The socialist market economy system reform with Chinese characteristics is one of the most important contents in China's economic reform practice. From the reality of China's economic development, the transformation of macroeconomic policies, and the academic discussion in the theoretical circles, it can be concluded that China's market economy system reform entered the deepening exploration period since 2012, and it is urgent to change the economic growth mode to a higher quality socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics. This paper systematically studies the thought trajectory, policy practice and performance analysis of the socialist market economy system reform with Chinese characteristics entering the deepening exploration stage since 2012.At the thought level, China's market economy system reform has achieved the multi-dimensional innovation and development since 2012. Among them, the basic understanding of the economic New Normal" is the era background and the thought premise of China's deepening market economic reform. The proposal of New Development Concept" is its main line of thoughts and overall guidance of China's deepening market economic reform, while the conception of Modern Economic System" and the initiation of Community with Shared Future for Mankind" are the thought expansion and extension respectively in internal direction and external direction. The thought trajectory of China's market economy system reform's deepening exploration is developing along this thought premise, the overall guidance, and the thought expansion in internal direction and external direction. These new ideas not only have theoretical breakthroughs and innovations in answering important questions such as what kind of development we want and how to achieve it", what kind of world we want and how to achieve it", but also provide an ideological and theoretical basis for China to deepen the practical practice of the market economy system reform.At the level of practices, based on the evolution of China's reform thinking since 2012, the key policy practices for deepening reform in this period can be elaborated from two sides: one is the construction of six systems, one organization" guided by the concept of Modern Economic System"; the other is the construction of the Belt and Road" under the guidance of the community of human destiny". These policy practices are the realistic manifestation of thought evolution, and at the same time provide a practical source for thoughts' further development and innovation. The dynamic interaction between the two aspects promotes the deepening development of the socialist market economy system reform with Chinese characteristics, which has made remarkable realistic achievements in the economic structure, urban and rural regional development, people's living standards, ecological civilization construction, and new international economic relations.Since the deepening exploration period of the market economy system reform in 2012, the organic combination and effective interaction between China's reform thoughts and policy practices is not only the realistic embodiment of the basic logic of historical materialism of Marx's social existence determines social consciousness, social consciousness counteracts social existence", but also one of the most important experiences of China's success in the socialist market economic reform since the founding of the People's Republic of China. It is further one of the most important principles that must be adhered to cope with the current severe domestic and international challenges and to promote the construction of a more mature socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics.


In pre-Columbian times along the mighty Hudson River, extending in a radius of a hundred miles on either side from its point of origin in the north to its estuary far to the south on the Atlantic Ocean, lay a pristine world of bucolic and serene landfall. This was a world mantled with lush forests that rimmed the walls and blanketed valley floors but whose coastal plains and flatlands had a much thinner layer. It was a world permeated with babbling, bubbling, tumbling freshwater brooks and numerous smaller rivers that meandered through the region snaking their way to larger bodies of water like the Raritan and Hackensack Rivers that emptied into the Atlantic. There were undulating hills and precipitous ridges that lay in the shadow of towering mountain ranges like the Palisades and Shawangunk on the lower and mid-Hudson to its west, and the mountain ranges of Catskills, Taconic and Adirondacks that rise magnificently from the valley floor. There were smaller valleys off to the southwest like the Passaic and Hackensack, with both the Piedmont and Jersey Highlands rising above them. Rainfall was seasonally heavy, and spring thaws brought streams of melting snow rushing down mountains to enrich rivers with topsoil that spilled from the rivers' banks inundating agriculturally rich flood plains. This was truly a cornucopia of natural wealth whose space was contested by indigenous bands of Algonquian-speakers and an abundance of wild life. Where the river emptied into the estuary, on its southern and western flanks, were scattered Native American bands of Manhattans, Hackensacks, Lenapes, Minisinks and Delawares, while bands of Wappingers, Mohicans, and Esopus lay across the middle span of the river, and with Mohawks and others further north. On the eastern flank of the estuary, on Long Island, were the Montauks, Shinnecocks, Matinecocks, and Massapequas. The tranquility of this pristine world was traumatically shattered in the seventeenth century with the arrival initially of the Dutch and later the English in search of wealth, bringing with them alien ideas of land ownership through "purchase" and, barring that, outright conquest. The alien form of land tenure was part and parcel of an overall alien economy of individualism driven by the profit motive, and combined with equally alienating socio-cultural systems that slowly eroded, incorporated, and eventually collapsed an indigenous, more humane and collective socio-economic structure. Yet out of the clash of cultures would emerge a new, more dominant culture, whose staying power on what became contested ground, was as a result of a process of "grafting on" key cultural and economic elements from the vanquished. So in their efforts to ensure profitability in tapping the natural wealth of the region's hinterland, especially the trade in animal skins, the Dutch in the first three decades of the seventeenth century carved out from the landfall a trading station, Fort Orange (Albany), on the upper Hudson and a southern port city at the river's mouth which they named New Amsterdam. Laying claim to the vast extent of the river's environs and beyond southwest to the Delaware River, and naming it New Netherlands, the Dutch, in the wake of the collapse of the fur trade, moved to enhance the profitability of what was becoming an uneconomic colonial venture. Future profits for the Dutch were envisioned in the exploitation of the potential agricultural schemes of land grants called patroonships, an alien form of land tenure that would forever alter this pristine landfall, creating a terrain of on-going contestation between intruders and indigenous folk and among the intruders themselves. Grant holders (patroons) were to exploit the land and other natural resources through the recruitment of "servants" (i.e., European, Native American and/or African) as laborers. Two of the early patroonships established were Rensselaerwyck on the upper Hudson, the personal holding of Kiliaen van Rensselaer a director of the Dutch West India company, and the patroonship of Pavonia of Michael Pauw on the lower Hudson across from New Amsterdam. …


In "Managing in the Age of Modularity," which was written in June 1997 and appeared in the Harvard Business Review, we proposed that a new technological phenomenon, the modular design of complex computer systems, caused the emergence of a large modular cluster of firms and markets in the computer industry. We went on to say that "managing" in this "modular environment" was different from managing a large, hierarchical corporation of the type that had emerged in the early 20th Century. The events of the past four years, especially the dot.com bubble and crash, have caused us to reflect critically on both our theory and the related managerial recommendations. In this invited paper, with full benefit of hindsight, we revisit the questions: do the benefits of modularity and the modular cluster form of organization justify the costs? If so, when and why? And what do managers need to know to be effective in a modular environment?


This paper presents a new type of fuzzy controller for active magnetic bearing applications. Active magnetic bearing (AMB) applications in rotating machinery are fast growing due to their precise and contact less support of the rotating shaft. AMB are open loop unstable due to nonlinear relationship between electromagnetic force,attraction distance and the electromagnetic current. To regulate the electromagnetic forces acting on the bearing, external control is required. Feedback control for AMB systems such as proportional and derivative is only restricted to linearized region. For nonlinear control systems, artificial intelligence techniques such as fuzzy and hybrid techniques are being investigated. Bang-bang control is an old but effective technique to control nonlinear system in optimal time. Bang-bang control combined with fuzzy logic decision-making flexibility results in a robust control system. In this work an integrated fuzzy bang-bang relay controller (FBBRC) is presented to control the AMB system. FBBRC is simple to design than conventional fuzzy controllers. Comparison with other widely used AMB control techniques demonstrate improved results.


Development is a changing process to improve human standard of life that strongly related to the activities of natural resource utilization. It is frequently found that these activities change the ecosystems and their resources. Eventually, these changes will give serious impacts to the environments. The most distinct environmental problems are caused by resident migration to the coastal areas, coastal developments, and land limitation. Coastal reclamation is an example of human effort to respond to the land limitation in the coastal areas as observed in coastal areas of Labakkang Subdistrict. Reclamation activity is doing along the coast of Pundata Baji Village, whereas, in other villages, cutting off of mangrove areas as an alternative land expansion is increasingly practiced by the local communities. This Research was aimed to observe the landscape change from 1980 to 2010 at coast area in Labakkang Subdistrict. Each review considers Landsat Image Map (acquired in 1980); Landsat Image Map (acquired in 1990); Landsat Image Map-7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) (acquired in 2000); Spot Image 4 (acquired in 2005); and Spot 4 LAPAN (acquired in 2010). Result of research indicates that at coast area of Labakkang Subdistrict in 1980, there are 248.3 ha of mangrove vegetation, 2,756.63 ha inundation, and 4,157.0 ha open land. In 1990, there are 234.2 ha mangrove vegetation, 2,251.63 ha embankment, 933.2 ha rice field, and 582.0 ha open land. In 2000, there are 218.3 ha mangrove vegetation, 2,848.1 ha embankment, and 3,579.2 ha rice field. In 2005, it has 121.4 ha mangrove vegetation, 3,762.6 ha embankment, and 2,306.2 ha rice field. In 2010, it is found 48.9 ha mangrove vegetation, 5,029.35 ha embankment, and 749.98 ha rice field.


Scholars have argued that the malpractice system would be better off if patients had the option of waiving the right to sue for malpractice in exchange for a lower fee. Some doctors have tried to follow this advice by having their patients sign medical malpractice exculpatory agreements, but courts usually have refused to enforce these agreements, invoking a void-for-public-policy rationale. This Note argues that a doctor could maximize the odds that a court would enforce her medical malpractice exculpatory agreement by somehow ensuring that she will never find out whether her patient decided to sign. A case study of the law in New York highlights the ambiguity in the void-for-public-policy rationale as to whether the simple fact that the doctor-patient relationship is implicated in a medical malpractice contract is fatal to enforcement, or whether such a contract could be enforced if it were nonadhesive and clearly worded. A behavioral-economic analysis of the patient's decision to sign a medical malpractice exculpatory agreement reveals a reason why the agreements may be categorically barred: Some patients might unwillingly agree to sign for fear of signaling distrust or litigiousness to their doctors. A confidential contract — in which the offeror never knew whether the offeree had accepted or not — would avoid this signaling effect. A provider using such a contract could distinguish those cases in which the doctor-patient relationship alone seemed to justify nonenforcement as not involving this prophylactic measure.


Product attributes are closely related to consumers' willingness to buy on e-commerce. Some products are considered that few people would buy them online, but in fact they have large sales volume, such as underwear products. This study analyzed from the perspective of the product grey private information of why consumers buy and who is buying these products, what kind of relationship between the purchasing comments and product attributes of these products. Firstly, we select the companies with certain influence to the exploratory research to study the company's comments, and do the data mining of the top 10 products of the best sales and the last 10 products of the poor sales. Secondly, we analyzed the product attributes of the 14 enterprises again by the iterative method and compared with the first exploration result. Thirdly, we studied on the value of common knowledge and outlier knowledge for these products. The study found that common knowledge has the sensitive interval for the price of grey private products, the product price, the discount of the product and the sales volume of the product have significant relationship. The discovery of outlier knowledge is open and the comfort is very different. There is a significant positive correlation between the time of marketing and the sales volume: simple, natural, health products and sales are related; the extreme situations are not universal, but have good room for growth.


Over the past 25 years, the present author has written with several co-authors a series of papers beginning with the landmark paper in the 1 st International Conference on Ground Control in Mining in 1981, in turn, based upon U. S. Bureau of Mines (USBM) funded contract research managed by the author with a final report issued in 1979, all concerning this paper's title subject, Effect of FullExtraction Underground Mining on Ground and Surface Waters. Initially the work was a summary of British, Russian, and Hungarian experience tailored to United States strata conditions, but has evolved into a consistent and well-documented model of the behavior of strata influenced by full-extraction underground mining such as longwall coal mining. The several strata zones recognized in these works, Surface Fracture Zone, Constrained or Aquiclude Zone, Dilated Zone, Fractured Zone, and Caved Zone, have been observed by several workers in the field. The concepts presented initially 25 years ago have been adopted, rightly or wrongly, by state regulators, ground and surface water researchers, and mining practitioners. The development and utility of these concepts and recent findings will be summarized.


Hubble Space Telescope observations of main-belt comet P/2013 P5 reveal an extraordinary system of six dust tails that distinguish this object from any other. Observations two weeks apart show dramatic morphological change in the tails while providing no evidence for secular fading of the object as a whole. Each tail is associated with a unique ejection date, revealing continued, episodic mass loss from the 0.24 ± 0.04 km radius nucleus over the last five months. As an inner-belt asteroid and probable Flora family member, the object is likely to be highly metamorphosed and unlikely to contain ice. The protracted period of dust release appears inconsistent with an impact origin, but may be compatible with a body that is losing mass through a rotational instability. We suggest that P/2013 P5 has been accelerated to breakup speed by radiation torques.


The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is issuing this final rule to establish procedures for requesting an exemption from the substantial equivalence requirements of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (Tobacco Control Act). The final rule describes the process and statutory criteria for requesting an exemption and explains how FDA reviews requests for exemptions. This regulation satisfies the requirement in the Tobacco Control Act that FDA issue regulations implementing the exemption provision.


Nobel metal nanoparticles possess unique materials properties different from their corresponding bulk materials, which have sparked extensive research developments in the field of nanofabrication over the past few decades. In particular, the rational design of plasmonic nanoparticles ("artificial atoms") is emerging as an exciting route for engineering material properties with high accuracy. Synthetic advances enable the sophisticated control over their size, shape, composition, and morphology, which has led to a wide spectrum of applications including miniaturized optical and electronic device, sensors and photonic circuits, and medical diagnostics and therapeutics. It is expected that the ability to assemble these elementary plasmonic nanoparticle building blocks into well-defined assemblies such as "artificial molecules", "artificial polymers" or "superacrystals" will further impact the way materials are synthesized and devices are fabricated. Despite the encouraging progresses in synthesizing metallic nanoparticles, it is still far from the capability of constructing any arbitrary nanostructures in a well-controlled manner. This thesis is dedicated to synthesis and characterisation of a few novel plasmonic nanostructures including hairy plasmonic nanorods, hairy bacteria, nanoparticle pyramids, etc. I have also thoroughly investigated the soft DNA corona structures via small angle neutron scattering (SANS) for the first time. Soft organic ligand plays a critical role in synthesis and assembly of plasmonic nanoparticles. In chapter 3, SANS was used to investigate soft ligand corona structures using DNA-capped nanoparticles as the model system. Two 15mer DNA strands with palindromic sequence and poly(dT) sequence under high number density packing on gold nanoparticle surfaces, the influence of ionic strength and temperature on DNA corona structures and resultant hybridization has been investigated. Poly(dT) sequences were found to maintain globular corona structures across a range of ionic strengths and temperatures but the corona thickness decreased with increasing salt concentration and increased with increasing temperature. In contrast, palindromic sequenced DNA had globular corona structures in the absence of salt but quickly evolved into dimeric and multimeric structures under high ionic strength or under low annealing temperatures. The structural insights revealed by SANS can help us better understand how DNA controls nanoparticle interaction, which in further guide the design of tailor-made DNA corona structures for customizable designer materials and devices. In the chapter 4, synthesis and characterization of a new metal nanoarchitecture, hairy gold nanorods (HGNRs), are described. HGNRs were obtained by a seed-mediated growth of nanowires on gold nanorod templates. The hairy nanowires could be obtained in a wider range of ratios of gold precursor to ligand than that reported on solid surfaces or silica beads in the literature. The HGNRs have the unique soft 'hairs' and rigid 'core', allowing for the fabrication of patches with controllable percolation conductivity networks. The soft conducting patches could be used as elastic strain sensors with high stretchability and durability. Remarkably, this nanotemplated approach appears to be general. We found that E. coli bacteria could be employed as the template as well, leading to generation of 'hairy plasmonic bacteria' for the first time. In chapter 5, a combined top-down and bottom-up approach is developed to fabricate structurally well-defined nanoparticle pyramids. The top-down fabricated silicon pyramid well arrays are used as the template to confine self-assembly of pre-synthesized gold nanoparticles. Three types of monodisperse nanoparticles, nanospheres, octahedron, romboic dodecahedron, are used as elementary building blocks. For all the three type of nanoparticles, well-defined pyramids could be successfully constructed. The plasmonic properties of these pyramids were thoroughly investigated by micro-UV-visible spectroscopy and dark field spectroscopy. These novel plasmonic pyramids show highly tunable Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) enhancements.


Mobile application testing and testing over a cloud are two highly topical fields nowadays. Mobile testing presents specific test activities including verification of an application against a variety of heterogeneous smartphone models and versions of operating systems (OS) build distribution and test team management monitoring and user experience analytics of an application in production etc. Cloud benefits are widely used to support all these activities. This study conducts in-depth analyses of existing cloud services for mobile testing and addresses their weaknesses regarding research purposes and testing needs of the critical and business-critical mobile applications. During this study a Cloud Testing of Mobile Systems (CTOMS) framework for effective research crowdsourcing in mobile testing was developed. The framework is presented as a lightweight and easily scalable distributed system that provides a cloud service to run tests on a variety of remote mobile devices. CTOMS provides implementation of two novel functionalities that are demanded by advanced investigations in mobile testing. First it allows full multidirectional testing which provides the opportunities to test an application on different devices and/or OS versions and new device models or OS versions for their compatibility with the most popular applications in the market or just legacy critical apps etc. Second CTOMS demonstrates the effective integration of the appropriate testing techniques for mobile development within such a service. In particular it provides a user with suggestions about coverage of configurations to test on using combinatorial approaches like a base choice pair-wise and t-way. The current CTOMS version supports automated functional testing of Android applications and detection of defects in the user interface (UI). This has a great value because requirements for UI and user experience are high for any modern mobile application. The fundamental analysis of possible test types and techniques using a system like CTOMS was conducted and ways of possible enhancements and extensions of functionality for possible research are listed. The first case studies prove the work of implemented novel concepts their usefulness and their convenience for experiments in mobile testing. The overall work proves that a study of cloud mobile testing is feasible even with small research resources.


SUMMARY
We describe a new 'reference annotation based transcript assembly' problem for RNA-Seq data that involves assembling novel transcripts in the context of an existing annotation. This problem arises in the analysis of expression in model organisms, where it is desirable to leverage existing annotations for discovering novel transcripts. We present an algorithm for reference annotation-based transcript assembly and show how it can be used to rapidly investigate novel transcripts revealed by RNA-Seq in comparison with a reference annotation.

AVAILABILITY
The methods described in this article are implemented in the Cufflinks suite of software for RNA-Seq, freely available from http://bio.math.berkeley.edu/cufflinks. The software is released under the BOOST license.

CONTACT
email@example.com; email@example.com

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION
Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.


The Rossby Centre Regional Climate Model (RCA3) and the hydrological model HBV were linked to assess climate change impacts on water resources in the Pungwe basin until 2050. RCA3 was capable of simulating the most important aspects of the climate for a control period at the regional scale. At the subbasin scale, additional scalingwas needed. Three climate change experiments using ECHAM4-A2, B2 and CCSM3-B2 as input to RCA3 were carried out. According to the simulations annual rainfall in 2050 would be reduced by approximately 10% with increasing interannual variability of rainfall and dry season river flow and later onset of the rainy season. The ECHAM4-A2 driven experiment did also indicate a slight increase of high flows. If the results indeed reflect the future, they will worsen the already critical situation for water resources, regarding both floods and droughts. Uncertainties, however in the downscaled scenarios make it difficult to prioritize adaptation options. This calls for inclusion of more climate change experiments, in an ensemble of climate scenarios possibly by using a combination of dynamical and statistical downscaling of general circulation models, as well as extending the simulations to 2100 to further ensure robustness of the signal..


Open spaces are 'backbones' of the city, important places of communication and identification of the urban society. In an era of increasing privatization and commercialization of urban spaces the design of public spaces remains as one of the most important responsibilities for the municipality. The article discusses possibilities for improving public spaces in Irkutsk. Three conceptional approaches – 1: Network of public spaces, 2: Integration of different interests, 3: Encouraging special features and spatial identity – by presenting international best practices (e.g. from Dresden, Cleveland, Oulu) are recommended as approach for sustainable city development.


This paper studies the economic costs of hurricanes in the Caribbean by constructing a novel dataset that combines a detailed record of tropical cyclones' characteristics with reported damages. I estimate the relation between hurricane wind speeds and damages in the Caribbean; finding that the elasticity of damages to GDP ratio with respect to maximum wind speeds is three in the case of landfalls. The data show that hurricane damages are considerably underreported, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s, with average damages potentially being three times as large as the reported average of 1.6 percent of GDP per year. I document and show that hurricanes that do not make landfall also have considerable negative impacts on the Caribbean economies. Finally, I estimate that the average annual hurricane damages in the Caribbean will increase between 22 and 77 percent by the year 2100, in a global warming scenario of high CO2 concentrations and high global temperatures.


Informal justice refers to those legal practices that are traditionally outside the purview of formal law and legal systems. Since the advent of widespread social critique in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s, informal justice models have become increasingly popular and implemented in communities and within the legal system itself. The existence of informal justice mechanisms alongside and within formal justice systems in the US raises a number of questions for applied anthropologists interested in legal anthropology. In this article, I leverage four years of ethnographic fieldwork in the US to argue for the capacity of applied anthropologists to effectively work in grey juridical spaces that are beside and between the law, activism, and emerging bureaucratic regimes.


Fast and smart learning is required for companies to stay attuned and secure competitive strength in the marketplace. In addition, companies mastering corporate learning excellence are highly attractive to talents wanting to gain, build, and share their knowledge and experience to help solve strategic questions. Leaders in the global food and agribusiness industry should seize the opportunity of using corporate learning as a strategic weapon. Companies need it, Talents expect it.


The aerospace industry, driven by a demand to reduce weight, has relied increasingly on composite materials to increase performance of advanced systems. However, impacts by foreign objects such as runway debris can damage composite components without leaving indentations or other visually identifiable marks. Microcracking of the matrix, fiber pullout, and delaminations are among the types of resultant internal damage that can weaken the structure and affect the ultimate load strength as well as fatigue life. The field of nondestructive evaluation (NDE) provides a means for the detection and evaluation of barely visible impact damage. In this study glass/epoxy, carbon/epoxy, and carbon/thermoplastic material systems were evaluated ultrasonically after being struck at low impact energy levels. Laminates were impacted following NASA specifications; two different clamped impact boundaries were evaluated. Impact energies were varied by adjusting the drop height or the mass of the impactor. Impact events were recorded with a video camera and the energetics were obtained from the video tape; these included the incident and rebound energy and velocity. The energy dissipated in the laminate as a consequence of the impact can therefore be determined. The total delamination area, as summed over all the ply interfaces through the thickness of the laminate, was determined from ultrasonic scans and then quantitatively correlated to the energy dissipated in the laminate. A destructive deplying technique was applied to woven laminates to obtain the size and morphology of the impact delaminations. These results were compared to NDE results. The ability of delaminations to block ultrasound and the resulting shadowing effects were


Characterized Green's function method (CGFM), a new approach for estimating the response spectra of earthquake ground motion, has been proposed by Oji et al. (2012). The CGFM is based on the concept that the spatial average of estimated results is equal to a conventional attenuation model. The site‐specific deviations can be modeled by the source rupture effects, such as directivity pulses and radiation patterns, which are represented by the frequency‐dependent factors obtained from a superposition of simple characterized waveforms obeying the omega‐square model. In this article, we expand the CGFM to include nonlinear site response at a specific site. This response is calculated using the estimated time history of ground motion on the engineering basement from the response spectrum and the simulated phase waveform obtained by the original CGFM. The proposed CGFM is verified by comparing the estimated results with the records from the 1995 Kobe and the 2007 Chuetsu‐Oki earthquakes, Japan.


Nowadays, coal production increases continuously due to an increase in mechanization in coal mining and demand in its related fields of application worldwide. Coal production in China is especially an increasing trend and a large amount of waste fine coal is produced. Waste fine coals usually contain large amounts of ash and inorganic sulfur due to non-selective coal mining of the coal. Therefore, waste fine coals are available as a resource and cause spontaneous combustion leading in turn to air pollution because of their coal contents and small particle sizes which increases the surface area liable to be wet and oxidized, and the disposal site of waste fine coals cause land occupation, soil pollution and water contamination. In this study, a vegetable oil agglomeration process was performed for coal recovery from Chongqing Nantong waste fine coals in China. The oil agglomeration process has been used to mineral oil of exhaustible resource. Therefore, in this study, several kinds of vegetable oils are selected as oil agglutinative agents because the vegetable oils which are renewable, available and less-pollutant energy resources. The effects of the parameters including particle sizes, agitation conditions, chemical structure and viscosity of vegetable oils were investigated based on the combustible matter recovery, ash reduction and efficiency index. It was concluded that particle sizes of waste fine coal, agitation rate and agitation time will influence on the recovery efficiency of combustible matter from its original waste coal by the colza oil agglomeration. Furthermore, a wide range of vegetable oil alteration grades including prepared waste vegetable oil samples and therefore, of oil properties, such as chemical


First year chemistry classes at UOW are large (>500), the student body is very diverse in academic background and the students are enrolled in a broad range of degree programmes in science and applied science. Although students in Engineering degrees have a separate one semester programme, all other students taking first year chemistry do the subjects CHEM101 (Autumn) and CHEM102 (Spring). The undergraduate degree programmes range from nutrition and dietetics through health and medical sciences to biological sciences, to the degree programs run by the School of Chemistry itself, being BSc(Chem), BMedChem and BNano. The diversity of student intake includes those with senior school chemistry and mathematics, those without who attend a two week Bridging Chemistry intensive and those who have no senior school chemistry background, often lacking formal mathematics as well. Workshops based on Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) activities in conjunction with individual formative testing and group based peer assessment have been introduced into First Year Chemistry. We used different workshops formats in CHEM101 and CHEM102 depending on timetabling and other constraints. This has resulted in useful informative comparisons from the staff and student point of view. Extensive student surveying and focus group discussions have given rise to a rich body of commentary. We report our experiences and students' responses and outcomes. This research is being carried out within the context of increasing student numbers, increasing student diversity and major changes in Government policies concerning social inclusion and enablement.


Biofuel production from the tropical plant Jatropha curcas L. has recently attracted a great deal of attention. Some anticipate substantial social and environmental benefits from its cultivation, while at the same time expecting sound profitability for investors. Others are more doubtful, envisaging large trade-offs between the pursuit of social, environmental and economic objectives. The paper explores these issues in Tanzania, a forerunner in the cultivation of Jatropha in Africa. We trace how isolated Jatropha biofuel experiments in the country developed since their inception in early 2005 towards a fully fledged sectoral production and innovation system; and investigate to what extent that system has been capable of developing ánd maintaining sustainable practices and producing sustainable outcomes. The application of evolutionary economic theory allows us to view the ongoing development processes in the sector as a result of evolutionary variation and selection on the one hand, and revolutionary contestation between different coalitions of stakeholders on the other. Both these processes constitute significant engines of change in the sector. While variation and selection is driven predominantly by localised learning, the conflict-driven dynamics are highly globalised. The sector is found to have moved some way towards a full sectoral innovation and production system, but it is impossible to predict whether a viable sector with a strong "triple bottom line" orientation will ultimate emerge, since many issues surrounding the social, environmental and financial sustainability still remain unresolved.


This film describes an attempt to use a high-definition digital cinema system to produce content for a next-generation image system. Paintings by Ito Jakuchu were used as prototypes to produce an immersive virtual environment that allows people to enter the paintings. The result reveals possibilities for new collaborative studies among various fields such as art, psychology, and cognitive science, and a larger-than-life display to analyze and understand cultural properties and art works.


Plant productivity in many regions of the world is limited primarily as a result of environmental stresses. High temperature and wounding caused by pest and pathogen infection are among the main factors accounting for unpredictable and often severe yield losses worldwide. These stresses, force the plants to alter then gene expression in order to adapt to the changed environment. Attempts were made in the study to isolate and characterise the differentially expressed heat shocked and wound-induced genes to understand the underlying molecular mechanism of heat shock and wounding response. The isolation of the promoters and their use to derive the tissue-specific and high expression of the linked coding sequences will be proved practically more significant. A cDNA clone designated LP 19 was isolated from a differential screening of a cDNA library prepared from lignifying pods of pea line L59. Sequence homology analysis showed that LP19 belongs to the hsp70 gene family. Northern analysis of RNA from pods from pea lines of different genotypes, showing the presence or absence of pod lignification, showed that LP 19 expression was specifically associated with lignification. Several cDNA species derived from transcripts of the LP 19 gene were subsequently isolated, which showed varying positions of poly (A) addition to the 3' untranslated region. Southern blotting of genomic DNA indicated the presence of single gene corresponding to LP 19.The pea hsp70 gene corresponding to LP 19 was isolated from a pea genomic library using LP 19 as a probe. The pea hsp70(LP19) gene predicts an open reading frame encoding a polypeptide of 648 amino acid residues. This sequence is similar to other plant hsp70 proteins. However, unlike most other plant hsp70 genes, the pea hsp70(LP19) gene lacks an intron. 1.8 kb of 5' flanking sequence of hsp70(LP19) gene was also sequenced. The promoter region contains 6 putative consensus heat shock elements (HSEs) as well as 4 A-T rich sites upstream from TATA box. Induction of gene expression of the pea hsp70(LP19) was observed in all organs of the plant after heat shock; the highest level of expression was observed in root, followed by stem and least in leaves. A similar expression pattern for a corresponding gene was observed in chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.). Other stress conditions such as salt stress and wounding failed to induce the expression of hsp70LP(19) gene both in pea and chickpea. The pea hsp70(LP19) promoter region, including 1.8 kb 5'-flanking sequence, and the first 18 amino acids of the coding region, was fused with coding sequence for P- glucuronidase (GUS). Tobacco plants were transformed with this chimaeric gene in order to study tissue specific and developmental expression of the hsp70(LP19) promoter. Histological staining of GUS activity in transgenic tobacco plants showed that protein was present predominantly in the phloem tissue in stem, root and petioles In addition, developmental expression of the hsp70(LP19) gene promoter, without heat shock, was observed in petals, pollen grains, developing seeds as well as in germinating seeds and seedlings at different stages of growth. Quantitative assay of GUS activity by fluorometric assay was used to follow the time course of protein accumulation. Activity was detected within few minutes of the start of heat shock and increased to a maximum after 6 hrs. A high level of GUS activity was observed only in the heat shocked parts of the plant; no endogenous signal that spread systemically from the heat shocked areas to the rest of the plant was observed.Pea and chickpea plants showed a transient increase of polyphenol oxidase (PPO) with maximum level at 48 hrs after wounding. No systemic induction of PPO was observed in unwounded parts in response to both wounding and MeJA treatment. In order to isolate transcripts expressed differentially in response to wounding, a pea subtractive cDNA library was made. 21 subtracted cDNA clones were partially sequenced. Most of the subtracted cDNA clones showed homology with wound or pathogen induced sequences. Northern analysis of the genes corresponding to the subtracted cDNA clones (SC3, SC7, SC12, SC33, SC57 and SC58), indicated differential expression in response to wounding. Full length or nearly full length cDNAs corresponding to 4 subtracted cDNA clones, designated SC10, SC15, SC57 and SC58, were isolated and sequenced. These cDNA clones will be further studied and efforts will be made to isolate their promoters. The tissue-specific expression will be carried out by using promoter-reporter system. These isolated cDNA clones were partially characterised and will be available for further studies to isolate their respective promoters. The tissue specific expression will be carried out by using promoter-reporter system.


Abstract Objectives To explore how children of mothers newly diagnosed with breast cancer perceive their mother's illness and its initial treatment; to contrast their accounts with the mothers' perceptions of their children's knowledge. Design Qualitative interview study with thematic analysis. Setting Home based interviews with mothers and children in Oxfordshire, England. Participants 37 mothers with early breast cancer and 31 of their children aged between 6 and 18 years. Results Awareness of cancer as a life threatening illness existed even among most of the youngest children interviewed. Children described specific aspects of their mother's treatment as especially stressful (seeing her immediately postoperatively, chemotherapy, and hair loss). Children suspected that something was wrong even before they were told the diagnosis. Parents sometimes misunderstood their children's reactions and underestimated the emotional impact or did not recognise the children's need for more preparation and age appropriate information about the illness and its treatment. Conclusions As part of their care, parents newly diagnosed with a life threatening illness need to be supported to think about how they will talk to their children. General practitioners and hospital specialists, as well as nurses, are well placed to be able to help with these concerns and if necessary to be involved in discussions with the children. The provision of appropriate information, including recommended websites, should be part of this care. More information specifically designed for young children is needed.


Objective KidsMatter identified a need for resources to support the social and emotional wellbeing of Aboriginal children. This case study describes the intercultural processes underpinning the development of the KidsMatter Aboriginal Project. Method The project was guided by the principles of participatory action, narrative therapy, and critically reflective practice and aimed to define Aboriginal social and emotional wellbeing from the perspective of Aboriginal peoples. Workshops were held with Aboriginal cultural consultants across two phases. The consultants worked collaboratively with the project team to develop a series of animations and supporting resources for Aboriginal families, and early childhood and primary school educators. Workshop outcomes and themes were provided to Indigenous psychologists for comment and comparison with the available literature. Separate consultations were held with school, early childhood, and health and community professionals, and Aboriginal family group members to consider use of the resources in professional settings. Results The project resulted in the development of a suite of culturally relevant and professional learning tools to support the social and emotional wellbeing of Aboriginal children. The tools are designed for use by Aboriginal families, schools, early childhood, and health and community services and are reflective of key themes raised by relevant literature and community representatives. Conclusion The principles of participatory action, narrative therapy, and critically reflective practice can guide culturally safe practice and project outcomes when working with Aboriginal social and emotional wellbeing. The combination of first‐hand community knowledge and evidence‐based literature assists align projects with National Practice Standards in Mental Health.


Recently, the phenomenon of software aging, one in which the state of the software system degrades with time, has been reported. This phenomenon, which may eventually lead to system performance degradation and/or crash/hang failure, is the result of exhaustion of operating system resources, data corruption, and numerical error accumulation. To counteract software aging, a technique called software rejuvenation has been proposed, which essentially involves occasionally terminating an application or a system, cleaning its internal state and/or its environment, and restarting it. Since rejuvenation incurs an overhead, an important research issue is to determine optimal times to initiate this action. In this paper, we first describe how to include faults attributed to software aging in the framework of Gray's software fault classification (deterministic and transient), and study the treatment and recovery strategies for each of the fault classes. We then construct a semi-Markov reward model based on workload and resource usage data collected from the UNIX operating system. We identify different workload states using statistical cluster analysis, estimate transition probabilities, and sojourn time distributions from the data. Corresponding to each resource, a reward function is then defined for the model based on the rate of resource depletion in each state. The model is then solved to obtain estimated times to exhaustion for each resource. The result from the semi-Markov reward model are then fed into a higher-level availability model that accounts for failure followed by reactive recovery, as well as proactive recovery. This comprehensive model is then used to derive optimal rejuvenation schedules that maximize availability or minimize downtime cost.


Endometriosis is an enigmatic disease that could start at birth which affects women of reproductive age. It is associated with hormonal imbalance, including increased estrogen synthesis, metabolism and progesterone resistance. These changes in hormones cause increased proliferation, inflammation, pain and infertility. The current treatments are surgical and hormonal but have limitations including risk of recurrence, side effects, contraceptive action for women who desire pregnancy and cost. New treatments include gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH) analogues, selective progesterone (or estrogen) receptor modulators, aromatase inhibitors, immunomodulators and antiangiogenic agents. More research is needed into central sensitization, local neurogenics and the genetics of endometriosis to identify additional treatment targets. Despite a range of symptoms, diagnosis of endometriosis is often delayed due to lack of non-invasive, definite and consistent biomarkers for diagnosis of endometriosis. The future trend will be to define new drugs to use for prolonged period of time and with poor side effects considering endometriosis a chronic disease. Aim of this review article is to understand and study the new molecules and conventional treatment that are effective for the management of endometriosis associated pain.


Considering the particular structure of the Italian productive system, characterised by local concentration of a great number of small and medium-sized enterprises in industrial districts, this study aims at developing a "district-oriented" approach to energy analysis. A combination of statistical methods is proposed in order to describe similarities, variability and relations among different industries within the same district, so that opportune indicators can be introduced. In this way, several small-sized industries can be analysed and similar solutions can be evaluated, without consuming excessive resources. As a case study, a research carried out in the worldwide known ham producing district of the "Prosciutto di San Daniele", in northeastern Italy, is presented. Information has been gathered onsite, in order to acquire an accurate description of the systems, and to identify the opportunities for energy recovery. A statistical analysis has been conducted, determining relations between energy consumption and productive features. Thereby, homogeneity and heterogeneity in the energy needs and behaviour within the district could be highlighted and possible improvements could be proposed.


While the periodizing concept "post-truth" (PT) initially appeared in the United States as a key word of popular politics in the form "post-truth politics" or "post-truth society," it quickly appeared in many languages. It is now the object of increasing scholarly attention and public debate. Its popular and academic treatments sometimes differ in respect to its meaning, but most associate it with communication forms such as fake or false news, rumors, hoaxes, and political lying. They also identify causes such as polarization and unethical politicians or unregulated social media; shoddy journalism; or simply the inevitable chaos ushered in by digital media technologies. PT is sometimes posited as a social and political condition whereby citizens or audiences and politicians no longer respect truth (e.g., climate science deniers or "birthers") but simply accept as true what they believe or feel. However, more rigorously, PT is actually a breakdown of social trust, which encompasses what was formerly the major institutional truth-teller or publicist—the news media. What is accepted as popular truth is really a weak form of knowledge, opinion based on trust in those who supposedly know. Critical communication approaches locate its historical legacy in the earliest forms of political persuasion and questions of ethics and epistemology, such as those raised by Plato in the Gorgias. While there are timeless similarities, PT is a 21st-century phenomenon. It is not "after" truth but after a historical period where interlocking elite institutions were discoverers, producers, and gatekeepers of truth, accepted by social trust (the church, science, governments, the school, etc.). Critical scholars have identified a more complex historical set of factors, to which popular proposed solutions have been mostly blind. Modern origins of PT lie in the anxious elite negotiation of mass representative liberal democracy with proposals for organizing and deploying mass communication technologies. These elites consisted of pioneers in the influence or persuasion industries, closely associated with government and political practice and funding, and university research. These influence industries were increasingly accepted not just by business but also by (resource-rich) professional political actors. Their object was not policy education and argument to constituents but, increasingly strategically, emotion and attention management. PT can usefully be understood in the context of its historical emergence, through its popular forms and responses, such as rumors, conspiracies, hoaxes, fake news, fact-checking, and filter bubbles, as well as through its multiple effects—not the least of which the discourse of panic about it.


Abstract This paper evaluates the empirical relationship between top executive turnover and firm performance. Based on a sample of the 460 largest UK listed companies during the period 1990–1998, we establish an inverse and robust statistical relation between the probability of a management change and a firm's performance: top executives are fired for poor performance. This can result from internal monitoring of management by the board or block share holders. Second, the data indicate that only very poor levels of performance affect significantly the turnover likelihood: corporate performance must fall dramatically to force a senior executive job separation. Third, the likelihood of managerial turnover for poor performance has not changed over time: today's senior managers face the same disciplining effects as those senior managers in earlier years. Finally, there seems to be no evidence that managerial stock ownership, measured as the proportion of ordinary shares owned by top managers, enables them to become entrenched.


Heating and cooling for residential buildings consumes a lot of energy in the United States every year, which leads to Energy Recovery Ventilator (ERV) systems becoming more common for residential applications. An ERV is a relatively simple air to air heat exchanger with supply and exhaust fans. The supply fan pulls outdoor air into the house while the exhaust fan pulls stale air from the house. The ERV preheats outside air during cold weather and cools/dehumidifies outside air during warm weather. These systems are a good investment because they typically achieve a simple payback of 2 years or less based on energy savings. ERV's also have an important role for Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) in modern energy efficient homes that are carefully sealed to minimize the infiltration. One challenge is determining an optimal strategy for when to turn on the fans for the ERV. Unnecessary run time wastes energy by running equipment when it is not necessarily needed for IAQ. This paper explores a demand controlled ventilation strategy that has been deployed in a net zero energy home which was designed and built by Purdue University for the 2011 Solar Decathlon. The control strategy only runs the ERV when direct measurements for IAQ indicate that fresh outside air is needed. CO2, VOC, and relative humidity levels are monitored in the home on a continuous basis. When any of these measurements rise above a specified threshold, the heat recovery system turns on and continues to run until the IAQ levels return to healthy levels. This paper summarizes the results of several years of demand controlled ERV performance in terms of IAQ and energy savings. The results clearly show that this optimized control strategy should be considered in more ERV installations.


Aims To determine the retinal nerve fibre layer (RNFL) thickness at which visual field (VF) damage becomes detectable and associated with structural loss. Methods In a prospective cross-sectional study, 72 healthy and 40 glaucoma subjects (one eye per subject) recruited from an academic institution had VF examinations and spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) optic disc cube scans (Humphrey field analyser and Cirrus HD-OCT, respectively). Comparison of global mean and sectoral RNFL thicknesses with VF threshold values showed a plateau of threshold values at high RNFL thicknesses and a sharp decrease at lower RNFL thicknesses. A 'broken stick' statistical model was fitted to global and sectoral data to estimate the RNFL thickness 'tipping point' where the VF threshold values become associated with the structural measurements. The slope for the association between structure and function was computed for data above and below the tipping point. Results The mean RNFL thickness threshold for VF loss was 75.3 μm (95% CI: 68.9 to 81.8), reflecting a 17.3% RNFL thickness loss from age-matched normative value. Above the tipping point, the slope for RNFL thickness and threshold value was 0.03 dB/μm (CI: −0.02 to 0.08) and below the tipping point, it was 0.28 dB/μm (CI: 0.18 to 0.38); the difference between the slopes was statistically significant (p<0.001). A similar pattern was observed for quadrant and clock-hour analysis. Conclusions Substantial structural loss (∼17%) appears to be necessary for functional loss to be detectable using the current testing methods.


Since time immemorial, societies, states and state builders have been challenged and transformed by the need and quest for military manpower.1 European states relied on conscript armies to 'pacify' and retain colonies in parts of the non-European world. These facts underscore the meticulous attention paid by the British to the recruitment of their colonial forces in Africa. In the Niger basin for one, conscious efforts were made by individual agents of the British Crown and at official level to ensure that only members of designated groups were recruited into those colonial forces that facilitated the establishment of the Nigerian supra-national state. The end of colonial rule and shifts in military recruitment policies hardly erased the vestiges of colonial recruitment from the Nigerian military. The study on which this article is based and which examines Britain's policies on military human resource recruitment as state-building initiatives, argued that military coups d'etat in Nigeria can be traced back to colonial and post-colonial recruitment patterns for military human resources.


This paper summarizes results of a monitoring program conducted on three urban wet detention ponds located within the Piedmont region of North Carolina, in the city of Charlotte. Data collected from five storm events were employed to develop a relationship between detention pond performance and pond surface/watershed area ratios. In comparison with data from the NURP study, runoff quality of the study area is generally better and runoff sediment can be characterized by a finer particle size distribution. The attenuation of peak discharge appears unsatisfactory due to short circuiting of local drainage entering the detention ponds from surrounding areas. Despite the fact that these detention ponds were not built for water quality control, the observed improvement in water quality justifies the promising use of wet ponds for urban runoff pollution abatement.


We derive a method for predicting the efficiency of stimulated photon echoes in optically thick media. Analytic solutions to the Maxwell–Bloch equations are derived for multiple pulse sequences in which the pulses are either temporally brief or have a low pulse area. This method retains the temporal and spatial information of the recalled waveform, and it provides a nonintensive computational method for determining the recall efficiency of stimulated photon echoes. The case considered is when the medium is optically thick and the recall efficiency is high, but with minimal distortion of the data. The results are in good agreement with a full space, time, and frequency numerical integration of the Maxwell–Bloch equations.


The target recognition ability of the human visual system
can be severely affected by vibration of the imaging system. Although
vibration can be minimized by proper design, it is often the
main limitation on visual perception despite the best attempts at
stabilization. There are two types of image degradation caused by
vibration of the camera. The first is the vibration of the line of sight
(LOS), causing location changes of the scene in successive frames.
The second degradation type is the blur induced in each frame of
the sequence due to motion during the exposure. We investigate the
relative effect of these two degradation sources on the human visual
system recognition abilities by conducting a series of psychophysical
experiments. These experiments show that object recognition
and orientation recognition abilities may be affected more by the
motion blur of each frame than by the oscillation of the scene. An
important implication of these results on digital image sequence restoration
algorithms is that under certain conditions, the main effort
should be put toward motion deblurring rather than on the precise
registration of the frames.


An often overlooked aspect of the Supreme Court's recent decision in Citizens United v. FEC is the sharply contrasting factual accounts regarding disclosure of independent election-related spending. For eight of the Justices, such disclosure is constitutionally defensible because it enables voters to make informed decisions. For Justice Thomas, however, such disclosure is constitutionally suspect because of its potential to result in retaliation and related chilling of First Amendment speech in the form of financial contributions. The continuing importance of these contrasting narratives can be found not only in the pending Supreme Court case of Doe v. Reed, in which the plaintiffs are challenging disclosure of referendum petition signers, but also in the debates in Congress and numerous state legislatures regarding whether to substantially expand disclosure requirements in the wake of Citizens United. This article questions both factual assertions. Looking first at the informing voters claim, existing political psychology research reveals that whether contributor information provides helpful information to voters depends on what information is disclosed and how it is disseminated to voters. Knowing the identities of numerous smaller contributors is highly unlikely to aid voters, as compared to knowing the identities of larger donors who may be more well-known, and, possibly, knowing aggregate information about smaller contributors such as geographic and industry concentrations. Moreover, even the useful information is more likely to help voters if it is provided in a manner that facilitates their learning of it before the relevant election. As for the retaliation claim, there is sparse evidence that outside of certain specific contexts – civil rights groups during the 1950s and 1960s and communist and socialist parties today – there is much if any retaliation, much less retaliation that rises to a level that raises serious concerns, against contributors whose support becomes known through the existing disclosure rules. That said, the ever increasing access to such information through the Internet may change this conclusion. While much remains unknown about the effects of political contributor disclosure, what is known suggests at least two changes that could result in better knowledge for voters and, for the first change, less exposure to retaliation or the risk of retaliation for smaller contributors. The first change would be to reduce the public disclosure of identifying information for smaller contributors, releasing only data relevant for aggregation purposes for such contributors. The second change would be to expand the disclosure of information regarding larger contributors through disclaimers on mass media and other large-scale communications that identify not only the group paying for such communications but the major funders of that group. These common sense strategies both match what we know about the effects of disclosure and may have the added benefit of relieving some of the constitutional tension in this area.


Analysts, investors and entrepreneurs have for long recognized the value of comprehensive user profiles. While there is a market for trading such personal information among companies, the users, who are actually the providers of such information, are not asked to the negotiations table. To date, there is little information on how users value their personal information. In an online survey-based experiment 1059 Facebook users revealed how much they would be willing to pay for keeping their personal information. Our study reveals that as soon as people learn that some third party is interested in their personal information (asset consciousness prime), the value their information to a much higher degree than without this prime and start to defend their asset. Furthermore, we found that people develop a psychology of ownership towards their personal information. In fact, this construct is a significant contributor to information valuation, much higher than privacy concerns.


We describe the operating characteristics of optically pumped concentric-circle-grating surface-emitting semiconductor lasers. The circular grating defines the laser resonant cavity and provides for a symmetric surface-emitted beam. We present detailed experimental studies of the influence of epitaxial semiconductor material and grating design on lasing characteristics. We emphasize the effect of grating parameters on the lasing and damage thresholds and on the shape, polarization, diffraction, and spectral purity of emitted radiation.


Flicker studies generally employ a train of light pulses consisting of a single period of stimulation repeated serially. In a recent study, fusion points were measured using trains of light pulses in which alternate periods were of different duration. Fusion points obtained with this type of stimulation are best described by a fusion contour which identifies those combinations of two periods which, when alternated serially, result in a transition point between flicker and fusion. In the present study, data have been obtained on three flicker contours each of which identifies those combinations of two periods which, when alternated serially, have the same apparent rate of flicker. A matching technique was used to measure the subjective rate of trains of light pulses. Data points were obtained from observers who matched the apparent rate of a variable stimulus (composed of two periods of alternating duration) to the apparent rate of a standard stimulus (composed of a single period repeated serially). Standard rates of 33.3, 28.6, and 25 cps were used. The fusion contour for each of the two observers in the experiment is also shown. The fusion and flicker contours are not dichotomous: as the frequency of the standard stimulus is increased, the flicker contours tend to resemble more closely the shape of the fusion contour. The contours illustrate the limiting values within which various combinations of two alternating periods may have the same apparent rate: (1) The sum of the durations of the two alternating periods must be greater than the duration of the period of the standard stimulus. (2) The sum of the durations of the two periods must be less than twice the duration of the period of the standard stimulus.


Abstract Sexual experience and expression is of fundamental importance to most people. However, most people do not communicate effectively about sexuality even when it is important to do so. For example, many parents see it as their responsibility to talk to their children about sexuality and yet do not engage in in-depth discussions with their children about sexual topics. Most romantic partners have difficulty telling each other what pleases and displeases them sexually. Many health care professionals do not meet their patients' needs for information about the sexual changes they experience as a result of their disease or treatment. Many psychologists also are not doing a good job of addressing sexuality in the classroom, in practicum and internship settings, and/or with clients. These instances of poor sexual communication are unfortunate as effective sexual communication can have a range of positive outcomes such as more satisfying relationships and positive sexual health and well-being over the life span. This paper reviews sexual communication in all of these contexts, focusing on findings from my program of research spanning more than 30 years. Keywords: sexual communication, sexual education, couples, adolescents It is a truism to state that sexual experience and expression is of fundamental importance to most people; indeed, this statement is not controversial and needs no citations. There is no place in which this is more evident than in the media. Certainly, sexual images and tips about enhancing our sexual relationships, sexual experiences, and ability to please our partner are ubiquitous in the media. There is a great deal that has been and could be said about the content and impact of these media messages, particularly about their negative effects, but that is a topic for another time and place and is not the focus of the present paper. Rather, this paper focuses on interpersonal sexual communication - between parents and their children, between partners, between health care professionals and their patients, between professors and psychology graduate students, and between psychologists and their clients. I have drawn on select data (i.e., data from larger studies) from several strands of my research program spanning more than 30 years to support my contention that there is a great deal of room for improvement in how we communicate about sexuality in every one these contexts. Because each section of this paper could be a review paper in its own right, I have not, for the most part, reviewed the results of studies by other researchers on these topics. There are two major limitations to my research that are important to identify from the outset. One is that most, if not all, of the research I cite is with heterosexual individuals. This is because, typically, there have not been enough sexual minority participants for me to be able to analyse their data. The other limitation is that, in keeping with the population of New Brunswick where I conduct my research, the participants in my studies are primarily white and of European descent. Still, sexual communication among most ethnocultural minority groups living in Canada is even more limited than among the majority culture (Cappon et al., 1996; Manson Singer et al., 1996) suggesting that, if anything, the results would be stronger among these groups. Parent-Child Sexual Communication or the Birds and the Bees Most parents believe that they have a role to play in their children's sexual health education as a way to communicate family values, prevent negative sexual health outcomes, and prepare their children for adulthood (Croft & Asmussen, 1992; McKay, Pietrusiak, & Holowaty, 1998; Weaver, Byers, Sears, Cohen, & Randall, 2002). Although parents may not readily identify this as a goal of their sexual communication with their children, I believe that communicating positive attitudes toward both sexuality and talking about sexual topics is another important outcome of parent- child sexual communication. …


How does democracy emerge from authoritarian rule? Influential theories contend that incumbents deliberately choose to share or surrender power. They do so to prevent revolution, motivate citizens to fight wars, incentivize governments to provide public goods, outbid elite rivals, or limit factional violence. Examining the history of all democratizations since 1800, I show that such deliberate choice arguments may help explain up to one third of cases. In about two thirds, democratization occurred not because incumbent elites chose it but because, in trying to prevent it, they made mistakes that weakened their hold on power. Common mistakes include: calling elections or starting military conflicts, only to lose them; ignoring popular unrest and being overthrown; initiating limited reforms that get out of hand; and selecting a covert democrat as leader. These mistakes reflect well-known cognitive biases such as overconfidence and the illusion of control.


Background and Study Aim: Esophageal variceal bleeding is a major medical emergency and one of the most important indications for hospital admission and for blood transfusion. However, the safest and the effective blood transfusion strategy is controversial. Here, we studied the safety and the effectiveness of the restrictive versus liberal transfusion strategies in patients with esophageal variceal bleeding. Patients and Methods: The study included 342 patients with esophageal variceal bleeding. Patients were divided into 2 groups: group I (Restrictive strategy) transfusion when the hemoglobin level is ≤7 g/dl and group II (Liberal strategy): transfusion when the hemoglobin level is ≤9 g/dl. All patients were subjected to complete blood counts, liver and kidney profiles, coagulation profile, pelvi-abdominal ultrasonography and upper GI endoscopy. Clinical outcome measures include rebleeding, infection, allergic transfusion reactions thromboembolic events, and mortality. Results: Of all patients admitted to hospital with esophageal variceal bleeding, the number of transfused RBCs units and hospital stay were more in the liberal transfusion strategy. Also, the overall rate of complications was higher in the liberal transfusion strategy (49.7% versus 38.5% in the restrictive transfusion strategy). The most common complications were rebleeding (26.9%) and infection (21.6%). As regard the death rate, 13 cases (7.6%) died in the restrictive transfusion strategy versus 25 cases (14.6%) in the liberal transfusion one. Conclusions: For esophageal variceal bleeding, restrictive transfusion strategy is better than the liberal one as regard cost-effectiveness, risk of complications and hospital stay with no harm and less mortality as compared to liberal strategy.


According to Xenophon, the hetaira "gratified" her patron as a philos, participating in an aristocratic network of gift exchange (Xen. Mem. 3.11), while the porne, as her name signified, trafficked in sex as a commodity. Recent writers on Greek prostitution have acknowledged that hetaira vs. porne may be as much a discursive opposition as a real difference in status, but still, very little attention has been paid to the period of the "invention" of this binary. Hetaira meaning "courtesan" first occurs in Herodotus (2.134-35) and does not exist in Homer: hence, the conceptual category of the hetaira is an invention of the archaic period. What needs generated the constitution of this category? And what conceptual "work" was the opposition hetaira-porne doing in Greek culture in the period of its inception? This paper addresses these questions through a reading of fragments of archaic lyric-predominantly those of Anakreon-as well as consideration of Attic vase painting. I suggest that the hetaira-porne opposition participates in the overarching tension between the aristocratic symposium and the public sphere in archaic Greece. Oswyn Murray has suggested that the symposium constitutes itself as a kind of anti-city with its own rules and conventions. Part of the discursive exclusion of the public sphere is the complete suppression of the city9s monetarized economy from the domain of the aristocratic symposium, and it is this impulse to mystify economic relations for sex that generates the category of the hetaira within a framework of gift exchange. But if the motives for this discursive invention are economic, they are also (inextricably) political: the hetaira affirms and embodies the circulation of charis within a privileged elite, while the porne figures the debased and promiscuous exchanges of the agora.


In the United States, family law norms and childcare policy have long  reflected the view that childcare is a private, family matter. But childcare  has crossed the private-public divide. In the absence of parents at home  providing care, a substantial childcare market has emerged. And that  market is failing. Our law, policy, and legal scholarship have yet to  recognize and account for this new reality. This Article confronts the  problem on its own terms, using economic analysis to diagnose our  childcare crisis as a market failure, and makes the case for more active  and explicit government intervention in the childcare market. Economic  theory not only helps us understand why the market is failing, but also  recommends specific law and policy levers—subsidies, regulation, and  information—to mitigate market failure, enabling us to craft more  responsive reforms. In the end, the market lens shifts our focus from what  is private about caring for children to what is public about it. From this  vantage point, the Article makes plain that our childcare market is too  big—and too important—to fail.


Contemporary debate about compensation for past wrongs turns on the assumption that state reparation benefits the victims of atrocity by acknowledging harm and ameliorating victim suffering. Indeed, much recent theoretical and practical work has concurred to establish reparation to victims of state crimes as a cornerstone of human rights. However, this article argues that reparation can also function to placate victim demands for criminal justice and to regulate the range of political and historical meanings with which the crimes of the past are endowed. This is most evident in transitional political contexts in which gestures of reparation are usually concomitant with the inauguration of new political orders, and formal investigations of past atrocity are conditioned by the balancing of the political demands of new and old regimes. This article argues that in such contexts, state reparation can work to control social suffering with the consequence that it sometimes intensifies rather than alleviates it. To evidence this claim, the article investigates the refusal of reparations by the victims towards whom it is addressed, with reference to Argentina's Madres de Plaza de Mayo. This analysis of their refusal demonstrates how victim groups make important challenges to some of the core assumptions in the field, reveals internal inconsistencies within the analytical architecture of the scholarly and professional discourse, and indicates the ways in which reparations carry political, and not just palliative, significance.


The rain gardens at Bryggen in Bergen, Western Norway, is designed to collect, retain, and infiltrate surface rainfall runoff water, recharge the groundwater, and replenish soil moisture. The hydraulic infiltration capacity of the Sustainable Drainage System (SuDS), here rain gardens, has been tested with small-scale and full-scale infiltration tests. Results show that infiltration capacity meets the requirement and is more than sufficient for infiltration in a cold climate. The results from small-scale test, 245–404 mm/h, shows lower infiltration rates than the full-scale infiltration test, with 510–1600 mm/h. As predicted, an immediate response of the full-scale infiltration test is shown on the groundwater monitoring in the wells located closest to the infiltration point (<30 m), with a ca. 2 days delayed response in the wells further away (75–100 m). Results show that there is sufficient capacity for a larger drainage area to be connected to the infiltration systems. This study contributes to the understanding of the dynamics of infiltration systems such as how a rain garden interacts with local, urban water cycle, both in the hydrological and hydrogeological aspects. The results from this study show that infiltration systems help to protect and preserve the organic rich cultural layers below, as well as help with testing and evaluating of the efficiency, i.e., SuDS may have multiple functions, not only storm water retention. The functionality is tested with water volumes of 40 m3 (600 L/min for 2 h and 10 min), comparable to a flash flood, which give an evaluation of the infiltration capacity of the system.


Despite the widespread and successful use of luminescence-based bioassays in water testing, their applications to soils and sediments is less proven. In part this is because such bioassays have mainly been carried out in an aqueous-based medium and, as such, favour contaminants that are readily water-soluble. In this study, aqueous solutions and soils contaminated with heavy metals (HM), polar organic contaminants and hydrophobic organic contaminants (HOCs) were tested using a range of luminescence-based bioassays (Vibrio fischeri, Escherichia coli HB101 pUCD607 and Pseudomonas fluorescens 10586r pUCD607). For the first two chemical groups, the assays were highly reproducible when optimised extraction procedures were employed but for HOCs the bioassay response was poor. Quantitative structure-activity relationships (QSARs) obtained from aqueous solutions had a linear response although correlation for the chemicals tested using bacterial bioassays was significantly less sensitive than that of sublethal tests for Tetrahymena pyriformis. Bacterial and Dendrobaena veneta bioassay responses to extracts from HM amended soils showed that a clear relationship between trophic levels could be obtained. There is no doubt that the wide range of bioluminescent-based bioassays offers complementary applications to traditional testing techniques but there is a significant need to justify and optimise the extraction protocol prior to application.


Software as a Service (SaaS) applications fully exploit the potential of elastic Cloud computing Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) platforms by enabling new highly dynamic Cloud provisioning scenarios where application providers could decide to change the placement of IT service components at runtime, such as moving computational resources close to storage so to improve SaaS responsiveness. Moreover, emergent Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios enable novel computing applications involving several heterogeneous smart objects interacting with each other. These highly dynamic scenarios call for novel Cloud support infrastructures able to automate the whole SaaS provisioning cycle spanning from resource management to dynamic IT service components placement, including software deployment, components re-activation, and rebinding operations. However, notwithstanding the core importance of these functions to truly enable the deployment of complex SaaS over IaaS environments, at the current stage only partial and ad-hoc solutions are available. This paper presents a support infrastructure aimed to facilitate the composition of heterogeneous resources, such as single Virtual Machines (VMs), DB services and storage, and stand-alone services, by automating the provisioning of complex SaaS applications over the widely diffused real-world open-source OpenStack IaaS. Collected experimental results show the effectiveness of parallel execution of deployment steps introduced by our solution and demonstrate its applicability and advantages in a real SaaS production testbed.


Author(s): MacLennan, S; Park, Y; Swanson-Hysell, N; Maloof, A; Schoene, B; Gebreslassie, M; Antilla, E; Tesema, T; Alene, M; Haileab, B | Abstract: © 2018 Geological Society of America. In order to understand the onset of Snowball Earth events, precise geochronology and chemostratigraphy are needed on complete sections leading into the glaciations. While deposits associated with the Neoproterozoic Sturtian glaciation have been found on nearly every continent, time-calibrated stratigraphic sections that record paleoenvironmental conditions leading into the glaciation are exceedingly rare. Instead, the transition to glaciation is normally expressed as erosive contacts with overlying diamictites, and the best existing geochronological constraints come from volcanic successions with little paleoenvironmental information. We report new stratigraphic and geochronological data from the upper Tambien Group in northern Ethiopia, which indicates that the glacigenic diamictite at the top of the succession is Sturtian in age. U-Pb zircon dates obtained from two tuffaceous siltstones that are 74 and 84 m below the diamictite are 719.68 ± 0.46 Ma and 719.68 ± 0.56 Ma (2σ), respectively. We also report a U-Pb date of 735.25 ± 0.25 Ma from a crystal-rich tuff located 2 m above the nadir of a high-amplitude, basin-wide, negative δ13C excursion previously correlated with the Islay anomaly. This age for the anomaly agrees with Re-Os age constraints from Laurentia, suggesting that the δ13C signal is globally synchronous and preceded the Sturtian glaciation by ~18 m.y. The interval between the Islay anomaly and Sturtian glaciation is recorded in the Tambien Group as an ~600 m succession of predominantly shallow-water carbonates and siliciclastics with δ13C values recording a prolonged period at +5‰, followed by an interval of lower, but still positive, values leading up to the glaciation. Our data are consistent with synchronous global onset of the Sturtian glaciation at ca. 717 Ma. Shallow-water carbonates in strata directly below the first diamictite suggest that glacial onset was rapid in terranes of the Arabian-Nubian Shield.


With rapid population explosion, improving rail transit speed and capacity is strongly desirable around the world. Communication-based train control (CBTC) is an automated train control system using high capacity bidirectional train-ground communications to ensure the safe operation of rail vehicles. This book presents the latest advances in CBTC research. The contributed chapters from leading experts in the field cover different aspects of modelling, analysis, design, testing, management, deployment, and optimization of CBTC systems. Advances in Communications-Based Train Control Systems begins with the background and evolution of train signaling/train control systems. It introduces the main features and architecture of CBTC systems and describes current challenges and successful implementations around the world. Subsequent contributed chapters discuss such key research areas as • Nondestructive testing techniques that can be employed to inspect rails and fastening parts • New wireless channel modelling techniques for underground tunnels and viaducts • Advanced wireless communication systems to improve CBTC communication availability • Schemes to integrate train control and train-ground communications by modelling the control system of a group of trains in CBTC as a networked control system • Use of cognitive control to improve train control performance, considering both train-ground communication and train control The book includes many supporting illustrations and tables along with a valuable set of references at the end of each chapter. With this book, researchers and practitioners will be well-equipped to advance the research and development in this important field.


Musculoskeletal robots that are based on pneumatic actuation have a variety of properties, such as compliance and back-drivability, that render them particularly appealing for human-robot collaboration. However, programming interactive and responsive behaviors for such systems is extremely challenging due to the nonlinearity and uncertainty inherent to their control. In this paper, we propose an approach for learning Bayesian Interaction Primitives for musculoskeletal robots given a limited set of example demonstrations. We show that this approach is capable of real-time state estimation and response generation for interaction with a robot for which no analytical model exists. Human-robot interaction experiments on a 'handshake' task show that the approach generalizes to new positions, interaction partners, and movement velocities.


Recasts are probably the most commonly studied type of correct feedback by second language acquisition (SLA) researchers and there is substantial evidence that they facilitate different types of L2 development (Li, 2010; Mackey & Goo, 2007; Sheen & Ellis, 2011). However, to date, their impact on learners' phonological development has received relatively little attention. In order to fill this gap, the current study examined the effects of recasts on the development of lexical stress in L2 English. Following a pretest-posttest design, 68 L1 Arabic speakers were randomly assigned to intervention and control groups. The pre- and posttests comprised sentence-reading and decision-making tasks that contained three-syllable words with stress on the second syllable as the target vocabulary. All learners participated in an interactive role-play task, with learners in the intervention group receiving a recast following misplaced primary stress during the role-play task and learners in the control group not receiving any form of corrective feedback. Acoustic analyses of learners' primary stress placement focused on syllable duration, pitch, and intensity because of their established role as the main correlates of stress in English (Beckman, 1986; Cutler, 2008; Lieberman, 1960). Results demonstrated that the intervention group's realizations of second syllables at the posttest exhibited statistically longer duration and higher pitch than their pretest productions, whereas the control group did not show any gains. Furthermore, acoustic analyses of the target words produced by the intervention group showed that the gains were limited to the words that received a recast. In sum, the findings showed a positive effect for recasts on the development of primary stress using acoustic analytical tools. Thus, this thesis contributes to the growing body of SLA research by revealing that recasts can promote development of primary stress placement, hence L2 phonology, a relatively understudied area within the interactionist strand of SLA.


Although osteopontin (OPN) is induced in alcoholic patients, its role in the pathophysiology of alcoholic liver disease (ALD) remains unclear. Increased translocation of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) from the gut is key for the onset of ALD because it promotes macrophage infiltration and activation, tumor necrosis factor‐α (TNFα) production, and liver injury. Since OPN is protective for the intestinal mucosa, we postulated that enhancing OPN expression in the liver and consequently in the blood and/or in the gut could protect from early alcohol‐induced liver injury. Wild‐type (WT), OPN knockout (Opn−/−), and transgenic mice overexpressing OPN in hepatocytes (OpnHEPTg) were fed either the control or the ethanol Lieber‐DeCarli diet. Ethanol increased hepatic, plasma, biliary, and fecal OPN more in OpnHEPTg than in WT mice. Steatosis was less in ethanol‐treated OpnHEPTg mice as shown by decreased liver‐to‐body weight ratio, hepatic triglycerides, the steatosis score, oil red‐O staining, and lipid peroxidation. There was also less inflammation and liver injury as demonstrated by lower alanine aminotransferase (ALT) activity, hepatocyte ballooning degeneration, LPS levels, the inflammation score, and the number of macrophages and TNFα+ cells. To establish if OPN could limit LPS availability and its noxious effects in the liver, binding studies were performed. OPN showed binding affinity for LPS which prevented macrophage activation, reactive oxygen, and nitrogen species generation and TNFα production. Treatment with milk OPN (m‐OPN) blocked LPS translocation in vivo and protected from early alcohol‐induced liver injury. Conclusion: Natural induction plus forced overexpression of OPN in the liver or treatment with m‐OPN protect from early alcohol‐induced liver injury by blocking the gut‐derived LPS and TNFα effects in the liver. (Hepatology 2014;59:1600‐1616)


In 2010, the International Council for Science (ICSU) and the International Social Science Council (ISSC) published their Grand Challenges in Global Sustainability Research, seeking to mobilise researchers in a 10-year scientific effort to address what they call the "grand challenges in global sustainability". In this paper, we ask whether these Grand Challenges are relevant to Australian environmental management. We examine this from two angles, insights from public perception surveys, and our own survey data. Public attitudes surveys indicate public ambiguity on the knowledge base, a finding that implies an immediate need for improved public communication of scientific knowledge. Our on-line survey, attached to a conference, Innovative Solutions for Environmental Challenges, targeted Australian environmental managers and scientists' views on critical issues. The results mirrored global scientists' views on the need to find ways for the scientific, social and political communities to work together to develop innovative approaches to solving future environmental concerns. Importantly, we found that the specific responses were context and scale dependent, while highlighting the inherent tensions between maintaining production and consumption, and protection of resources and ecosystem services.


S everal proposals to reform the heavily subsidized Federal Crop Insurance Program have received considerable attention. However, one initiative that has not been given much consideration is a straightforward cut in the amount by which the federal government subsidizes the premiums farmers pay for their crop insurance coverage. Currently, the government pays an average of 62 percent of the total premiums paid into the crop insurance pools from which indemnities are provided to farmers who experience reimbursable losses. This policy study examine the effects of reducing the federal subsidy rate to either 50 or 40 percent of the total premium, with corresponding increases in farmers' share of the premium payments. Results indicate that reducing the average subsidy rate to 50 percent would reduce annual federal spending on the crop insurance program by as much as $2.14 billion annually, a roughly 25 percent reduction relative to current subsidy costs. Reducing the average subsidy rate to 40 percent would likely generate annual savings well in excess of $3 billion, amounting to about $34 billion over 10 years. R STREET POLICY STUDY NO. 113 October 2017 CONTENTS Executive Summary


Annotating a document with an interpretation of its contents raises a number of challenges that we are hoping to address via the creation of a supporting environment. We present these challenges and motivate an approach based on the notion of suggestions to support document annotation, hoping these suggestions would act as leads to follow for annotators, therefore reducing some of the difficulties inherent to the task. The environment resulting from this approach, ClaimSpotter, is presented. Aspects of its evaluation are also given, using the findings of a study involving a group of participants faced with a document annotation task.


KRASTANOV, A., D. BLAZHEVA and Toshiomi YOSHIDA, 2006. Conversion of sucrose into palatinose with immobilized Serratia plymuthica cells. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 12: 721-726 Palatinose (isomaltulose) can be used as a substitute of sucrose. Here we describe a simple and effective method of converting concentrated sucrose solutions into palatinose using immobilized Serratia plymuthica cells. The cells were immobilized in alginate beads and on chitin. A conversion rate of up to 99 % was achieved. The process was carried out in a batch and continuous mode in a column. The effect of temperature and flow rate on the conversion rate and the productivity of the column was investigated.


Chromate was used as a chemical probe to investigate the impact of mineral-organic contact time on the surface reactivity of two different sizes of goethite particles. A series of goethite-chromate sorption batch reactions were conducted in the presence and absence of Suwannee River humic acid (HA) and natural organic matter (NOM) using nano- and micro-scale goethite particles. In experiments with added organics the amount of time allowed for goethite-organic matter interaction (i.e. contact time) was varied from less than 1 minute, up to 24 hours prior to the addition of chromate. Results indicated that nano- and micro-scale goethite in the absence of organics sorbed nearly identical amounts of chromate on a per mass basis, despite the greater surface area of the smaller particles. Results also indicated that the presence of ∼10 mg L-1 of HA and a contact time of less than 1 minute reduced the amount of chromate sorbed by both nano- and micro-scale goethite. Increasing the contact time resulted in greater decreases in chromate sorption. Experiments using NOM produced similar results. While chromate sorption was most rapid during the first hour of the experiments, goethite particles continued to sorb additional chromate over a period of up to 7 days. Additionally, a noticeable impact on chromate sorption due to increased contact time was present over that time period.


Summary 1. The objective of this research was to evaluate soil subsurface methods that may aid in seedling establishment and encourage root colonization from a diverse group of ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi during restoration projects. 2. American chestnut Castanea dentata Marsh. Borkh. and backcrossed chestnuts seedlings were planted on a reclaimed coal mine site in central Ohio, USA. Roots from chestnut seedlings planted in the plots that were cross-ripped, plowed and disked, or a combination of treatments were sampled for ECM fungi and compared with control plots. The presence and identification of native ECM were determined by fungal DNA sequencing of the internaltranscribed (ITS) region. 3. After two growing seasons, mechanical soil treatments resulted in seedlings with significantly more ECM species when compared to seedlings grown in the control plots (P <0 0001). A nonmetric multidimensional scaling ordination followed by a permutational MANOVA confirmed significant dissimilarities in community composition between the control and mechanically treated plots (F =0 24, P =0 015). 4. Ectomycorrhizal root colonization was significantly higher on the chestnut seedlings sampled from the mechanically treated plots when compared to the control plots (F =1 063, P <0 0001). Differences did not exist among the three mechanical treatments. There was also a significant increase in above-ground seedling growth in the plots that were treated with a surface soil method (F =1 572, P <0 0001). It is not clear whether ECM activity was the driver of plant growth; regardless, both are strong indicators of healthy tree establishment. 5. Synthesis and applications. This study illustrates that the use of soil subsurface methods increased ectomycorrhizal (ECM) activity and seedling growth. Employing methods that encourage the root colonization by beneficial ECM and promote healthy seedling establishment may aid the long-term survival of chestnuts in restoration projects. This can be applied to other hardwood seedlings used in reforestation in soils compacted after anthropogenic disturbances.