Background Substantial residual cardiovascular risk remains after optimal LDL lowering in patients of established coronary artery disease. A number of therapeutic agents that raise HDL-C have been tested in clinical trials to cover this risk. However, the results of clinical trials are conflicting. Objectives To determine whether raising HDL-C with pharmacologic therapies translates into beneficial cardiovascular outcomes and to find out if this change was proportional to the percentage change in HDL levels. Methods Electronic and printed sources were searched up to August, 2013 for randomised controlled trials (RCTs) using at least one of the HDL raising therapies for secondary prevention of adverse cardiovascular events over optimal LDL levels. Data from eligible studies were pooled for the following outcomes: all cause mortality, cardiovascular disease mortality, hospitalization for unstable angina, non-fatal myocardial infarction, coronary revascularization and ischemic stroke. Mantel Haensnzel fixed effect model was used preferentially. Meta-regression was done to see the correlation of change in HDL levels and cardiovascular outcomes. Pooled odds ratios with 95% confidence interval (CI) were calculated. Results A total of 12 RCTs including 26,858 patients with follow up period ranging from 1 year to 6.2 years were included in the analysis. Pooled analysis showed no significant difference in all-cause mortality between the treatment and control group (Pooled OR 1.07; 95% CI 0.98–1.16, p = 0.15). No significant difference was found between the groups for any of the secondary outcomes. Similarly no correlation was seen between percentage change in HDL and adverse cardiovascular outcomes on meta-regression analysis. Conclusion Increasing HDL levels via pharmacological manipulation beyond optimal lipid lowering therapy for secondary prevention is not beneficial.


Handheld devices have become sufficiently powerful that it is easy to create, disseminate, and access digital content (e.g., photos, videos) using them. The volume of such content is growing rapidly and, from the perspective of each user, selecting relevant content is key. To this end, each user may run a trust model - a software agent that keeps track of who disseminates content that its user finds relevant. This agent does so by assigning an initial trust value to each producer for a specific category (context); then, whenever it receives new content, the agent rates the content and accordingly updates its trust value for the producer in the content category. However, a problem with such an approach is that, as the number of content categories increases, so does the number of trust values to be initially set. This paper focuses on how to effectively set initial trust values. The most sophisticated of the current solutions employ predefined context ontologies, using which initial trust in a given context is set based on that already held in similar contexts. However, universally accepted (and time invariant) ontologies are rarely found in practice. For this reason, we propose a mechanism called TRULLO (trust bootstrapping by latently lifting context) that assigns initial trust values based only on local information (on the ratings of its user's past experiences) and that, as such, does not rely on third-party recommendations. We evaluate the effectiveness of TRULLO by simulating its use in an informal antique market setting. We also evaluate the computational cost of a J2ME implementation of TRULLO on a mobile phone.


The United States Supreme Court famously labeled copyright the engine of free expression because it provides a vital economic incentive for much of the literature, commentary, music, art, and film that makes up our public discourse. Yet today's greatly expanded copyright law often does the opposite - it can be used to quash news reporting, political commentary, church dissent, historical scholarship, cultural critique, and artistic expression.In Copyright's Paradox, Neil Weinstock Netanel explores the tensions between copyright law and free speech concerns, revealing how copyright law can impose unacceptable burdens on speech. Netanel provides concrete illustrations of how copyright often prevents speakers from effectively conveying their message, tracing this conflict across both traditional and digital media and considering current controversies such as the YouTube and MySpace copyright infringement cases, Hip-hop music and digital sampling, and the Google Book Search litigation. The author juxtaposes the dramatic expansion of copyright holders' proprietary control against the individual's newly found ability to digitally cut, paste, edit, remix, and distribute sound recordings, movies, TV programs, graphics, and texts the world over. He tests whether, in light of these developments and others, copyright still serves as a vital engine of free expression and he assesses how copyright does - and does not - burden speech. Taking First Amendment values as his lodestar, Netanel argues that copyright should be limited to how it can best promote robust debate and expressive diversity, and he presents a blueprint for how that can be accomplished. Copyright and free speech will always stand in some tension. But, as Netanel demonstrates, there are ways in which copyright can continue to serve as an engine of free expression while leaving ample room for speakers to build on copyrighted works to convey their message, express their personal commitments, and fashion new art.


1.The oxygen consumption of Sabella decreases soon after the concentration of dissolved oxygen in the sea water falls below the value corresponding to air saturation both at 10 and 17° C. Above air saturation at 17° C there is no significant rise in oxygen consumption. 2. The oxygen consumption of Sabella whose chlorocruorin has been converted to carboxychlorocruorin is lower than that of normal worms. This is the case at air saturation of the water and at oxygen concentrations below air saturation both at 10 and 17° C. 3. The fall in oxygen consumption of the animals after treatment with carbon monoxide is not due to an action of the latter on cell enzymes. 4. It follows that chlorocruorin functions as an oxygen carrier in Sabella at all temperatures and oxygen pressures to which the animals are subjected in nature.


Previous studies have found discourse markers to be represented with only low frequencies in Early Modern English
 trial proceedings, especially when compared to other dialogic and fictional text types from the same period. Nevertheless, they
 comprise certain classes of markers, such as contrastive markers, which operate on different levels of discourse. This study aims
 to provide further insights into the use of the coordinator but in a sociopragmatically annotated corpus of trial
 proceedings from the period 1560 to 1760. Drawing on contextual information, the analysis will assess the distribution of
 but throughout the Early Modern English period and address certain peaks in its use. In addition, the
 sociopragmatic information included in the corpus will be consulted to discover which trial participants used the form repeatedly
 in their speech and with which functions. Overall, this study will therefore offer an innovative sociopragmatic profile of
 but as a contrastive marker in Early Modern English trials.


This thesis presents the design and microfabrication technology of a tip-tilt, 2 degree of freedom "mirror system" made out of Silicon On Insulator (SOI) wafers with two movable mirrors that have diameter of 10 mm. The system was intended for precise beam steering applications and tracking for inter-satellite telecommunication. Implementation of two mirrors allowed one mirror to have large static mechanical scan angles (±3.5°) and the other to have fast fine pointing capabilities within ±0.2° static mechanical scan angle. The first mirror was magnetically actuated and has a resonance frequency of 200 Hz and the large rotation angle. The second mirror was designed to use either electrostatic actuation or electromagnetic actuation. The resonance frequency is 1 KHz. The main objective of this thesis was the microfabrication of large mirrors (10 mm) and actuators. The study of upper limits of achievable resonant frequencies in combination with static deflection was another major aim of the project, as well as optimization of the flatness of the mirrors. The undertaken research presents a study of different non-contact actuation schemes for use in MOEMS devices, namely electrostatic and magnetic actuation schemes. Determination of the best magnetic actuation scheme for use in this thesis was carried out according to the design constraints and size limitations. It was concluded that the best magnetic actuation scheme consists of a moving magnet and a microfabricated stationary coil. This scheme created high force and the stationary microfabricated coils could easily dissipate heat through conduction into a heat sink. This configuration was of great advantage in space where heat convection does not exist. The considered electrostatic schemes included parallel plate actuators and vertical comb actuators. The vertical comb actuator was chosen to be fabricated due to its scalability that allows the microfabrication process to be easily adapted to smaller or larger devices. The microfabrication and implementation of the magnetically actuated mirrors was proven to be very straightforward resulting in high yield and uniformity of both the high and low frequency devices. The microfabrication of the electrostatic actuator was also achieved successfully. The operation performance of the electrostatically actuated mirror was not as satisfactory as the magnetically actuated mirrors. It was concluded that electrostatic actuation might be more suited to smaller devices, rather than the devices designed in the present study. The fabrication and actuation performance of the components of a "mirror system" that combines fast and large angle actuation was successfully demonstrated in this thesis. Very good mirror flatnesses were also obtained with RMS flatness of λ/10 for near infrared wavelengths. This project shows the general advantage of magnetic actuation for large MOEMS devices with large actuation ranges and proves the feasibility of their fabrication. Potential applications of these devices are robotic 3D vision, imaging LIDARs (Light Detection And Ranging), docking sensors and inter-satellite laser communications.


Since the times of the old Arab grammarians, the syllable has played a major role in the phonology of classical as well as colloquial Arabic. In the 1970s, phonologists investigated Cairene Arabic (CA) syllable structure and found it to be the domain of some phonological processes, such as emphatic spread, CVC syllables light word final but heavy word internally, limitations on consonant clusters in certain positions of a word, and epenthesis of a vowel to break consonant clusters if there happen to be more than two consonants in word concatenation. This paper discusses some CA phonological phenomena investigated through different theories in generative phonology, i.e. rule based, autosegmental and Optimality Theory (OT). An overview of early theories is given. Early generative theories contributed substantially to the theory of the syllable of CA; however, each theory was able to explain a given phonological phenomenon. It is through the generative Optimality Theoretic approach that more than one phenomenon can be described and analyzed. The paper's aim is not to compare between the different theories, but to describe the progression CA syllable structure analysis took in generative phonology. Unlike earlier research which based conclusions on some CA words mixed with some other classical Arabic words pronounced by CA native speakers, this paper presents an Optimality Theoretic analysis that is based on uniquely CA phonetic outputs. The analysis finds that some syllable structure constraints are high ranked and inviolable such as ONSET, and *[μ μ μ]σ. The study also shows that OT analysis can illustrate and explain in one representation, i.e. tableau two different phonological phenomena, insertion and deletion of a vowel in consonant clusters, despite their relatedness to separate prosodic domains, the syllable, the prosodic word, and the phrase. This is carried out by analyzing the ranking, relationship and interaction between the following constraints, ONSET MAX-IO, *[μ μ μ], *COMPLEX CODA, DEP-IO >> NOCODA, *APPENDIX; -*V,+hi]$:, ALIGNR (σ, PrWd), and LINEARITY. The study analyzes data that is mainly from Cairene spoken Arabic, attempting to fill a gap created by one of the contentious issues related to studies of the phonology of CA, and that is mixing between colloquial Cairene and classical Arabic.


Each paper needs an abstract of up to 250 words and should be structured as follows: Background: What is the major motive that prompted the study? Objectives: What is the purpose of the study? Methods: How was the study done? Results: Most important findings. Conclusions: Most important conclusions. Structured abstracts are not needed for reviews. Footnotes: Footnotes should be avoided. When essential, they are numbered consecutively and typed at the foot of the appropriate page. Units: All articles must be submitted with measurements expressed in SI units. Tables and illustrations: Tables and illustrations (both numbered in Arabic numerals) should be prepared on separate pages. Tables require a heading and figures a legend. Due to technical reasons, figures with a screen background should not be submitted. When possible, group several illustrations in one block for reproduction (max. size 180  223 mm) or provide crop marks. Electronically submitted b/w half-tone and color illustrations must have a final resolution of 300 dpi after scaling (final size), line art drawings one of 800–1,200 dpi. Figure files should not be embedded in a document file but submitted separately. References: In the text identify references by Arabic numerals [in square brackets]. Material submitted for publication but not yet accepted should be noted as [unpublished data] and not be included in the reference list. The list of references should include only those publications which are cited in the text. Do not alphabetize; number references in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text. The surnames of the authors followed by initials should be given. There should be no punctuation other than a comma to separate the authors. Preferably, please cite all authors. Abbreviate journal names according to the Index Medicus system. Also see International Committee of Medical Journal Editors: Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals (www. icmje.org). Authors using EndNote® may choose the format setting for Intervirology for the correct format of references. Examples (a) Papers published in periodicals: Vilhelmsson M, Johansson C, Jacobsson-Ekman G, Crameri R, Zargari A, Scheynius A: The Malassezia sympodialis allergen Mala s 11 induces human dendritic cell maturation, in contrast to its human homologue manganese superoxide dismutase. Int Arch Allergy Immunol 2007;143:155–162. (b) Papers published only with DOI numbers: Theoharides TC, Boucher W, Spear K: Serum interleukin-6 reflects disease severity and osteoporosis in mastocytosis patients. Int Arch Allergy Immunol DOI: 10.1159/000063858. (c) Monographs: Matthews DE, Farewell VT: Using and Understanding Medical Statistics, ed 4, revised. Basel, Karger, 2007. (d) Edited books: Bartalena L: Prevention; in Wiersinga WM, Kahaly GJ (eds): Graves' Orbitopathy: A Multidisciplinary Approach – Questions and Answers, ed 2, revised. Basel, Karger, 2010, pp 248–254.


Over the past two decades, there has been a marked increase in partisan social polarization, leaving scholars in search of solutions to partisan conflict. The psychology of intergroup relations identifies empathy as one of the key mechanisms that reduces intergroup conflict, and some have suggested that a lack of empathy has contributed to partisan polarization. Yet, empathy may not always live up to this promise. We argue that, in practice, the experience of empathy is biased toward one's ingroup and can actually exacerbate political polarization. First, using a large, national sample, we demonstrate that higher levels of dispositional empathic concern are associated with higher levels of affective polarization. Second, using an experimental design, we show that individuals high in empathic concern show greater partisan bias in evaluating contentious political events. Taken together, our results suggest that, contrary to popular views, higher levels of dispositional empathy actually facilitate partisan polarization.


We present the general architecture of the GI2T/REGAIN control system. Based on a Graphical User Interface and different client-server communications, the system has to control both telescopes, the delay line, the beam-combiner, the data acquisition system and the real-time processing used as fringe tracker. We also describe in details the implementation of a real-time fringe tracker based on 4 monochromatic images and which used the fractional excess algorithm. Numerical simulations are shown. The control system is also dedicated to the acquisition of all the relevant data for the visibility calibration. We will also describe in details the data reduction package that provides the corrected visibilities. This architecture is very general and robust and has been developed having in mind that GI2T/REGAIN should be used by a wide community of astronomers.


Background: Racial inequality in the U.S. is typically described in terms of stark categorical difference, as compared to the more gradational stratification based on skin color often said to prevail in parts of Latin America. However, nationally representative data with both types of measures have not been available to explicitly test this contrast. Objective: We use novel, recently released data from the U.S. and 18 Latin American countries to describe household income inequality across the region by perceived skin color and racial self-identification, and examine which measure better captures racial disparities in each national context. Results: We document color and racial hierarchies across the Americas, revealing some unexpected patterns. White advantage and indigenous disadvantage are fairly consistent features, whereas blacks at times have higher mean incomes than other racial populations. Income inequality can best be understood in some countries using racial categories alone, in others using skin color; in a few countries, including the U.S., a combination of skin color and self-identified race best explains income variation. Conclusions: These results complicate theoretical debates about U.S. racial exceptionalism and methodological debates about how best to measure race. Rather than supporting one measure over another, our cross-national analysis underscores race"s multidimensionality. The variation in patterns of inequality also defies common comparisons between the U.S. on the one hand and a singular Latin America on the other.


Organisations that use coaching programmes express their need for the assessment of coaches to ensure quality of provision. One solution to this need has been provided by professional bodies that assess coaches as part of their accreditation systems, often using competency frameworks. In this conceptual paper [the authors] open four specific debates in order to explore inherent problems associated with this approach. [The authors] start by highlighting the divide that seems to be emerging in coaching between academia and the professional bodies. [The authors] then move on to discuss the degree to which the gradation of coaching expertise in assessment is justified. The third debate concerns the extent to which competency frameworks are appropriate for coach assessment. Lastly, [the authors] question whether the existing paradigms, on which many assessment systems are based, effectively represent the coaching interaction. [The authors] argue that by seeing the coaching engagement as a complex adaptive system, a different conceptual approach to the assessment of coaches is needed, one that focuses on capabilities rather than competencies alone. A new model for the assessment of coaches is discussed, together with implications of the proposed change for professional bodies and educators of coaches.


The Remote Sensing Group at the University of Arizona has used ground-based test sites for the vicarious calibration of airborne and satellite-based sensors, of which the Railroad Valley Playa in north central Nevada has played a key role. This work presents a cross comparison of five satellite-based sensors that all imaged this playa on July 16, 2001. These sensors include the Advanced Land Imager and Hyperion on the Earth Observer-1 platform, the Landsat-7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+), Terra's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, and Space Imaging's Ikonos. The approach atmospherically corrects the ETM+ data to derive surface reflectance for a 1 km /spl times/ 1 km area of the playa and then uses these reflectances to determine a hyperspectral at-sensor radiance for each of the sensors taking into account the changes in solar zenith angle due to any temporal differences in the overpass times as well as differences in the view angles between the sensors. Results show that all of the sensors agree with ETM+ to within 10% in the solar reflective for bands not affected by atmospheric absorption. ETM+, MODIS, and ALI agree in all bands to better than 4.4% with better agreement in the visible and near infrared. Poorer agreement between Hyperion and other sensors appears to be due partially to poorer signal to noise ratio in the narrowband Hyperion datasets.


This study emanated from an interest in the potential impact of Incorporation on Further Education. Would Incorporation
dramatically change the Further Education service, raising its profile and steering it along a different course, or would it remain basically the same despite being taken out of Local Education Authority control? There were many questions to ask in 1991 as colleges started to make preparations for Vesting Day (1st. April 1993). Some of those questions still cannot be answered, for a longer period of observation is required, but the preparations had an effect on staff which proved extremely interesting.
The institutional focus for the research was a large College of Further Education, in which the researcher is employed.
The early part of the work concentrated on the preparations in that college for Incorporation, but it soon became evident that it was the perceptions of the staff rather than the actualities that were worthy of further study. These perceptions led the researcher towards areas of interest and issues which need to be addressed.
Some of the findings highlight aspects of institutional life, such as communication, which would be relevant to other colleges during times of change. Others, such as ethos and management style, will be particular to this college, but can nevertheless highlight areas and issues that could usefully be considered within other institutions.
The conclusions and implications of this research suggest that perceptions of staff are vitally important, regardless of whether or not they match reality; they are reality for those staff. Areas of institutional life have been explored and issues have been raised which could assist colleges to fulfil their potential. It is hoped that this particular piece of research will be of value both to the college studied and to the body of research which will no doubt develop on Incorporation and Further Education. For the researcher it has proved a fascinating insight into the institution of which she is a part and has indicated other related areas which merit further study.


Title of Dissertation: EFFICIENT IMAGE AND VIDEO REPRESENTATIONS FOR RETRIEVAL Sravanthi Bondugula, Doctor of Philosophy, 2016 Dissertation directed by: Professor Larry S. Davis Department of Computer Science Image (Video) retrieval is an interesting problem of retrieving images (videos) similar to the query. Images (Videos) are represented in an input (feature) space and similar images (videos) are obtained by finding nearest neighbors in the input representation space. Numerous input representations both in real valued and binary space have been proposed for conducting faster retrieval. In this thesis, we present techniques that obtain improved input representations for retrieval in both supervised and unsupervised settings for images and videos. Supervised retrieval is a well known problem of retrieving same class images of the query. We address the practical aspects of achieving faster retrieval with binary codes as input representations for the supervised setting in the first part, where binary codes are used as addresses into hash tables. In practice, using binary codes as addresses does not guarantee fast retrieval, as similar images are not mapped to the same binary code (address). We address this problem by presenting an efficient supervised hashing (binary encoding) method that aims to explicitly map all the images of the same class ideally to a unique binary code. We refer to the binary codes of the images as 'Semantic Binary Codes' and the unique code for all same class images as 'Class Binary Code'. We also propose a new class based Hamming metric that dramatically reduces the retrieval times for larger databases, where only hamming distance is computed to the class binary codes. We also propose a Deep semantic binary code model, by replacing the output layer of a popular convolutional Neural Network (AlexNet) with the class binary codes and show that the hashing functions learned in this way outperforms the state of the art, and at the same time provide fast retrieval times. In the second part, we also address the problem of supervised retrieval by taking into account the relationship between classes. For a given query image, we want to retrieve images that preserve the relative order i.e. we want to retrieve all same class images first and then, the related classes images before different class images. We learn such relationship aware binary codes by minimizing the similarity between inner product of the binary codes and the similarity between the classes. We calculate the similarity between classes using output embedding vectors, which are vector representations of classes. Our method deviates from the other supervised binary encoding schemes as it is the first to use output embeddings for learning hashing functions. We also introduce new performance metrics that take into account the related class retrieval results and show significant gains over the state of the art. High Dimensional descriptors like Fisher Vectors or Vector of Locally Aggregated Descriptors have shown to improve the performance of many computer vision applications including retrieval. In the third part, we will discuss an unsupervised technique for compressing high dimensional vectors into high dimensional binary codes, to reduce storage complexity. In this approach, we deviate from adopting traditional hyperplane hashing functions and instead learn hyperspherical hashing functions. The proposed method overcomes the computational challenges of directly applying the spherical hashing algorithm that is intractable for compressing high dimensional vectors. A practical hierarchical model that utilizes divide and conquer techniques using the Random Select and Adjust(RSA) procedure to compress such high dimensional vectors is presented. We show that our proposed high dimensional binary codes outperform the binary codes obtained using traditional hyperplane methods for higher compression ratios. In the last part of the thesis, we propose a retrieval based solution to the Zero shot event classification problem a setting where no training videos are available for the event. To do this, we learn a generic set of concept detectors and represent both videos and query events in the concept space. We then compute similarity between the query event and the video in the concept space and videos similar to the query event are classified as the videos belonging to the event. We show that we significantly boost the performance using concept features from other modalities.


CONJOINT MARITAL THERAPY: PROXY VOICE INTERVENTION AND SOFTENING IN THE CONTEXT OF COUPLE ENACTMENTS Ryan B. Seedall Department of Marriage and Family Therapy Master of Science This study evaluated the effectiveness of proxy voice intervention, embedded within couple enactments, on client-perceived softening. During enactments, direct couple interaction is the focus while the therapist coaches from the periphery. In the context of an enactment, the therapist may use proxy voice when partners appear to be distressed and expressing themselves in terms of secondary emotions by modeling appropriate attachment and self-concept expression. The primary research question was whether therapist use of proxy voice in an enactment would be more likely to bring about softening effects, or whether use of proxy voice was counterintuitive to enactment conceptualization and would bring about effects related to struggle (e.g. withdrawal or negativity). The review of literature sets forth (1) enactments as common factors; (2) enactments conceptually and operationally; (3) proxy voice in the context of enactments; and (4) the effects of proxy voice on softening versus withdrawal or negativity. Proxy voice occurred 42 times in nine research sessions where proxy voice was delivered repeatedly in a 20-30 minute enactment episode. Results indicated that proxy voice was significantly (both statistically and clinically) associated to softening while dissimilarly linked with withdrawal or negativity. Results also suggested that proxy voice may be used to dampen volatility and foster couple softening during enactment in the following ways: (1) proxy voice temporarily increases the structure of the couple interaction, thereby allowing the therapist to dampen reactivity and model healthy expression before returning to direct couple interaction; (2) proxy voice is a hypothesis of softer emotions that fits the clients' experiences, helps them to feel validated, and encourages them to consider something in a newer, softer way; and (3) proxy voice taps into foundational relationship dynamics surrounding self-concept and attachment experiences that "propel" interaction processes but remain outside conscious awareness or explicit expression for the couple. These preliminary findings suggest that proxy voice intervention embedded within a fluid, carefully delineated, and discriminating model of enactments effectively facilitates essential elements of couple interaction (expression of primary affect, and self-concept and attachment threats) while promoting self-reliant couple interaction and increased couple softening.


The Value of Nothing – PaR 300 word statement

This piece of theatre written by Kim Wiltshire was about the benefits system, what living with worklessness was like, and how the creative industries in the UK are being utilized through projects to try and address issues that they simply are not equipped to deal with.

This was a two and a half year project, and funding came from ACE, Lime Arts and Health as well as the Research Investment Fund and support in-kind from Bolton Octagon Theatre. I worked with 31 creatives/artists to make the piece.

The question for the play was: What if an artist created a community project that could end worklessness and the welfare system? The idea was to explore what it means to live on benefits but also how society views the creative industries. I also wanted to explore the use of audience participation, to create a sense of a real time event that was unfolding in front of the audience, as well as further explore the role of multimedia and film in live performance that I had used for Project XXX.

The theatre piece was researched for two and a half years with young people attending community projects and focus group sessions in Bolton and Manchester. I worked with over 30 young people in all, asking people to tell me about their experiences of living within the welfare system. I used the information gathered to create a narrative based on the research question and themes, and produced a 70-minute multimedia piece of theatre.

The play performed 5 times across North West England and the Midlands in 2017, and published by Aurora Metro theatre. It was bought in by the TUC for their Equality Conference on 21st October 2017. Marketing for the play was run by High Rise Communications, and blog posts and articles appeared in various press outlets, including Big Issue North.


Though of ancient origin, the concept of cosmopolitanism remains salient, not least within contemporary rights discourse. Its institutional implications promulgate the ideal of a common community which can be viewed as reflected in the emergence of post-1945 federations of nations which sponsor international human rights and humanitarian laws. Yet, can these concepts of cosmopolitanism hold fast in the face of contemporary terrorism? Jihadi movements like Al-Qa'ida have been criticised as 'counter-cosmopolitans'. In turn, states are motivated by terrorism to raise the drawbridge on cosmopolitan comity and to adopt exceptionalism in foreign affairs and irreconcilable forms of illiberal nationalism at home. The counter-terrorism world order thus appears to contradict the 'Perpetual Peace' grounded in universal hospitality as outlined by Kant (1795) and draws closer to an inhospitable 'war all the time'.Despite this unpromising landscape, a 'weak' and 'moderate' version of cosmopolitanism is adopted in this chapter as championing the notion of a common shared morality which can apply regardless of nationality and citizenship even in the face of terrorism by one's mortal enemy. The version is 'weak' in that it is not claimed that cosmopolitan liberty delivers equal liberty without borders, but it does demand an equation of liberty for all within borders and at a sufficient level of enjoyment which satisfies international standards. The version is 'moderate' for it is not claimed that cosmopolitanism is the sole normative value of relevance. For present purposes, the core of the applicable morality within cosmopolitanism will remain the universality of human rights. However, the point of this chapter's regard for cosmopolitanism beyond human rights doctrine is to draw out the force of its restraint within a jurisdiction upon state-centric security and also the force of its persuasion to extend mutual respect beyond jurisdictional boundaries. Another helpful feature of cosmopolitanism is to recognise that solidarity demands more than negative respect for universal rights, though allied agendas such as the search for mobilising shared values (such as citizenship) and the impact of broad concepts of collective 'human security' go beyond the scope of this chapter. Instead, it is intended to provide a case study of the cosmopolitan treatment of liberty in the face of terrorism. Its treatment within the United Kingdom will be examined for traces of cosmopolitanism in both internal-facing and outward-facing aspects. This focus through the prism of cosmopolitanism on the liberty of individuals suspected of terrorism potentially involves consideration of three internal-facing modalities of restriction: police detention following arrest; administrative restrictions on liberty; and detention pending deportation. Then there is the outward-facing incarceration of the enemies of the state.


In cereals, senescence is a highly regulated and organized process in which the nutrients located in the leaves are translocated to the developing seeds. During this process multiple signaling cascades are activated either up-regulating or down-regulating senescence related genes. The majority of the nitrogen to be remobilized is located in the leaves in plastidial proteins, especially Rubisco. These proteins must be degraded before their components can be translocated to be reutilized in the seeds. The mechanism for plastidial protein degradation is largely unknown at this time. Proteases located in lytic vacuolar compartments, including carboxypeptidases, have been found to be up-regulated during senescence, which may indicate their involvement in the degradation of plastidial proteins. In a recent genomic study a serine carboxypeptidase, cp-mIII, was found to be up-regulated in senescing leaves. Further characterization and localization of this protease could lead to an increased understanding of the mechanisms of protein degradation within the leaves during senescence. After the proteins are degraded they are transported to the developing seeds to be reincorporated into grain storage proteins. The amount of grain protein is noted to vary widely within a species depending on genotype and environmental conditions. Both high and low grain protein content (GPC) are economically important. Previously, a locus on chromosome 6 in barley was discovered that affects GPC. This locus has also been found to be homologous to chromosome 6B in wheat. To determine the effects of this locus, near isogenic lines (NIL) were generated from two varieties, one commonly grown high GPC variety and another known to have relatively low GPC. Several NIL were created where the high GPC allele(s) is isolated in the low GPC background and vice versa. Detailed physiological characterization of this germplasm indicated that the high-GPC trait in barley is associated with (a) earlier/accelerated leaf senescence and N remobilization; (b) enhanced availablity of amino nitrogen in kernels; (c) earlier grain total N accumulation; and (d) differences in whole-plant allocation and reallocation of nitrate. This analysis serves as a basis for the further, molecular analysis of the processes controlling (re)allocation of vegetative nitrogen to seeds in barley.


Today in the business world, significant loss can happen when the borrowers ignore paying their loans. Convenient credit-risk management represents a necessity for lending institutions. In most times, some persons prefer to late their monthly payments, otherwise, they may face difficulties in the loan payment process to the financial institution. Mainly, most fiscal organizations are considered managed and refined client classification systems, scanning a valid client from invalid ones. This paper produces the data mining idea, specifically the classification technique of data mining and builds a system of data mining process structure. The credit scoring problem will be applied using the Taiwan bank dataset. Besides that, three classification methods are adopted, Naïve Bayesian, Decision Tree (C5.0), and Artificial Neural Network. These classifiers are implemented in the WEKA machine learning application. The results show that the C5.0 algorithm is the best among them, it achieves 0.93 accuracy rates, 0.94 detection rates, 0.96 precision rates, and 0.95 F-Measure which is higher than Naïve Bayesian and Artificial Neural Network; also, the False Positive Rate in C5.0 algorithm achieves 0.1 which is less than Artificial Neural Network and Naïve Bayesian.


The Schatten-$p$ quasi-norm with $p\in(0,1)$ has recently gained considerable attention in various low-rank matrix estimation problems offering significant benefits over relevant convex heuristics such as the nuclear norm. However, due to the nonconvexity of the Schatten-$p$ quasi-norm, minimization suffers from two major drawbacks: 1) the lack of theoretical guarantees and 2) the high computational cost which is demanded for the minimization task even for trivial tasks such as finding stationary points. In an attempt to reduce the high computational cost induced by Schatten-$p$ quasi-norm minimization, variational forms, which are defined over smaller-size matrix factors whose product equals the original matrix, have been proposed. Here, we propose and analyze a novel variational form of Schatten-$p$ quasi-norm which, for the first time in the literature, is defined for any continuous value of $p\in(0,1]$ and decouples along the columns of the factorized matrices. The proposed form can be considered as the natural generalization of the well-known variational form of the nuclear norm to the nonconvex case i.e., for $p\in(0,1)$. The resulting formulation gives way to SVD-free algorithms thus offering lower computational complexity than the one that is induced by the original definition of the Schatten-$p$ quasi-norm. A local optimality analysis is provided which shows~that we can arrive at a local minimum of the original Schatten-$p$ quasi-norm problem by reaching a local minimum of the matrix factorization based surrogate problem. In addition, for the case of the squared Frobenius loss with linear operators obeying the restricted isometry property (RIP), a rank-one update scheme is proposed, which offers a way to escape poor local minima. Finally, the efficiency of our approach is empirically shown on a matrix completion problem.


There has been a recent paradigm shift in robotics to data-driven learning for planning and control. Due to large number of experiences required for training, most of these approaches use a self-supervised paradigm: using sensors to measure success/failure. However, in most cases, these sensors provide weak supervision at best. In this work, we propose an adversarial learning framework that pits an adversary against the robot learning the task. In an effort to defeat the adversary, the original robot learns to perform the task with more robustness leading to overall improved performance. We show that this adversarial framework forces the robot to learn a better grasping model in order to overcome the adversary. By grasping 82% of presented novel objects compared to 68% without an adversary, we demonstrate the utility of creating adversaries. We also demonstrate via experiments that having robots in adversarial setting might be a better learning strategy as compared to having collaborative multiple robots. For supplementary video see: youtu.be/QfK3Bqhc6Sk


Applying research findings to practice is the foundation of evidence based practice. In healthcare, evidence-based practice depends upon the development, promulgation and application of clinical guidelines. While EBM has been enthusiastically embraced by many, gaps persist, and transmission from research to practice remains slow and uneven. The perception that EBM threatens professional autonomy accounts for some resistance but, even among practitioners who support EBM in concept, uptake of guidelines has encountered numerous barriers. A recent study of guideline implementation by residents in a tertiary care medical center provides insight into the barriers to guideline adoption, and draws parallels between the uptake of EBM in the healthcare sector and the uptake of EBLIP in the library and information field. Through increased understanding of the diffusion of evidence-based practice in one field, LIS practitioners can position themselves to avoid similar impediments.


The protectionist policy of the European Economic Community (EEC) has created a negative image for the regional economic grouping in the eyes of Third World countries. For the EEC such a policy is needed to foster regional sufficiency and economic growth. Thus, there is a need to protect local markets of its member-states from the incursion of foreign products, including those from the Third World. The underdeveloped nations, on the other hand, point out the contradictions in such a policy. Not only did these European countries, several of which were their former colonial masters, transform their (Third World) economies into appendages of the international capitalist system, but foreign economic assistance to the Third World also perpetuate the dependence of their economies on the external market. This position of EEC governments, however, is being challenged by European development aid non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who believe that the imposition of protectionist policies is detrimental to the EEC. Such policies will ultimately backfire on the EEC member-states because they also limit the potential marker for European products since developing states will not earn enough to buy First World commodities. More importantly, unlike most of their governments, these NGOs believe that the goal of international economic assistance to underdeveloped states must be the establishment of self-reliant economies and not the production of commodities for the world market. Such an economic scheme, they perceive, would benefit both the First and Third Worlds.


Formal reasoning about programs executing in virtual memory is a difficult problem, as it is an environment in which writing to memory can change its layout. At the same time, correctly reasoning about virtual memory is essential to operating system verification, a field we are very much interested in. Current approaches rely on entering special modes or making high-level assertions about the nature of virtual memory which may or may not be correct. In this thesis, we examine the problems created by virtual memory and develop a unified view of memory, both physical and virtual, based on separation logic. We first develop this model for a simple programming language on a simplified architecture with a one-level page table, taking care to prove it constitutes a separation logic. We then extend the framework to deal with low-level C programs executing in a virtual memory environment of the ARMv6 architecture with a two-level page table. We perform two case studies involving mapping in of a new page into the current address space: first for the simple version of our logic, and finally for our full framework. The case studies demonstrate that separation logic style modular reasoning via the frame rule can be used in a unified model which encompasses virtual memory, even in the presence of page table writes. To our knowledge, we present the first model offering a unified view of virtual and physical memory, the first separation logic involving an address translation mechanism, as well as the first published model of a functional subset of ARM memory management unit. Our memory models, framework, proofs and all results are formalised in the Isabelle/HOL interactive theorem prover.


Music therapy is the professional use of music and its elements as an intervention in medical, educational, and everyday environments with individuals, groups, families, or communities who seek to optimize their quality of life and improve their physical, social, communicative, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual health and wellbeing. Research, practice, education, and clinical training in music therapy are based on professional standards according to cultural, social, and political contexts. (World Federation of Music Therapy, 2011)


Recently, a number of statistical problems have found an unexpected solution by inspecting them through a 'modal point of view'. These include classical tasks such as clustering or regression. This has led to a renewed interest in estimation and inference for the mode. This paper offers an extensive survey of the traditional approaches to mode estimation and explores the consequences of applying this modern modal methodology to other, seemingly unrelated, fields.


Aims The aim is to investigate autonomic nervous system imbalance in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) by combining echocardiographic morphological and functional parameters with the analysis of the autonomic responses to orthostatic stress. Methods A 10-min tilting test and a transthoracic echocardiogram focused on ventricular septal systolic (S wave) and diastolic function (isovolumic relaxation time) were performed. Low frequency on high frequency ratio (LF/HF) and RR variation (variation of beat to beat intervals) in response to passive orthostatism were used as measures of sympathetic reflex activation [delta LF/HF (D-LF/HF) and delta RR (DRR), respectively]. Brain natriuretic peptide was measured. Results A total of 50 HCM patients were categorized in two groups: D-LF/HF more than 0 (group 1, sympathetic response) and D-LF/HF 0 or less (group 2, parasympathetic response). Patients in group 2 had higher New York Heart Association class, a more frequent history of atrial fibrillation (38 versus 9% P = 0.04) or syncope (46 versus 12% P = 0.01) and an increased septal isovolumic relaxation time (122 versus 82 ms P = 0.02). The same categorization was made according to lowest quartile DRR (DRR at least 23 ms, group 1: sympathetic response; DRR less than 23 ms, group 2: parasympathetic response). In group 2, patients were older, with advanced New York Heart Association class and higher history of atrial fibrillation. Conclusions Autonomic response to passive orthostatism in HCM appears correlated with specific functional features of the hypertrophic heart. Altered neural afferent traffic from the localized area of segmental hypertrophy resulted in autonomic changes with a blunted sympathetic response, and an inappropriate vagal activation, especially in patients with history of atrial fibrillation or syncope.


The aims of this research were to investigate the reproductive performance of
Thoroughbred mares in New Zealand, to examine the use of intravaginal progesterone to
manage transitional mares and to develop a potential model for haemorrhagic
anovulatory follicle (HAF) development in the mare.
Firstly, a prospective cohort study was performed involving five stud farms in the
Waikato region of New Zealand during three consecutive breeding seasons (2006-2008).
A total of 1482 individual mares contributed 2007 mare years and 3402 oestrous cycles
over the three breeding seasons. The mean first-cycle pregnancy rate was 53.6%, the
end-of-season pregnancy rate was 85.3% and the foaling rate was 80.2%. The length of
the breeding season was relatively short with 87% of services occurring in the 91 day
period between 1st September and 30th November. Multivariable analyses revealed that
reproductive performance was influenced by two main mare-related factors; the age of
the mare and her reproductive status (dry or foaling). Increasing mare age significantly
reduced the first-cycle pregnancy rate, reduced the end-of-season pregnancy rate and
increased the interval from the start of the breeding season to conception. In terms of
reproductive status, dry mares had a significantly higher first-cycle pregnancy rate and
end-of-season pregnancy rate compared with foaling mares. The majority of variation in
reproductive performance was associated with mare-level factors and the contribution of
the stallion and stud farm was relatively minor.
Transitional mares treated with intravaginal progesterone at the start of the breeding
season were served two weeks earlier than untreated control mares. In the first 21 days
of the season, 95% of treated mares were served compared with 43% of control mares.
Treated mares also conceived earlier and had a higher end-of-season pregnancy rate than
control mares. Follicle development in response to intravaginal progesterone treatment
iii
appeared to be mediated through a close temporal association between progesterone,
FSH and LH during treatment.
In the last study, transplantation of chorionic girdle into non-pregnant mares resulted in
elevated eCG concentrations in all mares and the development of multiple HAFs in the
treated mares over a prolonged time-span.
In conclusion, this research has, i) identified the most important factors associated with
the reproductive performance of New Zealand Thoroughbred mares, ii) determined that
intravaginal progesterone treatment is a suitable management tool for transitional mares
and iii) created a model for HAF development in the mare.


While mechanisms to detoxify plant produced, anti-herbivore compounds have been associated with plant host use by herbivores, less is known about the role of chemosensory perception in their life histories. This is especially true for generalists, including chelicerate herbivores that evolved herbivory independently from the more studied insect lineages. To shed light on chemosensory perception in a generalist herbivore, we characterized the chemosensory receptors (CRs) of the chelicerate two-spotted spider mite, Tetranychus urticae, an extreme generalist. Strikingly, T. urticae has more CRs than reported in any other arthropod to date. Including pseudogenes, 689 gustatory receptors were identified, as were 136 degenerin/Epithelial Na+ Channels (ENaCs) that have also been implicated as CRs in insects. The genomic distribution of T. urticae gustatory receptors indicates recurring bursts of lineage-specific proliferations, with the extent of receptor clusters reminiscent of those observed in the CR-rich genomes of vertebrates or C. elegans. Although pseudogenization of many gustatory receptors within clusters suggests relaxed selection, a subset of receptors is expressed. Consistent with functions as CRs, the genomic distribution and expression of ENaCs in lineage-specific T. urticae expansions mirrors that observed for gustatory receptors. The expansion of ENaCs in T. urticae to > 3-fold that reported in other animals was unexpected, raising the possibility that ENaCs in T. urticae have been co-opted to fulfill a major role performed by unrelated CRs in other animals. More broadly, our findings suggest an elaborate role for chemosensory perception in generalist herbivores that are of key ecological and agricultural importance.


The Tasking Interface Manager (TIM) seeks to demonstrate real-time adaptive automation and real-time task, interface and timeline management to support pilot operations in the Cognitive Cockpit . The intended TIM application is to enable the pilot to concentrate his/her cognitive capabilities on the tactical aspects of the mission and off-load the routine activities to automation. Ideally, this would allow the pilot to remain in a feed-forward activity (supervisory control), whilst most, if not all feedback requirements are met by decision aiding and automation. The TIM utilises output from the Situation Assessment Support System and the Cognition Monitor to adaptively present information and adaptively automate tasks according to the situational context and the pilot's internal state. The main features of a tasking interface are a shared mental model, the ability to track goals, plans and tasks, and the ability to communicate intent about the mission plan. The paper will describe the concept of operation and the technical development of the TIM.


Ever since Goldin (1995) proposed the idea that there is a U-shaped female labor force participation rate function in economic development, empirical research is stunned by the question why the countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are characterized by such low rates of female labor force participation. This gap in labor economics research is all the more perplexing since gender equality, particularly in education and employment, significantly contributes to economic growth. The research strategy of the present paper is within a relatively new tradition in labor market research, initiated by the recent article by Besamusca, Tijdens, Keune and Steinmetz (2015), which does not exclude anymore the "religious factor" and what these authors call "gender ideology". Our analysis of the "gender ideology" of Islamism and gender values is based on an empirical analysis of World Values Survey data. In recent economic theory, Carvalho (2013) maintained that Muslim veiling is a strategy for integration, enabling women to take up outside economic opportunities while preserving their reputation within the community. The empirical data clearly support a pessimistic view. We show that Muslim Feminism, which implies according to our data analysis the rejection of the twin brothers - Islamism and the veil - and the democracy movement in the Muslim world are closely interrelated. Thus, it is imperative that Western Feminism develops solidarity with Muslim Feminism, and that labor economics does not exclude anymore "the religious factor" from the analytical frameworks explaining low female labor force participation rates.


The Importance of Happiness The study of happiness – and well-being more generally – has achieved ever-greater salience within the social sciences over the last two decades. Much effort has gone into producing reliable measures of happiness within individuals and populations. This has been driven by a desire to produce credible alternatives to more conventional economic measures of societal progress. Objective economic indicators like GDP-growth and per-capita income have traditionally been used as stand-alone indicators of national social progress, and their popularity has stemmed from the ease with which such measures of material and physical well-being can be closely monitored. It has been assumed that these measures alone will adequately reflect well-being. However, recent work on measuring happiness, which is gaining traction in the eyes of the public and policymakers, suggests this is not the case. Interest in measuring and incorporating happiness into policy has been fuelled by well-publicised analyses of people's self-reported levels of happiness from population surveys. Such surveys ask generalised questions about happiness, along the lines of: "Taking all things together, how happy would you say you are, 00 being extremely unhappy and 10 being extremely happy?" Studies aggregating these measures to the level of population contrast such measures with rates of GDP growth. They have found that if a country's level of GDP is high, it does not immediately follow that levels of subjective well-being (such as feelings of happiness or satisfaction) will match this (Easterlin, 1974, Layard, 2005, Diener and Seligman, 2004, Kahneman, 2006, Veenhoven, 1994). Subjective indicators like happiness tell an important story. They are, at the very least, important measures to include alongside the more objective conventional economic indicators in national accounts, if we are to have a proper and well-recognised understanding of all the factors that comprise human well-being and progress. The task of generating appropriate measures of happiness, however, is not straightforward. Popular research by Diener and Seligman and Layard has advanced both the profile of happiness and the measurement of happiness by use of the generalised happiness question, but we should not conflate the appropriateness of the former with the latter. We suggest that there are particular contentions to be raised over the use of the generalised happiness measure. Generalised happiness versus particularised happiness The primary criticism we raise against the generalised happiness measure is that survey questions that simply ask respondents how happy they feel in a general 'all of life' sense cannot capture the day-to-day micro level factors that affect a person's feeling of happiness, such as social interaction with others. While emotions like happiness are commonly perceived to be individual, private phenomena, sociologists of emotion have also, in the last thirty years, shed light on their social dimensions. Some sociologists have argued that cultural norms, otherwise known as 'feeling rules' are central to an individual's emotional experience. These rules can determine what is felt and when, and how intensely it is felt. Others say that emotions are also shaped by more social structural or macro-level factors. Thus, this paper will explore and discuss some of the major sociological studies of emotion (Hochschild, 1979, 1983, 1998, Durkheim, 1961, Thoits, 1990, Shott, 1979, Kemper, 1981) and will shed light on some of the socio-cultural factors that can influence people's feelings, and more importantly, their perceptions of their levels of happiness. However, what these researchers have in common is an understanding that emotions like happiness are contextual – one way or another, they are caused by events and activities that people experience. This suggests that people's responses to survey questions on generalised happiness are likely missing a great deal of important and subtle information, and must be examined with an eye towards looking for viable alternatives. Contrasting 'generalised' and 'particularised' happiness using the ESS We will present data from the European Social Survey (ESS) to illustrate the nature of the relationship between generalised measures of happiness and alternative measures of happiness and well-being. Alternative measures are particularised in that they are asked in relation to the past two weeks, and the activities and experiences that occurred therein. We will demonstrate that these measures do not show the kind of statistical coherence that one would expect if they were adequately examining the same phenomenon, and argue that this is representative of the inadequacy of the generalised happiness measure, and of the need for alternative measures. Alternative particularised measures of happiness – Emotion Time Diaries We then proceed to argue that a better method for measuring happiness is through the use of time diaries. This builds on an existing body of research. Mihaly Csikszentmihalhyi (2003) did a study using the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) and Daniel Kahneman (2004) developed the Day Reconstruction Method (DRM) to measure happiness and other emotions. Both go into great depth, looking on a micro level at everyday activities and how these affect emotions and happiness. The former asks respondents to record their feelings in response to random beeps delivered at regular intervals throughout the day, whilst the latter uses a diarylike structure and intends to act as a less expensive alternative to ESM. For two days, at the end of each day, respondents must retrospectively record activities that they engaged in, as well as emotions felt at the time. However, whilst either method captures the multi-dimensional nature of happiness (such as the different types of activities that could make one feel happy), they both have the distinct disadvantage of only being able to uncover emotions that were brought about by an activity or event at the present moment, and not at any time in the past. There is also no way of knowing whether the activity itself was the cause of the emotion, or whether it was caused by something different (for example, an event that occurred in the past, or something other than an activity). Neither method provides a means by which socio-cultural influences on emotion (explored by sociologists in the last thirty or so years) can be detected. We propose an alternative methodology – an Emotion Time Diary - for quantitatively measuring happiness and other emotions. This aims to rectify all of the problems that have been encountered in studies using both survey measures and the Experience Sampling and Day Reconstruction Methods. It takes the diary-like structure from these two methods but it also has its differences. The design will enable the accounting for socio-cultural influences on emotion that are discussed in the sociological literature. We will present aspects of the overall design of the diary and some preliminary results from a small-scale pilot exercise. This will shed light on the advantages that the diary method of happiness measurement has over conventional generalised survey variables.


In this report we discuss the triangular strategy of integrating knowledge management, cloud computing and lifestyle of health and sustainability (LOHAS) as a corporate strategy. The core of this strategy is that consumer behavior is the consequence of culture influence. In order to increase the impact of Cheer & Share International Ltd as a member of culture creative in the form of a group, we plan to put the LOHAS culture on the cloud. Through effective knowledge management in the society about LOHAS, we develop applications based on cloud computing so as to increase the scale of influence and therefore establish the reputation of the corporate as a provider of health, beauty, wealth and sustainability.


In all methods of photographic optical processing presented here, the carrier frequency is derived from an intensity speckle pattern, the advantage of which is to spread out information in the Fourier plane. Furthermore, they are based on the fact that the Fourier spectrum of two laterally translated speckle patterns displays Young's fringes, the visibility of which represents the correlation of the speckle patterns. The problems of comparing intensities of two transparencies, multiplexing optical signals, and detecting small translations of a diffuse object will be successively considered. The optical process of comparing two transparencies A and B is the following. The two signals are modulated by the same speckle pattern and recorded successively on a photographic plate which is laterally translated between the exposures. After processing, H displays Young's fringes at infinity. If the intensity distributions of A and B are not identical, the two corresponding speckle images are not completely correlated and therefore the fringe visibility is not maximum. The difference A–B can easily be obtained by filtering the minima of the fringes. For multiplexing operations, each of the signals to be stored is modulated by a speckle pattern and recorded at least twice on a photographic plate which is laterally translated between successive exposures. The amount of translation given to the plate is different for each of the signals. The spectrum of the photographic record has as many fringe systems as the signals. By filtering the maxima of a particular fringe system, the corresponding signal is reconstructed and the others are removed. Small translations of a diffuse object can be detected by illuminating the object with a speckle pattern and recording its image before and after the motion in the same way as above. The decorrelation of the two recorded speckle patterns is only due to the motion of the object which can thus be revealed by the visibility of the corresponding Young's fringes. With such a method it is not possible to detect the direction of the translation suffered by the object. We suggest therefore an interferometer consisting of a Michelson interferometer in which both mirrors are replaced by two scattering surfaces O1 and O2 shifted longitudinally. The interferometer is illuminated by a parallel beam of laser light, and a photographic plate twice records (before and after the translation of one of the surfaces) irradiances lying in the Fourier plane of O1 and O2. After processing, H exhibits Moire fringes. These fringes are rectilinear if the translation suffered by the object is lateral and they are circular if the translation is longitudinal. The sensitivity of the interferometer depends only on the geometrical characteristics of the recording setup.


Objective: Several tools have been introduced to evaluate the quality of prescribing. The aim of this study was to determine the quality of prescribing in hypertension and bronchial asthma in tertiary health care (THC) setting using the new Prescription Quality Index (PQI) tool and to assess the reliability of this tool. Methods : A prospective cross-sectional study was carried out for 2 months in order to assess the quality of prescribing of antihypertensive and antiasthmatic drugs using recently described PQI at THC facility. Patients with hypertension and bronchial asthma, attending out-patient departments of internal medicine and pulmonary medicine respectively for at least 3 months were included. Complete medical history and prescriptions received were noted. Total and criteria wise PQI scores were derived for each prescription. Prescriptions were categorized as poor, medium and high quality based on total PQI scores. Results : A total of 222 patients were included. Mean age was 56 ± 15.1 years (range 4-87 years) with 67 (30.2%) patients above 65 years of age. Mean total PQI score was 32.1 ± 5.1. Of 222 prescriptions, 103 (46.4%) prescriptions were of high quality with PQI score ≥34. Quality of prescribing did not differ between hypertension and bronchial asthma (P > 0.05).The value of Cronbach′s α for the entire 22 criteria of PQI was 0.71. Conclusion : As evaluated by PQI tool, the quality of prescribing for hypertension and bronchial asthma is good in about 47% of prescriptions at THC facility. PQI is valid for measuring prescribing quality in these chronic diseases in Indian setting.


Discussions about the Sabbath often center around moralistic laws and arguments over whether a person should be able to play cards or purchase liquor on Sundays. In this volume, popular author Walter Brueggemann writes that the Sabbath is not simply about keeping rules but rather about becoming a whole person and restoring a whole society. Importantly, Brueggemann speaks to a 24/7 society of consumption, a society in which we live to achieve, accomplish, perform, and possess. We want more, own more, use more, eat more, and drink more. Keeping the Sabbath allows us to break this restless cycle and focus on what is truly important: God, other people, all life. Brueggemann offers a transformative vision of the wholeness God intends, giving world-weary Christians a glimpse of a more fulfilling and simpler life through Sabbath observance.


The major coat protein of bacteriophage M13 is synthesized as a precursor, the procoat, with a typical leader (signal) sequence of 23 residues at its NH2-terminus. A fusion protein that contains the NH2-terminal 141 residues of cytoplasmic ribulokinase and all but the first ten residues of M13 procoat was made. The fusion protein inserts into the plasma membrane of Escherichia coli and is processed by leader peptidase to give rise to a leader peptide of 155 residues and the mature coat protein of 50 residues. The NH2-terminus of the leader peptide remains in the cytoplasm and is protected from protease added to the medium outside of the cell. This indicates that M13 procoat inserts into the membrane as a loop structure and that the NH2-terminus of a leader peptide remains within the cytoplasm during membrane insertion.


Introduction: The early prenatal identification of fetal gender is of great importance. Accurate prenatal identification is currently only possible through invasive procedures. The present study was conducted to determine the accuracy and sensitivity of ultrasound fetal gender identification. Materials and Methods: The present cross-sectional study was conducted on 150 women in their 11th and 12th weeks of pregnancy in Hamadan in 2014. Ultrasound imaging performed in the 11th and 12th weeks of pregnancy for fetal gender identification identified the fetus either as a girl, a boy, or as a "gender not assigned." Frequency, sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values, and accuracy of the gender identification was assessed using SPSS version 20. The significant level was 0.05 in all analyses. Results: Of the total of 150 women, the gender was identified as female in 32 (21.3%), as male in 65 (43.3%), and not assigned in 53 (35.3%); overall, gender identification was made in 64.6% of the cases. A total of 57 male fetuses were correctly identified as boys, and 8 female fetuses were wrongly identified as boys. As for the female fetuses, 31 were correctly identified as girls, and 1 was wrongly identified as a boy. The positive predictive value for the ultrasound imaging gender identification was 87.6% for the male fetuses and 96.8% for the female fetuses. Conclusion: The present study had a much higher gender identification accuracy compared to other studies. The final success of fetal gender identification was about 91% in the 11th and 12th weeks of pregnancy.


There have been great advances in the last 20 years in understanding the volcanic, structural, geophysical, and petrologic development of the Coso Range and Coso geothermal field. These studies have provided a wealth of knowledge concerning the geology of the area, including general structural characteristics and kinematic history. One element missing from this dataset was an understanding of the sedimentology and stratigraphy of well-exposed Cenozoic sedimentary strata - the Coso Formation. A detailed sedimentation and tectonics study of the Coso Formation was undertaken to provide a more complete picture of the development of the Basin and Range province in this area. Detailed mapping and depositional analysis distinguishes separate northern and southern depocenters, each with its own accommodation and depositional history. While strata in both depocenters is disrupted by faults, these faults show modest displacement, and the intensity and magnitude of faulting does no t record significant extension. For this reason, the extension between the Sierran and Coso blocks is interpreted as minor in comparison to range bounding faults in adjacent areas of the Basin and Range.


In one common type of industrial continuous casting, partially molten metal is extruded from a vessel through a shaped orifice called a mold in which the metal assumes the cross-sectional form of the mold as it cools and solidifies. Continuous casting can be sustained as long as molten metal is supplied and thermal conditions are maintained. I propose that a similar process produced parallel sets of grooves in three geologic settings, as follows: (1) corrugated metamorphic core complexes where mylonitized mid-crustal rocks were exhumed by movement along low-angle normal faults known as detachment faults; (2) corrugated submarine surfaces where ultramafic and mafic rocks were exhumed by normal faulting within oceanic spreading centers; and (3) striated magma extrusions exemplified by the famous grooved outcrops at the Inca fortress of Sacsayhuaman in Peru. In each case, rocks inferred to have overlain the corrugated surface during corrugation genesis molded and shaped a plastic to partially molten rock mass as it was extruded from a moderate- to high-temperature reservoir.


All children, even the healthiest, have preventive and acute health care needs. Moreover, a growing number of children are chronically ill, with preventive, acute, and ongoing care needs that may be much more demanding than those for healthy children.  Because children are unable to care for themselves, their parents are expected to provide a range of health care services without which the current health care system for children would not function. Under this "shadow health care system," parents or parent surrogates often need to be with the child, a requirement that can create difficulties for working parents, particularly for those whose children are chronically ill. How federal, state, and employer policies and practices mesh with the child health care needs of families is therefore a central issue in any discussion about work and family balance.  In this article Mark Schuster, Paul Chung, and Katherine Vestal describe the health care needs of children; the essential health care responsibilities of parents; the perspective of employers; and the existing network of federal, state, and local family leave benefits that employed parents can access. They also identify current gaps in policies that leave unmet the needs of both parents and their employers.  The authors suggest the outlines of a national family leave policy that would protect the interests of parents and employers. In essence, such a policy would build on the federal Family and Medical Leave Act, which gives some workers time off with no advance notice required and no loss of job or health insurance. But it would also include elements of California's Paid Family Leave Insurance, which expands coverage to more workers and provides partial pay during leave. Employers could be given some financial protections as well as protections against employee fraud and abuse. Such a policy, the authors conclude, would help to provide security to parents, minimize effects on employers, raise societal expectations for family-friendly work environments, and help maintain the parental shadow system of care on which health care professionals depend.


In this paper, we introduce a framework to observe RPKI relying parties (i.e., those that fetch RPKI data from the distributed repository) and present insights into this ecosystem for the first time. Our longitudinal study of data gathered from three RPKI certification authorities (AFRINIC, APNIC, and our own CA) identifies different deployment models of relying parties and (surprisingly) prevalent inconsistent fetching behavior that affects Internet routing robustness. Our results reveal nearly 90% of relying parties are unable to connect to delegated publication points under certain conditions, which leads to erroneous invalidation of IP prefixes and likely widespread loss of network reachability.


The case of a 70-year-old woman with progressive renal cell carcinoma (RCC) metastatic invasion of a L3 vertebral hemangioma treated by dual percutaneous radiofrequency ablation (RFA) and vertebroplasty is reported. The patient was surgically treated for RCC in 2001. Chemotherapy and immunotherapy were introduced in 2013 for ovarian, bladder and cerebral metastatic disease. An asymptomatic L3 benign hemangioma was noticed at this time. One-year CT and MRI follow-up studies demonstrated a nodular isolated soft tissue lesion involving the anterior edge of the hemangioma. Percutaneous treatment consisted of a L3 vertebral body unipedicular approach to perform a biopsy, RFA with a navigational bipolar RFA device and vertebroplasty using high viscosity cement. Histopathological examination confirmed metastasis of RCC. The 5-month spinal MRI and CT examinations demonstrated complete disappearance of the tumor.


'Scripture' is any work in which the authors, translators, editors, or discoverers all claim to have received wisdom from a source outside themselves, be it revelation, enlightened philosophy, or ancient archive. For the first time in a single volume, "American Scriptures" gathers fifteen of these texts from religious movements with origins in the United States. Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp's concise single volume will enlighten not only readers interested in the historical and religious aspects of the scriptural texts, but also those whose interest has been piqued by such bestsellers as "Angels and Demons" and "The Da Vinci Code".


Instructors searching for learning objects in online repositories will be guided in their choices by the content of the object, the characteristics of the learners addressed, and the learning process embodied in the object. We report here on a feasibility study for metadata to record process-oriented information about instructional approaches for learning objects, though a set of Educational Rationale [ER] tags which would allow authors to describe the critical elements in their design intent. The prototype ER tags describe activities which have been demonstrated to be of value in learning, and authors select the activities whose support was critical in their design decisions.

The prototype ER tag set consists descriptors of the instructional approach used in the design, plus optional sub-elements for Comments, Importance and Features which implement the design intent. The tag set was tested by creators of four learning object modules, three intended for post-secondary learners and one for K-12 students and their families. In each case the creators reported that the ER tag set allowed them to express succinctly the key instructional approaches embedded in their designs.

These results confirmed the overall feasibility of the ER tag approach as a means of capturing design intent from creators of learning objects. Much work remains to be done before a usable ER tag set could be specified, including evaluating the impact of ER tags during design to improve instructional quality of learning objects.


More than 100 years ago, John Dewey, a major influence in American education, argued for the need to "stimulate the spirit of inquiry into actual fact" (Dewey, 2002, p. 118). The debate among politicians and educators about the structure, purpose, and goals of education and inquiry continues. Yet the world has changed, largely because of widely accessible and versatile technologies. We are unclear how Dewey's spirit of inquiry will grow, die, or reinvent itself through boundaryless tools of inquiry such as the Internet, but the technology is here and will not disappear while educators debate best methods.

Twenty-first-century society demands new ways to learn and understand, and these new ways of learning require new ways of teaching (McPheeters, 2009/2010). For many students, especially the younger generations, technology intertwines with almost all daily activities, including social contact. Many educators lag behind the technological curve and express frustration at the challenge to shift their educational paradigms toward increasingly technological means of communication and interaction, or entertain "virtual realities" as legitimate educational forums.

The purpose of this symposium is to examine the role of technology in transforming higher education. The goal is to seek best methods of using technology more effectively to educate learners for the 21st century. The shifts in society's focus and the characteristics of learners going into the future are also critical, and part of this discussion.


Since the term "smart materials" was put forward in the 1980s, stimuli-responsive biomaterials have been used as powerful tools in tissue engineering, mechanobiology, and clinical applications. For the purpose of myocardial repair and regeneration, stimuli-responsive biomaterials are employed to fabricate hydrogels and nanoparticles for targeted delivery of therapeutic drugs and cells, which have been proved to alleviate disease progression and enhance tissue regeneration. By reproducing the sophisticated and dynamic microenvironment of the native heart, stimuli-responsive biomaterials have also been used to engineer dynamic culture systems to understand how cardiac cells and tissues respond to progressive changes in extracellular microenvironments, enabling the investigation of dynamic cell mechanobiology. Here, we provide an overview of stimuli-responsive biomaterials used in cardiovascular research applications, with a specific focus on cardiac tissue engineering and dynamic cell mechanobiology. We also discuss how these smart materials can be utilized to mimic the dynamic microenvironment during heart development, which might provide an opportunity to reveal the fundamental mechanisms of cardiomyogenesis and cardiac maturation.


In Dutch, Frisian and German dialects, bewildering morphological variation is found in the person-marking system (e.g., the Syntactic Atlas of Dutch Dialects for Dutch and Frisian, and Goossens 1994, Weiss 2005 and Fuss 2005 for German). One type of variation concerns the formation of subject clitics in clauses with inverted word order, i.e. with the subject following the verb. These elements are subsequently extended to other syntactic positions through analogy, via a pathway described by Kathol (2001): originally enclitic elements spread first to the position enclitic to the complementiser, then to verbs in sentences with regular word order, and finally, in a rare number of cases, to verbs in the sentence-final position in subclauses. This paper shows that Kathol's proposed pathway actually comprises two similar but not identical pathways, i.e. one for specifically enclitic elements, and one for elements occurring both pro- and enclitically. This implies that developments must be modelled as an 'analogical map' rather than a pathway, which will be illustrated extensively with data from Dutch, Frisian and German dialects. The map will be shown to apply to more data than Kathol's original pathway: it not only captures the extension of clitics, but also the spread of many innovative agreement markers and pronouns, and, hence, a range of person marking phenomena, including complementiser agreement (e.g., Carstens 2003, Weiss 2005), clitic doubling (e.g., Fuss 2005) and double agreement (e.g., Zwart 1997). Finally, following Hill (2007), some of the motivations underlying the change and the factors determining their direction are discussed.


Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy (FCS) allows one to measure protein-membrane binding, self-assembly and other molecular reactions and parameters quantitatively in
buffer as well as in complex media. Subject of this thesis was to investigate protein-membrane interactions within blood coagulation in buffer as well as in their biological
environment with FCS.
Binding of Factor VIII (FVIII) to phosphatidylserine (PS)-expressing platelets is a key process in the intravascular pathway of the blood coagulation cascade. Representing a complex component of the highly regulated network of the coagulation cascade, this protein-membrane interaction is influrenced by many cofactors, such as annexin, which binds to PS-containing membranes as well. Since defects in coagulation, particularly in FVIII binding to membranes lead to severe bleeding disorders, a better understanding
of the underlying biophysical and biochemical mechanisms and regulatory influences of this interaction could boost diagnosis and therapy of such diseases, especially when used
in combination with an improved systems biology description of the cascade.
This thesis investigates the mechanism of FVIII binding to PS-containing model membranes and its regulation by annexin using FCS. Activated FVIII, in contrast to inactivated FVIII, was found to exhibit a striking binding anomaly, consisting in a sharply peaked dependence of the binding constant K(PS) as a function of the PS content. It exceeds the binding of inactivated FVIII in a regime around 12% PS, including physiological concentrations. Furthermore, the regulatory influence of annexin, which can both, increase as well as decrease the binding of activated FVIII, was explained based on this binding anomaly. A quantitative model of this regulatory mechanism assuming efficient shielding of charges by annexin was developed, which allows for the reconstruction of the full three-dimensional phase diagram of FVIII binding to membranes as a function of their PS-content and the concentration of annexin. In order to prove the relevance of these results for coagulation, the experiments were repeated in plasma.
Since plasma is a scattering medium, which is crowded by macromolecules and hence strongly affects FCS experiments, a procedure to analyze measurements performed in such complex media was developed. To this end, the influences of scattering and crowding on FCS were investigated using a model system of GFP in highly concentrated vesicle solutions. Scattering was found to enhance and distort the focal volume, whereas crowding slows down diffusion. Taking both effects into account, corrections could be applied, which were demonstrated to allow for artifact-free analysis of binding measurements in complex soft matter systems. To further improve the performance of FCS in complex
media and, particularly, in cells, a two-photon FCS microscope was set up.
Based on the results of the investigations on scattering and crowding, FCS experiments on living cells were performed. The effective viscosity in dictyostelium discoideum cells was probed and compared to values obtained in lysate. The enhancement of viscosity in the cytoplasm was found to be due to crowding by polydisperse macromolecules, whereas the viscosity of the actin cortex was determined by actin polymerization. Drug treatment allowed for regulation of the polymerization level in the cytoplasm and for detection and determination of the viscosity of actin waves.
A project in close colaboration with the groups of Prof. Bein and Prof. Brauchle succeded in the design, characterization and testing of a drug delivery system employing colloidal mesoporous silica nanoparticles efficiently coated by lipids with a solvent exchange method. Using cross-correlation spectroscopy the lipids were shown to form a close and dense bilayer around the nanoparticles. In-vitro drug delivery experiments gave evidence of the capping-mechanism of the lipids and in-vivo studies proved the effcient delivery and release of drugs by the lipid-coated nanoparticles.


The present article intends to throw light on the oral resources in the form of testimony for reconstructing the colonial archives, memoirs and also the argumentative discourses in writing the Sannyasi and Fakir Rebellion of late eighteenth century Bengal. The origin of the Sannyasis and Fakirs need a careful analysis in order to know the roots of the rebellion. The oral sources, either in the form of testimony, interviews taken with the present day Sannyasis and Fakirs in different parts of India including Bengal would either compliment or supplement the version of colonial records and the vernacular literature which have been used here for understanding the Sannyasi and Fakir Rebellion in proper perspective. In order to understand the genesis of the rebellion, their relations with the East India Company, local zamindars and peasantry the importance of the oral testimonies and interviews cannot be ignored. The texts and contexts of the oral sources, which have been used on different occasions, would support the connectivity of various aspects of the rebellion.


One of the major challenges faced by energy intensive industries is an excessive greenhouse gas emission to the atmosphere due to high consumption of fossil fuels throughout the production processes. Due to high electricity usage in intensive industries, it is strongly advisable to all the engineers and other stakeholders to reduce the amount of energy needed for production, thus reducing carbon footprints. This is because the power generation industry emits approximately 37 % of total carbon dioxide emission to the atmosphere. Process improvement via Process Integration enhances the process energy efficiency, which contributes to the minimisation of fossil fuels and electricity consumption. Sub-ambient processes with refrigeration system are one of the highly energy intensive processes, which consumes a vast amount of electrical energy to run the compressors for fulfilling the process cooling demand. It is crucial to optimise the process-utility heat transfer in the system including the placement of compressors and expanders to minimise the exergy losses and shaft work consumption. This paper presents a combined energy analysis technique of Pinch Analysis and Exergy Analysis to determine exergy losses and compressor shaft work targeting in sub-ambient processes via a novel numerical approach known as the Exergy Problem Table Algorithm (Ex-PTA). The validity of the novel approach is demonstrated by using an illustrated case study. Based on the new numerical method, the total exergy loss in the process is 4.42 kW which is equivalent to 7.4 kW potential savings of compressor shaft work. In the economic analysis, the wasted potential shaft work costs a loss of approximately 19,926 MYR/y which should be avoided to minimise process operating cost.


This paper develops a simple theoretical framework to study a set of regions, each with its own regional government, who share a union or central government. These governments must decide whether to implement or discard a large number of projects that produce local benefits for the region that implements them, and externalities for the rest of the regions. Conflict or disagreement arises since different regions value projects differently. The classic assignment problem consists of deciding who decides these projects, either the union or the regional governments. It is well known that regional governments are insensitive to externalities. The key observation here is that the union government is insensitive to local benefits. Thus, each government maximizes only a piece of the value of projects, and disregards the other one. This observation leads to simple and clear rules for solving the assignment problem.


Purpose
Isolated communities face a variety of inconveniences including severe remoteness, poor roads and extreme climate conditions, resulting in the lack of security of supply chains and exorbitant prices for cargo delivery. This paper aims to investigate the present advantages and prospects of applying 3-D printing to improve economics and everyday life of remote communities, reindeer herder case taken as an example.

Design/methodology/approach
This study covers the use of a low-cost open-source 3-D printer (RepRap) capable of fused filament fabrication to reduce operating costs for nomadic reindeer herder groups. Three case studies are provided for reindeer-specific applications to probe economic and technical viability of the technology, namely, ear-tags, electric fence components and lasso accessories.

Findings
3-D printed objects feature technical characteristics similar to those of analogues available on the market while reducing the price by 63 per cent. Distributed 3-D printing reduces the cost of raw materials by 68 per cent and shipping costs by 50 because of lower trip frequency. If all reindeer herders globally were to adopt distributed manufacturing of the three aforementioned sample items only, their annual savings from such solution would amount to US$2m. The paper discovers other economic, entrepreneurial, technical and environmental opportunities offered by 3-D printing put to service the needs of remote communities.

Research limitations
As the paper is the first-ever study of 3-D printing potential applied to the reindeer husbandry case, it is based on a more thorough analysis of the techno-economic feasibility of the technology, while cultural and entrepreneurial factors have been discussed as preconditions only.

Practical implications
The paper might serve as a valuable source of information for entrepreneurs, as well as for students and academics for further case studies in this area.

Originality/value
In remote conditions, 3-D printing offers a more sustainable way of good manufacturing. Numerous open source designs already available for specialists, financial effectiveness, environmental benefits and vast opportunities for entrepreneurs are among the most promising advantages of the technology.


This paper examines the impact of financial depth on macroeconomic volatility using a dynamic panel analysis for 110 advanced and developing countries. We find that financial depth plays a significant role in dampening the volatility of output, consumption, and investment growth, but only up to a certain point. At very high levels, such as those observed in many advanced economies, financial depth amplifies consumption and investment volatility. We also find strong evidence that deeper financial systems serve as shock absorbers, mitigating the negative effects of real external shocks on macroeconomic volatility. This smoothing effect is particularly pronounced for consumption volatility in environments of high exposure - when trade and financial openness are high - suggesting significant gains from further financial deepening in developing countries.


We examine the well-known problem of determining the capacity of multi-dimensional run-length-limited constrained systems. By recasting the problem, which is essentially a combinatorial counting problem, into a probabilistic setting, we are able to derive new lower and upper bounds on the capacity of (0, k)-RLL systems. These bounds are better than all previouslyknown bounds for k > 2, and are even tight asymptotically. Thus, we settle the open question: what is the rate at which the capacity of (0, k)-RLL systems converges to 1 as k → ∞? While doing so, we also provide the first ever non-trivial upper bound on the capacity of general (d, k)-RLL systems.


We consider the budget optimization problem faced by an advertiser participating in repeated sponsored search auctions, seeking to maximize the number of clicks attained under that budget. We cast the budget optimization problem as a Markov Decision Process (MDP) with censored observations, and propose a learning algorithm based on the well-known Kaplan-Meier or product-limit estimator. We validate the performance of this algorithm by comparing it to several others on a large set of search auction data from Microsoft adCenter, demonstrating fast convergence to optimal performance.