Introduction: Metal-on-metal hip resurfacing arthroplasty (HRA) is currently recommended for younger, active patients with high expectations but information about outcomes is limited. Reports concentrate on wear, fracture rates and radiographic appearance, rather than function. Studies that report function do not describe rehabilitation protocols. This data is important to discussions about likely outcomes and restrictions prior to consent and to fully evaluate HRA. Methods: Consecutive Conserve HRA operations were reviewed 1 year post-surgery. Function was assessed using 3 validated questionnaires; the OHS (Oxford Hip Score), HOOS (Hip Disability and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score) and UCLA Activity Scale. Complications, pain, ROM, muscle strength, single leg stand, walking and stair climbing ability were recorded. Results: 125 HRA were reviewed (68 right, 57 left hips) in 120 patients (71 male, 49 female) of mean age 56 years. 86.7% recorded no complications, but 20% had pain at 3 months. The median OHS was 15, median UCLA 7 (active) and mean HOOS 82.78%. Operated hip flexors, extensors and abductors were weaker ( p =0.000) and hip flexion ROM a mean 94.46 ± 12.71 (55–120) degrees. For 25% walking was limited, 7.6% needed a stick and 10% a stair rail. The OHS correlated with HOOS pain subscale ( r =0.812, p =0.000), flexion ROM ( r =0.426, p =0.000), hip extensor ( r =0.359 , p =0.000) and abductor ( r =0.424 , p =0.000) strength. Pain at 3 months correlated with the HOOS pain subscale ( p =0.000, r = 0.503). Discussion: Although outcomes were generally good with few complications, high levels of function and activity 25% had poor outcomes; with pain, restricted hip flexion, decreased strength, limited walking and functional problems, particularly putting on socks. Pain present at 3 months was associated with pain and worse function at 1 year. It is postulated this sub-optimal recovery may be related to current rehabilitation protocols adopted from THA and not tailored to HRA.


With the publication of "Specters of Marx" in 1993, Jacques Derrida redeemed a longstanding pledge to confront Marx s texts directly and in detail. His characteristically bravura presentation provided a provocative re-reading of the classics in the Western tradition and posed a series of challenges to Marxism. In a timely intervention in one of today s most vital theoretical debates, the contributors to "Ghostly Demarcations" respond to the distinctive program projected by "Specters of Marx." The volume features sympathetic meditations on the relationship between Marxism and deconstruction by Fredric Jameson, Werner Hamacher, Antonio Negri, Warren Montag, and Rastko Mocnik, brief polemical reviews by Terry Eagleton and Pierre Macherey, and sustained political critiques by Tom Lewis and Aijaz Ahmad. The volume concludes with Derrida s reply to his critics in which he sharpens his views about the vexed relationship between Marxism and deconstruction."


The concept of "corporate governance" developed in an era marked by global economic liberalization, continuing enterprise expansion, and separation enterprise ownership and management trends. Good corporate governance is important to enhance corporate value and national competitiveness. "Locations" refer to spaces wherein human social activities are held. Office activities have become important economic human activities, and enterprise headquarters are the primary places where enterprises issue orders, carry out corporate control, and make decisions. Hence, they are vital to the overall operation of enterprises. Do the locations of enterprise headquarters influence corporate governance quality, and thus, the overall business performance of enterprises? This research analyzes Taiwan's listed and over-the-counter companies. As per empirical results: (1) Corporate business performance significantly correlates with corporate governance and office locations, with a significant difference between various areas, and (2) the quality of corporate governance of Taiwanese enterprises significantly correlates and varies with their office locations.


In ice flow modelling, the use of control methods to assimilate the dynamic and geometric state of an ice body has become common practice. These methods have primarily focussed on inverting for one of the two least known properties in glaciology, namely the basal friction coefficient or the ice viscosity parameter. Here, we present an approach to infer both properties simultaneously for the whole of the Antarctic ice sheet. After the assimilation, the root-meansquare deviation between modelled and observed surface velocities attains 7.8 ma−1 for the entire domain, with a slightly higher value of 14.0 ma−1 for the ice shelves. An exception in terms of the velocity mismatch is the Thwaites Glacier Ice Shelf, where the RMS value is almost 70 ma−1. The reason is that the underlying Bedmap2 geometry ignores the presence of an ice rise, that exerts major control on the dynamics of the eastern part of the ice shelf. On these grounds, we suggest an approach to account for pinning points not included in Bedmap2 by locally allowing an optimisation of basal friction during the inversion. In this way, the velocity mismatch on the ice shelf of Thwaites Glacier is more than halved. A characteristic velocity mismatch pattern emerges for unaccounted pinning points close to the marine shelf front. This pattern is exploited to manually identify 7 uncharted features around Antarctica that exert significant resistance to the shelf flow. Potential pinning points are detected on Fimbul, West, Shackleton, Nickerson and Venable ice shelves. As pinning points can provide substantial resistance to shelf flow, with considerable consequences if they became ungrounded in the future, the model community is in need of detailed bathymetry there. Our data assimilation points to some of these dynamically important features, not present in Bedmap2, and implicitly quantifies their relevance. 2 J. J. Fürst et al.: Evidence for pinning points


Title of Document: THE ROLE OF SYNTAX AND CONTEXTUAL FRAME IN CHILDREN'S USE OF A CAUSAL THEORY IN REASONING ABOUT NATURAL KINDS Jane Anne Hammond, Doctor of Philosophy, 2005 Directed By: Professor Ellin Kofsky Scholnick Department of Psychology A central focus of cognitive development research is the nature and organization of knowledge. Some researchers claim that young children use an intuitive theory to help them understand foundational domains such as biological categories. In particular, researchers have studied whether children's biological concepts are embedded in a causal theory about the nature of living organisms. Two key features of this theory are the concept of biological essences and the use of inductive generalizations. This study examined the influence of contextual frame and logical conjunctions on access and use of the theory in elementary and middle school children. It also investigated whether that causal theory supports both inductive and deductive reasoning. Children were given inductive and deductive tasks involving natural kinds. In the inductive tasks the child was asked whether a property of an animal would be found in other animals varying in taxonomic distance from the animal. In the deductive task, children worked on syllogisms based on cues at different levels of a biological taxonomy. Older children were not as likely to make inductions about instances of less biological resemblance to the target. However they also made more accurate deductions regardless of level of the hierarchy. Inductive and deductive performance were not correlated. Whether the cues were stated in a sentence beginning with "if" or "all" had no significant impact on performance, but whether the problem was presented from the viewpoint of a scientist or a pet store owner affected performance. These results were used to re-examine the basic tenets of essentialist thinking and the nature of developmental changes in reasoning about biological kinds. THE ROLE OF SYNTAX AND CONTEXTUAL FRAME IN CHILDREN'S USE OF A CAUSAL THEORY IN REASONING ABOUT NATURAL KINDS


With the rapid development of Internet, the security issues faced by computer system and computer network are more and more serious. Security protocol is a research hotspot in current network security filed and plays an important role in protecting network security. But if the information is replaced by viruses, Trojans, or tampered before encryption, the transmittal information has alreadyfailed although protocol itself is safe. Trusted computing platform only run the program of trusted source guarantee, and ensure the running program is legal. At the same time, the platform can stop the virus and malicious code running, the trusted computing platform solve the problem of the security of the encryption system and its running environment. If the current security protocol without modified directly to use on the trusted computing platform, although it can guarantee the communication security but do not play the advantage of the trusted computing platform, protocol execution efficiency is not high, and also unable to complete the authentication of platform. Based on the status research of trusted computing platform and security protocol, and aiming at the shortcomings of the current security protocol, this paper puts forward the safety communication protocol based on trusted computing platform. At the same time, using the formal method verifies protocol, and writes the middle tier of the NDIS driver implement the protocol. Security protocols running on the safe and reliable platform, achieve real efficient and secure communication. In the research process, the research mainly achieved the following research results: 1. Establish security protocol model based on trusted computing platform. 2.In the process of analyzing the protocol, theoretically prove protocol security, not only use attack validation but also use the formal analysis. Compared to the traditional security protocol, the protocoldesigned and implemented in this paper applies on the trusted computing platform, data computing speed is faster, protocol execution efficiency is higher,information transmission is more security.


Perhaps the most resonant quality of quiltmaking is the promise of creating unity amongst disparate elements, of establishing connections in the midst of fragmentation. (Kelley 176) Walker's peculiar sound, the specific mode through which her deepening of self-knowledge and sell-love comes, seems to have much to do with her contrariness, her willingness at all turns to challenge the fashionable belief of the day .... (Christian 124) Since its publication in 1973 in the collection of stories In Love and Trouble, Alice Walker's short story "Everyday Use" has become very popular--probably the most anthologized of her stories (Winchell 80)--and it clearly merits such critical acclaim. In 1994, the story was honored by a critical edition published in the Rutgers University Press series "Women Writers: Texts and Contexts." Paralleling the success of Walker's story has been that of another cultural artefact, the quilt, which since the Sixties has undergone a rather spectacular revaluation, moving from the marginalized position it held as a symbol of gossipy women's sewing circles, to becoming by the Seventies the "central metaphor of American cultural identity" (Showalter 215). One of the intentions of the Rutgers critical edition is to indicate a link between these two success stories. As Barbara Christian writes in the first paragraph of her introduction, it is in "Everyday Use" (1973) and "in her classic essay 'In Search of Our Mothers' Gar dens' (1974) that Walker first articulates the metaphor of quilting to represent the creative legacy that African Americans have inherited from their maternal ancestors" (3). While Walker was not the first to write about quilts, she was one of the first to write of the value of the quilt in the Afro-American experience, and she has certainly been one of the most influential writers in rearticulating the value of the quilt and in contributing to its success in the collective imagination at large. If it seems clear that the popularity of the quilt owes much to writers like Walker, one needs to ask, in turn, whether Walker's story would enjoy its current status if the quilt itself had not become such a privileged symbol. And yet another way of formulating this kind of question would be to ask whether we are to read the quilt as a figure in a story, or whether the story is, as it were, a figure of the quilt. Is the quilt, in other words, to be seen as one sign of women's creative activity among many, or as the very ground of a specifically woman's world? How such questions might be answered is largely dependent on whether another significant characteristic of Walker's work is taken into consideration. As the epigraph above from Barbara Christian notes, central to Walker's work is a certain kind of "contrariness," a "willingness at all turns to challenge the fashionable belief of the day." And if the symbolic value attributed to the quilt can be taken as a "fashionable belief of the day," we might have a dilemma, since the very story which surely contributed to the success of such a belief could likewise be questioning it, and this would produce a dilemma, as well, for those critics who want to ensure that Walker holds an honored place in the history of quilting and who likewise feel that any questioning of that history would be dishonoring it. If there were any hint that such contrary questioning were coming from Walker's work itself, then perhaps a critic would be tempted to avoid a close reading of her text in order to avoid risking having to deal with suc h a disruption. This very dilemma seems to be reflected in the Rutgers critical edition. While the short story "Everyday Use" is clearly central to the edition entitled Everyday Use, the story is not clearly central to each of the six articles which make up the section "Critical Essays." While Mary Helen Washington goes on to offer in her three-page, 1994 postscript some of the most insightful comments which have been made on the story, her original article, written in 1979, to which she appends the postscript, makes no reference whatsoever to "Everyday Use. …


Tumor cell invasion is a process regulated by integrins, matrix-degrading enzymes, and interactions with host tissue stromal cells. The ADAM family of proteins plays an important role in modulating various cellular responses. Here, we show that an alternatively spliced variant of ADAM9 is secreted by hepatic stellate cells and promotes carcinoma invasion. ADAM9-S induced a highly invasive phenotype in several human tumor cell lines in Matrigel assays, and the protease activity of ADAM9-S was required for invasion. ADAM9-S binds directly to alpha6beta4 and alpha2beta1 integrins on the surface of colon carcinoma cells through the disintegrin domain. ADAM9-S was also able to cleave laminin and promote invasion. Analysis of human liver metastases revealed that ADAM9 is expressed by stromal liver myofibroblasts, particularly those that are localized within the tumor stroma at the invasive front. These results emphasize the importance of tumor-stromal interactions in invasion and suggest that ADAM9-S can be an important determinant in the ability of cancer cells to invade and colonize the liver.


This paper presents a model where human capital differences - rather than technology differences - can explain several central phenomena in the world economy. The results follow from the educational choices of workers, who decide not just how long to train, but also how broadly. A "knowledge trap" occurs in economies where skilled workers favor broad but shallow knowledge. This simple idea can inform cross-country income differences, international trade patterns, poverty traps, and price and wage differences across countries in a manner broadly consistent with existing empirical evidence. The model also provides insights about the brain drain, migration, and the role for multinationals in development. More generally, this paper shows that standard human capital accounting methods can severely underestimate the role of education in development. It shows how endogenous educational decisions can replace exogenous technology differences in a range of economic reasoning.


In the Roman Eastern provinces, the concept and rituals of a province-wide imperial cult were based on a pre-existing tradition of Hellenistic ruler's divinization and worship. But its formal mise en place was conformed to the new territorial framework of Roman administration: a gubernatorial provincia /ἐπαρχeία appears subdivided into several administrative sub-provinces that were likewise called provinciae /ἐπαρχeῖαι. The cities of almost all known eparchies in terms of sub-provinces formed koina responsible for the provincial imperial cult and the political representation of the provincials headed by priestly officials, such as bithyniarchai or '(high-)priests of the eparchy/-ies', whose titles refer explicitly to the represented sub-province. The correlation between these koina and Roman territorial administration from almost all Eastern provinces demands more political functions of the koinon -officials than only priestly ones, as shown by the frequently combined titulatures.


ABSTRACT Adipose tissue expansion involves angiogenesis to remodel its capillary network. The enzymemethionine aminopeptidase 2(MetAP2) promotes angiogenesis.MetAP2 inhibitors suppress angiogenesis and have potential anti-obesity effect. However, impairment in adipose tissue expansion is also linked with impaired glycemic control.This study investigated the effect of BL6, a MetAP2 inhibitor, on adipogenesis and glucose disposal.To test effect on angiogenesis, Human Umbilical Vein Endothelial Cells(HUVECs) were treated with BL6 for 24h to determine tube formation. Further, to test effect on adipogenesis and glucose disposal,3T3-L1 pre-adipocytes were treated with BL6(0 µM, 20µM, 50 µM or 100µM) during differentiation. Differentiated cells were stained with Oil Red O for determining lipid accumulation, and glucose uptake assay. Protein levels and RNA expression for key genes involved in the adipogenic cascade were determined.BL6 treatment of HUVECs dose dependently blocked angiogenesis. During differentiation of pre-adipocytes, 50μM and 100µM BL6 significantly reduced lipid accumulation. Treatment with 100µM BL6 significantly decreased expression of adipogenic genes. Interestingly, BL6 treatment dose dependently increased glucose uptake by 3T3-L1 cells.MetAP2 inhibitor blocks angiogenesis, attenuates adipogenesis, yet increases cellular glucose uptake. Collectively this proof of concept study supports a possible role for MetAP2 inhibitor BL6, as a putative anti-obesity therapeutic agent.


Nowadays, large and rapidly evolving data sets are commonly encountered in many modern applications. Efficiently mining and exploiting these data sets generally results in the extraction of valuable information and therefore appears as an important challenge in various domains including network security, computer vision, internet search engines, bioinformatics, marketing systems, online advertisement, social networks, just to name a few. The rapid development of these modern computer science applications sustains an everincreasing demand for efficient machine learning algorithms that can cope with large-scale problems, characterized by a large number of samples and a large number of variables. The research reported in the present thesis is devoted to the design of efficient machine learning algorithms for large-scale problems. Specifically, we adopt a geometric optimization viewpoint to address the problem of linear regression in nonlinear and high-dimensional matrix search spaces. Our purpose is to efficiently exploit the geometric structure of the search space in the design of scalable linear regression algorithms. Our search space of main interest will be the set of low-rank matrices. Learning a low-rank matrix is a typical approach to cope with high-dimensional problems. The low-rank constraint is expected to force the learning algorithm to capture a limited number of dominant factors that mostly influence the sought solution. We consider both the learning of a fixed-rank symmetric positive semidefinite matrix and of a fixed-rank non-symmetric matrix. A first contribution of the thesis is to show that many modern machine learning problems can be formulated as linear regression problems on the set of fixed-rank matrices. For example, the learning of a low-rank distance, low-rank matrix completion and the learning on data pairs are cast into the considered linear regression framework. For these problems, the low-rank constraint is either part of the original problem formulation or is a sound approximation that significantly reduces the original problem size and complexity, resulting in a dramatic decrease in the computational complexity of algorithms. Our main contribution is the development of novel efficient algorithms for learning a linear regression model parameterized by a fixed-rank matrix. The resulting algorithms preserve the underlying geometric structure of the problem, scale to high-dimensional problems, enjoy local convergence properties and confer a geometric basis to recent contributions on learning fixedrank matrices. We thereby show that the considered geometric optimization framework offers a solid and versatile framework for the design of rank-constrained machine learning algorithms. The efficiency of the proposed algorithms is illustrated on several machine learning applications. Numerical experiments suggest that the proposed algorithms compete favorably with the state-of-the-art in terms of achieved performance and required computational time.


Abstract Since its foundation in 1866 the Swiss Red Cross has been actively involved in caring for refugees who fled their countries of origin to neutral Switzerland. During the various wars in Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and above all the Second World War, the Swiss Red Cross set up shelters for thousands of refugees, with particular emphasis on care for children. With the fall of the Iron Curtain in the heart of Europe and especially the growing influx of migrants from the south, the Swiss Red Cross has had to find different ways of helping with refugee crises. The article discusses the various steps in this ongoing process of adapting its policy to new circumstances.


Blood flow arid segmental intravascular pressures were measured in the pump-perfused forelimb vascular beds of 25 dogs with chronic perinephritic hypertension and 26 normotensive control dogs (either unilaterally nephrectomized or sham-operated) under pentobarbital anesthesia. Measurements were made under resting conditions (pump-perfusion pressure set equal to aortic pressure) and during response to: (1) stepwise changes in pump blood flow over the range 21−330 ml/min; (2) intrabrachial arterial injection of supramaximal doses of methacholine chloride; and (3) limb denervation. Total limb vascular resistance and segmental pressure gradients were calculated. In hypertensive dogs, as compared to normotensive dogs, resting blood flow was equal (P>0.3) and resting limb total vascular resistance was increased (P<0.005). Small vessel pressure gradient was increased (P<.005) and venous pressure gradient was decreased (P<0.005). Limb vascular resistance following methacholine injections and residual resistance following neurectomy were lower (P<0.05) in normotensive than in hypertensive dogs. The development of hypertension was accompanied by the upward displacement of limb flow-resistance curves without discernible change in shape of the curves. These data suggest that in chronic renal hypertension in dogs: (1) the limb vascular bed participates in the increased peripheral vascular resistance; (2) the increase in limb vascular resistance is confined to the small vessel segment with no evidence found for limb venoconstriction; (3) a portion of the elevated limb vascular resistance is not attributable to neural stimuli; and (4) structural changes in vessels may account for part of the increase in limb resistance.


The effect of waves on the transport of sand in suspension by currents can be especially important in the outer regions of estuaries and tidal inlets. Two series of field experiments are therefore being carried out to investigate the transport of sand under the combined action of waves and currents. In the first series of tests, measurements were taken from a specially constructed tower located just off the Maplin Sands in the outer Thames Estuary, England, (Fig.l). The tower stands in about 1.5m of water at lowest tide levels, and the mean spring tidal range is about 4.5m. Average tidal velocities are about 0.6m/s, with peak values up to about 0.9m/s. The tower has a completely open structure (Fig.2) below the water line, with the exception of the four corner piles penetrating the sea bed, and a vertical trackway which stops approximately lm above bed level. A series of instruments were fixed to a trolley which could be winched up and down the trackway, thus allowing measurements at any height above bed level. The annual wave climate at a waverider buoy position some 900m from the tower is summarised in Fig.3: Fig.3a shows the percentage occurrence of different wave heights, and it can be seen that the tower is at a fairly sheltered site, with less than 2 per cent of the waves exceeding lm in significant height. Fig.3b shows the percentage occurrence of given wave periods which, as one would expect, are correspondingly short, with less than 2 per cent exceeding 4.5s mean-zero crossing period. The second series of field tests are presently being carried out at the seaward end of Boscombe Pier, located in Poole Bay, England, (Fig.4). Water depths at this site are about 2.5m at low tide, with a mean spring tidal range of about 1.7m. Maximum tidal velocities are only about 0.3m/s, although during prolonged storms the tidal currents are enhanced by strong wind-induced currents. This site is significantly more exposed than Maplin, which was the reason for the choice of this second location. Annual wave statistics are not available for Boscombe Pier itself, but a waverider buoy some 3000m from the pier (Fig.4) has been operated by the University of Southampton for several years, and Fig.5 shows the percentage occurrence of given wave heights for the year 1977. Some 17 per cent of waves were greater than lm significant height, and 2 per cent greater than 2m. Fig.6 shows the percentage occurrence of given wave periods: 5 second waves are the most common, but with periods of longer than 10 seconds being recorded. Despite initial appearances, Fig.7, Boscombe Pier is a relatively open structure below the water line, with only vertical columns 0.4 x 0.4m, spaced at 5.5m centres. As at Maplin, a vertical trackway is provided, and an instrument trolley can be winched up and down.


Interactive whiteboards (IWBs) have become increasingly available in Australian primary schools. However, little is known about how they are being integrated by teachers into their teaching practices. This paper reports on a study of the introduction of IWBs into an Australian public primary school. Data were collected for one day per week over two school terms, involving four classroom teachers. Data collected included a log of time allocation, lesson observations and a series of interviews with the teachers. The study found that participants used IWBs to a varying extent over the course of a teaching week, with lessons that integrated the use of IWBs tending to focus on literacy and numeracy. The technology was readily incorporated into the classroom environment by teachers and considered easy to use. Teachers adopted a range of pedagogical approaches when using the IWBs and these approaches were consistent with those they usually employed in their teaching.


The genesis of Permian magmatism in southern South America is actively debated, particularly in relation to the origin of Patagonia. U–Pb zircon ages of c. 255 Ma for igneous rocks from the basement of Tierra del Fuego are the first evidence for southerly prolongation of this magmatism. Zircon in these rocks has εHft values <−1 and δ18O > 7.4‰, indicating recycling of Cambrian rocks. Permian granites in the north of the North Patagonian Massif record mantle-like δ18O magmatic input at c. 280 and 255 Ma, but reworking of upper crust between these two events, paralleling the recognized deformational history. In northwestern Patagonia, Early Permian granitic rocks have zircon with εHft values ranging from +0.1 to −7.2, and δ18O > 6.2‰, suggesting continuity of the Permian magmatic belt along the western margin of South America farther north. Comparison with a sample from the Sierra de la Ventana suggests melting of similar crust on both sides of the Patagonia–South American hypothetical suture. These features, together with other geological considerations, are consistent with an autochthonous or parautochthonous origin of northern Patagonia and connection between southern Patagonia and the Antarctic Peninsula in late Palaeozoic time. Supplementary material: U–Pb SHRIMP, O and Hf analytical data are available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.3768710


While general object recognition is still far from being solved, this paper proposes a way for a robot to recognize every object at an almost human-level accuracy. Our key observation is that many robots will stay in a relatively closed environment (e.g. a house or an office). By constraining a robot to stay in a limited territory, we can ensure that the robot has seen most objects before and the speed of introducing a new object is slow. Furthermore, we can build a 3D map of the environment to reliably subtract the background to make recognition easier. We propose extremely robust algorithms to obtain a 3D map and enable humans to collectively annotate objects. During testing time, our algorithm can recognize all objects very reliably, and query humans from crowd sourcing platform if confidence is low or new objects are identified. This paper explains design decisions in building such a system, and constructs a benchmark for extensive evaluation. Experiments suggest that making robot vision appear to be working from an end user's perspective is a reachable goal today, as long as the robot stays in a closed environment. By formulating this task, we hope to lay the foundation of a new direction in vision for robotics. Code and data will be available upon acceptance.


Cross-cultural trust and cooperation are important concerns for international markets, political cooperation, and cultural exchange. Until recently, this problem was difficult to study under controlled conditions due to the inability to conduct experiments involving interaction between participants located in physically distant locations. We report results of an experiment using a Web-based "virtual lab" to study trust and trustworthiness between Japanese and Americans in real-time interaction. Participants played a variation of the Trust Game in two different experimental conditions: a "flags-on" condition in which everyone's nationality was publicly identified during the session, and a "flags-off" condition in which participants did not know who was Japanese or American. The findings most strongly support Yamagishi's structural theory of trust, which predicts that Japanese will form more durable exchange relations compared to Americans. We found less support for explanations that focus on cultural differences in trust and trustworthiness associated with the nationality of the participants, and for cognitive explanations that point to the effects of a shared social identity between participants and partners with common nationality.


Well-being is a complex construct that concerns optimal experience and functioning. Current research on well-being has been derived from two general perspectives: the hedonic approach, which focuses on happiness and defines well-being in terms of pleasure attainment and pain avoidance; and the eudaimonic approach, which focuses on meaning and self-realization and defines well-being in terms of the degree to which a person is fully functioning. These two views have given rise to different research foci and a body of knowledge that is in some areas divergent and in others complementary. New methodological developments concerning multilevel modeling and construct comparisons are also allowing researchers to formulate new questions for the field. This review considers research from both perspectives concerning the nature of well-being, its antecedents, and its stability across time and culture.


How does India remember the 1962 border war with China? The article argues that there are two ways in which the war is recalled in the country and both of them are betrayal narratives, one blaming the Chinese alone and the second blaming the Chinese expansionism as well as the naive leadership of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. The main focus of the article will be on a critical analysis of the three primary assumptions made by the betrayal narratives: the legitimacy of Indian claims; the unexpected Chinese aggression; and the singular failure of Indian political leadership. It will argue that these narratives prevent an honest evaluation of the military and diplomatic failure that contributed to the border war.


Book synopsis: This timely book explores what might be termed "Gothic" science fiction of the last three decades, 1980-2010. Identifying texts by this category may at first appear contradictory, as the Gothic's connotations of the irrational and supernatural seems to conflict with science fiction's rational foundations. However, this collection demonstrates that the two categories have rich intersections. Applying such a category to texts of this period permits fresh examination of their engagement with the dramatic socio-economic changes accompanying these years: changes in communication technology, medical science, globalization, and global politics have transformed the way we live, and Gothic science fiction identifies narrative modes appropriate to this modern world. The Gothic mode images readily in science fiction that explores power, anxiety, resistance and capital.

The essays in this collection reflect the current willingness among researchers to explore interpretations across genre, form, and discipline, as well as revealing a buoyant field of research in contemporary Gothic and science fiction studies. The collection ranges across narrative media – in the form of literature, film, graphic novels, trading card games – and across genre – in the form of horror, science fiction, Gothic, New Weird and more. The essays explore questions of genre, medical science, gender, biopower, capitalism, with Gothic science fiction texts understood as uniquely inflected for their time and place.


Based on extensive new research, this book explores the distinctive political and diplomatic relationship between the late medieval city of Siena and the Angevin royal family of Naples and the ways in which this relationship impacted upon the production and dissemination of Sienese art during the first half of the fourteenth century.

Between 1289 and 1327 Siena witnessed a series of lavish ceremonial events marking the visits to the city of successive Angevin kings and princes, members of the French dynasty that ruled the whole of southern Italy. The reason for these magnificent civic rituals was Siena's status as a Guelph city state closely allied both to the papacy and to the kingdom of Naples. Based on extensive new research, including unpublished archival material, Diana Norman explores in detail the nature and extent of this distinctive political and diplomatic relationship and the ways in which it impacted upon the production and dissemination of Sienese art during the first half of the fourteenth century. In so doing, she demonstrates that this relationship not only informed the conception and resolution of a number of major pictorial schemes for key civic sites in Siena itself, but that it also familiarised the Angevin royal family with the quality of contemporary Sienese art. This, in turn, led to the employment of Sienese artists by the Angevins and to the production of significant images that commemorated various members of the dynasty. In this beautifully illustrated book, works of art executed by well-known fourteenth-century artists - including Simone Martini, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and Tino di Camaino - are examined in a new light, together with other finely crafted objects produced by lesser known artists, all of whom contributed to this hitherto over-looked example of late medieval cultural exchange.


It is argued that the Neogene evolution of the Western Mediterranean region was mainly determined by the East to SE ward extrusion of wedges of the Alkapeca belt and by the westward extrusion of the Betic-Rif-Alboran wedge, both driven by the convergence between the Africa, Eurasia and Atlantic-Iberia plates. Back arc extension developed in the wake of Alkapeca wedges in the Liguro-Provencal and East Algerian basins and in the wake of Betics-Rif-Alboran wedge in the West Algerian and Alboran basins. The proposed interpretation, consistent with the minimum work principle, can plausibly and coherently account for the time-space distribution of the observed tectonic processes. It is advanced the hypothesis that the convergence of Africa, Eurasia and the Atlantic-Iberia plate determined the formation of two new microplates, Iberia and Morocco. If the proposed plate configuration is taken into account in the search of the Africa-Eurasia relative motion that best fits the available kinematic indicators in the Atlantic and Mediterranean regions, the resulting kinematics may be considerably different from the one currently adopted.


The finite element method is a very efficient numerical tool to solve geometrically complex problems in electromagnetics. Traditionally the method is applied to bounded domain problems, but it can also be forged to solve unbounded domain problems using one of various mesh termination schemes. A scalar finite element solution to a typical unbounded two-dimensional problem is presented and the need for a proper mesh termination scheme is motivated. Different such schemes, specifically absorbing boundary conditions, the finite element boundary integral method and infinite elements, are formulated and implemented. These schemes are directly compared using different criteria, especially solution accuracy and computational efficiency. A vector finite element solution in three dimensions is also discussed and a new type of infinite element compatible with tetrahedral vector finite elements is presented. The performance of this infinite element is compared to that of a first order absorbing boundary condition.


Over the past two decades, extensive work has been conducted on the dynamic effect of joint clearances in multibody mechanical systems. In contrast, little work has been devoted to optimizing the performance of these systems. In this study, the analysis of revolute joint clearance is formulated in terms of a Hertzian-based contact force model. For illustration, the classical slider-crank mechanism with a revolute clearance joint at the piston pin is presented and a simulation model is developed using the analysis/design software MSC.ADAMS. The clearance is modeled as a pin-in-a-hole surface-to-surface dry contact, with an appropriate contact force model between the joint and bearing surfaces. Different simulations are performed to demonstrate the influence of the joint clearance size and the input crank speed on the dynamic behavior of the system with the joint clearance. In the modeling and simulation of the experimental setup and in the followed parametric study with a slightly revised system, both the Hertzian normal contact force model and a Coulomb-type friction force model were utilized. The kinetic coefficient of friction was chosen as constant throughout the study. An innovative design-of-experiment (DOE)-based method for optimizing the performance of a mechanical system with the revolute joint clearance for different ranges of design parameters is then proposed. Based on the simulation model results from sample points, which are selected by a Latin hypercube sampling (LHS) method, a polynomial function Kriging meta-model is established instead of the actual simulation model. The reason for the development and use of the meta-model is to bypass computationally intensive simulations of a computer model for different design parameter values in place of a more efficient and cost-effective mathematical model. Finally, numerical results obtained from two application examples with different design parameters, including the joint clearance size, crank speed, and contact stiffness, are presented for the further analysis of the dynamics of the revolute clearance joint in a mechanical system. This allows for predicting the influence of design parameter changes, in order to minimize contact forces, accelerations, and power requirements due to the existence of joint clearance.


This paper describes how hopes can be, and have been, placed in nanotechnology. Focusing on two recent UK government reports into the future of nanotechnology, by the DTI/OST and MoD, the paper describes how the disclosure of the nanoscale as a place subject to intervention, the act that is taken to define nanotechnology, can be understood in the context of anticipatory knowledge practices that create futures. Because the object of such practices are virtualities, such as opportunities and threats, the paper argues that affect is transversal to both nano-technoscience and anticipatory governance. In conclusion, I open up a set of questions about anticipatory knowledges and argue that the ground that enables hope to be placed in nanotechnology is the event that defines nano – to simultaneously reduce 'life' to matter and to multiply 'life' into a limitless set of materialities.


Since the Labour government came to power in 1997, it has introduced a regime whereby public services are accountable in respect of best value performance indicators (BVPIs). A recent Public Services Productivity Panel (PSP) (2000) report has developed a set of criteria whereby the economic analysis of police force efficiency by the Home Office is to be made standard. In this paper we utilise an innovative distance function strategy in contrast to the standard efficiency techniques (Data Envelopment Analysis and Stochastic cost Frontier Analysis) advocated in PSP (2000). We present results from four different distance function models; Data Envelopment Analysis; Free Disposal Hull; SuperEfficiency; and Stochastic Frontier Analysis; in order to assess police force efficiency during the sample period 1996 – 1999.


Sustaining natural resources is regarded as an important component of ecological resilience and commonly assumed to be of similar importance to social and economic vitality for resource-dependent communities. However, communities may be prevented from benefiting from healthy local resources due to constrained economic or political opportunities. In the case of Alaskan wild salmon, the fisheries are in crisis due to declining economic revenues driven by the proliferation of reliable and increasingly high-quality products from fish farms around the world. This stands in contrast with many of the world's wild-capture fisheries where diminished biological abundance has led to fishery collapse. Furthermore, increasing efficiency of salmon farm production, globalization, and dynamic consumer preferences, suggests that the wild salmon industry will continue to be challenged by the adaptability, price and quality of farmed salmon. Conventional responses to reduced revenues by the wildcapture industry have been to increase economic efficiency through implementing a range of entry entitlement and quota allocation schemes. However, while these mechanisms may improve economic efficiency at a broad scale, they may not benefit local community interests, and in Alaska have precipitated declines in local ownership of the fishery. To be viable, economic efficiency remains a relevant consideration, but in a directionally changing environment (biological, social or economic), communities unable to procure livelihoods from their local resources (through access or value) are likely to seek alternative economic opportunities. The adopted strategies, although logical for communities seeking viability through transformation in a changing world, may not be conducive to resilience of a 'fishing community' or the sustainability of their wild fish resources. We use a theoretically grounded systems approach and data from Alaska's Bristol Bay salmon fishery to demonstrate feedbacks between global preferences towards salmon and the trade-offs inherent when managing for the resilience of wild salmon populations and human communities at different scales.


We have produced and investigated cell couples formed between cloned Th cells or T hybridoma cells, and either Ag-presenting B hybridoma or B lymphoma cells. The specific direct interaction between a Th and B-APC is here demonstrated by two rearrangements occurring inside the bound Th cell; the MTOC (and presumably the GA) is oriented to face the cell contact region with the B cell, and a membrane-associated cytoskeletal protein, talin, becomes concentrated under the contacting Th membrane. In the absence of the specific Ag or the correct Ia determinant, nonspecific T-B cell couples form that are morphologically indistinguishable from specific cell couples in the light microscope, but neither the MTOC nor the talin rearrangement occurs inside the bound T cell of such nonspecific couples. Furthermore, Ag processing by the B cell is required to produce the MTOC and talin rearrangements within the T cell in specific T-B couples. In the case of allogeneic Th- B cell couples, similar specific MTOC and talin rearrangements are observed inside the Th. Extracellular Ca2+ is required for the MTOC orientation to occur inside the specifically bound Th cell, but not for the talin rearrangement. It is proposed that the MTOC (and GA) reorientation and the talin rearrangement are involved in the directed secretion of GA-derived lymphokines from the Th cell to the bound B cell.


Cytosolic phospholipase A2 (cPLA2) plays a pivotal role in mediating agonist-induced arachidonic acid release for prostaglandin (PG) synthesis during inflammation triggered by tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α). However, the mechanisms underlying TNF-α-induced cPLA2 expression in human lung epithelial cells (HPAEpiCs) were not completely understood. Here, we demonstrated that TNF-α induced cPLA2 mRNA and protein expression, promoter activity, and PGE2 secretion in HPAEpiCs. These responses induced by TNF-α were inhibited by pretreatment with the inhibitor of Jak2 (AG490), platelet-derived growth factor receptor (PDGFR) (AG1296), phosphoinositide 3 kinase (PI3K) (LY294002), or MEK1/2 (PD98059) and transfection with siRNA of Jak2, PDGFR, Akt, or p42. We showed that TNF-α markedly stimulated Jak2, PDGFR, Akt, and p42/p44 MAPK phosphorylation, which were attenuated by their respective inhibitors. Moreover, TNF-α stimulated Akt activation via a Jak2/PDGFR pathway in HPAEpiCs. In addition, TNF-α-induced p42/p44 MAPK phosphorylation was reduced by AG1296 or LY294002. On the other hand, TNF-α could induce Akt and p42/p44 MAPK translocation from the cytosol into the nucleus, which was inhibited by AG490, AG1296, or LY294002. Finally, we showed that TNF-α stimulated Elk-1 phosphorylation, which was reduced by LY294002 or PD98059. We also observed that TNF-α time dependently induced p300/Elk-1 and p300/Akt complex formation in HPAEpiCs, which was reduced by AG490, AG1296, or LY294002. The activity of cPLA2 protein upregulated by TNF-α was reflected on the PGE2 release, which was reduced by AG490, AG1296, LY294002, or PD98059. Taken together, these results demonstrated that TNF-α-induced cPLA2 expression and PGE2 release were mediated through a Jak2/PDGFR/PI3K/Akt/p42/p44 MAPK/Elk-1 pathway in HPAEpiCs.


The effects of sward, breed type and sex on lamb growth and carcass composition were measured at two degrees of maturity in live weight. The three breed types were Scottish Blackface (no. = 60), Suffolk (no. = 59) and their reciprocal crosses (no. =60). The lambs grazed swards of either ryegrass, clover or a mixed sward intended to contain both. The proportion of the mixed sward as clover was only 0·014. Each lamb was scanned using X-ray computed tomography to measure the weights offat, lean and bone in the carcass at two proportions of mature body weight (0·30 and 0·45). Live weights were recorded weekly. Average daily gains (ADG) in live weight andcarcass tissues were calculatedfor each lamb between the 0·30 and 0·45 stages of maturity. At the 0·30 stage of maturity, breed type differences in carcass composition were small; the Scottish Blackface had 0·942 as much bone as the Suffolk lambs (P < 0·001), with the cross lambs intermediate. At the 0·45 stage of maturity, Scottish Blackface lambs had less fat (0·749 times as much; P < 0·001), more lean (1·065 times as much; P < 0·001) and more bone (1·055 times as much; P < 0·001) than did Suffolklambs. Thevalues for crossbred lambs were intermediate but closer to those of the Suffolk. Neither sward nor its interaction with breed type had any significant effect on carcass composition at either the 0·30 or 0·45 stage of maturity. Theeffect of sex on carcass composition was significant at the 0·45 stage of maturity whencastrated male lambs had less fat (P < 0·001) and more lean (P < 0·001) than female lambs. There were breed type by sward interactions for ADG in live weight (P < 0·05), in carcass weight (P < 0·001), and in fat (P < 0·001) and bone weights (P < 0·05). The interactions were such that Suffolklambs had higher growthrates than Scottish Blackface lambs on clover but not on ryegrass or the mixed sward. There were no significant differences between Suffolk and crossbred lambs in growth rates on any sward. In this, and in two other experiments, the extent to which growth rate declined as the nutritional environment became worse wasgreater (P < 0·05) in Suffolk than in Scottish Blackface lambs; that is, Suffolklambs expressed greater environmental sensitivity than theScottish Blackface.


There has been burgeoning interest in wireless technologies that can use wider frequency spectrum. Technology advances, such as 802.11n and ultra-wideband (UWB), are pushing toward wider frequency bands. The analog-to-digital TV transition has made 100250 MHz of digital whitespace bandwidth available for unlicensed access. Also, recent work on WiFi networks has advocated discarding the notion of channelization and allowing all nodes to access the wide 802.11 spectrum in order to improve load balancing. This shift towards wider bands presents an opportunity to exploit frequency diversity. Specifically, frequencies that are far from each other in the spectrum have significantly different SNRs, and good frequencies differ across sender-receiver pairs. This paper presents FARA, a combined frequency-aware rate adaptation and MAC protocol. FARA makes three departures from conventional wireless network design: First, it presents a scheme to robustly compute per-frequency SNRs using normal data transmissions. Second, instead of using one bit rate per link, it enables a sender to adapt the bitrate independently across frequencies based on these per-frequency SNRs. Third, in contrast to traditional frequency-oblivious MAC protocols, it introduces a MAC protocol that allocates to a sender-receiver pair the frequencies that work best for that pair. We have implemented FARA in FPGA on a wideband 802.11-compatible radio platform. Our experiments reveal that FARA provides a 3.1× throughput improvement in comparison to frequency-oblivious systems that occupy the same spectrum.


M_L ≥ 3 earthquakes (M_L=local magnitude) that occurred in the Taipei Metropolitan Area (TMA) from 1973-2013 are selected to study the dominant seismicity period of this area. The epicentral distribution and temporal sequences of earthquake magnitudes are simply described. These earthquakes can be divided into two groups: one for events shallower than 40 km and one for events deeper than 60 km. Shallow earthquakes are located mainly in the 0-10 km depth range north of 25.1°N, and down to 35 km for those south of 25.1°N. Deep events are located in the subduction zone, with a dip angle of about 70°. The Morlet wavelet technique is applied to analyze the dominant periods of temporal variations in numbers of monthly earthquakes in the shallow and deep ranges for three magnitude ranges, i.e., M_L ≥ 3, 4, and 5. The results show that for shallow earthquakes the dominant periods are 15.4, 30.8, 66.1, and 132.2 months when M_L ≥ 3 and 30.8 months when M_L ≥ 4; while for deep earthquakes, the dominant periods are 16.5 and 141.7 months when M_L ≥ 3 and 141.7 months when M_L ≥ 4. The dominant period cannot be obtained for both shallow and deep M_L ≥ 5 earthquakes.


The article analyzes the current state of the labor market in the Republic of Kazakhstan and provides the dynamics of the economically active population of the country. The paper identifies positive and negative factors affecting the human potential of economic sectors of Kazakhstan. The authors disclosed structural elements of human potential: basic capacity and technological potential. The paper defines a set of target indicators influencing the formation of elements of human resources in the country. The recommendations for the involvement and training of qualified personnel for the innovation economy, taking into account various factors, are proposed.


A study was conducted to evaluate the effect of feeding fixed level of treated Acacia saligna leaves (ASL) on feed intake, live body weight change and carcass characteristics of Abergelle goats. The experiment was executed in Aberegelle Agricultural Research Centre goat farm in the northern Ethiopia. Four treatments namely grass hay (GH) as a control, air dried acacia saligna leaves (ADASL), water soaked acacia saligna leaves (WSASL) and wood ash soaked acacia saligna leaves (WASASL) each included at 300 g head -1 day -1 were used as supplement. Feed intake was measured daily and live weight gain recorded weekly. Measurements were also taken on empty body weight (EBW), hot carcass weight (HCW), dressing percent (DP) and rib eye muscle area (REMA). Higher total crude protein intake was observed in the supplemented goats as compared to non-supplemented. As a result, better body weight gain was observed in the supplemented goats as compare to non-supplemented goats. Similarly, better HCW was obtained in the supplemented goats than non- supplemented in general and in particular goats fed on air dried and water soaked leaves showed significantly higher HCW than the control. So that it could be included that, it is important to feed acacia saligna leaves as an alternative feed particularly at the time of feed scarcity. However, dressing percent on slaughter weight base (SWB), EBW base and REMA were not showed any significant different (P>0.05) among the treatments. Generally, goats supplemented with air dried leaves showed higher body weight gain and carcass value compared with the other treatments.


An RT-PCR assay was developed to analyse expression patterns of genes in the Candida albicans ALS (agglutinin-like sequence) family. Inoculation of a reconstituted human buccal epithelium (RHE) model of mucocutaneous candidiasis with strain SC5314 showed destruction of the epithelial layer by C. albicans and also formation of an upper fungal layer that had characteristics similar to a biofilm. RT-PCR analysis of total RNA samples extracted from C. albicans-inoculated buccal RHE showed that ALS1, ALS2, ALS3, ALS4, ALS5 and ALS9 were consistently detected over time as destruction of the RHE progressed. Detection of transcripts from ALS7, and particularly from ALS6, was more sporadic, but not associated with a strictly temporal pattern. The expression pattern of ALS genes in C. albicans cultures used to inoculate the RHE was similar to that observed in the RHE model, suggesting that contact of C. albicans with buccal RHE does little to alter ALS gene expression. RT-PCR analysis of RNA samples extracted from model denture and catheter biofilms showed similar gene expression patterns to the buccal RHE specimens. Results from the RT-PCR analysis of biofilm RNA specimens were consistent between various C. albicans strains during biofilm development and were comparable to gene expression patterns in planktonic cells. The RT-PCR assay described here will be useful for analysis of human clinical specimens and samples from other disease models. The method will provide further insight into the role of ALS genes and their encoded proteins in the diverse interactions between C. albicans and its host.


Genetic and biochemical characterization of Drosophila singed, a homolog of the actin bundling protein fascin Kelly Cant Yale University 1996 Drosophila singed mutants were named for their gnarled bristle phenotype, however, severe alleles are also female sterile due to a defect in nurse cell cytoplasm transport. Recently, singed protein was shown to have 35% peptide identity with the actin bundling protein fascin. I present evidence that singed is a homolog of fascin. In vivo, singed is required for actin filament bundle formation in the cytoplasm of nurse cells during oogenesis and in the cellular extension that forms a bristle. In vitro, purified bacterially-expressed singed bundles actin filaments with the same 12 run periodicity and stoichiometry reported for sea urchin fascin. While many homologs of fascin have been described, functional domain organization is not understood. I generated 15 new sn alleles by EMS mutagenesis; surprisingly only 2 of these expressed fascin. singedG409E mutants have multiply bent bristles and are fertile, although nurse cell cytoplasmic actin bundles appear disorganized and cytoplasm transport is partially incomplete. singedS289N mutants have gnarled bristles and are sterile. I used the singedS289N allele in a dominant suppressor of sterility screen and identified an intragenic mutation S251F that appears to restore much of fascin's function. These Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. mutations, G409E, S289N and S251F, draw attention to critical amino acids in fascin. At wild type protein levels, both fascin and quail, a villin-like protein, are required for cytoplasmic actin bundle formation. I looked for genetic interaction between singed and quail. Mutations in quail enhance the intermediate egg chamber phenotype of singedG409E. Furthermore, overexpression of quail protein can rescue the cytoplasmic actin defect and sterility of singedS289N and of the null allele, singed28. In the absence of fascin, overexpression of quail is sufficient for the formation of actin bundles. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.


This project addresses questions of female subjectivity by examining video art made in the 1970s by American artists Suzanne Lacy and Martha Rosler. Their work is considered in comparison to popular culture by means of two television cooking programs The French Chef, hosted by Julia Child, and Nadia G.'s Bitchin' Kitchen, hosted by Nadia Giosia. Each chapter in this dissertation examines the functions of kitchen humor and popular culture, and how each woman uses it in her work.

This dissertation tracks the genesis of kitchen humor. A theory of kitchen humor has been developed made up of three elements that include the perturbed relationship women have with the domestic sphere as both a site of oppression and a site of resistance; the performance of domestic rituals, such as food preparation; and the use of humor, such as satire, to bring attention to the problems of socially prescribed gender normativity.

Pop culture examples range from Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique to Lucille Ball's slapstick performances on I Love Lucy, and also include formative American cook books from the pre-war era. Taking all of this in stride, feminist video artists in the 1970s used kitchen humor to grapple with the multifaceted nature of what it meant to be a feminist and used satire to advocate for change in the definition of gender roles.

Key texts used in understanding the political nature of humor include Umberto Eco's "Frames of Comic 'Freedom,'" Mary Douglas' "Jokes," and Richard M. Stephenson's "The Conflict and Control Functions of Humor." These texts are further supported through the discussion of feminist authors' work including (but not limited to) Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique, Helene Cixous' "Laugh of the Medusa," and Judith Butler's Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.

The trajectory of kitchen humor beginning with post-war pop culture, moving through 1970s video art, and ending with contemporary popular culture shows kitchen humor to be a considerable element in feminist visual culture.


In Old Age in Late Medieval England, Joel T. Rosenthal explores the life spans, sustained activities, behaviors, and mentalites of the individuals who approached and who passed the biblically stipulated span of three score and ten in late medieval England. Drawing on a wide variety of documentary and court records (which were, however, more likely to specify with precision an individual's age on reaching majority or inheriting property than on the occasion of his or her death) as well as literary and didactic texts, he examines "old age" as a social construct and web of behavioral patterns woven around a biological phenomenon. Focusing on "lived experience" in late medieval England, Rosenthal uses demographic and quantitative records, family histories, and biographical information to demonstrate that many people lived into their sixth, seventh, and occasionally eighth decades. Those who survived might well live to know their grandchildren. This view of a society composed of the aged as well as of the young and the middle aged is reinforced by an examination of peers, bishops, and members of parliament and urban office holders, for whom demographic and career-length information exists. Many individuals had active careers until near the end of their lives; the aged were neither rarities nor outcasts within their world. Late medieval society recognized the concept of retirement, of old age pensions, and of the welcome release from duty for those who had served over the decades.


Concepts of Divine Action for a Theistic Approach to Psychology Brent Sladyk Melling Department of Psychology, BYU Doctor of Philosophy Recent years have seen increased interest in using theism (the perspective that assumes that God is currently actively in the world) as a conceptual framework for scientific inquiry. This interest has built particular momentum in psychology where several scholars have expressed that traditional naturalistic approaches limit understanding and investigation of psychology's subject matter and thus are insufficient to fully account for human phenomena. Others have previously made the case for the consideration of theism as a legitimate alternative basis for psychological theory, research, and practice. This dissertation begins with that consideration and examines what would be required to move a theistic approach to psychology forward. In other words, if God is assumed to be active in the world (including the psychological world—theism), what difference would that make for the ideas, methods, and practices of psychology? As the current activity of God is the foundational assumption of theism, clarity about what that activity would entail is especially essential for those seeking to develop a theistic approach to psychology and to describe how their discipline would be different from that perspective. Unfortunately, there is currently a lack of clear and explicitly articulated conceptions of God's actions in and for psychology. This dissertation provides a conceptual analysis of the activity of God that synthesizes disparate approaches to divine action into a tentative conceptualization or taxonomic schema. This schema organizes the scholarly literature from across several major traditions into six major heads and elucidates multiple subordinate concepts. The conceptualization serves as an orientation to important issues such as strong v weak theisms, the limitations of naturalism, and practical theistic applications for psychology. Detailed illustrations of these concepts as applied to psychological theory, research (both in the qualitative and quantitative modes), and practice further demonstrate the utility of such a conceptualization. These examples provide a specific focus on the unique contributions of a theistic perspective over and against those of naturalism.


Employability is a set of skills needed to get a job. There is an expectation that students will exit education having developed employability skills in order to be successful in their chosen occupation. It remains therefore an important topic for research and it covers many areas from policies in Higher Education (HE) through to ideologies, practices and models to embed employability within the curriculum. The aim of this study was to discover the undergraduate student voice with respect to employability. It used Bourdieusian social theory and Tomlinson's graduate capital model to better understand the meaning and development of employability. Higher Education, government and employers are all grappling with the problems of employability for graduates and this study provided practical and academic contributions in this area. The thesis presents a literature review, drawing upon government policy, empirical and theoretical academic studies to contribute to the research of employability.
The study took place within the business school of the University of Salford, located within the North West of England. Questions were posed in focus groups and interviews to undergraduate students undertaking a core professional development module. Responses to the student views were then collected via interviews with HE staff and employer stakeholders. A constructivist grounded theory method was applied across this study capturing various dimensions of opinion regarding employability. The student view of employability was grounded in the data and the method allowed the researcher to construct the reality as seen from the perspective of the students.
The findings of this thesis are that students had a deep understanding of the meaning of employability though its development was considered to be challenging. In contrast to some of the literature, students understood employability goes beyond simple listing of 'transferable' skills. This thesis uncovered a 'placement dilemma' whereby students understood the value of work experience for developing employability but due to various factors, uncertainty prevented some students from pursuing this avenue.
Furthermore confidence, a form of psychological capital was found to underpin the meaning of employability for students (Rattray, 2016; Tomlinson, 2017a). Within the theoretical framing for this thesis it has therefore been concluded that psychological capital is found to be a key enabler for the development of employability. Responses to students' views by employers and staff suggested that continuous development is also a key element of employability. Hence this thesis advocates that HE and stakeholders should use continuous development and psychological capital to form a revised definition of employability contributing to an improved understanding.


The recent spate of cases in which reporters have been subpoenaed, fined, jailed, or otherwise disciplined has laid bare the divisions among the courts over the existence and scope of the "reporter's privilege." The cases have also exposed the doctrinal, historical, and theoretical infirmities of the broader law of newsgathering, which encompasses not only source relationships, but also rights of access to places and records, protections against civil and criminal liability for torts and crimes committed in the pursuit of news, and protections against government searches of newsrooms and phone records, among other things. Resolving these conflicts has grown more urgent with the democratization of media and the emergence of bloggers and other news providers who have challenged traditional conceptions of "journalists" and "the press." To settle these controversies, this Article seeks to move past the courts' desultory analyses, focus on core principles, and situate those assessments in the context of a particular approach to constitutional interpretation. This Article proposes a "sequential" interpretation of the First Amendment—an approach that assesses, in turn, the text of the Amendment, its history, its place in the broader constitutional structure, and its contemporary meaning in light of substantial social change. This approach draws upon conventional interpretive frameworks to show that there is abundant constitutional support to Copyright © 2008 by Erik Ugland. * Assistant Professor, J. William and Mary Diederich College of Communication, Marquette University. B.A. 1991, University of Minnesota; J.D. 1995, University of Minnesota; M.A. 1999, University of Minnesota; Ph.D. 2002, University of Minnesota. 04__UGLAND_FINAL.DOC 7/23/2008 9:34:02 AM 114 DUKE JOURNAL OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW & PUBLIC POLICY [VOL. 3:113 recognize most aspects of the right to gather news, including the reporter's privilege, and that doing so does not require any interpretive contortions. However, recognizing some newsgathering rights depends on a more egalitarian definition of "journalist"—one that emphasizes the function served by newsgatherers, and not their social or professional status or credentials. And although there is a historical and constitutional foundation for many newsgathering protections, some access claims and liability defenses—particularly those that are dependent on an affirmative-rights construction of the First Amendment—are not constitutionally cognizable, despite their appeal as matters of policy.


Synthetic biology explores the means of redesign and fabrication of existing biological systems or the de novo design and generation of biological components that are entirely new to nature. The main focus of the relatively new and dynamic discipline is to develop programmable genetic regulatory systems. Precise, reversible and temporary control of gene expression as well as in-depth understanding of fundamental genetics are crucial for the programming of new genetic circuits.
RNA represents one of the most powerful substrates in the engineering of biological systems, as it is versatile, designable and easily characterizable. Among the diverse functions of RNA molecules, their role as natural riboswitches has predominantly inspired researchers to design synthetic RNA-based regulators. Most of RNA devices contain a sensor element, an aptamer domain, which recognizes small molecules or protein ligands with high specificity and affinity, and an expression platform, controlling gene expression via various mechanisms. Generally, binding of a specific ligand to the aptamer domain stabilizes the RNA molecule or causes conformational changes in its structure; these further regulate transcription, translation and mRNA processing and degradation. Engineered RNA-based devices have already demonstrated multiple applications in synthetic biology. However, their implementation was mostly validated in bacteria and yeast, while mammalian synthetic biology has lagged behind.
Splicing of pre-mRNAs is an essential process in human cells that generates a diverse proteome through networks of coordinated splicing events and offers an additional layer of control for synthetic RNA devices. The reprogrammed removal of intronic sequences could provide a novel approach for the development of gene therapies to tackle disease phenotypes. For this purpose, it is necessary to design tools that allow precise and timely control of the splicing mechanisms. In the first research project described in the presented doctoral thesis, a versatile and highly efficient splicing device enabling control of gene expression in human cells and making use of an RNA aptamer recognized by the TetR was designed. Further, the portability of the splicing device was shown through its functionality in various reporter systems and the endogenous gene context. In the course of the thesis, the first inducible model for alternative 3' splice site recognition with the tetracycline repressor (TetR) aptamer leading to production of splice variants with different subcellular localization was generated. The applicability of the system was corroborated in experiments aimed at controlling nuclear import in human cells. The proposed approach may prove valuable in phenotypic studies of essential genes and provide an alternative in the development of therapeutic strategies, as the nucleo-cytoplasmic transport is vital for the maintenance of balanced cell physiology, with aberrant spatiotemporal localization of proteins leading to the development of various disorders and cancer. Finally, the third research project undertaken in the course of my doctoral studies focused on the development and optimization of the TetR aptamer dependent translational control system in human cells. Translational regulation constitutes an important point of post-transcriptional control of gene expression, enabling the cell to rapidly change the level of a specific gene product. Up to now, no efficient aptamer-ligand based translational regulatory system has been demonstrated in mammalian cells.


Introduction With the introduction of the good governance agenda in the 90s, corruption has been increasingly recognized as an impediment in democratic functioning and economic development. The rising salience of corruption (and anti-corruption) is demonstrated by the frequency of citations in world press: while in the beginning of 90s, corruption was mentioned approximately 800 times, by 2000 this number had reached 1200 (Bryane, 2004). Notably, a large part of the sector has been concentrated on the European post-communist countries. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] Albania, Kosovo and Serbia have all had turbulent recent history with fervent changes and troublesome transitions--creating favorable conditions for breeding corruption. Kosovo has gone through decades of de-investment, a conflict, international administration and state-building. Serbia, on the other hand, has been at the center of the fall-out of Yugoslavia, having inherited the secret state structures of the Communist regime, and then suffered international isolation during Milosevic's regime. Meanwhile, Albania faced civil war as pyramid structures collapsed. Transitions have been difficult for all post-communist countries, but the political, social and economic turmoil after the fall of communism have put an additional strain on the already fragile institutions of these countries. While their experiences might be different (yet interconnected), Albania, Kosovo and Serbia have much in common, among which a post-communist past, widespread corruption and much donor and EU influence. Despite a decade of heavy investment in anti-corruption, concerns about corruption have increased. In polls, 80 to 90% of respondents in Albania, Kosovo and Serbia find corruption and bribery harmful (Gallup International, 2008). An analysis of the civil society sector is not only necessary to understand its role in changing institutional behavior, but will also serve as a guide for policy-makers, donors and civil society practitioners. The experience of these three countries is insightful evidence into the elements that make anti-corruption projects successful or not. The goal of this research is to explore the impact of civil society organizations in the field of anti-corruption, and compare these experiences to each other. Furthermore, it looks into specific projects within these countries looking for elements which make these projects successful and tries to identify practices which could be transferred to other organizations and countries. The first part presents the theoretical grounding on the question why should civil society contribute to curbing corruption and what tools it has in its hands. The second part is the methodology and limitations encountered in the study. The third part diagnoses corruption in these countries, based on the typology developed by Alina Mungiu-Pippidi. Before diving into experiences of civil society organizations, the fourth chapter explores the strengths and weaknesses of investigative journalism in fighting corruption. The fifth part assesses civil society in Albania, Kosovo and Serbia, followed by impact assessment of the civil society in anti-corruption and experiences that organizations have had with their projects. 1. Civil Society and Anti-corruption Nowadays, some authors argue that formal political institutions, such as administrative control and judicial structures, have had a small effect in CEE, whereas among the systems that work are the watchdog role of the press and NGOs (Schmidt, 2007). International organizations have increasingly sought civil society involvement in anticorruption since the 90s, leading to the establishment of civil society involvement as a central theme in anti-corruption (Schmidt, 2007). Nowadays, the Organization for Economic Community and Development firmly states "civil society plays a key role in fighting corruption" (OECD, 2003:8). [FIGURE 2 OMITTED] A large part of the civil society sector in the region has, in one way or another, been involved in anti-corruption work. …


The story of Saint Josaphat, a prince who gave up his wealth and kingdom to follow Jesus, was one of the most popular Christian tales of the Middle Ages, translated into a dozen languages, and cited by Shakespeare in The Merchant of Venice. Yet Josaphat is only remembered today because of the similarities of his life to that of the Buddha. In Search of the Christian Buddha is set against the backdrop of the trade along the Silk Road, the Christian settlement of Palestine, the spread of Islam, and the Crusades. It traces the path of the Buddha's tale from India and shows how it evolved, adopting details from each culture during its sojourn. These early instances of globalization allowed not only goods but also knowledge to flow between different cultures and around much of the world. Eminent scholars Donald S. Lopez Jr. and Peggy McCracken reveal how religions born thousands of miles apart shared ideas throughout the centuries. They uncover surprising convergences and divergences between these faiths on subjects including the meaning of death, the problem of desire, and their view of women. Demonstrating the incredible power of this tale, they ask not how stories circulate among religions but how religions circulate among stories.


Human-wildlife conflicts are the product of socio-economic and political landscapes and are contentious because the resources concerned have economic value and species are often high profile and legally protected. Within a governance framework, we detail institutional roles and the effectiveness of policies and practices of controlling damage-causing animals (DCAs) at Kruger National Park (KNP) and Limpopo Province along KNP's western border. Most DCAs originate from the park, significantly affecting its long-term legitimacy among local communities. Between 2002 and 2004, over 12% of households within 15 km of the park experienced DCA damage, with incidents significantly correlated with being located closer to KNP and having higher numbers of mammalian livestock. These incidents are affecting opinions concerning KNP, as those who experienced damage were less likely to believe that the park would ever help their household economically. According to 482 DCA incident records from 1998 to 2004, the most problematic species are buffalo, lion, elephant, hippo and crocodile. Limpopo Province utilised professional hunters in DCA control, however, widespread abuses including the direct luring of lion led to a national moratorium on specific hunting practices. DCA procedures are highly flawed due to ambiguity concerning species and movement of DCAs, poor reporting, inadequate response times, overlapping responsibilities, and corruption. These are exacerbated by weak and, in some cases, competing institutions. Further, the controversial issue of undelivered compensation is determining negative attitudes by communities towards institutions who have historically promised it. Drawing on good governance principles, we offer recommendations on alleviating DCA conflicts in such contexts.


This is an exploratory paper on the re-emergence of urban farming/agriculture (UA) as an important priority in urban food systems and food policy in China. 'Re-emergence' because until about the early 1990s, cities/municipalities were able to meet most if not the entire requirement of fresh food and to some extent grain and livestock produce from within their boundaries. When rapid growth of urban centres in China began to manifest in the form of explosive population growth along with urban built up area, farmland within and around cities declined considerably and increasing amounts of urban food supplies were sourced from the hinterland or distant areas. In the recent decade, with rapid advances in technological capabilities aided by intensive research and development in the field of vertical farming, aquaponics and hydroponics, urban agriculture has become a priority in China's agriculture and food policy.


As the earliest dated solids, calcium–aluminum-rich inclusions (CAIs) provide a unique window into the early solar system. However, for many elements, CAIs have been shown to exhibit a very different nucleosynthetic isotope signature from that of later-formed bulk meteorites. To explore this critical difference between solar system materials, we investigate a broad set of CAI samples for both mass-dependent and non-mass-dependent (nucleosynthetic) isotope variations in the siderophile element nickel (Ni). We find that fine-grained CAIs show little if any mass-dependent Ni isotopic fractionation, whereas coarse-grained inclusions exhibit a broad range of isotopically heavy signatures. Because mass-dependent variations appear to be coupled with nucleosynthetic anomalies in CAIs, a part of this Ni isotope variability could be due to thermal processing that acted on these samples. Nucleosynthetic Ni isotopic signatures show that CAIs share a genetic heritage with carbonaceous meteorites and provide a clear distinction from the isotopic reservoirs occupied by terrestrial Ni and non-carbonaceous meteorites. However, whereas nucleosynthetic Ni isotope heterogeneity in previously investigated bulk meteorites was ascribed to variation in the neutron-poor isotope 58Ni, we here find that CAI signatures require variability in other, more neutron-rich Ni isotopes. Taken in aggregate with previous work, this highlights a change in the nucleosynthetic character from CAIs to later-formed solids that cannot be explained by variable admixture of a single presolar phase or material from a specific supernova shell. Instead, these data reveal the complex evolution of the solar system, including blending and reprocessing of matter from several generations and types of stars.


All children love this traditional rhyme and singing along will help to develop number skills. Bouncy illustrations, innovative die cutting and popular rhymes make Books with Holes a must for every child. Available in three formats, suitable for babies, toddlers, pre-schoolers and the nursery or classroom.


Cao, H. 2018. Exposure to xenobiotic chemicals disrupts metabolism, rhythmicity and cell proliferation in Drosophila melanogaster. Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Medicine 1481. 50 pp. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. ISBN 978-91-513-0391-8. Most species are constantly exposed to xenobiotic chemicals through multiple routes. Among all categories of xenobiotics, phthalates and bisphenols are two of the most widely used plasticizers and can be found in polyvinyl chloride (PVC) materials, medical devices and even drinking water. In paper I, we found that bis-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) exposure caused a significant decrease in circulating carbohydrates and insulin-related genes. The MultidrugResistance like Protein 1 (MRP1, MRP in Drosophila) belongs to the ATP-binding cassette transporter family, and previous studies revealed the importance of MRP1 for transporting xenobiotics. However, the function of MRP1 in metabolism and other biological processes is still unclear. Therefore, in paper II, we showed that knocking down MRP expression in Malpighian tubules, the physiological equivalence of the vertebrate kidney, led to disrupted lipid homeostasis and oxidative resistance. In paper III and IV, we initially used whole transcriptome sequencing to assess the genetic interferences of exposure to Dibutyl Phthalate (DBP) and Bisphenol A Diglycidyl Ether (BADGE). The reproductive and developmental disruptions of DBP had been reported in many studies. However, the mechanism is still unclear. In paper III, we observed that DBP interfered with neuronal systems associated circadian genes, including in vrille (vri, human NFIL3), timeless (tim, human TIMELESS), period (per, human PER3) and Pigment-dispersing factor (Pdf). Furthermore, we demonstrated that the evolutionarily conserved gene, Hormone receptor-like in 38 (Hr38, human NR4A2) was involved in responding to DBP and regulated Pdf expression as a consequence. In paper IV, BADGE, a BPA-substitute, was tested for its disruptive effects on Drosophila. Based on the transcriptome sequencing, we found that several mitotic genes, including string (stg, human CDC25A), Cyclin B (CycB, human CCNB1), Cyclin E (CycE, human CCNE1), and pan gu (png, human NEK11), had detectable overexpression by BADGE exposure. Developmental exposure to BADGE induced a large increase of hemocytes in fly 3 instar larvae, while it did not damage the morphological structure of lymph gland and blood circulation. To summarize, our studies describe the potential disruptions of the industrial xenobiotics and provide the mechanistic hints for future investigations.


Adaptive observation strategies in numerical weather prediction aim to improve forecasts by exploiting additional observations at locations that are themselves optimized with respect to the current state of the atmosphere. The role played by an inexact estimate of the current state of the atmosphere (i.e., error in the ''analysis'') in restricting adaptive observation strategies is investigated; necessary conditions valid across a broad class of modeling strategies are identified for strategies based on linearized model dynamics to be productive. It is demonstrated that the assimilation scheme, or more precisely, the magnitude of the analysis error is crucial in limiting the applicability of dynamically based strategies. In short, strategies based on linearized dynamics require that analysis error is sufficiently small so that the model linearization about the analysis is relevant to linearized dynamics of the full system about the true system state. Inasmuch as the analysis error depends on the assimilation scheme, the level of observational error, the spatial distribution of observations, and model imperfection, so too will the preferred adaptive observation strategy. For analysis errors of sufficiently small magnitude, dynamically based selection schemes will outperform those based only upon uncertainty estimates; it is in this limit that singular vector-based adaptive observation strategies will be productive. A test to evaluate the relevance of this limit is demonstrated.


The present attempt deals with analysis of conversion potential of earthworm, Eisenia fetida (L) through the use of Garbage (Garden waste) (GW), Kitchen Waste (KW) and combination of both (GW + KW ). The Garbage (Garden waste) (GW); Kitchen Waste (KW) and combination of both (GW + KW ) were subjected for recycling through vermicomposting through the using the epigeic earthworm, Eisenia fetida (L) under laboratory conditions. The parameters of analysis include: pH, moisture content, total organic carbon, humus, nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium in vermicompost. The moisture content, total organic carbon, humus, nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium of vwas high in the vermicompost derived from combination of both (GW + KW ) , followed by kitchen waste (KW) and garden waste (GW). This attempt is demonstrating, the potential of earthworm species and the type of wastes utilized. Role of soil microbes and earthworms are responsible for the recycling and biochemical degradation of organic matter. The earthworms are the important ecological drivers for the process by conditioning the substrate and altering the biological activity. However, the quality of the end product vary according to the composition of the initial mixture being processed.


Hints for the existence of a sterile neutrino at nuclear reactors are reexamined using two updated predictions for the fluxes of antineutrinos produced in fissions. These new predictions diverge in their preference for the rate deficit anomaly, relative to previous analyses, but the anomaly in the ratios of measured antineutrino spectra persists. We comment on upcoming experiments and their ability to probe the preferred region of the sterile-neutrino parameter space in the electron neutrino disappearance channel.


A novel method of linear system simplification is presented based on a modified factor division approach. It is seen to be more flexible than most model reduction methods in that families of reduced models may be easily generated by varying a single parameter in the modified transfer function denominator. It also guarantees stable reduced models of stable systems and preserves initial time moments and Markov parameters of the system. An example illustrates its application.


OBJECTIVE
To determine if the release of health care report cards focused on physician practice quality measures leads to changes in consumers' awareness and use of this information.

PRIMARY DATA SOURCES
Data from two rounds of a survey of the chronically ill adult population conducted in 14 regions across the United States, combined with longitudinal information from a public reporting tracking database. Both data were collected as part of the evaluation for Aligning Forces for Quality, a nationwide quality improvement initiative funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

STUDY DESIGN
Using a longitudinal design and an individual-level fixed effects modeling approach, we estimated the impact of community public reporting efforts, measured by the availability and applicability of physician quality reports, on consumers' awareness and use of physician quality information (PQI).

PRINCIPAL FINDINGS
The baseline level of awareness was 12.6 percent in our study sample, drawn from the general population of chronically ill adults. Among those who were not aware of PQI at the baseline, when PQI became available in their communities for the first time, along with quality measures that are applicable to their specific chronic conditions, the likelihood of PQI awareness increased by 3.8 percentage points. For the same group, we also find similar increases in the uses of PQI linked to newly available physician report cards, although the magnitudes are smaller, between 2 and 3 percentage points.

CONCLUSIONS
Specific contents of physician report cards can be an important factor in consumers' awareness and use of PQI. Policies to improve awareness and use of PQI may consider how to customize quality report cards and target specific groups of consumers in dissemination.


The author asks whether style diversification retains its arguable pretax benefits when considering taxes. First, he reviews the two generic arguments – market timing and manger focus - offered to support the suggestion that style diversification actually produces value added on a pretax basis. Then, he presents and discusses the results of two experiments designed to evaluate the extent to which style timing and manager focus can add value on a pretax basis, in various circumstances. Finally, the author repeats these same experiments on an after-tax basis to review the impact of either approach on an after tax basis. He concludes that diversification benefits do not seem to persist when taxes are taken into account, and that a more successful strategy might be to take as a broad portfolio focus as possible, in order to capture the tax-efficiency benefits likely to arise across asset classes or sub-categories.


The effects of canopy gaps on forest understory communities are well documented. However, there has been almost no documentation of the effects of gaps on the canopies themselves. Recent research has shown that portions of crowns adjacent to gaps undergo rapid growth, implying an increase in available carbohydrate (due to increased sunlight). It is reasonable to hypothesize that this would also lead to increases in flowering, fruiting, and epiphytic growth in these same crown portions. Limited data from a temperate forest presented here suggest that this is true. If so, gap-edge tree crowns could be hot spots of resource availability for folivores, floral visitors, frugivores, epiphytes, and associates of these species. As yet we have no documentation of these hot spots or how deeply their effects penetrate into the adjacent parts of the canopy. Because of limited access, canopy biology has concentrated on the vertical dimension, but studies in the horizontal dimension are equally important. Using examples from 'gaps' (glades) in an acacia bushland in East Africa and terrestrial temperate forest edges, I show how similar landscape mosaics have highly variable effects on the community, depending on the traits considered. I then consider parallels with forest canopy gaps, and possibilities for future research.


Given a graph where vertices represent alternatives and arcs represent pairwise comparison data, the statistical ranking problem is to find a potential function, defined on the vertices, such that the gradient of the potential function agrees with the pairwise comparisons. Our goal in this paper is to develop a method for collecting data for which the least squares estimator for the ranking problem has maximal Fisher information. Our approach, based on experimental design, is to view data collection as a bi-level optimization problem where the inner problem is the ranking problem and the outer problem is to identify data which maximizes the informativeness of the ranking. Under certain assumptions, the data collection problem decouples, reducing to a problem of finding multigraphs with large algebraic connectivity. This reduction of the data collection problem to graph-theoretic questions is one of the primary contributions of this work. As an application, we study the Yahoo! Movie user rating data set and demonstrate that the addition of a small number of well-chosen pairwise comparisons can significantly increase the Fisher informativeness of the ranking. As another application, we study the 2011-12 NCAA football schedule and propose schedules with the same number of games which are significantly more informative. Using spectral clustering methods to identify highly-connected communities within the division, we argue that the NCAA could improve its notoriously poor rankings by simply scheduling more out-of-conference games.


This paper describes the hydrogeological processes that caused unexpected instability and quick conditions during the excavation of a 25 m deep cutting through a drumlin in County Down, Northern Ireland. A conceptual hydrogeological model of the cutting, based on pore pressures monitored during and after the excavation, demonstrates how quick conditions at the toe of the cutting caused liquefaction of the till. Stability of the cutting was re-established by draining the highly permeable, weathered greywacke that underlies the drumlin, through the use of a deep toe drain. In spite of this drainage, the cutting was only marginally stable, owing to the presence of a low-permeability zone in the till above the bedrock, which limits the reduction of elevated pore pressures within the upper to mid-depths of the drumlin. The factor of safety has been further improved by the addition of vertical relief drains at the crest and berm of the cutting to relieve the pore pressures within the upper till by intercepting the weathered bedrock. The paper also highlights the importance of carrying out an adequate site investigation compliant with Eurocode 7 and additional monitoring in excavations in stiff, low-permeability till.