Excessive speed is one of the primary safety hazards facing highway users. Too often, operating speeds exceed design speeds, and speed limit postings are generally ignored by drivers. There is renewed interest in designing roadways that encourage drivers to operate at or below design speeds. There is not, however, a reliable body of concomitant knowledge regarding what combinations of design properties should be used to accomplish this goal. To date, only limited interrelationships have been explored, but these explorations have not begun to approach evaluations of the complexity of the design environment, which encompasses combinations of design properties such as lane width, shoulder width, clear zone, horizontal and vertical curvatures, and even the type and intensity of vegetation along the corridor. This research integrates the use of virtual reality simulations of various highway sample designs. These sessions can simultaneously accommodate significant numbers of subjects and gather their feedback through electronic audience response systems. The response feedback is modeled through the use of a fuzzy set system that allows designers to inspect the interrelationships of many different design parameters. Such modeling systems are particularly well suited to nonlinear, data-sparse applications such as this. This research reports on a pilot data modeling effort, in which the discomfort responses of 15 participants to 22 different virtual roadway design combinations were gathered in less than 30 min. These data were sufficient for use for modeling the way in which more than 400 possible roadway design combinations would affect the participants' perceptions of speed and safety.


The moving window finite difference time domain (MWFDTD) method is used to analyze propagation between low to the ground antennas commonly used in wireless unattended ground sensor networks. The propagation path loss at 300 MHz is computed for several terrains exhibiting different degrees of roughness. From the pathloss results, the mean and standard deviation of the path loss distribution are determined as functions of distance from the transmitter. The mean loss is shown to be close to the loss over a flat ground for all roughness values, and the standard deviation is shown to increase with the roughness of the terrain.


The tenth part of the Saga of Darren Shan - one boy's terrifying journey from human to half-vampire to Vampire Prince. "If you step through after Harkat, you might never come back. Is your friend worth such an enormous risk?" A terrifying new world, a deadly new challenge for Darren Shan, the Vampire Prince. Darren and Harkat face monstrous obstacles on their desperate quest to the Lake of Souls. Will they survive their savage journey? And what awaits them in the murky waters of the dead? Be careful what you fish for...


Automated Machine Learning (AutoML) aims to build an appropriate machine learning model for any unseen dataset automatically, i.e., without human intervention. Great efforts have been devoted on AutoML while they typically focus on supervised learning. In many applications, however, semisupervised learning (SSL) are widespread and current AutoML systems could not well address SSL problems. In this paper, we propose to present an automated learning system for SSL (AUTO-SSL). First, meta-learning with enhanced meta-features is employed to quickly suggest some instantiations of the SSL techniques which are likely to perform quite well. Second, a large margin separation method is proposed to fine-tune the hyperparameters and more importantly, alleviate performance deterioration. The basic idea is that, if a certain hyperparameter owns a high quality, its predictive results on unlabeled data may have a large margin separation. Extensive empirical results over 200 cases demonstrate that our proposal on one side achieves highly competitive or better performance compared to the state-of-the-art AutoML system AUTO-SKLEARN and classical SSL techniques, on the other side unlike classical SSL techniques which often significantly degenerate performance, our proposal seldom suffers from such deficiency.


We examine the importance of incorporating macroeconomic information and, in particular, accounting for model uncertainty when forecasting the term structure of U.S. interest rates. We start off by analyzing and comparing the forecast performance of several individual term structure models. Our results confirm and extend results found in previous literature that adding macroeconomic information, through factors extracted from a large number of individual series, tends to improve interest rate forecasts. We then show, however, that the predictive power of individual models varies over time significantly. Models with macro factors are the more accurate in and around recession periods. Models without macro factors do particularly well in low-volatility subperiods such as the late 1990s. We demonstrate that this problem of model uncertainty can be mitigated by combining individual model forecasts. Combining forecasts leads to encouraging gains in predictability, especially for longer-dated maturities, and importantly, these gains are consistent over time.


The influential model on visual information processing by Milner and Goodale (1995) has suggested a dissociation between action- and perception-related processing in a dorsal versus ventral stream projection. It was inspired substantially by the observation of a double dissociation of disturbed visual action versus perception in patients with optic ataxia on the one hand and patients with visual form agnosia (VFA) on the other. Unfortunately, almost all cases with VFA reported so far suffered from inhalational intoxication, the majority with carbon monoxide (CO). Since CO induces a diffuse and widespread pattern of neuronal and white matter damage throughout the whole brain, precise conclusions from these patients with VFA on the selective role of ventral stream structures for shape and orientation perception were difficult. Here, we report patient J.S., who demonstrated VFA after a well circumscribed brain lesion due to stroke etiology. Like the famous patient D.F. with VFA after CO intoxication studied by Milner, Goodale, and coworkers (Goodale et al., 1991, 1994; Milner et al., 1991; Servos et al., 1995; Mon-Williams et al., 2001a,b; Wann et al., 2001; Westwood et al., 2002; McIntosh et al., 2004; Schenk and Milner, 2006), J.S. showed an obvious dissociation between disturbed visual perception of shape and orientation information on the one side and preserved visuomotor abilities based on the same information on the other. In both hemispheres, damage primarily affected the fusiform and the lingual gyri as well as the adjacent posterior cingulate gyrus. We conclude that these medial structures of the ventral occipitotemporal cortex are integral for the normal flow of shape and of contour information into the ventral stream system allowing to recognize objects.


Membrane systems, also known as P systems, constitute an innovative computational paradigm inspired by the structure and dynamics of the living cell. A P system consists of a hierarchical arrangement of compartments and a finite set of multiset rewriting and communication rules, which operate in a maximally parallel manner. The organic vision of concurrent dynamics captured by membrane systems stands in antithesis with conventional formal modelling methods which focus on algebraic descriptions of distributed systems. As a consequence, verifying such models in a mathematically rigorous way is often elusive and indeed counter-intuitive when considering established approaches, which generally require sequential process representations or highly abstract theoretical frameworks. The prevalent investigations with this objective in the field of membrane computing are ambivalent and inconclusive in the wider application scope of P systems.

In this thesis we directly address the formal verification of membrane systems by means of model checking. A fundamental distinction between the agnostic perspective on parallelism, advocated by process calculi, and P systems' emblematic maximally parallel execution strategy is identified. On this basis, we establish that an intuitional translation to traditional process models is inadequate for the purpose of formal verification, due to a state space growth disparity. The observation is essential for this research project: on one hand it implies the feasibility of model checking P systems, and on the other hand it underlines the suitability of this formal verification technique in the context of membrane computing. Model checking entails an exhaustive state space exploration and does not derive inferences based on the independent instructions comprising a state transition. In this respect, we define a new sequential modelling strategy which is optimal for membrane systems and targets the SPIN formal verification tool.

We introduce elementary P systems, a distributed computational model which subsumes the feature diversity of the membrane computing paradigm and distils its functional vocabulary. A suite of supporting software tools which gravitate around this formalism has also been developed, comprising of 1. the eps modelling language for elementary P systems; 2. a parser for the eps specification; 3. a model simulator and 4. a translation tool which targets the Promela specification of the SPIN model checker.

The formal verification approach proposed in this thesis is progressively demonstrated in four heterogeneous case studies, featuring 1. a parallel algorithm applicable to a structured model; 2. a linear time solution to an NP-complete problem; 3. an innovative implementation of the Dining Philosophers scenario (a synchronisation problem) using an elementary P system and 4. a quantitative analysis of a simple random process implemented without the support of a probabilistic model.


This study examines the use of communication boards by seven nonspeaking, nonambulatory, severely mentally retarded students (all functioning at an early preoperational level cognitively) interacting with their teachers in a residential classroom setting. The authors present a method by which the spontaneous use of communication boards can be assessed as to actual functionality in meeting the students' communicative needs. The students' reliance on and success with their communication boards were analyzed relative to nonboard modes (e.g., gestures and vocalizations). Analysis of videotaped nonspeaking student-teacher interactions revealed that these students rarely used their communication boards despite their severe inability to convey messages by any other means. Use of the communication boards rather than alternate modes neither increased the likelihood of success nor decreased the ambiguity of student messages. Communication boards thus appeared to add little to the communicative competence of these students in interacting with their teachers. These findings are discussed in terms of the need to assess nonspeaking persons' use of augmentative systems outside the speech-language pathology setting, in order to begin to identify, explain, and treat communication breakdowns arising from interactions between nonspeaking persons and those with whom they attempt to interact in their daily living experiences.


A new technique capable of obtaining quantitative values of the rotation angle of the polarization vector by using holography is presented. This is a two-stage holographic process; during the recording stage a hologram of the object of interest is obtained. The reference beam is composed of two beams that form a small angle between them and keep their polarization states at right angles to each other. In the reconstruction stage of the hologram, two images from the hologram are obtained along two different angles. As a result of the interference between these two images, a set of parallel fringes is formed at the image plane. The fringe contrast on the reconstruction is related to the angle of the polarization vector of the light at each position on the image plane. Measurements of the rotation of the polarization angle of a fraction of a degree were obtained. The main application of this technique is in the study of transient phenomena, where single-shot measurements are the only means of obtaining reliable data.


oscillator Lie algebras with respect to countable bases of eigenfunctions of the Car-tan subalgebras, and he computed the summation identities for Bessel functions and Laguerre polynomials associated with the addition theorems for these matrix elements. He also studied matrix elements of the pseudo-Euclidean and pseudo-oscillator algebras with respect to the continuum bases of generalized eigenfunctions of the Cartan subalgebras of these Lie algebras and this resulted in realizations of the addition theorems for the matrix elements as integral transform identities for Bessel functions and for confluent hypergeometric functions. Here we work out q analogs of these results in which the usual exponential function mapping from the Lie algebra to the Lie group is replaced by the q-exponential mappings E4 and e,. This study of representations of the Euclidean quantum algebra and the q-oscillator algebra (not a quantum algebra) leads to summation, integral transform, and q-integral transform identities for q analogs of the Bessel and confluent hypergeometric functions, extending the results of Vile&in for the q= 1 case.


Environmental exposure such as tobacco smoke is the principal cause of most lung cancer cases worldwide. However, only a small proportion of heavy smokers develop lung cancer which suggests that other factors such as genetic and/or epigenetic interindividual variations may be responsible for individual disease susceptibility. The overall aim of this study was to determine germline copy number variations (CNVs) associated with early-onset lung cancer risk and to further investigate the genetic and epigenetic interplay of microRNAs (miRNAs) and genes located in two candidate CNVs on 8q24.3 and 11p15.5 in lung cancer.
A genome wide association study (GWA) had been performed using the Illumina Infinium platform Human Hap550 BeadChip on 492 early-onset lung cancer cases and 487 population based controls. Two computational CNV detection algorithms, QuantiSNP and PennCNV, were applied to this existing data set to identify CNVs and the overlapping CNVs between the two algorithms were further analyzed for association with the disease. Ten CNVs were significantly associated with early-onset lung cancer. Two CNVs were selected for strength of association and for containing miRNAs and genes likely to be relevant for lung cancer. To assess their functional relevance in non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC), qPCR based expression analysis and quantitative methylation analysis using the MassCLEAVETM assay of genes and miRNAs in these regions were performed on NCSLC and matched normal lung tissue. The expression analysis showed that miR-661 on 8q24.3 was significantly upregulated in lung tumor compared to normal. The putative miR-661 promoter was hypomethylated in tumor tissue and revealed a significant negative correlation with expression in tumor. Additionally, the loss of methylation at these sites was significantly associated with worse outcome independent from stage, histology and gender. The most significant changes in the gain CNV region on 11p15.5 were seen for miR-210 and Plakophilin 3 (PKP3) which both were significantly upregulated in NSCLC. Promoter hypomethylation at the transcription start site of PKP3 was inversely correlated with expression in NSCLC, suggesting that methylation regulates the PKP3 expression. For further functional analysis of the two miRNAs, predicted targets were identified in silico and 3´UTR luciferase reporter assays for the predicted targets and expression analysis after ectopic overexpression in A549, H1299 and H1703 lung cancer cell lines were carried out to determine whether a direct link between the miRNAs and the targets could be shown. The results showed that mitogen associated protein 3 kinase 3 (MAP3K3) and Cadherin1 (CDH1) are direct targets of miR-661, suggesting that miR-661 has oncogenic properties in lung cancer. Furthermore, miR-210 was shown to target the tumor suppressor gene Runt related transcription factor 3 (RUNX3), a transcription factor known to be involved in lung development and to be a crucial regulator of cell proliferation.
The results from this study suggest that CNV analysis of GWAs data for lung cancer risk can point to functionally important regions in the genome that are deregulated in NSCLC and may contribute to lung tumorigenesis. Further investigation of the relevance of these CNVs to early-onset lung cancer risk is needed to confirm our suggested finding of two risk markers. Furthermore, additional analyses on the functional role of miR-661 in lung cancer are desirable to elucidate to what extent this miRNA contributes to tumorigenesis. Taken together, this study provides evidence that interplay between genetic variations and epigenetic deregulation plays a pivotal role in NSCLC pathogenesis.


Escalating stress and pressures, along with organisational change in universities has led to the increased importance of research in to the impact of perceived job stress, work-life balance and work-life conflict amongst academics. Yet, very few studies have examined academics' ability to balance work and personal life, and overcome work-life conflict. Drawing on Spillover theory (Zedeck, 1992), our study hypothesised that high levels of perceived job pressure stress and job threat stress would predict increased levels of work-life conflict, and decreased levels of work-life balance. Due to the well-documented relationship between stress and health, the influence of job stress on wellbeing was also investigated in this sample of academics (N =139). Perceived job stress (threat and pressure-type stressors) was associated with poorer work-life balance, and increased conflict between academics' work and personal lives. Perceived job threat-type stress made a stronger contribution and was a significant predictor of work-life balance and work-life conflict scores, than perceived job pressure-type stress. Perceived job threat-type stress among academics was also a significant predictor and associated with poorer wellbeing and increased ill-being, but perceived job pressure-type stress was not related to academics' wellbeing or ill-being.


In recent years, the festival tourism as a new form of tourism products in the rapid development of China, won the local governments' welcome. Various regions are hold many different types and content of festival activities, but at the same time, how to set up own brand festival did not cause the attention of the government. Research planning creative festival tourism, can better meet the demand of tourism consumers, improve the visibility of the city and drive the development of regional economy, It will further promote the healthy development of festival tourism. This paper first introduces the related concepts and characteristics of festival tourism; Second analyzes the development status of Shanghai festival tourism and the existence questions; Then, to Shanghai Tourism Festival as an example for empirical analysis, analyze the influence of festival tourism on city, At last, according to the problems put forward constructive Suggestions, in order to provide reference for the sustainable development of festival tourism in Shanghai.


Precision medicines inherently fragment treatment populations, generating small-population markets, creating high-priced "niche busters" rather than broadly prescribed "blockbusters". It is plausible to expect that small markets will attract limited entry in which a small number of interdependent differentiated product oligopolists will compete, each possessing market power. Multiple precision medicine market situations now resemble game theory constructs such as the prisoners' dilemma and Bertrand competition. The examples often involve drug developer choices created by setting the cut-off value for the companion diagnostics to define the precision medicine market niches and their payoffs. Precision medicine game situations may also involve payers and patients who attempt to change the game to their advantage or whose induced behaviors alter the payoffs for the developers. The variety of games may predictably array themselves across the lifecycle of each precision medicine indication niche and so may become linked into a sequentially evolving meta-game. We hypothesize that certain precision medicine areas such as inflammatory diseases are becoming complex simultaneous multi-games in which distinct precision medicine niches compete. Those players that learn the most rapidly and apply those learnings the most asymmetrically will be advantaged in this ongoing information pharms race.


Background: In Australia, following the introduction of serogroup C meningococcal (MenC) conjugate vaccine for toddlers and catch-up immunization through adolescence, MenC disease incidence plummeted and remains low. However, individual protection following MenC conjugate vaccination, particularly in young children, may be short-lived. We investigated the persistence of MenC serum bactericidal antibody (SBA) titers in adolescents, more than 7 years after a single "catch-up" dose of MenC conjugate vaccine. We also investigated their exposure and susceptibility to meningococcal serogroups A, W and Y. Methods: MenC SBA titers and Men A, C, W and Y IgG geometric mean concentration were measured in 240 healthy 11- to 16-year-old adolescents. The correlate of protection was an rSBA titer of ≥8. Results: An rSBA ≥8 was observed in 105 [44% (95% confidence interval {CI}, 37–50%)] of 240 adolescents (mean age, 13.2 years, mean interval since MenC immunization, 8.2 years). The proportion with an rSBA ≥8, geometric mean rSBA titer and geometric mean IgG concentration increased with age, from 22% to 75%, 3.7 to 33.4 and 0.13 to 0.52 &mgr;g/mL, in participants who received MenC vaccine at mean age 2.8 to 7.5 years, respectively. Natural acquired antibody to Men A, W and Y was low with IgG geometric mean concentrations of 1.26, 0.38 and 0.47 &mgr;g/mL, respectively. Conclusions: More than half of Australian adolescents have inadequate serological protection against MenC disease and low natural immunity to MenA, W and Y.


Digitalization, in the form of new digital technologies, is disrupting various service-based industries, such as the traditional music industry. However, it is not always clear what impact digitalization has on the business model of service companies. In our review of the literature, we find that the term digitalization is often used as a buzzword, without a clear definition of delineation of the impact it has on the elements of a firm's business models. Further, the extant literature provides little insight into how firms can shift towards more digital business models. Thus, in our study we aim to answer the questions (1) how is digitalization impacting servicebased business models, (2) and what facilitates or hinders firms to shift towards more digital business models. To address these questions, we developed a framework that helps to categorize the different effects of digitalization on the elements of a firm's business model. We draw on a sample of 6 retail banks, where we conducted in-depth interviews to explore how digitalization has impacted their business models and to identify the barriers and facilitators in their shift towards digitalized business models. We chose the retail banking industry as our research context, because few industries have been more impacted by digitalization the recent years. Our sample consisted of three traditional savings banks and three digital niche banks that are all impacted by new technological innovations in their business models. Key findings in our study indicate that it is not that digitalization itself that directly impact the components of a business model. We uncovered that changes in customers' expectations and preferences as a result of new technological innovations are the main drivers for change. Hereby, our thesis contributes with a more fine-grained understanding of the effects of digitalization on firms' business models. Furthermore, we contribute to a better, practical understanding on how practitioners can manage the transformation process to a more digitalized business model.


Significant advancements in component and subsystem technologies have enabled new performance levels of adaptive optical systems on large ground-based telescopes. High power, facility-class sodium wavelength guide-star lasers, near infrared wave front sensor and tracking cameras, wave front correctors, and high speed processors are being integrated into the 3.5-m telescope at the Starfire Optical Range.


Lidar is an effective tool for remotely monitoring target or object, but the lidar signal is often affected by various noises or interferences. Therefore, detecting the weak signals buried in noises is a fundamental and important problem in the lidar systems. In this paper, an effective noise reduction method combining wavelet improved threshold with wavelet domain spatial filtration is presented to denoise pulse lidar signal and is investigated by detecting the simulating pulse lidar signals in noise. The simulation results show that this method can effectively identify the edge of signal and detect the weak lidar signal buried in noises.


Our purpose with this article is to show the importance of assessing trends and promoting innovation in a real business context, through a cluster ecosystem, mainly composed of micro-enterprises in the agro-industrial Portuguese sector. As many studies show, Inovcluster (which has 158 associates, from which 120 are enterprises) is also a geographic region cluster, which improves innovation performance of businesses seeking to gain competitiveness and ability to improve their exportations in the agro-industrial Portuguese sector. The role of the cluster is fundamental to creating a model for knowledge transfer of innovation capacity, interconnecting its institutional, scientific and business associates. This model has to be adapted to the sector and enterprise characteristics, relying in an interconnecting structure which is more or less decentralized according to the mentioned features. Here we present an experience and case study of the Inovcluster ecosystem and its trends and innovation transfer to business value creation, contextualized within the regional strategy for smart specialization. We have shown how, through the establishment of an Inovcluster network, it is possible to integrate the contribution of different research and academic centres, channelled to assist micro-enterprises by innovating within a geographical constraint.


The use of solid-solid reactions in the development of one-. two-, and threedimensional Cu(I) coordination networks are discussed. The solid-solid reactions were monitored by a variety of instrumental techniques to achieve a better picture of the solidsolid reaction mechanism. The crystalline reagents led to crystalline products with no amorphous phase. The nitrogen containing bridging ligands, 4,7-phenanthroline, 4,4'dipyridyl, and trans-1,2-bis(4-pyridy1)ethylene in addition to 1,3-dithiane were used in the formation of these networks. The resultant crystalline compounds were compared to the solution-based products, showing that on average the same product was formed. Through the bridging ligands and a change in the coordinated solvent, the ultimate goal of showing how these solid-solid reactions could be expanded to cover a large array of reagents was accomplished.


The influence of lidar data systematic errors on the retrieved particulate extinction coefficient profile in clear atmospheres is investigated. Particularly, two sources of the extinction coefficient profile distortions are analyzed: (1) a zero-line offset remaining after subtraction of an inaccurately determined signal background component and (2) a far-end incomplete overlap due to poor adjustment of the lidar system optics. Inversion results for simulated lidar signals, obtained with the near- and far-end solutions, are presented that show advantages of the near-end solution for clear atmospheres.


We examine the extent to which the large-scale features of the sea surface temperature (SST) anomaly field are represented by a sparse observational network of coral oxygen isotope (δ18O) time series. Regression of annually averaged δ18O data against gridded estimates of local SST anomaly within the period 1856–1990 confirm the literature regression of δ18O anomaly on SST anomaly for Indo-Pacific corals. However, while interannual SST variability is generally well represented by individual coral time series, observed decadal and secular variability does not always display a linear relationship to local SST anomaly. Instead, many records appear to better recover nonlocal, large-scale phenomena, which in turn are related to either the coral local SST or SST covariant changes in seawater δ18O. We employ empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis to identify common patterns of variability in the coral data. We find two significant patterns which are interpretable as the oceanographic signature of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and as a near-global warming in which the eastern equatorial Pacific cools. A third pattern weakly resembles the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. These modes are seen more clearly in a singular vector decomposition (SVD) of the covariance between the coral data and the dominant patterns of large-scale historical SST variability. The results are consistent with those found in EOF and SVD analyses of SST data from the coral locations. As additional coral-based proxy estimates become available, they will improve the resolution of the patterns recovered. These results suggest that a sparse network of coral data may be used to reconstruct interannual, secular, and decadal SST variability for preinstrumental periods, albeit with large uncertainty.


Animal reintroduction and rewilding are two widely appealing and frequently connected forms of ecological restoration. However, the critical assumption that animal reintroduction automatically helps to restore formerly wild places is under‐theorized. To fill this void, we identified three common rewilding elements from the literature—ecological functioning, wilderness experience, and natural autonomy—and screened these against a hypothetical wolf reintroduction to Scotland. Each of the rewilding elements was likely to be positively impacted by a wolf reintroduction. Yet, there is a key conceptual difficulty in that the different rewilding elements do not necessarily enforce each other, and at times may even collide. Thus, a reintroduced species like the wolf may obfuscate the clear‐cut, purified nature category to which rewilding often aspires. As a way forward, we suggest that there is merit in actively engaging with the tensions created by rewilding and reintroductions. A reconceptualisation of the nature–culture spectrum as consisting of multiple layers (e.g. ecological functioning, wilderness experience, and natural autonomy) may help to interpret ecological restoration as a tentative, deliberative, and gradual enterprise. This bears some resemblance to the notion of approaching a landscape like a 'palimpsest' (i.e. a text built up of different layers written on top of each other), which may support the reconciliation of conflicting views without necessarily making those disappear. When viewed as feeding into a multilayered nature–culture spectrum, animal reintroduction and rewilding can be promoted as inspiring and essentially non‐controlling forms of ecological restoration and human interaction with nature.


Portable wireless communication systems operate on a limited battery supply, and energy efficiency is therefore crucial. Voltage scaling techniques have been proposed to lower the energy consumption of embedded processors and real-time operating systems have incorporated these schemes in their task scheduling engine. However, the actual data transmission itself constitutes a major portion of the total energy consumption in these wireless communication systems. In this paper, we extend the scaling notion to the realm of wireless communications and propose a novel technique called modulation scaling to decrease the energy consumed during data transmission. Modulation scaling trades off energy consumption against transmission delay and as such, introduces the concept of energy awareness in communications. We investigate how modulation scaling can be exploited to design a dynamic power management engine at the level of the radio. This engine coordinates the packet transmission schedule while optimizing energy efficiency. We demonstrate such a power management module for real-time traffic and show that it reduces the energy consumption of data transmissions by up to 50 % through smart traffic scheduling.


The abundant and growing bibliographical production over the last fifty years concerning the Admonitions of Saint Francis has moved the author to present an ample synthesis which, on the one hand, brings together the most important results of the research cerried out in this period, while on the other hand, defining certain doubts that are still current. To this end, the author takes up again the main aspects of the study of the Admonitions in general, such as their nature and authenticity, the date of composition, the literary genre, their possible formation of a whole etc. So that this study may serve as a help to those who may wish to deepen their knowledge of these opuscula, this study offers too a complete listing of the abundant bibliographical production on these brief writing of francis, which are revealed as valuable means to coming to know his soul, and for better understanding the entire panorama of his thought.


Women's Rights, Human Rights: International Feminist PerspectivesJulie Peters and Andrea Wolper, eds. London/New York: Routledge, 1995; 372 pp.Reviewed by Helle - Mai Lenk Department of Adult Education Ontario Institute for Studies in Education Toronto, OntarioWomen's Rights, Human Rights is the most recent and arguably the most wide - ranging addition to a growing body of literature on the global movement for women's human rights.(f.1) The interest has been most remarkable in the last three years since the 1993 UN World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna brought to international attention gender - based violations of human rights. In the introduction to this anthology, Julie Peters and Andrea Wolper state the purpose of their collection as twofold: to map the directions the movement for women's human rights is taking and to address the ramifications of critical events and issues. Among the latter, they single out the rapes in the former Yugoslavia and the pressure for a war crimes tribunal; trafficking of women and girls; female genital mutilation; and reproductive rights and coercive methods of "population control."The 32 contributions by activists, journalists, lawyers and scholars from 21 countries (albeit for the most part U.S. - educated or - based) have been organized under seven headings: "Backgrounds," "Regional Reports," "Gendered Law, 'Public' and 'Private'," "Cultural Difference," "Violence and Health," "Development and the Socio - Economy," and "The Persecuted, The Voiceless." However, in reading through the essays, one finds that these categorizations necessarily overlap and certain common themes emerge, particularly those that pertain to the situation of women in parts of the world other than North America or Western Europe.The three essays in the section entitled "Cultural Difference" address what the editors identify as the most critical issue facing human rights advocates: "Does the right to preserve cultural and religious practices take precedence over human rights norms?" (p. 5). The role played by custom and culture in hindering the advancement of women's rights is a theme, however, that is broached by most contributors and permeates not only this volume but, I would argue, all aspects of the movement for international women's human rights, a movement which to a certain extent owes its very existence to the identification of a West/non - West binary. In "The Politics of Gender and Culture in International Human Rights Discourse," Arati Rao seems well aware of this fact. In what seems a direct criticism of the editors' introductory comments, she cautions against the tendency to set up "a false oppositional dichotomy in which geopolitical borders are erased and a multitude of cultures are collapsed into falsely unified packages, one bearing the stamp of human rights and the other lacking it" (p. 168). While not denying that defences of culture and religion have resulted in some of the most egregious violations of women's rights, Rao points out that "culture is a series of constantly contested and negotiated social practices whose meanings are influenced by the power and status of their interpreters and participants" (p. 173).Ann E. Mayer might have benefitted from reading Rao's essay before embarking on her reflections on women's rights and what she terms "the Middle Eastern experience". Her article is replete with references to "Middle Eastern Muslim women," "Middle Eastern governments" and "Middle Eastern law" as if national boundaries let alone racial and class divisions do not exist. When a specific country is cited, as in the case of Iran, the author limits her references to books published in the immediate post - revolutionary period of the early 1980s.(f.2) While Mayer castigates those who in adopting a "cultural relativist" position promote a monolithic, static image of Middle Eastern countries, she herself does little to dispel that notion.Finally, Maria Suarez Toro downplays the importance of advances in women's rights made at the international level maintaining that in Central America they have had little impact on women's everyday lives. …


The results in this thesis are steps toward bridging the gap between the handful of exact structure theorems known for minor-closed classes of graphs, and the very general, yet wildly qualitative, Graph Minors Structure Theorem. This thesis introduces a refinement of the notion of tree-width. Tree-width is a measure of how "tree-like" a graph is. Essentially, a graph is tree-like if it can be decomposed across a collection of non-crossing vertex-separations into small pieces. In our variant, which we call k-tree-width, we require that the vertex-separations each have order at most k. Tree-width and branch-width are related parameters in a graph, and we introduce a branch-width-like variant for k-tree-width. We find a dual notion, in terms of tangles, for our branch-width parameter, and we prove a generalization of Robertson and Seymour's Grid Theorem.


The patient is a 5-month-old Caucasian boy with no developmental abnormalities who presented Christmas Eve 2004 to his pediatrician with increasing fussiness, emesis, and inability to tolerate oral intake. He had a temperature of 100.2°F but otherwise normal vital signs. Physical exam at that time revealed a distended abdomen. He was sent home with a diagnosis of viral gastroenteritis.


LIEUTENANT (JUNIOR GRADE) FLORENCIO J. YUZON(*) I. INTRODUCTION Since being condemned to death, my days have been spent dealing with the guilt of having been convicted of taking the lives of two human beings, confronting the very real possibility of my own violent death, and coping with the anger, resentment, frustration, helplessness, and grief of having five friends taken from my side to be ritualistically exterminated. These have been nine long years of fighting to maintain my sanity, of growing, and of holding onto a sense of humanity in an environment maintained specifically for the purpose of bombarding the senses with hopelessness.1 The movement to abolish capital punishment has grown steadily in recent years.2 International and regional instruments have placed immediate restrictions on its use and have set long term goals for its absolute abrogation.3 In contrast, retentionist states rely on established penological theories to justify the death penalty.4 State practice reveals a polarization of conflicting ideologies.5 The United States, China, and various Muslim and third-world countries still employ the death penalty.6 On the other hand, portions of Western, Central, and Eastern Europe have abolished either partially or fully this form of punishment.7 Attention to major issues-deterrence, retribution, cruelty, irreversibility, and judicial error-has given way to a variety of peripheral issues.8 These include "[t]he desire to avoid torture in the implementation of any penalty-raising the questions as to what extent either death or life sentences are tantamount to torture, and, further, of how to define torture."9 Critics of death row specifically point to its poor living conditions as treatment that violates basic human rights.10 Indeed, Giarratano's poignant description of life as an inmate sentenced to death reveals the adverse physical, mental, and psychological effects to which an individual on death row is subjected.11 In Soering v. United Kingdom,12 the European Court of Human Rights (European Court) examined the deplorable conditions of life on death row and their detrimental effects on inmates.13 The court found that the "death row phenomenon" abridged certain human rights and fundamental freedoms.14 What mode of judicial review did the European Court use? Do the standards and findings of Soering reflect an emerging jurisprudential attitude that the conditions on death row violate certain individual rights? Would a death row inmate in a position like that of Giarratano prevail on a similar legal theory in the United States? This Article confronts these issues. To begin, it surveys various international and regional instruments to provide a backdrop for understanding the European Court's mode of analysis. Next, the Article investigates the doctrinal basis for Soering by exploring the development of European judicial review in cases of conduct and treatment contrary to fundamental rights. Subsequent sections analyze Soeing in greater detail and examine the judgments of both the European Commission of Human Rights (European Commission or Commission) and the European Court. The Article then compares the judicial review employed in Soering to that employed in Eighth Amendment challenges to death row conditions in the United States. The Article concludes that although similarities exist in the standards employed, divergent applications of judicial review have yielded varying results. II. INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE TO CAPITAL PUNISHMENT AND THE DEATH ROW PHENOMENON A. Historical Background The United Nations has established a comprehensive set of instruments for the protection of human rights.15 This corpus of laws articulates various standards on the use of capital punishment. Under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Universal Declaration),16 the General Assembly sought to promote "universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms. …


This Article highlights both the rewards in accepting and the risks in rejecting a claim of sex discrimination as one constitutional basis for invalidating restrictions on marriage for same-sex couples. It argues that recognition of same-sex marriage and elimination of enforced sex roles are as inextricably intertwined as the duck is with the rabbit in the famous optical illusion. As the Article demonstrates, this has long been clear to opponents, from the pope to David Blankenhorn, but needs to become as clear to proponents and to judges deciding same-sex marriage cases if we are to preserve and extend the liberty and equality of all regardless of sex or orientation. The Article begins by suggesting some advantages of thin over thick definitions of both sex and marriage in law. Through a review, first of landmark U.S. Supreme Court sex discrimination cases concerning the law of marriage and then of state constitutional same-sex marriage litigation from the 1970s to the present, it goes on to demonstrate, on the bright side, that opening marriage to same-sex couples would eliminate the last vestige of sex stereotyping from the law of marriage and complete the law's evolution away from legally enforced sex-role differentiated inegalitarian marriage, with a resulting benefit to persons of all orientations. On the dark side, however, it also demonstrates that to insist, as some state judges have done, that denial of marriage licenses to same-sex couples does not discriminate on the basis of sex because neither the class of women nor the class of men is singled out for disadvantageous treatment is a repudiation, not only of the entire body of U.S. Supreme Court sex discrimination law of the last forty years, but of more general fundamental principles of U.S. equal protection law established for a century. Even more ominously, some state judges have justified the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage by relying on exactly the sort of "fixed notions concerning the roles and abilities of males and females" settled understandings of federal constitutional sex equality mandate they repudiate. Not only gays and lesbians, but heterosexual women from a feminist perspective are the losers when marriage is (p)reserved for heterosexual couples because of and not in spite of its traditions, traditions that include sex-role differentiation and female subordination. The Article ends with an examination of the many opportunities Ted Olson and David Boies missed to highlight the sex discrimination argument in the trial of Perry v. Schwarzenegger and with some speculation as to why the two have so far failed to make the strong case they could have in support of the proposition that denial of marriage to same-sex couples is unconstitutional discrimination on the basis of sex.


The pursuit of computational efficiency has led to the proliferation of throughput-oriented hardware, from GPUs to increasingly wide vector units on commodity processors and accelerators. This hardware is designed to efficiently execute data-parallel computations in a vectorized manner. However, many algorithms are more naturally expressed as divide-and-conquer, recursive, task-parallel computations. In the absence of data parallelism, it seems that such algorithms are not well suited to throughput-oriented architectures. This paper presents a set of novel code transformations that expose the data parallelism latent in recursive, task-parallel programs. These transformations facilitate straightforward vectorization of task-parallel programs on commodity hardware. We also present scheduling policies that maintain high utilization of vector resources while limiting space usage. Across several task-parallel benchmarks, we demonstrate both efficient vector resource utilization and substantial speedup on chips using Intel's SSE4.2 vector units, as well as accelerators using Intel's AVX512 units.


Outsourcing is now a widely accepted part of dong business. What started as a mechanism to lower costs is now an integral part of a much larger IT strategy. Today, newer forms of outsourcing are on the horizon and newer approaches that will change yet again how IT sourcing decisions are made. Better connectivity, the availability of high quality staff, and much lower costs in other countries are shifting sourcing markets and expanding sourcing possibilities for companies. To examine how sourcing is changing in IT organizations, the authors convened a focus group of senior IT managers from a variety of companies. This paper explores the evolution of sourcing and how sourcing strategies are shifting. Then it looks at emerging sourcing models and particularly at offshore/nearshore outsourcing. Finally, it identifies critical factors for successful sourcing. The paper concludes that while sourcing is changing the nature of the work that is done internally in IT, it is unlikely that it will eliminate this function altogether or reduce the its value to that of a utility. To the contrary, more and more organizations will need the systems thinking, architectural understanding, and strategic awareness embodied in a modern IT department to ensure that they don't end up with a hollow shell of an organization which provides limited added value to the marketplace.


After a long economic cycle marked by steady growth, the current crisis forces several European states to face a restructuring of their growth models if they want to keep the wealth creation and the welfare state. At the same time, the gravity centre of the global production and consumption has shifted from the Occident to other regions such as Asia and Latin America, causing an increase in international trade and the consolidation of large global supply chains. Hence, European growth opportunities lie on the opening of its economy to the outside. It is in this context that ports and infrastructure become key elements in order to channelize the arrival and departure of goods, allowing the generation of added value that may provide wealth to the territory. Therefore, considering the existing wide range of ports in Europe, states, regions and port authorities are meant to maximize their competitiveness if they want to attract these new trade flows and consequently remain on the European port market. In this competition, data shows a clear dominance of the North Sea ports over the Mediterranean ports, enlarging economic differences between northern and southern Europe. For this reason, the analysis of the source of this divergence becomes important, from both a macroeconomic as well as from an infrastructure endowment point of view, in order to provide solutions that may help southern countries to be competitive and take advantage of the current trends in the global economy. In line with this analysis, detailed observation of the characteristics of ports and hinterlands of the north, as well as their infrastructure governance, can also be a good tool to improve the position of the Mediterranean ports and the competitiveness of their hinterlands. In this sense, the study of the Port of Antwerp and Flanders, being both entities world class exporters, serves as reference for ports and southern regions with growth ambitions, such as the Port of Barcelona, its metropolitan area and Catalonia as a whole.


Friedrich Nietzsche is here considered an exponent of a revivalism rooted in ancient European culture. Specifically, his notion of the "overman," his (intellectual?) militarism, his derogation of Periclean democracy, and his renunciation of Christianity are regarded as based in this culture. Key Words: Nietzsche, cultural revivalism, elitism, militarism, socialism, Christianity, Indo-European culture "A path had been found on which one could sneak back to the old ideal... " [Re: Immanuel Kant] The Antichrist "The good men of every age are those who dig the old ideas deep down and bear fruit with them." The Gay Science The assertion that Friedrich Nietzsche's work reflected a form of European cultural revivalism requires prompt lexical hygiene regarding the constructs of cultural revivalism and of pre-Christian European, or what some German scholars of the nineteenth century called "Indo-German," culture. As a classical scholar, Nietzsche was certainly inspired by the ancient Greek ideal, and his choice of Zoroaster as a cultural model connoted regard for ancient Persian values. This is no accidental association: what is common to both the Greek and the Persian traditions is, in fact, a shared heritage, today referred to as "IndoEuropean (I-E), or sometimes "Indo-Hittite," culture. A review of contemporary scholarship affords a picture of a traditional I-E culture shared by the early Greeks, the Persians and the Indo-Aryans of the Vedic period in northwest India (Horowitz, 1996). This is a culture dominated by its successful military - i.e., its aggressive warrior chieftains and horsemen. Consequently, it admires martial weapons - axes, swords, spears, javelins, and daggers. Spiritually, it fails to evolve a concept of an absolute, all-powerful God - initially revering the sun, stars, thunder, and lightning; but later advancing to, among other credos, Olympian mythology and Brahmanic mysticism. Moreover, its hegemonic warrior class evolves an elitist individualism and a cosmology independent of priestly dogma. The individualism is possibly fueled by access to swift personal transportation and the haughty perspective horseback affords; it complements, in any case, the development of a privileged aristocracy excused from the dictates of common law. In ancient Greece, the cosmology leads to the humanization of deity ... then on to a secular scientific dialectic; in ancient India, to a prescient spiritual philosophy that at times anticipates modern theoretical physics. With the advent of the Upanishads in India and, later, Archimedes in Greece, I-E culture celebrates its ancient apotheosis as both spiritual philosophy envisioning a dimension beyond spacetime and a mathematics on the verge of calculus. The European Context No definition of cultural revivalism is possible in this case without first exploring the context of Nietzsche's argument. Since the American and French Revolutions, Western Europe had been evolving from aristocratic to (bourgeois) public to mass culture. Although this development would not crystallize until the next century, by the time of Nietzsche's literary prime (1878-88) it had substantively affected political, economic, and religious life. From the early 19th century, international diplomacy had sought to attenuate conflict between the various European powers, and with the exception of the Crimean and Franco-Prussian Wars had been somewhat successful. Meanwhile, social democracy - a synthesis of political and religious liberalism with concessions to socialism became increasingly attractive to the European public. With the reform of 1867, for example, the United Kingdom had embarked on the path of universal suffrage to complement its evolution to parliamentary supremacy. Eight years later, the French finally abandoned both monarchy and Bonapartism to establish the Third Republic. Within France and Germany, meanwhile, socialist ideas regarding common ownership of property and production had been articulately advanced by Auguste Blanqui and Karl Marx since the insurgence of 1848. …


Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to propose a combination of forecasting methods that enables a holistic understanding of a future situation, given certain influencing variables by a combination of real data and expert knowledge.

Design/methodology/approach
The proposal combines two well-known methods: first, system archetypes that correspond to generic structures, allowing us to handle model management issues, and second, system dynamics that offers technical support on a computational level to assess different scenarios or problem solutions.

Findings
The case study considers the situation of the mining industry in Chile and its related variables, including four different scenarios. Based on the proposed methodology, the results indicate that: first, the price of copper is paramount for the industry and its effects are not limited to company profits; second, a long period of downfall in copper prices could halt exploration and development projects.

Research limitations/implications
Systemic archetypes are still a subject of research and their application in different fields of knowledge continues to increase to improve this simulation approach.

Practical implications
The case study illustrates the combination of a Vester matrix and initial system archetype models that are enriched using the system dynamics approach. Indeed, the case study aims to understand the consequences of different scenarios based on the problem-driven approach provided by Vester.

Social implications
The goal of prospective studies of large-scale and complex situations is to model the real situation to obtain solutions that may enhance social welfare.

Originality/value
The proposed methodology contributes to the existing literature by integrating techniques such as the Vester matrix, system archetype modelling and system dynamics simulation, all of which were proposed previously in the literature as independent techniques.


Fifth generation (5G) mobile networks will revolutionize edge-based computing by providing fast and reliable network capabilities to remote sensors, devices and microservices. This heralds new opportunities for researchers, allowing remote instrumentation and analytic capabilities to be as accessible as local resources. The increased availability of remote data and services presents new opportunities for collaboration, yet introduces challenges for workflow orchestration, which will need to adapt to consider an increased choice of available services, including those from trusted partners and the wider community. In this paper we outline a workflow approach that provides decentralized discovery and orchestration of verifiably trustable services in support of multi-party operations. We base this work on the adoption of standardised data models and protocols emerging from hypermedia research, which has demonstrated success in using combinations of Linked Data, Web of Things (WoT) and semantic technologies to provide mechanisms for autonomous goal-directed agents to discover, execute and reuse new heterogeneous resources and behaviours in large-scale, dynamic environments. We adopt Verifiable Credentials (VCs) to securely share information amongst peers based on prior service usage in a cryptographically secure and tamperproof way, providing a trust-based framework for ratifying service qualities. Collating these new service description channels and integrating with existing decentralized workflow research based on vector symbolic architecture (VSA) provides an enhanced semantic search space for efficient and trusted service discovery that will be necessary for 5G edge-computing environments.


Leptospirosis is a worldwide zoonose and is endemic in many countries. This zoonosis is maintained in nature by chronic renal infection of carrier animals, being rodents and other small mammals the most important reservoirs. Also, significant sources of human infection are domestic animals, such as livestock and dogs. The wild boar (Sus scrofa) is an introduced species from Europe which is widespread in America and particularly in the Center and South of Argentina. This species is highly valued by hunters in the region and their meat is consumed more often. In many countries of the world (Europe, USA and Australia) studies of seroprevalence have been carried out, the seroreactivity does not mean that the wild boar has clinical symptoms of leptospirosis or that wild boars are maintenance host of this pathogen. However, these animals have been in contact to leptospiras in their environment in the past. This study has the objective of molecular characterization of pathogenic Leptospira sp. isolated strain obtained from fetuses of wild boars from Patagonia Argentina. Four fetuses were aborted from a wild boar (Sus scrofa) in Patagonia, the southern region of Argentina. Necropsy was performed of the 4 fetuses and samples of kidneys, liver, spleen and lung were cultivated in Fletcher and EMJH mediums. Also, samples of liver, spleen, lung and kidney of fetuses were processed and analyzed by direct immunofluorescence. Multiple Locus Variable number tandems repeats Analysis (MLVA) was used to characterize the isolated strain. The genetic profile of the isolated pathogenic Leptospira sp. strain was identical to the profile of Leptospira borgpetersenii serovar Castellonis Castellon 3. To the best of our knowledge this is the first isolation of Leptospira spp. from a wild boar fetus.


Background: The recent decrease in myeloid leukemia incidence may be directly attributed to changes in the population-based cancer registries 2001 guidelines, which required the capture of only one malignancy in the myeloid lineage per person and the simultaneous adoption of myelodysplastic syndrome registration in the United States. Methods: We constructed four claims-based algorithms to assess myeloid leukemia incidence, applied the algorithms to the 1999–2008 Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER)-Medicare database, and assessed algorithm validity using SEER-registered cases. Results: Each had moderate sensitivities (75%–94%) and high specificities (>99.0%), with the 2+BCBM algorithm showing the highest specificity. On the basis of the 2+BCBM algorithm, SEER registered only 50% of the acute myelogenous leukemia cases and a third of the chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) cases. The annual incidence of myeloid leukemia in 2005 was 26 per 100,000 persons 66 years or older, much higher than the 15 per 100,000 reported by SEER using the same sample. Conclusion: Our findings suggest underreporting of myeloid leukemias in SEER by a magnitude of 50% to 70% as well as validate and support the use of the 2+BCBM claims algorithm in identifying myeloid leukemia cases. Use of this algorithm identified a high number of uncaptured myeloid leukemia cases, particularly CML cases. Impact: Our results call for the commitment of more resources for centralized cancer registries so that they may improve myeloid leukemia case ascertainment, which would empower policy makers with ability to properly allocate limited health care resources. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 21(3); 474–81. ©2012 AACR.


Political communication scholars have long warned of the danger of fragmented media agendas on public discourse and debate. This research develops a better understanding of agenda fragmentation in the American mass media by leveraging a data set of broadcast and partisan cable agendas over five years to examine the conditions under which agenda fragmentation, and agenda congruence, occurs. Using measures of agenda diversity and media storms, I demonstrate that agenda fragmentation is conditional on the broader media environment, with news outlets exhibiting congruence in agendas when coverage is skewed toward one or a few large issues and coverage that reverts to "niche" issue agendas during periods of time not characterized by issues that take up high levels of the agenda space. In particular, traditional broadcast sources show the effect over the broader media agenda, particularly when those sources exhibit media storm–type coverage. No similar effect is found for cable news sources. This research illuminates the conditional nature of agenda fragmentation and points the way forward for a more nuanced understanding of agendas in a diverse media ecology.


Groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.) is the 13 and 4th most important food and oil seed crops in the world. Groundnut is a source of vitamin E. However, due to low soil fertility, drought stress, fungal diseases and lack of appropriate management, production has been constrained qualitatively and quantitatively in the study area. Trichoderma harzianum and wheat straw mulch could increase the growth performance of groundnut and soil moisture content at maturity and near harvest to overcome terminal drought stress. Therefore, a field experiment was conducted in Rama, Central Zone of Tigray, Northern Ethiopia, to evaluate the effects of wheat straw mulch and T. harzianum on yield and yield components of groundnut genotypes (ICGV00308, ICIAR19BT, Werer-961 and Rama local). The treatments were arranged in factorial randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three replications. Results showed that groundnut genotypes, T. harzianum and wheat straw mulch highly significantly (p<0.01) affected plant height with the tallest plant height 25.40 cm was recorded from Rama local while the shortest 23.15 cm from ICGV00308. The highest (37.06) mean number of seeds per plant was obtained from ICGV00308 treated with wheat straw mulch, followed by 32.05 and 32.91 from ICIAR19BT treated with wheat straw mulch and Rama local treated with T. harzianum and wheat straw mulch, respectively. Higher 28.44 and 24.97 numbers of pods per plant were recorded on ICIAR19BT and ICGV00308 genotypes, respectively that were mulched with wheat straw. ICGV00308 genotype produced the highest seed yield per plant (14.69 g), hundred seed weight (51.00 g) and total seed yield (1.00 t ha-1) as compared to the other genotypes.

 Key words: Groundnut genotype, Trichoderma harzianum, wheat straw mulch.


We propose a density decomposition scheme using a Wang-Govind-Carter(WGC-) based kinetic energy density functional (KEDF) to accurately and efficiently simulate various covalently bonded molecules and materials within orbital-free (OF) density functional theory (DFT). By using a local, density-dependent scale function, the total density is decomposed into a highly localized density within covalent bond regions and a flattened delocalized density, with the former described by semilocal KEDFs and the latter treated by the WGC KEDF. The new model predicts reasonable equilibrium volumes, bulk moduli, and phase-ordering energies for various semiconductors compared to Kohn-Sham (KS) DFT benchmarks. The decomposition formalism greatly improves numerical stability and accuracy, while retaining computational speed compared to simply applying the original WGC KEDF to covalent materials. The surface energy of Si(100) and various diatomic molecule properties can be stably calculated and also agree well with KSDFT benchmarks. This linear-scaled, computationally efficient, density-partitioned, multi-KEDF scheme opens the door to large-scale simulations of molecules, semiconductors, and insulators with OFDFT.


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Editor's Summary

In the late 1990s the need for an overhaul in the approach to scholarly publishing was recognized. A drastic change would revise the economic model on which publishing was based, give authors rights to their own works in open access repositories and enable consumers across the world to access scholarly materials, building a flow of valuable information for the common good. The revolution has yet to materialize, though small but welcome achievements have been made. The open access business model has gained a foothold with the Public Library of Science (PLoS), and scientists receiving grants through the National Institutes of Health must submit manuscripts to the PubMed Central digital archive. Several universities mandate that faculty members deposit their scholarly articles in institutional repositories, and the Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity promotes open publishing by supporting authors. Librarians are both part of the problem and part of the solution. Instead of worrying about paying rising subscription fees, they could use their position to influence authors to take advantage of open access channels despite publish-or-perish pressures. Recent legislative and presidential initiatives, geared to disseminating publicly funded research, may be effective in moving open access closer to transforming the traditional system of scholarly communication.


Very few marine microbial communities are well characterized even with the weight of research effort presently devoted to it. Only a small proportion of this effort has been aimed at investigating temporal community structure. Here we present the first report of the application of high-throughput pyrosequencing to investigate intra-annual bacterial community structure. Microbial diversity was determined for 12 time points at the surface of the L4 sampling site in the Western English Channel. This was performed over 11 months during 2007. A total of 182 560 sequences from the V6 hyper-variable region of the small-subunit ribosomal RNA gene (16S rRNA) were obtained; there were between 11 327 and 17 339 reads per sample. Approximately 7000 genera were identified, with one in every 25 reads being attributed to a new genus; yet this level of sampling far from exhausted the total diversity present at any one time point. The total data set contained 17 673 unique sequences. Only 93 (0.5%) were found at all time points, yet these few lineages comprised 50% of the total reads sequenced. The most abundant phylum was Proteobacteria (50% of all sequenced reads), while the SAR11 clade comprised 21% of the ubiquitous reads and approximately 12% of the total sequenced reads. In contrast, 78% of all operational taxonomic units were only found at one time point and 67% were only found once, evidence of a large and transient rare assemblage. This time series shows evidence of seasonally structured community diversity. There is also evidence for seasonal succession, primarily reflecting changes among dominant taxa. These changes in structure were significantly correlated to a combination of temperature, phosphate and silicate concentrations.


Business analytics can potentially create value and improve competitive advantage for firms. We argue that dynamic and operational capabilities, enabled by business analytics technology, lead to improved firm performance. We develop a process-oriented theoretical framework that explains how dynamic and operational capabilities interact over time to create value. We use the framework to explain how business value was achieved from business analytics systems in a case study at a financial institution. A number of implications of the study are discussed and suggestions for future work are provided.


We provide initial descriptive evidence on the emerging crypto capital market, and use this unique unregulated setting to examine the role of disclosure for capital market outcomes. We analyze a comprehensive global sample of more than 750 initial coin offerings ("ICOs") with data from April 2014 to May 2018 and find that the ICO market has emerged as a significant financing channel with over $13 billion raised by a diverse set of issuers from more than 50 countries. We also find that the likelihood of successfully raising funds is positively associated with issuers' disclosure, the information environment, and hype. Further, weaker information environments are associated with higher crash risk, illiquidity, and volatility. Finally, we present evidence on the capital market benefits of new information intermediaries that have naturally evolved in this unregulated market to monitor and assess the quality of tokens issued in an ICO. Overall, our study provides novel and timely evidence on the role of disclosure in this completely unregulated capital market.


In order to enhance the accuracy of network traffic forecasting of ideological and political websites, in pertinence to the nonlinear and non-stable property of network traffic data, this paper introduces the chaos theory into PSO for optimization selection of the nuclear parameters and penalty coefficient of LS-SVM, and proposes an EMD_CPSO optimized LS-SVM (ECLS-SVM) network traffic forecasting model. It begins with EMD decomposition of the time sequence of network traffic data to extract detail features and trend features of network traffic data. Next, with the extracted network traffic features as the input into the CPSO optimized LS-SVM model, a network traffic forecasting model is built on the base of EMD_CPSO optimized LS-SVM. Finally, the network traffic data are utilized for a simulation experiment. By comparing the ECLS-SVM algorithm based single-step, 3-step, 5-step and 7-step forecasting results and the forecast time and mean square errors among different models, it is seen that the ECLS-SVM algorithm can effectively boost both accuracy and efficiency of network traffic forecasting, which attaches vital theoretical significance and practical value to instructing rational distribution and planning of network resources.


Stabilization of one ubiquitin ligase results in the destabilization of another that targets β-catenin for degradation. Aberrant activity of numerous pathways contributes to colon cancer, particularly the reactivation of developmental pathways, such as the Wnt pathway. The protein CSN6, a subunit of the COP9 signalosome that regulates ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation, is important for embryonic development. Fang et al. found that CSN6 indirectly stabilized the Wnt effector β-catenin, thereby promoting the growth of colorectal cancer (CRC). CSN6 abundance was increased in patient CRC tissue compared with adjacent normal mucosa and correlated with poor prognosis. Gene expression associated with the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) pathway was enriched in samples with high abundance of CSN6. In cultured CRC cells, overexpressing constitutively active MEK1, a kinase in the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway that is stimulated by EGFR, or adding EGF to the medium increased the abundance of CSN6 protein, but not mRNA, and decreased the ubiquitination of CSN6. In contrast, adding an inhibitor of MEK1 diminished the EGF-induced increase in CSN6 abundance. Coimmunoprecipitation assays showed that CSN6 interacted with ERK2, a kinase in the EGFR-stimulated MAPK pathway. Analysis of the effect of expressing CSN with a mutation in a site predicted to be phosphorylated by ERK showed that phosphorylation of CSN6 stabilized the protein and promoted proliferation in CRC cells. Overexpressing CSN6 dose-dependently increased the protein but not mRNA abundance of β-catenin as well as the expression of β-catenin target genes, and decreased the protein but not mRNA abundance of β-TrCP, a ubiquitin ligase that marks β-catenin for degradation. CSN6 interacted with and increased the ubiquitination and degradation of β-TrCP in transfected CRC cells. High abundance of CSN6 also correlated with high abundance of phosphorylated ERK and β-catenin in patient CRC samples. In mice bearing CRC xenografts, inhibiting EGFR with cetuximab suppressed growth and β-catenin target gene expression in tumors while increasing β-TrCP abundance. The findings suggest that inhibiting EGFR-MAPK-CSN6 pathway activity may suppress Wnt-driven CRC growth in patients. L. Fang, W. Lu, H. H. Cho, S.-C. J. Yeung, J.-Y. Tung, C.-D. Hsiao, E. Fuentes-Mattei, D. Menter, C. Chen, L. Wang, J. Wang, M.-H. Lee, ERK2-dependent phosphorylation of CSN6 is critical in colorectal cancer development. Cancer Cell 28, 183–197 (2015). [PubMed]


Title of Document: FEM IMPLEMENTATIONS OF MAGNETOSTRICTIVE-BASED APPLICATIONS Jonathan G. Benatar, Master of Science, 2005 Directed By: Associate Professor, Alison B. Flatau, Department of Aerospace Engineering Magnetostrictive transducers are used in a broad variety of applications that include linear pump drive mechanisms, active noise and vibration control systems and sonar systems. Optimization of their performance relies on accurate modeling of the static and dynamic behavior of magnetostrictive materials. The nonlinearity of some properties of magnetostrictive materials along with eddy current power losses occurring in both the magnetostrictive material and the magnetic circuit of the system makes this task particularly difficult. This thesis presents continuum level, three dimensional, finite element analysis of magnetostrictive-based applications for different operating conditions. The Finite element models (FEMs) are based on boundary value problems which are first introduced in the "differential" form (Chapter 2) and then derived to a "weak" form (Chapter 3) suitable for the implementation on the commercial finite element software, FEMLAB 3.1©. Structural mechanics and electromagnetics BVPs are used to predict the behavior of, respectively, structurally-involved parts and the electromagnetic circuit of a magnetostrictive-based application. In order to capture the magnetostrictive material's behavior, static and dynamic three-dimensional multiphysics BVPs include magneto-mechanical coupling to model magnetostriction and the effect of the magnetic stress tensor, also known as Maxwell stress tensor, and electromagnetic coupling to model eddy current power losses (time-harmonic and dynamic case only). The dynamic formulation is inspired by the finite element formulation in the Galerkin form introduced by Perez-Aparicio and Sosa [1], but focuses on a weak form formulation of the problem suitable for implementation in the commercial finite element software FEMLAB 3.1©. Implementation methods of the introduced models are described in Chapter 4. Finally, examples of these models are presented and, for the coupled magneto-mechanical FEM, compared to experimental results. FEM IMPLEMENTATIONS OF MAGNETOSTRICTIVE-BASED APPLICATIONS


Spurious noise (rattles, squeaks, etc) in the interior of car cabinets can be annoying, distractive and indicative of potential performance problems. Fault finding these problems can be difficult since the fault is intermittent and may not necessarily happen under test conditions. A 3 channel system that can record the fault and indicate its location within the cabinet is presented here. The system consists of a coincident microphone array that measures acoustic particle velocity along two orthogonal axes at its location. Detection and direction of noise can be obtained in real time or during post-processing using advanced signal analysis methods. Measurements inside a vehicle show that the very reflective nature of the sound-filed inside a car cabinet present a major challenge and that a combination of advance techniques from diagnostics engineering and room acoustics are required to reliably indicate the direction of the annoying sound.


Concerning human health, studies of radioadaptive responses are quite important in radiation biology, because the radiation response may strongly depend on previous radiation exposure. Therefore, we have studied the radiation-induced Bax and apoptosis in mouse spleen after whole-body irradiation with low dose or low dose-rate. By use of severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) mouse defective DNA-PK activity, we examined the role of DNA-PK activity in radioadaptation induced by pre-irradiation with low dose or low dose-rate. Based on immunohistochemical analyses in the present study, we detected the dose- and time course-dependent induction of Bax and apoptosis after acute irradiation especially in splenic white pulp of both SCID and the parental mice. They were significantly suppressed in the parental mice 2 weeks after low-dose (0.45 Gy) irradiation or immediately after low dose-rate (0.001 Gy/min for 25 h, 1.5 Gy) irradiation, but not SCID mice under each condition. These data suggest that DNA-PKcs (expressed in the parental mice, not SCID mice) might play a major role on the suppression of the acute radiation-induced apoptosis in spleen by low dose or low dose-rate irradiation. We expect that the present findings will provide useful information for the clarification of radioadaptive response.


Tensiometers are increasingly used in geotechnical engineering to monitor pore-water tension in the field and to study the hydro-mechanical behaviour of unsaturated soils in the laboratory. Early tensiometers exhibited a relatively small measuring range, typically limited to a tension of 0.1 MPa, due to water tension breakdown inside the sensing unit at absolute negative pressures. This limitation was subsequently overcome by the design of High Capacity Tensiometers (HCT), which enabled the measurement of considerably larger pore-water tensions. According to literature, the highest value of water tension ever recorded by a HCT is equal to 2.6 MPa. In the present work, this value is almost tripled by designing a novel Ultra-High Capacity Tensiometer (UHCT) capable of recording water tensions up to 7.3 MPa. This is achieved by replacing the traditional ceramic interface with a nanoporous glass (typically employed by physicists for the study of confined liquids), which has never been used before for the manufacture of tensiometers. The maximum attainable tension has been determined via tests where the UHCT measurement was progressively increased by vaporising water from the glass interface until the occurrence of tension breakdown (often referred to as "heterogeneous cavitation" or "tensiometer cavitation"). The increased measuring range and the potentially larger measuring stability of the proposed UHCT will contribute to enhance laboratory testing of soils at high suctions and long-term monitoring of earth structures.


Non-traditional students represent an important group of university students, and that is why their motivation to study is an important factor that affects current university education. This study investigates the academic motivation of Czech students who are considered non-traditional because of their age (they are older than 26) and at the same time have experienced a break of at least one year in their formal educational trajectory. The Czech version of the Academic Motivation Scale (AMS) has been used to measure academic motivation. The purpose of this study is to examine the factor structure of the Czech version of the AMS on a sample of 1,885 first-year students at Masaryk University and determine if this tool is functional even on a specific group of non-traditional students and to identify differences in particular types of academic motivation between traditional and non-traditional students. The results of confirmatory factor analysis showed that the Czech version of the AMS is a valid scale with a factor structure corresponding to the original model, and based on measurement invariance analysis we can state that the Czech version of the AMS can be used to compare traditional and non-traditional students. The results of regression analyses suggest that non-traditional students had significantly higher values for all types of intrinsic motivation and lower values for most types of extrinsic motivation. In the case of amotivation, it was again the non-traditional students with significantly lower values, which suggests that the absence of a motivation to study tends to be more common in younger students who are continuously receiving formal education.


A nation wide survey of the vending industry indicated
that the shelf-life of chilled menu items served from vending machines rarely exceeded 24 hours. This necessitated food production and distribution to vending sites on a daily basis. The short life coupled with unpredictable consumer demand may result in high food wastage rates. Vacuum and modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) are known to improve stored raw food quality. In order to optimize the quality and shelf-life of vended foods, the effects of these techniques and length of storage time on menu items were studied. Chicken drumsticks and chicken a la king were either individually cling wrapped, vacuum packed or packed under modified atmosphere (70% CO , 30N 0) and stored for up to 21 days in a chilled foot vending machine. The growth of naturally occurring micro-organisms was delayed in vacuum packed samples, compared with cling wrapped samples. However, direct inoculation studies indicated that this effect was dependent on the nature of the initial microflora. The public health risk of serving cooked food from vending machines was assessed by means of a survey of the operating temperatures of chilled food vending machines and a review of the growth characteristics of the major food poisoning micro-organisms. Th8 surveyed machines were able to
maintain temperatures below 5 C, although this temperature
was not universally found. The sensory quality of the chicken samples was examined by two trained taste panels and also a consumer panel. Stepwise discriminant analysis of the trained panel scores indicated that packaging and length of storage had a distinctive and unique effect on the sensory quality of both products. The mean consumer scores were used to construct significant (p<0.05) regression models, which showed that on average consumers preferred the fresh unpackaged sample and least preferred the cling wrapped samples. However, when the consumer scores of individuals were examined by means of Prefmap analysis, subgroups were found to exist within the
population that held polar viewpoints in opinion.
The results show that MAP and vacuum packaging may be
used in place of cling wrapping to extend the shelf-life of
certain vended menu items, but of more immediate importance
to the vending industry is the implementation of proper
temperature control to ensure a hazard free syste


Research increasingly links low literacy levels in the early grades with a range of poor outcomes; for instance, students who read below grade level at the end of third grade are about four times less likely than their higherachieving peers to graduate from high school (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2010, 2011; Balfanz, Bridgeland, Bruce & Fox, 2012). In a four-year study, researchers from the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) at the University of Pennsylvania and the Center for Research on Education and Social Policy (CRESP) at the University of Delaware examined the effectiveness of Reading Recovery—a widely used 1st grade literacy program—at helping struggling early readers catch up. The study's findings offer promise for intensive early literacy intervention. Disciplines Education | Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research This policy brief is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/cpre_policybriefs/82


In bivalve hatcheries, opportunistic pathogens have been associated with important mass mortality events of larvae and important economic lost for producers. New alternatives to the use of antibiotics, such as probiotics, have been proposed to limit the occurrence of such events in bivalve hatcheries and to stabilize bivalve production. Probiotics are microorganisms, or natural molecules, that are associated with beneficial effects for the host at different levels, especially to enhance their resistance to external stressors such as bacterial pathogens. It is know recognized that the composition of the host microbiota influences host health status and could be a target of probiotics. The aim of this study is to highlight the protective effect of a new probiotic, the marennine, on Mytilus edulis larvae during bacterial challenges in relation with a potential modification of the microbiota of the marennine-treated larvae. The main hypothesis is that the addition of marennine during larvae rearing processes could modify the conditions prevailing in the rearing medium and, as a consequence, the composition of the larvae microbiota, leading to a better resistance to bacterial infections. The marennine is a blue pigment originating from the diatom Haslea ostrearia, that have demonstrated a positive effect on larvae survival at a final concentration of 500 µg L-1. In this study, D-larvae (9 days old) and post-larvae (29 days old) were exposed for 96h to Vibrio splendidus with and without mareninne at a final concentration of 500 µg L-1. Our results demonstrated that at this concentration, the marennine have no direct antimicrobial effect on Vibrio splendidus growth kinetics. In addition, the presence of marennine did not modify the abundance of bacteria in the rearing medium, suggesting no direct antimicrobial effect of marennine on the bacterial load to which larvae were exposed during the experiments. Nevertheless, the presence of marennine increased the survival of D-larvae exposed to the pathogen but have no effect on post-larvae survival. The undergoing molecular analyses and the future metagenomics analyses of the larvae microbiota diversity will allow us to demonstrate if a modification in the larval microbiota's richness might explain the increase of the survival rate during the production of blue mussels in aquaculture. Ultimately, our work will enable us to shed light on the importance of the larval microbiota in pathogen-resistance during bivalves rearing process.


It is widely acknowledged that a great effort is necessary to cope with environmental problems. Focus is often upon technological change as the main way to achieve sustainability. But is it reasonable to place so much faith in technological change? The main dividing line between the optimistic and the critical view relates to the importance of distributional issues. First, an over-narrow focus upon technology diverts attention from the need to deal with distributional issues as an integral part of coping with environmental problems. Second, the technology optimists underestimate the need for changes in fundamental mechanisms, power structures and basic ideas as preconditions for influencing the direction of technological change. The paper deals with the state interventionist version of technology optimism, where it is emphasized that active industrial and technology policies should supplement market-based instruments to make sure that the technological potential for solving environmental problems is realized.


Gansbaai fishing and pleasure craft harbour is situated approximately 160km east of Cape Town. Modifications and extensions were required to the existing breakwater as well as construction of an internal access mound. An investigation was commissioned into alternative construction methods and construction sequences for the modifications and extensions. The aim of the study forming the subject of the paper was to establish as accurately as possible the optimum sequence of construction for the various phases of the work and to establish the optimum construction methods to be adopted so that any damage to the work was minimised as construction proceeded. By means of a three dimensional hydraulic model, alternative construction methods and sequences were investigated under varying wave heights and sea conditions. Minimum wave heights and the sea direction causing damage or localised displacement of the elements of construction were studied.


For the past two centuries, vaccines have provided a safe and effective means of preventing a number of infectious diseases. Although the safety of some vaccines has been questioned in recent years, the currently available vaccines are more than a millionfold safer than the diseases they are designed to prevent. Vaccines, however, should always be used in conjunction with other public health interventions. One important intervention is education because the general public can be led to believe that vaccines are unsafe and not needed by misinformation readily available electronically and in print. Not only are some vaccines available via injection but other vaccines are also given orally or intranasally. New vaccines are being studied for topical and intravaginal use. In addition, new systems are being developed for more efficient production of vaccines, especially for influenza. Vaccines are currently available for only a limited number of viral and bacterial diseases. In the future, it is anticipated that safe and effective vaccines will be developed against a number of other viral and bacterial infections as well as fungal and protozoan diseases.


Gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) acting through the cognate GnRH receptor (GnRH-R) plays an important role in the regulation of mammalian reproductive function by regulating the synthesis and release of follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH). The sensitivity of pituitary gonadotropes to GnRH depends on the number of GnRH receptors present on the gonadotrope cell surface. GnRH-R is regulated at a transcriptional, post-transcriptional and post-translational level. Hormones such as GnRH and glucocorticoids (GCs) regulate GnRH-Rs in a timeand dose-dependent manner. Previous studies have shown that the GnRH-R promoter confers glucocorticoid-dependent activation via the activating protein 1 (AP-1) site in the nongonadotrope GGH3 cell line. The mechanism by which GCs regulate the GnRH-R promoter is not precisely known as the literature is contradictory. Therefore this study investigates the mechanism of transcriptional regulation of the mouse GnRH-R promoter in the mouse gonadotrope cell line LβT2, treated with the synthetic GC dexamethasone (dex). Assays used include promoter-reporter studies, Western blotting, endogenous mRNA expression studies, electrophoretic mobility shift assay (EMSA) as well as the in vivo chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) assay. A transfected promoter-reporter plasmid containing 600 bp of the mouse GnRH-R promoter was used to investigate the effect of dex on transcriptional regulation. Previously it was determined in our laboratory that the GnRH-R promoter is activated via an AP-1 binding site in the LβT2 cell line, and is regulated in a timeand dose-dependent manner by dex. In the present study in the LβT2 cell line a small induction was indeed seen upon dex treatment. Cotransfecting a expression vector for rat GR succeeded in inducing a 2 fold positive dex response. Western blot analysis revealed that GR levels remain consistent even after 8 hours dex induction. The effect of dex on the endogenous GnRH-R gene was investigated by means of real-time RT-PCR. Dex did indeed upregulate the gene in a time-dependant manner. Maximal induction (7.4 fold) was obtained after at least 12 hours of dex treatment. Untreated LβT2 nuclear extracts were investigated using EMSA, for protein binding to the mouse GnRH-R promoter AP-1 binding site, and these proteins were identified as cFos and GR. This suggests that the GR interacts with the AP-1 transcription factor via a tethering mechanism to mediate the positive dex response. The results of an in vivo ChIP assay were consistent with this hypothesis, showing that the GR interacted with a genomic fragment containing


Abstract This article explores a covert partnership between a prominent Zionist agronomist, Menashe Meirovitch, and the Christian Arab editor of the newspaper Filastin, ʿIsa al-ʿIsa, a founding father of Palestinian nationalism. Under the literary guise of an Arab Muslim peasant called Abu Ibrahim, the two men produced a series of Arabic-language columns in 1911–12 that exhibited imperial citizenship par excellence, demanding political and agrarian reforms in Palestine in the name of strengthening the Ottoman Empire. The article explores their short-lived political alliance to interrogate historiographical uses of the press as a source for social history. Moreover, it challenges the portrayal of cooperation between Jews and Arabs as "collaboration" in its pejorative sense. Far from a simple story of betrayal or corruption, the partnership between the two men demonstrates how a shared commitment to Ottoman modernism brought them together more than nationalism, language, or religion pulled them apart.


Over the past decade, several Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries have developed or expanded export-oriented apparel industries in the context of the Multi-Fibre Arrangement (MFA) quotas and preferential market access, most importantly under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). Madagascar is different to the other main SSA low-income country (LIC) apparel exporters – Kenya, Lesotho and Swaziland – given its more diverse end markets and ownership structures and the political instability that led to the loss of AGOA status at the end of 2009. This paper assesses the development of Madagascar's export-oriented apparel industry and economic and social upgrading dynamics in particular in the context of the AGOA loss. It identifies four types of firms and value chains that differ with regard to ownership patterns, end markets and, most importantly, 'local embeddedness', with important implications for both economic upgrading dynamics and possibilities and the sustainability of the industry. The paper concludes that, despite the contraction in the export-oriented apparel industry post-AGOA, Madagascar is still a more successful apparel producer in terms of economic upgrading than the other main apparel-exporting LICs in SSA. The key to this trajectory lies in the differentiation of global value chain (GVC) relationships, local embeddedness and export diversification.


The possibility that 100-200 m changes in water-table elevation can be mechanically induced by earthquakes is a consideration in site studies of a potential high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. However, numerical simulations of tectonohydrologic coupling involving earthquakes typical of the Basin and Range province produce 2-3 m excursions of a water table that is 500 m below the land surface. Even displacements corresponding to extraordinary seismic events drive water-table excursions of less than 20 m. Flow resulting from earthquake-induced pore-pressure fields below the water table tends to be mainly horizontal; vertical flows that cause changes of the level of the water table are secondary. Strongly anisotropic permeability, intended to enhance vertical flow within fault zones, only doubles water-table rise in the models considered. These simulations of water-table rise compare well with observations following large earthquakes in the Basin and Range. The authors` models suggest that exceptional hydrologic and/or tectonic conditions would be required to produce substantially larger water-table rises.