The last few decennia have seen a marked increase in the fragmentation of individual activity and travel patterns in time and space. As a result of an increased spatial-temporal complexity in their everyday lives and a larger action radius, individuals nowadays enjoy many new opportunities, but also face new constraints for participation in activities and travel. As a result of these developments, the activity patterns of individuals no longer coincide with the physical morphology of the city. Instead, patterns of human interaction have crystallized in many new and complex ways. The greatest change of all, however, is the shift of the conditions in time and space in which physical interactions occur. As a result of land-use deconcentration in various forms, today's urban landscape is characterized by a multiplicity of urban forms and systems ranging from monocentric to polycentric urban systems and sprawl. Accordingly, the size and composition of the population temporarily present in an area are expected to be related to this increased multiplicity. More specifically, the characteristics of these visitor populations may increasingly depend on the time-space interdependencies between each location and all other locations.
From a policy perspective, the networked character of urban space and human interaction required an insight into the impact of visitor populations on the economic, environmental, and social performance of places. In addition to residential populations, visitor populations may increasingly determine this performance. For planning to be capable of taking into account these visitor populations and their impacts, it is necessary to understand the relative position of an area in terms of flows of people from different origins entering and accumulating in that area at different times of the day, without suggesting a closed network system. Planners and plans, however, still try to grasp the increased complexity in the performance of places in rather traditional conceptualizations of spatial and temporal organization. Traditional planning instruments concentrate too much on areas as static places rather than places structured around and by highly diverse (rhythms of) flows of people, goods, and information.
So far, little empirical research has been conducted on the size, distribution, timing, and characteristics of visitor populations. More specifically, the implications of the growing diversity in social groups and lifestyles on people's use of places have hitherto remained largely unexplored. Furthermore, since people increasingly change the spatial orientation of their activities throughout the day, more light needed to be shed on the role of travel behaviour characteristics such as travel time and origin-destination combinations and their relationship with the presence of visitor populations. Finally, the impact of spatial environment (urban, suburban, and rural) and urban system (monocentric and polycentric) on the characteristics of visitor populations and their daily use of places was lacking.
This dissertation has taken the topic of visitor populations and presented an investigation of their characteristics, their space-time dynamics during an average weekday, and their impacts on the performance of places.


Instrumental variable models for discrete outcomes are set, not point, identifying. The paper characterises identified sets of structural functions when endogenous variables are discrete. Identified sets are unions of large numbers of convex sets and may not be convex nor even connected. Each of the component sets is a projection of a convex set that resides in a much higher dimensional space onto the space in which a structural function resides. The paper develops a symbolic expression for this projection and gives a constructive demonstration that it is indeed the identified set. We provide a MathematicaTM notebook which computes the set symbolically. We derive properties of the set, suggest how the set can be used in practical econometric analysis when outcomes and endogenous variables are discrete and propose a method for estimating identified sets under parametric or shape restrictions. We develop an expression for a set of structural functions for the case in which endogenous variables are continuous or mixed discrete-continuous and show that this set contains all structural functions in the identified set in the non-discrete case.


The effects and interactions of late season soil water deficit and crop level on the growth, yield, fruit quality, and physiology of four-year-old Concord own-rooted grapevines in a loam soil in New York were examined. Soil moisture stress was induced in half of the vines by rain-shielding beginning after bloom, while natural and supplemental drip irrigation were used to maintain high water status of the other half. Within each stress plot crop levels were adjusted to give unthinned vines with a mean of 130 clusters/kg pruning weight versus 67 clusters/kg pruning weight giving about 18 and 9 t/ha, respectively. Thinning of the crop significantly decreased cluster number and yield, but increased shoot growth, juice °Brix, and pruning weights as expected. Since significant soil water stress did not developed until about 10 to 20 days after veraison, the stress only significantly reduced net photosynthesis (Pn) and leaf conductance (g l ) after veraison at leaf and pre-dawn soil water potential below -1.1 and -0.25 MPa. A significant water stress x crop level interaction occurred at harvest for juice °Brix and total soluble solids (TSS) per berry, indicating that reduction of sugar accumulation due to water stress was aggravated in heavier cropping vines. No significant effects of crop level on leaf gas exchange or vine water use ( i.e. , soil water reduction in shielded plots) were observed. The reduction of leaf function and earlier leaf senescence in the unthinned stressed vines were not severe enough to cause carry-over effects the following season.


The practice of used snow disposal has evolved from indiscriminate snow dumping to storage and meltwater management at engineered snow disposal sites. The Town of Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada, constructed such a snow disposal site in 2003. Environment Canada and the Town of Richmond Hill formed a partnership to investigate the operation of the Richmond Hill Snow Storage Facility (RHSSF) with respect to snowmelt flows, fluxes of chemicals contained in snowmelt and direct effects on the receiving water. Results of chloride monitoring during the winter of 2007 are presented here. Roughly 16 tonnes of chloride passed through the snow disposal facility in 2007, which in itself reflects only a small proportion of the total salt applied to roads that winter. The highest concentrations of chloride were present in early melt, with 50% of the chloride released within the first 30% of the meltwater. The remainder of the chloride was released in lower concentration, higher volume melt later in the season. As expected, conductivity measurements at the outlet of the stormwater pond indicate that the meltwater management system served to delay and dilute the chloride released, but not to remove the pollutant.


We tested the hypothesis that cetaceans use weak anomalies in the geomagnetic field as cues for orientation, navigation and/or piloting. Using the positions of 212 stranding events of live animals in the Smith sonian compilation which fall within the boundaries of the USGS East-Coast Aeromagnetic Survey, we found that there are highly significant tendencies for cetaceans to beach themselves near coastal locations with local magnetic minima. Monte-Carlo simulations confirm the significance of these effects. These results suggest that cetaceans have a magnetic sensory systemcomparable to that in other migratory and homing animals, and predict that the magnetic topography and in particular the marine magnetic lineations may play an important role in guiding long-distance migration. The 'map' sense of migratoryanimals may therefore be largely based on a simple strategy of following paths of local magnetic minima and avoiding magnetic gradients.


The transformer is a state-of-the-art neural translation model that uses attention to iteratively refine lexical representations with information drawn from the surrounding context. Lexical features are fed into the first layer and propagated through a deep network of hidden layers. We argue that the need to represent and propagate lexical features in each layer limits the model's capacity for learning and representing other information relevant to the task. To alleviate this bottleneck, we introduce gated shortcut connections between the embedding layer and each subsequent layer within the encoder and decoder. This enables the model to access relevant lexical content dynamically, without expending limited resources on storing it within intermediate states. We show that the proposed modification yields consistent improvements over a baseline transformer on standard WMT translation tasks in 5 translation directions (0.9 BLEU on average) and reduces the amount of lexical information passed along the hidden layers. We furthermore evaluate different ways to integrate lexical connections into the transformer architecture and present ablation experiments exploring the effect of proposed shortcuts on model behavior.


As Web 2.0 technologies proliferate, an increasing number of Australians, especially young Australians, are relying primarily on information and communication technologies to engage and interact with each other and the world. If governments are to have meaningful interaction with young people, it is therefore important for them to explore the potential of these communication platforms. But legal considerations must be taken into account when strategising how best to make use of emerging technologies. The report identifies the practical legal risks associated with activities conducted in online participatory spaces. Encompassing Copyright, Privacy, Defamation, Breach of Confidence and other areas of law, the report outlines the main considerations that arise when engaging in the online environment. It also examines the popular social networking platforms YouTube, MySpace and Second Life in detail, analysing legal issues specific to their Terms of Use and functionality.


The recent sex education curriculum update in Ontario sparked controversy in the media, reflecting a moral panic around sex education in Canada. Since its introduction in 2010 and implementation in 2015, debates ensued over the content of the curriculum, however, little attention was on the form through which it is delivered. This study explores experiences of sexuality education to critically reflect on the ways adolescents navigate discourses of sexuality through formal and informal education. In this thesis, I review discourses of sexuality education and argue that queer pedagogies can be used to foster critical, and queer spaces to negotiate sexuality. I conceptually frame playbuilding (Belliveau, 2006; Norris, 2009; Weigler, 2001), a drama-based research methodology, as a queer pedagogy and mobilize it in this study to coauthor a play with participants based on our collective experiences. This participatory dramabased research process involved an exploration of themes and constructs in sexuality education, translating these into dramatic forms, and performing the co-authored scenes to an audience. Through playbuilding, this research tells critical stories of six individuals negotiating their experiences of the discourses of sexuality education. I explore the ways queer pedagogies in sexuality education and playbuilding, in particular, can create spaces wherein youth can exercise agency as sexual subjects and critically reflect on adolescent sexuality.


Sub-Saharan Africa has at least since 2nd World War; been highly integrated into the world economy. On the face of it, this integration should have lead to a higher sustained growth. It however has not but instead African Populations have continued to dwell in abject poverty. Debt and aid dependence have also exposed every African country, including Kenya to the multilateral lending programmers of the IMF and WB. The lending programmers focused on a standard set of macro-economic issues; public service reforms which included reduction in Public expenditure, the wage bill, liberalization of trade, domestic commodity prices and exchange rates, Privatization and other reforms. Policy reforms were first pursued by the BWI through SAPS. Since the early 1980s, bilateral and multilateral donor agencies jointly exerted pressure on recipient governments like Kenya to implement major changes in the way they managed their econotrnes. . BWI have sought to influence the government policy towards poverty reduction and democratization. Through the SAPs programmers, BWI often sought ownership of these programmers by government. The way to do this is often through diplomacy which is at the core of the business of IR. Diplomacy is the exercise by governments of power in the international component of national life. It includes management of IR through negotiation. This study examines the diplomatic process between Kenya and BWI in the period 1989-2002. It looks into how this process was influenced by the inter play of both international and domestic politics; the negotiations that took place and its impact on the democratization process in Kenya. The study in conclusion, gives its own findings on whether democratization was part of the diplomatic process.


641 W hen 29-year-old Brittany Maynard appeared on the October 27, 2014 cover of People magazine announcing that she planned to end her life before she fell victim to aggressive glioblastoma, she drew new attention to the rightto-die movement. "Her youth appealed to a whole other generation that has not given a second thought to what they might die of or how that death might play out," says Barbara Coombs Lee, president of Compassion & Choices, an advocacy organization that supports right-to-die legislation and patients' rights to make end-of-life choices. "She said, 'I will rob cancer of the ability to take everything of me before it takes my life.'" Learning that surgery had not stopped her aggressive brain tumor and that her severe decline and eventual death were inevitable, Maynard moved with her husband and mother to Oregon, which was the first state to pass a Death with Dignity Act (DWDA; also known as physician aid-in-dying) in 1997. The law allows terminally ill patients to end their lives through the voluntary self-administration of lethal medications, expressly prescribed by a physician for that purpose. In addition to applying for and obtaining the medication, Maynard contacted Compassion & Choices and told them she wanted to become an advocate for the organization, launching an online video campaign and doing the interview with People. On November 1, 2014 she ended her life, issuing a public goodbye on Facebook. Since Maynard went public with her choice, inquiries to the organization from both activists and terminally ill patients have increased 10-fold, according to Coombs Lee, an attorney and former nurse who coauthored Oregon's Death with Dignity bill. She also points to a recent HealthDay Harris Poll, conducted shortly after Maynard's death, which found that 74% of American adults believe that patients who are terminally ill and in great pain have the right to end their lives, whereas 14% percent were opposed.1 "One of the enormous benefits of Brittany's story is that people are talking about the issue who never would have talked about it before," she says. Nevertheless, there is strong opposition to the right-todie movement, including among both religious and disability rights organizations. The latter cite concerns about potential abuse of vulnerable populations. Medical providers also worry about risks to the medical profession and the patient-physician relationship. In fact, several physicians in states without rightto-die laws chose not to be interviewed about the topic when contacted by CancerScope. Even the name of the practice can be hotly debated, ranging from "assisted suicide" in opposition circles to "death with dignity" among supporters. However, Coombs Lee maintains that these concerns have not been borne out in Oregon. "Twenty years of experience in Oregon has shown that physicians can participate in aid in dying and that it can be compatible with their practices," she says.


Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM) is a highly malignant form of brain cancer for which there is no effective cure. The over-expression of a number of genes, including the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFr), has been implicated as a causative factor of tumourigenesis. Ribozymes are a class of ribonucleic acid that possess enzymatic properties. They can inhibit gene-expression in a highly sequence specific manner by catalysing the trans-cleavage of target RNA. The potential use of synthetic hammerhead ribozymes as novel anti-brain tumour agents was investigated in this study. The successful use of synthetic, exogenously administered ribozymes for such applications will require chemical modifications that improve biological stability and a fundamental understanding of cellular uptake mechanisms. Chimeric 2'-O-methylated hammerhead ribozymes proved to be significantly more stable (>4000-fold) in serum than unmodified RNA ribozymes and exhibited high in vitro catalytic activity. The cellular association of an internally [32P]-labelled 2'-O-methylated chimeric ribozyme in U87-MG human glioma cells was temperature-, energy- and pH-dependent and involved an active process that could be competed with a variety of polyanions. Indications are that the predominant mechanism of uptake is by adsorptive and / or receptor mediated endocytosis. Twenty 2'-O-methylated chimeric ribozymes were designed to cleave various sites along the EGFr mRNA. In vitro, 18 ribozymes exhibited high activity in cleaving a complementary short substrate. Using LipofectAMINETM as a delivery agent, the efficacy of these ribozymes was evaluated in the A431 cell line, which expresses amplified levels of EGFr. Studies revealed that although the ribozymes were taken up by the cells and remained stable over a period of 4 days, no significant reduction in either EGFr expression or cell proliferation was evident. The presence of telomerase, a ribonucleoprotein responsible for telomere elongation, has been strongly associated with tumour progression. The biological activity of a 2'-O-methylated ribozyme targeted against the RNA component of telomerase was determined. The ribozyme exhibited specific dose-dependent inhibition of telomerase activity in U87-MG cell lysates with an IC50 of –4μM. When 4μM ribozyme was delivered to intact U87-MG cells, complexed to LipofectAMINETM, telomerase activity was significantly reduced to 74.5±4.17% of the untreated control. Free ribozyme showed no significant inhibitory effect demonstrating the importance of an appropriate delivery system for optimum delivery of exogenously administered ribozymes.


A study conducted by the CERT Program at Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute analyzed hundreds of insider cyber crimes across U.S. critical infrastructure sectors. Follow-up work involved detailed group modeling and analysis of 35 cases of insider theft of intellectual property. In the context of this paper, insider theft of intellectual property for business advantage includes incidents in which the insider's primary goal is stealing confidential or proprietary information from the organization with the intent to use it to take to a new job, to get a new job, or to start a business. It does not include cases of in which insiders sell an organization's information. This paper describes general observations about, and a preliminary system dynamics model of, this class of insider crime based on our empirical data. This work generates empirically-based hypotheses for validation and a basis for identifying mititgative measures in future work.


This paper aims at providing quantitative analysis of the dynamics of money supply, exchange rate and inflation in Nigeria. The paper utilizes secondary data that were obtained from the International Financial Statistics (IFS), of all variables investigated in the model. The sample covers quarterly data from 1986:01 to 2008:04. The model was estimated using Vector Error Correction Mechanism (VECM). The empirical results confirms that in the long run, money supply and exchange rate have significant inverse effects on inflationary pressure, while real output growth and foreign price changes have direct effects on inflationary pressure. The possible justification for the inverse effect of money supply on price level is that inflation may not be due to aggregate demand pressure but rather due to hiccups in the supply chain of goods both from the domestic and foreign supply outlets. Empirical deductions also signify the presence of significant feedback from the long run to short run disequilibrium. However, there exists a causal linkage between inflation, money supply and exchange rate in Nigeria.


When the US led the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, it expected to be able to establish a prosperous liberal democracy with an open economy that would serve as a key ally in the region. It sought to engage Iraqi society in ways that would defeat any challenge to that state-building project and US guidance of it. Herring and Rangwala argue that state building in Iraq has been crippled less by pre-existing weaknesses in the Iraqi state, Iraqi sectarian divisions or US policy mistakes than by the fact that the US has attempted - with only limited success - to control the parameters and outcome of that process. They explain that the very nature of US state building in Iraq has created incentives for unregulated local power struggles and patron-client relations. Corruption, smuggling and violence have resulted. The main legacy of the US-led occupation, the authors contend, is that Iraq has become a fragmented state - that is, one in which actors dispute where overall political authority lies and in which there are no agreed procedures for resolving such disputes. As long as this is the case, the authority of the state will remain limited. Technocratic mechanisms such as training schemes for officials, political fixes such as elections and the coercive tools of repression will not be able to overcome this situation. Placing the occupation within the context of regional, global and US politics, Herring and Rangwala demonstrate how the politics of co-option, coercion and economic change have transformed the lives and allegiances of the Iraqi population. As uncertainty about the future of Iraq persists, this volume provides a much-needed analysis of the deeper forces which give meaning to the daily events in Iraq.


Drawing on the wider political economy of global commodities markets, this paper analyses the dynamics of agrarian change related to the rise of emerging economies. Departing from an overview of China's trade relations with Brazil, it discusses the consequences of these asymmetric relations for the countries' international strategies and their broad impacts in developing countries. To do so, the paper is structured according to two objectives. The first focuses on the political economic trends of the emerging countries' role in the agricultural sector, particularly through the shift in soy trade flows towards Brazil and China and their engagement in building a global biofuel market. The second objective connects the shifts in patterns of trade to an increasing wave of investments in southern Africa's farmland and it analyses the barriers and the effects of this movement in Mozambique. (Resume d'auteur)


The Meso-Cainozoic marly carbonate and carbonate formations of the Umbro-Marchigiana-Sabina Series cropping out along the southern portion of the Serra valley (Martani Mts., Umbria, Central Italy) were strongly deformed during a phase of transcurrent tectonic activity initiated in Late Miocene and ended in Pliocene times. The carbonate rocks of one of such formations ("Scaglia") are particularly rich of calcite veins developed within micro- and macro-fractures formed during the deformation episode. A stable isotope study was conducted on these calcites and their host rocks in order to investigate on their genetic process. Forty two calcite and seventeen host rock samples from four sampling localities were analyzed. The delta 18 O and delta 13 C values of the "Scaglia" samples vary within the narrow range from 28.52 to 29.42 (vs. SMOW), and from 1.47 to 3.42 (vs. PDB), respectively, and are very close to those of the secondary calcite veins. Microthermometric measurements carried out on a few calcites yielded homogenization temperatures between 127 degrees and 141C and salinity of the fluid phase close to 0 per mil, suggesting that calcites crystallized from meteoric-hydrothermal solutions. It is concluded that the calcites under study originated from "pressure-solution" phenomena favored by the tectonic event which affected the sedimentary formations of the Serra valley.


To become a member of the European Union, certain conditions have to be fulfilled. First of all, a country has to apply for membership. Furthermore, the country must geographically be situated in Europe, though there is some space of discussion (Cyprus, Turkey, and some territories and countries outside Europe). Finally the country has to meet the Copenhagen criteria (stability of institutions, functioning market economy, ability to take on the obligations of membership). Since 2004, new members of the EU even have to join the Economic and Monetary Union, when they fulfil the Maastricht criteria (low inflation and long-run interest rates, low public deficits and debts, stable exchange rates and independent national central bank). The purpose of this paper is to investigate some economic aspects and challenges of the enlargement of the EU since 2000. Even possible future enlargements will be discussed. Among the economic aspects the size, internationalisation and globalisation will be discussed mostly in macroeconomic terms. Furthermore, the question of Europe's international competitiveness and the Lisbon agenda from 2000 will be treated. The time perspective regarding the economic development in the past is approximately the years from 2000 to 2007, i.e. the actual development in 2008 and 2009 will not be dealt with. Finally, the question will be asked, whether past and future enlargements lead to a stronger or weaker European Union


The nearshore and offshore waters of southern New England provide some of the most important wintering habitat for sea ducks in North America. Understanding changes in sea duck body composition during winter could provide insights into current habitat quality and potential effects of anthropogenic disturbances on the body condition of sea ducks. We used the deuterium dilution method, a nonlethal approach, to investigate intraseasonal variation and differences between genders in body composition of 86 adult common eiders (Somateria mollissima) during winter (2011 and 2012) in southern New England. Both male (n = 39) and female (n = 47) eiders increased fat mass by 75% in late winter compared with early winter. Wet lean mass of males remained constant throughout the winter, while that of females decreased by 10%. These seasonal increases in fat stores of eider suggest that birds were able to secure adequate resources to improve their body condition over winter. Our estimates of body composition of eider during winter in southern New England can be used as a baseline when conducting future research to evaluate effects of anthropogenic disturbance and disease. © 2016 The Wildlife Society.


The interaction of Human Serum Albumin (HSA) with local anaesthetic, procaine hydrochloride is an important study from the viewpoint of pharmaceutical sciences to clarify the structure, function, and properties of HSA-drug complexes.
The investigation has been carried through UV-absorption, Fluorescence and FTIR spectroscopy. The secondary structure of the protein and the binding mechanisms of the drug have been studied using Fourier self-deconvolution techniques on the obtained IR spectra.
Analysis of UV-absorbance and fluorescence spectra of procaine-HSA complexes showed a weak binding ability in quenching the intrinsic fluorescence of HSA by combinations of static and dynamic quenching procedures.
The binding constant (k) is calculated by graphical analysis and found to be in the range of (1.115-1.156) × 103 M-1 at 293 K. Spectral analysis of HSA-procaine compound has revealed a relative decrease in the intensity of the absorption band of α helix relative to that of β-sheets. This change in intensity is mainly due to the formation of Hbonding in procaine-HSA complex.


The main result of Meese and Rogoff [1983 a,b] is that small structural exchange rate models forecast major dollar exchange rates no better than a naive random walk model. This result obtains even when the model forecasts are based on actual realized values of the explanatory variables. Here we improve our methodology by implementing a new test of out-of-sample fit; the test is valid even for overlapping long-horizon forecasts. We find that the dollar exchange rate models perform somewhat less badly over the recent Reagan regime period than over the episodes studied previously. The methodology is also applied to the mark/yen and mark/pound exchange rates, and to real exchange rates. Finally, we test to see if real exchange rates and real interest differentials can be represented as a cointegrated process. The evidence suggests that there is no single common influence inducing nonstationarity in both real exchange rates and real interest differentials.


Background: Invasive leg compartment testing may be performed to diagnose chronic exertional compartment syndrome. No prior study has assessed the accuracy of leg compartment needle tip access. Purpose: This study was undertaken to describe and determine the accuracy of palpation-guided and ultrasound-guided techniques for needle tip placement into the deep and superficial posterior leg compartments by a less experienced clinician and a more experienced clinician using a cadaveric model. Study Design: Controlled laboratory study. Methods: Twenty unembalmed adult lower limb cadaveric specimens were used for the study. Two investigators, a sports medicine fellow with 10 months of musculoskeletal ultrasound experience and a staff physiatrist with 3 years of musculoskeletal ultrasound experience, each performed 1 palpation-guided and 1 ultrasound-guided colored latex dye injection into the deep and superficial posterior leg compartments of each cadaveric specimen. A blinded investigator dissected the specimens and graded them for accuracy. Results: The accuracy rates of palpation-guided (accuracy rate, 90%; 95% confidence interval [CI], 76%-97%) and ultrasound-guided (accuracy rate, 88%; 95% CI, 73%-95%) deep posterior compartment injections were statistically equivalent (P = 1.000). All 80 injections performed into the superficial posterior compartment were accurate (accuracy rate, 100%; 95% CI, 89%-100%). The accuracy of the less experienced investigator (total injection accuracy rate, 88%; 95% CI, 73%-95%) and the more experienced investigator (total injection accuracy rate, 90%; 95% CI, 76%-97%) were not significantly different (P = 1.000). Conclusion: Needle tip placement into the deep and superficial posterior leg compartments is relatively accurate with palpation guidance regardless of level of experience, and does not improve with the use of ultrasound guidance. Clinical Relevance: Ultrasound guidance does not appear to be indicated for routine deep or superficial posterior leg compartment pressure testing. However, this does not preclude the need for ultrasound guidance in selected clinical scenarios.


American women attain more professional success than most of their counterparts around the world, but - Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin not withstanding - they lag surprisingly far behind in the national political arena. Women held only 15 per cent of U.S. congressional seats in 2006, a proportion that ranks America behind eighty-two other countries in terms of females elected to legislative office. A compelling exploration of this deficiency, "The Motherless State" reveals why the United States differs from comparable democracies that routinely elect far more women to their national governing bodies and chief executive positions. Explaining that equal rights alone do not ensure equal access to political office, Eileen McDonagh shows that electoral gender parity also requires public policies that represent maternal traits. Most other democracies, she demonstrates, view women as more suited to govern because their governments have taken on maternal roles through social welfare provisions, gender quotas, or the continuance of symbolic hereditary monarchies. The United States has not adopted such policies, and until it does, McDonagh insightfully warns, American women run for office with a troubling disadvantage.


Von Willebrand disease (VWD) may be caused by an impaired von Willebrand factor (VWF) synthesis, its increased clearance or abnormal function, or combinations of these factors. It may be difficult to recognize the different contributions of these anomalies. Here we demonstrate that VWD diagnostics gains from measuring platelet VWF, which can reveal a defective VWF synthesis. Measuring platelet VWF revealed that: severe type 1 VWD always coincided with significantly lower platelet and plasma VWF levels, whereas mild forms revealed low plasma VWF levels associated with low or normal platelet VWF levels, and the latter were associated with a slightly shorter VWF survival; type Vicenza (the archetype VWD caused by a reduced VWF survival) featured normal platelet VWF levels despite significantly reduced plasma VWF levels; type 2B patients could have either normal platelet VWF levels associated with abnormal multimer patterns, or reduced platelet VWF levels associated with normal multimer patterns; type 2A patients could have reduced or normal platelet VWF levels, the former associated mainly with type 2A-I, the latter with type 2A-II; plasma and platelet VWF levels were normal in type 2N, except when the defect was associated with a quantitative VWF mutation. Our findings show that measuring platelet VWF helps to characterize VWD, especially the ambiguous phenotypes, shedding light on the mechanisms underlying the disorder.


It has long been known that some microswimmers seem to swim counter-intuitively faster when the viscosity of the surrounding fluid is increased, whereas others slow down. This conflicting dependence of the swimming velocity on the viscosity is poorly understood theoretically. Here we explain that any mechanical microswimmer with an elastic degree of freedom in a simple Newtonian fluid can exhibit both kinds of response to an increase in the fluid viscosity for different viscosity ranges, if the driving is weak. The velocity response is controlled by a single parameter Γ, the ratio of the relaxation time of the elastic component of the swimmer in the viscous fluid and the swimming stroke period. This defines two velocity–viscosity regimes, which we characterize using the bead-spring microswimmer model and analyzing the different forces acting on the parts of this swimmer. The analytical calculations are supported by lattice-Boltzmann simulations, which accurately reproduce the two velocity regimes for the predicted values of Γ.


Many aposematic species have evolved an aggregated lifestyle, and one possible advantage of grouping in warningly coloured prey is that it makes the aposematic signal more effective by generating a greater aversion in predators. Here we investigate the effect of prey group size on predator behaviour, both when prey are aposematic and when they are not aposematic, to separate the effects of warning coloration and prey novelty. Naive domestic chicks (Gallus gallus domesticus) were presented with either solitary or groups of 3, 9 or 27 live larvae of the aposematic bug Tropidothorax leucopterus. Other naive chicks were presented with larvae of the non–aposematic bug Graptostethus servus either solitary or in groups of 27. Attack probability decreased with increasing group size of aposematic prey, both when birds were naive and when they had prior experience, whereas prey gregariousness did not affect the initial attack probability on the G. servus larvae. In a separate experiment, groups of mealworms were shown to be even more attractive than solitary mealworms to naive chicks. We conclude that the aversiveness of prey grouping in this study can be explained as increased signal repellence of specific prey coloration, in this case a classical warning coloration. These experiments thus support the idea of gregariousness increasing the signalling effect of warning coloration.


G. H. Lawson, Ed., Studies in Cash Flow Accounting and Analysis (Aspects of the Interface between Managerial Planning, Reporting and Control and External Performance Measurement) (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1992, 315 pp., $63). Reviewed by Kathryn A. S. Lancaster Texas A&M University The book is a collection of 14 papers that reflect a long-standing interest of Dr. Gerald Lawson in cash flow accounting/ analysis (CFA) and provide insight into the development of the Statement of Cash Flows as it is currently presented. Since Dr. Lawson has taught at the University of Manchester in England, a number of his papers are written from an United Kingdom accounting methodology standpoint. Some of the papers do not stand alone, which makes the glossary of symbols included at the end of the book a helpful tool to refer to while reading the papers. The papers focus on the measurement of the creation of ownership value inherent in cash flow market value accounting an span a decade from 1981 to 1992. At the time Dr. Lawson began examining CFA, the U.K. Accounting Standards Committee (ASC) advocated a fund flow of the following form in SSAP 10: Sources of Funds = Applications of Funds where sources came from operating activities, the sale of assets, loans raised, and equity shares issued. Applications of funds went towards assets acquired, taxes paid, loans repaid, and dividends paid. Dr. Lawson believed the above approach led to the "erroneous impression that funds generated from operations constitute part of a pool which, at management's discretion, can then be deployed in alternative uses including periodic working capital investment" p. 274 . To correct for this perceived muddying of the water, he proposed the following identity, which is a reorganization and reclassification of the information included in the fund flow statement: ENCF = LCF + SHCF where ENCF is entity cash flows, LCF is lender cash flows, and SHCF is shareholder cash flows. In this form, the user would be able to identify the source of funds as being generated by the entity or by investing/financing activities more readily. This basic identity formula is expanded on in several of the papers, with the most straightforward explanation being provided in Paper 8, "The Valuation of a Business as a Going Concern." This reader recommends beginning with Paper 12, "Call for SSAP 10 Reform." This paper provides the motivation for the studies and cases included in the other 13 papers and helps make sense of some of the other papers. Also, any unfamiliarity with U.K. accounting standards is mitigated by reading the papers in the order outlined. The papers all focus on the use of Lawson's proposed cash flow identity that facilitates analysis of management decisions and corporate performance. The motivation is further clarified in Papers 9 and 10, each a case study of a firm that experienced financial difficulty in the late 1970s or the early 1980s. In Paper 9, "Was Woolworth Ailing," Dr. Lawson examines Woolworth's cash flows and concludes that entity generated cash flows did not cover dividend payments, lender's contributions did. This resulted in an increasing debt to equity ratio, which Lawson believes was the basis of Woolworth's difficulties. He speculates if CFA via the Lawson model had been employed by the firm, both management and shareholders would have realized dividends based on historical levels were not feasible, and that cash flows generated by operating activities were not sufficient to cover the dividends. Paper 10, "Why the Current UDS Takeover Bids Became Inevitable," presents the same type of analysis for a firm that did adjust dividends for reduced revenue. …


We present a number of complete sets of series expansion formulas for neutrino oscillation probabilities in matter of constant density for three flavors. In particular, we study expansions in the mass hierarchy parameter α≡Δm212/Δm312 and mixing parameter s13≡sin θ13 up to second order and expansions only in α and only in s13 up to first order. For each type of expansion we also present the corresponding formulas for neutrino oscillations in vacuum. We perform a detailed analysis of the accuracy of the different sets of series expansion formulas and investigate which type of expansion is most accurate in different regions of the parameter space spanned by the neutrino energy E, the baseline length L, and the expansion parameters α and s13. We also present the formulas for series expansions in α and in s13 up to first order for the case of arbitrary matter density profiles. Furthermore, it is shown that in general all the 18 neutrino and antineutrino oscillation probabilities can be expressed through just two independent probabilities.


Gemmayzeh is located in Beirut Central District, known to be one of the most famous night attractions in the Lebanese capital. It is also a special attraction for domestic visitors and tourists. However, despite its competitive nightlife advantages in the Lebanese tourism industry, its local residents are not convinced with the way tourism is being developed in this area. The lack of cooperation among the different potential tourism stakeholders and the absence of effective regulations and policies have affected the traditions and heritage of the local residents especially that this specific region is one of the oldest in Beirut with many historical and cultural buildings. All these vibes have created negative impacts on the community's well-being. The absence of tourism planning is affecting most of the Lebanese tourism attractions and it is getting worse with time especially in the case of Gemmayzeh whose residents have been involved in direct conflicts with visitors and are trying to avoid the negative impacts on their children at times. Therefore, this study aims to review the impacts of tourism development on Gemmayzeh's local residents, to assess and analyze the type of involvement of local communities in tourism planning and development and to explore the attitudes and perceptions of local residents towards tourism development and its impacts on the community. Out of 1,400 permanent local residents in Gemmayzeh, 50 respondents (representing 5% of the target population) were selected and surveyed during January, 2014. Results have revealed that the lack of involvement of local residents in tourism planning and development has negatively affected their perception towards tourism development. Although this issue is affecting the local community, results revealed that the majority of respondents, mainly young ones, have no problem with nightlife as a type of tourism but with the way it has been developed for years. Furthermore, respondents suggested the development of other forms of tourism such as cultural tourism which can have a better impact on all stakeholders.


This paper describes effects of temperature on herpes-like virus detection in Pacific oyster Crassostrea gigas larvae held at different temperatures. Intranuclear, intracytoplasmic and extracellular viral particles were observed in velum and mantle connective tissues of oyster larvae reared at 25-26°C. In larvae held at 22-23OC, although nuclear lesions were observed, the presence of viral particles was not detected. Results were obtained for oyster larvae with 4 different parental origins. Herpesvirus infection was found in 3 of the 4 groups of oyster larvae held In the same conditions at the higher temperature.


In this study, I present a theory which explains how the influence of others may generate overconfidence. The argument is built on the idea that the more help an agent receives when performing a task, the less informative the score on that task will be relative to the agent's ability to perform it. If an agent is confident, he tends to benefit from more cooperation opportunities simply because he is likely to be perceived as being more skilled. As a result, he remains confident because the future signals he will observe will contain very little information regarding his ability. On the contrary, if the agent is not confident, he will receive more informative scores, which will help him learn his true ability faster.


OBJECTIVE
Right-heart catheterization using the antecubital veins has recently regained attention, and studies demonstrating the feasibility and safety of antecubital access in adults have been published. However, no changes have been observed in the preferred entrance sites in right-heart catheterizations in children with congenital heart diseases. This article is a description of the technique and features of the antecubital venous approach in pediatric patients with complex congenital heart defects and a Glenn anastomosis.

METHODS
The data regarding a right cardiac catheterization through the antecubital fossa veins performed in 18 patients with various clinical indications between January 2014 and August 2017 were reviewed retrospectively and the results were assessed.

RESULTS
Ten patients (55%) were male and 8 patients were female. All of the patients but 1 had a complex congenital heart disease with a Glenn anastomosis. One patient had been operated on for a sinus venosus atrial septal defect and an abnormal pulmonary venous return and had a total occlusion of the superior vena cava. A diagnostic catheterization was performed in all cases. Additional procedures consisted of a balloon test occlusion of the pulmonary valve in 2 patients, a superior vena cava-right pulmonary artery anastomosis dilatation in 1, and abnormal veno-venous collateral occlusion with various devices in 2 patients.

CONCLUSION
The antecubital venous approach technique can be performed easily and safely for diagnostic and therapeutic catheterization in patients with complex congenital heart defects. The authors advocate that the antecubital venous approach should be the first site selected for right-heart catheterization, especially in patients with a Glenn anastomosis.


The growth and starvation responses of Acanthamoeba castellanii and Hartmannella vermiformis were investigated in the presence and absence of Escherichia coli on an agar surface or within shaken suspensions. The amoebae perceived all the suspended systems to be unfavourable for growth, despite being challenged with high levels of prey, and as a consequence they exhibited a starvation response. However, the response differed between species, with A. castellanii producing characteristic cysts and H. vermiformis producing round bodies. These amoebic forms were reactivated into feeding trophozoites in the presence of bacterial aggregates, which formed in the suspended systems after 68 h of incubation. In contrast, both species of amoebae grew well in the presence of attached E. coli at a concentration of 1 x 10(6) cells cm(-2) of agar and yielded specific growth rates of c. 0.04 h(-1). Starvation responses were induced at the end of the growth phase, and these were equivalent to those recorded in the suspended systems. We conclude that, when suspended, amoebae in the 'floating form' cannot feed effectively on suspended prey, and hence the starvation response is initiated. Thus the majority of amoebic feeding is via trophozoite grazing of attached bacterial prey.


Background and Aim : Considering the history of Islamic and Iranian culture we should represent new solutions able to join the current medicine and the former Hikmat (Wisdom) in the light of the medical world-view and through making use of the historical instructions of hikmat. Materials and Methods : In the present review-study, using keywords such as Hikmat, aristid ethics, medical research, medical ethics as well as bioethics, we searched for the published articles and resources regarding this topic, and then they were analyzed. Ethical Considerations : Honesty in the literature and citation analysis and reporting were considered. Findings : From old days, pious people always had sought wisdom. Medicine was considered a kind of practical wisdom that is called pyrrhonism or wisdom and physician was known as a pious person. A physician must reach the highest degree of knowledge so he would gain virtue. In the past, science was accompanied by the perfectness of soul and physician for achieving the truth, had to learn the medicine along with wisdom, because wisdom and medicine had a close relationship. But nowadays seems that medical science inters into the age of instability and morals in all fields have collapsed and continuance of this process has not any bright perspective for the future of medicine. One of the obvious reasons of this situation in two recent decades is separation between medical sciences and humanism. Conclusion : In recent decades that western world was in seek of ethics for the purpose of amends the lack of religion and virtuality in their society, we in a opposite attitude with separation of tentative science especially medicine from humanism, have caused a great and irrecoverable damages on the body of our medicine, so that unfortunately our country is following the west in this matter. The reason of this matter is in the collapse of values that was the foundation of previous wisdom, the wisdom that seems to be the missing segment of current medicine. Citation : Abbasi M. In Quest of Wisdom; Missing Segment of Current Medicine. Bioeth Health Law J. 2017; 1(2):1-8.


The quark-gluon plasma is studied via medium-induced changes to correlations between jets and charged particles in PbPb collisions compared to pp reference data. This analysis uses data sets from PbPb and pp collisions with integrated luminosities of 166 μb−1 and 5.3 pb−1, respectively, collected at sNN = 2.76 TeV. The angular distributions of charged particles are studied as a function of relative pseudorapidity (∆η) and relative azimuthal angle (∆φ) with respect to reconstructed jet directions. Charged particles are correlated with all jets with transverse momentum (pT) above 120 GeV, and with the leading and subleading jets (the highest and second-highest in pT, respectively) in a selection of back-to-back dijet events. Modifications in PbPb data relative to pp reference data are characterized as a function of PbPb collision centrality and charged particle pT. A centrality-dependent excess of low-pT particles is present for all jets studied, and is most pronounced in the most central events. This excess of low-pT particles follows a Gaussian-like distribution around the jet axis, and extends to large relative angles of ∆η ≈ 1 and ∆φ ≈ 1. Published in the Journal of High Energy Physics as doi:10.1007/JHEP02(2016)156. c © 2016 CERN for the benefit of the CMS Collaboration. CC-BY-3.0 license ∗See Appendix A for the list of collaboration members ar X iv :1 60 1. 00 07 9v 2 [ nu cl -e x] 2 M ar 2 01 6


The shibboleth that "government should not be picking winners and losers" has dominated the public discourse over renewable energy subsidies. This way of framing the debate ignores the nation's long history of support for fossil fuels and obscures the economic theory behind the subsidies. This article contributes to the discussion in four ways. First, the article examines economic justifications for government intervention in markets and evaluates the tax subsidies to both fossil fuels and renewable energy resources in that light. Second, the article contrasts the different market trajectories for those investments and explores possible reasons for their divergence, including their budgetary history. Third, the article examines the investment incentives that arise from the subsidy structures in terms of marketability, liquidity, information costs, transaction costs, risk, and uncertainty. Fourth, it examines the political economy associated with the development and continuation of the subsidies. A subsidy's age, diversity, type, and beneficiaries affect its stability and longevity. These factors also determine whether taxpayers report having claimed the benefits and whether administrative agencies evaluate them. Finally, the article argues that the way Congress structures its subsidies can determine whether new energy technology is a winner or loser. The article develops a generalized framework for structuring tax incentives and examines recent proposals for reform.


The aim of this research is to study in-situ transesterification technique of jatropha seeds for biodiesel production. This research was conducted using a randomized factorial block design consisting of two factors that is moisture content of jatropha seeds (2% and 3%) and amount of hexane that used as a co-solvent (0 ml, 75 ml, 95 ml, 115 ml and 135 ml). The experimental result shows that the highest yield biodiesel of 78.72 % obtained at process condition of jatropha seeds moisture content of 2% and amount of hexane of 115 mL. The physico-chemical analysis of biodiesel procured the acid number of 0.35 mg KOH/g, density of 0.89 g/mL and viscosity of 3.04 mm2/ s that meet requirement of Indonesian Nasional Standard No. 04-7182-2006.


In this paper I explore the conception of cognition and action found in the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi . More specifically, I focus on the role of explicit and implicit spatial imagery in the context of this complex problem. Spatial imagery suggests that cognition is understood as fundamentally bimodal in the text: (1) the default modality, which is informed by an entrenched distinction pattern, is cast in terms of fullness and bulk; and (2) the auxiliary modality, which is free from this kind of constraint, is imagined in terms of emptiness and lack of bulk, as an axis or point. The latter is the preferred mode of engagement with the environment, according to the Zhuangzi . Spatial imagery brings out the crucial characteristics of this cognitive modality: its radical openness and infinite fecundity in the context of distinction–drawing and action. It also connects with other metaphorical schemata at work in the text, including organic imagery. Interestingly, the notion of emptiness and the figure of an axis do not mark an experience of undifferentiated oneness but the state of heightened sensitivity to the makeup of one's environment. Such sensitivity allows the agent to entertain the situation at hand without bias and to move around (relatively) conflict–free.


Aims
Species-rich plant communities are hypothesized to be more resistant against plant invasions because they use resources in a more efficient way. However, the relative contributions of aboveground competition and belowground interactions for invasion resistance are still poorly understood.
Methods
We compared the performance of Knautia arvensis transplants growing in plots differing in plant diversity both under full competition and with shoots of neighbors tied back to determine the relative strength of aboveground competition in suppressing this test invader without the confounding effect of shading. In addition, we assessed the effects of belowground competition and soil-borne pathogens on transplant performance.
Important Findings
Both aboveground competition and plant species richness strongly and independently affected invader performance. Aboveground biomass, height, leaf mass per area and flowering of transplanted individuals of K. arvensis decreased with increasing species richness of the host community. Species-rich and species-poor communities both imposed equally strong aboveground competition on K. arvensis. However, belowground interactions (especially belowground root competition) had strong negative effects on transplant performance. In addition, the presence of grasses in a plant community further reduced the performance of K. arvensis. Our results suggest that belowground competition can render species-rich host communities more suppressive to newly arriving species, thus enhancing community invasion resistance.


This was a £20 million research project funded by the Leverhulme Foundation in conjunction with Oxford University and Oxford University Press.


Kernel methods are a popular choice in solving a number of problems in statistical machine learning. In this thesis, we propose new methods for two important kernel based classification problems: 1) learning from highly unbalanced large-scale datasets and 2) selecting a relevant subset of input features for a given kernel specification. The first problem is known as the rare class problem, which is characterized by a highly skewed or unbalanced class distribution. Unbalanced datasets can introduce significant bias in standard classification methods. In addition, due to the increase of data in recent years, large datasets with millions of observations have become commonplace. We propose an approach to address both the problem of bias and computational complexity in rare class problems by optimizing area under the receiver operating characteristic curve and by using a rare class only kernel representation, respectively. We justify the proposed approach theoretically and computationally. Theoretically, we establish an upper bound on the difference between selecting a hypothesis from a reproducing kernel Hilbert space and a hypothesis space which can be represented using a subset of kernel functions. This bound shows that for a fixed number of kernel functions, it is optimal to first include functions corresponding to rare class samples. We also discuss the connection of a subset kernel representation with the Nyström method for a general class of regularized loss minimization methods. Computationally, we illustrate that the rare class representation produces statistically equivalent test error results on highly unbalanced datasets compared to using the full kernel representation, but with significantly better time and space complexity. Finally, we extend the method to rare class ordinal ranking, and apply it to a recent public competition problem in health informatics. The second problem studied in the thesis is known as the feature selection problem in literature. Embedding feature selection in kernel classification leads to a non-convex optimization problem. We specify a primal formulation and solve the problem using a second-order trust region algorithm. To improve efficiency, we use the two-block Gauss-


Expansion of the corn-based ethanol industry in recent years has resulted in a growing supply of coproduct feeds. These coproducts result in significant improvements in cattle performance and are often priced lower than corn on a dry matter basis. Along with these benefits to feeding ethanol coproduct feeds, cattle feeders must also account for additional transportation costs to originate the coproducts and for added expenses to handle, mix, and deliver the feed ration within the feedlot. An economic budget model, called Cattle CODE, was created to help feeders, nutritionists, and Extension educators evaluate these nonlinear effects across unique feeding situations.


Cecropia peltata is a tropical tree that, like other plants, makes insoluble starch in its leaves. However, C. peltata also makes soluble glycogen in small food bodies specially produced for mutualistic ants. We provide evidence that this ability to make either polymer is brought about by differential regulation of the same set biosynthetic genes. The branched glucans glycogen and starch are the most widespread storage carbohydrates in living organisms. The production of semicrystalline starch granules in plants is more complex than that of small, soluble glycogen particles in microbes and animals. However, the factors determining whether glycogen or starch is formed are not fully understood. The tropical tree Cecropia peltata is a rare example of an organism able to make either polymer type. Electron micrographs and quantitative measurements show that glycogen accumulates to very high levels in specialized myrmecophytic structures (Müllerian bodies), whereas starch accumulates in leaves. Compared with polymers comprising leaf starch, glycogen is more highly branched and has shorter branches—factors that prevent crystallization and explain its solubility. RNA sequencing and quantitative shotgun proteomics reveal that isoforms of all three classes of glucan biosynthetic enzyme (starch/glycogen synthases, branching enzymes, and debranching enzymes) are differentially expressed in Müllerian bodies and leaves, providing a system-wide view of the quantitative programming of storage carbohydrate metabolism. This work will prompt targeted analysis in model organisms and cross-species comparisons. Finally, as starch is the major carbohydrate used for food and industrial applications worldwide, these data provide a basis for manipulating starch biosynthesis in crops to synthesize tailor-made polyglucans.


This study investigated factors negatively affect English language speaking skills in Saudi colleges for girls in the South in terms of: a) Instructors. b) Students. c) Curriculum and textbook. d) English Language teaching methods and exercises. e) Teaching and learning environment. To collect data for the study, a questionnaire papers were distributed to 150 students studying at Mhayeal and Almajardah colleges of King Khalid University (KKU) at English languages department, and 10 female instructors were interviewed about the students' questionnaire information. Data generated were subjected to descriptive and analytical approach using SPSS. The findings were: 1. Using Arabic in class affect students' proficiency. 2. Students fear speaking English Language in public and can't make a phone conversation, presentation in English without Arabic translation. 3. Curriculum of listening and speaking does not contain enough exercises for speaking skills. 4. Instructors do not use strategies that develop speaking such as: role-play, debates, and presentation - assignment. 5. More time is devoted to listening skills than speaking skills. 6. Labs are not used for teaching listening and speaking skills. 7. Rarely CD is used as speaking model. 8. More than 30 students are in listening and speaking class. It has been strongly recommended: 1. Prohibit the students from using Arabic in English Language classes. 2. Use motivating teaching strategies such as: cultural debatable topics, discussions, role-play, and presentations - assignment to develop speaking proficiency. 3. Teach Listening and speaking course in the lab. 4. Increase the time of listening and speaking course to six hours instead of three to develop speaking proficiency. 5. Activate English club and societies inside the colleges. 6. Students' number in listening and speaking class must not exceed 30.


Corresponding author: Hadi R. Hasan Al-Masudi Email: firstname.lastname@example.com Department of Clinical Laboratories College of Applied Medical Sciences University of Karbala Karbala Iraq ABSTRACT Objectives: The aim of the current study is to focus of the relationship between thymosin β4 and vitamin D3 in systemic lupus erythmatosus patients. Methods: This study included sixty of systemic lupus erythematosus patients that diagnosed by clinic specialists by using (SLEDAI) taken from (Al-Hussein Medical City/Kerbala / IRAQ). During the period from January 2015 to December 2016. Control group of 30 healthy persons who matched in gender and age with patients, and haven't history for this disease. The majority of the SLE patients were female 95% , the ratio of female male 19:1. The age of SLE patients was ranging from (7-65) compared with healthy control group as a seem in age. Results: The result shows a significant decreasing in concentration of thymosin β4, vitamin D3 and circulating complement factors (C3,C4) in active SLE patients compare with healthy control while significant increase in concentration of ANA and ds-DNA antibodies and disease activity measured using the SLE disease activity index (SLEDAI). Conclusion: Positive relationship between level thymosin β4 and concentration vitamin D3. There is an inverse relationship between Thymosin β4 and disease activity index of SLE.


Objective. This study aimed to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of a mometasone steroid-eluting sinus implant compared to a nonsteroid-eluting sinus implant following endoscopic sinus surgery (ESS) for chronic rhinosinusitis. Study Design. Economic evaluation using a decision tree model. Setting. Academic and nonacademic otolaryngology practices. Subjects. Patients with refractory chronic rhinosinusitis undergoing ESS. Methods. The economic perspective was the health care third party payer. Effectiveness and probability data were obtained from a single meta-analysis of 2 randomized, double-blind, controlled trials. Costs were obtained from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services database and wholesale pharmaceutical pricing. Multiple sensitivity analyses were performed including a probabilistic sensitivity analysis. Comparative treatment groups were (1) placement of the mometasone steroid-eluting sinus implant following ESS and (2) placement of a nonsteroid-eluting implant following ESS. The primary outcome was cost per postoperative intervention avoided within 60 days after ESS. Results. The mean cost for the steroid-eluting and nonsteroideluting sinus implant strategies were $1,572.91 and $365.18, respectively. The steroid-eluting strategy incremental costeffectiveness ratio was $5,489.68. The sensitivity analysis demonstrated a 74.3%, 87.2%, and 90.5% certainty that the steroideluting implant strategy is cost-effective at willingness-to-pay thresholds of $10,000, $25,000, and $50,000, respectively. Conclusion. Results from this economic evaluation suggest that placement of a mometasone steroid-eluting sinus implant into the ethmoid cavity following ESS for refractory chronic rhinosinusitis is a cost-effective intervention for preventing a postoperative intervention within 60 days after surgery.


In previous work, we have advocated explicitly scheduling computation time for planning and problem solving (deliberation) using a framework called expectation-driven iterative refinement. Within this framework, we have explored the problem of allocating deliberation time when the procedures used for deliberation implement anytime algorithms: algorithms that return some answer for any allocation of time. In our search for useful techniques for constructing anytime algorithms, we have discovered that dynamic programming shows considerable promise for the construction of anytime algorithms for a wide variety of problems. In this paper, we show how dynamic programming techniques can be used to construct useful anytime procedures for two problems: multiplying sequences of matrices, and the Travelling Salesman Problem.

Dynamic programming can be applied to a wide variety of optimization and control problems, many of them relevant to current AI research (e.g., scheduling, probabilistic reasoning, and controlling machinery). Being able to solve these kinds of problems using anytime procedures increases the range of problems to which expectation-driven iterative refinement can be applied.


The purpose of the current study was to examine the effectiveness of an adventure-based counselling (ABC) program on interpersonal behaviour within a forensic psychiatric population. Very little research has examined the effectiveness of an adventure-therapy approach with this population, and to our knowledge, an ABC program has never been attempted, much less examined for efficacy. Participants in this study were offenders at the Southwest Center for Forensic Mental Health Care in St. Thomas, Ontario who were designated not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder. Offenders took part in a 12-session ABC program which addressed interpersonal skills through various challenge activities. Interpersonal behaviour (i.e., the way clients interacted with each other) was assessed using measures of anger, cognitive and affective mindfulness, quality of life, coping style, physical assault, and events requiring seclusion or restraint. These variables were measured before starting and after completion of the program using both self-assessment and file review. It was hypothesized that participants would show statistically significant improvements on all six measures following participation in the ABC program. A multivariate analysis of variance was conducted to analyze the effect of the program from preto post-test. Results indicated that several variables did change in the hypothesized direction; however, two variables actually decreased significantly following participation. Though none of our hypotheses were explicitly supported, sample size was a serious limitation and these findings represent only the first iteration of this ABC study. Future repetitions may benefit from methodological nuances that aim to increase statistical power.


paper examines the extent to which foreign exchange reserves were accumulated or sold during the global financial crisis and what the social costs of any excess accumulation has been. We find that far fewer nations drew on their foreign exchange reserves to defend their currencies and economies from the volatility that ensued during the crisis. What is more, in the wake of the crisis many nations have continued to accumulate reserves. Finally, we estimate that the social costs of foreign exchange accumulation in excess of what is deemed adequate for insurance purposes could be as high as 1.8 per cent of GDP for the developing world, and could be higher than 3 per cent of GDP for China. According to our calculations, the developing world may have between US$98 billion to US$266 billion in assets in excess of what is needed to protect themselves from shocks, or 5 to 16 times the amount of benefits that could be made available by liberalizing world trade under the Doha Round at the World Trade Organization. The recognition within the economics profession and in international financial institutions that capital controls can be effective may provide an opportunity for developing nations to buffer their economies from external shock and free up opportunity for productive investment for development purposes.


Lovesick Japan: Sex, Marriage, Romance, Law. By Mark D. West. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2011. 259 pp. $29.95 cloth.Expressions of love matter greatly in our lives. But how do love and emotions shape the processes of trials and legal decisions by professional judges once our relationships face serious problems and turn into tragedies? In Lovesick Japan: Sex, Marriage, Romance, Law, Mark D. West introduces us to a new side of the judiciary. Comparing and contrasting equivalent cases and situations in the United States with his careful analyses of 2,700 Japanese court opinions in the 1990s and 2000s, West reveals judges' particular world views of love, sex, and marriage, and ultimately of law and society in Japan (p. 7). The book also presents demographic data and public opinions from the government's national statistics, studies by Japan scholars, and the author's interviews with Japanese legal specialists. Drawing on these sources, West contributes not simply to our understanding of an official legal perspective on love, sex, and marriage, or of the judicial world in Japan; his work also guides us to consider how cultural conceptualizations of intimacy and the institutional arrangements of judiciaries influence the ways cases play out in the legal arena.West argues that the concept of "love," which we typically do not associate with legal decision making, plays a striking role in judicial verdicts and judges' reasoning in Japan. He recognizes that many Japanese are relatively reserved in expressing the feelings of "love" verbally in their personal interactions, let alone in public. The study starts with the assumption that Japanese judges do not concern themselves with legally trivial matters of the heart (p. 10). Yet, in his analysis of legal reports and interviews with lawyers and judges, West demonstrates that love-related expressions often appear unexpectedly and shape the outcomes of cases; and surprisingly, love matters most in criminal cases rather than in cases about marriage and divorce. West conceptualizes his rather astonishing findings on judicial commentaries with an introduction and analysis of the judicial system and, in particular, the judge's career path in Japan-an extremely homogeneous, age-graded, and elitist structure. West also provides a valuable description of popular and gendered understandings of "love" as pain and suffering in Japan, in marked contrast to American conceptions of love as warm and caring, a positive necessity in life. …


Abstract. Observations of peroxynitric acid (HO2NO2) and nitric acid (HNO3) were made during a 4 month period of Antarctic winter darkness at the coastal Antarctic research station, Halley. Mixing ratios of HNO3 ranged from instrumental detection limits to ~8 parts per trillion by volume (pptv), and of HO2NO2 from detection limits to ~5 pptv; the average ratio of HNO3 : HO2NO2 was 2.0(± 0.6) : 1, with HNO3 always present at greater mixing ratios than HO2NO2 during the winter darkness. An extremely strong association existed for the entire measurement period between mixing ratios of the respective trace gases and temperature: for HO2NO2, R2 = 0.72, and for HNO3, R2 = 0.70. We focus on three cases with considerable variation in temperature, where wind speeds were low and constant, such that, with the lack of photochemistry, changes in mixing ratio were likely to be driven by physical mechanisms alone. We derived enthalpies of adsorption (ΔHads) for these three cases. The average ΔHads for HNO3 was −42 ± 2 kJ mol−1 and for HO2NO2 was −56 ± 1 kJ mol−1; these values are extremely close to those derived in laboratory studies. This exercise demonstrates (i) that adsorption to/desorption from the snow pack should be taken into account when addressing budgets of boundary layer HO2NO2 and HNO3 at any snow-covered site, and (ii) that Antarctic winter can be used as a natural "laboratory in the field" for testing data on physical exchange mechanisms.


Stroke is the third leading causing of death in the world after cardiovascular disease and cancer. Indonesia ranked 97th among the world's most stroke patients with a mortality rate of 9.7%. in  General Hospital of Islam ORPEHA Tulungagung stroke is included in the order of 10 major diseases. Paralysis due to stroke is a defect on one side of the body or hemiplegia, causing the limb to not be energized. To restore the body functions that have Aweakness and paralysis then the patient is given physical exercise regularly one of them with ROM exercises. The purpose of this research was to know the relationship between knowledge and attitude of family in execution of ROM in stroke patient at outpatient installation of Orpeha Hospital Tulungagung. The research design used was quantitative analytic survey. While the research design used was correlational with cross sectional approach. The population in this study was all families of stroke patients at the outpatient installation of RSUI Orpeha Tulungagung. Sampling method using quota sampling that meets the criteria of inclusion and exclusion as many as 30 respondents. Data analysis using Kendalls tau statistic test. From the results of the study note that there are 19 respondents with a good knowledge with a supportive attitude in the implementation of ROM is 63.3%. In addition, supportive attitude on the performance of ROM exercises is found (with total number of 21 respondents or 70 %) The results showed significance value 0.000 or P-Value <a and in this study a using 5% so that in this study H0 rejected and Ha accepted. It can be concluded from this study that there is a relationship between knowledge with family attitudes in the implementation of ROM in stroke patients in outpatient installation RSU Orpeha Tulungagung 2017. So hopefully with good knowledge can improve the attitude that supports the family of stroke patients in the implementation of ROM.


The amphibolite-facies, Au-mineralized mafic rocks at the Plutonic Gold Mine are intruded by a suite of dolerite dykes of unknown age. The zones between these intrusive units often host significant Au mineralization. It is unclear whether this enrichment in Au mineralization is a function of the intrusion of the dolerites themselves or the influence of pre-existing structures (e.g. faults or shears). Geochemical characterization of the different microcrystalline dolerite units is important to the understanding of the structural architecture of the deposit and to the possible relationship of the dolerites to Au mineralization. The collection of a large geochemical dataset (n = 497) from the dolerite dykes from across the deposit using portable X-ray fluorescence technology allows us to break them into four distinct geochemical groupings. Thus we can define their geometries with greater confidence than was possible using lithology alone. Traverses across individual dolerite dykes indicate that the chill margins are the most geochemically homogenous and most likely to represent the chemistry of the source magma. Plots of Ti v. Zr combined with principal component analysis (PCA) define four geochemically distinct suites of dolerites. By applying this understanding to dolerites in a small area of the deposit, a new interpretation was generated whereby significant amounts of rock that were previously modelled as being dolerite were reclassified as potential host-rock, thus increasing the potential for Au in this area.


The adoption of 1993 Lesotho Constitution was part of the momentous changes which occurred throughout Southern Africa in the early 1990s. This paper attempts to provide an historical and political background to the 1993 Lesotho Constitution, namely, the process through which Lesotho attained its constitution rather than the content of this constitution. It argues that the withdrawal of the Military regime (1986-1993) and the transition to democratic and constitutional rule that followed were driven by the international, regional and local events.


In this paper we investigate the logic of speech acts and groundedness. A piece of information is grounded for a group of agents if it is publicly expressed and established by all agents of the group. Our concept of groundedness is founded on the expression of the sincerity condition of speech act theory.

We formalize groundedness within an extended BDI (Belief, Desire, Intention) logic where belief is viewed as a kind of group belief. We show that our logic permits to reconcile the mentalist approaches on the one hand, and the structural and social approaches on the other, which are the two rival research programs in the formalization of agent interaction. Although groundedness is thus linked to the standard mental attitude of belief, it is immune to the critiques that have been put forward against the mentalist approaches, viz. that they require too strong hypotheses about the agents' mental states such as sincerity and cooperation: just as the structural approaches, groundedness only bears on the public aspect of communication.

In our extended BDI logic we study communication between heterogeneous agents. We characterize inform and request speech acts in terms of preconditions and effects. We demonstrate the power of our solution by means of two examples. First, we revisit the well-known FIPA Contract Net Protocol. As a second example, we show how Walton & Krabbe's commitments can be redefined in term of groundedness.


Whilst religion may have been of relevance in the quest for material prosperity and economic advancement in the 16th century, it seems not to have such importance today. The declining rate of organised religion and the growth of secularism around the world progressively lead many to believe that if there is any truth particularly relevant for this century, it is no longer found in religion. In this paper, we argue that global leadership deficiencies and corruption (glaring as they may be) are not the root causes for the economic development challenges currently faced in Southern Africa and the rest of the world. They are simply the result of the root cause, which we maintain is a decline in moral and spiritual values in society, and unless national governments make some meaningful progress in these realms, this generation is headed for serious economic trouble.


Abstract This Article represents the first comprehensive study of the EU query process, a form of flexible extra-judicial cooperation between the European Ombudsman and the national ombud offices on the interpretation and application of EU law across member states. The way this cooperation is constructed brings imminently to mind the preliminary reference procedure: A national office submits a query within the scope of EU law to the European Ombudsman who, after consultation with the Commission—in the vast majority of cases—provides a reply. Upon closer examination, however, this Article illustrates key differences between the two procedures, while pointing out the added value of the EU query procedure compared to the preliminary reference. More specifically, while the interpretation that is provided is not authoritative or legally binding (among other differences), thanks to the flexibility of this instrument, interpretative guidance is provided at an early stage in case a problem in the interpretation and application of EU law arises, and thus litigation may be avoided. Furthermore, the EU query procedure serves as a reliable source of information for both the European and the national sides. However, this Article also identifies a number of challenges in relation to the transparency of the scheme, its effective functioning, as well as its interplay with other instruments, such as the infringement procedure.


We evaluated claims that physioacoustic therapy can enhance muscle healing following damaging exercise. Untrained subjects were randomly assigned to control (C), placebo (P) or treatment (T) groups. All groups performed 70 eccentric triceps contractions followed by; no treatment (C), sham physioacoustic treatment (P), or actual physioacoustic therapy (T) on days 1–4 post-exercise. Muscle soreness and isometric and concentric triceps peak torque were determined pre-exerciseand on days 1–4 and 7 post-exercise. The T group received physioacoustic therapy for 30 min/day on the treatment days. The P group believed they received physioacoustic therapy, although the chairs were turned off. Peak torques were depressed (P < 0.05) on days 1–3 in all groups and returned to pre-exercise values by days 4–7 in both P and T groups. C group peak torques remained depressed (P < 0.05) through day 7. Soreness was elevated (P < 0.05) in all groups on days 1–2 post-exercise. P and T groups reported no soreness by day 3 while the C group remained sore (P < 0.05) through days 3–4. The T group recovered soreness and force faster than C but at a similar rate to the P group. The effectiveness of physioacoustic therapy in enhancing post-exercise muscle healing may be attributable to a placebo effect.


Side and covert channels (referred to collectively as illicit channels) are an insidious affliction of high security systems brought about by the unwanted and unregulated sharing of state amongst processes.

Illicit channels can be effectively broken through isolation, which limits the degree by which processes can interact. The drawback of using isolation as a general mitigation against illicit channels is that it can be very wasteful when employed naively. In particular, permanently isolating every tenant of a public cloud service to its own separate machine would completely undermine the economics of cloud computing, as it would remove the advantages of consolidation.

On closer inspection, it transpires that only a subset of a tenant's activities are sufficiently security sensitive to merit strong isolation. Moreover, it is not generally necessary to maintain isolation indefinitely, nor is it given that isolation must always be procured at the machine level.

This work builds on these observations by exploring a fine-grained and hierarchical model of isolation, where fractions of a machine can be isolated dynamically using migration. Using different units of isolation allows a system to isolate processes from each other with a minimum of over-allocated resources, and having a dynamic and reconfigurable model enables isolation to be procured on-demand. The model is then realised as an implemented framework that allows the fine-grained provisioning of units of computation, managing migrations at the core, virtual CPU, process group, process/container and virtual machine level. Use of this framework is demonstrated in detecting and mitigating a machine-wide covert channel, and in implementing a multi-level moving target defence.

Finally, this work describes the extension of post-copy live migration mechanisms to allow temporary virtual machine migration. This adds the ability to isolate a virtual machine on a short term basis, which subsequently allows migrations to happen at a higher frequency and with fewer redundant memory transfers, and also creates the opportunity of time-sharing a particular physical machine's features amongst a set of tenants' virtual machines.


textabstractThis article focuses on the recent attention in the European Union for fragile states, as expressed, among others, in the European Security Strategy of 2003 and the European Consensus on Development of 2006. It is demonstrated that most understandings of the notion of state fragility concern limited state capacity, the inability of institutions to deal with social and political tensions or problems of state legitimacy. The European Union is no exception to this general trend of seeing state fragility in terms of governance deficits. The EU's approach of preventing and responding to state fragility, which was adopted by the European Council in 2007, is being tested in six pilot countries. This article analyses the governance-oriented measures that have been adopted in the Country Strategy Papers (CSPs) agreed between the European Commission and five of the six pilot countries. The paper concludes that there is a profound gap between the political-economic analyses of the CSPs and the support policies implemented by the EU. The approach of the European Commission revolves around attempts to reconstruct state capacities in fragile states through technocratic measures. Fundamental problems of state capture, ethnic relations, human rights violations and extreme inequalities are beyond the purview of policy makers in the European Union.


The Child Life Council Mission statement highlights the role of a child life specialist as supporting children in stressful or traumatic life situations. Child life specialists are professionals who have an important role in providing support to hospitalized children, but their role can expand to various settings beyond the hospital. Expansion of child life professionals into alternative settings is a growing concept and thus how this is accomplished is not as clearly defined as compared with child life specialists in the hospital setting. Literature thus far on child life specialists in alternative settings is limited, but this project includes a thorough literature review highlighting various settings as well as possible areas of needed improvement. The project also highlights an exploration of teaching students about the expanding role of child life and the perspectives of child life professionals in alternative settings including the NICU, child advocacy center, camp, and early intervention. The roles of a co-teaching student are highlighted as well as a reflection of the experience. Interviews were conducted with five child life professionals who have worked for multiple years in an alternative setting. Each specialist was interviewed at their respective work places and each was asked the same basic set of questions to allow for a clear comparison of their responses. A multiple day observation of two of these child life specialists during their normal work day was completed to help provide a further understanding of their role. Through these interviews and observations, multiple similarities between the experiences and skills required of these professionals were found.


The depletion of the ozone layer in the stratosphere has led to a dramatic spike in ultraviolet B (UV-B) intensity and increased UV-B light levels. The direct absorption of high-intensity UV-B induces complex abiotic stresses in plants, including excessive light exposure, heat, and dehydration. However, UV-B stress signaling mechanisms in plants including soybean (Glycine max [L.]) remain poorly understood. Here, we surveyed the overall transcriptional responses of two soybean genotypes, UV-B-sensitive Cheongja 3 and UV-B-resistant Buseok, to continuous UV-B irradiation for 0 (control), 0.5, and 6 h using RNA-seq analysis. Homology analysis using UV-B-related genes from Arabidopsis thaliana revealed differentially expressed genes (DEGs) likely involved in UV-B stress responses. Functional classification of the DEGs showed that the categories of immune response, stress defense signaling, and reactive oxygen species (ROS) metabolism were over-represented. UV-B-resistant Buseok utilized phosphatidic acid-dependent signaling pathways (based on subsequent reactions of phospholipase C and diacylglycerol kinase) rather than phospholipase D in response to UV-B exposure at high fluence rates, and genes involved in its downstream pathways, such as ABA signaling, mitogen-activated protein kinase cascades, and ROS overproduction, were upregulated in this genotype. In addition, the DEGs for TIR-NBS-LRR and heat shock proteins are positively activated. These results suggest that defense mechanisms against UV-B stress at high fluence rates are separate from the photomorphogenic responses utilized by plants to adapt to low-level UV light. Our study provides valuable information for deep understanding of UV-B stress defense mechanisms and for the development of resistant soybean genotypes that survive under high-intensity UV-B stress.


Classified U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) documents released in the summer of 2013 detailed a trove of controversial surveillance programs, igniting a debate about state power and the rights of citizens. But how can citizenship be evaluated in a digital, networked world? In response to this question, the NSA created an algorithmic, data-based version of citizenship (and foreignness), where a user is legally foreign if his or her "selectors" are "at least 51 percent confidence" foreign. These selectors, which can include telephone numbers, Internet protocol addresses, or language, became effectual arbiters of citizenship online. This article explains what algorithmic citizenship means, what the NSA's citizenship and foreignness look like, and what the implications are when a formal rubric of U.S. citizenship is based exclusively on algorithmic interpretations of communications data.


The aim of our study was to investigate the correlation between serum malondialdehyde levels and serum estradiol concentrations in healthy human female subjects. Nine hundred and fifty-five blood samples, from infertile women undergoing controlled ovarian hyperstimulation treatment with recombinant follicle-stimulating hormone, were collected for estradiol and malondialdehyde measurements. Five groups were formed according to serum estradiol levels: Group I (< 50 pg/ml), group II (50 - 299 pg/ml), group III (300-999 pg/ml), group IV (1000-1999 pg/ml) and group V (> or = 2000 pg/ml). One-way analysis of variance was used for comparisons. Mean malondialdehyde concentrations were 1.74 +/- 0.24 mmol/ml (group I), 1.53 +/- 0.20 mmol/ml (group II), 1.69 +/- 0.24 mmol/ml (group III), 1.77 +/- 0.21 mmol/ml (group IV) and 1.86 +/- 0.20 mmol/ml (group V), respectively. Mean serum malondialdehyde level at physiological estradiol concentrations (50-199 pg/ml, group II) was significantly (p < 0.01) lower than the mean malondialdehyde levels in other groups. Mean malondialdehyde concentrations among the remaining groups did not significantly differ. Our findings suggest that in vivo lipid peroxidation might be increased when circulating estradiol concentrations are below (< 50 pg/ml) or above (> 300 pg/ml) the physiological limits. High blood estradiol levels in human female subjects during ovarian stimulation with exogenous gonadotropins could be associated with increased serum malondialdehyde concentrations.


The dissertation, which consists of three chapters, is devoted to exploring theoretical asset pricing in over-the-counter markets. In Chapter 1, I study an economy where investors can trade a long-lived asset in both exchange and OTC market. Exchange means high immediacy and high cost
while OTC market corresponds to low immediacy and low cost. Investors with urgent trading needs enter the exchange while investors with medium valuations enter the OTC market. As search friction decreases, more investors enter the OTC market, the bid-ask spread narrows and the trading volume in the OTC market increases. This sheds some light on the historical pattern why most trading in corporate and municipal bonds on the NYSE migrated to OTC markets after WWII with the development of communication technology. In Chapter 2 (co-authored with Hongjun Yan and Hin Wei), we analyse a search model where an intermediary sector emerges endogenously and trades are conducted through intermediation chains. We show that the chain length and the price dispersion among inter-dealer trades are decreasing in search cost, search speed and market size, but increasing in investors' trading needs. Using data from the U.S. corporate bond market, we find evidence broadly consistent with these predictions. Moreover, as the search speed goes to infinity, our searchmarket equilibrium does not always converge to the centralized-market equilibrium. In particular, the trading volume explodes when the search cost approaches zero.
In Chapter 3 (co-authored with Hongjun Yan), we analyse a search model where two assets with different level of liquidity and safety are traded. We find that the marginal investor's preference for safety and liquidity is not enough to determine the premium in equilibrium, but the whole distribution of investors' valuations play an important role. We specify the condition under which an increase in the supply of the liquid asset may increase or decrease the liquidity premium. The paper also endogenizes the investment in the search technology and conducts welfare
analysis. We find that investors may over- or underinvest in the search technology relative to a central planner.


Although the suspicion that quantum mechanics is emergent has been lingering for a long time, only now we begin to understand how a bridge between classical and quantum mechanics might be squared with Bell's inequalities and other conceptual obstacles. Here, it is shown how mappings can be formulated that relate quantum systems to classical systems. By generalizing these ideas, one gets quite general models in which quantum mechanics and classical mechanics can merge. It is helpful to have some good model examples such as string theory. It is suggested that notions such as 'super determinism' and 'conspiracy' should be looked at much more carefully than in the, by now, standard arguments.


A pervasive force that evades easy analysis, globalization has come to represent the export and import of culture, the speed and intensity of which has increased to unprecedented levels in recent years. The Cultures of Globalization presents an international panel of intellectuals who consider the process of globalization as it concerns the transformation of the economic into the cultural and vice versa; the rise of consumer culture around the world; the production and cancellation of forms of subjectivity; and the challenges it presents to national identity, local culture, and traditional forms of everyday life.

Discussing overlapping themes of transnational consequence, the contributors to this volume describe how the global character of technology, communication networks, consumer culture, intellectual discourse, the arts, and mass entertainment have all been affected by recent worldwide trends. Appropriate to such diversity of material, the authors approach their topics from a variety of theoretical perspectives, including those of linguistics, sociology, economics, anthropology, and the law. Essays examine such topics as free trade, capitalism, the North and South, Eurocentrism, language migration, art and cinema, social fragmentation, sovereignty and nationhood, higher education, environmental justice, wealth and poverty, transnational corporations, and global culture. Bridging the spheres of economic, political, and cultural inquiry, The Cultures of Globalization offers crucial insights into many of the most significant changes occurring in today's world.

Contributors . Noam Chomsky, Ioan Davies, Manthia Diawara, Enrique Dussel, David Harvey, Sherif Hetata, Fredric Jameson, Geeta Kapur, Liu Kang, Joan Martinez-Alier, Masao Miyoshi, Walter D. Mignolo, Alberto Moreiras, Paik Nak-chung, Leslie Sklair, Subramani, Barbara Trent