Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted disease in the United States and the primary cause of cervical cancer. Approximately 14 million people will contract the virus this year. Luckily, the HPV vaccine provides protection from HPV infection and, therefore, HPV related cancers and conditions. Unfortunately, only 42% of adolescent girls and 28% of adolescent boys have received the recommended three doses of the vaccine. This literature review examines provider perspectives on the HPV vaccine with an emphasis on identifying the barriers and facilitators of vaccination. Thirty articles from the United States were found to meet the selection criteria through a PubMed database search using parameters regarding HPV, providers, and perceptions. Providers not recommending the vaccine, concerns about vaccine safety and side effects, the cost or the perceived cost of the vaccine, and providers not prioritizing the vaccine because it is not mandated for school entry were among the barriers identified. Facilitators of vaccination included repetitive recommendations at each subsequent visit after a vaccine denial and presenting the vaccine as a means of cancer prevention. The reduction of cervical cancer cases is a public health issue that is facilitated by the HPV vaccine. Understanding the perspectives of health care providers is certainly useful and may be essential in efforts to increase the uptake of this vaccine, making these perspectives of public health importance. Ongoing efforts to increase HPV vaccination rates should be designed with an understanding of the current dynamics in play between providers, adolescent patients, and their parents with regards to the HPV vaccine.


Objective To share practical, user-friendly data validation methods in R that result in shorter validation time and simpler code. Introduction There are currently 123 healthcare facilities sending data to the Washington (WA) State syndromic surveillance program. Of these facilities, 30 are sending to the National Syndromic Surveillance Program's (NSSP) production environment. The remainder are undergoing validation or in queue for validation. Given the large number of WA healthcare facilities awaiting validation, staff within the state syndromic surveillance program developed methods in R to reduce the amount of time required to validate data from an individual facility. Methods The dplyr package and R Markdown file format were used to more rapidly conduct syndromic data validation. Dplyr, written by Hadley Wickham, was created for easy data manipulation. 1 The syntax of this package is user-friendly, providing a function for almost every common data manipulation task and utilizing the piping operator from the magrittr package. Data fields of interest for syndromic surveillance are classified as required (R), required but may be empty (RE), or optional (O). For R or RE data fields, dplyr can be used to check for patterns of missingness as well as verify that the correct value sets are being used for code fields. For character fields, dplyr can be used to pull samples of free-text, calculate word or character counts, or search for string patterns of interest. Results The amount of time spent validating any single facility has decreased significantly. This has allowed the number of facilities undergoing data validation at one time to increase from 12 to 22. However, the length of time between beginning and completing data validation per facility has not decreased. While reporting data issues to facilities takes less time, the lag in the validation process still occurs while waiting for facilities to correct these issues at the feed origination. Conclusions In order to increase the number of healthcare facilities that are sending production quality data more quickly, more resources need to be directed at providing facilities with support on how to correct data issues rather than solely reporting the problems. References 1. Anderson, S. dplyr and pipes: the basics [Internet]. 2014 [cited 2017 Oct 10]. Available from: http://seananderson.ca/2014/09/13/dplyr-intro.html 2. Broman, K. Knitr with R Markdown [Internet]. [cited 2017 Oct 10]. Available from: http://kbroman.org/knitr_knutshell/pages/Rmarkdown.html.


In this paper we give a review of our recent results related to the incorporation of hydrogen (H) in silicon carbide (SiC) and its interaction with acceptor doping atoms and implantation induced defects. Hydrogen is an abundant impurity in the growth of epitaxial SiC since it is present in the precursor gases and since H2 is used as the carrier gas. High concentrations of hydrogen are indeed incorporated into highly doped p-type epi-layers and it is shown that the main source is the carrier gas. Furthermore, it is revealed that the entire substrate becomes homogeneously filled with hydrogen during growth and that this hydrogen is more thermally stable than that in the epi-layer. Incorporation of hydrogen from an H2 ambient, at temperatures considerably lower than those used for epitaxy, is also demonstrated in p-type samples coated with a catalytic metal film. This effect is most likely the cause for the increased series resistance observed in p-type SiC Schottky sensor devices using a catalytic metal gate after annealing at 600 °C in a H2 containing ambient. Hydrogen is found to passivate the acceptors Al and B by forming electrically neutral H-acceptor complexes. Unlike in Si and GaAs, the two H-acceptor complexes in SiC exhibit very different dissociation energies, suggesting that the atomic configurations of the complexes are significantly different. The migration of mobile hydrogen in the presence of externally applied, or internal built-in, electric fields further reveals that hydrogen is present as H+ in p-type SiC. Finally, the redistribution and subsequent out-diffusion of low energy implanted 1H and 2H is investigated. Two annealing phases for the redistribution are observed, and the activation energies for the processes are extracted.


INTRODUCTION
At present, little data exists about the incidence of, and the risk factors associated with, metabolic syndrome (MetS) in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). The aims of this present study were to assess the incidence and risk factors of MetS in people with T2DM using routinely collected data from a clinical information system at Isfahan Endocrine and Metabolism Research Centre, Iran.

MATERIAL AND METHODS
During the mean (SD) follow-up period of 11.7 (4.8) years, 3,047 patients with T2DM who were free of MetS at baseline were examined to determine the incidence and predictors of progression to MetS. The mean (SD) age of participants was 50.4 (11.0) years, with a mean (SD) duration of diabetes of 6.3 (6.2) years at initial registration. A modified National Cholesterol Education Programme- Adult Treatment Panel III definition (with body mass index [BMI] instead of waist circumference) was used for the MetS.

RESULTS
The prevalence of MetS was 63.2% (95% CI: 62.3, 64.1). The incidence of MetS was 28.5 (95% CI: 26.8, 30.2) (25.9 men and 30.9 women) per 1,000 patient-years based on 35,677 patient-years of follow-up. Multivariate analysis revealed that higher body mass index (BMI) and education, lower HbA1c and treatment with oral agent or insulin were associated with MetS.

CONCLUSIONS
These are the first estimates of the incidence and risk factors of MetS in patients with T2DM in Iran. These findings show that the natural course of MetS is dynamic. The clinical management of patients with T2DM will contribute significantly to MetS prevention.


An exascale machine is expected to be delivered in the time frame 2018-2020. Such a machine will be able to tackle some of the hardest computational problems and to extend our understanding of Nature and the universe. However, to make that a reality, the HPC community has to solve a few important challenges. Resilience will become a prominent problem because an exascale machine will experience frequent failures due to the large amount of components it will encompass. Some form of fault tolerance has to be incorporated in the system to maintain the progress rate of applications as high as possible. In parallel, the system will have to be more careful about power management. There are two dimensions of power. First, in a power-limited environment, all the layers of the system have to adhere to that limitation (including the fault tolerance layer). Second, power will be relevant due to energy consumption: an exascale installation will have to pay a large energy bill. It is fundamental to increase our understanding of the energy profile of different fault tolerance schemes. This paper presents an evaluation of three different fault tolerance approaches: checkpoint/restart, message-logging and parallel recovery. Using programs from different programming models, we show parallel recovery is the most energy-efficient solution for an execution with failures. At the same time, parallel recovery is able to finish the execution faster than the other approaches. We explore the behavior of these approaches at extreme scales using an analytical model. At large scale, parallel recovery is predicted to reduce the total execution time of an application by 17% and reduce the energy consumption by 13% when compared to checkpoint/restart.


The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which repealed the Missouri Compromise slavery restriction, transformed Abraham Lincoln's political career by making opposition to slavery central to his thought and action to a degree it had never been before. But Lincoln at first called only for the restoration of the Missouri Compromise, a sectional pact between slave states and free states, which seems more a formula for indefinite continuation of a "house divided" than for placing slavery in course of ultimate extinction. Initially Lincoln even hoped, unrealistically, that Southern leaders would join Northern leaders in restoring the Compromise for the peace of the country. Though repeal of the Missouri Compromise continued to play a key role in Lincoln's diagnosis of the slavery crisis, he eventually ceased to call for its restoration, and instead moved toward a more comprehensive, principled, and arguably more radical stance on the legitimate power of an electoral majority, despite strong opposition from the slave states, to halt and eventually reverse the expansion of slavery.


Religious/spiritual (R/S) coping following natural disasters is associated with positive outcomes, leading to perceptions that the absence of R/S coping leads to negative outcomes among nonreligious individuals. However, little research explicitly explores the coping strategies of nonreligious individuals in response to natural disasters and traumatic events. The present study collected data from a sample of survivors of a natural disaster event (i.e., a tornado) to test the relationship between (non)religiosity/(non)spirituality, coping, psychological distress, and posttraumatic growth. Statistical models suggested that problem-focused coping facilitated posttraumatic growth and lower levels of psychological distress among people with lower levels of institutional religiousness and/or individual spirituality (consistent with predictions), but not among people at high levels of religiousness/spirituality (contrary to predictions). Participants with moderate levels of institutional religiousness reported more dysfunctional coping and higher levels of psychological distress, as predicted. Emotion-focused coping was associated with fewer depressive symptoms following trauma among participants with low levels of institutional religiousness. These data suggest a complex relationship between trauma, posttraumatic growth, distress, and coping among varying levels of (non)religiousness/(non)spirituality. This study is among the first to suggest that problem-focused coping in particular may promote positive psychological outcomes among nonreligious/nonspiritual people following a natural disaster or traumatic event. Implications of these data (i.e., for treatment of trauma) are discussed.


This research aims to determine the lifestyle indicators that related to menarche age of female teenagers. The methodology that used in this research was correlational studies (association relationship) with retrospective approach. The population in this research was all female student in junior high school in Pekanbaru that have been menarche. This research was conducted on 98 female students in 9 junior high schools in Pekanbaru spread over 3 districts in Pekanbaru. Samples were taken from junior high school that the location was in district with  cluster sampling method and then simple random sampling method. The tools used questionnaire that the validity and reliability had been tested. The analysis used univariate and bivariate. The univariate analysis explained respondent  characteristic and the variable view. The bivariate analysis explained  correlation between each variable with chi-square test. The results that there was relationship between exercise habits and stress control with menarche age of female teenagers, with p value is 0,000  and 0,009. For indicators of diet and bed rest showed that there was no relationship with menarche age. Expected for female teenagers can behave in healthy living lifestyle, especially for exercise habits and stress control that related with menarche age. Keywords: lifestyle indicators, menarche age, female teenager.


This paper describes analytical and experimental studies into the effectiveness and feasibility of semi-active resettable devices for seismic protection of civil engineering structures. A series of shake table tests were performed on a one-fifth scale structure equipped with two newly developed resettable devices. The devices were installed as part of the lateral bracing of the structure to reduce structural responses induced by different seismic excitations. The independent chamber controlled devices can modify the hysteretic behavior of the structure by using different control laws. The results of the shake table tests are presented and interpreted in this paper. Following the experimental validation of the resettable devices, analytical studies were carried out to investigate the performance of a twelve-storey reinforced concrete building subjected to earthquake loading and controlled by resettable devices. Computer simulations were carried out to determine the optimal utilization of the resettable devices in the structure. In this paper, the optimal distribution of the devices is investigated and the effects of different control laws on the seismic response are discussed.


A monolithically integrated distributed feedback (DFB) laser and traveling-wave electro-absorption modulator (TWEAM) with ges 100 GHz -3 dBe bandwidth suitable for Non-return-to-zero (NRZ) operation with on-off keying (OOK) is presented. The steady-state, small-signal modulation response, microwave reflection, chirp characteristic, and both data operation and transmission were investigated. The DFB-TWEAM was found to be an attractive candidate for future short distance communication in high bitrates systems.


Metric spaces, which generalise the properties of commonly-encountered physical and abstract spaces into a mathematical framework, frequently occur in computer science applications. Three major kinds of questions about metric spaces are considered here: the intrinsic dimensionality of a distribution, the maximum number of distance permutations, and the difficulty of reverse similarity search. Intrinsic dimensionality measures the tendency for points to be equidistant, which is diagnostic of high-dimensional spaces. Distance permutations describe the order in which a set of fixed sites appears while moving away from a chosen point; the number of distinct permutations determines the amount of storage space required by some kinds of indexing data structure. Reverse similarity search problems are constraint satisfaction problems derived from distance-based index structures. Their difficulty reveals details of the structure of the space. Theoretical and experimental results are given for these three questions in a wide range of metric spaces, with commentary on the consequences for computer science applications and additional related results where appropriate.


Introduction: Āsana is an important constituent of Yoga. The impact of Anantasamāpatti, a technique for the practice of āsana prescribed by patan jali, in the practice of Yogāsana remains to be scientifically assessed. Scientific verification presupposes conceptual clarity. A cursory survey of contemporary interpretations reveals that Anantasamāpatti has been represented variously. Objectives and Method: In the light of this contemporary uncertainty, effort is made to refer to and analyse the traditional view point which is preserved in the form of Sanskrit commentaries regarding the meaning and mechanism of working of this technique to assist better understanding and implementation of this most ancient technique in the practice of Yogāsana. Result: Contemporary uncertainty regarding Ananatasamāpatti seems to stem from traditional sources. Conclusion: Based on the literary evidences Ananta is the probable reading and the meaning seems to be Śeṣa. Samāpatti is visualization of oneself as firm and strong like Śeṣa. The mechanism of working seems to be the effect of the mental visualization on physical firmness. And this requires to be practiced along with prayantaśaithilya.


Cassava (Manihot esculenta) is the fourth most important source of food energy in the tropics. More than two-thirds of the total production of this crop is used as food for humans, with lesser amounts being used for animal feed and industrial purposes. The ingestion of high levels of cassava has been associated with chronic cyanide toxicity in parts of Africa, but this appears to be related to inadequate processing of the root and poor overall nutrition. Although cassava is not a complete food it is important as a cheap source of calories. The crop has a high yield potential under good conditions, and compared to other crops it excels under suboptimal conditions, thus offering the possibility of using marginal land to increase total agricultural production. Breeding programs that bring together germ plasm from different regions coupled with improved agronomic practices can markedly increase yields. The future demand for fresh cassava may depend on improved storage methods. The markets for cassava as a substitute for cereal flours in bakery products and as an energy source in animal feed rations are likely to expand. The use of cassava as a source of ethanol for fuel depends on finding an efficient source of energy for distillation or an improved method of separating ethanol from water.


A sufficient condition for C1-continuity of subdivision surfaces was proposed by Reif [Comput. Aided Geom. Design, 12 (1995), pp. 153–174.] and extended to a more general setting in [D. Zorin, Constr. Approx., accepted for publication]. In both cases, the analysis of C1-continuity is reduced to establishing injectivity and regularity of a characteristic map. In all known proofs of C1-continuity, explicit representation of the limit surface on an annular region was used to establish regularity, and a variety of relatively complex techniques were used to establish injectivity. We propose a new approach to this problem: we show that for a general class of subdivision schemes, regularity can be inferred from the properties of a sufficiently close linear approximation, and injectivity can be verified by computing the index of a curve. An additional advantage of our approach is that it allows us to prove C1-continuity for all valences of vertices, rather than for an arbitrarily large but finite number of valences. As an application, we use our method to analyze C1-continuity of most stationary subdivision schemes known to us, including interpolating butterfly and modified butterfly schemes, as well as the Kobbelt's interpolating scheme for quadrilateral meshes.


PURPOSE
To determine whether coronary computed tomographic (CT) angiography "triple rule-out" evaluation of emergency department (ED) patients presenting with symptoms suggestive of acute coronary syndrome (ACS) can help identify a subset of patients who can be discharged without adverse clinical outcomes within 30 days.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
This protocol was approved by the university institutional review board. Each patient provided written informed consent prior to inclusion. Coronary CT angiography was performed in 201 consecutive low-to-moderate risk ACS patients. A triple rule-out protocol was used to evaluate for coronary disease, pulmonary embolism, aortic dissection, and other thoracic disease. Four patients were excluded because of technical problems. The remaining subjects underwent a 30-day follow-up.

RESULTS
A disease process other than coronary atherosclerosis that explained the presenting symptoms was diagnosed in 22 (11%) of 197 patients. Clinically important noncoronary diagnoses that did not explain patient symptoms were identified in 27 (14%) of 197 additional patients. With respect to coronary artery disease, 10 patients had severe disease (>70% stenosis), 12 had moderate disease (50%-70% stenosis), 46 had mild disease (up to 50% stenosis), and 129 had no disease. No further diagnostic testing was performed in 133 (76%) of 175 of patients with no to mild coronary disease. At 30-day follow-up, the negative predictive value of coronary CT angiography with no more than mild disease was 99.4%. There were no adverse outcomes at 30 days.

CONCLUSION
Triple rule-out coronary CT angiography evaluation of low-to-moderate risk ACS patients presenting to the ED provided a noncoronary diagnosis that explained the presenting complaint in 11% of patients, suggested the presence of significant moderate-to-severe coronary disease in 11% (22 of 197) of patients, and precluded additional diagnostic cardiac testing in the majority of patients with no adverse outcomes at 30-day follow-up.


Acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) with t(6;11)(q27;q23), resulting in a chimeric MLL/AF6 gene, is rare (≤0.6% of adult cases),1 ,2 and is associated with poor prognosis.2 ,3 The majority of these cases are acute myelomonocytic leukaemia, or acute monoblastic/monocytic leukaemia,1 and they have increased risk for hyperleukocytosis requiring leukapheresis.4 The RAS association domain ( RA1 ) at the N-terminus of AF6 is sufficient for MLL-AF6 to mediate leukemogenesis.5 Although an activated KRAS mutation accelerates MLL/AF4 -driven leukemogenesis in transgenic mice,6 whether it will do the same with MLL/AF6 is unknown. Here, we report a rare and aggressive case of acute monocytic leukaemia with both MLL/AF6 and KRAS G12D .

A middle-aged man in his 40s had sore throat, chills, night sweats and swelling in the neck for four days prior to presentation to a local emergency centre. Concurrently, non-pruritic purple skin lesions appeared on his body. A complete blood count showed a white blood cell (WBC) count of 3 25 000/mm3, a platelet count of 60 000/mm3, and 92% monocytes in the blood smear. He was given 6 g of hydroxyurea orally and transferred to a tertiary cancer centre for emergent treatment of hyperleukocytosis. His past medical history, social history and family history were non-contributory.

Upon arrival at the cancer centre, he became dyspneic. His vital signs were: blood pressure 107/53 mm Hg; heart rate …


This study is driven by the need to bridge the gap in the current literature in terms of identifying the sustainable institutional aspects of the Land Tenure Administration (LTA) under the current situation in Iraq, as the principal mechanism through which LTA can be sought. In fact, the critical situations of post-war, economic crisis and terrorism waves in Iraq are now heading the country to develop an urgent national policy, thus there is a need to put forward a strategic approach that helps Iraqi Land Authorities (ILAs) policy to build an efficiency implementation of LTA and ensuring the users' satisfaction to achieve better practices in Iraq. While post-war situations and inter-communal violence impacts continue to occur in the country, the research provided a pioneer opportunity to identify current problems of LTA, which can be directly linked to these factors of the instability and insecurity situations in the Iraqi urban areas. This thesis is structured from nine chapters; it deals with the government policy makers of the applicants at ILAs and the property users in Iraq. The research identified a set of key influential factors driven from the current critical situation regarding the LTA efficiency at ILAs and the level of users' satisfaction. One of the research objectives is to develop a conceptual framework for evaluation the operational performance of LTA in Iraq. To evaluate the conceptual framework validity, the questionnaire has distributed targeting the user's samples of 384 in 3 chosen neighbourhoods in the Al-Nassiriya city, 16 semi-structured interviews have been conducted with Top Senior Managers (TSMs) in 6 agencies of decision-making councils in ILAs at both national and local levels in the Iraqi system. In this research a multi-method of analysis was followed triangulating data, hence the core part of data to be used for analysis is that derived from these Iraqi land resources. Based on respectable evidence, the Iraqi existing system is still offering significant levels of management and monitoring supports. Evidence showed that the LAS/LTA is qualified and there is no lack in administrative approach. However, crucial influences of the state instability, insecurity situations, inter-communal violence, and the displacement and refugee's relocation problems were directly followed the land dispute resolution, financing & data costs, land administration processes, and efficient technical aspects.


The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was enacted on August 21, 1996, by the 104th U.S. Congress as Public Law 104-191 (29 U.S.C. [section]18). The act amended both the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, or ERISA [29 U.S.C.[section]1182(a)(1)], and the Public Health Service Act [42 U.S.C.[section] 6(a)]. Its main purpose was to improve both the portability and continuity of health insurance coverage for workers and their families, especially as individuals changed employers. Title II of the act was intended to reduce paperwork--making it easier to detect and prosecute fraud and abuse--and to streamline industry inefficiencies (Office of Civil Rights, 2003). However, one specific clause in title II part C, titled "Administrative Simplification," has had implications beyond the original intent of the act. This clause is referred to as the Privacy Rule; it was effective on October 15, 2002, and is responsible for much confusion and widespread controversy (Kuczynski & Gibbs-Whalberg, 2005), especially in collegiate sport settings. "Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information" is the Privacy Rule (45 CFR parts 160 and 164). The Privacy Rule implements the privacy requirements of the Administrative Simplification subtitle of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. The Privacy Rule was added to the legislation at the request of the insurance industry. It was intended to be a confidentiality provision--controlling the use and disclosure of health information--by establishing for the first time a set of national standards for the protection of personal health information. Before the enactment of this act, an individual's health information was readily available and able to be shared among insurance companies. The resulting effect of this ethically questionable, yet legal, sharing of health information was across-the-board rejections of many persons who requested, and often needed, health insurance. The Department of Health and Human Services is responsible for the enforcement and implementation of HIPAA. Being a federal agency, its power is far-reaching and at times intimidating. The passage of HIPAA and more specifically of the Privacy Rule has had an immediate impact on sporting organizations and personnel, especially with the normative method by which injuries are reported and information concerning athletes is released. The challenge facing sport professionals is determining if HIPAA applies to them, and if it does, establishing protocol for performing their duties adequately while being in compliance with the federal regulations. This paper will identify issues with the HIPAA Privacy Rule and suggest methods with which sport professionals can cope with these issues. Operational Definitions Personal health information is defined by HIPAA as individually identifiable health information. This includes any demographic or personally identifiable data relating to physical or mental health conditions, as well as information relating to the provision of health care and payment; however, patient information that is redacted for identifiable information is not subject to HIPAA guidelines (Jones, 2003). The Privacy Rule (also known as "Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information") is in title 45 of the Code of Federal Regulations, part 160 and subparts A and E of part 164. The full text of the Privacy Rule can be found at the HIPAA privacy website of the Office for Civil Rights, http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa. The Privacy Rule specifies that all covered entities follow five steps to ensure the privacy of patients' health information (Dolan, 2003): 1 Notify patients about their rights and inform them of how their information will be used. 2 Adopt and implement privacy procedures. 3 Train employees on privacy procedures. …


: Playfair cipher is an interesting data encryption technique with a medium level of complexity, and therefore, is suitable for security of wireless and mobile systems. Different sizes of the matrices used for key have been prevsiouly stuided by researchers, but no study has been done so far that provides a comparative analysis of different matrix sizes of a key. This paper is motivated by this observation, and provides a comparison of three different matrix sizes used for the key. These matrices are 9 x 9, 10 x 10, and 11 x 11. Different experiments were performed which indicate that for the data used herein, the size of the plaintext does not have a signifncicant effect on the encryption of the output. However, the size of the key does have a notable effect and the exntrypion level increases with big keys of bigger sizes. Furthermore, increasing the size of the matrix provides better encryption results.


The vaccinal antibodies interference represents one of the Microscopic Agglutination test - MAT limitation in the animal leptospirosis serum diagnosis. Prospective studies showing the dimensions of this effect are rare in buffaloes. This study aimed to determine the anti-Leptospira serum agglutinin profile in vaccinated female buffaloes using two types of commercial vaccines against leptospirosis: bacterin (whole bacterial cell) and purified outer membrane and to evaluate the vaccinal interference on serum diagnosis. Three groups of 11 adult buffalo females were established: G1-control, non-vaccinated, G2- vaccinated with bacterin vaccine with six serovars, G3- outer membrane purified vaccine with five serovars. A booster dose was administrated 30 days after the first vaccination (dpv) and two re-vaccinations six months a part (210 and 390 dpv). Serum samples were collected on days 0, 15, 40, 45, 60 and every 30 days until 540 dpv. G1, G2 and G3 serum samples were submitted to MAT with the serovars present in the vaccines. G1 remained always negative. Both vaccines induced serologic responses in MAT at 150 dpv against all serovars and they revealed maximum titers around 45 and 60dpv as follows: Pomona: G2 (1600) and G3 (3200); Hardjo: G2 and G3 (1600); Wolffi: G2 (800) and G3 (1600); Icterohaemorrhagiae: G2 and G3 (800); Grippotyphosa: G2 and G3 (200) and Canicola: G2 (NR) and G3 (400). Even though, the Wolffi serovar is not present in the purified outer membrane vaccine, G3 showed a response to that serovar, probably due to cross reaction to the serovar Hardjo. The G3 titers were higher and appeared earlier than in G2, but with similar serologic profiles. At the re-vaccination there was an increase on agglutinin levels, but of less intensity than those previously observed. After six months from the second revaccination (540 dfv), G2 and G3 were almost negative, which demonstrated the short diagnostic interference.


Automatic Discovery and Exposition of Parallelism in Serial Applications for Compiler-Inserted Runtime Adaptation David Greenland Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Master of Science Compiler-Inserted Runtime Adaptation (CIRA) is a compilation and runtime adaptation strategy which has great potential for increasing performance in multicore systems. In this strategy, the compiler inserts directives into the application which will adapt the application at runtime. Its ability to overcome the obstacles of architectural and environmental diversity coupled with its flexibility to work with many programming languages and styles of applications make it a very powerful tool. However, it is not complete. In fact, there are many pieces still needed to accomplish these lofty goals. This work describes the automatic discovery of parallelism inherent in an application and the generation of an intermediate representation to expose that parallelism. This work shows on six benchmark applications that a significant amount of parallelism which was not initially apparent can be automatically discovered. This work also shows that the parallelism can then be exposed in a representation which is also automatically generated. This is accomplished by a series of analysis and transformation passes with only minimal programmer-inserted directives. This series of passes forms a necessary part of the CIRA toolchain called the concurrency compiler. This concurrency compiler proves that a representation with exposed parallelism and locality can be generated by a compiler. It also lays the groundwork for future, more powerful concurrency compilers. This work also describes the extension of the intermediate representation to support hierarchy, a prerequisite characteristic to the creation of the concurrency compiler. This extension makes it capable of representing many more applications in a much more effective way. This extension to support hierarchy allows much more of the parallelism discovered by the concurrency compiler to be stored in the representation.


In this paper we present SPARSAR, a system for English poetry recital. The system is parasitic on TextToSpeech (TTS) systems available both online and on Macintosh computers. It creates prosodic parameters and phonetic transcriptions on any input text to be used by the TTS in order to normalize and improve current systems which are statistically based. In order to show TTS inability to produce semantically coherent and expressive readings Italian texts will be used at first and critical points indicated and discussed. Then SPARSAR architecture will be introduced and its three layers presented in detail. The ability of the system to generate appropriate prosodic parameters will be discussed in relation to a poem by Sylvia Plath, Edge. The peculiarity of this poem is its richness in enjambments, which are not captured at all by statistically based TTS. Eventually, latest work on Elisabethan poetry will be presented and a Sonnet by Shakespeare will be transcribed and annotated with prosodic parameters' values by the system; in particular, it will be shown how the lack of a specific component to account for contractions and rhyming violations makes best commercial TTS systems even unable to pronounce words correctly.


First published 30 years ago, Wyatt and Dashwood's European Union Law was a landmark publication, designed and written for students taking degree level courses in EU law. In the intervening years new editions have appeared at regular intervals, firmly establishing the book as a reliable and authoritative text. Besides introducing generations of students to the intricacies of European law it has also been increasingly relied upon by scholars, practitioners and the courts as a valuable source of reference on this complex and ever-expanding body of law.

While the book cannot cover every aspect of the subject matter, it nevertheless offers comprehensive coverage of those aspects of EU law most commonly studied at degree level. Part I introduces the history and foundations of the Union's primary law. Part II looks at the Union's institutions, decision-making procedures and competences. It also deals with the Union judiciary, focusing on direct actions before the Union courts and preliminary references from national courts. The constitutional fundamentals of direct effect and supremacy, effective judicial protection before national courts, general principles of Union law and the Charter of Fundamental Rights are dealt with in Part III. Part IV covers the internal market: free movement of goods, Union citizenship, workers, establishment and services, the services directive, mutual recognition of qualifications, corporate establishment and company law harmonisation. Part V deals with competition law: Articles 101 and 102 TFEU, the enforcement of Union competition rules and other related competition law issues. Part VI then includes a brand new chapter concerned with the EU's external relations, together with treatment of the legal effects of international agreements entered into by the EU.

As with previous editions the aim is to provide an accurate, critical, pragmatic and original account of the subject, at times also offering unique insiders' insights. The book holds to its reputation as being both broad and profound, the ideal foundation for gaining a deep understanding of EU law.

This edition reflects the law post-Lisbon. It has also been re-structured and re-designed, so as to facilitate ease-of-use. Its original authors, Derrick Wyatt and Alan Dashwood, continue to make a significant contribution. Michael Dougan, Eleanor Spaventa and Barry Rodger complete the team of authors working on this invaluable textbook and reference work.

The 6th edition has already been cited in the Northern Ireland High Court by The Honourable Mr. Justice Bernard McCloskey [2011] NIQB 61.


While regional differences in life expectancy have flattened out in Switzerland, we investigate the effect of periurbanization on the geography of mortality. Using data from vital statistics and censuses, we find an increasing intra-urban differentiation of mortality since 1980, especially in the largest and most recently sprawling cities. A non-linear gradient, in which life expectancy is lower in city centres and rural areas than in urban agglomeration belts, has emerged. Ageand cause-specific mortality profiles suggest that lifestyles specific to the population of the city centres and related to the spatial concentration of disadvantaged groups play a dominant role in shaping this pattern. Considering mortality at ages 20-64, a multilevel model applied to census-linked mortality data shows how the mortality advantage observed in periurban areas can be explained by a concentration of highly educated individuals and of families. Excess mortality at ages 20-64 in city centres, by contrast, arises from more deprived material and social living environments. However, these socioeconomic consequences of periurbanization fail to account for the urban mortality gradient observed among older people.


This research explores the challenges of developing a ticket sales force v^thin a collegiate athletic department by investigating the difficulties one BCS college faced over the course of a decade amidst the implementation and management of a ticket sales force. The athletic department at the University of Miami was the first of its kind to establish a ticket sales force similar to that of professional sports organizations in that it would constitute its own directors and management team within the department. Like many metropolitan universities, the University of Miami athletic department faced challenging marketing conditions. Its locale offered unique marketing and sales opportunities for the athletic department to better leverage the visibility of their athletic programs and increase the oVerall attendance at university sporting events. Using qualitative collection methods and coding analysis techniques, this research explores the methods used by the University of Miami athletic department to increase ticket sales revenue from the time a ticket sales force was established to the time of its demise. Propositions regarding the successful implementation and management of ticket sales operations within college athletic departments are provided to help guide future research in the area of sport ticket sales and coUegiate athletics. Though generalizing how athletic departments function can be difficult, the authors believe the findings of this research provide a useful framework for further research into this line of inquiry. Practical implications as well as avenues for potential research are also forwarded.


Social-ecological systems contribute to environmental change and, in turn, face its corresponding shocks and disturbances. As scholarship on resilience and social-ecological transformations grows, researchers from various disciplines continue to debate how major transitions and environmental change can be anticipated, studied or guided towards just and ethical outcomes. To this end, we apply an interdisciplinary perspective to describing key aspects of social-ecological transformations scholarship around three pressing questions: (1) What features or criteria distinguish transformations from other forms of change?; (2) What are the political, ethical, and normative concerns associated with transformations?; and (3) How can we better track, measure, and evaluate such transformations? Our insights, which emerged from a workshop with early-career interdisciplinary scholars, highlight questions of justice, equity and ethics in transformations research, and suggest that more precise indicators of change, a more explicit understanding of system boundaries, and a dual focus on process and outcomes will help advance our understanding of the social-ecological implications of transformations. We hope that articulating these challenges and recommendations in an interdisciplinary framing will help further the conversation on these critical topics and provide an accessible perspective of key considerations for multidisciplinary scholarship on social-ecological transformations.


Two 3-D six-hole transparent enlarged model injector have been manufactured with full optical access; both were 15 times larger than the real size, but one had a length-to-diameter ratio twice as the second one. The working fluid was water and aqueous solutions of glycerol circulating through the nozzle injector under steady- state flow conditions at different flow rates, pressures and needle lift positions. Real-time in-nozzle flow visualisations were obtained using a high speed video recorder which allowed determination of in-nozzle flow patterns, in particular, formation, dynamics and the development of cavitation.

Simultaneous imaging of the flow inside the nozzle injector showed that reducing the needle lift would suppress the cavitation intensity in both models especially during early stage of cavitation causing a delay on its onset from a CN ≈ 1.1 at full lift to CN = 1.9 at 25% of the full. The main noticeable effect of L/D was found to be at the exit of the nozzles where different types of in-nozzle flow would be experienced due to different length of the nozzles with larger L/D having a more developed and stable cavitating flow and is expected to affect spray outside the nozzles. The effect of viscosity was only evident during early stage of cavitation with a delay on the onset of the cavitation and a less intense cavitation with blends at higher viscosities. The results also showed that an increase in temperature had the effect of enhancing cavitation due to lower viscosity and weaker molecular bounding.


The key to high precision parameter estimation in global navigation satellite system (GNSS) applications is to properly deal with the integer valued carrier-phase ambiguities. The class of integer estimators fixes all ambiguities to integer values. This can also decrease the precision of the estimates of the non-ambiguity parameters, if the fixing is incorrect. The best integer-equivariant (BIE) estimator is optimal in the sense of minimizing the mean-squared error (MSE) of both the ambiguities and the real valued parameters, regardless of the precision of the float solution. However, the BIE estimator comprises a search in the integer space of ambiguities, whose complexity grows exponentially with the number of ambiguities. This search is not feasible for large-scale network solutions. To overcome this problem, a sequential BIE (SBIE) algorithm is proposed, which shows close to optimal performance with only linearly increasing complexity. Numerical simulations are used to verify the performance of the SBIE algorithm.


Traditionally, digitisation has been led by supply rather than demand. While end users are seen as a priority they are not directly consulted about which collections they would like to have made available digitally or why. This can be seen in a wide range of policy documents throughout the cultural heritage sector, where users are positioned as central but where their preferences are assumed rather than solicited. Post-digitisation consultation with end users isequally rare. How are we to know that digitisation is serving the needs of the Higher Education community and is sustainable in the long-term? The 'Digitisation in Special Collections: mapping, assessment and prioritisation' (DiSCmap) project, funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the Research Information Network (RIN), aimed to:- Identify priority collections for potential digitisation housed within UK Higher Education's libraries, archives and museums as well as faculties and departments.- Assess users' needs and demand for Special Collections to be digitised across all disciplines.- Produce a synthesis of available knowledge about users' needs with regard to usability and format of digitised resources.- Provide recommendations for a strategic approach to digitisation within the wider context and activity of leading players both in the public and commercial sector.The project was carried out jointly by the Centre for Digital Library Research (CDLR) and the Centre for Research in Library and Information Management (CERLIM) and has taken a collaborative approach to the creation of a user-driven digitisation prioritisation framework, encouraging participation and collective engagement between communities.Between September 2008 and March 2009 the DiSCmap project team asked over 1,000 users, including intermediaries (vocational users who take care of collections) and end users (university teachers, researchers and students) a variety of questions about which physical and digital Special Collections they make use of and what criteria they feel must be considered when selecting materials for digitisation. This was achieved through workshops, interviews and two online questionnaires. Although the data gathered from these activities has the limitation of reflecting only a partial view on priorities for digitisation - the view expressed by those institutions who volunteered to take part in the study - DiSCmap was able to develop:- a 'long list' of 945 collections nominated for digitisation both by intermediaries andend-users from 70 HE institutions (see p. 21);- a framework of user-driven prioritisation criteria which could be used to inform current and future digitisation priorities; (see p. 45)- a set of 'short lists' of collections which exemplify the application of user-driven criteria from the prioritisation framework to the long list (see Appendix X):o Collections nominated more than once by various groups of users.o Collections related to a specific policy framework, eg HEFCE's strategically important and vulnerable subjects for Mathematics, Chemistry and Physics.o Collections on specific thematic clusters.o Collections with highest number of reasons for digitisation.


An open reuse of public data and tools can turn the government into a powerful 'platform' also involving external innovators. However, the typical information system of a public agency is not open by design. Several public administrations have started adopting technical solutions to overcome this issue, typically in the form of middleware layers operating as 'buses' between data centres and the outside world. Open-DAI is an open source platform designed to expose data as services, directly pulling from legacy databases of the data holder. The platform is the result of an ongoing project funded under the EU ICT PSP call 2011. We present the rationale and features of Open-DAI, also through a comparison with three other open data platforms: the Socrata Open Data portal, CKAN, and ENGAGE.


Rugged terrains, including much of the earth's surface, other planets, and many man-made structures, are inaccessible to wheeled and tracked vehicles. This has inspired research into legged vehicles. Prior to the research described here, virtually all legged vehicle designs relied on the concept of mounting actuated leg-type mechanisms onto a single rigid frame or chassis. This dissertation research explores and advances a novel vehicle concept that uses passive legs attached to an actuated multibody structure. This new vehicle moves only its actuated body trunk to achieve locomotion; thus moving in a manner similar to that used by insect larvae known as caterpillars. The passive-legged design is termed a "crawling" vehicle, to differentiate it from "walking" vehicles, which have powered legs.
A conceptual design for the proposed vehicle was developed using insights from observations of caterpillar specimen geometry, gaits, leg trajectories, and ranges of motion. The flexible, segmented body of the robot is realized using a series of actuated truss-like mechanisms, resulting in a configuration similar to the body structure of caterpillars.
A computer simulation was developed to verify the concept and to assist in creating future designs. This simulation includes a parametric model of the robot structure, an efficient kinematics model, a motion programming method based on six-dimensional parametric cubic trajectories, static stability analysis, actuator velocity and acceleration analysis, wire-frame animations, and rendering, thus providing synthesis and analysis tools for this new class of vehicle.
Results of this work show that by using properly designed Stewart-Gough platform mechanisms for the vehicle multibody structure, a range of motion very similar to that of caterpillars is achievable. Simulation tests showed that imitating the caterpillars' primary gait (or stepping sequence) yields superior speed and efficiency, with little reduction of stability, when compared to a simpler, more obvious gait.
With proper controls, this crawling vehicle will, like its biological counterpart, be intrinsically stable and have excellent maneuverability over rough terrain. The crawling vehicle is shown to be a viable legged locomotion system that may prove to have superior rough terrain mobility to all previous types of man-made land vehicles.


This paper deals with roommate problems (Gale and Shapley, 1962) that are solvable, i.e., have a non-empty core (set of stable matchings). We study the assortativeness of stable matchings and the size of the core by means of maximal and average rank gaps. We provide upper bounds in terms of maximal and average disagreements in the agents' rankings. Finally, we show that most of our bounds are tight.


Human beings subconsciously adapt their behaviors to a communication partner in order to make interactions run smoothly. In human-robot interactions, not only the human but also the robot is expected to adapt to its partner. Thus, to facilitate human-robot interactions, a robot should be able to read subconscious comfort and discomfort signals from humans and adjust its behavior accordingly, just like a human would. However, most previous research works expected the human to consciously give feedback, which might interfere with the aim of interaction. We propose an adaptation mechanism based on reinforcement learning that reads subconscious body signals from a human partner, and uses this information to adjust interaction distances, gaze meeting, and motion speed and timing in human-robot interactions. The mechanism uses gazing at the robot's face and human movement distance as subconscious body signals that indicate a human's comfort and discomfort. A pilot study with a humanoid robot that has ten interaction behaviors has been conducted. The study result of 12 subjects suggests that the proposed mechanism enables autonomous adaptation to individual preferences. Also, detailed discussion and conclusions are presented.


A revocable identity-based encryption (RIBE) provides an efficient revocation method in IBE that a trusted authority periodically broadcasts an update key for nonrevoked users and a user can decrypt a ciphertext if he is not revoked in the update key. Boldyreva, Goyal, and Kumar (CCS 2008) defined RIBE and proposed an RIBE scheme that uses a tree-based revocation encryption scheme to revoke users' private keys. In this paper, we devise a new technique for RIBE and propose RIBE schemes with a constant number of private key elements. We achieve the following results. We first devise a new technique for RIBE that combines a hierarchical IBE (HIBE) scheme and a public-key broadcast encryption (PKBE) scheme using multilinear maps. In contrast to the previous technique for RIBE, our technique uses a PKBE scheme in bilinear maps for revocation to achieve short private keys and update keys. Following our new technique for RIBE, we propose an RIBE scheme in three-leveled multilinear maps that combines the HIBE scheme of Boneh and Boyen (EUROCRYPT 2004) and the PKBE scheme of Boneh, Gentry, and Waters (CRYPTO 2005). The private key and update key of our scheme possess a constant number of group elements. Next, we propose another RIBE scheme with reduced public parameters and short keys by combining the HIBE scheme of Boneh and Boyen and the PKBE scheme of Boneh, Waters, and Zhandry (CRYPTO 2014), which uses multilinear maps. Compared with our first RIBE scheme, our second RIBE scheme requires high-leveled multilinear maps.


Oxygen Minimum Zones (OMZs) in the ocean represent key regions for the interaction between atmosphere and ocean waters and can be a sink or source for atmospheric CO2. Hence, they play a major role with respect to anthropogenic induced global warming. Biological productivity is very high in these areas and resulting degradation processes consume substantial amounts of dissolved oxygen from the water column, leaving certain water depths almost oxygen‐free.
One of the largest and most distinctive OMZs worldwide stretches along the west coast of South America offshore Ecuador, Peru and Chile. This OMZ is associated with intense coastal upwelling, which is most pronounced between ~5°S and ~25°S. The intensity of the upwelling varies seasonally, being propelled mainly by external forcing mechanisms like the position of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), the strength of trade winds and modulations of the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO).
This hydrographically complex ocean area affords different approaches to study its characteristics. Sediment surface samples and corresponding seawater samples from the Eastern Equatorial Pacific (EEP), ranging from a water depth of 60 to 2,000 m and covering a large latitudinal range from the equator to 17°S, were investigated. Apparent calcification depths (ACDs) were calculated by combined analyses of stable oxygen isotopes (d18O) in planktonic foraminifers from these samples and from water samples (Chapter 4).
Investigations of ACDs for species G. ruber (white, morphotype sensu stricto) and N. dutertrei (dextral) show clear differences between both species within the EEP. Surface dweller G. ruber constantly inhabits the upper 16 meters of the water column; contrary N. dutertrei favors different habitat depths in dependence on the surrounding water masses. On average, the ACDs for N. dutertrei indicate a calcification depth of ~200m in the northern
part of the study area (the equator to 5°S) and ~70m in the southern region (7° to 13°S). The shallower habitat depth in the south is probably related to the more intense upwelling, which results in the rise of cooler water masses and thus similar temperatures (~15°C) are reached in shallower depths. Additionally, lower oxygen concentrations in the southern part of the study area are likely to force N. dutertrei to shallower habitat depths.
The correct estimation of ACDs in the EEP provides a more detailed view on the vertical habitat of N. dutertrei, which is particularly important for the following paleointerpretations in Chapter 5.
Two piston cores from the Gulf of Guayaquil at 3.5°S in the EEP were studied, covering time spans of ~13,000 years (core 056; temporal resolution ~60 years) and of ~18,000 years (core 059; temporal resolution ~80 years), respectively (Chapter 5). Surface and subsurface temperatures were reconstructed for the past 18,000 years using alkenone thermometry as well as foraminiferal Mg/Ca‐based approaches for surface (Globigerinoides ruber, white) and for subsurface depths (~200 m; Neogloboquadrina dutertrei).
Salinity approximations (d18Oivf‐sw) for surface and subsurface depths were generated to corroborate the high‐resolution temperature records. In the study area the deglaciation was characterized by much warmer temperatures (~3°C) and higher salinities than nowadays, in surface as well as in subsurface depths. Surface dweller G. ruber and alkenone records show almost identical temperatures prior to ~10 ka BP, indicating that both proxy carriers recorded a similar habitat and seasonality during this time. After ~10 ka BP both proxies divert markedly, which was possibly caused by a shift of alkenone‐synthesizing coccolithophores from annual mean temperatures during the deglaciation to austral summer temperatures during the Holocene. The cooling in G. ruber records by ~2°C in both cores during the Holocene implies a strengthened influence of cooler water masses.
The surface records lag the subsurface records of N. dutertrei by ~1‐2 kyrs, implying that different mechanisms control the surface and subsurface hydrography. The temperature decrease and freshening trends during the Holocene coincide with an enhanced marine
productivity, indicating that cooler (EUC‐sourced) water masses and strengthened upwelling intensity transported more nutrients into the EEP.
A newly developed species‐specific transfer function for benthic Mg/Ca ratios based on Uvigerina peregrina data from the EEP is presented in Chapter 6 and completes the foraminiferal investigations. The sediment surface data set of endobenthic species U. peregrina shows a clear correlation between water depth and d18O as well as Mg/Ca ratios, thus supporting the use of this species as a reliable temperature proxy. The reconstruction of bottom water temperatures is important to understand the complex, local hydrography. The effect of bottom water delta [CO32‐] on Mg/Ca ratios in U. peregrina is apparently small and does not influence the temperature signal. A compilation of data from the EEP
and literature data results in a transfer function covering a temperature range between 5 and 20°C; the resulting function (R²= 0.77) estimates temperatures with a precision of ±1.6°C. This new transfer function provides a more precise estimation of Mg/Ca‐derived temperatures in the EEP for endobenthic species U. peregrina than previous approaches.


The purpose of this article is to describe an example of teaching so-called meta-skills in Häme University of Applied Sciences Electrical and Automation Engineering study programme. The method has been conducted twice, in 2018 and 2019. Both times the first-year students were given a development project in which they studied the basics of programming. More important than programming was to learn meta-skills: teamwork skills, language and communication skills, IT skills, problem-solving skills, and skills to apply knowledge to practice and acting in a multicultural environment. The feedback was gathered after the implementations by the questionnaire. The results show that students think this kind of pedagogical method improves their previously described meta-skills. For teachers this means working more as a supervisor than a source of knowledge. In addition to meta-skills, the method increases interaction between students of different cultural and educational backgrounds. The method works as means of internationalization for Finnish-speaking students. For foreign students, the method is one way of increasing interaction with Finnish-speaking students and can act as a part of the integration process to Finnish society.


In recent years, YBCO high-temperature superconducting (HTS) tapes have been expected to be applied to devices in power systems or in other industrial applications, owing to their rapidly improving quality and productivity. Our objective is to develop an HTS cyclotron with a compact body, high efficiency of output power, and high performance in heavy particle radiotherapy. In such an application, extremely high precision is required in the range 0.01% to 0.1% of magnetic field, both spatially and temporally. An isochronous field along with an azimuthally varying field is generated by an air-core pancake coil system during construction. Therefore, developing a technology for extremely high coil-winding accuracy is very important. In this study, we constructed an experimental model of a YBCO pancake coil using a high-precision coil winding machine. Then, the winding error in the radial and axial directions was experimentally evaluated using a pair of laser displacement meters and a surface roughness tester. We also developed a numerical simulation model to analyze the influence of winding error on the magnetic field distribution. The relationship between the winding error and the magnetic field of the meter-class YBCO coil assuming a real system was also evaluated by numerical simulation.


Today's productivity programmers, such as scientists who need to write code to do science, are typically forced to choose between productive and maintainable code with modest performance (e.g. Python plus native libraries such as SciPy (SciPy)) or complex, brittle, hardware-specific code that entangles application logic with performance concerns but runs two to three orders of magnitude faster (e.g. C++ with OpenMP, CUDA, etc.). The dynamic features of modern productivity languages like Python enable an alternative approach that bridges the gap between productivity and performance. SEJITS (Selective, Embedded, Just-in-Time Specialization) embeds domain-specific languages (DSLs) in high-level languages like Python for popular computational kernels such as stencils, matrix algebra, and others. At runtime, the DSLs are "compiled" by combining expert-provided source code templates specific to each problem type, plus a strategy for optimizing an abstract syntax tree representing a domain-specific but language-independent representation of the problem instance. The result is efficiency-level (e.g. C, C++) code callable from Python whose performance equals or exceeds that of handcrafted code, plus performance portability by allowing multiple code generation strategies within the same specializer to target different hardware present at runtime, e.g. multicore CPUs vs. GPUs. Application writers never leave the Python world, and we do not assume any modification or support for parallelism in Python itself. We present Asp ("Asp is SEJITS for Python") and initial results from sev- eral domains. We demonstrate that domain-specific specializers allow highly- productive Python code to obtain performance meeting or exceeding expert- crafted low-level code on parallel hardware, without sacrificing maintainability or portability.


"Stand firm and hold the handrail", a friendly female voice repeats over and over on the escalators in the Beijing subway. That is good advice in world politics too. Don't be intimidated by capricious or aggressive world leaders; don't overreact either; stand firm and calmly defend your position. But just as one would wish for a handrail in today's volatile environment, there doesn't seem to be one in sight.


A regular short physical activity break in the classroom may improve classroom behavior. The current study reports on the results of the implementation of a daily 10-min Just Dance break in the classroom. A total of 31 Dutch primary school teachers agreed to participate in the study. We collected data on the frequency of the use of the Just Dance breaks via an online registration system. Data on the long-term barriers and facilitators of the implementation were collected using two online questionnaires. In addition, we held five interviews with teachers to elucidate data on barriers and facilitators. The results show that none of the teachers maintained the Just Dance breaks on a daily basis, and only 19% (n = 6) of the teachers on a weekly basis (i.e., one to three times a week). According to all participating teachers, a lack of time was the primary barrier to implement Just Dance breaks on a daily basis. Teachers who did not maintain Just Dance breaks on a weekly basis also experienced difficulties in 1) keeping all pupils engaged during the full 10-min Just Dance break or 2) getting the pupils focused again after the Just Dance break. Teachers who maintained the Just Dance breaks on a weekly basis provided several practical recommendations for a more sustainable implementation process. This study shows that the implementation process of daily Just Dance breaks is challenging. We recommend providing teachers with professional support when implementing physical activity breaks in their daily program.


Cutting plane selection is a subroutine used in all modern mixed-integer linear programming solvers with the goal of selecting a subset of generated cuts that induce optimal solver performance. These solvers have millions of parameter combinations, and so are excellent candidates for parameter tuning. Cut selection scoring rules are usually weighted sums of different measurements, where the weights are parameters. We present a parametric family of mixed-integer linear programs together with infinitely many family-wide valid cuts. Some of these cuts can induce integer optimal solutions directly after being applied, while others fail to do so even if an infinite amount are applied. We show for a specific cut selection rule, that any finite grid search of the parameter space will always miss all parameter values, which select integer optimal inducing cuts in an infinite amount of our problems. We propose a variation on the design of existing graph convolutional neural networks, adapting them to learn cut selection rule parameters. We present a reinforcement learning framework for selecting cuts, and train our design using said framework over MIPLIB 2017 and a neural network verification data set. Our framework and design show that adaptive cut selection does substantially improve performance over a diverse set of instances, but that finding a single function describing such a rule is difficult. Code for reproducing all experiments is available at https://github.com/Opt-Mucca/Adaptive-Cutsel-MILP.


The turbulence and fluctuation induced transport in the edge plasma of the Tokoloshe tokamak was studied using a Langmuir probe array. In this thesis three separate experiments are presented, each of which examines a particular aspect of the edge plasma. In the first experiment measurements of edge plasma parameters are presented. These include standard parameters (such as ne , <pp , Te , etc.) as well as features sueh as the velocity shear, f'(t) during periods of both high and low Mirnov activity, t/Te and Q. These are compared with results from other machines as well as predictions of several turbulence theories. It was found that many of the results are very similar to those obtained on other machines and that, since the operating parameter space on Tokoloshe is well within the parameter space described by drift wave theories, resistivity-driven gradient driven turbulence theories do not describe the edge turbulence. In the second experiment external windings are used to produce fields which can slow and lock magnetic islands in the toroidally rotating plasma. Edge parameters are again presented and these results compared with those from the so-called 'reference' plasmas, i.e. ones in which no locking occurred. During locking some parameters are dramatically altered, e.g. 'fe/Teo Standard transport theory ignores the effect of Te/Te since they are usually small in reference discharges. During the locked phase, however, certain measurements used to deduce f' and Q are greatly affected by increases in t/Te. As a result, certain assumptions regarding these measurements are no longer valid. Comparison of results for different island positions (produced by different coils) indicates that the assumption of poloidal and toroidal symmetry of edge conditions is invalid. The third experiment investigates the high frequency ('" 60 kHz), low amplitude, magnetic oscillation which characterises the locked phase and which exhibits some small degree of correlation with the fluctuations observed on (e.g.) ~f' Since over 80% of the spectral power of 'fe/Te lies below 70 kHz and since ~f /Te depends strongly on 'fe/Te , it is suggested that the magnetic mode and these large variations in Te , may be due to a similar physical process.


Architecture and store design are increasingly significant to fashion brands as powerful media for the expression of brand image and story (Riewold 2002). While this relationship is not entirely new, fashion brands such as Fiorucci, Pierre Cardin and Biba have augmented their image using store design since the 1960s (Mores 2006). Battista (2010) identifies that the overtly collaborative relationships between fashion and architecture are embryonic and will be an area of growth for practitioners and academics alike. As the boundaries between fashion, retail, art and architecture continue to blur, architects have actively sought collaboration with fashion brands, and vice versa (Bingham 2005). Contemporary collaborations have developed beyond the design of spaces for selling apparel, extending now to the synergetic creation of products and cultural experiences which are visually spectacular, creatively influential and commercially significant. Meanwhile, hybrid exhibitions in New York (2006) and London (2009) have stimulated a dialogue for exploring the relationships between the disciplines (Menkes 2009). The paper provides an insight into this phenomenon by considering the nature and characteristics of contemporary instances to identify the key drivers of fashion and architecture collaborations.


The results of the 2018 general election were shocking. Although the main competitors were the same as in 2013 (the centre-right coalition, the centre-left coalition, and the Movimento 5 Stelle), great uncertainty surrounded the electoral outcome because of the application of a new electoral system, and polls data indicating the competitiveness of the multiple political formations and the high number of undecided voters. For the first time in Western European history, a successful debutant managed not to lose votes in the subsequent election. In 2013 the Movimento 5 Stelle had actually been the most successful debutant in Western Europe since 1945, and it gained over 7 percentage points, coming close to one third of the votes. At the same time, the Lega (Nord) achieved the best result in its history, with 17.3% of the national votes. Thus, these two challenger parties combined received over 50% of votes, while the two mainstream parties, national wings of the major European Parliament party families, both hit their historical lows, together winning less than a third of the votes. The election resulted in a hung Parliament. The centre-right coalition was first, but with far from a majority of seats. The Movimento 5 Stelle was the most voted party, finishing second, but close to the centre-right. The centre-left was outdistanced. In this article we describe and discuss the 2018 electoral results and their strange, largely unexpected outcome. More specifically, we look at voter turnout and the results of the vote, both at the overall national level and with a geographical breakdown, comparing and contrasting them with Italian electoral history and the 2013 results in particular. Finally, we conclude by analysing survey data and vote shifts between 2013 and 2018 to assess the electoral dynamics behind the results.


Background: Guidelines in the United Kingdom recommend that seating should be provided prior to hospital discharge after a stroke. Occupational therapists often advise on seating to maximise function and minimise risks associated with posture and sitting. Little is known however as to their experience of the seating provision process. Aim: This study aimed to acquire a greater understanding of occupational therapists' lived experience of seating provision for clients following a stroke. Method: The study drew upon hermeneutic phenomenology and eight occupational therapists were interviewed. Findings: Four themes were identified including: a collaborative project, a race against time, unremarkable versus 'a battle on our hands', and out of our hands. Participants' experience varied greatly but appears to inform that seating is not always provided in time for hospital discharge. Participants seemed frustrated and conflicted when they faced barriers to seating provision and were not always able to meet clients' needs or practice client-centred care as they wished. Conclusion: This study demonstrates a need to develop processes to allow prompt access to seating solutions during the stroke rehabilitation pathway. Occupational therapists may want to consider ways in which barriers can be reduced and further research to develop more effective pathways is recommended.


The last couple of decades have seen a renewed interest among urban transportation planners in light rail transit (LRT) systems in large cities across the United States (US) as a possible means of addressing negative transportation externalities such as congestion and greenhouse gas emissions while encouraging the use of public transit [1]. LRT infrastructure investments have also gained traction as a means of revitalizing decayed urban centres because transportation infrastructure developments are highly correlated with economic growth in surrounding areas [2]. The primary objective of this dissertation is to examine the externalities associated with LRTs during its the construction and operations phases. In particular, three areas of concern are addressed: (1) The effect that proximity to LRT stations have on nearby single family residences (SFRs) throughout the LRT life-cycle; (2) the
 effect that directional heterogeneity between LRT stations, the central business district (CBD), and the SFR; and (3) the longer term effects on nearby populations due to LRT operations. To answer the first two research objectives, quasi-experimental spatial econometric models are used; to address the last objective, a-spatial fixed effects panel models are developed. The analyses primarily relies on SFR sales data
 from 2001-2019, publicly available geographical information systems data, as well as demographic data from eight 5-year American Communities Surveys (ACS). Charlotte, NC, a medium-sized US city, is chosen as the site of analysis, both due to the relative novelty factor of its LRT in the region and data availability.The results show that SFR values are positively associated with proximity to LRT
 stations in the announcement and construction phases but negatively associated with proximity to stations once the LRT is operational. Additionally, potential homeowners with prior experience with LRT do not behave any differently than potential homeowners with no prior experience with LRT in terms of willingness to pay to live a certain distance from LRT stations. Further, directional heterogeneity is shown to be a statistically significant source factor in deciding the extent to which house-buyers are willing to pay to be near LRT stations. Lastly, distance from LRT stations are
 found to have no statistically significant effect on changes in the racial composition of nearby areas but have significant positive effects on educational attainment and average median incomes of residents living in nearby areas over time. The contributions of this research are twofold. First, in addition to highlighting
 the need to use spatial econometric methods when analyzing the effect that LRTs have on surrounding real estate markets, this research provides a framework by which directional heterogeneity can be incorporated into these analyses. Second, this research adds to the existing pool of knowledge on land use externalities of LRT through incorporating the life-cycle of LRT from announcement to operations. Furthermore, this research examines the effects that LRT have on surrounding populations in transit
 adjacent areas to provide a look at the broader effects of LRT over time. A major challenge in the analyses conducted in this dissertation is its reliance
 on SFR sales data. Urban areas near LRT may contain additional land uses. In
 order to fully determine LRT's effects on its surrounding area, one should examine the proximity effects on all land use types. Furthermore, LRT stations and rail lines are assumed exogenous, which may not be the case as public hearings and town halls
 during the planning phase may influence stations' locations. Future research should seek to understand how the circumstances surrounding the planning process could
 indirectly affect the socio-demographic characteristics in transit adjacent areas over time. Finally, additional research is needed to better understand the extent to which
 LRT affects urban intra- and inter-migration. Knowing the population repulsion and attraction of LRT can help planners design facilities to better serve the public.


One of the most important challenges facing mankind today is the formulation of strategies for sustainable development. These are strategies that could reduce poverty in the current generation, without making development more difficult in the future. One response to this challenge has been the creation at IIASA of a simulation model of development, population, and the environment on Mauritius. The main purpose of this paper is to put the IIASA Mauritius model into perspective by (1) comparing it with other simulation models that include environmental considerations, and (2) showing how these models contribute to the debate about economic, environmental, and demographic interactions.

In addition to the IIASA Mauritius model, four others are considered in this paper. The first, the Wonderland Model, is used to introduce essential modeling concepts. The second, World3, is the basis of the books "The Limits to Growth" (1972) and "Beyond the Limits" (1992), and undoubtedly the most famous and most criticized model of sustainable development ever published. The World3 model suggests the likelihood of a dreadful environmental collapse within the next eighty years if population growth and economic growth do not soon come to an end. The third, a model of the Sahel model by Anthony Picardi, appeared as an MIT PhD dissertation in 1974 and is still one of the best pieces of work ever done in the area. It deals with, among other things, an actual environmental collapse that occurred in the Sahel in the early 1970s. The last is the POMA model of population and environment in Costa Rica in 1990. It is a simple framework that takes the environment into account, but does not allow any feedbacks from the environment to the economy. Each of the four teaches us lessons that are used to broaden our understanding the IIASA Mauritius model.

The debate on demographic, environmental, and economic interactions has, in many instances, been an acrimonious one with people maintaining that economic growth and population growth must soon come to an end or an environmental catastrophe is imminent, that more rapid economic growth is the key to reducing both environmental degradation and population growth, and that reduced population growth is the key to more rapid economic growth and reduced probabilities of environmental collapse. The models reviewed here are used as frameworks within which to address these conflicting viewpoints.

Models of environmental, demographic, and economic interactions have had frightfully short lifetimes and, typically, no descendants. One of the most important challenges facing those interested in these interactions today is the development of strategies of sustainable modeling.


Complexity in cross-cultural interaction is apparent within the Indian Claims Commission (ICC) proceedings of the 1950s. The U.S. federal government and Creek Indians both in Oklahoma and east of the Mississippi joined forces to suppress the ICC petition of the Yuchi, a small Native American community whose identity had been systematically denied for nearly two hundred years. Multiple perceptions of identity and history collided with the inevitable defeat of the Yuchi's petition. The more subtle concerns of political resistance and the reinforcement of Yuchi identity were not defeated but were strengthened in the process.


A total of 31 pairs of Montagu's Harrier Circus pygargus nesting on calcareous marshes near Che 3 m in eastern Poland were observed from 1991 to 1995 in ''Bagno Serebryskie" nature reserve. This area has been included into Nature 2000 network as a special protection area for birds. Total time of observations was 1700 hours. The harriers were caught, ringed and individually marked by special colour wing tags. Observations each year started in April at the beginning of pair formation and continued until the start of post-fledging period in July. The size of a harrier nesting territory varied from 0.42ha to 2.25ha, averaging 1.14ha. Clumped territories were significantly smaller than solitary ones. The clumped territories were occupied earlier (as estimated from egg-laying dates) than solitary ones. Clutch size in clumped nests was larger than in solitary ones and the number of fledglings per nest was also higher in clumped territories. Semi-colonial nesting was safer in terms of predation risk. Copulation frequency was higher in semi-colonial than in solitary nests, suggesting a higher risk for extra-pair copulations. Males from clumped nests spent more time inside territories than males from solitary nests. Most of observed copulations were preceded by food pass.


Enhancement of mammography images considers as powerful methods in categorization of breast normal tissues and pathologies. The digital image software gives chance to improve the mammographs and increasing their illustration value. The image processing methods in this paper were using contrast improvement, noise lessening, texture scrutiny and portioning algorithm. The mammography images kept in high quality to conserve the quality. Those methods aim to augment and hone the image intensity and eliminate noise from the images. The assortment factor of augmentation depends on the backdrop tissues and type of the breast lesions; hence, some lesions gave better improvement than the rest due to their density. The computation speed examined used correspondence and matching ratio. The results were 96.3 ± 8.5 (p>0.05). The results showed that the breast lesions could be improved by using the proposed image improvement and segmentation methods.


My master thesis proposes a general methodology to model pedestrian destination choice from WiFi localization in multimodal transport facilities (e.g., airports, railway stations). It is based on the output of [Danalet, A., B. Farooq and M. Bierlaire (2014) A Bayesian approach to detect pedestrian destination-sequences from WiFi signatures, Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, 44, 146–170.] method to generate candidates of activity-episode sequences from WiFi measurements, locations of activities on a map and prior information. Destination choice is nested to the activity choice. An individual first chooses an activity ([Danalet, A. and M. Bierlaire (2015) Importance sampling for activity path choice, paper presented at the 15th Swiss Transport Research Conference (STRC), Monte Verita, Ascona, Switzerland.]), and then selects the destination where to perform it. We propose an approach to model destination choice accounting for panel nature of data. We compare static, dynamic strict exogenous and dynamic model with two different agent effect corrections inspired by [Wooldridge, J. M. (2002) Simple solutions to the initial conditions problem in dynamic, nonlinear panel data models with unobserved heterogeneity, Journal of applied econometrics, 44, ISSN 1753-9196.] method. In a case study using WiFi traces on EPFL campus, we focus on one activity type: catering. The choice set contains 21 alternatives on campus (restaurants, self-services, cafeterias, ...). Our models reveal that the choice of a catering facility depends mostly on habits (e.g., where an individual ate the previous time), distance to walk from the previous activity-episode (calculated with a weighted shortest path algorithm) but less on destination specific determinants (e.g., price, capacity). The models are successfully validated using the same WiFi dataset and we forecast possible changes concerning catering destinations on the campus.


Third-party copyright liability raises specific First Amendment problems that remain relatively unexplored. Among other things, such liability separates the danger of liability from the benefits of speaking, making key actors prone to careless censorship of speech. This Article applies the First Amendment to third-party copyright liability by drawing lessons from the famous cases of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan and Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. It concludes that vicarious liability should be sharply curtailed, and that the application of presumed damages is constitutionally problematic in many contributory liability cases.


Recent years have witnessed the rapid proliferation of social networking sites, which have gradually changed people's way to deal with employment and recruitment process. From job seekers' perspective, their occupational decisions will be consciously or unconsciously affected by information and activities in online social networks. In this study, we focus on job choice intention, which is formed from an impressionable and suggestible state, but has predictive power on the final decision. Since it is a fairly new angle with scant literature, we adopted an exploratory approach and identified two influence mechanisms built upon expectancy theory. We conducted a survey on graduating college students from IT-related majors, and examined how the online social networks serve as information providers and interactive platforms. Our results suggest that online social networks have significant impact on job choice intentions through information seeking behaviors and peer influence.


National water production functions reflecting regional weather conditions for corn, cotton, sugar beets, and wheat are derived. A least squares regression technique is used with the actual yield as the dependent variable. The independent variable is a composite of four components. These components include the potential yield, the amount of irrigated water used by the crop, the effective rainfall, and the potential evapotranspiration. These functions are transformed into regional production functions. The impact of a decrease in the amount of irrigated water consumed is examined through these regional functions. Finally, a demand curve for water used in irrigation is derived. It is found that the demand for water is more elastic at low corn prices. However, as corn prices increase, the demand for water becomes more inelastic.


Aerosol nucleation occurs frequently in the atmosphere and is an important source of particle number. Observations suggest that nucleated particles are capable of growing to sufficiently large sizes that they act as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN), but some global models have reported that CCN concentrations are only modestly sensitive to large changes in nucleation rates. Here we present a novel approach for using long-term size distribution observations to evaluate a global aerosol model's ability to predict formation rates of CCN from nucleation and growth events. We derive from observations at five locations nucleation-relevant metrics such as nucleation rate of particles at diameter of 3 nm (J3), diameter growth rate (GR), particle survival probability (SP), condensation and coagulation sinks, and CCN formation rate (J 100). These quantities are also derived for a global microphysical model, GEOS-Chem-TOMAS, and compared to the observations on a daily basis. Using GEOSChem-TOMAS, we simulate nucleation events predicted by ternary (with a 10−5 tuning factor) or activation nucleation over one year and find that the model slightly understates the observed annual-average CCN formation mostly due to bias in the nucleation rate predictions, but by no more than 50 % in the ternary simulations. At the two locations expected to be most impacted by large-scale regional nucleation, Hyyti älä and San Pietro Capofiume, predicted annual-average CCN formation rates are within 34 and 2 % of the observations, respectively. Model-predicted annual-average growth rates are within 25 % across all sites but also show a slight tendency to underestimate the observations, at least in the ternary nucleation simulations. On days that the growing nucleation mode reaches 100 nm, median single-day urvival probabilities to 100 nm for the model and measurements range from less than 1–6 % across the five locations we considered; however, this does not include particles that may eventually grow to 100 nm after the first day. This detailed exploration of new particle formation and growth dynamics adds support to the use of global models as tools for assessing the contribution of microphysical processes such as nucleation to the total number and CCN budget.


Abstract Clostridium species (particularly Clostridium difficile, Clostridium botulinum, Clostridium tetani and Clostridium perfringens) are associated with a range of human and animal diseases. Several other species including Clostridium tertium, Clostridium cadaveris, and Clostridium paraputrificum have also been linked with sporadic human infections, however there is very limited, or in some cases, no genomic information publicly available. Thus, we isolated one C. tertium strain, one C. cadaveris strain and three C. paraputrificum strains from preterm infants residing within neonatal intensive care units and performed Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) using Illumina HiSeq. In this report, we announce the open availability of the draft genomes: C. tertium LH009, C. cadaveris LH052, C. paraputrificum LH025, C. paraputrificum LH058, and C. paraputrificum LH141. These genomes were checked for contamination in silico to ensure purity, and we confirmed species identity and phylogeny using both 16S rRNA gene sequences (from PCR and in silico) and WGS-based approaches. Average Nucleotide Identity (ANI) was used to differentiate genomes from their closest relatives to further confirm speciation boundaries. We also analysed the genomes for virulence-related factors and antimicrobial resistance genes, and detected presence of tetracycline and methicillin resistance, and potentially harmful enzymes, including multiple phospholipases and toxins. The availability of genomic data in open databases, in tandem with our initial insights into the genomic content and virulence traits of these pathogenic Clostridium species, should enable the scientific community to further investigate the disease-causing mechanisms of these bacteria with a view to enhancing clinical diagnosis and treatment.


The primary focus of this thesis is the two kinases PKA and PKG, cAMP and cGMP dependent protein kinase respectively. PKA and PKG are studied both at structure/function level as well as at the level of interaction with other proteins in tissue. Our primary methods are all based on mass spectrometry. First, a brief overview of molecular signaling events involved in the function of the cardiovascular system, especially those involving the cyclic nucleotides cAMP (cyclic adenosine monophosphate) and cGMP (cyclic guanosine monophosphate) is given. Besides the specific functions of the two kinases PKG and PKA, other proteins involved in cyclic nucleotide signaling, like phosphodiesterases, cyclic nucleotide activated ion channels and Epac are briefly discussed. Special attention is given to compartmentalized signaling events that involve scaffolding proteins, for PKA and PKG designated as AKAPs and GKAPs. The structure function relationships in PKA and PKG are also described. Specifically, mass spectrometric techniques that were used in structure/function studies are described in somewhat more detail. The structure function relationships of PKG is the focus of chapter 2 and 3. Chapter 2 studies this by intrinsic fluorescence stability measurements and limited proteolysis to show that the stability of PKG is mediated by a single amino acid that acts as a stability switch. In chapter 3, a lysine surface labeling technique was developed and tested on the E. Coli Colicin E9-Im9 protein complex. Then it was applied to elucidate the differential solvent exposure of PKG's different domains upon cGMP binding, which eventually proved more challenging than expected. This is either due to the fact that no lysines are in direct proximity of the affected sites, or that affected sites all reside in the uncovered 40% of the protein sequence. It is also possible that the basal kinase activation of PKG takes place on a short timescale, thereby eliminating differences. The next two chapters of this thesis focus on the use and development of chemical proteomic approaches in the search for (novel) PKA AKAP signaling complexes involved in heart function. Chapter 4 describes the initial development of a chemical proteomics method to selectively enrich PKA/AKAP, and PKG, signaling protein complexes from rat ventricular tissue by using immobilized cAMP or cGMP. Among the proteins enriched for, several different AKAPs not earlier described in heart tissue were observed. Most interesting was the observation that the protein SKIP (Sphingosine Kinase type 1 Interacting Protein), earlier described as an anchor for sphingosine kinase-1, could be assigned as a novel AKAP. Chapter 5 continues with the application of the cyclic nucleotide pull down protocol. A more detailed relative quantification procedure is described as well to more reliably allocating proteins to a specific eluting fraction. Attention is focused on the discovery of a novel splice isoform of AKAP2: PALM2-AKAP2, as well as on the observed differential phosphorylation patterns of PKA regulatory subunit type Iα. Finally, all results are placed into perspective in a concluding summary and outlook.


There is a Yew-tree, pride of Lorton Vale, Which to this day stands single, in the midst Of its own darkness, as it stood of yore: Not loth to furnish weapons for the bands Of Umfraville or Percy ere they marched 5 To Scotland's heaths; or those that crossed the sea And drew their sounding bows at Azincour, Perhaps at earlier Crecy, or Poictiers. Of vast circumference and gloom profound This solitary Tree! a living thing 10 Produced too slowly ever to decay; Of form and aspect too magnificent To be destroyed. But worthier still of note Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale, Joined in one solemn and capacious grove; 15 Huge trunks! and each particular trunk a growth Of intertwisted fibres serpentine Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved; Nor uninformed with Phantasy, and looks That threaten the profane; a pillared shade, 20 Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue, By sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged Perennially-beneath whose sable roof Of boughs, as if for festal purpose decked With unrejoicing berries-ghostly Shapes 25 May meet at noontide; Fear and trembling Hope, Silence and Foresight; Death the Skeleton And Time the Shadow;-there to celebrate, As in a natural temple scattered o'er With altars undisturbed of mossy stone, 30 United worship; or in mute repose To lie, and listen to the mountain flood Murmuring from Glaramara's inmost caves.


We study embedding table placement for distributed recommender systems, which aims to partition and place the tables on multiple hardware devices (e.g., GPUs) to balance the computation and communication costs. Although prior work has explored learning-based approaches for the device placement of computational graphs, embedding table placement remains to be a challenging problem because of 1) the operation fusion of embedding tables, and 2) the generalizability requirement on unseen placement tasks with different numbers of tables and/or devices. To this end, we present DreamShard, a reinforcement learning (RL) approach for embedding table placement. DreamShard achieves the reasoning of operation fusion and generalizability with 1) a cost network to directly predict the costs of the fused operation, and 2) a policy network that is efficiently trained on an estimated Markov decision process (MDP) without real GPU execution, where the states and the rewards are estimated with the cost network. Equipped with sum and max representation reductions, the two networks can directly generalize to any unseen tasks with different numbers of tables and/or devices without fine-tuning. Extensive experiments show that DreamShard substantially outperforms the existing human expert and RNN-based strategies with up to 19% speedup over the strongest baseline on large-scale synthetic tables and our production tables. The code is available at https://github.com/daochenzha/dreamshard