D. M. Swarthout, giving a resume of the doings of the convention at Lincoln. This book should be in general circulation among music teachers, and a copy should be in every library.-EDWARD B. BIRGE.


We study good programming practices expressed in rules and detected by static analysis checkers such as PMD or FindBugs. To understand how violations to these rules are corrected and whether this can be automated, we need to identify in the source code where they appear and how they were fixed. This presents some similarities with research on understanding software bugs, their causes, their fixes, and how they could be avoided. The traditional method to identify how a bug or a rule violation were fixed consists in finding the commit that contains this fix and identifying what was changed in this commit. If the commit is small, all the lines changed are ascribed to the fixing of the rule violation or the bug. However, commits are not always atomic, and several fixes and even enhancements can be mixed in a single one (a large commit). In this case, it is impossible to detect which modifications contribute to which fix. In this paper, we are proposing a method that identifies precisely the modifications that are related to the correction of a rule violation. The same method could be applied to bug fixes, providing there is a test illustrating this bug. We validate our solution on a real world system and actual rules.


Fuel cycle analyses of the transmutation of (a) all of the transuranics (TRUs) in light water reactor (LWR) spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and of (b) the minor actinides (MAs) remaining in SNF (after separation of much of the plutonium for starting up fast reactors) have been performed for the conceptual subcritical advanced burner reactor (SABR) fission-fusion hybrid sodium-cooled fast burner reactor. Both metallic and oxide burner reactor fuels were considered, and the effect of clad radiation damage limit on fuel residence time was investigated. For a radiation damage limit of 200 displacements per atom, the support ratio (LWR power/SABR power) for transmuting all of the TRUs produced by LWRs is 3/1, and for transmuting just the MAs produced by LWRs the support ratio is 25/1. The reduction in high-level waste repository capacity required due to this transmutation is a factor of 10, based on a decay heat at a 100 000-yr limit on capacity.


A thorough knowledge of modern connection-oriented networks is essential to understanding the current and near-future state of networking. This book provides a complete overview of connection-oriented networks, discussing both packet-switched and circuit-switched networks, which, though seemingly different, share common networking principles. It details the history and development of such networks, and defines their terminology and architecture, before progressing to aspects such as signaling and standards. There is inclusive coverage of SONET/SDH, ATM networks, Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS), optical networks, access networks and voice over ATM and MPLS. Connection-oriented Networks: * Provides in-depth, systematic coverage of several connection-oriented networks in a single volume * Explains topics such as the Generic Framing Procedure, Label Distribution Protocols, Wavelength Routing Optical Networks, Optical Burst Switching, and Access Networks in detail * Illustrates all concepts with problems and simulation projects to test and deepen your understanding * Includes an accompanying website with solutions manual and complete set of PowerPoint presentations for each chapter Senior undergraduate and graduate students in telecommunication and networking courses, as well as networking engineers, will find this comprehensive guide to connection-oriented packet-switched and circuit-switched networks useful for their training. The book presents tried and tested material based on an existing, successful course.


This paper explains how strategic planning is able to deliver strategic integration within organizations. While communication and participation within planning processes are perceived to have an integrative effect, we argue that these effects are unlikely to arise simply from bringing people together. Rather, we suggest that, given the varying interests of actors in different business units, integration will only arise from active negotiations and compromises between these actors. The paper is based upon a case of strategic planning in a multinational that was attempting to develop greater strategic integration across Europe. Drawing upon an activity theory framework, we examine how a common strategy emerges over time through modifications to the planning process and to different actors' roles within it. The findings are used to develop a process model that shows how different business unit characteristics of planning experience and relative power shape different experiences of communication and participation activities and different processes for achieving integration. The paper concludes with a discussion of how this process model contributes to the literature on strategic planning, political processes of strategy-making, and strategy-as-practice.


Plasma Propulsion is a state of the art modern technique for Spacecraft Attitude Control as well as the primary source to propel
Deep Space Missions. Under High Vacuum to mimic the Space Environment, experiment using High Voltage of around 0.5kV was
applied in a glass tube to generate Plasma. The Plasma generated was subjected to Lorentz force using Permanent Ring Magnets to
accelerate the ion bean to be ejected from the Nozzle at the end of the Plasma tube. The experiment is being tested with and without
Electric field for best and most efficient results. The success of this experiment would be followed by a Prototype Design of the
Thruster using the above described experiment incorporated in the working mechanism. Optimized and easier Plasma Generation
Techniques such as Microwave Generation would also be tested at the finishing stages to give way for a better and efficient Plasma
Micro Thruster research and development program in the future.


Due to the complex and dynamic nature of the construction industry, construction material management faces many unique challenges from material planning, ordering, receiving and storing, handling and distribution, site usage and monitoring (Johnston and Brennan 1996). Poor material management has been identified as a major source for low construction productivity, cost overrun and delay (Fearon 1973, Olomolaiye et al. 1998). Although many fac-tors contribute to the problems of material management, the lack of active, accurate and integrated information flow from material planning, inventory to site use and monitoring is the major contributor. However, it is difficult to obtain such accurate information actively due to the nature of the industry, particularly for large or material intensive projects such as oil or water pipe-laying projects. A Radio Frequency Identification system (RFID) facilitated construction ma-terial management system has been developed to tackle this problem. This latest technology helps the project team to collect material storage and usage in an active and accurate way, and further to facilitate the information flow through the construction material management process with focus on the dynamic material planning, ordering and monitoring. The developed system is being implemented in a water-supply project.


Andrea Fraser's work, writes Pierre Bourdieu in his foreword to Museum Highlights, is able to "trigger a social mechanism, a sort of machine infernale whose operation causes the hidden truth of social reality to reveal itself." It often does this by incorporating and inhabiting the social role it sets out to critique -- as in a performance piece in which she leads a tour as a museum docent and describes the men's room in the same elevated language that she uses to describe seventeenth-century Dutch paintings. Influenced by the interdisciplinarity of postmodernism, Fraser's interventionist art draws on four primary artistic and intellectual frameworks -- institutional critique, with its site-specific examination of cultural context; performance; feminism, with its investigation of identity formation; and Bourdieu's reflexive sociology. Fraser's writings form an integral part of her artistic practice, and this collection of texts written between 1985 and 2003 -- including the performance script for the docent's tour that gives the book its title -- both documents and represents her work.The writings in Museum Highlights are arranged to reflect different aspects of Fraser's artistic practice. They include essays that trace the development of critical "artistic practice" as cultural resistance; performance scripts that explore art institutions and the public sphere; and texts that explore the ambivalent relationship of art to the economic and political interests of its time. The final piece, "Isn't This a Wonderful Place? (A Tour of a Tour of the Guggenheim Bilbao)," reflects on the role of museums in an era of globalization. Among the book's 30 illustrations are stills from performance pieces, some never before published.


The relevance and recall of information sources, particularly those used in the prepurchase hotel search process, have not been fully explored. As they are critical to inform the final hotel booking, it is essential to examine the relevance and recall of information sources used by customers. Thus, the main aim of this article is to investigate both relevance, in this case measured by the pages viewed, and recall, gauged by both aided and unaided recall of keywords used and websites visited during an online session. An exploratory, observation method that is "goal-directed" is the main research instrument with both qualitative and quantitative data collected. This method is supplemented with questionnaires to measure both implicit and explicit recall. Results show that online travel agencies are more relevant than both search engines and travel-related social media, based on the number of pages viewed. The recall of both keywords and websites was low, both for aided recall and unaided recall.


Predicting a reader's rating of text quality is a challenging task that involves estimating different subjective aspects of the text, like structure, clarity, etc. Such subjective aspects are better handled using cognitive information. One such source of cognitive information is gaze behaviour. In this paper, we show that gaze behaviour does indeed help in effectively predicting the rating of text quality. To do this, we first we model text quality as a function of three properties - organization, coherence and cohesion. Then, we demonstrate how capturing gaze behaviour helps in predicting each of these properties, and hence the overall quality, by reporting improvements obtained by adding gaze features to traditional textual features for score prediction. We also hypothesize that if a reader has fully understood the text, the corresponding gaze behaviour would give a better indication of the assigned rating, as opposed to partial understanding. Our experiments validate this hypothesis by showing greater agreement between the given rating and the predicted rating when the reader has a full understanding of the text.


Seals are crucial machine elements in hydraulic devices. However, especially with regard to dynamic seals – for example in cylinder applications – the physical understanding of the sealing mechanism is still insufficient. In this paper a physically based, transient elastohydrodynamic simulation for translational hydraulic seals is presented. The deformation of the seal is calculated in a dynamic finite element (FE) simulation, hyper- and viscoelastic material properties are taken into account. For the numerical calculation of the fluid film and its influences on the seal deformation the FE simulation is coupled with an implementation of the transient Reynold's equation. For a physically based calculation of the solid contact, the FE-model is coupled with Persson's theory of rubber friction and contact mechanics. Both, normal force and solid friction are implemented. In a simulation study the influence of the relative velocity in the contact between the elastic, highly deformable seal and a hard cylinder is investigated. The initial phase of motion is investigated in detail. The simulation results are compared to experimental data of a lubricated sliding contact between an nitrile butadiene rubber (NBR) O-ring and a rough steel surface.


With the global population projected to reach 9 billion by the year 2050, the need for nations to secure food supplies for their populations has never been more pressing. Finding better supply chain solutions is an essential part of achieving a secure and sustainable diet for a rapidly increasing population. We are now in a position, through methods including life cycle assessment (LCA), carbon footprinting and other tools, to accurately measure and assess our use – or misuse – of natural resources, including food. The impact of new technologies and management systems can therefore improve efficiencies and find new ways to reduce waste.

Global Food Security and Supply provides robust, succinct information for people who want to understand how the global food system works. The book demonstrates the specific tools available for understanding how food supply works, addresses the challenges facing a secure and safe global food supply, and helps readers to appreciate how these challenges might be overcome.

This book is a concise and accessible text that focuses on recent data and findings from a range of international collaborations and studies. The author provides both a snapshot of global food supply and security today, and a projection of where these issues may lead us in the future. This book will therefore be of particular interest to food policy leaders, commercial managers in the food industry, and researchers and students seeking a better understanding of a rapidly evolving topic.


Investigation of the social framing of human–shark interactions may provide useful strategies for integrating social, biological, and ecological knowledge into national and international policy discussions about shark conservation. One way to investigate social opinion and forces related to sharks and their conservation is through the media's coverage of sharks. We conducted a content analysis of 300 shark‐related articles published in 20 major Australian and U.S. newspapers from 2000 to 2010. Shark attacks were the emphasis of over half the articles analyzed, and shark conservation was the primary topic of 11% of articles. Significantly more Australian articles than U.S. articles treated shark attacks (χ2 = 3.862; Australian 58% vs. U.S. 47%) and shark conservation issues (χ2 = 6.856; Australian 15% vs. U.S. 11%) as the primary article topic and used politicians as the primary risk messenger (i.e., primary person or authority sourced in the article) (χ2 = 7.493; Australian 8% vs. U.S. 1%). However, significantly more U.S. articles than Australian articles discussed sharks as entertainment (e.g., subjects in movies, books, and television; χ2 = 15.130; U.S. 6% vs. Australian 1%) and used scientists as the primary risk messenger (χ2 = 5.333; U.S. 25% vs. Australian 15%). Despite evidence that many shark species are at risk of extinction, we found that most media coverage emphasized the risks sharks pose to people. To the extent that media reflects social opinion, our results highlight problems for shark conservation. We suggest that conservation professionals purposefully and frequently engage with the media to highlight the rarity of shark attacks, discuss preventative measures water users can take to reduce their vulnerability to shark encounters, and discuss conservation issues related to local and threatened species of sharks. When integrated with biological and ecological data, social‐science data may help generate a more comprehensive perspective and inform conservation practice.


Head direction cells -- neurons that fire only when an animal orients its head in a certain direction -- are found in several different brain areas, with different neurons selective for different head orientations; they are influenced by landmarks as well as motor and vestibular information concerning how the head moves through space. These properties suggest that head direction cells play an important role in determining orientation in space and in navigation. Moreover, the prominence, strength, and clarity of head direction signals indicate their importance over the course of evolution and suggest that they can serve as a vital key for understanding brain function. This book presents the latest findings on head direction cells in a comprehensive treatment that will be a valuable reference for students and researchers in the cognitive sciences, neuroscience, computational science, and robotics. The book begins by presenting head direction cell properties and an anatomical framework of the head direction system. It then looks at the types of sensory and motor information that control head direction cell firing, covering topics including the integration of diverse signals; the relationship between head direction cell activity and an animal's spatial behavior; and spatial and directional orientation in nonhuman primates and humans. The book concludes with a tutorial demonstrating the implementation of the continuous attractor network, a computational model of head direction cells, and an application of this approach for a navigational system for mobile robots.


Since in the Netherlands large areas of low lands are protected against the sea by coastal dunes only, it is very important to know how far, during a storm surge, the erosion of these dunes will proceed. In order to obtain an answer to this question, the cross-section of the coast has been studied. The shape of the cross-section of a sandy coast is mainly caused by displacements of sand perpendicular to the coast-line. Obviously this transport is mainly caused by waves. Since our knowledge of the very intricate physical processes, governing the sand transport by waves is, even now, still very incomplete, we can, perhaps, obtain an insight into the behaviour of a sandy coast, if we start from some rather simplified basic assumptions which are roughly in accordance with observations in nature.


The relatively low rate of mortgage default and foreclosure in California in recent years obscures the fact that many Californians have high-cost home loans that they cannot afford. High cost loans are particularly common in low-income and minority communities, suggesting that those who can least afford it are paying the most for credit. In communities where high cost lending is more prevalent, so is the prevalence of households that are defaulting on their mortgage. Homeownership may be coming at too high a price for these households and communities.


Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. (RLL) is the largest pharmaceutical company incorporated in India. It is also amongst the top league globally and is ranked 9th largest generic company worldwide. Ranbaxy is also credited with the tag of true Indian multinational. The company traces its roots to a chemist shop in Delhi. It is one of the first Indian pharmaceutical company to start a joint venture abroad. Rapid growth of Ranbaxy is attributed mainly to its focused research and joint ventures in India and abroad. It is also innovation and market driven, with a strong distribution network. The company was able to grow successfully in highly competitive markets. In the current business scenario, Ranbaxy is focusing on innovation, alliances, mergers and globalisation to achieve its long-term vision of becoming a global pharmaceutical giant with a turnover of $1 billion by 2004. The fruits of such efforts are evident in the latest financial result, as a large chunk of its income comes from new products and exports of generics. The growth of Ranbaxy can be attributed to its ability to identify good windows of opportunity and its ability to grow by leveraging innovation, regulatory knowledge and alliances.


Background: Iron supplementation during pregnancy in programmatic settings has failed to produce desired results. Formulation of iron supplementation may have a role in compliance and hematological parameters. Objective: We did this study to compare the compliance to iron supplementation, change in mean hemoglobin and serum ferritin level after iron supplementation in capsule form and tablet form during pregnancy. Materials and Methods: In this single-blinded (investigator blinded), active comparator, randomized controlled trial we enrolled pregnant women (aged ≥18 years) from May to November 2014 during second trimester to receive iron supplementation either as capsule (ferrous fumarate) or tablet (ferrous sulphate) during entire pregnancy. The outcome was compliance (good compliance ≥ 90%) to iron supplementation assessed by pill count and change in mean hemoglobin and serum ferritin. Statistical significance was tested using Chi-square test and Student's t test. Results: We enrolled and randomized 204 pregnant women for iron supplementation; capsule form (n = 100) and tablet form (n = 104). Out of which 52 (25.5%) women (23 in capsule arm and 29 in tablet arm) were lost to follow up. As compared to tablet arm, the capsule arm had higher good compliance (22% vs 16.8%), increase in mean hemoglobin (0.79 vs 0.44 gm/dL) and increase in mean serum ferritin (2.50 vs -2.14 ng/mL), but the difference was not statistically significant. Conclusion: Pregnant women who received either of the formulation reported a low compliance. Iron supplementation in capsule formulation resulted in more increase in blood hemoglobin level, though clinically insignificant.


This paper gives an overview of the KULRoT 99 team. This team is based on our last year's team. The major problem we experienced with KULRoT 98 was a slow reaction time. The cause of this problem was related to bad synchronization and an insufficient notion of time. To tackle this problem, we switched to a new architecture that gives each soccer player a better notion of time. Preliminary results already show a large improvement in reaction time. In this position paper, we describe this architecture and briefly mention some plans for future work.


The present study proposes a validation of a mathematical index Q able to identify optimal geographic places for economic activities, solely based on the location variable. This research work takes its roots in the 1970s with the statistical analysis of spatial patterns, or analysis of point processes, whose main goal is to understand if a resulting spatial distribution of points is due to chance or not. Indeed point objects are commonplace (towns in regions, plants in the landscape, galaxies in space, shops in towns) and the development of specific mathematical tools are useful to understand their own location processes. Spatial point deviations from purely random configurations may be analyzed either by quadrat or by distance methods. An interesting method of the second category – the cumulative function M – was developed recently for evaluating the relative geographic concentration and co-location of industries in a nonhomogeneous spatial framework. On this basis, and having quantified retail store interactions, the French physicist Pablo Jensen elaborated the Q-index to automatically detect promising locations. To test the relevance of this quality index, Jensen used location data from 2003 and 2005 for bakeries in the city of Lyon and discovered that between these two years, shops having closed were located on significantly lower quality sites. Here, using bankruptcy data provided by the Registrar of companies of the State of Valais in Switzerland and by the City Council of Glasgow in Scotland, we implemented a method based on univariate logistic regressions to systematically test for the relevance of the Q-index on the many commercial categories available. We show that the Q-index is reliable, although significance tests did not reach stringent levels. Access to trustable bankruptcy data remains a difficult task.


Internal states can deeply alter the behavior of animals. Which aspects of behavior change upon metabolic challenges and how these allow the animal to achieve nutrient homeostasis is poorly understood. We used an automated video tracking setup to characterize how amino acid and reproductive states interact to shape exploitation and exploration decisions taken by adult Drosophila melanogaster, to achieve nutritional homeostasis. We find that these two states have specific effects on the decisions to engage and leave proteinaceous food patches. Furthermore, the internal nutrient state defines the exploration-exploitation trade-off: nutrient deprived flies focus on specific patches while satiated flies explore more globally. Finally, we show that olfaction mediates the efficient recognition of yeast as an appropriate protein source and that octopamine is specifically required to mediate homeostatic postmating responses without affecting internal nutrient sensing. Internal states therefore modulate specific aspects of exploitation and exploration to change nutrient selection.


Estimates of snow water equivalent derived from measurements of the attenuation of terrestrial gamma radiation vary as a function of several known sources of error. In this study, a computer simulation of the physically-based model used to obtain estimates of snow water equivalent is developed and the variance in estimates of snow water equivalent is investigated using simulation techniques. Several of the principle sources of error in the estimating model are simulated and studied for various conditions under which snow water equivalent estimates are obtained. The simulation results indicate that the error in airborne snow water equivalent estimates made in both forested and open environments with up to 60 cm of snow water equivalent is less than 12 per cent of the estimate for typical flight lines. The results of this study can aid National Weather Service hydrologists in improving river and flood forecasts, water supply forecasts, and spring flood outlooks for large areas of the United States and Canada.


PHASTA falls under the category of high-performance scientific computation codes designed for solving partial differential equations (PDEs). Its a massively parallel unstructured, implicit solver with particular emphasis on fluid dynamics (CFD) applications. More specifically, PHASTA is a parallel, hierarchic, adaptive, stabilized, transient analysis code that effectively employs advanced anisotropic adaptive algorithms and numerical models of flow physics. In this paper, we first describe the parallelization of PHASTA's core algorithms for an implicit solve, where one of our key assumptions is that on a properly balanced supercomputer with appropriate attributes, PHASTA should continue to strongly scale on high core counts until the computational workload per core becomes insufficient and inter-processor communications start to dominate. We then present and analyze PHASTA's parallel performance across a variety of current near petascale systems, including IBM BG/L, IBM BG/P, Cray XT3, and custom Opteron based supercluster; this selection of systems with inherently different attributes covers a majority of potential candidates for upcoming petascale systems. On one hand, we achieve near perfect (linear) strong scaling out to 32,768 cores of IBM BG/L; showing that a system with desirable attributes will allow implicit solvers to strongly scale on high core counts (including petascale systems). On the contrary, we find that the relative tipping point for strong scaling fundamentally differs among current supercomputer systems. To understand the loss of scaling observed on a particular system (Opteron based supercluster) we analyze the performance and demonstrate that such a loss can be associated to an unbalance in a system attribute; specifically compute-node operating system (OS). In particular, PHASTA scales well to high core counts (up to 32,768 cores) during an implicit solve on systems with compute nodes using lightweight kernels (for example, IBM BG/L); however, we show that on a system where the compute node OS is more heavy weight (e.g., one with background processes) a loss in strong scaling is observed relatively at much fewer number of cores (4,096 cores).


Recent statistics indicate that the human population is ageing rapidly. Healthy, but also diseased, elderly people are increasing. This trend is particularly evident in Western countries, where healthier living conditions and better cures are available. To understand the process leading to age-associated alterations is, therefore, of the highest relevance for the development of new treatments for age-associated diseases, such as cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer and cardiovascular accidents. Mechanistically, it is well accepted that the accumulation of intracellular damage determined by reactive oxygen species (ROS) might orchestrate the progressive loss of control over biological homeostasis and the functional impairment typical of aged tissues. Here, we review how epigenetics takes part in the control of stress stimuli and the mechanisms of ageing physiology and physiopathology. Alteration of epigenetic enzyme activity, histone modifications and DNA-methylation is, in fact, typically associated with the ageing process. Specifically, ageing presents peculiar epigenetic markers that, taken altogether, form the still ill-defined "ageing epigenome". The comprehension of mechanisms and pathways leading to epigenetic modifications associated with ageing may help the development of anti-ageing therapies.


Efficient audio synthesis is an inherently difficult machine learning task, as human perception is sensitive to both global structure and fine-scale waveform coherence. Autoregressive models, such as WaveNet, model local structure at the expense of global latent structure and slow iterative sampling, while Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), have global latent conditioning and efficient parallel sampling, but struggle to generate locally-coherent audio waveforms. Herein, we demonstrate that GANs can in fact generate high-fidelity and locally-coherent audio by modeling log magnitudes and instantaneous frequencies with sufficient frequency resolution in the spectral domain. Through extensive empirical investigations on the NSynth dataset, we demonstrate that GANs are able to outperform strong WaveNet baselines on automated and human evaluation metrics, and efficiently generate audio several orders of magnitude faster than their autoregressive counterparts.


This guide lists resources for finding, developing, analyzing and presenting data including, research methodology and data presentation guides, sources of statistical data, statistical software tutorials and much more!


Some of the most challenging and influential opportunities for Physical Geometric Algorithms (PGA) arise in developing and applying information technology to understand the molecular machinery of the cell. Our recent work (and work by others) shows that many PGA techniques may be fruitfully applied to the challenges of computational molecular biology. PGA research may lead to computer systems and algorithms that are useful in structural molecular biology, proteomics, and rational drug design.Concomitantly, a wealth of interesting computational and physical modeling problems arise in proposed methods for discovering new pharmaceuticals. In this talk, I'll discuss some recent results from my lab, including new algorithms for interpreting X-ray crystallography and NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) data, disease classification using mass spectrometry of human serum, and protein redesign. Our algorithms have recently been used, respectively, to reveal the enzymatic architecture of organisms high on the CDC bioterrorism watch-list, for probabilistic cancer classification from human peripheral blood, and to redesign an antibiotic-producing enzyme to bind a novel substrate. I'll overview these projects, and survey some of the algorithmic, modeling, and computational challenges.


Background Strength testing of the ankle musculature using the isokinetic dynamometer is often undertaken by sports clinicians and is of great importance for screening, rehabilitation and injury prevention. Injuries such as ankle sprains may be preventable if the risk factors can be addressed; however, the success of such screening procedures depends on the accuracy and reproducibility of the methods used. Objective To determine the test-retest reliability of three setup positions during isokinetic ankle inversion-eversion exercise, and to investigate the effect of setup position on peak torque and total work. Design Randomised test-retest study. Setting University biomechanics laboratory. Participants played at a semi-professional level of soccer. Participants: A convenience sample was used to recruit sixteen healthy male participants. Inclusion criteria included males, aged 18–25 years, who participated in semi-professional soccer and who were right leg dominant. Risk factor assessment Three maximal concentric ankle inversion-eversion repetitions at 60, 120, 180, 240, 300 and 360° · s−1, during 10° dorsiflexion, neutral dorsiflexion/plantarflexion, and 10° plantarflexion. Set up position and isokinetic speed were the independent variables. Main outcome measure Peak torque and total work in newton metres in the three setup positions. Results The results indicated that the 10° plantarflexion position was the most reliable setup, with ICC results ranging from 0.84–0.95 for peak torque and total work, at speeds 60 through 240°· s−1, during ankle inversion and eversion. The results also showed significantly greater (P<.0167) peak torque and total work values for the 10° plantarflexion position. Conclusion Clinicians should consider adopting this new ankle setup when screening or rehabilitating athletes as the most reliable results were identified. The 10° plantarflexion position also most accurately represented the peak performance of the muscles tested, as peak torque and total work were maximised in this position.


For the first time working MEMS resonators have been produced using low-temperature deposited (550◦C) UltrananocrystallineTM Diamond (UNCDTM) films. Using a lumped-element model to fit experimental data, UNCD materials properties such as a Young's modulus of 710 GPa and an acoustic velocity of 14,243 m/s have been deduced. This is the highest acoustic velocity measured to date for a diamond MEMS structural layer deposited at low temperatures. A 10 MHz resonator shows a DC-tunability of the resonance frequency of 15% between 15 and 25 V and the breakdown voltage behavior shows electrostatic breakdown rather than electro-mechanical pull-down for higher frequency devices. Good resonant frequency reproducibility is observed when cycling the resonators over bias voltages from 15 to 25 V and over RF power levels of -10 to 10 dBm. Keywords— MEMS resonator, resonant frequency, diamond, UNCD, acoustic velocity


Swarm-based multi-agent simulation leads to better modeling of tasks in biology, engineering, economics, art, and many other areas. It also facilitates an understanding of complicated phenomena that cannot be solved analytically. Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation with Swarm provides the methodology for a multi-agent-based modeling approach that integrates computational techniques such as artificial life, cellular automata, and bio-inspired optimization. Each chapter gives an overview of the problem, explores state-of-the-art technology in the field, and discusses multi-agent frameworks. The author describes step by step how to assemble algorithms for generating a simulation model, program, method for visualization, and further research tasks. While the book employs the commonly used Swarm system, readers can model and develop the simulations with their own simulator. To encourage hands-on exploration of emergent systems, Swarm-based software and source codes are available for download from the authors website. A thorough overview of multi-agent simulation and supporting tools, this book shows how this type of simulation is used to acquire an understanding of complex systems and artificial life. It carefully explains how to construct a simulation program for various applications.


The purpose of the present paper is to analyse the geological elements and references found in Dante Alighieri's Inferno, which have never been treated in complete and comprehensive manner. Dante used wisely and in a unique manner the elements of nature, especially of landscape, to build the material foundation on which the fiction of the underworld journey is based. Specific kinds of rocks, steep cliffs, landslide bodies, lakes of hydrothermal water, waterfalls, become basic material in the hands of the Florentine poet, on which to base metaphors and similes. In Dante's Inferno there are references to hydrogeology, earthquakes, mountain structures, deposition of travertine, landscape modelling, meteorological phenomena, structure of the Earth and of the entire cosmos. The grandeur and mastery of Dante lies in being able to communicate, in short lines, the strong separation between scientific facts of natural phenomena and their use for aesthetic, poetic, political, and even ethical purposes. In dealing with complex issues such as the geophysical equilibrium and the reason for the current distribution of land and ocean, Dante does not simply accept the theories of Aristotle (as stated by several exegetes) but shows a critical and deep analysis in the field of geology sensu lato, considering and preferring the phenomenal datum to the abstract theories. The work of Dante and his contemporaries did not impersonate the dark period for science, as found in many interpretations of the Middle Ages, but the cultural context where those questions were posed which served as foundation and propellant for the subsequent scientific revolution.


Plateletand plasma-derived factor Va are absolutely essential for thrombin generation catalyzed by the prothrombinase complex, a 1:1 stoichiometric complex of the serine protease factor Xa and the nonenzymatic cofactor, factor Va, assembled on an appropriate membrane surface in the presence of calcium ions. Two whole blood pools of the procofactor, factor V, exist: approximately 75% circulates in the plasma as a single chain inactive molecule, while the other 25% resides in platelet α-granules in a partially proteolytically-activated state. Our laboratory demonstrated that the platelet-derived cofactor originates following endocytosis of plasma-derived factor V by megakaryocytes, the platelet precursor cells, via a two receptor system including an uncharacterized, specific factor V receptor and low density lipoprotein receptor related protein-1. Following endocytosis factor V is physically and functionally modified and trafficked to the platelet α-granule from where it is released upon platelet activation at sites of vascular injury. The first goal of this dissertation was to define how factor V endocytosis changes over the course of megakaryocyte development. Hematopoietic multipotential stem cells were isolated from human umbilical cord blood and subjected to ex vivo differentiation into megakaryocytes. Megakaryocyte differentiation was assessed by flow cytometry using fluorescently-labeled antibodies against megakaryocyteand platelet-specific markers and factor V directly conjugated to a fluorophore over 12 days. Differentiation was confirmed by a decrease in a stem cell marker (CD34) and an increase in a mature megakaryocyte marker (CD42) and coincident with factor V endocytosis. Live cell imaging verified differentiation and permitted the observation of proplatelet formation, the precursor to circulating platelets. Analogous experiments verified the trafficking of factor V into proplatelet extensions. Factor V is a highly glycosylated protein: potential roles of these glycans may be endocytosis and trafficking by megakaryocytes. We previously demonstrated that factor V endocytosis is mediated by the light chain region of the procofactor. This region of factor V contains three glycans – one high mannose and two complex N-linked glycans. In the second part of this dissertation, a role for the complex N-linked glycans at Asn1675 and Asn2181 of the factor V light chain in factor V endocytosis by megakaryocytes was assessed. Exoglycosidases were used to selectively trim the complex N-linked glycans on human factor V under native conditions. Treatment with neuraminidase removed 100% of the sialic acid residues on the factor V light chain as demonstrated by gel electrophoresis and mass spectrometry. Treatment with β-1,4-galactosidase removed 69% of the galactose residues at Asn1675 and 100% at Asn2181. Glycosidase-treated factor Va behaves similarly to untreated factor Va in thrombin generation assays suggesting that cofactor activity is unaltered by glycan trimming. In addition, glycan removal had no effect on factor V endocytosis by megakaryocyte-like cells. These observations suggest that complex N-linked glycans on the factor V light chain are not important for factor Va cofactor activity or factor V endocytosis by megakaryocyte-like cells, which strongly suggests that they have a role in trafficking.


Who is the proper occupant of the nursery? The obvious answer is the child, and not an archive, a seductive troll-princess, or poor fosterlings. Nevertheless, characters in Hedda Gabler, The Master Builder , and Little Eyolf intend to host these improper occupants in their children's rooms. Dr. Gunn calls these dramas 'the empty nursery plays' because they all describe rooms intended for o spring, as well as characters' plans for re lling that space. One might expect nurseries to provide an ideal setting for a realist playwright to dramatize contemporary problems. Rather than mattering to Ibsen in terms of naturalist detail or explicit social critique, however, they are reserved for the maintenance of characters' fears and expectations concerning the future. Empty Nurseries, Queer Occupants intervenes in scholarly debates in child studies by arguing that the empty bourgeois nursery is a better symbol for innocence than the child. Here, 'emptiness' refers to the common construction of the child as blank and latent. In Ibsen, the child is also doomed or deceased, and thus essentially absent, but nurseries persist as spaces of memorialization and potential alike. Nurseries also gesture toward the domains of childhood and women's labor, from birth to domestic service. 'Bourgeois nursery' points to the classed construction of innocence and to the more materialist aspects of this book, which inform our understanding of domesticity and family in the West and uncover a set of reproductive connotations broader than 'the innocent child' can convey.


There is growing interest in the design of protein assemblies for use in materials science and bionanotechnology. Protein assemblies, such as cages and crystalline protein structures, provide confined chemical environments that allow immobilization of metal complexes, nanomaterials, and proteins by metal coordination, assembly/disassembly reactions, genetic manipulation and crystallization methods. Protein assembly composites can be used to prepare hybrid materials with catalytic, magnetic and optical properties for cellular applications due to their high stability, solubility and biocompatibility. In this feature article, we focus on the recent development of ferritin as the most promising molecular template protein cage and in vivo and in vitro engineering of protein crystals as solid protein materials with functional properties.


This paper discusses the structural modification of a molecular layer of polymethine dye under the action of laser radiation. Resonance excitation of the all-trans isomer irreversibly alters the spatial orientations and relative concentrations of all the isomeric and aggregated species of the molecules present in the composition of the layer. The influence of the total excitation-energy density on the orientational variation and relative concentrations of the species depends on the lasing regime and the energy density in a single pulse, on the concentration of the all-trans isomer, which determines the amount of absorbed energy in each pulse, and on the total concentration of molecules in the composition of all the species, which affects the heating temperature. A model is proposed for the photostimulated structural modification of a layer of polymethine dye.


Digital watermarking is becoming increasingly important in a large number of applications such as copyright protection, content authentication, and document annotation. Thanks to its capability of exactly recovering the original host, reversible image watermarking, a kind of digital watermarking, is favored in fields sensitive to image quality like military and medical imaging. This paper presents theoretical examination and experimental analysis of model order selection in reversible image watermarking. It involves two modeling tools: prediction and context modeling. Classic prediction models are compared and evaluated using specially derived criteria for reversible image watermarking. Among them, the CALIC, a tool combining the Gradient-Adjusted Prediction with a context modeling, stands out as the best by providing the most competitive model-fitness with relatively low complexity. In addition, full context prediction, a model unique to reversible image watermarking, is also discussed. By exploiting redundancy to greater extent, it achieves highly fitted modeling at a very low order. Experimental results demon- strate that it is capable of providing even better performance than the CALIC with only negligible computation.


Page: MINORITY RECRUITMENT IN MEDICAL RESEARCH: A MULTI-APPROACH STUDY. Stacy J. UyBico, Cary P. Gross. Department of Internal Medicine, Yale University, School of Medicine, New Haven, CT. Background: Despite the pervasive underrepresentation of minorities in health research studies, little is known about strategies that aim to increase minority enrollment in research. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify whether elder African American and Latinos were more likely to refuse research participation, identify tangible and specific incentives to improve research participation in this population, and to review the successes and data reporting of recruitment interventions attempted on diverse populations at large, including the non-elderly. Methods: We conducted a review of Yale OAIC studies to determine minority vs. non-minority research enrollment rates, interviewed key informants about likely barriers and gateways to minority research participation, conducted focus groups and administered a quantitative survey on and to elderly African Americans and Latinos in the New Haven, CT area, and performed a systematic review of published studies attempting to recruit diverse populations. Results: Results from analyzing OAIC studies determined that elderly minorities were not more likely to refuse research participation. Main themes that emerged from the Key informant interviews and Focus groups were access, the benefits of research and trust in medicine and doctors as well as in researchers and research procedures. Enticements most often identified by survey participants as very important to enrolling in research studies included disclosure of study findings, free health care, 24-hr access to study personnel, explanation of study safety precautions, researchers showing respect, and presence of Spanish speaking research staff for Latinos. The systematic review of attempted recruitment interventions on diverse populations identified that most such studies published do not offer adequate qualitative and quantitative data, are recruiting for preventive studies, are performed more so on African Americans, and that social marketing and community outreach were more commonly attempted when compared to referrals and health system recruitment. Social marketing is successful in leading to the most subjects enrolled with the caveat that it requires a large sample to be screened. Discussion: Results suggest that minorities can be recruited to medical research, and that innovative methods such as interviewing key informants and conducting focus groups are also particularly helpful in assessing their opinions. Social marketing recruitment interviews appear promising, but better quantitative and qualitative data reporting must be carried out in the future in order to better inform researchers on the ideal ways to recruit diverse populations. Acknowledgements: Cary P. Gross, MD, Holly Prigerson, Ph.D., Joanne McGloin, MDiv, MBA, Ezra Griffith, M.D., Esperanza Diaz, M.D., Sarah McGraw, Ph.D., Karen Bullock, Shani Pavel, Yale Claude Pepper Older Independence Center, Yale University School of Medicine Office of Student Research, Dr. John Forrest, Yale Department of Internal Medicine. Table of


In the 21st century, the mainstream of technology development is the interdisciplinary integration, together with the human-centered technologies (HT) that emphasizes on friendly service for human rather than the forced adaptation by human. Intelligent transportation systems (ITS), an integrated discipline of sensing, controls, information technology, electronics, communications and traffic management with transportation systems, represents a typical human-centered large-scale and highly complex dynamic system. It is aimed to provide the traveler information to increase safety, efficiency, and reduce traffic jam, therefore a more humanistic transportation system. Accordingly, new research topics emerge. Specifically, increasing machine intelligence (machine IQ), human-in-the-loop control system technology (human-centered control), human-based intelligent dialogue interface technology (human-based interfacing), vision and communication supported and enhancement systems (smart vision, smart networking), human physical conditions detection and intelligent control technology (intelligent control), multi-agent for large-scale systems to support information analysis (large-scale system analysis). This paper discusses some achievements of HT-ITS in Taiwan, including ITS information and communication platform, traffic dynamics simulation platform, driving safety assistance systems, and intelligent control technologies applied to next generation smart vehicles. Some experimental demonstrations of advanced traveler information systems (ATIS) and advanced vehicle control and safety systems (AVCSS) on Taiwan iTS-1 are also included.