Diabetes rates are increasing around the world, mainly driven by increasing levels of obesity (1). The dilemma for diabetes prevention is that the main risk factor—obesity—is a product of our modern lifestyle (the so-called obesogenic environment) (2). Immediate prospects for changing the environment to reverse rising obesity levels are not promising, and there is a need to consider other options for preventing diabetes.

One of these options—vitamin D—is addressed in the article by Forouhi et al. (3) in the current issue of Diabetes . The sun is the primary source of vitamin D, which is synthesized endogenously in skin to produce cholecalficerol (vitamin D3), although a small proportion (<20%) of vitamin D comes through diet from a limited range of foods (in the form of ergocalciferol [vitamin D2] and vitamin D3) (4). The main marker of vitamin D status is the metabolite 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D], which is synthesized in the liver. The epidemiology of vitamin D status is inverse to that of diabetes, since blood levels of 25(OH)D decline with age and are lower in populations with increased skin pigmentation, such as African Americans and South Asians, and in people with obesity, while diabetes increases with age and obesity and is higher in these ethnic groups (5).

Animal studies published nearly 30 …


We introduce three metrics for measuring the performance of the Philippine scientific enterprise system consisting of organizations in the country that are directly involved in the generation of new scientific knowledge and in the training of future Filipino scientists and researchers in STEM. The national budget in 2014 was 1.59 times larger than that in 2009 consistent with the steady GDP growth during said period. Consequently the budgets for SUCs and the DOST also grew by 61.53% and 115.11%, respectively. We consider peer-reviewed technical publications and PhD graduates as tangible outputs of an institution that is engaged in scientific R&D activities. The metrics are: Academic Productivity Index (API), Science Productivity Index (SPI), and the PhD Production Efficiency Index (PPEI). The API score is given by the ratio of the (geometric) product of the number of publications and PhD graduates produced in a given year, and that of its corresponding budget allocation and number of faculty members. The SPI score is computed as the ratio of the product of the number of publications and PhD graduates, and that of the number of faculty members and their time to do research. Equal importance is given to institutional PhD graduates and the individual (peer-reviewed publications) outputs. Because the outputs are calibrated to the corresponding inputs an index score would track the response (absorption capacity) of an institution to temporal variations in resources invested into it. Scientific measures that align institutional output with individual performance are recommended in faculty and staff promotion as well as in the selection of R&D administrators and in assessing the possible impact and consequences of budget increases and policy initiatives. Prudent application of data-driven analytics promotes transparency, predictability, efficiency and fairness. It motivates stakeholders to work together for a common purpose that is larger than the sum of their own individual aspirations.


The number of international students studying on campuses in the United States is at an all-time high. International students bring with them special skills and insights, but they also present unique challenges for our educational systems. Libraries play a critical role in connecting these foreign students, not only to our universities and colleges, but also to the information literacy skills they need to succeed. The insightful case studies presented in International Students and Academic Libraries: Initiatives for Success describe over a dozen exciting projects that support the success of international students studying at academic institutions. The work provides numerous examples of new and innovative strategies for librarians to encourage library use among international students and increase international student success. This volume is essential reading for academic librarians, library educators and professional collections at institutions that support international student populations.


Background: In gene therapy, the use of RNA molecules as therapeutic agents has shown advantages over plasmid DNA, including higher levels of safety. However, transient nature of RNA has been a major obstacle in application of RNA in gene therapy. Methods: Here, we used the internal ribosomal entry site of encephalomyocarditis virus and the 3' non-translated region of Poliovirus to design an enterovirus-like RNA for the expression of a reporter gene (enhanced green fluorescent protein) and a suicide gene (thymidine kinase of herpes simplex virus). The expression of these genes was evaluated by flow cytometry and cytotoxicity assay in human colorectal adenocarcinoma cell line (SW480). We then armed RNA molecules with a target sequence for hsa-miR-143 to regulate their expression by microRNA (miRNA) mimics. Results: The results showed effective expression of both genes by Entrovirus-like RNA constructs. The data also showed that the restoration of hsa-miR-143 expression in SW480 leads to a significant translation repression of the introduced reporter and suicide genes. Conclusion: Collectively, our data suggest the potential use of Entrovirus-like RNA molecules in suicide gene therapy. Additionally, as a consequence of the possible downregulated miRNA expression in cancerous tissues, a decreased expression of gene therapy constructs armed with target sequences for such miRNA in cancer tissue is expected.


Music, in particular Mozart's K448 Sonata For Two Pianos, has been said to have a potential to alleviate epilepsy, hence it has potential as a non-pharmacological intervention or therapy. This effect is termed the "Mozart effect": listening to Mozart's K448 was associated with a reduction in epileptic activity on the electroencephalograms of epileptic patients. Thus far, no literature was found summarising and analysing the relevant literature in this topic, exploring the different characteristics that could affect the effectiveness of music therapy in alleviating epilepsy. This literature review therefore aimed to consolidate and discuss the literature surrounding this issue. The literature review was conducted using six databases: DOAJ, Google Scholar, JSTOR, PubMed, ScienceDirect and Scopus. Key terms "Mozart", "Music", "Epilepsy", "Seizure" and "Epileptic" were included in the search strategy, and relevant articles were shortlisted based on the title and abstract. 22,410 articles were found in total. Only English articles found in the six databases were shortlisted for this review. 13 articles were shortlisted for final review. The 13 shortlisted articles were classified to discuss one or more of the following topics: Investigating the effectiveness of music in reducing the occurrence of epilepsy for peoples of different age groups, effectiveness of music in reducing the occurrence of different types of epilepsy and seizures, effectiveness of different types of music in reducing the occurrence of epilepsy, and theories behind K448 as a potential treatment for epilepsy. In conclusion, all the studies showed that Mozart's K448 music seems to be a potentially effective and affordable option of an alternative or additional therapy for epileptic patients that causes little to no harm.


Why does the horror genre serve as a source of pleasure, given its aim to induce fear in the audience? I examine two general solutions to this phenomenon, referred to as the paradox of horror, which differ based upon their position regarding the possibility of deriving pleasure from fear. Each of the possible solutions contains significant flaws. I argue that, by adjusting a meta-theory originally proposed by Susan Feagin, it is possible to craft a solution that addresses the paradox while preserving the idea that, at times, fear can be enjoyed. The article concludes by considering the moral status of macabre fascination, which is often subject to recrimination. Given that such fascination is a driving force behind the willingness to engage with horror, does it follow that these works ought to be viewed as morally problematic? Drawing upon the concept of a moral saint, I argue the lack of macabre fascination is problematic. Exercising this fascination is beneficial to the development of character traits. Thus such indulgences are, within reason, morally acceptable.


In this paper we present a method for modeling herbaceous plants, suitable for generating realistic plant images and animating developmental processes. The idea is to achieve realism by simulating mechanisms which control plant growth in nature. The developmental approach to the modeling of plant architecture is extended to the modeling of leaves and flowers. The method is expressed using the formalism of L-systems.


A discussion of globalization is presented that focuses on the pros and cons of English spread. The postcolonial theoretical basis for promoting the status of second-language varieties of English, and how this impacts on the foreign-language speaker of English in the European Union, is investigated. Three primary factors, linguistic Anglo-Americanization, the decline of standard British English as an educational norm, and the monoculturalization that accompanies English language learning, are addressed. While the spread of English is beneficial in some respects, Anglo-Americanization is seen as threatening to the social and cultural integrity of non-native speakers of English. The construction of identity within foreign-language learning, of importance to learners of English worldwide, is discussed. It is held that a theoretically neutral program for English, which is growing out of the Euro-English and English as an international language paradigms, is the best possible platform for the teaching and learning of English.


In 1982 at the General Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church of that year, a new article 56 was added to its church order. This article stipulated that the church, through its assemblies and other work, strives to stimulate views in church and society that depart from Scripture. The Dutch Reformed Church wants to see such an approach in doctrinal, current and ethical affairs. The Dutch Reformed Church is part of the South and Southern African society and wants to influence these affairs to be handled according to the Bible. The same Synod referred to the Bible as a God-given document which sheds light on life as a whole and has an in-principle influence on the whole of society and the total existence of every believer. In approaching this calling and task, the Dutch Reformed Church opted to do it in an ecclesiastical way. It believes that creation as a whole is a unity in which everything can have an effect on any other thing. Every matter in society and creation can develop an ecclesiastical aspect for the church to act on in an ecclesiastical way. This article shows examples of this in the Dutch Reformed Church.


We studied the transmission characteristics of a one-dimensional metamaterial slab operating at the millimeter-wave regime. The double-negative nature was proven by using a normal incidence transmission study. A split-ring resonator based metamaterial flat lens with five layers at the propagation direction was constructed and illuminated with oblique incidence. From the scanning experiments, the shifting of the beam to the negative side was observed. The experimental results are in agreement with the Drude-Lorentz model based simulations. Two-dimensional field maps that were obtained from these simulations demonstrated negative refraction, negative phase velocity, and the reflected beam properties at 99 GHz.


ii This research discusses the mechanical characteristics of laminated piezoelectric actuators that are manufactured at an elevated temperature, to cure the adhesive bonding the layers together, or to cure the layers made of polymeric composite material, and then cooled to a service temperature. Mainly discussed are actuators that are composed of layers of passive materials and a layer of piezoelectric material. THUNDER (THin layer UNimorph ferroelectric DrivER and sensor) and LIPCA (LIghtweight Piezo-composite Curved Actuator) actuators, which consist of layers of metal, adhesive and piezoelectric material, and carbon-epoxy, glass-epoxy and piezoelectric material, respectively, are studied and investigated in detail to understand the thermal effects due to the elevated manufacturing temperature. Owing to the large out-of-plane deformations of the THUNDER actuators as a result of cooling to the service temperature, inclusion of geometric nonlinearities in the kinematic relations is taken into consideration for prediction of the thermally-induced deformations and residual stresses. The deformations and residual stresses are predicted by using a 23-term Rayleigh-Ritz approach and more rigorous, time-consuming, finite-element analyses performed with ABAQUS. The thermally-induced deformations of THUNDER actuators can result in multiple room-temperature manufactured shapes, whereas those of LIPCA actuators (LIPCA-C1 and LIPCA-C2) exhibit single room-temperature manufactured shape. Actuation responses of these actuators caused by a quasi-static electric iii field applied to the piezoelectric layer are also studied with the Rayleigh-Ritz approach. It is shown that geometrical nonlinearities play an important role in the actuation responses, and these nonlinearities can be controlled by the choice of actuator geometry and the materials in the passive layers. In addition, blocking forces representing load-carrying capability of THUNDER and LIPCA actuators are determined. Support conditions and again geometrical nonlinearities are vital factor in load-resisting performances. Amongst the actuators considered, the actuated deflection and blocking forces are compared. Finally, based on the outcome of this study, new criteria for designing a new type of laminated piezoelectric actuators with improvement of performance characteristics are proposed.


The phenomenon that rural residents and people with low incomes lag behind in Internet access is known as the "digital divide." This problem is particularly acute in developing countries, where most of the world's population lives. Bridging this digital divide, especially by attempting to increase the accessibility of broadband connectivity, can be challenging. The improvement of wide-area connectivity is constrained by factors such as how quickly we can dig ditches to bury fibers in the ground; and the cost of furnishing "last-mile" wiring can be prohibitively high.In this paper, we explore the use of digital storage media transported by the postal system as a general digital communication mechanism. While some companies have used the postal system to deliver software and movies, none of them has turned the postal system into a truly generic digital communication medium supporting a wide variety of applications. We call such a generic system a Postmanet. Compared to traditional wide-area connectivity options, the Postmanet has several important advantages, including wide global reach, great bandwidth potential and low cost.Manually preparing mobile storage devices for shipment may appear deceptively simple, but with many applications, communicating parties and messages, manual management becomes infeasible, and systems support at several levels becomes necessary. We explore the simultaneous exploitation of the Internet and the Postmanet, so we can combine their latency and bandwidth advantages to enable sophisticated bandwidth-intensive applications.


The 1968 Fulton report made the case for reforming the civil service to meet the demands of modern government. This article considers Fulton, and subsequent 'failures' to implement it, in the context of a changing political culture in Westminster that privileged political advice in policy-making and became ambivalent towards external expertise. It explores whether the Fulton recommendation for the creation of policy planning units in government departments, staffed by a mix of outside experts and talented officials, could be reimagined for present purposes, to include historians: history embedded in policy-making is proposed as an alternative to history presented to policy-makers.


Background and Purpose: Cervical cancer is the most prevalent cancer among women in the world. Cervical cancer is no symptoms and can be treated if diagnosed in the first stage of the disease. The aim of this study was to survey the affecting factors of the Pap smears test on perceptual factors, enabling and reinforcing (PEN-3) model constructs in women. Materials and Methods: This study was a descriptive cross-sectional study . The sample size was 416 married women with random sampling . The questionnaire had 50 questions based on PEN-3 model structures . Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics and logistic regression method in software SPSS 20 . Results: The mean age of women was 32.70 ± 21.00 years. The knowledge of risk factors and screening methods for cervical cancer was 37.2. About 40% of women had a history of Pap smears. The most important of perception factors were effective, family history of the disease, encourage people to Pap smear, and fear of detecting of cervical cancer. The most important enabling factors were the presence of expert health personnel to provide training and Pap smear test (50.3%), lack of time and too busy to do Pap smear test (23.2%). The reinforcing factors were the media advice (41.3%), doctor's advice (32.5%) and neglect and forgetfulness (36.2%). Conclusion: This study has shown the Pap smear screening behavior affected by personal factors, family, cultural and economic. Application of PEN-3 can effective in planning and designing intervention programs for cervical cancer screening. Application . Iran J Health 2016; 4(1): 31-36]


This empirical study examines the stability of Islamic banks during the subprime crisis. It covers a sample of fourteen Islamic banks and fourteen conventional banks. The conditional variance (volatility) of returns was used to measure stability. The E-GARCH and GJR-GARCH asymmetric models were used to estimate volatility due to their ability to take into account the leverage effect. The results of this study show that conventional bank returns were highly volatile during the crisis period, while Islamic banks saw their volatility - initially low - increase during the crisis, though to a much more moderate extent. These results corroborate both the hypothesis that Islamic banks were at least partially immune to the subprime crisis and the underlying hypothesis that Islamic banks are not subject to the same risks as conventional banks - although, due to their links with the real economy, they do eventually suffer the consequences of the subprime crisis.


A mobile robot system, capable of performing various tasks for the physically disabled, has been developed. To avoid collision with unexpected obstacles, the mobile robot uses ultrasonic range finders for detection and mapping. The obstacle avoidance strategy used for this robot is described. Since this strategy depends heavily on the performance of the ultrasonic range finders, these sensors and the effect of their limitations on the obstacle avoidance algorithm are discussed in detail. >


We analyze how banks' equity stakes in firms influence their credit supply in crisis times. For identification, we exploit the 2008 Global Financial Crisis and merge unique supervisory data from the German credit register on individual bank-firm credit exposures with the security register data that include banks' equity holdings. We find that a large and ex-ante persistent equity position held by a bank in a firm is associated with a larger credit provision from the respective bank to that firm. In crisis times, however, equity stakes only foster credit supply to ex-ante riskier firms especially from relatively weak banks. This ex-ante risk-taking may be due to better (insider) information by the bank, including a traditional lending relationship over the crisis. However, this ex-ante riskier lending translates also into higher ex-post loan defaults, worse firm-level stock market returns and even more firm bankruptcy or restructuring cases. Our results therefore suggest that banks' equity stakes in their borrowers do not mitigate debt overhang problems of distressed firms in crisis times, but rather foster evergreening of banks' outstanding credit to those (zombie) firms.


Historically the property entitlement has been conceived as a unitary entitlement form that permits a holder to transfer the entitlement to a third party, and the third party to remove the entitlement from its holder, pursuant to a voluntary transaction. Thus, the background presumption - of legal theorists or the Supreme Court or contract law - has been that any entitlement structured as a property entitlement is subject to voluntary transfer in the same manner as any other, be it a fundamental Constitutional right or a parcel of land or a barrel of oil. This conception of a unitary property entitlement form is mistaken. Instead, there are two distinct primary classes of property entitlements: strong property entitlements and standard property entitlements. The basis for the distinction between strong and standard property entitlements is that the power of a third party to remove an entitlement from its holder via a voluntary transaction is comprised of two salient distinct powers. The first is the power to remove the entitlement by offering in exchange therefore money or a superior direct substitute for the entitlement, which power one might call direct economic surplus inducement. The second is the power to remove the entitlement by making its transfer or waiver a prerequisite to delivery of economic surplus from some other source or sources, what might be called indirect economic surplus inducement. A standard property entitlement permits a third party to exercise both direct and indirect economic surplus inducement in attempting to remove the entitlement; whereas a strong property entitlement permits a third party to utilize only direct economic surplus inducement in offers for the entitlement. Distinguishing between strong and standard property entitlements enables a more precise understanding of how rights protecting fundamental liberties, which are at minimum strong property entitlements, differ from most interests in land or chattels, which are standard property entitlements, as well as resolution of longstanding doctrinal confusion in areas such as U.S. constitutional law and contract law. In addition to introducing the strong property entitlement as a new type or class of entitlement, this article sets forth a new logical organization of legal entitlements. This article asserts there are four salient types of entitlements that correspond to four salient gradations in power of a third party to remove the entitlement: 1. the liability - rule entitlement identified and named by Calabresi and Melamed - permits a third party to remove the entitlement without the consent of the holder but which requires such third party to compensate the holder in some manner; 2. the standard property entitlement - protects entitlement against removal by force, threat of force or fraud; 3. the strong property entitlement - protects entitlement against removal by force, threat of force, fraud or indirect economic surplus inducement; or 4. the inalienable entitlement - protects entitlement against removal by any means including direct economic surplus inducement. The last three types of entitlements - the standard property entitlement, the strong property entitlement and the inalienable entitlement - may be thought of as comprising three salient classes of the property category of entitlements. Organizing property entitlements into salient classes based on third party removal power, each of which class contains a subset of specific property entitlement forms, permits precise conversations about the motivating conception of a particular property entitlement that are distinct from conversations, typified by those in the Cathedral article and its progeny, about what specific entitlement form is optimal taking into account market failure considerations such as third-party effects or collective action problems. Finally, the article analyzes precisely the way in which an entitlement holder's autonomy with respect to an entitlement varies with the extent of removal power granted to third parties. The article posits that a holder's autonomy with respect to an entitlement is comprised of use autonomy and transfer autonomy, with possession autonomy constituting the foundational component of use autonomy common to all entitlements. The article shows that, putting aside possible effects from wealth endowment or cognitive limitations, increasing a third party's power to remove an entitlement from none (which corresponds to the inalienable entitlement) up to and including direct economic surplus inducement (which corresponds to the strong property entitlement) will increase the holder's transfer autonomy without diminishing the holder's possession autonomy. Increasing the third party's power to remove the entitlement beyond direct economic surplus inducement to include indirect economic surplus inducement (which corresponds to the standard property entitlement) will, though, reduce the holder's possession autonomy without increasing the holder's transfer autonomy. The strong property entitlement marks the critical inflection point beyond which any increase in third party removal power begins to mitigate the entitlement's possession autonomy by empowering a third party to remove the entitlement for a price less than the holder's value of enjoyment of those benefits through continued possession. The fact that, putting aside issues of wealth endowment and cognitive limitations, holder autonomy is maximized by structuring the entitlement as a strong property entitlement does not imply that either social wealth or any particular holder's overall wealth is maximized at this level of third party removal power. It is possible that social wealth as well as the overall wealth of certain (or most) individual holders may be increased by structuring the entitlement as a standard property entitlement. When deciding whether to structure an entitlement as a strong or standard property entitlement, the issue for lawmakers is whether any gain in material wealth from increased allocative efficiency achievable by structuring the entitlement as a standard rather than strong property entitlement exceeds the cost of impairing the absolute possession autonomy that would be conveyed to each holder by structuring the entitlement as a strong property entitlement. For entitlements the primary purpose of which is to provide the holder with autonomy benefits enjoyable free from third party interference and for which any wealth creation through transfer is an incidental concern (such as, say, a right to be free from racial discrimination), it will usually be the case that such entitlements should be structured at minimum as strong property entitlements. On the other hand, for entitlements (such as a barrel of oil) for which allocative efficiency is the primary goal and where there is little, or no, concern about protecting a holder's subjective valuation, such entitlements should normally be structured as standard property entitlements.


Background Nurses' health is often accompanied by various dangers due to the nature of their career. Therefore, it is required to monitor their health. Based on designing any system, users' views should be investigated relative to the usefulness, necessity and acceptance of the system. Then, a designing and implementing process is conducted. Objective To investigate nurses' views on accepting the creation of a Nurses' Health Monitoring System. Methods This cross-sectional study was conducted in 2015. Sample size was 586 nurses of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences. Sampling was conducted using multi-stage random sampling method. Research tool was a two-section researcher-made questionnaire. In the first section, demographic data were studied and in the second section, a twelve-item questionnaire was presented based on technology acceptance model. Five-item questions were regulated on perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEU) and views towards creating this system. Validity of the questionnaire was approved by content validity and content validity index and its reliability was approved by Cronbach's alpha. Data were analyzed using SPSS16 and descriptive statistics (frequency distribution, percentage, mean). Results The majority of participants (75.3%) were females between 25–35 years of age (44.4%) and (58.2%) were married. Mean work experience was 11.5±8.19. Mean perceived usefulness (PU) (17.36±2.66) and perceived ease of use (PEU) (16.75±2.65) and views towards using a Nurses' Health Monitoring System was (16.220±3.05). Conclusion Over two-thirds of nurses demonstrated perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use as well as positive views towards creating a nurses' health monitoring system. It is recommended to design and implement a nurses' health monitoring system based on local culture of Iranian nurses using IT in the health sector.


John Neale was born in Burton-on-Trent where his father was concerned with the grocery business and, appropriately to the town, his grandfather was a cooper in the brewing industry. After leaving school he spent two terms at Manchester University, passing the First Year examinations and, in 1943, volunteered for wartime service in the Royal Navy. One year later he was commissioned an officer and served in the hazardous but vital role of minesweeping. With discharge from the navy in 1947 he rejoined Manchester University to follow a BSc General degree in Geology and Geography with subsidiary Zoology, graduating in 1949. It was during this time that he met his future wife, Patti, who was a fellow undergraduate. Upon graduation he was appointed as Assistant Lecturer in the small Sub-department (later a full Department) of Geology of the University of Hull, which was to be his scientific home for the rest of his professional life. John Neale and his senior colleague Lewis Penny, who also joined in 1949, were the only members of staff and for some years taught the full spectrum of Geology between them. John Neale's diaries record how they had intensive discussions about developing their sub-department and building the teaching collections. The department grew in numbers of students and staff and won a reputation for sound teaching and, in time, for research. It is therefore easy to understand how saddened John Neale was when, following a reorganization of Earth Science departments in British universities, the department he had …


Abstract:Established in the early 1850s in what is now southern Sierra Leone, Mo Tappan was a direct descendant of the Amistad slave revolt and served as a transatlantic extension of the American abolitionist movement. Named after philanthropist Lewis Tappan, the town was a symbolic, intentional community. As the forward operating station of the Mendi Mission, it was a hub of education, commerce, and cultural exchange. It was the site of the first systematic studies of the Mende language, the first printed material in Mende, and some of the earliest recorded examples of Mende literature and folklore. It also housed multiracial families of African and American missionaries who pushed a radical agenda of religious discipline, social justice, and economic transformation. Until recently, very little was known about Mo Tappan, its origins, or its operations. The discovery of a large cache of material belonging to John Brooks, the community's founder and primary leader, sheds new light on the making and unmaking of this unique Mende-American town.


This paper considers the role of social capital in the aspirations for higher education of a group of socially disadvantaged girls. Drawing on data from a longitudinal, ethnographic case study of an underperforming secondary school, the paper considers current conceptualisations of social capital and its role in educational ambitions. The paper concludes by tentatively suggesting that whilst social capital is extremely helpful in explaining differences within groups, trust appears to be a pre-requisite for the investment and generation of social capital, as opposed to the other way around. The paper also suggests that young people are not necessarily dependent on their families for their social capital but are able to generate capital in their own right.


Despite the fact that structural collapse is a key contributor to seismic risk, robust procedures for the assessment of structural collapse are typically absent in seismic design documents. This paper discusses probabilistic collapse capacity assessment of reinforced concrete buildings using the New Zealand red book building as a case study. Load resisting elements of RC buildings are traditionally modelled using lumped plasticity elements at predefined plastic hinge locations which require crude approximations of several features of post-peak response, which is very important in simulating structural collapse. This paper presents a discussion on the use of fiber-based nonlinear modelling, which utilizes generic path-dependent cyclic stress-strain relationships of concrete and reinforcing steel, for prediction of RC frame building collapse. A collapse capacity distribution accounting for ground motion uncertainty is estimated using a suite of ground motions and conducting incremental dynamic analysis (IDA), i.e., gradually increasing the intensity of the ground motions until the occurrence of collapse. It is shown that the fiber model simulates the collapse mechanism of the building without the upfront assumptions required in lumped plasticity modelling; thereby making the prediction more reliable.


The paper, a novelty in Romanian economic literature, is comparable to the most valuable international papers in this field, is based on a thorough theoretical documentation, characterised by scientific rigour and originality, is rich in concrete analyses of the informal sector and unobserved economy based on actual Romanian data and is finalised by wording pertinent conclusions at the practical level of macroeconomic management.


This study analyzes various games played by Internet broadcasting jockey "Big Library" who professionally broadcasts video game playing. Due to the rapid developments of new media, the era that Internet BJs independently broadcast on their own channel has dawned and it has become popular. Among diverse genres, currently game has been the most popular in Internet broadcasting. Specifically, this study chooses "Big Library", one of popular Internet game broadcasting Jockeys as a case study. Big Library has broadcasted video game playing on his own Afreeca TV channel, and he also uploaded those recorded videos on his YouTube channel. By visiting his YouTube channel, it examines 1) Genre 2) Nationality 3) Number of Episodes 4) Number of Hit (Popular Games) of games played by him. Throughout this study, it explores traits of games that Big Library has played, and further discusses the future of the new media industry in South Korea.


It has often been argued that post-colonial immigration in France has posed new challenges to the so-called French Republican model of integration. Indeed, French popular, and to a large extent political and media, discourses have presented postcolonial migrants (especially Maghrebis) and their children as constituting a population which is more difficult to integrate than previous, mainly European, migrants. At the core of this widely held belief lies the idea that Maghrebi immigration is a relatively
recent phenomenon, and that their cultural, religious traditions and social practices (which are often described in vague and reifying terms) are irreconcilably different from those of the French, thereby ignoring the long and complex historical links that have tied France to North Africa since the colonial era. Equally, the lack of political representation of Maghrebis in France is not so much attributed to the discrimination to which North Africans are subjected as to their lack of political tradition.

This thesis aims to challenge these two widely held beliefs by carrying out a detailed analysis of the discourse and mobilisation processes of two important political movements which developed within North African immigration in France in the twentieth century. The first one, the Etoile nord-africaine (ENA), later to become the Parti du peuple algerien (PPA), developed during the inter-war period and became the strongest voice of Algerian nationalism during those years. The second one, the Mouvement des travailleurs arabes (MTA), which was created in the early 1970s in
France, saw itself as an Arab nationalist movement which fought for the liberation of the Arab people and against racism within France and beyond.

Many academic studies posit the development of the ENA/PPA within the wider framework of colonial liberation movements and as a phenomenon which is linked with the history of Algeria. And further Maghrebi political movements such as the MTA, which have emerged in the post-colonial period, are somehow viewed as rooted in the social history of immigration in France. This thesis challenges this dichotomy and shows that, in spite of their specificities and different socio-historical contexts, these
two Maghrebi political movements which developed during the colonial and post colonial eras form part of a consistent political tradition established by the Maghrebi
diaspora in France. This study also focuses on the central question of identity and examines the complex social, historical and political processes which shaped Maghrebis'
sense of national and ethnic identity during these two periods.

Both movements' discourses and actions are analysed through a large corpus of archival documents and publications produced by the ENA/PPA and the MTA on the one hand, and secondary sources pertaining to these two organisations on the other. The primary documents which are examined in detail include newspapers, tracts, reports from militants, personal correspondence, minutes of meetings, posters, as well as police and government reports.

This thesis shows that both the ENA/PPA and the MTA viewed Maghrebi national identity as rooted in Arabness. However, their sense of identity was informed by different markers and shaped their political agenda in different ways. On the one hand, the ENA/PPA's sense of ethnic identity marked a nationalist discourse rooted in history and religion which aimed to challenge France's oppressive colonial rule, and
establish a modern nation-state within the confines of the colonial territory. On the other hand, the MTA's sense of ethno-national identity was informed by North Africans' anticolonial struggle, by the Palestinian Revolution and by a strong sense of class belonging. Its nationalism encompassed the Arab World and transcended the boundaries
of nation-states which had failed to defeat imperialism and its corollary, racism. In spite of these differences, this analysis shows that Maghrebi immigrants, who have been
present in France since the early twentieth century, have developed a consistent and original political tradition and discourse in France.


Background: No studies have been conducted concerning
Multiple Myeloma (MM) associated Human Immunodeficiency
Virus (HIV) in Cote d'Ivoire.
Aim:
To describe the peculiarities of association MM-HIV.
Materials and methods: We conducted a retrospective and
descriptive study with duration of 8 years, from January 2009 to
December 2017 in Abidjan. We included the case of MM with
HIV serology positive. 10 patients among 101 cases of MM
were infected by HIV, prevalence of 9.9%.
Results: There were 6 mens and 4 females. The average age
was 53 years with extremes 31 and 75 years. Clinical signs
were bone pain (10 cases), anemia (10 cases), pathological
fractures (6 cases) and tumor syndrome (3 cases). Biologically,
8 patients had a hemoglobin level<6 d/dl, 6 had a
hypercalcemia and 3 had renal failure. Radiological signs
noted a Geode in all patients which 5 were multiple. 7
patients had been stadified ISS III. Therapeutic responses
noted Complete Response (one case), Very Good Partial
Response (two cases), and Partial Response (5 cases).
Conclusion: MM associated HIV in Cote d'Ivoire is most to
young people with severe manifestations. The treatment seems
good with the use of conventional chemotherapy.


The study was designed to investigate the effect of different soaking time on the nutrient and antinutrient composition of bambara ground nut (Vigna subterranean) seeds. Milky coloured variety of bambara groundnut was purchased from Ubani Market Umuahia, Abia State. The sample was cleaned by winnowing. One kilogram of whole seeds was soaked in potable water at room temperature (29-32oC in a 1: 30 (bean: water) ratio for 6, 12, 18, 24, 48 and 72 hrs respectively. The soaked seeds were drained, rinsed, dehulled and dried at 550C in an oven until the moisture became constant. Milling the dried seed into flour was done using attrition milling machine. The proximate, vitamin and anti-nutrient content of the samples were determined using standard methods. Mineral elements were determined using wetacid digestion method for multiple nutrients determination. All tests were carried out in duplicates and the data generated were analysed using standard methods. The moisture content of the samples ranged between 10.2 -11.2%. Values of protein (20.2-22.4%), crude fiber (4.1- 4.8%), crude fat (5.9-7.2%), and ash (3.6-3.9%) decreased with increasing soaking time. The result shows decrease of 2.85%- 12.4% for Ca, 1.54%-36.2% for Mg, 4.27%-16.2% for Na, 2.24%-11.2% for K, 6.21%-22.0% for Fe, 23.8%-90.0% for Cu, 14.28%- 64.28% for Se and 12.9%-44.5% for I respectively. There was significant decrease in all the vitamins except for vitamin B2 in the sample soaked for 24hr and in the sample soaked for 48hr (0.09mg/100g, 0.08mg/100g respectively). It was found that all the anti-nutrient composition of unsoaked and soaked bambara groundnut were within permissible limit which implies that soaking bambara


In recent decades of Emerson scholarship, there have been primarily two ways of situating the political orientation of Emerson's writing: the first, and most widely held, proclaims Emerson's status as an architect of democratic individualism. Generally supported by readings of "Circles," "New England Reformers," and "Self-Reliance," scholars such as Richard Poirier, Sacvan Bercovitch, Stanley Cavell, and George Kateb have argued that Emerson's writing defines American democratic individuality as an endless process of personal renovation. These scholars hold that by saying no to whatever social forces threaten to foreclose upon the individual's potential for growth, the Emersonian poet is really saying yes to a dream of a better communal and democratic future. At best, this argument is a sophisticated and precarious enterprise, as several reviewers have noted (Wolfe, Rosenblum, Patell). Although Poirier, Cavell, and Kateb have emphasized the ways in which Emerson is antagonistic to the commercial greed of the Jacksonian era (and to unqualified, atomistic individualisms), their portrayals of Emerson's democratic individualism often sound more like descriptions of a genteel temper of mind than a recognizable politics. (1) In contrast to viewing Emerson as a prophet of American liberalism, a second political movement in Emerson scholarship is best illustrated by Len Gougeon's work on Emerson's anti-slavery speeches and essays. In a book and several articles, Gougeon has recovered Emerson's activist commitment to the pressing political issues of his day, such as the Cherokee removals, abolition, and women's fights. The analysis of Emerson's interest in civic duty continues to be a minority voice in Emerson studies, but it is of longstanding tradition, and it provides a helpful explanation of the origins of the spirit of (social) reform that often animate Emerson's lectures and writing (see also Francis, Rose, Cayton). The problem with these civic recuperations of Emerson, however, is that they have difficulty articulating the aesthetic side of Emerson's work. At the risk of trying to pass between Scylla and Charybdis, the contrast I have sketched is evocative of the recent liberal/republican debates in American historiography. At stake is whether Emerson represents the commerce-oriented individual of liberalism, or whether he is inspired by a legacy of republican civic conscience. Fortunately, in the last ten years, both liberal and republican historians have begun to see themselves as describing two sides of the same coin (Shalhope 39). The virtue of this rapprochement is that literary scholars have begun to hear strains of republican rhetoric in commercial discourse and vice versa. Grantland Rice's study of eighteenth-century authorship thus shows how the profession of author in the United States eventually came to be defined economically, albeit significantly inflected by ideological republican leftovers from an earlier age (10-11; also Teichgraeber). Daniel Malachuk's essay on Emerson's "cosmic" republicanism has also helped to put the liberal and republican faces of Emerson in dialogue. Similarly, Sam Worley, drawing on Michael Walzer's notion of the immanent or connected critic, has demonstrated Emerson and Thoreau's complex fusion of communitarian and individualist philosophies in their cultural criticism. In accord with these attempts to connect early national ideals of fellow-feeling with individualist spirit, I argue that Emerson's infatuation with oratory supplies an influential ethos of collective individuality in his mature essays. This socially-connected individuality is pivotal in "Circles," a text which is often invoked as a pragmatist manifesto of American liberalism. If the text is indeed a seminal moment in United States pragmatism, the communalist philosophy of that essay carries a political freight that contemporary liberal pragmatists, such as Richard Rorty, have had difficulty sustaining ("Intellectuals"; "Reply" 267). …


Abstract The study defines a process-oriented framework for measuring social innovation. Social initiatives focus on meeting the needs of the community and solving their problems The local, community-based innovative ideas have a significant role. During the systematic operation of innovation, the starting point (expression of local needs) and the definition of short and long term goals as induction factors are involved in the innovation process. The starting conditions are widening in the transformation with incentive and inhibiting factors, while the stakeholders of the innovation process are also determined. As a result of the transformation, territorial-specific results will be created complementing the economic and / or social impact of the given innovation. Indicators that help measure social innovation initiatives can be identified as prerequisites, conditions of implementation and sustainability criteria, defining the structured conditions of the innovation process per phase. In addition, several levels of social innovation efforts are possible. Measuring macro-level social innovation, it is necessary to examine regional contexts, with the method of analysis of the connection network, and also with a systematic approach. Regional social innovation measurement can be used to analyze local and regional cooperation and initiatives. The study analyzes the conditions and measurement possibilities of micro-level social innovation, their generating potential and investigates the speed of organizational innovation. An example of good practice in the municipality is presented as a case study, defining the conditions that help to evaluate social innovation by determining a process-oriented framework.


We address the task of generating live soccer-match commentaries from play event data. This task has characteristics that (i) each commentary is only partially aligned with events, (ii) play event data contains many types of categorical and numerical attributes, (iii) live commentaries often mention player names and team names. For these reasons, we propose an encoder for play event data, which is enhanced with a gate mechanism. We also introduce an attention mechanism on events. In addition, we introduced placeholders and their reconstruction mechanism to enable the model to copy appropriate player names and team names from the input data. We conduct experiments on the play data of the English Premier League, provide a discussion on the result including generated commentaries.


We propose a decision triggered data transmission and collection (DTDTC) protocol for condition monitoring and anomaly detection in the industrial Internet of things (IIoT). In the IIoT, the collection, processing, encoding, and transmission of the sensor readings are usually not for the reconstruction of the original data but for decision making at the fusion center. By moving the decision making process to the local end devices, the amount of data transmission can be significantly reduced, especially when normal signals with positive decisions dominate in the whole life cycle and the fusion center is only interested in collecting the abnormal data. The proposed concept combines compressive sensing, machine learning, data transmission, and joint decision making. The sensor readings are encoded and transmitted to the fusion center only when abnormal signals with negative decisions are detected. All the abnormal signals from the end devices are gathered at the fusion center for a joint decision with feedback messages forwarded to the local actuators. The advantage of such an approach lies in that it can significantly reduce the volume of data to be transmitted through wireless links. Moreover, the introduction of compressive sensing can further reduce the dimension of data tremendously. An exemplary case, i.e., diesel engine condition monitoring, is provided to validate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed scheme compared to the conventional ones.


Context. Intermediate polar cataclysmic variables (IPCV) contain a magnetic, rotating white dwarf surrounded by a magnetically truncated accretion disk. To explain their strong flickering X-ray emission, accretion has been successfully taken into account. Nevertheless, observations suggest that accretion phenomena might not be the only process behind it. An intense flaring activity occurring on the surface of the disk may generate a corona, contribute to the thermal X-ray emission, and influence the system stability. Aims. Our purposes are: investigating the formation of an extended corona above the accretion disk, due to an intense flaring activity occurring on the disk surface; studying the effects of flares on the disk and stellar magnetosphere; assessing its contribution to the observed thermal X-ray flux. Methods. We have developed a 3D magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) model of a IPCV system. The model takes into account gravity, disk viscosity, thermal conduction, radiative losses, and coronal flare heating through heat injection at randomly chosen locations on the disk surface. To perform a parameter space exploration, several system conditions have been considered, with different magnetic field intensity and disk density values. From the results of the evolution of the model, we have synthesized the thermal X-ray emission. Results. The simulations show the formation of an extended corona, linking disk and star. The flaring activity is capable of strongly influencing the disk configuration and possibly its stability, effectively deforming the magnetic field lines. Hot plasma evaporation phenomena occur in the layer immediately above the disk. The flaring activity gives rise to a thermal X-ray emission in both the [ 0.1−2.0 ] keV and the [ 2.0−10 ] keV X-ray bands. Conclusions. An intense coronal activity occurring on the disk surface of an IPCV can affect the structure of the disk depending noticeably on the density of the disk and the magnetic field of the central object. Moreover, the synthesis of the thermal X-ray fluxes shows that this flaring activity may contribute to the observed flickering thermal X-ray emission.


This paper describes the use of reflective biographical narrative, in postgraduate research supervision, in helping students develop their sense of place - an intellectual place - within the scholarly landscape. The example provided centres on the work of students who have found an intellectual home in cultural geography. Using planned and semi-formal conversation, a device emerging from the authors' supervisory practices, this activity draws on the emerging tradition of reflective biographical narrative, in which biographical reflection is not merely reflection on knowledge, but a practical methodological approach to working with knowledge. We conclude that our approach provided positive learning outcomes for the students, all of who were better able to frame their research, using reflective biographical narrative, within a conscious sense of scholarly place, and to adopt such reflection as a key analytical tool in their respective research projects.


Abstract. Peatlands are important carbon stores and Sphagnum moss represents a critical peatland genus contributing to carbon exchange and storage. However, gas fluxes in Sphagnum-dominated systems are poorly represented in Dynamic Global Vegetation Models (DGVMs) which simulate, via incorporation of Plant Functional Types (PFTs), biogeochemical and energy fluxes between vegetation, the land surface and the atmosphere. Mechanisms characterised by PFTs within DGVMs include photosynthesis, respiration and competition and, in more recent DGVMs, sub-daily gas-exchange processes regulated by leaf 10 stomata. However, Sphagnum, like all mosses, are non-vascular plants and do not exhibit stomatal regulation. In order to achieve a level of process detail consistent with existing vascular vegetation PFTs within DGVMs, this paper describes a new process-based non-vascular-PFT model that is implemented within the TRIFFID DGVM used by the JULES land surface model. The new PFT model was tested against extant published field and laboratory studies of peat assemblage-net primary productivity, assemblage-gross primary productivity, assemblage respiration, water-table position, incoming 15 photosynthetically active radiation, temperature, and canopy dark respiration. The PFT model's parameters were roughly tuned and the PFT model easily produced curves of the correct shape for peat assemblage-net primary productivity against water-table position, incoming photosynthetically active radiation and temperature, suggesting that it replicates the internal productivity mechanism of Sphagnum for the first time. Minor modifications should also allow it to be used across a range of other bryophytes enabling this non-vascular PFT model to have enhanced functionality.


The new D-Link Network Security Firewall (DFL-210) is an easy-to-deploy VPN and firewall solution designed specifically for the Small Office / Home Office (SOHO) market that demands superior performance and security. The DFL-210 is a powerful security solution that provides integrated Network Address Translation (NAT), SPI Firewall, advanced content filtering features, IDS protection, bandwidth management, as well as Virtual Private Network (VPN) support. The DFL-210 hardware includes four trusted LAN ports, a WAN port, and a user-configurable DMZ port to support local servers such as e-mail, Web, and FTP. The DMZ port can also be reconfigured as a WAN fail-over port. All of these features conveniently fit into a desktop chassis that can be easily integrated into your network. To provide enterprise-class network security, the DFL-210 has several flexible firewall features to manage, monitor, and maintain a healthy and secure network. checks, and real-time statistics. These features along with a firmware backup function provide and maintain maximum network performance and security. VPN Performance For optimal VPN configuration, the DFL-210 has an integrated VPN Client and Server to support almost any required VPN policy. This high-end appliance has a hardware VPN engine to support and manage up to 100 VPN configurations. The DFL-210 can support IPSec, PPTP, and L2TP protocols in Client/Server mode and can handle pass-through traffic as well. Advanced VPN configuration options include: DES/3DES/AES/Twofish/Blowfish/CAST-128 encryption, Manual or IKE/ISAKMP key management, Quick/Main/Aggressive Negotiation modes, and VPN authentication support using either an external RADIUS server or the internal 500-user database. The DFL-210 features an intuitive user interface that can easily be configured via D-Link's Web-based interface and monitored using the Command Line Interface (CLI). These configuration options can be managed through Admin, Read/Write, or Read-only administrator rights. With these access management levels, any authorized user can easily configure or access the administrative functions of the DFL-210. With businesses becoming increasingly network-dependent, the need to invest in a reliable security solution is crucial. The D-Link DFL-210 Network Security Firewall offers high return on investment through robust security features, flexible configuration, and maximum network protection for SOHO networks.


Popular culture is a central part of everyday life to many Americans. Personalities such as Elvis Presley, Oprah Winfrey, and Michael Jordan are more recognizable to many people than are most elected officials. With Amusement for All is the first comprehensive history of two centuries of mass entertainment in the United States, covering everything from the penny press to Playboy, the NBA to NASCAR, big band to hip hop, and other topics including film, comics, television, sports, dance, and music. Paying careful attention to matters of race, gender, class, technology, economics, and politics, LeRoy Ashby emphasizes the complex ways in which popular culture simultaneously reflects and transforms American culture, revealing that the world of entertainment constantly evolves as it tries to meet the demands of a diverse audience. Trends in popular entertainment often reveal the tensions between competing ideologies, appetites, and values in American society. For example, in the late nineteenth century, Americans embraced "self-made men" such as John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie: the celebrities of the day were circus tycoons P.T. Barnum and James A. Bailey, Wild West star "Buffalo Bill" Cody, professional baseball organizer Albert Spalding, and prizefighter John L. Sullivan. At the same time, however, several female performers challenged traditional notions of weak, frail Victorian women. Adah Isaacs Menken astonished crowds by wearing tights that made her appear nude while performing dangerous stunts on horseback, and the shows of the voluptuous burlesque group British Blondes often centered on provocative images of female sexual power and dominance. Ashby describes how history and politics frequently influence mainstream entertainment. When Native Americans, blacks, and other non-whites appeared in the nineteenth-century circuses and Wild West shows, it was often to perpetuate demeaning racial stereotypes-crowds jeered Sitting Bull at Cody's shows. By the early twentieth century, however, black minstrel acts reveled in racial tensions, reinforcing stereotypes while at the same time satirizing them and mocking racist attitudes before a predominantly white audience. Decades later, Red Foxx and Richard Pryor's profane comedy routines changed American entertainment. The raw ethnic material of Pryor's short-lived television show led to a series of African-American sitcoms in the 1980s that presented common American experiences-from family life to college life-with black casts. Mainstream entertainment has often co-opted and sanitized fringe amusements in an ongoing process of redefining the cultural center and its boundaries. Social control and respectability vied with the bold, erotic, sensational, and surprising, as entrepreneurs sought to manipulate the vagaries of the market, control shifting public appetites, and capitalize on campaigns to protect public morals. Rock 'n Roll was one such fringe culture; in the 1950s, Elvis blurred gender norms with his androgynous style and challenged conventions of public decency with his sexually-charged performances. By the end of the 1960s, Bob Dylan introduced the social consciousness of folk music into the rock scene, and The Beatles embraced hippie counter-culture. Don McLean's 1971 anthem "American Pie" served as an epitaph for rock's political core, which had been replaced by the spectacle of hard rock acts such as Kiss and Alice Cooper. While Rock 'n Roll did not lose its ability to shock, in less than three decades it became part of the established order that it had originally sought to challenge. With Amusement for All provides the context to what Americans have done for fun since 1830, showing the reciprocal nature of the relationships between social, political, economic, and cultural forces and the way in which the entertainment world has reflected, refracted, or reinforced the values those forces represent in America.


To investigate the role of temporal processing in language lateralization, we monitored asymmetry of cerebral activation in human volunteers using positron emission tomography (PET). Subjects were scanned during passive auditory stimulation with nonverbal sounds containing rapid (40 msec) or extended (200 msec) frequency transitions. Bilateral symmetric activation was observed in the auditory cortex for slow frequency transitions. In contrast, left-biased asymmetry was observed in response to rapid frequency transitions due to reduced response of the right auditory cortex. These results provide direct evidence that auditory processing of rapid acoustic transitions is lateralized in the human brain. Such functional asymmetry in temporal processing is likely to contribute to language lateralization from the lowest levels of cortical processing.


Correspondence: Tessa Cigler weill Cornell Medical College iris Cantor Breast Center, 425 east 61st Street, 8th Floor, New York, NY 10065, USA Tel +1 212 821 0736 Fax +1 212 821 0796 email firstname.lastname@example.com Abstract: The treatment of metastatic breast cancer (MBC) has become increasingly challenging as the primary goals of therapy include prolonging life without added toxicity. While multiple agents are approved for the therapy of MBC, there is no standard approach for therapy beyond the second-line. Eribulin mesylate, an analog of the marine sponge halichondrin B, is a non-taxane microtubule dynamics inhibitor with a mechanism of action distinct from other tubulin-targeted drugs. Based on a significant extension in overall survival seen in a Phase III clinical trial, eribulin was approved for third-line therapy in MBC patients following anthracycline and taxane failure. Eribulin has a manageable toxicity profile and a low incidence of peripheral neuropathy. In this review, we discuss the natural source of eribulin, pharmacology, mode of action, preclinical and clinical data, and patient-focused perspectives.


By what capacities
do human beings engage in intentional action? Humeans about motivation claim
that the source of all action is desire. Volitionalists claim that action has
two distinct sources, one in the will and one in desire. Recent work suggests
that volitionalism has some empirical support. Roy F. Baumeister and colleagues
have argued for a phenomenon called "ego depletion". They argue that some
aspect of the self exerts volition in a number of different contexts. The main
evidence for this claim is that experimental subjects who engage in acts of
self-regulation are less likely to engage in similar actions on later tests. The
evidence calls for a reformulation of the Humean theory, not a rejection of it.
And the reformulation is one that still has interest for metaethics. Many
philosophers are interested in the Humean theory of motivation because they
believe that it has implications for the correct theory of normative practical
reasons. Here I argue that if the Humean theory of motivation was ever a threat
to the objectivity of morality, it still is.


A quasi-continuous-wave intracavity frequency-doubled Nd:YAG laser which operates at 660 nm is studied. By using a flat-flat laser cavity, 2 Kr-lamps, KTP crystal and an acousto-optically Q-switch, 2-W output power at 660 nm is obtained. The relationship between laser cavity length and output power is analyzed.


A letter from Hamilton K. Redway in Washington D.C. to his wife, Loriette Redway, on December 3, 1865. The letter is regarding Hamilton Redway's business and life in Washington. Redway mentions that he will remain in the city until he gets his papers, and comments on the affairs of the army in Washington. He mentions that he has visited Munson's Hill and Upton's Hill in Arlington, and informs Loriette that the grounds about the Arlington Home have been turned into a national cemetery and that the old mansion (Custis-Lee Mansion) has been newly painted. According to Redway, there were between seven- and eight-thousand families buried in the cemetery at that time. Redway asks about his father, Chauncy Redway, as well as his daughter, Rosa Redway.


Abstract. The boron isotope composition (δ11B) of marine biogenic carbonates has been predominantly studied as a proxy for monitoring past changes in seawater pH and carbonate chemistry. However, a number of assumptions regarding chemical kinetics and thermodynamic isotope exchange reactions are required to derive seawater pH from δ11B biogenic carbonates. It is also probable that δ11B of biogenic carbonate reflects seawater pH at the organism's site of calcification, which may or may not reflect seawater pH. Here, we report the development of methodology for measuring the δ11B of biogenic carbonate samples at the multi-collector inductively coupled mass spectrometry facility at Ifremer (Plouzane, France) and the evaluation of δ11BCaCO3 in a diverse range of marine calcifying organisms reared for 60 days in isothermal seawater (25 °C) equilibrated with an atmospheric pCO2 of ca. 409 µatm. Average δ11BCaCO3 composition for all species evaluated in this study range from 16.27 to 35.09 ‰, including, in decreasing order, coralline red alga Neogoniolithion sp. (35.89 ± 3.71 ‰), temperate coral Oculina arbuscula (24.12 ± 0.19 ‰), serpulid worm Hydroides crucigera (19.26 ± 0.16 ‰), tropical urchin Eucidaris tribuloides (18.71 ± 0.26 ‰), temperate urchin Arbacia punctulata (16.28 ± 0.86 ‰), and temperate oyster Crassostrea virginica (16.03 ‰). These results are discussed in the context of each species' proposed mechanism of biocalcification and other factors that could influence skeletal and shell δ11B, including calcifying site pH, the proposed direct incorporation of isotopically enriched boric acid (instead of borate) into biogenic calcium carbonate, and differences in shell/skeleton polymorph mineralogy. We conclude that the large inter-species variability in δ11BCaCO3 (ca. 20 ‰) and significant discrepancies between measured δ11BCaCO3 and δ11BCaCO3 expected from established relationships between abiogenic δ11BCaCO3 and seawater pH arise primarily from fundamental differences in calcifying site pH amongst the different species. These results highlight the potential utility of δ11B as a proxy of calcifying site pH for a wide range of calcifying taxa and underscore the importance of using species-specific seawater-pH–δ11BCaCO3 calibrations when reconstructing seawater pH from δ11B of biogenic carbonates.


I provide an analysis of the Bulgarian clitic cluster within the framework of Greg Stump's theory of Paradigm Function Morphology. I treat the basic clitic cluster as essentially a string of affixes generated by paradigm functions. In this way I formalize the notion of 'phrasal affix'. The placement of the cluster is determined by the interaction of syntactic and prosodic constraints, whose interaction is mediated by Optimality Theory. The notorious question clitic, li , is treated as an enclitic to the leftmost stressed element in its domain. The clitic itself is generated as a member of the basic cluster but without any linear precedence. Its final placement is thus decided by OT constraints. I briefly consider the closely related Macedonian system, in which the clitic cluster is affixed by the paradigm function not to the root of the lexeme, but to a word form which has already undergone a layer of inflection.


Detection and segmentation of abnormalities present in the liver is one of the testing and vital steps to treatment planning which expands the survival of a patient. Liver cancer expands the death rate because the side effects cannot be distinguished even the cancer is in its advanced stage. The early diagnosis and consistent observing is the best way to control the development of the malignancy and to save the lives. Ultrasound imaging is a standout amongst the most frequently utilized diagnosis instruments to distinguish and classify irregularities of the liver which is also a non-invasive, safe technique for patient examination, being easy to apply, economical than the CT, MRI, PET based liver tumor detection. Traditional liver cancer detection strategies have high computation time and multifaceted nature. In order to diminish the complexity in the computational procedure and to enhance the diagnostic exactness in this paper we propose a new optimum hierarchical feature fusion based on Penguin Search Optimization Algorithm (PeSOA). The features resulting from PeSOA is used by a Probabilistic Neural Network (PNN) which classifies the liver cancer tissues. Test results demonstrate that the proposed technique acquires 98.92% classification accuracy and the correlation demonstrates that we obtained superior results than the existing strategies.


Hyperspectral imagery (1000–2500 nm) was used to quantitatively map carbonate and clay minerals in fossil reef cores that are relevant to accurately reconstructing past environmental and climatic conditions. Techniques were developed using hyperspectral imagery of fossil reef corals and cores acquired from three different geological settings, and were validated against independent measures of calcite to aragonite ratios. Aragonite, calcite, and dolomite were distinguished using a combination of the wavelength position and asymmetry of the primary carbonate absorption between 2300 and 2350 nm. Areas of core containing small amounts of calcite (>2–5%) were distinguished from aragonite in imagery of two cores, enabling quantitative maps of these minerals to be constructed. Dolomite was found to be the dominant mineral in another core. Trace amounts of the aluminium‐rich clay mineral kaolinite were detected, quantified, and mapped in one core using its diagnostic absorption feature near 2200 nm. The amounts of clay detected from hyperspectral imagery were below the limits of detection by standard X‐ray diffraction techniques but its presence was confirmed by Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy. Hyperspectral imagery acquired at high spatial resolution simplifies vetting procedures for secondary carbonate minerals in coral reef cores, significantly reduces sampling time and costs, and is a powerful nondestructive tool to identify well‐preserved coral aragonite in cores for uses in paleoclimate, paleoenvironment and paleoecosystem reconstruction.


Two tomato pomace (TP) were studied as feedstocks to obtain extracts that are rich in polyphenols. TPs prompt degradation impairs biomass safety, thus naturally present microflora were tested to perform conservation, and own lactic bacteria became predominant after 60 days of treatment. The extracts of TPs and TPs fermented (TPF) were chemically characterized and tested for antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities. Flavonoids and phenolic acids were classed as aglycone-polyphenols (A-PP), the most bioactive polyphenol fraction. Fermentation led to a reduction of the A-PP amount, but no significant change in composition. Antioxidant power increased, despite the A-PP reduction, for the presence of fermentation metabolites having aromatic-substituent. TP and TPF both have anti-inflammatory properties that were strictly dependent upon the A-PP content. Fermentation preserved the anti-inflammatory activity and the Partial Least Square (PLS) identified as the most active molecules naringenin chalcone, kaempferol, gallic acid, and cinnamic acid, together with the definition of the active dose.


Spatial interactions (or flows), such as population migration and disease spread, naturally form a weighted location-to-location network (graph). Such geographically embedded networks (graphs) are usually very large. For example, the county-to-county migration data in the U.S. has thousands of counties and about a million migration paths. Moreover, many variables are associated with each flow, such as the number of migrants for different age groups, income levels, and occupations. It is a challenging task to visualize such data and discover network structures, multivariate relations, and their geographic patterns simultaneously. This paper addresses these challenges by developing an integrated interactive visualization framework that consists three coupled components: (1) a spatially constrained graph partitioning method that can construct a hierarchy of geographical regions (communities), where there are more flows or connections within regions than across regions; (2) a multivariate clustering and visualization method to detect and present multivariate patterns in the aggregated region-to-region flows; and (3) a highly interactive flow mapping component to map both flow and multivariate patterns in the geographic space, at different hierarchical levels. The proposed approach can process relatively large data sets and effectively discover and visualize major flow structures and multivariate relations at the same time. User interactions are supported to facilitate the understanding of both an overview and detailed patterns.


The ability to adaptively exert control over negative emotions is associated with beneficial mental health outcomes. Less is known about the associated emotional sequelae surrounding controllable versus uncontrollable positive emotional experiences. The ability to harness positive emotions is of particular importance in populations involving disrupted positive emotion functioning. In the present study, participants engaged in a relived memory task in which they recalled either a controllable or uncontrollable past positive emotional experience in counterbalanced order, while concurrent experiential and autonomic responses were measured. Participants included adults with bipolar I disorder (BD; n = 32), major depression (MDD; n = 32), and or nonpsychiatric controls (CTLs; n = 31). Across all participants, reliving a controllable positive emotion experience was associated with exhibited increased respiratory sinus arrhythmia, an autonomic marker of regulatory control. Interestingly, only the MDD group reported increased positive emotion and decreased cardiovascular arousal when reliving an event involving uncontrollable positive emotion, compared to the BD and CTL groups. No other group differences emerged. These findings suggest that although controllable positive emotion experiences may be adaptive for most, individuals with a history of restricted affect and depressed mood may actually derive more pleasure from times of unharnessed happiness.


Understanding the structure of baryons in terms of the fundamental interaction of the constituent quarks and gluons is one of the primary challenges in strong interaction physics. This interaction is governed by Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), which is a theory for understanding the dynamics of strong. QCD displays the asymptotic freedom of hadrons at very short distances and also the confinement of quarks and gluons inside hadrons. However, solutions of this QCD theory in the non-perturbative domain of the interaction are extremely difficult to achieve, mainly because confinement happens on the hadronic scale on which the coupling constant is large and prevents any perturbative approach. Thus leaving us with strategies such as lattice QCD or formulating QCD sum rules to get around this problem. In exclusive hadron production the yN interaction is recognized for being a powerful method for investigating hadrons and the mysteries that still exist within the strong interaction. From reactions with the nucleon, the strong interaction can be investigated through the transition amplitudes to the N and Delta resonances. More specifically, if an electromagnetic interaction is well known then the intermediate resonance states may be evaluated through meson photoproduction. To gain more detailed insight into this interaction, wemore » look to probe the baryon structure of the nucleon and the photo-excited resonance decays through photon scattering off a deuteron producing two pions in the final state. This photoproduction process off the deuteron will be used to investigate known baryon resonances in the two pion channel. The two pion final state will be investigated for unraveling new information into the photo-coupling strengths. We want to explore final state interactions, search for properties of known resonances, and to explore the possibility of seeing missing states that are predicted by quark models but have not yet been found experimentally. Using the CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer (CLAS), the hadronic products are detected in coincidence with the incident scattered photon on a deuterium target. This makes it possible to measure the single differential cross sections and the decay angular distributions for the production of two pion final states. The measured cross sections will contribute significantly to a better understanding of the coupling strengths that govern the baryonic and mesonic resonances which will push the knowledge of the strong interaction to a next level. We use CLAS to study the two pion channel from the eg3 data set, for resonance production, specifically investigating the exclusive reaction of yd --> p pi^+pi^?n, and comparing the relevant cross sections to already existing data sets. The eg3 data set provided an excellent data set for investigating photo-induced baryonic and mesonic resonances. It contains a large photon tagging range from 1.1 to 5.5 GeV in the study of photo-coupling strengths, as well as an available two pion reaction channel for resonant decay study. These measurements provide unique and coherent results from tagged photons over a broad range of energy, and represent the only two pion production data above 5 GeV at this present time. We found that the data produced good comparable single-differentials cross sections to other existing CLAS (gll dataset) two pion differential cross sections, and an excellent comparable total cross section to published (ELSA and ABBHHM) two pion total cross sections.« less


This Note addresses Proposition 227, California's recently enacted voter initiative banning bilingual education in public schools. Nirej Sekhon argues that tre proposition functions rhetorically as a racially inflected exhortation to nonwhite peoples in the United States. The proposition equates American identity with white identity by claiming English as the birthright privilege of white Americans. As sai, the proposition is continuous with the history of language and education politics in the United States. The author concludes by sketching the broad challenge that his analysis poses to current legal mechanisms.


Atomic data are an important source of systematic uncertainty in our determinations of nebular chemical abundances. However, we do not have good estimates of these uncertainties since it is very difficult to assess the accuracy of the atomic data involved in the calculations. We explore here the size of these uncertainties by using 52 different sets of transition probabilities and collision strengths, and all their possible combinations, to calculate the physical conditions and the total abundances of O, N, S, Ne, Cl, and Ar for a sample of planetary nebulae and H II regions. We find that atomic data variations introduce differences in the derived abundance ratios as low as 0.1$-$0.2 dex at low density, but that reach or surpass 0.6$-$0.8 dex at densities above 10$^{4}$ cm$^{-3}$ in several abundance ratios, like O/H and N/O. Removing from the 52 datasets the four datasets that introduce the largest differences, the total uncertainties are reduced, but high density objects still reach uncertainty factors of four for their values of O/H and N/O. We identify the atomic data that introduce most of the uncertainty, which involves the ions used to determine density, namely, the transition probabilities of the S$^{+}$, O$^{+}$, Cl$^{++}$, and Ar$^{+3}$ density diagnostic lines, and the collision strengths of Ar$^{+3}$. Improved calculations of these data will be needed in order to derive more reliable values of chemical abundances in high density nebulae. In the meantime, our results can be used to estimate the uncertainties introduced by atomic data in nebular abundance determinations.


In light of the recent revival of agrarian studies in the scholarship of Southeast Asia, this paper reviews three recent publications that are concerned with specific aspects of what has been framed as "agrarian transition", "agrarian change" or "agrarian transformation". It seeks to identify new perspectives and fresh approaches to the analytical challenges that arise from the multi-faceted and intertwined nature of agrarian change in the region. Further, it considers the implications of these processes – specifically in social, political and economic terms – for the rural population and examines their ways of embracing and resisting these changes. By emphasising the explanatory potential that linking approaches, theories and methodologies of different research traditions and disciplines in an integrative fashion has, it will be argued that – in order to enhance our understanding of people's responses to rural change – it is essential to recognise their agency and perceptions as interconnected across multiple scales within broader structural conditions.


The fibroblast has been the prototype cell for studying a range of phenomena, including cell proliferation, morphology, adhesion, and movement. Yet, our current understanding of fibroblast biology is based predominantly on observing these cells in two-dimensional (2D) culture. Cukierman et al. (see the Perspective by Geiger) have designed a 3D matrix system to culture fibroblasts and report key biological differences compared with the traditional 2D culture system. A comprehensive description of cell-matrix adhesions reveals striking structural and morphological differences that may justify a reevaluation of current models. E. Cukierman, R. Pankov, D. R. Stevens, K. M. Yamada, Taking cell-matrix adhesions to the third dimension. Science 294, 1708-1712 (2001). [Abstract] [Full Text] B. Geiger, Encounters in space. Science 294, 1661-1663 (2001). [Full Text]


In this work a new exhaust air system for rotary screw compressors with integrated refrigeration dryers has been developed. The new system unites both, the exhaust air flow out of the compressor and out of the refrigeration drier and in such a way the overall exhaust air and hence the overall heat are exhausted through one single air duct. For the development of the system, the ASD 50 T SFC compressor system from KAESER Kompressoren SE [1] was used. Because of the slight overpressure in the exhaust air duct due to the cooling radial fan in the compressor, a jet pump was designed and placed into the main exhaust air duct to reduce the static pressure in the main duct. In such a way, after the jet pump the exhaust air of the refrigeration drier is sucked into the main exhaust air duct through an intake fitting. The nozzle and the intake fitting of the exhaust air duct were first designed by using the commercial CFD solver CFX from ANSYS. The nozzle length, angle and diameter were varied to determine the best geometry. In order to validate the components designed by CFD simulations, three of the designs were manufactured and measured in the compressor laboratory at Coburg University. Therefor heat and velocity measurements in the exhaust air ducts have been done. Also the flow of the exhaust air was visualized using smoke and laser sheets. The simulation and experimental results are shown in detail in this work.


This is primarily a tutorial paper to organize and clarify various concepts whose understanding is required for work with linear systems. Among the questions to be addressed are: What is the difference between a resonance and a normal mode? What about an antiresonance? How do normal modes relate to free motion? To forced motion? Are there ''strong'' and ''weak'' modes? Are resonance denominators quadratic in frequency, or linear? What does it mean for modes to be ''coupled''? In a measured frequency characteristic, when are normal modes represented by peaks, by dips, by both? What information is carried by the phase? In searching for normal modes, what is the difference between pulse excitation, white noise excitation, and sinusoidal excitation? Are there other options of interest? Do dissipative systems have normal modes? [Work supported by NSF.]


Individual instances of state failure and collapse must be placed within a broader appreciation of the evolution of statehood within the international system. The idea that the inhabited area of the globe must be divided between sovereign states is a recent development, and likely to prove a transient one. Largely the product of European colonialism, and turned into a global norm by decolonization, it is threatened both by the inherent difficulties of state maintenance, and by processes inherent in globalization. States are expensive organizations to maintain, not only in economic terms but also in the demands that they make on their citizens and their own employees. Poor and dispersed peoples, and those whose values derive from societies without states, have found these demands especially burdensome. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union revealed the hollowness of existing models of sovereign states, and challenged the triple narratives on which the project of global statehood has depended: the narratives of security, representation, and wealth and welfare. While individual cases of state failure and collapse may owe much to specific circumstances and the behaviour of particular individuals, they must also be understood within the context of a world in which maintaining states has become increasingly difficult.


China has been dedicating to public hospital reforms in recent years. The social responsibility of public hospitals is discussed and needs to design appropriate policy. In this paper, we propose connotation of the commonweal goal to distinguish it from a simple non-profitability notion. Several preconditions are listed in this paper, including pharmacy separation, restrain of retrospective payment, promoting primary care, enhancing budget and accountability information disclosure. Prudent choice of the suitable mode still needs to be made based on the current situation of China.


The last twenty years have seen a resurgence of interest in human evolution in many aspects. A distinction can be made between 'narrow' (general acceptance that human evolution occurred, historically) and 'broad' (evolutionary ideas that stretch much further into all aspects of humanity, past and present) human evolution. The broad perspective is beginning to make its presence felt, for example, through the developments in evolutionary genetics, evolutionary psychology and behavioural ecology. There must, therefore, be, among the variety of human adaptations, natures and behaviours, phenomena which are not susceptible to an evolutionary analysis, which are beyond the bounds of evolution. The problem is, though, that we do not really know where that boundary lies. Here, the limits of human evolution are explored, using two approaches - first, finding where humans 'fit' the expectations of evolutionary principles; and second, applying evolutionary methods to particular human contexts, whilst looking for an evolutionary signal.


Feature selection is an important issue for any learning algorithm, since reduced feature sets lead to an improvement in learning time, reduced model complexity and, in many cases, a reduced risk of overfitting. When performing feature selection for RAM-based learning algorithms, we typically assume that the cost of accessing each feature is uniform. In multirelational data mining, especially when data are to be held in a relational database management system (RDBMS), this is no longer the case. The dominant cost in such a setting is the scan of a relation, so that the cost of using a feature from a relation that needs to be scanned anyway is comparatively small, whereas adding a feature from a relation that has not been used before is high. This means that existing work on feature selection using the uniform cost assumption may not be applicable in a disk-based setting. In this paper, we report the results of a case study that extends prior work on multirelational feature selection, in particular, in the context of a boosting algorithm. As shown by our study, using the previously developed strategies on average leads to larger numbers of relations that need to be considered and loaded into memory, and thus higher cost in a disk-based setting. Instead, a simple relation-oriented strategy can be used to minimize cost of accessing additional relations. We describe experimental results to show how this basic strategy interacts with the feature selection variants proposed previously, and show that significant gains are made even in a main-memory setting.


In this paper, a method is presented that facilitates the determination of stress intensity factors in composite bonded joints with interfacial or interlaminar cracks. The method is based on a global/local concept, where the displacements and stresses away from the crack tip are found by a conventional finite element analysis. In the neighborhood of the crack tip singularity, where the finite element results alone no longer converge, an elasticity solution is constructed using an eigenfunction expansion of the stresses and displacements. It was shown that the method allows accurate determination of stresses and stress intensity factors at the crack tip (within 5% of reference solutions) with a relatively small computational effort by using a coarse FE mesh. In addition, the method does not require special finitelements and can be used with any existing finite element code. An equivalent intensity factor [ILLEGIBLE] that captures the combined effect of KI and KII on failure was defined. Numerical results indicated that, out of various interfacial and interlaminar cracks studied, the largest value of the equivalent intensity factor occurs at the interlaminar crack in the first ply interface of the adherend near the adhesive, but not at the adherend-adhesive interface. These results are consistent with the experimental observation that failure of composite bonded joints typically occurs by delamination of the adherend near, but not at, the adhesive.


Depression is currently one of the major psychological disorders present in society, and is one of the major causes of disability, with substantial impact upon patients, their families and society. The etiology of depression is still a challenge for neuroscientists and in particular it is extremely difficult to relate neuronal level activity with the observed behaviour of the subject. This poster considers the challenges in development of a first order computational model of the disorder, considering the neurobiological theory of depression, contributions from experimental techniques in neuroscience in support of a computational model and issues in modelling across scales in this context.The proposed computational model will operate at three levels, neuronal, functional and behavioural. The model will seek to provide an approach to relate neuronal level details with the functional and behavioural aspects of the subject. The concept is to correlate the firing patterns of neuronal level data of specific brain regions with biomarkers, biomaps, psychophysical experiments and imaging techniques and to relate the relevant component parts of the brain with the symptoms as specified in the DSM-IV criterion of depression. The desired outcome will be a model that can predict, to at least a limited extent, specific observed external behaviours, based upon the firing patterns of particular clusters of neurons and functioning details of the region or group of regions of the brain, in the context of variations in neurotransmitter behaviour. The ultimate objective is to create a model that assists in developing a greater understanding (as opposed to diagnosis) of the condition, that permits experimental evaluations, and that may ultimately contribute to improved therapeutic approaches for treatment of depression.


The Prisoners As Phelan (2002) has pointed out, psychotherapists can, in some instances, receive vicarious traumatization, as a result of the kinds of clients they work with. Others have also discussed the issue of the problem of working with difficult clients, including criminals, prisoners, or others whose behavior is largely resistant to change (Ashford, Sales, & Reid, 2002; Eisenman, 1990, 1991, 2000; Denny, 1994; Hail, 2001; Hall & Pritchard, 1996; Herron, 1999; Hodgins, 2000; Holmes & Holmes, 2002; Huff, 2002; Hunter & Dantzker, 2002; McGauley, 2002; Milner, 2000; Rasmussen, 2002; Stamm, 1995, 1997; Travers, 1995; Truell & Sharp, 2002; Wilson & Forrester, 2002). From an evolutionary psychology standpoint, there may be some advantage for the person who regularly engages in deception, cheating, or crime, as they can achieve desired goals that otherwise might be mined by them, or would require much more work and effort (Buss, 1999; Daly & Wilson, 1988; Mealy, 1995; Rowe, 1995; Wilson, 1995). Thus, criminal or deceptive behavior may be very difficult to change, given that it provides sufficient rewards for the person. I worked at a very unusual prison. In most prisons, the prisoners receive no therapy. But, I was working at a prison treatment program, designed by the state of California to provide prisoners with therapy services. The prisoners in the treatment program received individual and group psychotherapy from clinical psychologists, social workers, and a psychiatrist. Although all were dedicated therapists, working with prisoners can be quite difficult. Some might think of people working at a state facility as being somehow inferior to others at more prestigious settings. However, the staff was not composed of rejects from other settings: they were, in my opinion, high quality professionals. The prisoners were juvenile delinquents, through 17 years old, and some young adults 18 to 25 years old. The latter were ones deemed inappropriate for the state's adult prison system. Often this was because the prisoner was too weak or immature to fit in with the adults. Since we bad one of the few treatment programs in the state, our prisoners had to be judged emotionally disturbed to get into the facility. The youngest prisoner in our program during my almost two years there was 14 years old, and the oldest was 28, the latter being an exception to the usual 25-year old limit. He was a weak, partially deaf, probably brain damaged child molester, who could fit into no other program in the state and who had failed parole at least twice. The modal age in our facility was 16 or 18 years old (different at different times: 18 during my first year, 16 during my second). This was a difficult group to treat successfully. Not only were they criminals, but they were seriously emotionally disturbed, with a full range of mental disorders. About one-third were psychotic. Early on I had heard reports of an 85 per cent recidivism rate for prisoners in the state's three intensive treatment programs (which our treatment program was officially known as), but I tried not to think about that too much. I wondered, how could I succeed where others had failed? In the end, the low probability of preventing a return to crime was frustrating to me. But, the major source of stress was the way I was treated by the prisoners. These were antisocial, anti-authority youths who had built their lives on manipulating others. They treated me similarly, even though I was often kind to them. To some extent kindness was reciprocated, but usually was misinterpreted as weakness. Never had I been lied to or been the victim of attempted manipulations so often. These prisoners were real pros. Even worse than the constant dishonesty and manipulations was the undercurrent of hostility. These were angry, aggressive individuals. With few exceptions, their orientation was one of violence for problem solving. …


A formalism based on plane-wave decomposition is applied to the linear propagation of terahertz pulses in experimental geometries. The approach is general and is not restricted to any particular polarization (or current) source. Near- and far-field expressions easily amenable to numerical computation are obtained for the temporal profiles and spectra of terahertz pulses in layered structures, as often encountered in experiments. The effects of polarization and angle-dependent multiple reflection and transmission, as well as of material dispersion, are included. Examples of optical rectification in GaAs and ZnTe are presented to illustrate the simplicity of the method and are compared with experiments. The numerical evaluation of the expressions for the terahertz electric field in practical experimental geometries is straightforward.