When I am in Haiti, I often find myself confusing people with my incessant gratitude.1 1 insert my manners, honed by a white, middle -class upbringing in the Midwest, into various situations, expressing thanks when someone walks me to the tap tap, relieves me of a heavy bag, or hands me the soda I just purchased. More often than not, my expression of gratitude sounds like an apology. I often excuse myself for needing others' help, even if it's just a scoot up in the tap tap, and then retreat into a chain of conciliatory thank-yous. After many raised eyebrows, I've come to realize that I say mesi way more than is appropriate or necessary. Yet I've struggled to break the habit. My longtime friend and research assistant, Ly sa Aide, knows this well. Having corrected me for years now, she reached her limit on my last trip to Haiti. Only half joking, she asked me: "Don't Man help each other? In life, one helps the other. Why every time someone helps you, you have to say thank you? And why are you sorry when you need help? Ede pa deranjel"2 Asking someone to help you, she was saying, is not the same as burdening someone. This contrast struck me, for it captures something of the gap between how Americans and Haitians approach our shared world. It touches on the difference between the way I view myself as leading a self-reliant and independent life in the United States, and the way my Haitian friend thinks of herself as deeply enmeshed in a web of interdependent collectives in Haiti and beyond. As I thought about it, I began to see my thank-yous and excuse-mes as more than a translation problem. These words are gestures that reflect American culture's deep valorization of autonomy and individualism. Conversely, the relative paucity of these words in Haitians' everyday life actually affirms the wealth of everyday acts of assistance. Ironically, it is the unacknowledged circulation of these acts that attests to Haitians' profound acknowledgement of the many dependencies that make their lives possible. After all, if it's part of ordinary life, then helping is not a burden and need not be excused. As Lysa put it, "E de pa deranje." (Helping does not disturb.) In the aftermath of the earthquake, this pithy phrase has become something of a metaphor through which I have tried to understand the different motivations that structure grassroots activism in Haiti and international aid. The former, usually organized around a localized "family" (fanmi) of kin, friends, and neighbors, is rooted in an understanding of interdependence and inescapable reciprocity. Conversely, international aid, whether pursued at the level of the state or among concerned citizens, often begins with an understanding of inequality and social distance, and the need for charity. In Bel Air, the downtown, impoverished neighborhood of the capital where I conduct research on expressive political culture, "organized people" (moun oganize) often distinguish their work from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) with a shift of vocabulary.3 They say that whereas these foreign organizations aim to "develop" (devlope) Bel Air by bringing aid to strangers, they are engaged in "defending" the zone and the interests of their neighbors by pooling their own resources as well as securing outside support. Though the notion of defense may express militancy, it also conveys the act of collective advocacy, and is articulated through several expressions such as: "taking up one's defense" (pran defans), "defending" idefann)^ "protecting" (pwoteje)^ "supporting" [ankadre\ and "reclaiming rights" or "redressing wrongs" (revandike). With this vocabulary, organized people not only configure their social engagement as inextricably tied to the many actual dependencies they bear as coeval residents of the neighborhood. They also invoke a world of competing interests in which their agendas are one of many. Hence, the idea of defense, as opposed to development, also valorizes local leadership. …


A result page of a modern search engine often goes beyond a simple list of "10 blue links." Many specific user needs (e.g., News, Image, Video) are addressed by so-called aggregated or vertical search solutions: specially presented documents, often retrieved from specific sources, that stand out from the regular organic Web search results. When it comes to evaluating ranking systems, such complex result layouts raise their own challenges. This is especially true for so-called interleaving methods that have arisen as an important type of online evaluation: by mixing results from two different result pages, interleaving can easily break the desired Web layout in which vertical documents are grouped together, and hence hurt the user experience.
 We conduct an analysis of different interleaving methods as applied to aggregated search engine result pages. Apart from conventional interleaving methods, we propose two vertical-aware methods: one derived from the widely used Team-Draft Interleaving method by adjusting it in such a way that it respects vertical document groupings, and another based on the recently introduced Optimized Interleaving framework. We show that our proposed methods are better at preserving the user experience than existing interleaving methods while still performing well as a tool for comparing ranking systems. For evaluating our proposed vertical-aware interleaving methods, we use real-world click data as well as simulated clicks and simulated ranking systems.


Double drum traction winches can develop high tension ratios between rope held on low tension storage reels and rope deployed at high tension. Such winches are used for a variety of applications. The tension profile applicable to the rope passing through such a winch is controlled by the Eytelwein equation and involves local slippage (or creep) at the coefficient of sliding friction. In an attempt to reduce the magnitude of creep, winch designs have been developed in which successive wraps have different diameters, to approximate to the rope stretch. This changes the tension profile with potentially serious consequences especially when retrieving rope at low or moderate tension. Furthermore if the two drums on such a winch are not mechanically coupled but hydraulically driven at equal torques, further complications can arise.


Abstract Background Vedolizumab effectiveness estimates immediately after Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn's disease (CD) are limited by use in refractory populations. We aimed to compare treatment patterns and outcomes of vedolizumab in 2 time frames after FDA approval. Methods We used 2 data sets for time trend analysis, an academic multicenter vedolizumab consortium (VICTORY) and the Truven MarketScan database, and 2 time periods, May 2014–June 2015 (Era 1) and July 2015–June 2017 (Era 2). VICTORY cumulative 12-month clinical remission, corticosteroid-free remission, and mucosal healing rates, and Truven 12-month hospitalization and surgery rates, were compared between Eras 1 and 2 using time-to-event analyses. Results A total of 3661 vedolizumab-treated patients were included (n = 1087 VICTORY, n = 2574 Truven). In both cohorts, CD and UC patients treated during Era 2 were more likely to be biologic naïve. Compared with Era 1, Era 2 CD patients in the VICTORY consortium had higher rates of clinical remission (31% vs 40%, P = 0.03) and mucosal healing (42% vs 58%, P < 0.01). These trends were not observed for UC. In the Truven database, UC patients treated during Era 2 had lower rates of inflammatory bowel disease–related hospitalization (22.4% vs 9.6%, P < 0.001) and surgery (17.2% vs 9.4%, P = 0.008), which was not observed for CD. Conclusion Since FDA approval, remission and mucosal healing rates have increased for vedolizumab-treated CD patients, and vedolizumab-treated UC patients have had fewer hospitalizations and surgeries. This is likely due to differences between patient populations treated immediately after drug approval and those treated later.


Ősi, A. 2011: Feeding-related characters in basal pterosaurs: implications for jaw mechanism, dental function and diet. Lethaia, Vol. 44, pp. 136–152.

A comparative study of various feeding-related features in basal pterosaurs reveals a significant change in feeding strategies during the early evolutionary history of the group. These features are related to the skull architecture (e.g. quadrate morphology and orientation, jaw joint), dentition (e.g. crown morphology, wear patterns), reconstructed adductor musculature and post-cranium. The most basal pterosaurs (Preondactylus, dimorphodontids and anurognathids) were small-bodied animals with a wingspan no greater than 1.5 m, a relatively short, lightly constructed skull, straight mandibles with a large gape, sharply pointed teeth and well-developed external adductors. The absence of extended tooth wear excludes complex oral food processing and indicates that jaw closure was simply orthal. Features of these basal-most forms indicate a predominantly insectivorous diet. Among stratigraphically older but more derived forms (Eudimorphodon, Carniadactylus, Caviramus) complex, multicuspid teeth allowed the consumption of a wider variety of prey via a more effective form of food processing. This is supported by heavy dental wear in all forms with multicuspid teeth. Typical piscivorous forms occurred no earlier than the Early Jurassic, and are characterized by widely spaced, enlarged procumbent teeth forming a fish grab and an anteriorly inclined quadrate that permitted only a relatively small gape. In addition, the skull became more elongate and body size increased. Besides the dominance of piscivory, dental morphology and the scarcity of tooth wear reflect accidental dental occlusion that could have been caused by the capturing or seasonal consumption of harder food items. □Basal pterosaurs, heterodonty, dental wear, insectivory, piscivory.


Recent attacks on the historicity of the Exodus raise the question of whether or not a text prepared long after the event is likely to be historically accurate. For it is undoubtedly true that the text of Exodus was prepared centuries after the events it describes. The Exodus would have occured, in archaeological terms, in the Late Bronze Age (13th century B.C.). According to the Biblical chronology, the Exodus occured before the establishment of the Israelite monarchy in about 1000 B.C. The existing Exodus text, however, was hardly prepared before that time. In considering the accuracy of the Biblical account, we must treat the story in its context, as a product of the ancient Near East. The preservation of records over many generations is a standard feature of those societies. There are many examples of texts that claim to relate to times long past. here I will explore only one such case.


The design of efficient IEEE 802.11 physical (PHY) rate adaptation algorithms is a challenging research topic and usually the issues surrounding their implementations on real 802.11 devices are not disclosed. In this paper, we identify and evaluate the key parameters to design such algorithms. We then present a survey on existing PHY rate adaptation mechanisms and discuss their advantages and drawbacks. We also propose three new 802.11 PHY rate adaptation mechanisms, named adaptive auto rate fallback (AARF), closed loop adaptive rate allocation (CLARA), and adaptive multi-rate retry (AMRR). AARF, proposed for low-latency systems, has low complexity and obtains similar performance than RBAR in stationary and non-fading wireless channels. CLARA is a culmination of the best attributes of the transmitter-based ARF and RBAR control mechanisms with additional practical features such as adaptive fragmentation to improve multipath-fading channel sensing and to provide feedback control signaling. AMRR is designed for high-latency systems; it has been implemented and evaluated on an AR5212-based device. Experimentation results show more than 20p performance improvement in throughput over the default algorithm implemented in the AR5212 MADWIFI driver. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Purpose of review This review highlights the recent discovery of antibodies to glycine receptor (GlyR-Ab) and discusses the relationship between these antibodies and neurological disorders. Recent findings Since the initial description in 2008 of antibodies to glycine receptors (GlyR-Abs) in a patient with progressive encephalomyelitis with rigidity and myoclonus (PERM), these antibodies have been found in PERM and in some patients with a variety of stiff person spectrum (SPS) or related disorders. Patients with GlyR-Abs often improve with aggressive immunotherapy, and antibody titres correlate with disease severity. Around 25% of patients have another autoimmune condition and 10–20% have an underlying malignancy. GlyR-Abs bind to extracellular determinants, are mainly Immunoglobulin G1 subclass and induce GlyR internalization in Human embryonic kidney 293 cells, suggesting pathogenicity. The spectrum of neurological disease associated with GlyR-Abs has not been fully characterized, and lower titres may not be syndrome specific, but GlyR-Abs, like antibodies to other neuronal cell-surface antigens, define immunotherapy-responsive disease and are likely to be pathogenic. This distinguishes them from the glutamic acid decarboxylase antibodies that can also be found at high titres in patients with classical stiff person syndrome which is more often chronic and relatively resistant to immunological treatments. Summary Irrespective of the clinical features, GlyR-Abs are helpful in the diagnosis of patients who very often have a subacute, progressive and life-threatening disorder which shows a favourable response to immunotherapy.


Monolithic bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) exhibit a unique combination of mechanical properties, such as high strength and large elasticity limits, but the lack of ductility is considered the main Achilles' heel of BMG systems. To increase the competitiveness of BMGs vis-à-vis conventional structural materials, the problem of catastrophic failure via intense plastic strain localization ('shear banding') has to be addressed. Recent experimental observations suggest that the addition of structural heterogeneities, in the form of crystalline particles, to BMG systems hinders the catastrophic propagation of shear bands and leads to enhanced ductility. These structural heterogeneities can be introduced by either forming BMG composites, where second-phase crystalline particles accommodate applied loads via martensitic transformation mechanisms, or developing glassy alloys that precipitate crystalline particles under deformation, a process by which further deformation can be sustained by twinning mechanisms in the crystalline phase. In this work, we present a non-linear continuum model capable of capturing the structural heterogeneity in the glassy phase and accounting for intrinsic work hardening via martensitic transformations in second-phase reinforcements in BMG composites and deformation twinning in precipitated crystalline particles. Simulation results reveal that in addition to intrinsic work hardening in the crystalline phase, particle size greatly affects the overall mechanical behavior of these BMG systems. The precipitation of crystalline particles in monolithic BMGs yields two-phase microstructures that promote more homogeneous deformation, delay the propagation of incipient shear bands, and ultimately result in improved ductility characteristics.


Focusing on the relatively longstanding experience of neighborhood councils in the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo (1993–), this research note seeks to analyze how sustainable democratic innovation is and to explain subsequent results. Sustainability is assessed through the evolution of citizens' participation in elections and through the number of candidates who apply to become neighborhood councilors. For both indicators, a consistent decline in the levels of participation over time is found. This is deemed to be a consequence of an institutional design that seriously limits the performance of neighborhood councils in terms of their influence in the decision-making process and their acquisition of legitimacy and political capital.


Abstract New findings pertinent to the human lineage origin (Ardipithecus ramidus) prompt a new analysis of the extrapolation of the social behavior of our closest relatives, the great apes, into human 'natural social behavior'. With the new findings it becomes clear that human ancestors had very divergent social arrangements from the ones we observe today in our closest genetic relatives. The social structure of chimpanzees and gorillas is characterized by male competition. Aggression and the instigation of fear are common place. The morphology of A. ramidus points in the direction of a social system characterized by female-choice instead of male–male competition. This system tends to be characterized by reduced aggression levels, leading to more stable arrangements. It is postulated here that the social stability with accompanying group cohesion propitiated by this setting is favorable to the investment in more complex behaviors, the development of innovative approaches to solve familiar problems, an increase in exploratory behavior, and eventually higher intelligence and the use of sophisticated tools and technology. The concentration of research efforts into the study of social animals with similar social systems (e.g., New World social monkeys (Callitrichidae), social canids (Canidae) and social rodents (Rodentia)) are likely to provide new insights into the understanding of what factors determined our evolution into an intelligent species capable of advanced technology.


Abstract. High-resolution general circulation models (GCMs) can provide new insights into the simulated distribution of global precipitation. We evaluate how summer precipitation is represented over Asia in global simulations with a grid length of 14 km. Three simulations were performed: one with a convection parametrization, one with convection represented explicitly by the model's dynamics, and a hybrid simulation with only shallow and mid-level convection parametrized. We evaluate the mean simulated precipitation and the diurnal cycle of the amount, frequency, and intensity of the precipitation against satellite observations of precipitation from the Climate Prediction Center morphing method (CMORPH). We also compare the high-resolution simulations with coarser simulations that use parametrized convection. The simulated and observed precipitation is averaged over spatial scales defined by the hydrological catchment basins; these provide a natural spatial scale for performing decision-relevant analysis that is tied to the underlying regional physical geography. By selecting basins of different sizes, we evaluate the simulations as a function of the spatial scale. A new BAsin-Scale Model Assessment ToolkIt (BASMATI) is described, which facilitates this analysis. We find that there are strong wet biases (locally up to 72 mm d−1 at small spatial scales) in the mean precipitation over mountainous regions such as the Himalayas. The explicit convection simulation worsens existing wet and dry biases compared to the parametrized convection simulation. When the analysis is performed at different basin scales, the precipitation bias decreases as the spatial scales increase for all the simulations; the lowest-resolution simulation has the smallest root mean squared error compared to CMORPH. In the simulations, a positive mean precipitation bias over China is primarily found to be due to too frequent precipitation for the parametrized convection simulation and too intense precipitation for the explicit convection simulation. The simulated diurnal cycle of precipitation is strongly affected by the representation of convection: parametrized convection produces a peak in precipitation too close to midday over land, whereas explicit convection produces a peak that is closer to the late afternoon peak seen in observations. At increasing spatial scale, the representation of the diurnal cycle in the explicit and hybrid convection simulations improves when compared to CMORPH; this is not true for any of the parametrized simulations. Some of the strengths and weaknesses of simulated precipitation in a high-resolution GCM are found: the diurnal cycle is improved at all spatial scales with convection parametrization disabled, the interaction of the flow with orography exacerbates existing biases for mean precipitation in the high-resolution simulations, and parametrized simulations produce similar diurnal cycles regardless of their resolution. The need for tuning the high-resolution simulations is made clear. Our approach for evaluating simulated precipitation across a range of scales is widely applicable to other GCMs.


Twenty top Major League Baseball players share stories about life off the field and their favorite foods-with nearly 100 full-color photos and more than 60 easy-to-make recipes Baseball and food are two of life's uncomplicated pleasures, stirring up sizzling passion across all generations. Now, for the first time, baseball fans and food lovers get a behind-the-scenes look into the kitchens of twenty of their favorite Major League All Stars. Author Julie Loria shares their stories, from memorable meals growing up, to their current fitness routines, food rituals, and guilty food pleasures. And within these pages you will even discover quite a few amusing anecdotes about life beyond the diamond, and so much more. And, oh what great food! America's favorite game not only brings together people from around the world but also blends a wonderful variety of cuisines-including classic dishes native to all corners of the United States and spicy Latin American fare. Julie recreates and collects the down-home family recipes, favorite authentic meals, and top dishes from on-the-road eateries of today's top players-from Derek Jeter's buttermilk pancakes and Dustin Pedroia's pasta primavera to Albert Pujols' Home Run Chicken and Ryan Howard's macaroni and cheese. An official Major League Baseball publication, Diamond Dishes is more than a cookbook. It's a singular and scrumptious backstage look at ballplayers flexing their culinary muscles and discussing the roles of family, friends, and food in their lives. With exclusive, full-color photos of Major League stars at home and in their kitchens, and more than sixty easy-to-prepare recipes, this book is a treasure trove of sights, sounds, tastes, and aromas that penetrate the hearts and souls of the players and their fans alike.-- Players featured in the book include: Lance Berkman, St. Louis CardinalsMiguel Cabrera, Detroit TigersAndre Ethier, Los Angeles DodgersAdrian Gonzalez, Boston Red SoxRoy Halladay, Philadelphia PhilliesJosh Hamilton, Texas RangersRyan Howard, Philadelphia PhilliesDerek Jeter, New York YankeesJosh Johnson, Florida MarlinsPaul Konerko, Chicago White SoxEvan Longoria, Tampa Bay RaysJoe Mauer, Minnesota TwinsDustin Pedroia, Boston Red SoxAlbert Pujols, St. Louis CardinalsHanley Ramirez, Florida MarlinsAlex Rodriguez, New York YankeesJohan Santana, New York MetsGrady Sizemore, Cleveland IndiansChase Utley, Philadelphia PhilliesDavid Wright, New York Mets VIDEOS:Book trailerBehind the Scenes: Players During the Photo ShootsMartha Stewart TelevisionMLB NetworkLocal NBC Miami News


This article provides a structural framework for studying the market performance of various food industries. It revisits the benefit-function approach to modeling demand and extends its application to the empirical industrial-organization literature. We illustrate the empirical value of our model in an econometric analysis of competitive conditions in the retail market for branded yogurt. The results show that retailers are engaged in imperfect competition. Furthermore, national brand yogurt remains an important tool for retail profitability.


As small worlds, where resources are often stretched, islands have had an intense experience of migration. For many small islands in a global era, migration represents a dialogue between different places, some urban, some rural. This book examines diverse facets of migration out of and into a variety of islands, from the North Atlantic to the South Pacific. It traces the way in which migration is of crucial importance, for demography, economics, culture, indeed the whole of island life and identity; it contrasts with the reality of emigration and the rhetoric of return. Topics explored include include migration and environmental change, language shifts, remittances, retirement migration, post-colonial identities and islanders on the Internet. The evidence shows that migration emerges our of islanders' needs, but inevitably transforms insular societies, changing values and expectations, yet rarely if ever contributing to a situation where it is no longer necessary.


This article asks how we should research museum communication with audiences through social media. We argue that museums and audiences co-construct one another on social media, and we explore how particular modes of communication and discursive genres serve to generate mutual online positionings. Based on in-depth analyses over three months' Facebook communication at nine Danish museums and applying theories and methods from discourse analysis, we offer an analytical model of social media communication; and we examine how processes of co-construction are established, upheld, modified and developed. We find that museums and audiences alike largely co-construct one another along familiar lines of institutional authority and that more dialogic modes of interaction mainly result when museums harness audience knowledge resources. We put our results into perspective in terms of recommendations for museum professionals that offer a sobering empirical corrective to the often celebratory claims made to the de-stabilizing of institutional authority and control wrought by social media.


Sourcing from emerging economies may yield direct cost savings, but companies often face greater risk of supplier responsibility problems due to many factors, with lax regulatory enforcement in these regions being one of them. Intuitively, to mitigate such risks, companies can design incentive schemes in sourcing contracts and invest in screening mechanisms for supplier sourcing. However, the relative effectiveness of these actions is often not known. To address this problem, we first develop a model that captures the supplier's rational decision making. Under this model, the supplier responsibility risk is endogenized and can be influenced by various factors, including the supplier's intrinsic ethical level. We then propose to use a delayed payment contract to mitigate supplier responsibility risk. When the supplier's intrinsic ethical level is unobservable to the buyer, we study the optimal screening mechanism based on the delayed payment contract. Surprisingly, we find that, when the buyer anticipates a high cost impact as a result of supplier responsibility problems, the optimal screening mechanism collapses to a random selection. To remedy this problem, we further consider screening mechanisms involving voluntary or mandatory supplier certification. We show that both certification mechanisms can help mitigate supplier responsibility risk in certain cases. Specifically, a properly designed mandatory certification can help the buyer to achieve the first-best performance when the cost impact from supplier responsibility problems is high.


Purpose: To use a novel, non-invasive hand held device (MyotonPRO) to quantify ratios of relative non-neural tone and mechanical properties of the rectus femoris (RF) and biceps femoris (BF) muscles, and to assess reliability of a novice user. Relevance: The device offers rapid, objective testing of mechanical parameters of muscle in clinical or sports settings. Participants: 21 healthy males (20-35 years) Methods: Relaxed muscle parameters of RF and BFwere obtained using the MyotonPRO. The device applies a brief mechanical impact, producing muscle oscillations from which tone (state of intrinsic tension, indicated by frequency [Hz]) and mechanical properties of elasticity (logarithmic decrement) and stiffness (N/m) are measured. Data were collected on two days, one week apart. Two series of 10 single measurements on each muscle were used to test within-day reliability. The mean of the two sets was used for between-day reliability. Analysis: The relative parameters between RF and BF were expressed as a ratio. Reliability was assessed using intra-class correlation coefficients (ICCs). Results: The mean (±SD) RF:BF ratios for resting muscle were: frequency 1:0.96 (±0.05), decrement 1:1.10 (±0.17) and stiffness 1:0.95 (±0.07). Reliability of all three parameters was excellent within-sessions (ICCs 3,2 >0.99) and good between-days (ICCs 3,1 0.72-0.87). Conclusions: The relative resting tone and mechanical properties of RF and BF has been characterised in young males, with ratios close to 1:1. Measures made by a novice user were reliable, indicating that the MyotonPRO has the potential for assessing changes in muscle properties objectively over time. Studies are needed in large healthy cohorts of different ages, activity levels and genders to produce reference data for assessing patients. Implications: The relative tone and mechanical properties of RF and BF could potentially be used as a rapid method for assessing risk of injury is sporting populations and presence of abnormality in musculoskeletal and neurological conditions, once normal values have been established in relevant groups.


This paper focuses on managers' attributions of M&A performance. Our analysis indicates that there is a linear association between performance and attributions to cultural differences, which is moderated by prior experience. Furthermore, our results suggest that there is a curvilinear association between performance and attributions to managers' actions, but we found no support for the moderating effect of experience for this association. By substantiating these attributional tendencies, our results contribute to research on M&As and studies on attribution more generally. In particular, our study helps to put cultural differences in perspective and cautions researchers and practitioners alike to avoid simplistic explanations of M&A performance.


In this study a tool for the calculation of costs of different wastewater treatment and reuse scenarios has been developed. This tool, called Evaluation of Wastewater Treatment and Reuse Option (EWA-TRO), was designed to have as end-users public administrators, water management authorities, and professionals that, in a direct and immediate manner, can automatically obtain, for a particular reuse alternative, the fundamental information for a feasibility study. In order to develop E-WA-TRO an overview was conducted of the international, national and regional regulations on water reuse and a synopsis of the possible reuse alternatives and of the appropriate treatment processes was prepared. Moreover, costs were obtained using national and international published data for the different treatment processes that might be required for the various reuse alternatives. The system has been created as a web site, in order to guarantee the highest availability and a wide diffusion and the possibility of an easy implementations of future updates and upgrades. Specifically, even non-expert user can easily navigate trough the site and use the tool to evaluate, within the national and international legal frameworks, various reuse alternatives as well as the appropriate treatment technologies and related costs.


In many hierarchical companies, reports from several independent groups must be merged to form a single, company-wide report. This paper describes a process and system for creating and structuring such reports and for propagating contributions up the organization. The system has been in regular use, in-house, by about 30 users for over a year to create monthly status reports. Our experiences indicate that it is possible to change a monthly reporting practice so that the system is easy to use, improves the quality of the written report, fosters collaboration across projects and creates a corporate memory for the company. These results were achieved as a consequence of our design effort to directly support the hierarchical and collaborative process of creating and assembling the report within the organization. User feedback has led to many improvements in the usability and functionality of the system. Further enhancements using information retrieval and text summarization techniques are in progress.


Post Padilla an attorney has an affirmative duty under the Sixth Amendment to advise a client about the loss of public housing eligibility as a consequence of a criminal conviction or plea. This collateral consequence is even more severe than civil commitments, loss of pension, sex offender registry and parole eligibility in that it not only punishes the offender but the offender's entire family. No other collateral consequence directly affects innocent bystanders in such a direct and punitive way. Attorneys must begin to recognize that there already exist an ethical and moral duty to advise clients of the collateral consequence of the loss of public housing eligibility and that this duty to advise meets the Sixth Amendment requirement for effective assistance to counsel. Moving forward attorneys must become aware and be more vigilant about collateral consequence advice if they want to successfully avoid Sixth Amendment ineffective assistance of counsel claims especially when it comes to a well-established federal law such as the One Strike Policy.


This study focused on the evaluation of environmental lead contamination due to artisanal gold mining at a Nigerian village of Bagega one year after a clean-up exercise was carried out. Water samples were collected from earthen dams, faucets and wells, while plant and soil samples from grazing fields, residential areas and sites within the vicinity of the gold mine. The collected samples were digested and analyzed for lead concentration using the atomic absorption spectrophotometer. The recommended safe level of lead in water is 0.01 ppm and all the sources of water analyzed showed elevated lead concentrations. Water from the earthen dam, tap and well had lead concentrations of 31.49±7.1, 5.98±1.5 and 7.14±1.2 ppm, respectively. In the grazing area, the lead concentration was 4.6±7.5 mg/kg, whereas in the residential area and mining vicinity, the concentrations were 46.84±10 and 1153± 165 mg/kg, respectively. Two plants, Alysicarpus vaginalis and Digitaria debilis had a uniquely high bioaccumulation ratio, suggesting their potential as hyperaccumulators of lead. Given that international standards accept lead levels of 420 ppm and below, the residential area and the grazing fields may be safe, but the vicinity of the mine which had a toxic concentration could be unsafe. For animal feed, all plant ingredients analyzed accumulated low levels of lead except for A. vaginalis. This study suggests that soil remediation may be an effective decontaminating procedure. Additionally, grazing plants in the study area are not important sources of lead exposure to animals. However, water bodies may constitute a probable route of lead exposure to both animals and humans. Therefore, there is a need to prevent water contamination by immobilizing lead from the mining site which could be potentially leached into water bodies.

 Key words: Animals, Bagega, mining, environment, decontamination.


The popularity of drones is rapidly increasing across the different sectors of the economy. Aerial capabilities and relatively low costs make drones the perfect solution to improve the efficiency of operations that are typically carried out by humans. Besides automating field operations, drones acting de facto as a swarm can serve as an ad hoc cloud infrastructure built on top of computing and storage resources available across the swarm members and other elements. Even in the absence of Internet connectivity, this cloud can serve the workloads generated by the swarm members and the field agents. By considering the practical example of a swarm-powered 3-D reconstruction application on top of such cloud infrastructure, we present a new optimization problem for the efficient generation and execution of multinode computing workloads subject to data geolocation and clustering constraints. The objective is the minimization of the overall computing times, including both networking delays caused by the interdrone data transmission and computation delays. We prove that the problem is NP-hard and present two combinatorial formulations to model it. Computational results on the solution of the formulations show that one of them can be used to solve, within the configured time-limit, more than 50% of the considered real-world instances involving up to two hundred images and six drones.


The effects of automatic sprinklers on compartment fires has been investigated in this report. The interaction of a sprinkler spray with a buoyant hot upper layer has also been examined. A model was developed to predict the rate of smoke production and hence the depth of a smoke layer that may be produced, for an uncontrolled growing fire. Flow out of vents was included in this model. The model compared well to the predictions of 'Firecalc'. An method for the prediction of detector actuation has been used that is valid for growing fires, avoiding the quasi-steady assumption used in 'Firecalc' and 'FPEtool'. This method also includes the transport lag time of the fire signature from the source to the detector. The interaction of a sprinkler spray with a fire induced hot upper layer is a very complex problem. The combining effects of drag induced on the upper layer and evaporative cooling by the sprinkler spray may cause the layer to fall to a lower level. The model developed to predict the rate of smoke production, hence smoke layer depth, is only valid for uncontrolled fires. Time constraints prevented the effects of sprinklers on compartment fires to be incorporated into this model, although the theory of the effects is included with this report.


Abstract Background: Over the last few years, the types of exercises prescribed for patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) have changed. There is also increasing knowledge on the physical status and physical activity levels of these patients. This article aims to give an overview of the physical status, physical activity levels and appropriate exercise prescription for patients with RA. Method: A literature search was conducted of scientific journals and text, including Medline and PubMed (1980–2012). Literature was selected for its in-depth data and well researched information. Key search terms included "RA and exercise therapy", as well as "physical activity levels and physical status of patients with RA". Results: The literature indicated that RA has a major impact on physical and psychological health. Over the past decade, there has been growing evidence of the health benefits of physical activity for patients with RA. Despite this evidence, patients with RA are less physically active than the general population. The types of exercises prescribed for patients with RA have changed from the traditionally prescribed isometric and range-of-motion exercises. However, proper choice and appropriate utilisation of exercise is essential in order to provide a therapeutic effect. Conclusion: Although pharmacological interventions have largely improved RA management, exercise therapy remains an important part of treatment. Despite the known benefits of physical activity and exercise, patients with RA are less physically active than the general population.


Background. Primary umbilical endometriosis (PUE) is a rare condition affecting 0.5 - 1% of all cases of extragenital endometriosis. The method of using routine laparoscopic inspection of the pelvis to exclude pelvic endometriosis has been applied extensively over the years. It has been demonstrated that even patients who have had no previous pelvic surgery or caesarean section, and have no symptoms of pelvic endometriosis or history of infertility, have presented with this condition.  Objective. To investigate whether patients with PUE should always undergo a laparoscopy to exclude pelvic endometriosis.  Methods. The study included women presenting with a history of painful umbilical nodules or bleeding from the umbilical nodule during or after menstruation in the absence of previous surgery either for gynecological disorders or caesarean section. The study began in January 2010 and ended in December 2016. All patients underwent umbilical biopsy confirming the presence of umbilical endometriosis before the diagnostic laparoscopy took place.  Results. Fourteen patients with cutaneous (scar) and umbilical endometriosis attended the clinic during the study period. Of these, only six cases (42.8%) met the inclusion criteria of PUE clinically, and underwent diagnostic laparoscopy. Their mean age was 31.1 years (range 23 - 48), and the mean parity was 1.1 (range 0 - 3), with no history of previous pelvic surgery or caesarean section. Biopsies of the lesions confirmed the presence of endometrial tissue (gland and stroma) and haemorrhage. Diagnostic laparoscopy that took place immediately after the excision of umbilical endometriosis revealed no pelvic endometriosis.  Conclusion. A laparoscopy to exclude pelvic endometriosis should not be undertaken in patients who present with PUE, as there is a potential risk of introducing endometriosis into the pelvic cavity. Additionally, there is a risk of exposing the patient to unnecessary intervention and possible complications associated with the procedure.


Acinetobacter species are Gram negative nonfermentative bacteria that have now emerged as important nosocomial pathogens involved in outbreaks of hospital infections.They are considered as opportunistic pathogens that readily colonize patients with compromised host defenses especially in intensive care units (ICUs), neonatal units, and surgical wards. The current study was conducted to type the Acinetobacter isolates obtained from various sources by a simplified phenotypic identification scheme and also to determine their antimicrobial susceptibility. Specimens like blood, CSF, endotracheal aspirate, urine, sputum, pus, bronchoalveolar lavage, HVS and body fluids were processed by standard methods and the antibiotic-sensitivity was performed by Kirby-Bauer disk diffusion technique as per Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute guidelines (CLSI). The study was conducted in a tertiary care hospital for a period of 6 months (July 2013 – Dec 2013) in which out of a total of 1272 culture positive specimens, 53 Acinetobacter isolates were obtained from various specimens. Speciation was done in which predominance of A. baumannii( 90.6%) was seen while A. lwoffii and A. haemolyticus showed an isolation rate of 5.7% and 3.8% respectively. High levels of resistance were seen for Ampicillin –Sulbactam (96%), Ampicillin (94%), Aztreonam (94%), Cefuroxime (92%), ceftazidime (91%). The p-value was found to be statistically significant for all the above mentioned antibiotics except for Polymyxin B for which 100% sensitivity was recorded. Clinical co-relation must be under taken to exclude commensal contaminants, before considering it to be a pathogen and prescribing antibiotics to the patient.


Phytoplankton biomass, productivity and assemblages were studied during the main hydrological seasons in two shallow reservoirs in Ivory Coast (West Africa). In this area, the hydrological pattern begins with the flood from July to October, that is the main change in environmental condition. The flood is followed by a dry period from November to March; then the rainy season resumes from April with numerous and intense storms. Chlorophyll-α concentrations ranged from 5.0 to 27.4 μg l -1 in mesotrophic Brobo reservoir and from 15.1 to 123.0 μg l -1 in eutrophic Nambengue reservoir. Despite their different trophic states phytoplankton production varied between 0.2 and 1.8 g C m -2 d -1 in both reservoirs. Both Chlorophyceae and Cyanobacteria largely dominated the phytoplankton communities. Opportunist species (mainly Chlorophyceae), with medium sized cells (10-15 μm equivalent spherical diameter, ESD), were observed during the flood. Slow growing/slow sinking species, with relatively large cells (> 15 μm ESD, mainly Cyanobacteria and Chlorophyceae), were present during the dry season. Small species (< 10 μm ESD), dominated by Chlorophyceae and Cyanobacteria were abundant during the rainy season. At this late stage of the hydrological year, N 2 fixing Cyanobacteria like Anabaena and Anabaenopsis were also present. Eight functional associations (H I, J, K, L M , N, P, S 1, X 1) from the thirty-one proposed by REYNOLDS et al. (2002) were outlined in the two systems surveyed; these functional groups were representative of warm, shallow, turbid, nutrient-enriched and frequently mixed habitats. A large part of the biomass was composed of cells hardly matching the needs of superior consumers, in size as well as in shape. These conditions could explain the inefficient transfer of biomass within the pelagic food web. resulting in trophic dead end and contributing to the eutrophication of the sites.


This essay, a response to Alexandra T. Vazquez's Listening in Detail: Performances of Cuban Music (Duke, 2013), follows Vazquez's lead to "listen in detail" to two ongoing musical projects, conceived and executed in the Little Havana nightclub known as Hoy Como Ayer, that dismantle popular Cuban musical forms and reinvent not only Cuban music but US popular music as well. The broken melodies of composer and violinist Alfredo Triff and the deep groove of the Spam Allstars, a jam band that draws from Cuban son, classic soul, and Miami Bass, deterritorialize Cuban music from fixed national imaginaries and reterritorialize an alternative Cuban repertoire within the forever-shifting imaginary of Miami.


Abstract In federal and regionalised states, bicameralism constitutes shared rule between levels of governments. At the same time, second chambers serve as a safeguard protecting selfrule of decentralised governments against the encroachments of central legislation into their areas of responsibility. Both functions seem to be best fulfilled in legislative systems requiring joint decisions of legislative chambers. Depending on particular conditions, joint decision-making involves the risk that legislation ends with ineffective compromises or even fails. Under favourable conditions, it provides a productive structure to apply shared rule and protect self-rule. Comparative studies can identify these conditions, and appropriate ways to adjust institutional designs of bicameralism accordingly, bearing in mind that significant institutional reforms of bicameral systems are difficult to achieve.


This report provides an analytical summary of the economic lessons reached in support of Congress's role in the trade policy process. On January 1, 2004, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) completed its tenth year and most of its provisions are now implemented. NAFTA is a free trade agreement (FTA) that effectively added Mexico to the U.S.-Canada FTA completed in 1989. Its anniversary has sparked numerous evaluations, which are particularly relevant as the United States pursues free trade agreements with multiple Latin American countries. Most studies found that NAFTA's effects on the U.S. and Mexican economies to be modest at most.


Livestock plays an important role in food supplying. However, this industry is today in Ukraine in a difficult situation. A gradual reduction of livestock numbers affected both the output and the changes in the structure and range of livestock production. In recent years, there has been a tendency to a reduction of meat and milk consumption in the Ukraine's domestic market due to the low purchasing power of individuals, which therefore causes difficulties for the country's food security. In the structure of livestock production in Ukraine, the dominant place belongs to farms. However, small-scale production is not able to provide high quality products and volumes necessary to meet domestic demand. With significant available resources of Ukraine, the country instead of exporting the livestock products has become an importer. The Ukrainian allocations to supporting the livestock production are quite significant, due to budgetary payments and subsidies or rebates in the value added tax (VAT). However, this does not significantly influence either the output or the performance indicators of improvement in the livestock production. All this testifies to the imperfection of mechanism of state support for the livestock production in Ukraine. The global financial crisis has reduced the financial capacity of the state support for the livestock industry. Therefore, under these conditions, there is an urgent need of an efficient use of budgetary resources and of an improvement of the mechanism of support for the livestock production in Ukraine.


Purpose The purpose of this investigation is to describe the clinical, imaging, histologic and flow dynamic characteristics of orbital cavernous haemangioma. Methods In this clinicopathologic series, clinical features were obtained from patient records. All imaging studies were reviewed. All specimens were reviewed with haematoxylin and eosin, and 10 were subject to a staining protocol including: Movat Pantachrome, periodic acid Schiff, D2-40, CD31, GLUT-1, Ki-67, vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 1 (VEGF-r1) (flt-1), VEGF-r2 (Flk-1), VEGF, anti-smooth muscle actin (SMA), CD20, CD4, CD8 and CD68. Imaging and pathology were reviewed in a systematic fashion. Results Clinically, lesions were more common in middle-aged females presenting with axial proptosis and pain. One-third demonstrated signs of optic nerve dysfunction. Dynamic imaging revealed focal early and diffuse late enhancement. Lesions demonstrated slow growth at 0.2 cm3/year. Histologically, all lesions demonstrated large vascular channels with mature-appearing endothelium and abundant stroma. Three salient features were noted and characterised: thrombosis, nests of perivascular hypercellularity and expanded stromal elements. Acute thrombosis was a feature of each specimen (<10% of channels). Fibrin clots were lined by a layer of CD31+ endothelium. Perivascular hypercellular areas stained uniformly with CD31 and less so with VEGFr2. Additionally, focal areas of Ki67+ and CD68+ cells were found in these regions. Expanded stroma contained CD31+ microcapillary networks and stained diffusely with anti-SMA. Conclusions Cavernous haemangioma demonstrate clinical features and growth characteristics of a benign mass. Dynamic imaging highlights their slow flow vascular nature. Histologically, the hypercellularity and stromal changes identified can be understood within the pathogenic context of thrombosis and recanalisation in an organised lesion.


The VA's mission-driven commitment to the veterans it serves is one of the most significant aspects of the system. The United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) operates the nation's largest integrated healthcare system, which is administered by the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). The VHA, the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) and the National Cemetery Administration (NCA), comprise the three major components of the VA. The VA was originally established by Congress in 1930 as the Veterans Administration. The agency's name changed to the Department of Veterans Affairs when the VA was elevated to cabinetlevel status in 1989. The VA healthcare system provides care to veterans at more than 150 hospitals, more than 900 community-based outpatient clinics (CBOC), 134 nursing homes (now called community living centers), and 271 readjustment counseling centers (also known as vet centers). The large number of CBOCs within the VHA reflects the VA's emphasis over the last two decades on promoting non-institutional care and service access and reducing re-hospitalizations. In fiscal year (FY) 2009 (October 1, 2008, through September 30, 2009), approximately 8 million veterans were enrolled in the VHA, and approximately 5.5 million veterans received care at VA medical centers and clinics. The VHA is a major provider of care to older adults; approximately 45 percent of veterans enrolled in care in the VHA are at least 65 years of age. In FY 2009, the VHA provided care to more than 2.3 million veterans ages 65 or older. Care for older veterans is anticipated to become an increasing focus of the VHA, largely because of the aging of the Vietnam era cohort of veterans. The VHA provides a broad continuum of general primary care and specialty care services, as well as a comprehensive spectrum of geriatric and extended care services that includes both institutional and (increasingly) non-institutional services. Institutional services are provided in community living centers (CLC), community nursing homes, and state veterans homes. The VA's non-institutional geriatric and extended care services include a number of innovative and highly effective programs, including home-based primary care, purchased skilled homecare, adult day healthcare, homemaker and home health aide services, home respite care, home hospice care, and community residential care. Several of these programs are discussed in this issue. In FY 2009, 59 percent of the VA's total extended care patient population received care in non-institutional or enriched housing settings. The experiences of the VHA can provide numerous lessons for providing high-quality care to older adults for other healthcare systems and the nation at large. The VHA has been internationally recognized as a leader in providing high-quality care. In fact, according to a study by the RAND Corporation, VA patients consistently received better care than consumers of non-VA services (Asch et al., 2004). Superior findings for the VHA were observed for screening, diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up care. Moreover, the VHA's superior performance relative to the private sector on multiple measures of healthcare quality, safety, cost-effectiveness, and satisfaction has been the focus of increasing attention among journalists and the popular press (Gerencher, 2010) in recent years and was the topic of Phillip Longman's 2007 book, Best Care Anywhere: Why VA Healthcare Is Better Than Yours (2d ed., 2010). Defining Characteristics of the VA Healthcare System Numerous factors, including structural, technological, clinical, and mission-oriented factors, contribute to the VHA's performance and recognition as a leader in providing highquality care. First, unlike private insurers, the VHA provides care that is mission-driven and is directly linked with its commitment to honor and to serve those who have served this country. Moreover, unlike other payers and providers of healthcare services, the VHA provides care to veterans for life; this provides an even greater incentive for the VHA to provide high-quality care and to keep veterans healthy, and results in providers having a lifetime relationship and unique bond with the patients for whom they care. …


Making inferences about aggregate business cycles from regional variation alone is diffcult because of economic channels and shocks that differ between regional and aggregate economies. However, we argue that regional business cycles contain valuable information that can help discipline models of aggregate fluctuations. We begin by documenting a strong relationship across US states between local employment and wage growth during the Great Recession. This relationship is much weaker in US aggregates. Then, we present a methodology that combines such regional and aggregate data in order to estimate a medium-scale New Keynesian DSGE model. We find that aggregate demand shocks were important drivers of aggregate employment during the Great Recession, but the wage stickiness necessary for them to account for the slow employment recovery and the modest fall in aggregate wages is inconsistent with the flexibility of wages we observe across US states. Finally, we show that our methodology yields different conclusions about the causes of aggregate employment and wage dynamics between 2007 and 2014 than either estimating our model with aggregate data alone or performing back-of-the-envelope calculations that directly extrapolate from well-identified regional elasticities. Martin Beraja Department of Economics MIT 50 Memorial Drive Cambridge, MA 02142 and NBER email@example.com Erik Hurst Booth School of Business University of Chicago Harper Center Chicago, IL 60637 and NBER firstname.lastname@example.com Juan Ospina Banco de la Republica de Colombia firstname.lastname@example.com


Christine Jackson was born in 1937. She attended an extremely over-crowded infants' and then primary school in rural Oxfordshire during the war, full of evacuees. By the time she was nine she was in a class of 60 with ages ranging from 9 to 11 and just one teacher. Unsurprisingly very little history was taught; she remembered learning about the Romans in both schools. Nevertheless she passed the 11+ and went to a small girls' grammar school in Oxfordshire. Here they learnt history in a formal way, starting with the Egyptians. The same general teacher also taught them elocution so they would lose their rural accents. Christine remembered schools broadcasts on the radio, the occasional school trip, and encouragement to visit the museums in Oxford. She chose to do history O level covering the period 1789 to 1936, which she found very interesting and described how they were encouraged to read relevant novels like those of Dickens. Christine did A level history which also covered the modern period. The teaching was very different at A level with only 3 of them in the class so there was a great deal of discussion as well as intensive reading. She went on to university and later joined the civil service. Interviewed by Jenny Keating.


Identifying similar or identical code fragments becomes much more challenging in code theft cases where plagiarizers can use various automated code transformation techniques to hide stolen code from being detected. Previous works in this field are largely limited in that (1) most of them cannot handle advanced obfuscation techniques; (2) the methods based on source code analysis are less practical since the source code of suspicious programs is typically not available until strong evidences are collected; and (3) those depending on the features of specific operating systems or programming languages have limited applicability. Based on an observation that some critical runtime values are hard to be replaced or eliminated by semantics-preserving transformation techniques, we introduce a novel approach to dynamic characterization of executable programs. Leveraging such invariant values, our technique is resilient to various control and data obfuscation techniques. We show how the values can be extracted and refined to expose the critical values and how we can apply this runtime property to help solve problems in software plagiarism detection. We have implemented a prototype with a dynamic taint analyzer atop a generic processor emulator. Our experimental results show that the value-based method successfully discriminates 34 plagiarisms obfuscated by SandMark, plagiarisms heavily obfuscated by KlassMaster, programs obfuscated by Thicket, and executables obfuscated by Loco/Diablo.


'Biopunk Dystopias' contends that we find ourselves at a historical nexus, defined by the rise of biology as the driving force of scientific progress, a strongly grown mainstream attention given to genetic engineering in the wake of the Human Genome Project (1990-2003), the changing sociological view of a liquid modern society, and shifting discourses on the posthuman, including a critical posthumanism that decenters the privileged subject of humanism. The book argues that this historical nexus produces a specific cultural formation in the form of "biopunk", a subgenre evolved from the cyberpunk of the 1980s. The analysis deals with dystopian science fiction artifacts of different media from the year 2000 onwards that project a posthuman intervention into contemporary socio-political discourse based in liquid modernity in the cultural formation of biopunk. Biopunk makes use of current posthumanist conceptions in order to criticize contemporary reality as already dystopian, warning that a future will only get worse, and that society needs to reverse its path, or else destroy all life on this planet. As Rosi Braidotti argues, "there is a posthuman agreement that contemporary science and biotechnologies affect the very fibre and structure of the living and have altered dramatically our understanding of what counts as the basic frame of reference for the human today" (40). The proposed book analyzes this alteration as directors, creators, authors, and artists from the field of science fiction extrapolate it from current trends.


In the setting of acute heparin‐induced thrombocytopenia (HIT), argatroban is one of the initial anticoagulants of choice, which is eventually bridged to warfarin over a period of 5 or more days. Argatroban prolongs prothrombin time (PT) and increases international normalized ratio (INR). However, the effects of prolonged argatroban exposure on the PT and INR are not known. We describe an unusual case of prolonged argatroban treatment in a patient with heparin‐induced thrombocytopenia with thrombosis syndrome (HITTS) resulting in a minimal elevation of the INR. The patient received a total of 58 days of argatroban and was resistant to warfarin therapy, requiring a 13‐day bridge to achieve a therapeutic INR of 2.0 to 3.0. Ultimately, argatroban was successfully transitioned to warfarin therapy when the INR was 2.7 on both agents, producing the confirmatory true INR of 2.4. Argatroban and warfarin cotherapy did not increase the INR beyond 4.0 after prolonged argatroban exposure. Clinicians should consider this unusual response in other cases of prolonged argatroban use, and monitor INR carefully during warfarin and argatroban cotherapy. The use of other methods to monitor anticoagulant therapy, such as chromogenic factor X assay (CFX), may be helpful in this setting.


Coastal marshes of eastern Georgian Bay contain unique water chemistry that reflects mixing between the relatively ion-rich waters of Georgian Bay and the relatively ion-poor water draining the Canadian Shield landscape. These unique chemical characteristics may be dramatically altered when wetlands become hydrologically disconnected from Georgian Bay through beaver activity. We sampled 35 coastal marshes in Georgian Bay, 17 of which had beaver impoundments built at the outlet of the coastal wetland. Impounded marshes had significantly higher total phosphorus (30.2 versus 15.3 μg·L−1, p = 0.0015), soluble reactive phosphorus, (13.33 versus 3.7 μg·L−1, p ≤ 0.0001), total suspended solids (15.5 versus 2.1 mg·L−1, p ≤ 0.0001), turbidity (5.4 versus 1.6, p = 0.0004), and chlorophyll (6.2 versus 1.9 μg·L−1, p = 0.0004), but significantly lower pH (5.57 versus 6.95, p ≤ 0.0001), nitrates (0.03 versus 0.04 mg·L−1, p = 0.0416), and conductivity (47 versus 134 μS·cm−1, p ≤ 0.0001), indicative of reduced mixing wit...


This paper evaluates the impact of an integrated rural development programme on farming techniques and food security in the Gaza area of rural Mozambique. We examine the impact of a group-based approach, in a country with few impact evaluations of technology adoption in farming. Using self-collected panel data on over 200 households from treatment and control villages from 2008-10, we examine the impact of the aid programme on people living in the treatment villages, using the difference-in-differences approach, and on those who participate in the farmers' groups, using instrumental variables techniques. The results on farming activities and food security indicate some positive immediate impacts on technology adoption and selfreported food security.


Yearly production and reproduction data on dairy farms in The Netherlands were obtained to determine whether management information systems significantly improved herd performance variables (management information systems (MIS) effects). The analysis included 357 adopters of a management information system and 357 herds were used as controls. The data comprised years 1987 through 1996, and included for the adopters both the 'before' and 'after' period. Panel data analysis enabled to estimate MIS effects both within and between farms, allowing for a separation of farm-specific effects and common (trend) effects. Adoption and use of a management information system resulted in a significant annual increase in rolling herd average milk (carrier) and protein production of 62 and 2.36 kg per cow, respectively. Calving interval was shortened by 5 days. The pay-back period was approximately 5 years of the system (including the hardware), and therefore, MIS appears to be economically profitable. © 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.


This research explores the English local government modernisation agenda of the 1997–2010 Labour government with reference to its promotion of, and effects on, organisational learning. It does this by examining the concept of learning to learn, as constructed by local authority Chief Executives.
A synthesised analytical framework is developed by exploring the commonalities of three approaches to the exchange of knowledge: organisational learning; policy transfer, and change management.
Utilising this framework, local government modernisation is examined within the broader modernisation agenda and its historical context. This, and an examination of Best Value, the Beacon Council Scheme and the Comprehensive Performance and Area Assessments, exposes the links between modernisation and organisation learning that underpin a central contention of this research; that the success of local government modernisation relied on local authorities being better able to learn from each other.
Analysis of the data unique to this research, obtained largely through interviews with local authority Chief Executives, illuminates the way in which they construct their views of learning, modernisation and central-local relations.
The major conclusions concern the significance of networks, differences and trust and how views of each are constructed. Also important is trust within central-local relations. Modernisation consolidated the acceptance of other local authorities as sources of learning and enhanced particular characteristics conducive to learning. However, through the mechanisms utilised, modernisation also inhibited instances of learning and was less successful at embedding the concept of learning to learn within local government.
Original contributions to knowledge are made in this under-researched area through innovative use of exiting approaches to the analysis of change and learning; synthesising these provides a useful tool for the analysis of those matters. Additionally, such analysis sheds new light on the way in which local authority Chief Executives construct the world-views that shape their actions.


More high-quality, in situ observations of essential marine variables are needed over the seasonal ice zone to better understand Arctic (or Antarctic) weather, climate, and ecosystems. To better assess the potential for arrays of uncrewed surface vehicles (USVs) to provide such observations, five wind-driven and solar-powered saildrones were sailed into the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas following the 2019 seasonal retreat of sea ice. They were equipped to observe the surface oceanic and atmospheric variables required to estimate air-sea fluxes of heat, momentum and carbon dioxide. Some of these variables were made available to weather forecast centers in real time. Our objective here is to analyze the effectiveness of existing remote ice navigation products and highlight the challenges and opportunities for improving remote ice navigation strategies with USVs. We examine the sources of navigational sea-ice distribution information based on post-mission tabulation of the sea-ice conditions encountered by the vehicles. The satellite-based ice-concentration analyses consulted during the mission exhibited large disagreements when the sea ice was retreating fastest (e.g., the 10% concentration contours differed between analyses by up to ∼175 km). Attempts to use saildrone observations to detect the ice edge revealed that in situ temperature and salinity measurements varied sufficiently in ice bands and open water that it is difficult to use these variables alone as a reliable ice-edge indicator. Devising robust strategies for remote ice zone navigation may depend on developing the capability to recognize sea ice and initiate navigational maneuvers with cameras and processing capability onboard the vehicles.


The research undertaken for this largely qualitative dissertation draws on newspaper articles, oral
histories, historical documentation, open-ended interviews, and to a lesser extent, questionnaires, in
the effort to ultimately confirm the extent to which the benefitting forces of globalization have
fractured any existing traditional-historical cultural body of knowledge and expression among the
Caymanian people. Indeed, by 2009 some Caymanians had long been verbally denouncing the social
and cultural ills of globalization – inclusive of multiculturalism – on their so-called traditional,
unassuming way of life, some of them clamoring for an extensive purge of the many foreign
nationals in "their" Cayman Islands. Yet, other Caymanians have become somewhat invested in the
idea of multicultural "oneness" ostensibly for the sake of peaceful coexistence, harmony and
prosperity as these work towards the promotion of a global, borderless cultural awareness.
This dissertation relies on theoretical frames centred both on the discrete natures of, and the
dualistic struggle between, these two opposing ideological-cultural forces. That this struggle is taking
place in the present age, I anticipate the ways in which more modern understandings, which are
potentially open to liberating subjectivities, must clash with "historical", xenophobic and
nationalistic viewpoints, viewpoints which have constantly proven contradictory given their
adherents' complacent acceptance of, and participation in, a localised economic prosperity
substantively dependent on foreign input. Thus in aggregate terms, this dissertation pinpoints the
various effects of an evolving scheme of values and counter-values on an ideologically torn
Caymanianness whose contradictory traditional half is especially fighting for its "cultural purity" in
an era where its 'reinvented' logic is being more and more regarded as anachronistic and somewhat
irrational.


The paper deals with the impact of the global financial crisis on public service delivery - mainly education and healthcare - in Belarus. The pre-crisis period of 2003-2008 was the most prosperous in recent history. These trends resulted in a pretty good fiscal performance. Nevertheless, the share of expenditures on education and healthcare in GDP was decreasing during the 2000s, which was a consequence of demographic trends and a number of reforms in these sectors. The global crisis hurt the Belarusian economy considerably. However, macro-indicators of the Belarusian economy looked pretty good in comparison to other countries, and the deterioration of public finance was limited. Thus, expenditures on both education and healthcare were mainly part of long-term trends and were able to avoid shock adjustments during the crisis. However, there are a number of medium and long-term threats to these public service sectors associated with the crisis agenda. This paper provides a number of policy recommendations to stave off these threats.


The environment and its compartments have been severely polluted by heavy metals. This has compromised the ability of the environment to foster life and render its intrinsic values. Heavy metals are known to be naturally occurring compounds, but anthropogenic activities introduce them in large quantities in different environmental compartments. This leads to the environment's ability to foster life being reduced as human, animal, and plant health become threatened. This occurs due to bioaccumulation in the food chains as a result of the nondegradable state of the heavy metals. Remediation of heavy metals requires special attention to protect soil quality, air quality, water quality, human health, animal health, and all spheres as a collection. Developed physical and chemical heavy metal remediation technologies are demanding costs which are not feasible, time-consuming, and release additional waste to the environment. This chapter summarises the problems related to heavy metal pollution and various remediation technologies. A case study in South Africa mines were also used.


In this article the author argues that research interviewing can be a form of research practice in which the subjects of study can object to the researcher's questions and the interview's theme. Researchers performing qualitative interviews should pay particular attention to situations where interviewees object to what we think, say, and write about them. The author draws on empirical examples where the objections and hesitations voiced by the interviewees toward the interviewer's questions became part of reconsidering the initial theoretical concepts guiding the research process. She argues that the interviewer should not provoke such situations but, rather, be sensitive enough to remain open to the possibility that the interviewee might feel a need to object to or refuse the researcher's interpretations. When this happens, it can allow for a fruitful exploration of the theme of conversation and the researcher's agenda.


The promise and potential of private sector engagement (PSE) in activities supported by development cooperation has garnered significant interest and importance. This recent salience mirrors the broad recognition that key international agreements such as the 2030 Agenda necessitate efforts and contributions beyond what governments alone can provide. Nonetheless, PSE through development co-operation provided by emerging powers has had a long and rich history; one that has been characterised by complex cooperation modalities that are driven by a number of objectives. However, despite this long-established practice there exists a clear lack of evidence on, and understanding of, PSE supported by emerging economies. In addressing this gap, the purpose of this paper is threefold. First, it proposes a typological framework to conceptualise how emerging economies support PSE in partner countries through development co-operation. Second, it explores how stakeholders regard issues related to the effectiveness of PSE at the country level. Third, based on the framework and these findings, it concludes with a set of key issue areas that are pertinent concerning the effectiveness and impact of PSE by emerging economies.


Abstract If there is a geographical area that will be particularly affected by the tragedy of September 11, that will be the international borders of the United States. It is understandable that a country that enters in a state of war after been attacked with enormous losses, reacts by closing its international borders. Such immediate reaction has now been substituted by a more strict control over everything that crosses the border but, a fact remains, the border life is not going to be what it used to before September 11. In the short run, everything that crosses the border has slowed down by new controls. In the long run many things will return to what it was before that Tuesday, but for a long while, life at the border will not be the same. An intense interaction of more than twelve million people from the two sides of the U.S.-Mexico border have made us live in many instances as if the border does not exist. This is the case among many of us in the way we practice our family life. For the planning of weddings, birthdays, reunions, ceremonies, the border is more virtual than real. This is reversed as we get more serious in what it means to the space where institutions, the laws and the governments reminds us that there is a line that marks the beginning and the end of two different nations.


Aging Gracefully gathers a collection of essays that highlight policy ideas for promoting greater retirement savings among Americans. The essays were written as part of the Retirement Security Project, which is dedicated to promoting common sense solutions to improve the retirement income prospects of millions of American workers. The project is supported by The Pew Charitable Trusts, in partnership with Georgetown University's Public Policy Institute and the Brookings Institution. The essays included in this volume address issues such as: How an "automatic 401(k)" would encourage greater savings. How better structured 401(k) investments can reduce risks and increase growth. What impact the preferential tax treatment given IRAs and 401(k) plans has on low-income families. How IRA-contribution matching by employers can encourage low- and middle-income families to save more.


Historically, agricultural research and education in India have been in the public domain. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) was established as an apex organization for effective research coordination among institutions and promotion of agricultural research in the country. Funds for agricultural research institutes were channeled through the ICAR from the central government. For the dissemination of research output, the research journals publishing in India have been, for long, primarily a public funded activity and done mostly by Government agencies. In case of agricultural research, the journals are being published by ICAR and by respective professional societies. Many of these societies are receiving financial assistance partly from ICAR. Each discipline of agriculture is represented by some sort of professional society and for some disciplines, and each society publishes a peer–reviewed research journal. Though many of these journals are distributed for international indexing, full–text database services are very poor. Many of them are not even in the ISI Master Journal list for impact factor or science citation index analysis. The main objective of each author is to have more impact, visibility and readership for their work. These journals publish quality articles after stringent peer review process, but the time lag from submission to publication of an article or production of issue is long. There are instances where the articles sent for review were not returned back due to various reasons. The infrastructure for publishing online is also not available for these journals. Recently, a portal (http://www.indianjournals.com) had started providing online access to some of the journals which are being published by professional societies. Under the National Agriculture Innovation Project (NAIP), ICAR is making available some subscription–based foreign international online journals along with other open access journals. Now the time has come to think about the wider availability of scientific journals without any restrictions. The availability of open source software for the transformation of traditional journals into open access journals and the establishment of open archive online repositories for archiving research will eventually make agricultural research reach to much larger audiences. This will increase the visibility of research output and eventually lead to an enhanced impact factor for many Indian agricultural research journals.


One of the biggest challenges for developers of scientific software is understanding how best to make the software reusable. A particular problem is that the concept of reusability combines many different concerns, including whether the software can be reused, how it can be reused, and by whom. This paper looks at the concept of software reusability from the perspective of the software engineer and the researcher. It proposes a multi-level framework for improving the reusability of scientific software, which minimises the information and effort required such that it is easier for scientific software developers, who are often researchers, to provide appropriate levels of information to support reuse.


BACKGROUND
In the affective-priming paradigm, a briefly-presented facial expression (prime) facilitates reaction time to identify a subsequent facial expression (target) if the prime and target are congruent in emotional valence (i.e. both positive or both negative). However, some studies have found that facilitation is more specific, only occurring when the prime and target share the same emotion (e.g. both angry).

OBJECTIVE
We investigated first whether reaction times to identify expressions showed valence priming effects that were modulated by whether the specific emotion was congruent between the prime and target. Second, we examined whether effects differed when the prime and target were faces of different people, a situation which minimizes low-level image effects.

METHODS
22 subjects were asked to indicate if the valence of a target facial expression was positive or negative. A prime (no prime, angry, fearful, happy) was shown for 85ms, preceded and followed by masks, and then a target expression (angry, fearful, or happy) was shown for 100ms. We examined whether priming by negative emotions (angry or fearful) differed from positive emotions (happy). Next we assessed whether there was an interaction between specific expressions of the prime and of the target.

RESULTS
We replicated the valence effect of priming, showing that subjects were faster to respond to positive emotions with a positive prime, and negative emotions with negative primes. Similar effects were obtained when the faces of the prime and target differed in identity. Examination of effects on negative targets showed no interaction between prime and target, in either same or different-identity blocks.

CONCLUSION
Expression-priming effects are related to emotional valence rather than specific expressions. Along with the finding that the effects do not depend on facial identity, this indicates a high-level origin of the priming effect, rather than an effect generated by low-level image properties. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.


Community health centers are at the forefront of ambulatory care practices in their use of nonphysician clinicians and team-based primary care. We examined medical staffing patterns, the contributions of different types of staff to productivity, and the factors associated with staffing at community health centers across the United States. We identified four different staffing patterns: typical, high advanced-practice staff, high nursing staff, and high other medical staff. Overall, productivity per staff person was similar across the four staffing patterns. We found that physicians make the greatest contributions to productivity, but advanced-practice staff, nurses, and other medical staff also contribute. Patterns of community health center staffing are driven by numerous factors, including the concentration of clinicians in communities, nurse practitioner scope-of-practice laws, and patient characteristics such as insurance status. Our findings suggest that other group medical practices could incorporate more nonphysician staff without sacrificing productivity and thus profitability. However, the new staffing patterns that evolve may be affected by characteristics of the practice location or the types of patients served.


When copyright lawyers gather to discuss fair use, the most common refrain is its alarming expansion. Their distress about fair use's enlarged footprint seems completely untethered from any appreciation of the remarkable increase in exclusive copyright rights. In the nearly 40 years since Congress enacted the 1976 copyright act, the rights of copyright owners have expanded markedly. Copyright owners' demands for further expansion continue unabated. Meanwhile, they raise strident objections to proposals to add new privileges and exceptions to the statute to shelter non-infringing uses that might be implicated by their expanded rights. Copyright owners have used the resulting uncertainty over the scope of liability for new uses to litigate some new businesses into bankruptcy before their legality could be determined. These developments push fair use to shelter new uses and users. When lawyers for copyright owners complain that fair use has stretched beyond their expectations, they fail to acknowledge their own responsibility for its growth.This essay, written for the 2015 Washington Law Review Symposium on Campbell at 20, takes up these questions with particular attention to the 31 year old decision in Sony v. Universal Studios, and Congress's assumptions about individual and contributory liability for personal copying before and after the Sony case.


This essay uncovers the various textual and chronological accounts of the evolution of Leopold Bloom's parents (Rudolph Virag and Ellen Higgins) and thereby explores the constructed nature of character in James Joyce's Ulysses. The manuscripts document how Joyce created their life-stories non-sequentially in a piecemeal fashion over many years. This essay challenges some of the ways that readers usually think temporally about the intertwining strands of a real life's linear chronology and the multi-faceted possibilities of narrative chronology. Based on a textually-informed, genetic-critical methodology, it explores Joyce's creative process and shows how primarily archival work can fruitfully intersect with a broader range of critical close readings — it thereby also investigates some of the radical innovations in Ulysses. By tracing the dynamic evolution of the text, we see what Ulysses actually was at various stages along the way, thus re-contextualizing the published work in a much wider textual and historical environment.


In this contribution the impact of treaty reservations on the establishment of an international human rights regime is analysed in view of factors such as the particular status of human rights treaties in public international law, the relevant provisions of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, the comments of the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations concerning reservations to human rights treaties, the findings of the European Court of Human Rights and the International Court of Justice on reservations to treaties, the responses of individual states to these comments and findings, and the viewpoints of authors dealing with the different aspects of the theme under discussion. As part of the analysis reference is also made to the impact of reservations on the foundations of treaty law, namely the principle of free consent in view of the discussion on the universality and relativity of human rights, the principle of good faith as it relates to the negotiation, interpretation and performance of treaties, and the pacta sunt servanda rule. In conclusion a number of suggestions are made concerning the problems that result from entering reservations to human rights treaties.


The purpose of this paper is to present the activity of the MPVT (Multi-Purpose PV Module Tester) project funded by the Innovation Promotion Agency (CTI) of the Swiss Confederation. The aim of the project is to develop an extremely versatile measurement equipment for the indoor testing of PV modules by upgrading and integrating new functionalities into an existing pulsed solar-simulator based IV measurement set-up. The newly developed MPVT set-up will be able to realize IV measurements at standard test conditions, temperature coefficients (TCOs) and measurement at different irradiance levels. In addition, a set-up to measure spectral response (SR) of large-area module will be implemented in the system. The MPVT system will be adapted to the needs of the different PV technologies present today on the market, which require a larger flexibility in terms of electrical measurement conditions (high-voltage/low-current thin film PV and high-current/low-voltage c-Si technologies). Moreover, traditional or alternative solutions will be implemented to overcome problems - related to the short duration of the light pulse - which some technologies may encounter when performing power measurements with flashers, as for example, high efficient c-Si modules, which are characterized by high cell capacitances.


Recognizing a hotel from an image of a hotel room is important for human trafficking investigations. Images directly link victims to places and can help verify where victims have been trafficked, and where their traffickers might move them or others in the future. Recognizing the hotel from images is challenging because of low image quality, uncommon camera perspectives, large occlusions (often the victim), and the similarity of objects (e.g., furniture, art, bedding) across different hotel rooms. To support efforts towards this hotel recognition task, we have curated a dataset of over 1 million annotated hotel room images from 50,000 hotels. These images include professionally captured photographs from travel websites and crowd-sourced images from a mobile application, which are more similar to the types of images analyzed in real-world investigations. We present a baseline approach based on a standard network architecture and a collection of data-augmentation approaches tuned to this problem domain.


Background: World Health Organization report in 2014 indicates a considerable range of alcohol consumption across the world which had a growing trend during last 5 years. A study on 5,231 students in 57 universities has shown that alcohol consumption became more common than other drugs, and alcohol is in the first rank for repeated usage. In another study in 2010, the prevalence of alcohol use was 15.1% among high school students in Tehran with predominant use among boys. This study was aimed to estimate the hidden population of alcohol consumer, commissioned by the Bureau of Mental and Social health and Addiction, Ministry of Health of Iran. Methods: In 2012, Iranian Ministry of Health has implemented a national program for estimation of the frequency of alcohol abusers from the hidden and high risk population by an indirect method. The method of network extension, social network measurement and data collection tool were done through questionnaire. Results: The consumption of alcohol is more than other substances in the country and it is estimated to involve 1,583,752 individuals. This was observed in all of the provinces and included more than 2,000 individuals per 100,000 population which consumed alcohol at least once in the past year. In young population, 1,063,557 people have consumed alcohol at least once in the previous year, which represents an incidence of 5%. Consumption in men aged 18 to 30 years is higher than the other age-groups. In terms of geographical separation, Isfahan, Fars, Tehran, Kurdistan, Zanjan, Yazd and Golestan provinces are at a very high risk. Conclusion: Alcohol is a serious health problem in our society. Based on higher rate of consumption in men and younger population, there must be higher attention. Adjusting systems for alcohol screening and treatment policies should be prioritized. In addition, studies to estimate the knowledge, attitude and practice of alcohol abusers are required.


With the development of Chinese economy, more Chinese multinational firms choose to merge and acquire oversea companies. And their cross-border Merger and Acquisitions(CBM&As) have become so frequent during the last ten years. Now it is easy to discover that some international famous companies have been acquired by Chinese multinational firms. Among all the CBM&As, the motivations are diversified, for example, some Chinese state-owned firms try to acquire key natural resources such as the mines, ores or natural gas. Some private-owned high technology firms try to acquire key technologies to remedy its disadvantages. Some firms acquire the foreign firms just to enter the local markets for the complicated regulations. This research aims to explain and analyse the motivations that lead to the frequent CBM&As on these Chinese multinational firms. Not all Chinese firms succeeded in these CBM&As, and many Chinese firms failed during the CBM&AS, and some firms even cannot recover to the scales before the CBM&As. Therefore, this research would explain the reasons and strategies on those successful firms, then this research would also clarify why some Chinese firms failed during the CBM&As. This research has used 3 case studies to review the research, and the 3 cases includes that Lenovo acquired the IBM's PC business, BOE acquired the NYDIS TFT-LCD and TCL acquired Thompson's TV and DVD business.


This study is a comprehensive, empirical analysis of the linkages between governance, institutions, and regional infrastructure. The empirical results indicate that governance and institutions are crucial for regional infrastructure development: every one point improvement in governance results in a 1 to 1.5 point rise in regional infrastructure. Countries (and regions) with higher income, stronger institutions, better governance, and more open economies are likely to have higher levels of regional infrastructure. The findings of this paper suggest that our efforts to promote regional infrastructure must not be limited to traditional policy measures aimed at attracting investment in infrastructure, but must also address policy reform across a number of areas. Thus, institutions and governance must play an important complementary role in strengthening Asia's regional infrastructure.


Atmospheric glow discharge (AGD) was developed with industrial plasma sources by using high voltage radio frequency (RF) excitation at KHz frequency ranges. It is possible to produce a steady-state uniform glow discharge at atmospheric pressure with various gases, thus eliminating the requirement for a vacuum system to expose the materials to plasma. The RF frequency should be in the limited range to produce AGD: if it is too low, the discharge will not initiate and if it is too high, the plasma will form filamentary discharge between the electrode plates or will be transformed to the arc discharge. The advantage of AGD is to modify or coat the materials with good uniformity. The AGD plasma polymerization can be used to modify the surface properties of wood powder as well as natural fiber to improve the compatibility between the fiber surface and PP matrix. The AGD surface modification process can allow the constituents to disperse quite evenly within the matrix with a strong interfacial bonding between the constituents and the matrix material. Contact angles of AGD polymers of various monomers were measured by goniometer and their surface energies were calculated, respectively, to find the most suitable monomer, which was hexamethyldisiloxane. Helium was used as a carrier gas and the monomer modified the surface property by plasma polymerization. The reactor is operated at room temperature while the surface is modified at atmospheric pressure. Mechanical tests and characterizations by the SEM were carried out for the natural fiber/pp composites.


RNA interference (RNAi) is a potent gene delivery system for studying the regulation of gene expression in a wide variety of eukaryotic cells. In the present study, different RNAi approaches, namely, synthetic small interfering RNA (siRNA) and plasmid- and lentivirus-based short hairpin RNA (shRNA) were investigated to assess the down-regulation of Nck1 protein efficiency in the Jurkat T cell line. Jurkat T cells treated with these three different systems substantially and specifically reduced the expression of the Nck1 protein but not that of the Nck2 protein. Although the three systems showed a similar Nck1 knockdown efficiency, they led to different T cell activation outcomes. After stimulation, CD69 expression and IL-2 production were impaired in Nck1-siRNA and plasmid-based Nck1-shRNA transfected Jurkat cells. However, these T cell activation outcomes were increased in lentiviral vector based Nck1-shRNA transfected cells. These data suggest that the outcomes from transfection with the shRNA based lentiviral vector differ from those of siRNA and shRNA-based plasmids although they provide the same gene silencing efficiency. The verification of suitable RNAi strategies to silence target genes is therefore necessary before using it in experiments.