Background: Communication skills have been recognized as an integral part of nursing services. Promoting the communication skills of nursing students is an important objective of nursing education, and the perspective of the faculty members, one of the most reliable groups involved in nursing education, is of great significance. The current study was carried out to perform a need to teaching communication skills of nursing students from the perspective of the faculty members of Guilan University of Medical Sciences. Methods: In this descriptive-analytical study, all faculty members of nursing faculty (n=45) at Guilan University of Medical Sciences were included in the study by census sampling in summer, 2015. Data were collected by a self-administered questionnaire including three sections: sociodemographic characteristics, faculty members' views about communication skills and open-ended questions. The obtained data were analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics (t-test, Kruskal-Wallis and one-way ANOVA). Results: The highest number of faculty members (66.7%) reported a high need for teaching communication skills to the nursing students. The mean score of female faculty members was a little higher than that of the male counterparts, but the difference was not statistically significant. The results of one-way ANOVA showed a significant relationship between the viewpoint of the faculty members on the need for teaching communication skills and age (p<0.05) and teaching experience (p<0.01). The analysis of open-ended questions by frequency distribution highlighted teaching communication skills as a one-unit course to students before apprenticeship as well as simultaneous theoretical and practical teaching of these skills in clinical settings. Conclusions: Based on the positive view of the faculty members about the need for teaching communication skills to nursing students, it seems helpful to provide a favorable ground to revise the curriculum to promote the students' communication skills.


Many scholars view the relaxation of restrictions to enter and reside in South Africa after the end of apartheid in 1994 as a catalyst for a number of changes in regional human migration. In this article, I show that human migration dynamics in post-apartheid South Africa pose theoretical and methodological challenges for studies of belonging among migrants. I argue that the majority of studies of belonging among migrants in South Africa rely on nation-state frames of reference and quantitative approaches. Furthermore, they largely seek to establish general patterns of migration processes. While these studies illuminate macro-level factors which seemingly structure migration experiences, they provide only a partial picture of migration dynamics. Often, they fail to sufficiently attend to context-dependent modes of emplacement among migrants in the urban zones due to the conceptual and methodological tools they use. The purpose of this article, therefore, is to suggest theoretical assumptions, concepts and methodological tools which constitute an alternative design for studying social constructions and practices of belonging among migrants in post-apartheid South Africa. The article draws on my doctoral research of Zimbabweans in Johannesburg for illustrations. URN: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs140163


Third Generation (3G) cellular networks take advantage of time-varying and location- dependent channel conditions of mobile users to provide broadband services. Under fairness and QoS constraints, they use opportunistic scheduling to efficiently utilize the available spectrum. Opportunistic scheduling algorithms rely on the collaboration among all mobile users to achieve their design objectives. However, we demonstrate that rogue cellular devices can exploit vulnerabilities in popular opportunistic scheduling algorithms, such as Proportional Fair (PF) and Temporal Fair (TF), to usurp the majority of time slots in 3G networks. Our simulations show that under realistic conditions, only five rogue device per 50-user cell can capture up to 95 percent of the time slots, and can cause 2-second end-to-end inter packet transmission delay on VoIP applications for every user in the same cell, rendering VoIP applications useless. To defend against this attack, we propose strengthening the PF and TF schedulers and a robust handoff scheme


We present the properties and potentialities of light emitting devices based on amorphous Si nanoclusters. Amorphous nanostructures may constitute an interesting alternative to Si nanocrystals for the monolithic integration of optical and electrical functions in Si technology. In fact, they exhibit an intense room temperature electroluminescence (EL). The EL properties of these devices have been studied as a function of current and of temperature. Moreover, to improve the extraction efficiency of the light, we have integrated the emitting system with a 2D photonic crystal structure opportunely fabricated by using conventional optical lithography to reduce the total internal reflection of the emitted light. The extraction efficiency in such devices increases by a factor of 4 at a resonance wavelength.


Icelandic has four (definite) article – adjective – noun patterns. In this paper, I present novel data, and put "old" data in a new perspective. I will argue that weakly inflected adjectives (patterns I – III) are merged inside the DP below the definite article, whereas strongly inflected adjectives (pattern IV) are merged outside DP, at least above the definite article. What distinguishes the weak patterns visibly is whether the adjective/(adjective plus) noun occurs before or after the article. Some researchers surmise that "non-restrictive adjectives are only direct modifiers and restrictive ones only indirect modifiers" (Cinque 2010: 140). Strong pattern (IV) adjectives are never restrictive, whereas certain weak adjectives may be. Against expectations, I will argue that weak adjectives in Icelandic are direct modifiers, whereas strong adjectives are indirect modifiers. I suggest that the criterion ± restrictive as such may not be relevant to properly characterize Icelandic adjectival patterns.


Exploration of unknown environments remains one of the fundamental problems of mobile robotics. It is also a prime example for a task that can benefit significantly from multi-robot teams. We present an integrated system for semi-autonomous cooperative exploration, augmented by an intuitive user interface for efficient human supervision and control. In this preliminary study we demonstrate the effectiveness of the system as a whole and the intuitive interface in particular. Congruent with previous findings, results confirm that having a human in the loop improves task performance, especially with larger numbers of robots. Specific to our interface, we find that even untrained operators can efficiently manage a decently sized team of robots.


Many of the chemistries studied by chemists as being relevant to the origins of life produce a combinatorial explosion of products. Researchers in the origins of life have traditionally regarded such combinatorial explosions as a problem that needs to be overcome, but due to recent technological advances there is an increasing interest in understanding these combinatorially complex chemistries as complex dynamical systems in their own right. An important question is whether a sufficiently large and complex reaction network can, in some quantitative sense, behave fundamentally differently from what is possible in the clean chemistries more usually studied by chemists. Here I argue for an affirmative answer to this question, with the aid of a simple toy example. The example shows the existence of a phase transition, leading to a threshold effect of a kind that cannot occur in a small reaction network. This threshold is closely re- lated to Eigens error threshold. However, while the error threshold occurs in a very structured chemistry (template replication), this transition occurs in a very unstructured chemistry more closely resembling Kauffmans autocatalytic set model. The significance of this result lies not in the scenario presented, but in showing that such threshold phenomena can exist in messy chemistries at all.


The purpose of this article is to cast some light on the nature, the essence and the functioning of the transformation process, as viewed from the higher education perspective. This is realised, firstly, by a study of the semantic value of the term transformation, as interpreted against the background of related terminology, which is followed by a discussion of the complexities involved in the carrying out of the process of higher education. Thirdly, various factors that form the basis of a successful transformation process are highlighted. The discussion is guided throughout by the actual process of the provision of higher education.


This paper is an introductory note on the lagoon of Orbetello, defining its environmental peculiarities and productive capacity. The aquaculture firms (both extensive and intensive) and their markets are presented from an economic point of view, focusing on the importance which the area can have as a district, according to the national and regional framework on fisheries. In particular, the unitary strategy adopted in managing the fishery involves the resolution of environmental problems and the coordination of trade to compete with products imported from other Mediterranean countries.


TASC (TYRES/TRACKS AND SOIL COMPACTION) is an Excel tool designed foremost as an aid in arable farming. The vulnerability of the soil to the passage of wheels or tracks is assessed after considering soil and load property factors. Danger of soil compaction is also apparent in the unworked underlayers. Factors included soil texture (finger test), penetration resistance in the pan layer (screwdriver test), depth of pan layer, size of tyres (width, overall diameter), load and inflation pressure. After examination of several field trials*, new algorithms will be developed and integrated into the model to obtain the contact area and the vertical stress propagation in the soil. For the assessment of the soil severe compaction risk, the concordance between the model data and field measurements is over 85 %. The tool is particularly well suited for traction tyres used on settled arable soil with a compacted plough pan between 20 and 25 cm depth. Technical data on more than 1'000 tyre types used in agriculture and forestry are available too. Information on tyre size can be directly imported into the program. According to ETRTO standards (European Tyre and Rim Technical Organisation), the tool gives the maximum load considering the tyre size, inflation pressure and speed of travel. TASC is developped firstly to protect prevently the soil from severe soil compaction damage with low reversible or irreversible character.


The medical devices industry, as well as the pharmaceutical industry, is slowly but indisputably accepting the concept of Quality by Design into its design and development product phases, and is introducing the statistical tools and methods of the concept into its process verification and validation phases as well. The Quality by Design concept or approach has found its implementation in the medical devices life cycle management, under the guidance of risk regulations by the International Conference on Harmonization. Since the importance of successful implementation of this concept is ever more evident in industry, this white paper will therefore discuss the concept and its possible implementation in the medical devices industry, along with the benefits and concerns expressed by the manufacturers.


This article deals primarily with the problem of determining the cutting force when machining hardened steels. For this study, the steel used was 100 Cr6, number 1.3505. The secondary aspects of the study focused on the evaluation of the surface quality of machined samples and the recommendation of cutting conditions. A wide variety of components are used in engineering, the final heat treatment of which is hardening. These components are usually critical in a particular product. The quality of these components determines the correct functioning of the entire body of technical equipment, and ultimately, its service life. In our study, these are the core parts of thrust bearings, specifically the rolling elements. The subject of this experiment involves machining these components in the hardened state with cubic boron nitride tools and the continuous measurement of the cutting force using a dynamometer. The machining is carried out on a conventional lathe. A total of 12 combinations of cutting conditions were set. Specifically, for three cutting speeds of 130, 155 and 180 m·min−1, the feed rates of 0.05 and 0.1 mm·rev−1 and the cutting widths of 0.2 and 0.35 mm, were evaluated The evaluation assessed the surface quality by both touch and non-touch methods. A structural equation with the appropriate constants and exponents was then constructed from the data obtained using the dynamometer. The experiment confirmed the potential of achieving a value of the average arithmetic profile deviation Ra in the range of 0.3–0.4 when turning hardened steels with cubic boron nitride.


The late nineteenth and early twentieth century were a brutal time for American wildlife, with many species pushed to the brink of extinction. (Some are endangered to this day.) And yet these decades also saw the dawn of the conservationist movement. Into this contradictory era came William Temple Hornaday, a larger-than-life dynamo who almost uncannily embodies these conflicting threads in our history. In The Most Defiant Devil , a compelling new biography of this complex figure, Gregory Dehler explores the life of Hornaday the hunter, museum builder, zoologist, author, conservationist, and anti-Bolshevist crusader. A deeply religious man, he was nonetheless anything but peaceful and was racist even by his era's standards, going so far as to display an Mbuti pygmy as a ""living specimen"" in a zoo. A passionate hunter, Hornaday killed thousands of animals, including some of the last wild buffalo in America, but he was far ahead of his time in his influential views on the protection of wildlife. Hornaday designed and built the New York Zoological Park (which became the Bronx Zoo) and was chief taxidermist for what would later become the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. In this single, fascinating individual, we can discern some of the Progressive Era's most destructive forces and some of its most enlightened visions.


The seismic interpretation problem for an isotropic spherical earth is analyzed on the basis of elastic theory, under the assumption that the three independent elastic parameters are unknown continuous functions of the depth. It is shown that solutions for these functions may be obtained in the form of Taylor's series. The problem is treated for three types of symmetrical excitation conditions on the free surface: (1) a shear source of type prϕ only; (2) a pressure distribution with vanishing surface shear stress; (3) an excitation consisting of pressure in combination with surface shear stress of type prθ. In each case the excitation functions are arbitrary functions of time. It is assumed that the associated components of surface displacement over the sphere are known from available observations, as functions of time. Thus, the complete information contained in seismic records is used in the proposed interpretation process, without need of selecting, identifying and assigning arrival times to specific events on the records. The two static elastic parameters may theoretically be determined from observations at a single frequency, including the frequency zero, or static case. The determination of the dynamic elastic parameter requires the use of at least two frequencies. Algebraic checks are obtained by comparing the general solutions with the corresponding results for two special cases in which the elastic parameters vary in a prescribed manner in the interior of the sphere. In both these cases treatment by the classical ray-path method of interpretation is excluded, because the wave velocity decreases with depth. Furthermore, the ray-path method (which is essentially a method of geometrical optics) would fail to distinguish between the two examples in any case, since the velocity function is the same in both, although the elastic parameters differ. In contrast to the valuable ray-path method, the analytical procedures in the present solution of the elastic problem are prohibitively cumbersome. Practical application of elastic theory to the direct interpretation of seismograms requires further development of the theory with probable utilization of modern high-speed computing methods.


The role of
religion for migrants in Australia has generated much interest in recent years.
A growing area of scholarly inquiry is how religion can assist in migrant
language maintenance. This thesis looks at the interaction between language and
religion within the goal of heritage language maintenance and how this plays
out in a particular migrant religious institution and for a particular
ethnoreligious group, namely Sri Lankan Tamil Hindus. It is the result of an
18-month ethnographic study situated in a Tamil Hindu temple in Australia. The study investigates the role of the Tamil language in the
temple, the types of language practices that the second generation employ in
the space, and the relevance of the Tamil language and Hindu religion in the
lives of second-generation devotees. It provides an insight into how migrant
youth skilfully use their heritage language and English to achieve
communication and index their hybrid identifications as they grow up in
Anglo-dominant, multicultural Australia. It also highlights the important role
played by the temple in supporting these migrants. At a macro-level, this study shows how the temple, as a
religious institution, not only provides a space for Hindu worship, but one for
socialising, cultural identification and the transmission of language, religion
and culture. In Sri Lanka the Tamil language and Hindu religion are closely
linked in a Tamil Hindu culture and this strong language-religion ideology is
reflected in the language practices of the temple. However, in the Australian
setting, the temple faces sociocultural change including an increasingly
ethnically and linguistically diverse congregation and disengagement by the
second generation. Therefore there is a tension between the extent to which the
temple remains linked to its Tamil identity and to which it must change its
policies to accommodate those who do not speak Tamil. On the micro-level, as an insight into language practices for
the second generation, the thesis focuses on one class in the temple's
Tamil-medium religious school. Naturalistic linguistic data collected from a
small class of teenage devotees reveals that translanguaging is the usual code
for interactions. While English is dominant in the students' lives, practices
in the classroom show that approximately 30 per cent of their speech contains
Tamil, thus evidencing the language-religion ideology being transmitted to the
next generation. English and Tamil features perform particular but also
overlapping functions in the classroom. The students and teacher create a safe
space where they can use their individual repertoires to explore and challenge
their beliefs and positions in terms of their heritage culture and religion.
Through the analysis of selected linguistic extracts, the multicompetence,
creativity, criticality, cooperation and subversion of the students is evident
in their language use. While pure Tamil is not necessarily used in the class, the
ways in which Tamil features are adopted to signal a connection to Tamil
culture, the ethnoreligious community and to perform a Tamil Hindu identity are
highly significant. It forms part of the picture of a group of
second-generation migrants who can practice their heritage language, religion
and culture with confidence in Australian society, and at the same time, bring
their strong proficiency in English into these expressions of heritage,
identity and faith.


Diagnostic testing to identify persons infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome–related coronavirus-2 (SARS–CoV-2) infection is central to control the global pandemic of COVID-19 that began in late 2019. In a few countries, the use of diagnostic testing on a massive scale has been a cornerstone of successful containment strategies. In contrast, the United States, hampered by limited testing capacity, has prioritized testing for specific groups of persons. Real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction–based assays performed in a laboratory on respiratory specimens are the reference standard for COVID-19 diagnostics. However, point-of-care technologies and serologic immunoassays are rapidly emerging. Although excellent tools exist for the diagnosis of symptomatic patients in well-equipped laboratories, important gaps remain in screening asymptomatic persons in the incubation phase, as well as in the accurate determination of live viral shedding during convalescence to inform decisions to end isolation. Many affluent countries have encountered challenges in test delivery and specimen collection that have inhibited rapid increases in testing capacity. These challenges may be even greater in low-resource settings. Urgent clinical and public health needs currently drive an unprecedented global effort to increase testing capacity for SARS–CoV-2 infection. Here, the authors review the current array of tests for SARS–CoV-2, highlight gaps in current diagnostic capacity, and propose potential solutions.


BACKGROUND
The aim of this study was to evaluate the activity and toxicity of pemetrexed and carboplatin combination as first-line chemotherapy in malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM).

PATIENTS AND METHODS
Patients with measurable advanced MPM and a zero to two Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) performance status (PS) were enrolled. The schedule was pemetrexed 500 mg/m(2) in combination with carboplatin area under the curve 5, every 21 days. In all, 76 patients were treated. Median age was 65 years; median ECOG PS was zero.

RESULTS
Grade 3 hematological toxicity according to World Health Organization criteria was seen in 36 (47.3%) patients; grade 4 hematological toxicity in 5 (6.5%) patients. There were 16 (21%) partial responses and 3 (4%) complete responses, for an overall response rate of 19 (25%) [95% confidence interval (CI) 15.3-34.7]. In all, 29 (39%) (95% CI 28-48) patients reported stable disease. The median survival was estimated at 14 months.

CONCLUSION
This combination of carboplatin and pemetrexed is moderately active and the toxicity is acceptable.


Noted philosopher Kai Nielsen offers an answer to this fundamental question - a question that reaches in to grasp at the very heart of ethics itself. Essentially, this innocent inquiry masks a confusion that so many of us get caught in as we think about moral issues. We fail to realise that there is a difference between judging human behaviour within an ethical context, or set of moral principles, and justifying the principles themselves. According to Nielsen, it is precisely this basic muddle that has spawned all sorts of challenges to morality, from relativism and institutionism to egoism and scepticism.Nielsen first argues the case for these challenges in the strongest possible terms; then he shows that their failure to establish themselves demonstrates a fundamental flaw - an inability to understand what it means to have good reasons for the moral claims we make. In his search for "good reasons" Nielsen must face the innocent question "Why be moral?" He tries to show us that skirmishes among supporters of specific moral principles require a different sort of resolution than those that occur between groups of ethical principles. Justifying an action within a moral point of view is quite different from making the case for having a moral point of view in the first place.


Novel functional Ionic Liquids (ILs) and Deep Eutectic Solvents (DESs), containing unique properties, were investigated. Eight new salts based on four different β-diketonate anions, each coupled with the choline or tetrabutylphosphonium cation were prepared and fully
characterized via ESI-MS, FTIR, and 1H/13C NMR. The thermal stabilities and transitions for these β-diketonate salts were explored using DSC and TGA. The inherent binding capability of the β-diketonate allowed for lanthanide recognition in which the coordination with Eu3+ resulted in a intensification of luminescence. Additionally, these ILs display prominent color change of the β-diketonate in the presence of an acid source, permitting the visual transduction of local pH changes. Utility for carbon capture was also considered, however, these ILs were essentially incapable of binding CO2. Computational studies revealed that the association of CO2 to the β-
diketonate anion was thermodynamically unfavored and sterically hindered. A DES of choline chloride (ChCl) and glycerol (Gly) along with a superbase was shown to capture up to 124 mg of CO2 per g of reagents (1.00 mole CO2 per mole of ChCl and Gly).
Different bases and mixture composition were also investigated. The system could also be easily reversed upon heating under nitrogen. The optimal system for CO2 capture was found to contain a 1:2 ChCl:Gly DES mixture mixed with the superbase, DBN, in a 1:3.5 Gly:DBN molar ratio. Overall, these newly introduced β-diketonate ILs and DES and superbase mixture showed interesting and useful physicochemical properties applicable to a number of applications.


Book synopsis: Svengali, the malevolent hypnotist in Trilby, a sensationally successful novel published by George du Maurier in 1894, became such a well-known character in the culture of the period that his name entered the dictionary as one who exerts a malign persuasiveness on another. This book explores the origins and impact of Svengali and his helplessly mesmerised female victim Trilby in an age already rife with discussions of race, influence, and the unconscious mind. Daniel Pick points out that Svengali was a Jew as well as a dangerous hypnotist; his depiction struck a chord not only with pervasive nineteenth-century forebodings about irrational interpersonal forces and psychic contacts but also with prevalent anti-Semitic assumptions. He shows how Svengali became the quintessential dark hypnotist of the fin de sihcle, whose image was recycled in pictures, drama, verse, and films. Pick not only discusses the work of mesmerists, hypnotists, and critics of entrancement but also relates tales of surrogate passion and psychological foreboding that feature opera singer Jenny Lind, composer Richard Wagner, politician Benjamin Disreali, novelist Henry James and others. The book identifies and illuminates a psychological and historical preoccupation a cluster of Victorian ideas and images, fears and fantasies of psychic invasion and racial hypnosis that crystallised in the figure and phenomenon of Svengali.


Closed-circuit television inspection technology is traditionally used to identify aging sewer pipes requiring rehabilitation. While these inspections provide essential information on the condition of pipes hidden from day-to-day view, they are expensive and often limited to small portions of an entire sewer system. Municipalities may benefit from utilizing predictive analytics to leverage existing inspection datasets so that reliable predictions of condition are available for pipes that have not yet been inspected. The predictive capabilities of data mining systems, namely support vector machines (SVMs) and decision tree classifiers, are demonstrated using a case study of sanitary sewer pipe inspection data collected by the municipality of Guelph, Ontario, Canada. The modeling algorithms are implemented using open-source software and are tuned to counteract the negative impact on predictive performance resulting from class imbalance common within pipe inspection datasets. The decision tree classifier outperforms SVM for this classification task – achieving an acceptable area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.77 and an overall accuracy of 76% on a stratified test set. Although predicting individual pipe condition is a notoriously difficult task, decision trees are found to be a useful screening tool for planning future inspection-related activities.


The composition of the intact wax esters of Calanus hyperboreus, C. finmarchicus, and C. glacialis from the Fram Strait area of the Greenland Sea was studied. In addition the fatty acid and alcohol composition of the wax esters was analysed. All copepods were rich in wax esters, especially C. hyperboreus in which long-chain wax esters were generally more abundant than in the other species. The wax ester composition was species dependent but strongly overlapped by spatial variabilities. Because phytoplankton fatty acids were partially incorporated directly into wax esters, the composition of the wax esters was widely influenced by the phytoplankton community which itself varied considerably in the Fram Strait region. Thus, the wax esters of the polar species, collected in the North East Water Polynya near Greenland, were dominated by diunsaturated compounds in the range from C32 to C44. The shorter chain components resulted from a combination of palmitoleic acid which is typical of diatom lipids with long-chain alcohols. In the marginal ice zone, higher levels of polyunsaturated wax esters were detected due to the presence of the 18:4 fatty acid, typical of a summer phytoplankton population.


The Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) established the Working Party on Evaluation Co-operation (WPEC) to promote exchange of information on nuclear data activities by its members. One of the WPEC objectives is to assess needs for nuclear data improvements and to stimulate initiatives to fulfill these. The High Priority Request List (HPRL) was established in pursuit of this objective. The HPRL project aims at identifying accuracy targets for the improvement of nuclear data, primarily for application in the nuclear industry. The list therefore provides a guide for those planning new measurements, nuclear model calculations and data evaluation programmes. Since 2004, the HPRL has undergone a major overhaul to better guarantee timeliness and adequate documentation of requests. A new webpage was developed at the NEA to facilitate submission of new requests, and to allow easy inspection. Submitted requests are first reviewed by external referees, before being accepted on the list. Requests are divided into high priority requests, where a quantitative justification is provided and general requests for which the justification is qualitative. The relevance of requests for nuclear energy applications is ensured through periodic reviews by an expert group of the NEA WPEC, involving Europe (JEFF), Japan (JENDL), the United States (ENDF), Russia (BROND) and China (CENDL). The new procedures for submission, review and adoption of requests were recently validated with a first set of entries. Examples of recent updates to the HPRL project are presented. The requirements for providing new requests are also presented, as well as how to justify needs for new nuclear data. Data users around the world are encouraged to formulate their concerns about nuclear data and submit them to the HPRL. The HPRL is maintained by the NEA Data Bank and can be consulted at the following address: http://www.nea.fr/html/dbdata/hprl/.


Interfacial structure of Mg/SiC multilayers as extreme ultra-violet reflectors was studied along with Mg/Si and Mg/C multilayers by means of x-ray reflectometry, x-ray diffraction, x-ray photoemission spectroscopy, and transmission electron microscopy. The interfacial diffusion in the Mg/SiC multilayer is found asymmetrical as the interlayers formed at SiC-on-Mg interfaces (2.5 nm) are much thicker than those at Mg-on-SiC interfaces (1.0 nm). Contrary asymmetry is found in the Mg/Si and Mg/C multilayers. An explanation of this phenomenon is suggested based on the investigation results. Our findings may result in improved reflectance of Mg/SiC multilayers by inserting diffusion barriers at the more diffused interfaces.


This paper reports an experimental setup aiming at evaluating the performance of a newly designed magnetorheological elastomer (MRE) seismic isolator. As a further effort to explore the field-dependent stiffness/damping properties of the MRE isolator, a series of experimental testing were conducted. Based upon the analysis of the experimental responses and the characteristics of the MRE isolator, a new model that is capable of reproducing the unique MRE isolator dynamics behaviors is proposed. The validation results verify the model's effectiveness to portray the MRE isolator. A study on the field-dependent parameters is then provided to make the model valid with fluctuating magnetic fields. To fully explore the mechanism of the proposed model, an investigation relating the dependence of the proposed model on every parameter is carried out.


The forewing base structure of the orthopteran suborder Ensifera, a group of insects well known for their sound-producing behavior, was examined by using light microscopy, confocal laser scanning microscopy, and µCT. We detected significant novel characters, such as functional changes in the tpm9 muscle from the flexor to the extensor of the forewing that are likely associated with the acquisition of sound-producing behavior using forewings. Phylogenetic analysis based on the characters selected from the forewing base structure showed that the character system contains a strong phylogenetic signal supporting the monophyly of Ensifera, Tettigonioidea and Grylloidea as well as the sister-group relationship between Grylloidea and Gryllotalpoidea, but no apomorphies to resolve the deep phylogeny among superfamilies could be determined from this character system.


India is the largest provider of generic drugs globally. Indian pharmaceutical sector industry supplies over 50 percent of global demand for various vaccines, 40 percent of generic demand in the US and 25 percent of all medicine in the UK. India enjoys an important position in the global pharmaceuticals sector. The country also has a large pool of scientists and engineers who have the potential to steer the industry ahead to an even higher level. Presently over 80 percent of the antiretroviral drugs used globally to combat AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) are supplied by Indian pharmaceutical firms.


Under the sponsorship of the University of Sydney, on 5-6th December 2002 the future of farm management in Australia was discussed. The fundamental conclusion achieved by key primary industry representatives, corporate executives, academics, consultants and researchers is that farm management will have a more significant role to play in the future than previously in servicing the primary sector. The idea of farm management as a profession was proposed. Its basis would be business management supported by farming systems and technology, and using an holistic approach to action (i.e. finance, people and environment). The new profession of Farm Business Management would seek to influence education, research, consultancy and extension in Australia. Interested parties participating of the 2002 National Farm Management Workshop came away with the idea of championing a consultative network, constituted by interested institutions and interested individuals, as a first step in the process of nurturing the future development of farm business management. By integrating farmers and academics with corporate executives, consultants and researchers the objective is to behave as a consultative group. This group will influence educational models, implement consultancy and research strategies, and network in social and professional terms. Moreover, this network will provide a systematic opportunity for the channelling of farm business management and farming systems related information at different levels for education, extension and scientific purposes. This network is called the Australian Farm Business Management Network (AFBMnetwork).


The transport sector has rarely seen disruptive evolutions after the diffusion of the internal combustion engine, and today the European mobility is still heavily relying on oil derivates and on private cars. However, there is a significant push in cities towards more sustainable mobility paradigms, and digital technologies are playing a major role in unleashing possible alternatives to a car- and fossil-based mobility. Three major digital trends can be highlighted, with different levels of maturity and some potential synergies among them: Mobility as a Service, Shared Mobility and Autonomous Vehicles. The effects of these trends are also related to the strong push towards electric mobility, which currently appears as the most supported solution by companies and regulators to decarbonize the transport sector. This working paper discusses an investigation of the potential effects of digital transition, by means of a data-driven model for the calculation of the impacts of mobility demand in Europe in terms of primary energy consumption and CO2 emissions. The results show that digitalization may have a positive effect on energy consumption and CO2 emissions for passenger transport, given the strong efficiency improvements expected by technological development in the vehicles powertrains. The benefits are maximized if digital technologies are used towards a collective optimization, by increasing the share of available mobility options. Conversely, if digital technologies are limited to increase the quality of private mobility, the environmental benefits will likely remain very limited. Thus, there is a need of tailored policies supporting the right mobility models to fully exploit the potential benefits of digitalization.


Our findings demonstrate conclusively that low abundance and upregulated transcripts are preferentially translated, potentially by environment-specific translation systems with distinct ribosomal protein composition. We show that a complex interplay of transcriptional and posttranscriptional regulation underlies the conditional and modular regulatory programs that generate ribosomes of distinct protein composition. The modular regulation of ribosomal proteins with other transcription, translation, and metabolic genes is generalizable to bacterial and eukaryotic microbes. These findings are relevant to how microorganisms adapt to unfavorable environments when they transition from active growth to quiescence by generating proteins from upregulated transcripts that are in considerably lower abundance relative to transcripts associated with the previous physiological state. Selective translation of transcripts by distinct ribosomes could form the basis for adaptive evolution to new environments through a modular regulation of the translational systems. ABSTRACT When organisms encounter an unfavorable environment, they transition to a physiologically distinct, quiescent state wherein abundant transcripts from the previous active growth state continue to persist, albeit their active transcription is downregulated. In order to generate proteins for the new quiescent physiological state, we hypothesized that the translation machinery must selectively translate upregulated transcripts in an intracellular milieu crowded with considerably higher abundance transcripts from the previous active growth state. Here, we have analyzed genome-wide changes in the transcriptome (RNA sequencing [RNA-seq]), changes in translational regulation and efficiency by ribosome profiling across all transcripts (ribosome profiling [Ribo-seq]), and protein level changes in assembled ribosomal proteins (sequential window acquisition of all theoretical mass spectra [SWATH-MS]) to investigate the interplay of transcriptional and translational regulation in Halobacterium salinarum as it transitions from active growth to quiescence. We have discovered that interplay of regulatory processes at different levels of information processing generates condition-specific ribosomal complexes to translate preferentially pools of low abundance and upregulated transcripts. Through analysis of the gene regulatory network architecture of H. salinarum, Escherichia coli, and Saccharomyces cerevisiae, we demonstrate that this conditional, modular organization of regulatory programs governing translational systems is a generalized feature across all domains of life. IMPORTANCE Our findings demonstrate conclusively that low abundance and upregulated transcripts are preferentially translated, potentially by environment-specific translation systems with distinct ribosomal protein composition. We show that a complex interplay of transcriptional and posttranscriptional regulation underlies the conditional and modular regulatory programs that generate ribosomes of distinct protein composition. The modular regulation of ribosomal proteins with other transcription, translation, and metabolic genes is generalizable to bacterial and eukaryotic microbes. These findings are relevant to how microorganisms adapt to unfavorable environments when they transition from active growth to quiescence by generating proteins from upregulated transcripts that are in considerably lower abundance relative to transcripts associated with the previous physiological state. Selective translation of transcripts by distinct ribosomes could form the basis for adaptive evolution to new environments through a modular regulation of the translational systems.


Anyone working towards the publication of indigenous life narratives is aware of the significance of cultural protocols to both the narrative exchange and the writing and editing process. In the telling and the writing of an indigenous life story, protocols determining what gets told – where, when, to whom, or for whom – influence and sometimes complicate decisions regarding the final published narrative. This is the case whether the subject of the life narrative is the writer or whether the narrative is mediated by others. Indigenous protocols – including authority and moral rights over indigenous narratives and culture, kinship rights and obligations, care for country, mourning protocols, restricted knowledge, and reciprocity in the form of a return of benefits to indigenous communities – will significantly shape the production of the text. Negotiating protocols is often challenging, sometimes fraught, but always, in some form, an aspect of the writing of indigenous lives.1


In contrast to more traditional debates about voting patterns, local versus state administrations, and individual rights and participatory democracy, this article addresses the question of urban politics through an analysis of subject formation. By taking subject formation as the analytical focus, research questions about 'politics' shift from traditional ones about local or state government and the development of consensus, for instance, to ones about the constitution of subjects who are governed and govern themselves in particular ways. Using the emergence of two increasingly commonplace subject forms in contemporary China — urban professionals and volunteers — as examples, the article considers how modes of self-regulation become political problems and also how subjects may be of the urban as well as located in the urban. The problematizations of socialist state planning have led to new governmental rationalities and technologies that not only produced new subject positions, but also new urban spaces, landscapes, economies and lifestyles. From this view, the article is an intervention into discussions about the 'where' of urban politics. It also argues that it is critical to examine politics as problematization and normalization if we are to understand what is at stake in the constitution of potential 'communities of action'.


This paper reports on research to explore the potential for using electromyography (EMG) measurements in pedestrian navigation. The aim is to investigate whether the relationship between human motion and the activity of skeletal muscles in the leg might be used to aid other positioning sensors, or even to determine independently the path taken by a pedestrian. The paper describes an exercise to collect sample EMG data alongside leg motion data, and the subsequent analysis of this data set using machine learning techniques to infer motion from a set of EMG sensors. The sample data set included measurements from multiple EMG sensors, a camera-based motion tracking system and a foot mounted inertial sensor. The camera based motion tracking system at MMU allowed many targets on the subjects lower body to be tracked in a small (3m x 3m x 3m) volume to millimetre accuracy. Processing the data revealed a strong, but not trivial, relation-ship between leg muscle activity and motion. Each type of motion involves many different muscles, and it is not possible to conclude merely from the triggering of any single muscle that a particular type of motion has occurred. For instance, a similar set of leg muscles is involved in both forward and backward steps. It is the precise sequencing, duration and magnitude of multiple muscle activity that allows us to determine what type of motion has occurred. Preliminary analyses of the data suggest that subsets of the EMG sensors can be used to distinguish, for instance, forward motion from backward motion, and it is expected that further analysis will reveal additional correlations that will be useful in inferring the subjects motion in more detail. This paper will introduce the EMG personal navigation con-cept, describe the data collected, explore the machine learning techniques applied to the dataset, and present the results of the analysis.


ABSTRACT On behalf of the INQUA Commission on Genesis and Lithology of Quaternary Deposits, a questionnaire consisting of about 150 questions concerning the methodology of investigations of tills was distributed in the formerly glaciated countries of Europe and North America in 1974. The 210 replies representing more than 750 investigators of tills (geologists, geographers, pedologists, engineering geologists and soils engineers) are summarized and discussed, considering the field and laboratory equipment used, and the procedures of field and laboratory investigations of tills. Particular attention is paid to the particle-size determinations and their boundaries, where a tendency is noticeable towards a general agreement on the clay-silt-sand size boundaries. Though the methods and equipment u ed vary considerably among the specialists of different professions and different countries, surprisingly few major differences exist between Europe and North America.


The bond between a mother and her newborn is one of strength, power, and potential. Several factors take place during the early postpartum period that can have a large influence on the bonding that occurs during this time. Oxytocin plays a vital role in the chemistry aspect of bonding, and its effects can be enhanced by a variety of techniques. Psychological theories such as the John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth's Theory of Attachment and Erik Erikson's developmental stage of trust versus mistrust can be applied to the bonding process. The abundant benefits of bonding for both mother and newborn are of extensive importance. Nurses and childbirth educators can promote the maternal-newborn bond through encouraging skin-to-skin contact, breastfeeding, eye contact, and newborn massage during the first postpartum hour. Common hindrances to the maternal-newborn bonding process include a preterm newborn, lack of support, maternal fatigue, a cesarean birth, and emotional stress. Personal testimonies from families who have experienced these barriers can be used to evaluate strategies for overcoming these barriers in a way that promotes bonding. It is recommended for hospital protocols to include an hour of uninterrupted skin-to-skin contact after vaginal and low-risk cesarean births in order to promote optimal maternal-newborn bonding.


Scientists in many disciplines have progressively been using simulations to better understand the natural systems they study. Faster hardware, as well as increasingly precise instruments, allow the construction and simulation of progressively advanced models of various systems. Governed by algorithms and equations, the spatial models at the core of simulations are changed and updated at every simulation step through spatial queries, implementing massive updates. Therefore, the efficient execution of these numerous spatial queries is essential. Two reasons render current spatial indexes inadequate for simulation applications. First, to ensure quick access to data, most of the spatial models in simulations are stored in memory. Most spatial access methods, however, have been optimized for use on disk and are not efficient in memory. Second, in every time step of a simulation, almost all spatial elements change their position, challenging update mechanisms for spatial indexes. In this paper we discuss how these challenges create opportunities for exciting data management research.


New reaction scheme is suggested for the initiated nonbranched-chain addition of free radicals to the multiple bond of the molecular oxygen. The scheme includes the reaction competing with chain propagation reactions through a reactive free radical. The chain evolution stage in this scheme involves a few of free radicals, one of which (tetraoxyl) is relatively low-reactive and inhibits the chain process by shortening of the kinetic chain length. Based on the proposed scheme rate equations (containing one to three parameters to be determined directly) are deduced using quasi-steady-state treatment. The kinetic description with use the obtained rate equations is applied to the γ-induced nonbranched-chain processes of the free-radical oxidation of liquid o-xylene at 373 K and hydrogen dissolved in water containing different amounts of oxygen at 296 K. In these processes the oxygen with the increase of its concentration begins to act as an oxidation autoingibitor (or an antioxidant), and the rate of peroxide formation as a function of the dissolved oxygen concentration has a maximum. The heat effects are compared for the overall reactions of dissociation of simple alkylperoxyl (exothermic) and alkoxyl (endothermic) free radicals in the gas phase. Possible nonchain pathways of the free-radical oxidation of hydrogen and the routes of ozone decay from the energetic standpoint via the reaction with the hydroxyl free radical in the upper atmosphere (including the addition yielding the hydrotetraoxyl free radical, which can be an intermediate in the sequence of conversions of biologically hazardous UV radiation energy) were examined. The energetics of the key radical-molecule reactions is considered.


The South African post-apartheid constitution provides for community participation in the construction, implementation and evaluation of integrated development planning at local level. This article reviews and assesses community participation in practice drawing on the findings of a range of research projects conducted in Cape Town since 1994. It is argued that contemporary understanding of community participation in South Africa is informed by the memory of community struggle – a radical form of participation – against the racist apartheid State. This means that communities have a richly-textured history of strategic mobilization against exclusionary and discriminatory government practices at the local level. It is precisely this repertoire of radical strategies that can and should be revisited and adapted, to advance the interests of the materially marginalized communities at the local level. 'People driven' development programmes through Integrated Development Planning (IDP) in post-apartheid South Africa in general, and Cape Town in particular, have thus far been largely rhetorical and not substantive. Hence, the enduring challenge of the perennial question at the grassroots level remains – in whose interest is community participation really driven?


Defining the relationship between displaced populations and the nation state is a fraught historical process. The Partition of India in 1947 provides a compelling example, yet markedly little attention has been paid to the refugee communities produced. Using the case of the displaced 'Urdu-speaking minority' in Bangladesh, this article considers what contemporary discourses of identity and integration reveal about the nature and boundaries of the nation state. It reveals that the language of 'integration' is embedded in colonial narratives of 'population' versus 'people-nation' which structure exclusion not only through language and ethnicity, but poverty and social space. It also shows how colonial and postcolonial registers transect and overlap as colonial constructions of 'modernity' and 'progress' fold into religious discourses of 'pollution' and 'purity'. The voices of minorities navigating claims to belonging through these discourses shed light on a 'nation-in-formation': the shifting landscape of national belonging and the complicated accommodations required.


Multi-cloud promises to substantially improve faulttolerance, by tolerating disasters affecting a subset of providers. Unfortunately, multi-cloud solutions are premature and none of them are fully fledged. Their main impediment is the lack of network services: to date, it remains impossible for a customer to setup and control a multi-cloud network. Moreover, manually inter-connecting multiple clouds from various providers is challenging: each cloud provider may offer dissimilar services and incompatible APIs.,,,,In this paper, we present the first reconfigurable intercloud network, called Stratosphere. Stratosphere combines recent achievements in the context of container deployment and software defined networking (SDN) to build an SDN-based IP overlay of software containers across providers. Stratosphere aims at dynamically re-routing traffic based on service guarantees, congestion, or failures. We evaluate Stratosphere by reconfiguring the network between major cloud providers, namely Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. The comparison against the Docker Swarm baseline indicates that this unique reconfiguration feature presents an overhead of only 1% when not used but can improve bandwidth significantly when used.


This study investigated the importance that junior and senior job-seeking undergraduates (Millennial generation members) place on transactional and relational work attributes; how ratings vary by gender, experiences with layoff, and intended loyalty; and how well ratings match with actual attributes offered by organizations. Results are discussed in context of psychological contract theory. Students (n = 199) and recent graduates working full-time (n = 180) took separate online survey. Students indicated the importance of various work attributes (Ng, Schweitzer, & Lyons, 2010), loyalty intentions, and other related questions. Graduates answered only work attribute questions related to their current employer. Work attributes were factored into new transactional (IMP-T; ∝ = .78) and relational scales (IMP-R; ∝ = .91). Key results indicated that students rated relational work attributes more highly than transactional attributes (p < .001); gender had no effect on importance ratings or intended loyalty; and students' importance ratings were above the workplace reality.


Low salinity water (LSW) injection is a promising Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) technique that has the potential to improve oil recovery and has been studied by many researchers. LSW flooding in carbonates has been widely evaluated by coreflooding tests in prior studies. A closer look at the literature on LSW in carbonates indicates a number of gaps and shortcomings. It is difficult to understand the exact relationship between different controlling parameters and the LSW effect in carbonates. The active mechanisms involved in oil recovery improvement are still uncertain and more analyses are required. To predict LSW performance and study the mechanisms of oil displacement, data collected from available experimental studies on LSW injection in carbonates were analyzed using data analysis approaches. We used linear regression to study the linear relationships between single parameters and the incremental recovery factor (RF). Correlations between rock, oil, and brine properties and tertiary RF were weak and negligible. Subsequently, we analyzed the effect of oil/brine parameters on LSW performance using multivariable linear regression. Relatively strong linear correlations were found for a combination of oil/brine parameters and RF. We also studied the nonlinear relationships between parameters by applying machine learning (ML) nonlinear models, such as artificial neural network (ANN), support vector machine (SVM), and decision tree (DT). These models showed better data fitting results compared to linear regression. Among the applied ML models, DT provided the best correlation for oil/brine parameters, as ANN and SVM overfitted the testing data. Finally, different mechanisms involved in the LSW effect were analyzed based on the changes in the effluent PDIs concentration, interfacial tension, pH, zeta potential, and pressure drop.


Quite often, public health care systems in developing countries are struggling because of incompetence and a lack of provider responsiveness to the needs of consumers. On the contrary, the private sector dominates the system of health provision. In recent years, contracting has been experimented as an approach to ensure delivery of comprehensive public health services in an efficient, effective, superior and fair manner and has generally thrived well. The state's healthcare system in Pakistan has suffered a lot, owing to structural fragmentation, resource scarcity, inefficiency and lack of functional specificity, gender insensitivity and inaccessibility. However, partnering with the private sector has shown some exceptional accomplishments. Though challenging but structural reforms, involving private health sector have become indispensable. The overall experience shows that up-scaling of such initiatives in the country would require lot of cautions to be taken by the government.


Constitutional interpretation is a serious matter in any political community committed to the rule of law. Widespread disagreement about the most fundamental moral issues is to be expected, and it is bound to play itself out in the interpretation of legal rights. The essays that make up this volume - contributed by some of the most accomplished legal philosophers and constitutional law scholars in the common law world - address three pressing issues in contemporary constitutional interpretation and constitutional theory: (1) the role of moral reasoning in constitutional interpretation; (2) the legitimacy and justification of judicial review; and (3) the place of unwritten constitutional principles in the constitutional order. Although these papers reflect the jurisdictional roots of their authors, they are theoretical works of wide application rather than doctrinal accounts of the workings of the constitution of any particular jurisdiction. Contents Part I Morality and the Enterprise of Interpretation 1. Steven D. Smith, "What Does Constitutional Interpretation Interpret?" 2. Jeremy Waldron, "Do Judges Reason Morally?" 3. W.J. Waluchow, "Constitutional Morality and Bills of Rights" 4. Bradley W. Miller, "Justification and Rights Limitations" Part II Judicial Review, Legitimacy, and Justification 5. Larry Alexander, "Constitutions, Judicial Review, Moral Rights, and Democracy: Disentangling the Issues" 6. David Dyzenhaus, "The Incoherence of Constitutional Positivism" 7. James Allan, "The Travails of Justice Waldron" 8. Aileen Kavanagh, "Deference or Defiance?: The Limits of the Judicial Role in Constitutional Adjudication" Part III Written and Unwritten Constitutional Principles 9. T.R.S. Allan, "Constitutional Justice and the Concept of Law" 10. Mark D. Walters, "Written Constitutions and Unwritten Constitutionalism" 11. Jeffrey Goldsworthy, "Unwritten Constitutional Principles"


Climate controls erosion and weathering on soil-mantled landscapes through diverse processes that have remained diffi cult to disentangle due to their complex interactions. We quantify denudation, soil and saprolite weathering, and soil transport near the base and crest of the western slope of the Sierra Nevada to examine how large differences in climate affect these processes. Depth profi les of fallout radionuclides and fi eld observations show relative differences in erosion and weathering processes at these two climatically diverse sites, and our data suggest fundamentally different patterns of soil production and transport mechanisms: biotically driven soil transport at low elevation, and surface erosion driven by overland fl ow at high elevation. Soil production rates from cosmogenic 10 Be decrease from 31.3 to 13.6 m/Ma with increasing soil depth at low elevation, but show uncertain depth dependence at the high elevation site. Our data also show a positive correlation between physical erosion and saprolite weathering at both sites. Highly weathered saprolites are overlain by weakly weathered and rapidly eroding soils, while chemically less depleted saprolites are overlain by slowly eroding, more weathered soils. Our data are among the fi rst to quantify the critical role of saprolite weathering in the evolution of actively eroding upland landscapes, and our results provide quantitative constraints on how different climates can shape hillslopes by driving processes of erosion and weathering.


Time series clustering is an active research area with applications in a wide range of fields. One key component in cluster analysis is determining a proper dissimilarity measure between two data objects, and many criteria have been proposed in the literature to assess dissimilarity between two time series. The R package TSclust is aimed to implement a large set of well-established peer-reviewed time series dissimilarity measures, including measures based on raw data, extracted features, underlying parametric models, complexity levels, and forecast behaviors. Computation of these measures allows the user to perform clustering by using conventional clustering algorithms. TSclust also includes a clustering procedure based on p values from checking the equality of generating models, and some utilities to evaluate cluster solutions. The implemented dissimilarity functions are accessible individually for an easier extension and possible use out of the clustering context. The main features of TSclust are described and examples of its use are presented.


The precise inner solutions of gravity field equations of hollow and solid spheres are calculated in this paper. To avoid space curvature infinite at the center of solid sphere, we set an integral constant to be zero directly at present. However, according to the theory of differential equation, the integral constant should be determined by the known boundary conditions of spherical surface, in stead of the metric at the spherical center. By considering that fact that the volumes of three dimensional hollow and solid spheres in curved space are different from that in flat space, the integral constants are proved to be nonzero. The results indicate that no matter what the masses and densities of hollow sphere and solid sphere are, there exist space-time singularities at the centers of hollow sphere and solid spheres. Meanwhile, the intensity of pressure at the center point of solid sphere can not be infinite. That is to say, the material can not collapse towards the center of so-called black hole. At the center and its neighboring region of solid sphere, pressure intensities become negative values. There may be a region for hollow sphere in which pressure intensities may become negative values too. The common hollow and solid spheres in daily live can not have such impenetrable characteristics. The results only indicate that the singularity black holes predicated by general relativity are caused by the descriptive method of curved space-time actually. If black holes exist really in the universe, they can only be the Newtonian black holes, not the Einstein's black holes. The results revealed in the paper are consistent with the Hawking theorem of singularity actually. They can be considered as the practical examples of the theorem.


We describe an unsupervised method for learning a probabilistic grammar of an object from a set of training examples. Our approach is invariant to the scale and rotation of the objects. We illustrate our approach using thirteen objects from the Caltech 101 database. In addition, we learn the model of a hybrid object class where we do not know the specific object or its position, scale or pose. This is illustrated by learning a hybrid class consisting of faces, motorbikes, and airplanes. The individual objects can be recovered as different aspects of the grammar for the object class. In all cases, we validate our results by learning the probability grammars from training datasets and evaluating them on the test datasets. We compare our method to alternative approaches. The advantages of our approach is the speed of inference (under one second), the parsing of the object, and increased accuracy of performance. Moreover, our approach is very general and can be applied to a large range of objects and structures.


Assuming no prior knowledge or technical skills, Getting Started with Business Analytics: Insightful Decision-Making explores the contents, capabilities, and applications of business analytics. It bridges the worlds of business and statistics and describes business analytics from a non-commercial standpoint. The authors demystify the main concepts and terminologies and give many examples of real-world applications. The first part of the book introduces business data and recent technologies that have promoted fact-based decision-making. The authors look at how business intelligence differs from business analytics. They also discuss the main components of a business analytics application and the various requirements for integrating business with analytics. The second part presents the technologies underlying business analytics: data mining and data analytics. The book helps you understand the key concepts and ideas behind data mining and shows how data mining has expanded into data analytics when considering new types of data such as network and text data. The third part explores business analytics in depth, covering customer, social, and operational analytics. Each chapter in this part incorporates hands-on projects based on publicly available data. Helping you make sound decisions based on hard data, this self-contained guide provides an integrated framework of data mining in business analytics. It takes you on a journey through this data-rich world, showing you how to deploy business analytics solutions in your organization.


The ever-increasing availability of information, made possible by the Internet today, transforms the way people perceive and acquire knowledge. The following contribution maps the effects of this epistemological shift in the literary form of the novel, hypothesizing that the notion of the sublime helps us understand how literary fiction dramatizes this shift. The sublime aesthetic, which attempts to present the unpresentable, reflects the way the unfathomable scope of the Internet challenges the imagination. My narrative analysis draws on key concepts from cyberculture and media theory, such as virtuality, and links them to narrative categories such as setting, character and narration. In that way, my research will improve our understanding of how Dutch and Flemish literary fiction reflects upon the Internet and how the genre of the novel may change because of it.


In this work, boosting the efficiency of Mean-Shift Tracking using random sampling is proposed. We obtained the surprising result tha t mean-shift tracking requires only very few samples. Our experiments demonstrate that robust tracking can be achieved with as few as even 5 random samples from the image of the object. As the computational complexity is considerably reduced and becomes independent of object size, the processor can be used to handle other processing tasks while tracking. It is demonstrated t hat random sampling significantly reduces the processing time by two order s of magnitude for typical object sizes. Additionally, with random sampli ng, we propose a new optimal on-line feature selection algorithm for objec t tracking which maximizes a similarity measure for the weights of the RGB channels. It selects the weights of the RGB channels which discriminate the object and the background the most using Steepest Descent. Moreover, the spatial distribution of pixels representing the object is estimated for sp atial weighting. Arbitrary spatial weighting is incorporated into Mean-Shi ft Tracking to represent objects with arbitrary or changing shapes by picking up non-uniform random samples. Experimental results demonstrate that our tracker with online feature selection and arbitrary spatial weighting out performs the original mean-shift tracker with improved computational efficiency and tracking accuracy.


The multilateral analysis of reusable launch vehicles (RLV) has been carried out by the authors' team within 8 years. The studies are based on the world experience and also on the large practical experience of Khrunichev Space Center in designing, production, and operation of aerospacecraft (incuding reentry one). The analysis results are monosemantic and are the following: The only one feasible principle for the nearest future is a mid-air retrieval (MAR), which will permit potentially the creation of the effective RLV. For practical realization of the results obtained, the authors in cooperation with M. L. Mil's Moscow Helicopter Plant (MHP) and "Parachute Design" Scientific Institute have developed the launch vehicles' booster MAR technology (including the structure and principles of main elements formation). The general conclusions of the mar technology are the following: (i ) it can be realized with a minimal technical risk at the earliest time (2-3 years); (ii ) it can be applied to the existing expendable launch vehicles (ELV) and can be easily adapted to different launch vehicles; (iii ) it can be demonstrated at minimal costs and time; and (iν ) it permits the creation of the most economically effective RLV (budget savings will be up to 30% and in case of using a special operation technology, the savings can attain 41.5%).


Abstract Yoram Barzel was always aware that competition is ubiquitous and takes many forms, and he was among the first to analyze settings where individuals compete on the basis of time, rather than price. This paper applies his insights to study the Oklahoma land rushes, where thousands of individuals raced to establish property rights to land. A simple modification of Barzel's analysis generates a model of rationing by racing, and we test its predictions using new data on the timing and location of over 73,000 homestead claims within the five distinct land rushes and one lottery. We find that increases in land quality or decreases in the cost of racing generate corresponding increases in the equilibrium speed, implying that potential rents are dissipated by investments in speed. The analysis highlights the lasting significance of Barzel's insights regarding non-price competition.


Massively parallel measurement techniques can be used for generating hypotheses about the molecular underpinnings of a biological systems. This thesis investigates how domain knowledge can be fused to data from different sources in order to generate more sophisticated hypotheses and improved analyses. We find our applications in the related fields of cell cycle regulation and cancer chemotherapy. In our cell cycle studies we design a detector of periodic expression and use it to generate hypotheses about transcriptional regulation during the course of the cell cycle in synchronized yeast cultures as well as investigate if domain knowledge about gene function can explain whether a gene is periodically expressed or not. We then generate hypotheses that suggest how periodic expression that depends on how the cells were perturbed into synchrony are regulated. The hypotheses suggest where and which transcription factors bind upstreams of genes that are regulated by the cell cycle. In our cancer chemotherapy investigations we first study how a method for identifiyng co-regulated genes associated with chemoresponse to drugs in cell lines is affected by domain knowledge about the genetic relationships between the cell lines. We then turn our attention to problems that arise in microarray based predictive medicine, were there typically are few samples available for learning the predictor and study two different means of alleviating the inherent trade-off betweeen allocation of design and test samples. First we investigate whether independent tests on the design data can be used for improving estimates of a predictors performance without inflicting a bias in the estimate. Then, motivated by recent developments in microarray based predictive medicine, we propose an algorithm that can use unlabeled data for selecting features and consequently improve predictor performance without wasting valuable labeled data.


Background. Psychosocial factors are important determinants of health behaviors and diet-related outcomes, yet relatively little work has explored their relation to food-purchasing and preparation behaviors in low-income populations. Aim. To evaluate the psychosocial factors associated with food-related behaviors. Methods. Cross-sectional data collected from 465 low-income African American adult caregivers in the baseline evaluation of the B'more Healthy Communities for Kids obesity prevention trial. Questionnaires were used to assess household sociodemographic characteristics, food sources frequently used, and food preparation and food acquisition behaviors. Multiple linear regression models explored the associations between caregiver psychosocial variables and food-related behaviors, controlling for caregivers' age, sex, household income, household size, and food assistance participation. Results. Caregivers purchased prepared food at carry-outs on average 3.8 times (standard deviation [SD] = 4.6) within 30 days. Less healthy foods were acquired 2 times more frequently than healthier foods (p < .001). Higher food-related behavioral intention and self-efficacy scores were positively associated with healthier food acquisition (β = 0.7; 95% confidence interval [CI] [0.09, 1.4]; β = 0.04; 95% CI [0.02, 0.06]) and negatively associated with frequency of purchasing at prepared food sources (β = −0.4; 95% CI [−0.6, −0.2]; β = −0.5; 95% CI [−0.7, −0.3]), respectively. Higher nutrition knowledge was associated with lower frequency of purchasing food at prepared food venues (β = −0.7; 95% CI: [−1.2, −0.2]). Discussion. Our findings indicate a positive association between psychosocial determinants and healthier food acquisition and food preparation behaviors. Conclusion. Interventions that affect psychosocial factors (i.e., food-related behavioral intentions and self-efficacy) may have the potential to increase healthier food preparation and food-purchasing practices among low-income African American families.


Transient and harmonic coupling effects between parallel overhead lines are normally modeled via frequency-dependent traveling-wave-type transmission-line models. Several electromagnetic transient programs rely on a line model based on a constant transformation matrix and modes (FD-line). These line models can, however, give substantial errors in the studies of coupled disturbance from one line to a neighbor line. In this paper, we show that the accuracy of the FD-line in these applications can be greatly improved by representing the line system by independent FD-lines in combination with rational models that take the mutual coupling between the lines into account. A mode-revealing transformation is used for further enhancing the accuracy of the coupling effect. The approach is demonstrated for the simulation of transient coupling between two parallel overhead lines caused by line energization and for assessing the disturbance of a railway signaling system from a neighboring overhead line caused by a transformer inrush current and fault transients.


A number of developing country governments have introduced ambitious anti-poverty programs in recent years, but the dynamic effects of these initiatives on governments' election performance remain poorly understood. Especially in contexts with low program implementation quality, public support for government interventions may be high initially but decline over time as citizens observe the actual program benefits. This paper analyzes the election impacts of the largest public-works program in the world, the Indian NREGS. Using a regression-discontinuity framework, the results suggest that length of program exposure and implementation quality matter: voter support in low implementation quality areas declines with longer program access. This effect is muted in well-implemented areas, where voter turnout is higher and incumbents of any party affiliation also benefit. The government payoff from implementing a large anti-poverty program may therefore be short-lived unless implementation challenges are resolved.


The aim was to gain a deeper understanding of individual emotion-focused coping strategies and institutionalised norms as regards emotion regulation in a short-and long-term perspective in relation to acute stressful situations that contain moral dilemmas. 15 participants at different hierarchical levels in the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF) were interviewed. Several individual emotion regulation strategies and organisational norms for emotional expressiveness were identified. These were integrated into a theoretical model. The study contributes by explicating a context-specific emotion culture that gives limited space for emotional expression as it is necessary to remain firm and cold in acute situations that include moral dilemmas. Leaders must be able to minimise emotional displays in order to contribute to operational efficiency (termed emotional containing capacity). Potential conflicts between a well-developed emotional containing capacity in acute situations and long-term adaptation to organisational norms in daily life after missions and practical implications are discussed.


Membrane bioreactor (MBR) activated sludge process is increasingly used in wastewater treatment due to its excellence in solid-liquid separation and superior effluent quality, smaller bioreactor volume and foot print. However, operational issues such as membrane fouling and sludge bulking affect its broad applications. As solids retention time (SRT) and hydraulic retention time (HRT) are the most important operating parameters in activated sludge systems, this research determined the effect of different SRTs (180 d, 90 d and 45 d) and HRTs (24 h, 12 h, and 6 h) on the change in sludge settling and filtration properties and membrane fouling trends while keeping the SRT/HRT ratio constant throughout the study period. The biomass concentrations increased from about 8,000 to 10,000 mg COD/L as SRT and HRT decreased proportionally. As SRT decreased to 45 d and HTR decreased to 6 h, significant sludge bulking and poor filtration with high Time to Filter (TTF) values were observed, largely due to the operation at low DO concentrations under high organic loading conditions. However, the system recovered in about 50 d after correction of low DO concentrations in the MBR.


Elastically stretchable metal interconnects are re- quired for electronic skin. To date, the resistance of such thin-film interconnects has been found to increase much more with mechan- ical strain than expected from purely geometrical deformation of the conductor. It has been discovered that the resistance change due to fully elastic deformation is minimal when the metal films are deposited on pyramidal nanopatterned surfaces. The nanopattern constrains the film to purely elastic deformation by localizing the microcracks that are formed in the conductor during stretching. Between 0% and 25% mechanical strain, the electrical resistance increases by only 60%, which is in close agreement with purely geometric deformation.


ABSTRACT Under starvation conditions, a swarm of Myxococcus xanthus cells will undergo development, a multicellular process culminating in the formation of many aggregates called fruiting bodies, each of which contains up to 100,000 spores. The mechanics of symmetry breaking and the self-organization of cells into fruiting bodies is an active area of research. Here we use microcinematography and automated image processing to quantify several transient features of developmental dynamics. An analysis of experimental data indicates that aggregation reaches its steady state in a highly nonmonotonic fashion. The number of aggregates rapidly peaks at a value 2- to 3-fold higher than the final value and then decreases before reaching a steady state. The time dependence of aggregate size is also nonmonotonic, but to a lesser extent: average aggregate size increases from the onset of aggregation to between 10 and 15 h and then gradually decreases thereafter. During this process, the distribution of aggregates transitions from a nearly random state early in development to a more ordered state later in development. A comparison of experimental results to a mathematical model based on the traffic jam hypothesis indicates that the model fails to reproduce these dynamic features of aggregation, even though it accurately describes its final outcome. The dynamic features of M. xanthus aggregation uncovered in this study impose severe constraints on its underlying mechanisms.


Fibromyalgia syndrome is mainly characterized by pain, fatigue, and sleep disruption. The etiology of fibromyalgia is still unclear: if central sensitization is considered to be the main mechanism involved, then many other factors, genetic, immunological, and hormonal, may play an important role. The diagnosis is typically clinical (there are no laboratory abnormalities) and the physician must concentrate on pain and on its features. Additional symptoms (e.g., Raynaud's phenomenon, irritable bowel disease, and heat and cold intolerance) can be associated with this condition. A careful differential diagnosis is mandatory: fibromyalgia is not a diagnosis of exclusion. Since 1990, diagnosis has been principally based on the two major diagnostic criteria defined by the ACR. Recently, new criteria have been proposed. The main goals of the treatment are to alleviate pain, increase restorative sleep, and improve physical function. A multidisciplinary approach is optimal. While most nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and opioids have limited benefit, an important role is played by antidepressants and neuromodulating antiepileptics: currently duloxetine (NNT for a 30% pain reduction 7.2), milnacipran (NNT 19), and pregabalin (NNT 8.6) are the only drugs approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of fibromyalgia. In addition, nonpharmacological treatments should be associated with drug therapy.


Background: Low back pain (LBP) is one of the world wide leading causes of limited activity and disability. Impaired motor control has been found to be one of the possible factors related to the development or persistence of LBP. In particularly, motor control strategies seemed to be altered in situations requiring reactive responses of the trunk counteracting sudden external forces. However, muscular responses were mostly assessed in (quasi) static testing situations under simplified laboratory conditions. Comprehensive investigations in motor control strategies during dynamic everyday situations are lacking. The present research project aimed to investigate muscular compensation strategies following unexpected gait perturbations in people with and without LBP. A novel treadmill stumbling protocol was tested for its validity and reliability to provoke muscular reflex responses at the trunk and the lower extremities (study 1). Thereafter, motor control strategies in response to sudden perturbations were compared between people with LBP and asymptomatic controls (CTRL) (study 2). In accordance with more recent concepts of motor adaptation to pain, it was hypothesized that pain may have profound consequences on motor control strategies in LBP. Therefore, it was investigated whether differences in compensation strategies were either consisting of changes local to the painful area at the trunk, or also being present in remote areas such as at the lower extremities.
Methods: All investigations were performed on a custom build split-belt treadmill simulating trip-like events by unexpected rapid deceleration impulses (amplitude: 2 m/s; duration: 100 ms; 200 ms after heel contact) at 1m/s baseline velocity. A total number of 5 (study 1) and 15 (study 2) right sided perturbations were applied during walking trials. Muscular activities were assessed by surface electromyography (EMG), recorded at 12 trunk muscles and 10 (study 1) respectively 5 (study 2) leg muscles. EMG latencies of muscle onset [ms] were retrieved by a semi-automatic detection method. EMG amplitudes (root mean square (RMS)) were assessed within 200 ms post perturbation, normalized to full strides prior to any perturbation [RMS%]. Latency and amplitude investigations were performed for each muscle individually, as well as for pooled data of muscles grouped by location. Characteristic pain intensity scores (CPIS; 0-100 points, von Korff) based on mean intensity ratings reported for current, worst and average pain over the last three months were used to allocate participants into LBP (≥30 points) or CTRL (≤10 points). Test-retest reproducibility between measurements was determined by a compilation of measures of reliability. Differences in muscular activities between LBP and CTRL were analysed descriptively for individual muscles; differences based on grouped muscles were statistically tested by using a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA, α =0.05).
Results: Thirteen individuals were included into the analysis of study 1. EMG latencies revealed reflex muscle activities following the perturbation (mean: 89 ms). Respective EMG amplitudes were on average 5-fold of those assessed in unperturbed strides, though being characterized by a high inter-subject variability. Test-retest reliability of muscle latencies showed a high reproducibility, both for muscles at the trunk and legs. In contrast, reproducibility of amplitudes was only weak to moderate for individual muscles, but increased when being assessed as a location specific outcome summary of grouped muscles. Seventy-six individuals were eligible for data analysis in study 2. Group allocation according to CPIS resulted in n=25 for LBP and n=29 for CTRL. Descriptive analysis of activity onsets revealed longer delays for all muscles within LBP compared to CTRL (trunk muscles: mean 10 ms; leg muscles: mean 3 ms). Onset latencies of grouped muscles revealed statistically significant differences between LBP and CTRL for right (p=0.009) and left (p=0.007) abdominal muscle groups. EMG amplitude analysis showed a high variability in activation levels between individuals, independent of group assignment or location. Statistical testing of grouped muscles indicated no significant difference in amplitudes between LBP and CTRL.
Discussion: The present research project could show that perturbed treadmill walking is suitable to provoke comprehensive reflex responses at the trunk and lower extremities, both in terms of sudden onsets and amplitudes of reflex activity. Moreover, it could demonstrate that sudden loadings under dynamic conditions provoke an altered reflex timing of muscles surrounding the trunk in people with LBP compared to CTRL. In line with previous investigations, compensation strategies seemed to be deployed in a task specific manner, with differences between LBP and CTRL being evident predominately at ventral sides. No muscular alterations exceeding the trunk could be found when being assessed under the automated task of locomotion. While rehabilitation programs tailored towards LBP are still under debate, it is tempting to urge the implementation of dynamic sudden loading incidents of the trunk to enhance motor control and thereby to improve spinal protection. Moreover, in respect to the consistently observed task specificity of muscular compensation strategies, such a rehabilitation program should be rich in variety.


Prior research suggests that it is through providing direct support to citizens that public servants gain a source of meaning in their work; and affirm their public service identities. This article explores how employees who work in a public service support function and receive little, if any, direct feedback from citizens may maintain their public service identity during their back office work. The study finds, against much previous empirical research, that these back office employees achieve positive identity affirmation through bureaucratic work. The findings also show that they affirm their caring and community focused public service identity by noting their superiority in this regard when compared with colleagues. However, this augmented self-narrative results in many experiencing feelings of isolation. The article discusses how these findings extend the understanding of identity affirmation among back office public servants and may improve our ability to effectively support these workers.


Agricultural land systems are the result of human interactions with the natural environment, and subjective evidence of socio-economic and environmental interactions has been demonstrated. Nevertheless, it is still difficult to analyze empirically the link between agricultural market and policy, as well as the environmental response due to changes in crop management by local stakeholders. In this study, we propose a cross investigation and analysis to bring the link between vegetation cover, policy, market and farmer's behavior to light. Our methodology is a combination of a rational positive and analogical approach between the quantifiable and non-quantifiable agents on a temporal basis. The method is applied to a dominant mono-crop agricultural watershed in Southern Italy that has been dedicated to durum wheat cultivation. In this region, we studied the relationship between the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), durum wheat market price, vegetation cover and land allocation. As a first step, we conducted a separate analysis for each factor, exploiting Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite observed Leaf Area Index (LAI) to analyze the land vegetation space–time distribution over the period 2000–2014 and three Land Satellite (Landsat) validated images as check-points for the agricultural pattern and CAP's reforms. We used the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) and Eurostat data to investigate the on-farm accountancy and the durum wheat market price changes, respectively. Based on the study period, we developed a storyline of the major relevant CAP's policy changes. In a second step, we conducted a comparative analysis where the CAP's reforms were used as interpretational support, the land allocation and the on-farm accountability for CAP's implementation, the price of durum wheat and the LAI for analytical comparison. We found interesting insights regarding the non-agronomic driving forces of LAI dynamics. The behavior of the individual farmers is influenced by the CAP policy that has been implemented by using profitability as the stimulus for the decision making of the farmer. This explains the correlation of the trend between the market price, the LAI of durum wheat and their associated dynamics.


The overall purpose of the thesis is to explore the role of learning in production improvement work.The research questions are:How does learning in production relate to investments in new machinery for existing processes and new processes? How is learning in production related to using production improvement methods?The answer to the first question is that regardless if the investment is in machinery for existing processes or new processes, learning plays an important role, both in the specification phase and in the production phase. In the specification/purchasing phase learning will lead to a better ability to specify the process equipment and to evaluate different supplier proposals. In the production phase learning can positively affect both the availability and the pace of the production process.The findings concerning the second question is that to be able to use improvement methods they have to be learned, and by using the methods you learn. The methods facilitate learning. It is possible to learn and improve without methods but it is not possible to use improvement methods without learning them. The ability (and willingness) to learn is more fundamental than improvement methods. Therefore production improvement projects depend more on learning ability than on improvement methods.When improving a production system investment in equipment and improvement methods are important. But there is a common decisive factor for both investments in equipment and improvement methods and that is the ability to learn.


This chapter describes the approach taken, the findings and the implications for land managers of research into the influences of land use and land management on water quality in Tasmanian rivers. The objective was to assist future environmental management decisions and investment in water quality protection. Our team approached this task through six activities that spanned four spatial scales (multiple catchment, single catchment, paddock and site) using a combination of historic gauging station data, aerial imagery and modelling. This work resulted in new information on characteristic nutrient generation rates for different land uses, modelled daily nutrient and turbidity concentrations, compared the effectiveness of current cropping practices for managing water and nutrient leaching, assessed the impact of past riparian intervention on water quality and included a simplified conceptual model of the major drivers of nutrient loads and turbidity in Tasmanian catchments. The core of this multi-scale approach, if not all the results, should be of wide relevance to different landscapes across Australia and elsewhere where there are insufficient data and information to be of direct use for managing water quality.


The recent proliferation of social enterprises around the world has attracted considerable interest from the research community. However, while attention has understandably focused on important issues related to short-term performance, governance and accountability of social enterprises, much less attention has been paid to their longer-term growth process. In the paper we aim to address this research gap by setting out the conceptual underpinnings of a more historically-informed approach. The paper opens with a critical review of the recent growth literature, and a particular focus on the unfolding tension between social and economic imperatives. The argument is illustrated through a comparative case analysis of three social enterprises located in the United Kingdom. Cross-case comparison, structured around the preceding conceptual discussion, is used to identify common themes. The concluding section indicates how this approach might be further developed and sets out implications for social enterprise policy and practice.


Consumers in developed countries regularly voice concerns regarding the working conditions under which goods, especially clothing and electronics, are manufactured in developing countries. Nobody wants slavery sneakers or a sweatshop iPhone; we all want to purchase fair trade goods. But how do we know we can trust a fair-trade label? Such certificates are given by private transnational organizations, which fill a regulatory vacuum created by the persisting weakness of international organizations such as the International Labor Organization (ILO), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and the World Health Organization (WHO). Absent any global oversight framework that supervises the work of such private regulators, it is unclear whether these certificates can be trusted, or whether they represent a mere whitewashing/greenwashing strategy, which allows multinational enterprises to turn a blind eye to manufacturing conditions across the less visible tiers of their global supply chains. To increase the accountability of this system, we propose holding private transnational regulators liable in tort if their actions (or omissions) generated harms. We support this proposal through a comparative legal analysis and discuss the practicalities of its implementation. We argue that this proposal will support and facilitate positive network effects in the global private regulation system. * Assistant Professor, Bar-Ilan University Law School. ** Professor of Law, Dean, Bar-Ilan University Law School. Published by Penn Carey Law: Legal Scholarship Repository, 668 U. Pa. J. Int'l L. [Vol. 43:3