Although right ventricular function may be examined by following the passage (first pass) of a bolus of radionuclide through the right heart before it reaches the left heart, the counts detected with conventional gamma cameras in such a short time interval are low; moreover, repeated determinations would result in an unacceptable radiation burden to the patient. We have modified the gated equilibrium blood pool method to allow repeated assessment of the right ventricular ejection fraction (RVEF) and have compared the results with the first-pass method in 43 patients. Good agreement was obtained between the two methods (r = 0.91, p less than 0.001). The mean difference between the two methods was 0.04 with an intra-observer variation for the equilibrium studies of 0.03 and an inter-observer difference of 0.04. The mean difference in RVEF for seven patients studied on two separate occasions 30 minutes apart was only 0.02. In four patients the mean RVEF measured at rest was 0.44 +/- 0.05 (SEM) and after exercise it was 0.48 +/- 0.06. After infusion of isoprenaline at 1 microgram/min the mean rose to 0.64 +/- 0.04 (p less than 0.02) and after infusion of a new beta 1-sympathomimetic agent, prenalterol, at doses of 1 and 2 mg it was 0.56 +/- 0.02 (p less than 0.02) and 0.59 +/- 0.03 (p less than 0.01) respectively, where the significance levels are relative to the resting values. In nine patients with good ventricular function the vasodilator nifedipine caused right and left ventricular ejection fractions to increase by the same amount; while in six patients with severe impairment of left ventricular function due to ischaemic heart disease the RVEF increased from 0.58 +/- 0.03 to 0.73 +/- 0.03 (p less than 0.01) after 2 mg of prenalterol, but the left ventricular ejection fraction increased only from 0.22 +/- 0.04 to 0.26 +/- 0.04. We conclude that repeated estimation of right ventricular performance is possible by equilibrium radionuclide ventriculography.


Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is one of the famous heuristic methods. However, this method may suffer to trap at local minima especially for multimodal problem. This paper proposes a modified particle swarm optimization with dynamic acceleration coefficients (ACPSO). To efficiently control the local search and convergence to the global optimum solution, dynamic acceleration coefficients are introduced to PSO. To improve the solution quality and robustness of PSO algorithm, a new best mutation method is proposed to enhance the diversity of particle swarm and avoid premature convergence. The effectiveness of ACPSO algorithm is tested on different benchmarks. Simulation results found that the proposed ACPSO algorithm has good solution quality and more robust than other methods reported in previous work.


In her essays, Marlene NourbeSe Philip has been forthcoming about being "an unembedded, disappeared poet and writer in Canada" whose contributions to cultural life have been systematically obstructed, partly because of her public activism on behalf of Black communities. Her visibility is an oxymoronic, bedeviling combination of disappearance and unchosen hypervisibility, with the hypervisibility largely brought about by a radical misunderstanding and abjection of her work as a cultural activist. In this article, I examine how the "embedded, disappeared" and yet present, visible, audible literary and activist career of Marlene NourbeSe Philip challenges prevailing conceptions of authorship in Canada. In particular, I think about how and why Philip's hypervisible invisibility offers a challenge to the regimes of visibility which tend to define literary celebrity. Any account of celebrity visibility needs to recognise the fact that the implications and consequences of visibility do not sit evenly on all public persons, as the theories of Katherine McKittrick, Jenny Burman, Sarah J. Jackson, and Toni Morrison testify. Neither is celebrity visibility the dualistic, either/or proposition so frequently framed by celebrity studies: either a much-desired good (an adoring audience) or a reviled evil, as in instances of notoriety, or in cases of overly intrusive, unwanted public attention. Instead, we need to reckon seriously with the ways visibility may be both systemically denied and reimposed as oppressive hypervisibility, as I argue it is in the celebrity of Marlene NourbeSe Philip and, by extension, in that of many racialised public figures.


The dielectric permittivity measurement of thick SU-8 film is presented for the entire frequency band of 1 GHz to 1 THz. SU-8 is a high-resolution UV-patternable photoresist that can be used for fabrication of high-aspect-ratio 3-D structures for millimeter-wave and terahertz devices. Here, we report the measured dielectric constant and loss tangent of SU-8 films using terahertz time-domain spectroscopy. A quadratic polynomial model is established for the accurate calculation of complex permittivity up to 1 THz. The loss tangent of fully cross-linked 430- μm-thick SU-8 film was measured to be 0.015, 0.027, and 0.055 at 1, 200, and 1000 GHz, respectively. Similarly, relative permittivity was found to be 3.24, 3.23, and 2.92. The fabrication process and level of cross-linking were demonstrated to have significant impact on the loss behavior of this material and the impact of cross-linking on dielectric permittivity is quantified across a wide frequency band. The characterization results reported in this letter are a platform for developing next-generation millimeter-wave and terahertz devices.


The requirements of present high-performance power electronic systems are exceeding the power density, efficiency, and reliability of silicon-based devices. Silicon carbide (SiC) is a candidate of choice for high-temperature, high-speed, high-frequency, and high-power applications: it has a wide band gap, high thermal conductivity, high saturated electron drift velocity, and high breakdown electric field. SiC is also hard, chemically stable, and resistant to radiation damage. Despite these desirable electronic properties, SiC-based devices are still facing many performance challenges due to the high density of defect states at the SiC/SiO2 interface. This thesis is dedicated to the first-principles study of defects at the SiC/SiO2 interface through hybrid functionals. We first generate a model structure providing a realistic description of the majority bonding arrangements at the 4H(0001)-SiC/SiO2 interface. The description of the electronic structure of the model through hybrid functionals leads to band offsets in excellent agreement with their experimental counterparts. We then study several semiconductor and oxide defects using spin-polarized hybrid density functionals and identify candidate defects responsible for the high density of interface defects measured in the 4H-SiC band gap. Finally, the possibility of growing epitaxial silicate adlayers on SiC is investigated as an alternative approach to greatly reduce the high density of defect states at the SiC/SiO2 interface.


This paper presents investigations about the automatic identification of video genre by audio channel analysis. Genre refers to editorial styles such commercials, movies, sports... We propose and evaluate some methods based on both low and high level descriptors, in cepstral or time domains, but also by analyzing the global structure of the document and the linguistic contents. Then, the proposed features are combined and their complementarity is evaluated. On a database composed of single-stories web-videos, the best audio-only based system performs 9% of Classification Error Rate (CER). Finally, we evaluate the complementarity of the proposed audio features and video features that are classically used for Video Genre Identification (VGI). Results demonstrate the complementarity of the modalities for genre recognition, the final audio-video system reaching 6% CER.


This study analyzes energy intensity trends and drivers in 40 major economies using the WIOD database, a novel harmonized and consistent dataset of input-output table time series accompanied by environmental satellite data. We use logarithmic mean Divisia index decomposition to (1) study trends in global energy intensity between 1995 and 2007, (2) attribute efficiency changes to either changes in technology or changes in the structure of the economy, and (3) highlight sectoral and regional differences. We first show that heterogeneity within each sector across countries is high. These general trends within the sectors are dominated by large economies, first and foremost the United States. In most cases, heterogeneity is lower within each country across the different sectors. Regarding changes of energy intensity at the country level, improvements between 1995 and 2007 are largely attributable to technological change while structural change is less important in most countries. Notable exceptions are Japan, the United States, Australia, Taiwan, Mexico and Brazil where a change in the industry mix was the main driver behind the observed energy intensity reduction.


BACKGROUND
3D printing/Additive Manufacturing seems a pragmatic approach to realize the quest for a truly customized and personalized drug delivery. 3DP technology, with innovations in pharmaceutical development and an interdisciplinary approach to finding newer Drug Delivery Systems can usher a new era of treatments to various diseases. The true potential of this is yet to be realized, and the US-FDA is focusing on the regulatory science of 3D printed medical devices to help patients access this technology safely and effectively. The approval of the first 3D printed prescription medicine by FDA is a promising step in the translation of more research in this area.

METHODS
A web-search on PubMed, ScienceDirect, and Nature was performed with the keywords Customized 3D printing and Drug delivery, publications dealing with the aspects of drug delivery using 3D printing for personalized or customized delivery were further considered and analyzed and discussed.

RESULTS
We present the advantages offered by 3DP over conventional methods of formulation development and discuss the current state of 3DP in pharmaceutics and how it can be used to develop a truly customized drug delivery system, various 3DP technologies including Stereolithography (SLA), Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM), Pressure Assisted Microsyringe (PAM) that have been used to develop pharmaceutical products have been discussed along with their limitations and also the regulatory considerations to help formulation scientists envisaging research in this area with the necessary information.

CONCLUSION
3D printing has the potential to fabricate a customized drug delivery system. Presence of many drug formulation and the devices are already in the regulatory approval process indicating its success.


Recent events, such as capital flow reversals and banking sector crises, have shaken faith in the widely held belief in the benefits of greater financial integration and financial deepening, which are typical in advanced economies. This book shows that emerging economies have often weathered the storm best despite the supposed burden of 'weak institutions'. It demonstrates that a better policy framework requires reliable indicators of vulnerability to financial instability, as well as improved policy tools and automatic stabilizers that anticipate and limit the vulnerabilities to financial crises.


Neil Gaiman's ability to weave fantasy, fairytales, folktales, mythology, canonical literature, and Gothic horror into his creative medium has played a significant role in elevating graphic literature as a subject for scholarly discourses. The Sandman series is often recognized as Gaiman's most influential contribution to graphic literature. As an epic series, spanning seventy-five issues from 1989 to 1996, The Sandman tales center on the figure of Dream/Oneiros/Morpheus, the personification of the unconscious, ruler of dreams and nightmares, and all that is kept hidden from waking consciousness (Sanders 18). In this regard, Gaiman's protagonist embodies the psychological fascination within the Gothic tradition, with the monstrosities that dwell deep within the human psyche. As part of Gaiman's extended fantasy discourse of The Sandmanseries, the story "Calliope" stands out as one of Gaiman's most overtly feminist polemics. In this tale of rape and revenge, Gaiman provides a powerful critique of male-driven economies of power and privilege through his depiction of sexual violence. Specifically, Gaiman challenges the conventional view of male mastery by illustrating the dualities of masculine creativity and failure, strength and weakness, virility and impotence, phallus and lack, as the conflicts that characterize the men of his story. In this way, Gaiman illustrates the impotence of the male perpetrators, Richard Madoc and Erasmus Fry, who violently exploit the muse Calliope by raping her and stealing her creativity to fulfill their selfish ambitions of fame and fortune.


In a global risk society, two interlinked developments increase complexity on environmental policy issues: On the one hand, unilateral problem solving is often ineffective in a globalized world. On the other hand, many environmental issues themselves are becoming increasingly complex. States have addressed these challenges by forming international institutions and regimes to collectively deal with environmental problems. But why do states form international environmental regimes on some issues while they fail to do so on others? How do states deal with scientific uncertainty on complex environmental issues and to what extent can scientific uncertainty account for success or failure of regime formation process? This dissertation provides insights on regime formation on highly complex policy issues by theorizing on how scientific uncertainty frames actors' perception of an issue. It is argued that actors are tolerant towards uncertainty on some aspects of an issue while they are not on others. This argumentation is empirically tested against four cases of international regime formation, two successful ones and two failed regime formation processes. The dissertation finds evidence that actors are more tolerant towards scientific uncertainty if it only affects the assessment of benefits while costs are at the same time estimated to be low.


Perceptions of proximity matter to people. When something that harms them was nearly avoided, or when they narrowly escape being harmed by something, or when they almost acquire something they want, but nevertheless fail to do so, they tend to react more strongly than when a harm that befalls them was unavoidable or when a potential harm never came close to occurring, or when they miss getting the thing they want by a lot. In this article, we explore these psychological phenomena and their implications for legal policy and process. We begin by reviewing the existing literature on the psychology of proximity and proceed to consider the implications of that psychology for the law of torts and crimes (i.e., harms), and for the law of auctions and gambling (i.e., goods). We then turn to examples of the phenomena produced by law itself - that is, to near misses of legality. Here we address how lawmakers could mitigate the frustrations of near misses by structuring law, and the manner in which legal judgments are issued, differently. In particular, we will focus on the implications of the psychology of proximity for the rules-standards debate and assess the virtues of substantial compliance doctrines in that context, a form of legal structure that has received insufficient attention in the course of that debate. Our ultimate conclusion is that lawmakers should take the psychology of proximity into consideration when they make policy choices, but in so doing lawmakers need to bear in mind the potential functionality of that psychology. Near miss experiences can be painful but simultaneously educational, stirring behavioral adjustments in those who endure them.


The agriculture industry is an industry with raw materials from the agricultural and agro-industrial sector. It is not only activities of processing agricultural products into value-added processed commodities but also includes the changes in value systems and cultural economic development with a more comprehensive policy strategy. The research aims to analyze and assess the effect of the consumption distribution and business strategy partially and simultaneously on the improvement of the agriculture industry. The method used in this research is quantitative descriptive research. Samples of this study are the agriculture industry companies listed on the Indonesian Stock Exchange (IDX). Data were analyzed using multiple linear regression analysis. The result concluded that the effect of consumption distribution on agriculture industry is positive and significant; effect of business strategy partially on the agriculture industry is also positive and significant, and the effect of the consumption distribution and business strategy simultaneously on the agriculture industry is significant.


'Anonymous and incognito' is a 5000 word essay by David Campany featured in the book Walker Evans: Labor Anonymous

Published by D.A.P./Koenig, 2015
Edited by Thomas Zander. Texts by David Campany, Heinz Liesbrock and Jerry L. Thompson.

Walker Evans shot the photographs collected in Labor Anonymous as an assignment for Fortune magazine, which published a small selection of 20 images in its November 1946 issue, under the title "On a Saturday Afternoon in Detroit." Until now, however, the entire series of 50 photographs has never been reproduced. Evans' extraordinary serial studies of the facial expressions and postures of Detroit workers walking the city's streets are fascinating both as portraiture and as a surprising dimension of his photographic style. Shooting passersby against a plywood backdrop as they crossed his field of vision from distant right to close left (some noticing him, most not), with the light striking and modeling their features, Evans found that what he was creating with these images was "the physiognomy of a nation." This book compiles the photographs, contact sheets, small-version printlets, Evans' annotations to newspaper clippings, drafts for an unpublished text, telegrams and every available print Evans made, along with the Fortune spread as published. Labor Anonymous captures a long-vanished moment in American history, and a crucial project in Evans' oeuvre.


During the past 2 yr, significant progress has been made in several areas related to the safety and environmental (S&E) aspects of inertial fusion energy (IFE). An updated methodology has been developed, and accident analyses have been performed for two IFE conceptual power plants and a target fabrication facility. Parallel to the consequence analyses of different accident scenarios, ongoing studies of accident initiating events are being used to support safety assessment and create a basic framework of types of events to consider in future risk characterization of new plant designs. Target designers/fabrication specialists have been provided with ranking information related to the S&E characteristics of candidate target materials. We have revisited waste management options for IFE, introducing the concept of clearance versus the traditional shallow land burial. A brief summary of results in each of these activities is given, and plans for future work are outlined.


The efficacy of disinfection processes in water purification systems is governed by several key factors including reactor hydraulics, disinfectant chemistry and microbial inactivation kinetics. The objective of this work was to develop a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model to predict flow structure, mass transport and chlorine decay in a continuous flow pilot scale reactor. These predictions were compared with experimental measurements for model validation. The current research demonstrates that inlet configurations can significantly impact reactor hydrodynamics.


Strobilurins are a new class of fungicides that are active against a broad spectrum of fungi. In the present work a GC method for analysis of strobilurin fungicides was validated. The method was based on extraction with ethyl acetate/cyclohexane, clean-up by gel permeation chromatography (GPC) and determination of the content by gas chromatography (GC) with electron capture (EC-), nitrogen/phosphorous (NP-), and mass spectrometric (MS-) detection. Three strobilurins, azoxystrobin, kresoxim-methyl and trifloxystrobin were validated on three matrices, wheat, apple and grapes. The validation was based on recovery tests at three or four spiking levels, determined as double determinations and repeated three times (n = 6). The mean recoveries for the three detectors were in the range of 70-114%, and the LODs were between 0.004mg/kg and 0.014mg/kg, for all three strobilurins. The values for repeatability and reproducibility were within the limits for repeatability and reproducibility given by the Horwitz equation. Validation was not accepted for azoxystrobin in grapes on all three detectors and for azoxystrobin in apple for the MS-detector. A comparison of matrix-matched standards versus standards in solvent showed varying differences


Fluidized Catalytic Cracking (FCC) units convert high molecular compounds (from atmospheric distillation and vacuum distillation units) to light gases. The major compounds in the light gases are methane, ethane, propane and butane. These light gases are then converted to highly reactive propylene (raw material for polypropylene) and butylene (raw material for butadiene and polybutadiene) via dehydrogenation. Propane and butane are always available as mixture along with traces of methane and ethane. In any commercial dehydrogenation process, the propane and butane are separated first and then dehydrogenated separately. This certainly leads to high fixed and operating costs. In this study, mixed-feed dehydrogenation of propane and butane is proposed. An isothermal model for a multi-tubular fixed bed reactor using PtSn/Al2O3 as a catalyst for the dehydrogenation of mixed-paraffin feed is developed considering the axial and radial variation of concentration (2D model). The 2D model is solved using central difference scheme. The simulations were carried out using MATLAB and the developed model is tested for the effect of space velocity, reactor temperature, reactor pressure, and propane to butane ratio in the feed on total paraffin conversion and olefin yield.


The wide spread and deployment of Internet facilities across theglobe are encouraging participation of more users in some Internetbasedapplications in which e-learning is not an exemption. Elearningis a method of acquiring knowledge and skills whichdepends on the Internet in its execution. The Internet has become thevenue for a new set of illegal activities, so e-learning environment isexposed to such threats. It is surprising that a lot of works byresearchers on e-learning have been focused on development anddeployment of e-learning systems without much attention given tothe security of these e-learning facilities. This paper discusses thegeneral overview of e-learning security threats. Some critical issuesaffecting e-learning security in the virtual environment vis-a-visethics, organisational management and design and implementationissues are examined and reported. Based on the review and findingson the security issues discussed, suggestions and recommendationsare made on how to strengthen existing security technologies andpolicies. We recommended that the inclusion of our suggestions inthe implementation of new organisational policies and managementstrategies will enhance the security of the e-learning systems. Therecould be considerable improvement in the technological approachesto mitigate the security challenges, if the findings andrecommendations presented in this paper are incorporated into thedesign and implementation of security component of e-learningsystems.


This paper reports both theoretical and experimental studies on nonlinear optical phenomena generated at very low thresholds in fiber ring resonators featuring ultrahigh quality factors. These studies are focused on two optical scattering phenomena: the Rayleigh and the Brillouin scatterings. The effects of these scattering phenomena on the phase noise of an optoelectronic oscillator based on the fiber ring resonator are detailed. A 30 dB reduction in the oscillator phase noise at 10 Hz offset frequency has been demonstrated by limiting the nonlinear scattering effects when using low input optical power. Moreover, a new high quality factor fiber ring resonator, optimized and immunized against some of these nonlinear optical effects, has been designed and an oscillator phase noise level of ${-}50$  dBc/Hz at 10 Hz offset frequency has been achieved.


This papers contains a review of so-called 'engineering methods' for predicting beach profile change based on equilibrium profile concepts. In the first part of the paper, three equilibrium profile forms are discussed, including two that account for realistic beach-face slopes. In the second part of the paper, these profile forms are used to obtain analytical solutions for the maximum erosion potential in response to a water level rise. These solutions assume that the water level is maintained steady until the profile reaches its full equilibrium response which is not realistic. Therefore, the final part of the paper presents a new method for incorporating time-dependent erosion effects based on a convolution integral.


The objective of the National Physical and Sensory Disability Database (NPSDD) is to provide an overview of the specialised health and personal social service needs of people with a physical, sensory and/or speech and language disability.

The report is based on monitoring current service provision and future service requirements over a five-year period using the demographic profiles of the individuals registered on the NPSDD.

This year's annual report is based on an analysis of 25,170 people registered on the database.


We use food to mark occasions that are important to us in life. Feast is not just about the way we cook and eat at the great religious festivals or big-deal special occasions, but about how food is the vital way we celebrate anything that matters...it's how we mark the connections between us, how we celebrate life.' Essentially about families and food, about public holidays and private passions, about how to celebrate the small everyday pleasures as well as the big occasions, it includes everything from Christmas, Thanksgiving , Hanukkah and Eid, to Passover and Easter; from Valentine's Day to that first breakfast in bed and Sunday lunch fit for the In-Laws; from Meatless Feasts to Midnight Feasts, from Partytime to the ultimate Chocolate Cake Hall of Fame; from weddings to funerals, from Georgian and Venetian feasts to children's favourites. Heartwarming, passionate, informed, refreshingly uncomplicated and full of ideas, Feast is destined to become a classic like How to Eat. Written with the same enjoyment, sensuality and practical awareness, and packed with over 300 recipes from all over the world and from near to home, Feast proclaims Nigella's love of life and great food to celebrate it with.


Urban landscapes are heterogeneous mosaics that develop via significant land-use and land cover (LULC) change. Current LULC models project future landscape patterns, but generally avoid urban landscapes due to heterogeneity. To project LULC change for an urban landscape, we parameterize an established LULC model (Dyna-CLUE) under baseline conditions (continued current trends) for a sub-tropical urban watershed in Tampa, FL. Change was modeled for 2012–2016 with observed data from 1995–2011. An ecosystem services-centric classification was used to define 9 LULC classes. Dyna-CLUE projects change using two modules: non-spatial quantity and spatial reallocation. The data-intensive spatial module requires a binomial logistic regression of socioecological driving factors, maps of restricted areas, and conversion settings, which control the sensitivity of class-to-class conversions. Observed quantity trends showed a decrease in area for agriculture, rangeland and upland forests by 49%, 56% and 27% respectively with a 22% increase in residential and 8% increase in built areas, primarily during 1995–2004. The spatial module projected future change to occur mostly in the relatively rural northeastern section of the watershed. Receiver-operating characteristic curves to evaluate driving factors averaged an area of 0.73 across classes. The manipulation of these baseline trends as constrained scenarios will not only enable urban planners to project future patterns under many ecological, economic and sociological conditions, but also examine changes in urban ecosystem services.


The measurements obtained were used to investigates the methanol synthesis reaction from pure carbon dioxide and hydrogen over binary (CuO/ZrO2) and ternary supported catalysts (CuO/ZnO/Al2O3). A comparison of different catalysts is presented. The influence of the most important reaction parameters, i.e. temperature, pressure, space velocity and feed gas composition is examined at moderate temperatures (≤ 300 °C) and pressures (≤ 20 bar). The influence of the partial pressures of hydrogen, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, water and methanol are studied in detail with the most efficient catalyst. According to the results, water has a decisive effect on the catalyst activity and performance. The measured results were used to derive a possible Langmuir-Hinshelwood kinetic model of the methanol synthesis reaction. The catalyst surface is analyzed by in situ diffuse reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The identification and evolution of intermediates on CuO/ZnO/Al2O3 catalysts confirm that the reaction proceeds by prior formation of the carbonate on the copper, followed by hydrogenation of the carbonate to the formate and thereafter to methoxy and methanol. For CuO/ZrO2 catalysts results demonstrate that the methanol formation occurs via π – bound formaldehyde and methoxy. Responses of sine shape variation applied to the reactants are also examined. The conversion of CO2 with hydrogen to methanol is investigated in dielectric-barrier discharges with and without catalysts at low temperatures (≤ 100 °C) and pressures (≤ 10 bar). The combination of discharges and catalysts lower the activation energy of the reaction resulting in a decrease in the catalyst optimum temperature. The presence of the catalyst in the discharge increases the methanol yield and selectivity by more than a factor of 10. Electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide is briefly investigated by using TiO2/Ni complex and TiO2/Ru complex thin film electrodes. A considerable decrease in overvoltage is achieved together with respectable current densities.


This article draws on an investigation of service responses to women of South Asian background who have attempted suicide or self-harm within northwest England to outline policy challenges for adequate provision to this population. This article highlights, in particular, the challenges for service managers arising from and documented within the study, outlining implications for improving policy, service commissioning and provision. We suggest that these omissions have resulted in the distress of South Asian women going unrecognized in the name of respect for cultural diversity, thereby sanctioning policies and practices that further the oppression of South Asian women. Four main issues emerging from the interviews are discussed: 1) the impact of the contract culture on the form and structure of service provision; 2) limitations of current partnership arrangements with South Asian communities; 3) practical and conceptual problems within models of both consultation and change; and, 4) key practical consequences of the covert ways in which the structure and interpretation of service responses work to treat `race' as more important than gender. In terms of specific implications, it is suggested that the current policy focus on addressing service inequalities via recruitment of South Asian workers warrants critical re-evaluation, while training and management development should take as central the intersections of `race', culture, class and gender as systemic issues to be worked with rather than marginal or optional considerations. It is argued that attending to the specific needs and conditions of South Asian women attempting suicide or self-harm by providing integrated culturally and gender-sensitive services highlights good practice for everyone.


The book covers both the analysis of the major producer of civil aircraft (EADS/Airbus) located in the region and its relation with the cluster of enterprises within those regions. We studied the organization of production, the creation of knowledge within the industry, the concentration and competition among the two global producers, the overall financial situation of the sector, the specialization and specification of the different territories. The book also analyzes the basic theoretical aspects needed to understand the origin and evolution of the European aerospace sector from the first dreamers to the beginning of this century. To end, the book shows a descriptive and inference statistical analysis of each territory.


Designing Sound teaches students and professional sound designers to understand and create sound effects starting from nothing. Its thesis is that any sound can be generated from first principles, guided by analysis and synthesis. The text takes a practitioner's perspective, exploring the basic principles of making ordinary, everyday sounds using an easily accessed free software. Readers use the Pure Data (Pd) language to construct sound objects, which are more flexible and useful than recordings. Sound is considered as a process, rather than as dataan approach sometimes known as "procedural audio." Procedural sound is a living sound effect that can run as computer code and be changed in real time according to unpredictable events. Applications include video games, film, animation, and media in which sound is part of an interactive process. The book takes a practical, systematic approach to the subject, teaching by example and providing background information that offers a firm theoretical context for its pragmatic stance. Many of the examples follow a pattern, beginning with a discussion of the nature and physics of a sound, proceeding through the development of models and the implementation of examples, to the final step of producing a Pure Data program for the desired sound. Different synthesis methods are discussed, analyzed, and refined throughout. After mastering the techniques presented in Designing Sound, students will be able to build their own sound objects for use in interactive applications and other projects.


Acoustic waves at 9*07 Gc have been generated in thin ferromagnetic films of nickel and monel. The phonon pulses are produced upon spin-wave or ferromagnetic resonance by a magnetostrictive coupling. Both transverse and longi¬ tudinal waves have been observed at several angles of magnetic field with respect to film surface. The acoustic spectrum has been studied as a function of magnetic field and compared with a spin-wave absorption spectrum also run on each film. The applicability of various surface pinning models to the results of the individual films is discussed. And the feasibility of this method of generation for use in other acoustic studies is examined and found favorable.


Introduction Fish catching with the aid of plants and their parts is an ancient practice. The rural communities of Nepal collect piscicidal plants and their parts from various habitats, such as forest, scrub, grassland, cultivated fields, wetlands and riverbanks and use them following traditional methods and practices to stupefy fish. However, at present, the piscicidal plants and their ethenobotanical information are being eroded as a result of haphazard exploitation of resources, habitat destruction and land use change (Joshi and Joshi, 2005). The loss of traditional knowledge within cultures undergoing rapid change is just as irreversiable as the loss of species (Joshi and Joshi, 2004). Hence, priority should be given to document the useful plants and their uses along with indigenous knowledge, methods and practices. Though some ethnobotanical initiatives related to the piscicidal plants have already taken (Bhandary and Shrestha, 1982; Joshi and Joshi, 2005a; Karki and Rai, 1982; Regmi and Karna, 1989; Manandhar, 1989), less priority has been given to the systematic and comprehensive enumeration of these species and their conservation in an integrated manner. Therefore, an attempt has been made to document and enumerate the piscicidal plants with exising traditional uses and practices.


The most common approach in fitting option pricing models to market data is first to make an assumption about the underlying asset's returns process and then develop an option pricing model for that process that is tested against market option prices. The returns process is estimated from historical data, option values are computed, and then compared against a cross-section of prices from the options market. Unfortunately, this often does not work well, and plainly it is inefficient in its use of the data. However, efforts to combine returns data from the asset market and prices from the options market into a single estimation have also not had much success. In this article, Chang, Cheng, and Fuh propose a new procedure to combine data from both markets in the estimation, in which options are assumed to be subject to random pricing noise relative to model values. The additional slack gives the estimator better ability to match prices in both markets. The article contrasts the performance of the full model approach with an approach that only uses stock prices or options prices to fit an option pricing model based on an underlying GARCH process. The value of the combined approach is demonstrated both theoretically as an asymptotic result in the model and also in a Monte Carlo simulation.


The Oxford Book of the American South resonates with the words of black people and white, women and men, the powerless as well as the powerful. The collection presents the most telling fiction and nonfiction produced in the South from the late eighteenth century to the present. Renowned authors such as James Agee, Richard Wright, Maya Angelou, Lee Smith, Eudora Welty, William Faulkner, and Flannery O'Connor appear in these pages, but so do people whose writing did not immediately reach a large audience. For example, Harriet A. Jacobs' book Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, which is now recognized as one of the most illuminating narratives of a former slave, was neglected for generations. And Sarah Morgan's powerful Civil War Diary has only recently come to widespread attention. The Oxford Book of the American South presents compelling autobiographies, diaries, memoirs, and journalism as well as stories and selections from novels, and runs the spectrum from the conservative to the radical, the traditional to the innovative. Editors Edward L. Ayers and Bradley C. Mittendorf have arranged these diverse readings so that they fit together into a rich mosaic of Southern life and history. The sections of the book The Old South, The Civil War and Its Consequences, Hard Times, and The Turning unfold a vivid record of life below the Mason Dixon line. We see the antebellum period both from the perspective of those who experienced it first-hand, such as Thomas Jefferson and former slaves Olaudah Equiano and Frederick Douglass, and then from the perspective of authors looking back on that era, including William Styron and Sherley Anne Williams. Likewise, we see the Civil War through the eyes of witnesses such as Sam Watkins, through the eyes of later writers trying to make sense of the conflict, such as Robert Penn Warren, and through the eyes of those using the war's intense passions to fuel their fiction, such as Margaret Mitchell and Barry Hannah. The classic authors of the Southern Renaissance in the 1920s and 1930s appear here in the context of the hard times in which they wrote. The years since World War II are chronicled in the powerful words of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail," George Garrett's "Good bye, Good bye, Be Always Kind and True," and Peter Taylor's "The Decline and Fall of the Episcopal Church, in the Year of Our Lord 1952." The editors have selected these readings, their Preface tells us, to convey "the passions that have surfaced time and again in more than two hundred years of Southern writing." Indeed, the struggles, defeats, and triumphs chronicled inThe Oxford Book of the American South speak not just to the South, but to all of the American experience. They document and evoke some of the most dramatic episodes in the nation's life


The selective oxidation of alcohols is one of the most challenging reactions in green chemistry. While the current chemical industry uses organic and inorganic oxidants to produce carbonyl compounds, it is highly desirable to use a heterogeneous catalyst for the efficient oxidation of alcohols. The present research is focused on increasing the activity and selectivity towards the corresponding carbonyl of the heterogeneous oxidation for alcohols. The low activity of 5 wt.%Pt-1 wt. %Bi/Carbon for the oxidation of 2-octanol was investigated in a 500ml stirred tank reactor. The fast reaction rate drops dramatically from 0.23 M/hr to 0.006 M/hr after 15 minutes reaction time when heptane was used as solvent. Different possible causes such as overoxidation, leaching and poisoning were examined. It was found that the loss of high conversion rate was due to product adsorption and hence, different solvents were investigated. A mixture of 16-18% v/v dioxane in heptane was able to effectively regenerate active sites and allow a constant reaction rate of 0.07M/hr. The effects of temperature and pressure were also studied. Gas-liquid, liquid-solid and internal mass transfer effects were determined experimentally and semi-empirically. Six different Langmuir-Hinshelwood rate models were examined where a modified model based on Schuurman et al. (1992) was found to adequately describe the experimental data. The novel 2.5%Au-2.5%Pd/titania catalyst was investigated for the oxidation of benzyl alcohol. Different parameters such as catalyst oxidation state, pressure and stirrer design were studied to increase the activity and selectivity of the catalyst. The selectivity was shown to be highly dependent on the oxygen concentration. Therefore, the pressure, temperature, catalyst treatment were optimised and the reactor configuration was re-designed to enhance oxygen transport to the catalyst. While the conversion rate was unaffected by the oxygen concentration, the catalyst pre-treatment significantly increased the reaction rate. Eventually, the use of a Rushton Turbine at 20 rps with a shower disc sparger and a treated catalyst allowed the selectivity to reach 93%. The reaction could be described with a Power Law model satisfactorily. Transition Metal Oxide catalysts such as \(AgO/ SiO_2, Fe_2O_3/SiO_2, CuO/SiO_2\) and \(CuO/Al_2O_3\) were investigated as an alternative to the expensive noble metal based catalyst. However, it was shown that such catalysts are ineffective for the oxidation of different alcohols by studying the effects of different engineering parameters. The maximum conversion reached was 15% with calcined copper oxide catalyst for 1-octanol oxidation.


A cryogenic atom probe technique allows direct observation of hydrogen at the atomic scale Hydrogen wreaks havoc in many alloy systems, leading to embrittlement that can cause catastrophic failure. This is a serious issue for any industry that produces or uses hydrogen—affecting production, transport, storage, and use—and is a real challenge for the development of a hydrogen economy. However, the design of new materials that resist hydrogen embrittlement is limited by the difficulty of experimentally measuring or observing hydrogen; precisely locating hydrogen at the atomic scale is a notorious challenge in materials science. Other examples of where this information is required include the development of fuel cells, the prevention of corrosion, and the improvement of catalytic processes. On page 1196 of this issue, Chen et al. (1) directly observe the precise, atomic-scale, three-dimensional (3D) distribution of hydrogen atoms within matter by using a new approach to atom probe tomography that utilizes deuteration, cryogenic transfer, and sophisticated data-analysis algorithms.


OBJECTIVE
The current study examined the relationship between severity of alcohol use disorders (AUDs) and the neural circuits that underlie response inhibition and error monitoring. In addition, we explored pre- and post-inhibition trial processes to determine the potential causal mechanisms responsible for disinhibition in AUDs.

METHOD
One hundred sixty-four individuals with a range of drinking from non-treatment-seeking adults with problematic alcohol use to treatment-seeking adults with alcohol dependence completed a Go/NoGo task while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging.

RESULTS
Correlations between signal change during response inhibition and a composite measure of AUD severity revealed significant negative relationships in right insula/inferior frontal gyrus, pregenual anterior cingulate cortex, and inferior parietal lobe. Relationships with error monitoring-related response largely overlapped with that of correct inhibitions but also included rostral anterior cingulate cortex and left inferior frontal gyrus, such that more severe AUDs were associated with reduced response in these regions. Last, examination of pre- and postinhibition processes suggested that more severe AUDs are associated with greater engagement of motor response circuits before inhibition trials, suggesting greater pre-potent tendencies that may lead to disinhibition.

CONCLUSIONS
The current results extend previous work by examining how variation in AUD severity is related to neural response during response inhibition and potential causal mechanisms responsible for impaired inhibitory control. More severe AUDs were associated with reduced engagement of neural circuits involved in behavioral control and enhanced pre-potent responding. This altered control may contribute to the progression of AUDs, as well as relapse after treatment.


OBJECTIVE
To design and fabricate fiberglass-reinforced composite (FRC) replicas of a canine radius and compare their mechanical properties with those of radii from dog cadavers.

SAMPLE
Replicas based on 3 FRC formulations with 33%, 50%, or 60% short-length discontinuous fiberglass by weight (7 replicas/group) and 5 radii from large (> 30-kg) dog cadavers.

PROCEDURES
Bones and FRC replicas underwent nondestructive mechanical testing including 4-point bending, axial loading, and torsion and destructive testing to failure during 4-point bending. Axial, internal and external torsional, and bending stiffnesses were calculated. Axial pullout loads for bone screws placed in the replicas and cadaveric radii were also assessed.

RESULTS
Axial, internal and external torsional, and 4-point bending stiffnesses of FRC replicas increased significantly with increasing fiberglass content. The 4-point bending stiffness of 33% and 50% FRC replicas and axial and internal torsional stiffnesses of 33% FRC replicas were equivalent to the cadaveric bone stiffnesses. Ultimate 4-point bending loads did not differ significantly between FRC replicas and bones. Ultimate screw pullout loads did not differ significantly between 33% or 50% FRC replicas and bones. Mechanical property variability (coefficient of variation) of cadaveric radii was approximately 2 to 19 times that of FRC replicas, depending on loading protocols.

CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE
Within the range of properties tested, FRC replicas had mechanical properties equivalent to and mechanical property variability less than those of radii from dog cadavers. Results indicated that FRC replicas may be a useful alternative to cadaveric bones for biomechanical testing of canine bone constructs.


There is no question that the timber industry needs to adopt sustainable practices that ensure a future for the industry. This book goes well beyond simply growing commercial tree plantations for wood production. It explores new forests that can supply environmental services such as salinity mitigation and carbon sequestration together with commercial wood production in an environment beyond the boundaries of traditional forestry.

New Forests targets agricultural landscapes affected by salinity and which generally have rainfall less than 650 mm per year. The book addresses vital issues such as where tree planting might best be pursued, what species and technologies should be used for establishment and later management, how productivity can be improved, what mix of environmental services and commercial goods is optimum, and whether the likely net benefits justify the change in land use and requisite investment.

While the book is focussed on the low-rainfall, agricultural, inland zone of the Murray-Darling Basin wherever possible the scope of most chapters has been expanded to synthesise generic information applicable to other regions in Australia and elsewhere.

The authors provide a comprehensive account of all the issues relevant to the development of these new forests, covering soils, the bio-physical environment, water use and irrigation strategies - including the use of wastewater, silviculture, pests and diseases, wood quality and products, and economics and policy implications.


Contemporary debates over the appropriate balance of unilateralism and multilateralism in U.S. foreign policy reflect disagreements not simply about the practical effectiveness of these alternative options but also about their legitimacy. Advocates of multilateral and unilateral action alike tend to bundle prudential calculations with normative claims, making assessments about costs and benefits difficult to disentangle from ethical arguments about fairness, justice, morality and obligation. Greater clarity may be possible by classifying U.S. foreign policy into six analytical categories, based on whether the aims pursued are nationalist, internationalist, or cosmopolitan and the strategies adopted to realize them are unilateral or multilateral. Each set of aims has different ethical justifications that generate and help to explain divergent attitudes and judgments about the role of multilateral cooperation in U.S. foreign policy. The article sheds new light on alleged U.S. unilateralism, showing that the U.S. decision to go it alone–or to act with others–can be motivated by the desire to advance the narrow interests of the United States, to advance the interests of all states, or to advance the interests of humanity at large. The article suggests that purely nationalist policies, whether pursued through unilateral or multilateral means, will become increasingly untenable and illegitimate as world politics becomes institutionalized and as humanity becomes integrated, albeit slowly, into a single cosmopolitan community.


In this paper we present a set transformation of points in a line of the Desargues affine plane in a additive group. For this, the first stop on the meaning of the Desargues affine plane, formulating first axiom of his that show proposition D1. Afterwards we show that little Pappus theorem, which we use in the construction of group proofs in additions of points on a line on desargues plane, also applies in the Desargues affine plane.


The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological research study was to examine the lived experiences and perceptions of 25 former National Football League ("NFL") players regarding the financial decisions they made when active as players for information that could lead to an appropriate model for making good financial decisions. Determined in the qualitative phenomenological study were the influential factors identified by the participants in the study that focused on financial decisions made by former NFL players. The study revealed five themes: (1) wealth enablers, (2) wealth killers, (3) challenges, (4) attitudes, and (5) wealth weak spots. The results of the study might help current and future NFL players become better-equipped to face the unique financial challenges that come from life as professional athletes. NFL, union, and team leaders should improve the way retired ballplayers are handled with regards to disability and injuries and NFL pension benefits, and NFL leaders should continue to enhance the educational programs offered to NFL players with regards to their careers after football and education about money. Professional advisors should fully understand the phenomenon of their clients being NFL players, actively guide and teach their clients about money, and do the right thing with regards the financial advice dispensed. NFL players should take to heart these nine financial tips: (1) realize that the career is short (NFL = Not For Long), (2) take it slow, play it low...be conservative and humble, (3) consult trustworthy professionals, (4) set a budget, beat it, and save, save, save, (5) educate yourself about your finances, (6) learn to say "No" to friends and family requests for money, (7) prepare yourself for your 2 career, (8) you can't go wrong with your 401(k), safe investments, and a modest home, and (9) wait to select a mate.


In this paper, we present our research on WWW caching proxies. We drew some key conclusions on the service properties and caching policies, according to the results of our analysis of caching proxies. These conclusions include our recommendations on cache configuration and illustrate how choosing cache scenarios depends on the different requirements requested by the cache manager and different network conditions.


Collagenase clostridium histolyticum (CCH) (Xiaflex TM ) has recently become the mainstay and gold standard of minimally invasive management of Peyronie's disease. Approved by the FDA in 2013 after phase III studies demonstrated efficacy and safety, collagenase is a popular and promising, albeit expensive treatment option. With the exception of phase II and phase III study data, there is a dearth of published outcomes and safety data. At present, Yang and Bennett's single-provider, prospectively collected series of 49 patients undergoing Xiaflex injections, is only the second published series cataloging efficacy and safety (1).


Service-oriented computing enhances business scalability and flexibility; providers who expect to benefit from it may bring explosive growth of web services. Searching an optimal composition solution with both functional and non-functional requirements is a computationally demanding problem: the time and space requirements may be infeasible due to the high number of available services. In this thesis, we study QoS-aware service composition problems which satisfy functional requirements as well as non-functional requirements. We use optimization algorithms to enhance accuracy of our searching algorithms.

In the first approach, we propose a database-based approach to search a service composition solution. Current in-memory methods are limited by expensive and volatile physical memory, to deal with this problem, we want to use the large space available in relational database on persistence disk. In our database-based approach, all possible service combinations are generated beforehand and stored in a relational database. When a user request comes, SQL queries are composed to search in the database and K best solutions are returned. We test the performance of the proposed approach with a service challenge data set; experiment results demonstrate that this approach can always successfully find top-K valid solutions.We offer three main contributions in this approach. First, we overcome the disadvantages of in-memory composition algorithms, such as volatile and expensive, and provide a solution suitable to cloud environments. Second, we fetch top-K solutions in case the optimal solution is not available as backup solutions to the user. Third, compared with other pre-computing composition methods, we use a single SQL query: there is no need to eliminate spurious services iteratively.

Then, we propose the application of a skyline operator to reduce the search space and improve the scalability. Skyline analysis returns all of the elements that are not dominated by another element. We use skyline analysis to find a set of candidate services referred to as "skyline services", therefore, less competitive services are reduced. This allows us to find a solution for a large composition problem with less storage and increased speed.

In reality, different users may have same requests, we are motivated to pick some popular requests and generate paths for fast delivery. These paths are stored in a separate table of the relational database. When a user request comes, we first search to find a nearly ready-made solution. Only as a last resort do we search the table with whole paths to find a solution.

Finally, to deal with the problem that the search space may explore, we apply a compressed data structure to represent the service composition graph. The goal is to allow algorithms running in in-memory over larger graphs. In this approach, we use compact K2-trees to represent the service composition graph. When a user request comes, we search the K2-tree for a satisfactory solution. We use an array to store values in the last level of the compact tree, which represents relationships between services and concepts. In our algorithms, we find services' inputs (resp. outputs) by locating elements in this array directly, therefore, decompressing the graph is unnecessary. To the best of our knowledge, our work is the first attempt to consider compact structure in solving web service composition problems. Experiment results demonstrate that this approach takes less space and has good scalability when handling a large number of web services.

We provide different approaches to search a solution for the user. If the user want to find an optimal solution with fewer services, he may use the database-based approach to search for a solution. If the user want to get a solution in a short time, he may choose the in-memory approach.


This essay presents a microhistory of U.S.-Japanese relations during the years of the Allied Occupation (1945–1952), describing how policies the United States enacted in the context of Cold War era national security concerns negatively affected the experiences of Japanese scientists. The Red Scare of the McCarthy Era ran along parallel tracks in the United States and Japan, and during those years, Japanese scientists—especially physicists—were the targets of surveillance and intense scrutiny, initially for fear they might abet diehard militarists in exacting revenge for the war, but later out of concern that they would pass "atomic secrets" to Communist nations. In the agenda to reform Japan, a "schizophrenic" science policy emerged, where, on the one hand, U.S. Occupation authorities under the Economic and Scientific Section assisted in the reconstruction of science institutions in Japan and facilitated international outreach, while on the other, the Civil Intelligence Division (G-2) frequently obstructed these efforts, as it imposed a regime of surveillance and penalties against those whom it suspected of being Communists or left-wing sympathizers. Toward this end, U.S. Occupation officials used travel visas as both a carrot and stick to influence the political behavior of Japanese scientists with mixed outcomes.


Some beg for forgiveness. Others claim innocence. At least three cheer for their favorite football teams. Death waits for us all, but only those sentenced to death know the day and the hour-and only they can be sure that their last words will be recorded for posterity. "Last Words of the Executed" presents an oral history of American capital punishment, as heard from the gallows, the chair, and the gurney. The product of seven years of extensive research by journalist Robert K. Elder, the book explores the cultural value of these final statements and asks what we can learn from them. We hear from both the famous-such as Nathan Hale, Joe Hill, Ted Bundy, and John Brown-and the forgotten, and their words give us unprecedented glimpses into their lives, their crimes, and the world they inhabited. Organized by era and method of execution, these final statements range from heartfelt to horrific. Some are calls for peace or cries against injustice; others are accepting, confessional, or consoling; still others are venomous, rage-fueled diatribes. Even the chills evoked by some of these last words are brought on in part by the shared humanity we can't ignore, their reminder that we all come to the same end, regardless of how we arrive there. "Last Words of the Executed" is not a political book. Rather, Elder simply asks readers to listen closely to these voices that echo history. The result is a riveting, moving testament from the darkest corners of society.


The research site has been the Sodra Cell Tofte pulp mill. The main focus in this thesis is how to learn about process control. The need for research on this theme is given implicitly in the foundation and construction of the INPRO programme. Norwegian engineering education is discipline oriented, and the INPRO programme aimed at integrating the three disciplines engineering cybernetics, chemical engineering, and organisation and work life science in a single PhD programme. One goal was to produce knowledge of modern production in chemical process plants based on socio-technical thinking.In the introduction I outline how my research questions have been developed and the need for doing research in the field of improving process understanding in a continuous process plant.This thesis provides answer to the three questions:1. What are the learning systems for workers in a process plant?2. What is the implication for learning of different socio-technical structures?3. How can learning be further improved for workers in the process industry?In order to answer these questions and to provide a background for why these questions are important to Tofte, I describe and analyse the case plant Sodra Cell Tofte. I find it necessary to make this part rather extensive in order for the reader to understand the context under which Tofte has been developing its learning arenas or learning systems. I use a sociotechnical framework in doing this. I want to introduce and use this framework as I regard it as useful for one of my purposes with this work: Assisting the production unit at Tofte to improve learning. I go through technological improvements that have been carried out from 1980 onwards, and one major organisational change that has taken place. The downsizing and reorganisation that took place in 1992 is of importance as well as the organisational development effort named "Employeeship" that took place in 1996. I had a leave from the INPRO project for almost a year following and evaluating this particular project. The situation at Tofte in 1994 was lack of good learning systems, and after a major reorganisation in 1992 the organisation defined a need for better responsibility distribution and co-operation. Chapters 3 and 4 present and discuss theories in order to give a broader background for the research issues in this thesis. In Chapter three I discuss features and characteristics of a continuous process plant as these have consequences on how knowledge and skills can be developed and why process understanding is a necessity. I present socio-technical system thinking (STS) as one way of regarding organisation and management of a process plant, and I further discuss why I find this approach appropriate for providing learning primarily at the shop floor level as an integrated part of daily production.In Chapter four I argue that knowledge and skills in production are becoming increasingly important in highly automated remotely controlled process plants and develop a theory of "process understanding". Process understanding is defined as the ability to predict what is going to happen. In order to predict what is going to happen with a system one firstly need to define the system boundaries. This system can then be regarded as a mental model. One must know and analyse input variables (know where and how to get relevant process information), and by this anticipate, like in a mental simulation, what will happen with the parameters within a defined time period. Different possible options may be mentally tested including what will happen if no corrective actions are taken. An ability to predict what is going to happen with the product, to process equipment or any other process variable, has to be developed and refined in order to operate a process plant optimally. Theories state that a variety of knowledge and skills are required and that some skills can be acquired only through years of experience. The "knowing why" within a process plant also has to be strengthen in order to develop a better process understanding, but as an addition to the experience based "knowing how".Models of learning regarding the demands given by the production systems in order to develop such process understanding are presented and discussed. These are conventional methods, experiential (problem based) learning, and collective learning. The experiential learning model is discussed and what may inhibit learning from experiences to take place in a plant. I have defined the concept "learning arena" and regarded each shift in a control room as a main learning arena since this is the place where theory meets practice. It is further discussed that practice will differ between shifts within same control room due to different mental models of the process. In various learning arenas, different communities-ofpractice must be joined in order to make more shared mental models with the intention to align different practices.In Chapter five the research methods used to explore the research questions, and thus to bring forth theories about gaining better process control, are reviewed. I have been inspired by action research methods in order to answer my research questions and to contribute in a necessary change process where development and use of learning arenas have been central. I have been more or less active in these arenas and played back experiences and theories in order to further develop the arenas. Besides participations in learning arenas, methods have been interviews, observations, and written documentations. Chapter six is the case description of two different kinds of learning systems at Tofte: Operator Training (OT) - Operator based development and execution of education/ training and Operations Workshop (OW) - Problem based learning aiming at better production practice. I have provided background for the two cases as an answer to the educational challenges Tofte had in 1996 and not least to differences in operational practice between shifts. I describe background, characteristics, and development from what I term different learning arenas where the learning about process control will take place. I have also discussed in what ways these two learning systems can be regarded as learning arenas and briefly the kind of learning that can take place in each arena. In two Operations workshops I provide more details in order to show some strengths of the method.In Chapter seven I provide answers to the three research questions outlined in the introduction and further refined in Chapter 4.5. I analyse how different learning types such as individual, experiential, and collective are covered within different learning arenas and how OT and OW meet the requirements for good learning systems in continuous process plants. Further I analyse how tasks regarding education and training are better distributed in a shift and daytime organisation with the two learning systems, and further how learning is integrated with working and thus process operators' knowledge and skills are better utilised. When I analyse the implication of learning of two different socio-technical structures, I also regard how managers are better enabled to become facilitators for learning. The two arenas have been well established at Tofte, but to a varying degree in the different departments. When regarding Operator training it is still too early to conclude on its impact on results in the pulp mill. However, two Operations workshops have made positive contributions and demonstrated the potential of the method. The strengths of the methods are the collective learning that place in cogenerated learning arenas. In Operator training this strengthens the master-apprentice method, and in Operations workshops it gives a shared understanding and direction for further tasks in process control. Finally, based on the analysis of the first two questions I discuss how learning for workers can be further improved.In Chapter eighth I conclude on my theoretical contribution and arguments for further research in the actual fields. Finally, based on my findings I will recommend organisational choices on future actions. STS provides frames and directions for learning to take place within groups along the production line. It is however not the scope of the STS paradigm to provide theories of what constitutes knowledge in operations of a plant. And the STS theories are not developed in order to cover more specifically models for how learning within and across semi-autonomous units and organisational levels may take place. Thus the main contribution of this thesis is learning theories based on two different kinds of learning models as means to develop process understanding.


Given the complexity of many social, environmental, and economic problems facing communities, nonprofit organizations are increasingly collaborating with public authorities—but the power dynamics of such arrangements can be extremely complex and fraught with institutional interests, as representatives of the various collaborating parties shift over time with changing political and other realities. The literature on such collaborations often does not do justice to what this means for the governance and life cycles of these efforts. In this article, we propose a conceptual framework that seeks to explain the formation, governance, and life cycle of public–nonprofit collaborations.

 As is noted by Melissa Stone and Jodi Sandfort, "research on nonprofit organizations does not fully consider how the policy environment shapes organizational operation and performance and shapes how actors act strategically to advance their organizational interests." And, in 2006, David Renz suggested that, in fact, many governance decisions are made at a meta level—above the realm of any single nonprofit board—in the funding and policy environments. Thus, Renz writes, understanding governance as merely board activity is shortsighted and limiting; he advocates a new focus on interorganizational governance processes that occur as organizations work together to address social problems. Such collaborations can be relatively long or short term, and they ordinarily contain power dynamics that must be worked out. But when the collaboration mixes public and private organizations, other issues often emerge having to do with changing institutional interests and tenures. This leads us to consider what the factors are that lead to the formation of public–nonprofit partnerships, how they are governed, and the influences on their life cycle.

 We base our observations here, in part, on a longitudinal case study of a public nonprofit collaboration in the United Kingdom. This partnership was aimed at neighborhood regeneration in deprived areas of one United Kingdom city. The head of the regeneration team, an employee of the city council, initiated the collaboration and acted as a key coordinator. The research examined the development of the collaboration from its inception, focusing particularly on an attempt by the team director to redesign its governance structure.


ABSTRACT An in-depth account of how English speakers think about thinking, using perspectives from etymology, metaphor and cognitive linguistics. Cognitive linguistics addresses how we conceptually structure and linguistically categorize experience in order to render our world coherent and accessible. One of the ways we do so is through the creation of spatial metaphors. In cognitive theory, language is not regarded as a representation of objective reality, but rather, as the product of our interaction with the world as entities in three-dimensional space. The metaphors we use to structure experience conceptually are grounded in this interaction. Our ability to generate metaphors makes it possible for us to get a mental and linguistic grip on abstract concepts by representing them as tangible, concrete entities situated in space. Hence, from a cognitive perspective, metaphors are much more than occasional ornamental figures of speech occurring primarily in literary contexts; rather, they are all-pervasive components of everyday language and reflections of how we cognitively structure our world. It should come as no surprise then that, as we shall see, metaphorical expressions are particularly prevalent in the lexis of that most abstract of realms, the realm of thinking.


Printed books were an enormous stimulus to science, culture, commerce, and entertainment. Electronic books and hypertext systems may produce a similar stimulus in the next century, but current designs are poor. Typical screens are too small, too slow, too complicated, and too hard to read. With careful attention to the user interface and the underlying technology, we have a chance to create a new medium that is potentially more attractive and effective than printed books in many situations.


Despite the remarkable evolution of deep neural networks in natural language processing (NLP), their interpretability remains a challenge. Previous work largely focused on what these models learn at the representation level. We break this analysis down further and study individual dimensions (neurons) in the vector representation learned by end-to-end neural models in NLP tasks. We propose two methods: Linguistic Correlation Analysis, based on a supervised method to extract the most relevant neurons with respect to an extrinsic task, and Cross-model Correlation Analysis, an unsupervised method to extract salient neurons w.r.t. the model itself. We evaluate the effectiveness of our techniques by ablating the identified neurons and reevaluating the network's performance for two tasks: neural machine translation (NMT) and neural language modeling (NLM). We further present a comprehensive analysis of neurons with the aim to address the following questions: i) how localized or distributed are different linguistic properties in the models? ii) are certain neurons exclusive to some properties and not others? iii) is the information more or less distributed in NMT vs. NLM? and iv) how important are the neurons identified through the linguistic correlation method to the overall task? Our code is publicly available as part of the NeuroX toolkit (Dalvi et al. 2019a). This paper is a non-archived version of the paper published at AAAI (Dalvi et al. 2019b).


Can someone running a business do good while doing well? Can they benefit society and the environment while still making money? Supporters of social enterprises believe the answer is yes, as these companies aim at both making money for shareholders while also pursuing other social benefits. Since 2010, states have begun to enact statutes creating the "benefit corporation" as a new legal form designed to fit social enterprises. Benefit corporations proclaim to the world that they will pursue both social good and profits, and those who run them have a fiduciary duty to consider a broad range of social interests as they make their decisions rather than a duty to focus solely on increasing shareholder value. Does this novel fiduciary duty effectively commit these businesses to doing good? How will courts actually apply this duty in practice? Will this new duty accomplish its goals without unduly high costs?This article is among the first to analyze in detail the fiduciary duty provisions in several versions of these new benefit corporation statutes. It compares duties in benefit corporations to duties in traditional corporations in the leading categories of fiduciary duty cases. It argues that there is likely to be a modest "flattening" in the risk of liability for directors and officers of benefit corporations. That is, as compared to the level of risk in ordinary corporations, the risk of being held personally liable will be bigger for decisions where that risk is weakest in ordinary corporations, while the risk of liability will be smaller for decisions where that risk is highest in ordinary corporations.The article then asks whether the statutes strike the proper balance in holding directors and officers accountable. The statutes could be too strong if they scare off investors and managers. They could be too weak if they allow managers to proclaim their virtue while ignoring their duties with no fear of legal sanctions. Neither possibility can be dismissed, but this paper argues that the statutes have got it just right. They create enough risk of liability that managers must pay attention to their legal duties, allowing courts to help shape norms of appropriate behavior, while not imposing such high risk that this promising new business form becomes unattractive.


This dissertation deals with a social-cultural change process within sport organizations attempting to change towards market-oriented organizations. Dutch National Sport Organizations (NSO's) experience pressure to apply marketing techniques. This pressure stems from the outer context as well as the institutional context, represented by the Olympic umbrella organization and a number of large, powerful federations. Therefore in 2005 and 2006, over sixty NSO's participated in a strategic marketing program (SMP) aimed at creating a marketing strategy. The SMP can be interpreted as a plea for NSO's to make room for market-oriented thinking instead of merely club-oriented-thinking. Therefore this calls for cultural change. The central question in this dissertation refers to the backgrounds and consequences of external pressure and the top-down controlled application of a market-orientation on a group of NSO's, which are characterized by a club-oriented culture and which reason for existence is legitimized from organizing sport participation based on a shared passion. This is studied at three sociological levels: the macro, meso and micro level. On the macro level, developments in market share of the traditional organized sports are recalculated. A loss of market share is validated. Based on a literature study, arguments of increasing individualization, expansion of more diverse sports suppliers and an increase in fitness participation are not found to be convincing. It is more likely that a loss of market share is caused by new groups of athletes who feel uncomfortable with the traditional club culture, as also a group of young adults who, experiencing time pressure, choose for more flexible (commercial) sport participation. Another part of the macro analysis is a literature study to the growing popularity of the marketing discourse in a not-for-profit context and in sports in particular. The meso analysis consists of a document study on policy plans of NOC*NSF and eleven NSO's, as well as in-depth interviews with marketing and management employees and board members of twenty NSO's. The meso analysis provides insights in the motivation, influences and outcomes of the change process. The neo-institutional framework of Greenwood and Hinings (1996) and Gidden's (1979) structuration theory are used to analyze and describe the process of change. Four years after starting the SMP, many NSO's have changed the institutional norms within their policy plans. However, only few people in the organization are affected by this change. The rank and files of most NSO's don't support these new norms and in their acting club-oriented values remain dominant. Since they have democratic power, change has hardly been realized. The micro analysis features different applications of the marketing discourse by outlining three case studies. In all three NSO's, key actors failed to give sense to- and make sense of the new market-oriented norms. This dissertation concludes mentioning tensions resulting in a gap between two discourses as experienced by NSO's: the club-oriented discourse and the market-oriented discourse. The author pleas for using marketing techniques not to initiate brand new activities aimed at new and different target groups, but to bridge the gap by marketing the club-oriented discourse


This is a continuation of a set of work investigating how students use mathematics when solving physics problems. This phase of the study specifically looked at qualitative data from in-depth group interviews to expand upon the more quantitative studies previously conducted. Specifically, but unsurprisingly, the results indicate that students tend to focus on the solution technique when examining math problems but heavily emphasize the context of the problem when examining physics problems. This is evident in a variety of tasks including grouping/matching exercises and oral discussions of the nature of the problems, and is true regardless of the purposeful prompting of students to consider the solution techniques required. Analysis from these interviews will be presented here, as well as some indication for future work to facilitate a more natural and useful incorporation of these disciplines for effective problem solving.


For the last forty years the commemoration of the dead (i.e. memoria) has become an important research topic in medieval studies. Memoria is a complex phenomenon with theological, liturgical, social-political and cultural aspects, touching every aspect of medieval life and society. At the centre of the commemoration of the dead stands the mentioning of the name of a deceased person in prayer or during mass, in order to shorten the time this person had to spend in purgatory. During the Middle Ages people donated land, money and other precious gifts to religious institutions for the benefit of their souls. Many religious institutions kept detailed records of the gifts that they received and the commemorative services (the countergifts) that were expected in return. Although much research has been carried out, the organisation and administration of memoria-culture for lay-people in the Carthusian Order got little attention so far, even though in the Middle Ages the Carthusians were seen as professional intercessors, praying daily for many people. Due to the austerity of the order, the prayers of the Carthusian monks were considered to be the most effective. This research focusses on the administration and organisation of memoria in the Carthusian Order and the Utrecht charterhouse Nieuwlicht in particular. Nieuwlicht existed from 1391 until 1580, when it was dissolved by the city council of Utrecht. The administration of memoria was registered in memorial registers. There are five main types of memorial registers: registers of memorial services (e.g. necrologies); registers of gifts; registers of pittances; registers of graves, and registers of names. Sources of all these categories have survived from Nieuwlicht. These sources are thoroughly analysed and placed in their context, often making use of additional source material e.g., cartae (sources from the Carthusian Order), cartularies, archaeological findings, and surviving gifts. The main research questions are: how was memoria for lay-people organised in Nieuwlicht? And how reliable are the memorial registers of Nieuwlicht for researching memoria? These questions are answered while looking at three different themes that are interlocked: gift-giving practices (schenken), burial practices (begraven), and commemoration practices (gedenken). In the first century of its existence the Utrecht charterhouse was a popular destination for wealthy people to make a donation to, to be buried in, and to be commemorated in. Lay-people were buried on the grounds of Nieuwlicht, but they were buried separately from the members of the monastery. In addition, there was, to a certain extent, also a separation between men and women, because women were officially not allowed inside a charterhouse. The registration of the names of the people in the necrologies that had to be commemorated was partly organised by the Carthusian Order itself, through the annual meetings of the General Chapter of the order. Additionally, there were 'locally' remembered persons. The analyses of the memorial registers and the additional source material shows that the Carthusians of Utrecht were very accurate in keeping their memorial registers, although it resulted in an extensive amount of work while dealing with the accumulating memorial services.


Nutrient imbalances, both deficiencies and excesses, are one reason for the poor acceptance of waste materials as fertilizer substitutes. Two greenhouse experiments were established using 24 different fly ashes with sewage sludge and poultry manure to estimate nutrient availability and imbalances to maize (Zea mays L.). The maximum maize growth attained with fly ash amendment of 80 Mg ha{sup {minus}1} was significantly less (50%) than a fertilized control treatment. The additional growth improvements obtained from mixtures with sewage sludge or poultry manure ranged from 30 to 49% and 30 to 71%, respectively. Organic materials applied alone achieved only 54 and 62% of the maximum potential, while growth on poultry manure mixtures was up to 94% of the best performing fertilized treatment. Results of foliage and soil analyses suggest that P and K were the main nutrient deficiencies, while B phytotoxicity and an imbalance in the K/Ca/Mg ratio also were likely causes of plant growth reduction. Fly ashes did not contribute significant P or K to correct soil and plant deficiencies, but more often exacerbated the imbalances by precipitation or adsorption of soil P. Sewage sludge mixed at 26% and poultry manure at 13% (DM) with fly ash had negligible effectmore » on availability of phytotoxic fly ash B, but were good sources of P (both) and K (poultry manure). Good agreement between plant nutrition in pot experiments and previous laboratory extraction studies implies that chemical analysis, efficient formulation and optimized application rates may overcome nutrient limitations for use of wastes as fertilizer substitutes.« less


We present a simple and efficient management scheme for gain control of EDFA by using standardized network management protocol(Simple Network Management Protocol) and operating the optical amplifier in a link-control scheme. We have demonstrated the proposed scheme by using SNMP Simulator and optical simulation software package.


This paper explores the links between fiscal multipliers and household discount rates. We report evidence of a large and statistically significant relationship between reported rates of time preference across countries and the government expenditure multiplier. This study uses recent cross-country data on reported rates of time preferences gathered by Wang, Rieger and Hens (2011). We find that a higher reported rate of time preference is strongly associated with a larger government expenditure multiplier. Our findings may help to explain some of the differences in view over the optimal path for fiscal consolidation in Europe today, between the Germanic and Northern European countries (whose representatives appear to favour a faster fiscal retrenchment) and those in the South (who would like their required fiscal adjustment to occur less rapidly).


The novel avian influenza A H7N9 virus which caused the first human infection in Shanghai, China; was reported on the 31st of March 2013 before spreading rapidly to other Chinese provinces and municipal cities. This is the first time the low pathogenic avian influenza A virus has caused human infections and deaths; with cases of severe respiratory disease with pneumonia being reported. There were 440 confirmed cases with 122 fatalities by 16 May 2014; with a fatality risk of ∼28%. The median age of patients was 61 years with a male-to-female ratio of 2.4:1. The main source of infection was identified as exposure to poultry and there is so far no definitive evidence of sustained person-to-person transmission. The neuraminidase inhibitors, namely oseltamivir, zanamivir, and peramivir; have shown good efficacy in the management of the novel H7N9 virus. Treatment is recommended for all hospitalized patients, and for confirmed and probable outpatient cases; and should ideally be initiated within 48 h of the onset of illness for the best outcome. Phylogenetic analysis found that the novel H7N9 virus is avian in origin and evolved from multiple reassortments of at least four origins. Indeed the novel H7N9 virus acquired human adaptation via mutations in its eight RNA gene segments. Enhanced surveillance and effective global control are essential to prevent pandemic outbreaks of the novel H7N9 virus.


This document defines an extension to the Network News Transfer
Protocol (NNTP) that allows a client to indicate an authentication
mechanism to the server, to perform an authentication protocol
exchange, and optionally to negotiate a security layer for subsequent
protocol interactions during the remainder of an NNTP session. This
document updates and formalizes the AUTHINFO USER/PASS authentication
method specified in RFC 2980 and deprecates the AUTHINFO SIMPLE and
AUTHINFO GENERIC authentication methods. Additionally, this document
defines a profile of the Simple Authentication and Security Layer
(SASL) for NNTP. [STANDARDS-TRACK]


This Essay was created to accompany a presentation at the New England Law Review/American Health Lawyers Association symposium "On the Table: An Examination of Medical Malpractice, Litigation, and Methods of Reform." In the last decade, many American medical facilities have instituted medical apology programs. These programs call on doctors who have committed an error to meet with their injured patient, explain what happened and, typically, apologize. Some programs have also adopted policies to accompany these communications with offers of compensation. As part of this process, doctors are typically accompanied to meetings by risk managers who represent the interests of the facility and malpractice insurers. While apology programs bill themselves as allowing "open, honest, and robust" communication, empirical evidence establishes that patients participating in them are less likely to be provided compensation and, to the extent they are compensated, receive less money. Based on the Washington Supreme Court decision in Jones v. Allstate Ins. Co., which examined an auto insurer's program that shared key attributes with apology-and-offer programs, this Essay additionally argues that risk managers and other non-attorney hospital representatives who participate in apology programs are engaged in the unauthorized practice of law. Applying the rationale of Jones, this Essay suggests that non-attorneys participating in apology programs should be held to the ethical standards of attorneys in terms of disclosing adverse interests and advising patients to seek independent counsel.


– System plays a key role in contemporary world. The world is now at the age of systems in which systems in various kinds play crucial roles in every aspect of human life. If we think that the innovation is an advent of a new life style due to the advance of sciences and technology, the system building must be a key factor of innovation. Therefore, systems science and technology must lead the innovation. In this article, we advocate the importance and implication of systems sciences and technology in the process of realizing innovation. The notion of systems buliding strategic research (SBSR) which was proposed by JST as a powerful device to promote systems science and technology is fully discussed. It is emphasized that SBSR can provide a good platform for the collaboration of various disciplines and rational decision making in the planning stage of systems building projects. Systems science and technology has many distinguishable characteristics which the other traditional sciences and technology do not share. Its real achievements cannot be presented in a concrete form. Its message is always represented as an abstract and invisible theory. So, it needs some special con-sideration to appreciate the importance of its result. The relevance of systems science and technology to a new growth strategy is discussed extensively.


The Interval Algebra (IA) and a subset of the Region Connection Calculus (RCC), namely RCC-8, are the dominant Artificial Intelligence approaches for representing and reasoning about qualitative temporal and topological relations respectively. Such qualitative information can be formulated as a Qualitative Constraint Network (QCN). In this paper, we focus on the minimal labeling problem (MLP) and we propose an algorithm to efficiently derive all the feasible base relations of a QCN. Our algorithm considers chordal QCNs and a new form of partial consistency which we define as G♦-consistency. Further, the proposed algorithm uses tractable subclasses of relations having a specific patchwork property for which ⋄-consistency implies the consistency of the input QCN. Experimentations with QCNs of IA and RCC-8 show the importance and efficiency of this new approach.


Objective and method: Company size is a proxy for other variables affecting occupational health and safety (OHS) performance. The aim of this literature study was twofold: to give an overview on how it empirically has been shown that smaller and larger companies differ from one another in terms of OHS, and to present how earlier studies have defined company size when studying its mediating effects on OHS. A search strategy with search terms was used in the major databases, as well as inspecting the reference list of appropriate studies recovered. A total of 29 articles were included.Findings: Examining what empirically has been shown on company size differences in terms of OHS resulted in ten different themes. For example that the OHS standard improves as company size increases, that there is an inverse relationship between company size and injury frequency, and that the rate of absenteeism is lower in small companies. The examined studies were similar, in that they found differences attributed to company size. They differed, however, in the ways they defined company size as a variable in analysis. To define company size as number of employees was the most commonly used approach (27 out of 29 studies). One study used number of man-labor years as definition. One study used the contractors' annual volume of business in dollars as definition. The scale of measure that was most commonly used as variable for measuring company size was ordinal scale data (23 out of 29 studies). Three studies used ratio scale data. Three studies did not specify scale of measurement.Conclusion: It is important to carefully consider what definition and scale of measure to use for the sake of studying the mediating effects of company size on OHS. Some of the less commonly used alternatives could be relevant.


Most MPs do not achieve the great offices of State; some do not aspire to them. As backbenchers they have an influential role in the making of legislation, the conduct of government and the welfare of their political party. Commons Knowledge makes the case for the active, rigorous backbench MP. From taking the oath to resigning, it offers advice for new and veteran backbenchers alike. Wise and witty, the informative narrative is an invaluable guide to what can be achieved by backbenchers - invaluable to would-be MPs and essential for constituents who want to know what their MP ought to be doing. Thirty-three sub-species of backbencher are identified, including the 'Trough-Diver', the 'Mantra Chanter', and the 'World Conscience'. From surviving the Speaker to walking on water; from running a campaign to doughnutting; from dealing with the tabloids to staying married, Paul Flynn's survey of back- bench life explains all.


In order to develop energetic materials with better comprehensive properties, energetic salts based on bifunctionalized furazan with nitramino and dinitromethyl group were synthesized and fully characterized by multinuclear NMR (1H, 13C or 15N), IR spectroscopy and elemental analysis. Ammonium (1b), hydroxylammonium (2b) and aminoguanidinium salts (5b) were further confirmed by single-crystal X-ray diffraction. In addition, their decomposition temperatures, impact sensitivities and friction sensitivities were determined. Among the salts, dihydroxylammonium DNMNAF (2b) showed the best comprehensive properties (2b: d = 1.930 g cm−3; Td = 175 °C; P = 43.0 GPa; vD = 9646 m s−1; IS = 8 J; FS = 64 N; OB = −5.3%), which makes it a promising high-performance energetic material.