Nature has secrets, and it is the desire to uncover them that motivates the scientific quest. But what makes these "secrets" secret? Is it that they are beyond human ken? that they concern divine matters? And if they are accessible to human seeking, why do they seem so carefully hidden? Such questions are at the heart of Peter Pesic's enlightening effort to uncover the meaning of modern science.Pesic portrays the struggle between the scientist and nature as the ultimate game of hide-and-seek, in which a childlike wonder propels the exploration of mysteries. Witness the young Albert Einstein, fascinated by a compass and the sense it gave him of "something deeply hidden behind things." In musical terms, the book is a triple fugue, interweaving three themes: the epic struggle between the scientist and nature; the distilling effects of the struggle on the scientist; and the emergence from this struggle of symbolic mathematics, the purified language necessary to decode nature's secrets.Pesic's quest for the roots of science begins with three key Renaissance figures: William Gilbert, a physician who began the scientific study of magnetism; FranA ois ViAte, a French codebreaker who played a crucial role in the foundation of symbolic mathematics; and Francis Bacon, a visionary who anticipated the shape of modern science. Pesic then describes the encounters of three modern masters--Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein--with the depths of nature. Throughout, Pesic reads scientific works as works of literature, attending to nuance and tone as much as to surface meaning. He seeks the living center of human concern as it emerges in the ongoing search for nature's secrets.


The article aims to uncover the nature and distinctive features of the contemporary messianic narrations in the Russian public discourse, as well as estimate their impact on the actual policy-making. For this reason, the article scrutinizes the political philosophy of Aleksandr Dugin, Nataliia Narochnitskaia, Egor Kholmogorov, and Vadim Tsymburskii. Their major messages are contrasted and compared to a variety of recent developments in Russia's domestic and foreign policies. The hypothesis is put forward that the messianic narrations are furtive, though unalienable factors which propel and justify Russian domestic and foreign policies. Therefore, it is always worth considering Russian policy-making through the prism of the nation-wide religious self-identification, as well as acknowledging a number of "eschatological duties" which derive from this self-identification. Finally, the article provides an overview to the western scholarly perspectives on Russian messianism with a specific emphasis on British and US contributors.


Patient engagement is essential to improve outcomes and reduce healthcare costs. This study aimed to examine the socio-demographic factors associated with one's capacity to engage in their health care. An observational, cross-sectional study was performed including patients from five medical/surgical units of four health systems. Patients' engagement capacity was assessed using the person engagement index (PEI) instrument which contains four subscales: engagement in health care, technology use in health care, proactive approach to health care, and psychosocial support for health care. Separate general linear models were applied for the PEI total score and each of the four subscale scores. Our results show that younger age was associated with greater technology use in health care. Individuals with higher educational levels have a greater overall engagement and the use of technology in their health care. A higher level of psychosocial support was found among blacks and those being employed. No difference in the proactive approach was found by one's socio-demographic factors. This study illustrated that an individual's age, race, educational level, and employment status were associated with the capacity to engage in different aspects of health care activities. Providers need to assess one's readiness for engagement to deliver customized interventions based on their needs and capacity to engage.


We present computational methods for attribute estimation of photon-counting and photon-processing detectors. We define a photon-processing detector as any imaging device that uses maximum-likelihood methods to estimate photon attributes, such as position, direction of propagation and energy. Estimated attributes are then stored at full precision in thememory of a computer. Accurate estimation of a large number of attributes for each collected photon does require considerable computational power. We show how mass-produced graphics processing units (GPUs) are viable parallel computing solutions capable of meeting the required computing needs of photon-counting and photonprocessing detectors, while keeping overall costs affordable.


U.S. farms, and with them agricultural lending institutions, are currently experiencing their most severe stress since the 1930s. As international trade in farm products has expanded, so has the sensitivity of farm incomes to fluctuations in domestic and world economic conditions. Thus, while price stabilization, acreage reduction, and related policies in place since the 1930s were relatively successful in stabilizing farm income during the 1950s and 1960s, they are likely to be less effective in achieving this goal in the future. Our analysis of state-level panel data indicates that disruptions in agricultural credit markets can have real effects on farm output. That finding is consistent with the conventional wisdom that, unlike credit markets for large firms or for firms for which monitoring is less costly, agricultural financial markets require close customer arrangements. Local financial institutions, for which such relationships are best developed, are often unable for institutional reasons to diversify their loan risks either within agriculture or across other geographically separated activities. The deviations from perfect markets indicate an economic rationale -- in addition to the usual political, social, and national defense rationales -- for government intervention in agricultural credit markets. Our empirical evidence supports the view that maintaining customer relationships in agricultural finance is important. Because of the Farm Credit System's ability to pool agricultural loan risks nationally and its access to national capital markets, it will continue to be an important lender in agricultural credit markets.


Differential cross sections of the photo- and electroproduction of the hypertriton have been calculated by utilizing modern nuclear wave functions and the elementary operator of KAON-MAID. It is found that a proper treatment of Fermi motion is essential for the two processes. Whereas the average momentum approximation can partly simulate the Fermi motion in the process, the 'frozen nucleon' assumption yields very different results, especially at lower energies. The Coulomb effect induced by the interaction between the positively charged kaon and the hypertriton is found to be negligible. The influence of higher partial waves is also found to be relatively small, in contrast to the finding of the previous work. Electroproduction is found to be much more sensitive to the off-shell assumption than is photoproduction. It is shown that the few available experimental data favor the assumption that the initial nucleon is off-shell and the final hyperon is on-shell. This seems to be reasonable, since the hyperon in the hypertriton is less bound than the nucleon in the initial {sup 3}He nucleus. The effect of the missing resonance D{sub 13}(1895) is more profound in the longitudinal cross sections. Excluding this resonance reduces the longitudinal cross sections by one order ofmore » magnitude but does not change the effects of various off-shell assumptions on the cross sections.« less


The traditional assumption in artificial intelligence (AI) is that most expert knowledge ·is encoded in the form of rules. We consider the phenomenon of rea soning from memories of specific episodes, however, to be the foundation of an intelligent system, rather than an adj unct to some other reasoning method. This theory contrasts with much of the current work in similarity-based learning, which tacitly assumes that learning is equivalent to the automatic generation of rules, and differs from work on "explanation-based" and "case-based" reasoning in that it does not depend on having a strong domain model. With the development of new parallel architec tures, specifically the Connection Machine@ system, the operations necessary to implement this approach . to reasoning have become sufficiently fast to allow experimentation. This article describes MBRtalk, an experimental memory-based reasoning system that has been implemented on the Connection Machine, as well as the application of memory-based reason ing to other domains.


Representative assemblages of agglutinated foraminifera from the Paleocene deposits of the Suha outcrop in the Tarcău Nappe (Eastern Carpathians, Romania) were analyzed using diversity indices, morphogroups and foraminiferal biofacies in order to describe the paleoenvironmental and palaeobathymetrical conditions of the studied area. The results suggest bathyal environments, close to the Carbonate Compensation Depth (CCD) and a flysch type biofacies. The assemblages are dominated by coarsely agglutinated flysch-type taxa: tubular (Nothia, Rhizammina, Rhabdammina), globular (Saccammina), flattened planispiral and streptospiral (Rzehakina) and flattened streptospiral forms (Paratrochamminoides and Trochamminoides). The agglutinated foraminifera morphogroups display variations through the section suggesting changes in the amount of organic matter, oxygen and seafloor disturbance caused by the local influence of the turbiditic flows. Based on the presence of the index taxa Rzehakina fissistomata throughout the entire section, the deposits were assigned to the Paleocene Izvor Formation.


sphere encrusted with reindeer antler tines, an intricate bone-laden tapestry and sculptural flora integrating domestic textiles are only three of the many works unveiled in this first ever comprehensive look at tactile works by Norwegian artist Aslaug M. Juliussen (b. 1953). Self-reflections upon her life and everyday experiences with the Arctic landscape shape the imagery in her work, as evidenced by her choice of materials and techniques. Juliussen explores materials that speak to culture and tradition in Northern Norway, and the Sami culture in particular. The publication comprises engaging cross-disciplinary essays that illustrate the multifaceted aspects of Juliussen as an artist. Scholars from such diverse fields as biology, philosophy, gender studies and art history look at Juliussen's art from multiple perspectives and thus enable a new dialogue on art in the context of a European indigenous culture. Published to accompany the exhibitions at Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum, Tromso (NO), 20 October 2018-31 March 2019 and at Blaafarvevaerket, Modum (NO), Summer 2019 and at Anchorage Museum, Alaska (USA), Autumn/Winter 2019.


The continuing stalemate in the headscarf controversy in Turkey stems from a mutual distrust about the way the concepts of secularism, democracy, and religious freedom are understood. Both Kemalist secularism, which defends the headscarf ban for the sake of protecting the secular regime, and liberal secularism, which opposes the ban for the sake of protecting the freedom of religion of Sunni Muslims, are short of offering a truly secular perspective that can come to terms with patriarchy in both its secular and Islamic varieties. This article argues that this impasse caused by fears about either top-down Islamization or secularization can be overcome only when women's rights and freedoms at large become the main concern for all parties in the debate.


Background and aims: One of the most important health procedures to control nosocomial infections is skin disinfection. This action is absolutely necessary to disinfect the skin before surgery. This action reduces the nosocomial infections significantly. Regarding the importance of this subject, in this study, two surgical areas: Preps with Betadine and Chlorhexidine has been compared. Methods: This study was three stages, double-blind clinical trial that was performed on sixty-four patients who was electively candidate for hand surgery and randomly divided into two Povidone iodine 7.5 and Chlorhexidine groups. Sample for culturing was obtained from area, before, and after prep, and after operation. Data were recorded in checklist and analyzed using independent t-test, chi-square, and repeated measure of ANOVA. Results: Results show that bacterial levels significantly reduced and reached to zero when preparation of skin was based on chlorhexidine formulation (P=0.001). In the povidone iodine group the mean number of bacteria was reduced significantly (P=0.001) in three times. The average number of bacteria after preparation with chlorhexidine significantly reduced when compare to Povidone iodine, but after operation it not significant between two groups (P=0.770). Conclusion: Although using antiseptic before surgery is essential, choosing the right solution in some cases faced with challenges. Chlorhexidine in prep before surgery could safely reduce the amount of bacteria. This study recommended using chlorhexidine rather than povidone iodine in surgical procedures, because it is more effective to reduce the number of skin surface bacteria.


There have been several incidents when Navy sonar operations at sea coincided in time and location with the mass stranding of marine mammals, particularly beaked whales. Filadelfo et al. (this issue) compiled historical data on large-scale naval exercises and found significant correlations with whale mass strandings in some locations but not in others. In the present study, we compile information on Navy operations off southern California and single strandings of several cetacean species to see if there is a correlation between strandings and Navy exercises in this area. We use information on the state of decomposition of the stranded animals to treat the actual time of stranding as a random variable, and we simulate the correlation between Navy activity and strandings with a Monte Carlo model. For gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus), the 95% confidence interval (CI) for the ratio of odds of a stranding occurring as a result of Navy exercises to the odds of a stranding occurring naturally was (0.879, 1.582), consistent with the null hypothesis of no difference in stranding rates between times of Navy exercises and other times. For other species, the 95% CI for the odds ratio was (0.716, 1.394), which is, again, consistent with the null hypothesis.


For pt. I see IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol. A smart antenna, i.e., a blind adaptive antenna array, has attracted much attention to improve the capacity of a future code-division multiple-access wireless communications system. It has been demonstrated that there is significant improvement in data demodulation through lab simulations and field experiments by employing a smart antenna of multiple elements. However, only one element is used for the pseudonoise (PN) code acquisition process, which is a coarse PN code synchronization prior to data demodulation. This paper proposes a simple and practical PN code acquisition scheme, which employs all elements in the smart antenna. Also, this paper uses an adaptive threshold for the PN code acquisition. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can significantly improve the PN code acquisition performance, e.g., the PN code acquisition time will be half as long by employing five elements rather than the single element at a given bit-energy-to-interference power spectral density ratio.


The present research work entails synthesis and pharmacological screening of chemically modified N-aryl chitosan derivatives. Chitosan is an amino polysaccharide obtained from natural origin and it has attracted attention because of its unique physicochemical characteristics and biological activities. It has great pharmaceutical futuristic potential with unusual extent of possibilities for structural modifications to impart desired functions. This chemically modified chitosan can be used as potent hypocholesterolemic agent. Various aldehydes can be used for the chemical modification of chitosan, where aldehyde attached to the free amino group of chitosan polymer imparts different physicochemical properties, not exhibited before modification. An imine formation as an intermediate is then reduced to N-aryl derivative of chitosan. It was characterised by IR and NMR. The hypocholesterolemic mechanism of chitosan was investigated in male wistar rats. Animals were divided into 6 groups (n = 6): a normal untreated control group (UC), a high-fat control group (PC), one standard control (SC) and 3 modified chitosan groups (CSA1, CSA2 and CSA3). The doses of standard chitosan and modified chitosan were given at the beginning for 12 days. Later it was preceded by high fat induction. The results showed marked decrease in total serum cholesterol of rat's in-vivo that refers to modified chitosan treatment.


Summary: Mother-to-child HIV prevention trials in sub-Saharan Africa use the US National Institutes of Health Division of AIDS (DAIDS) grading scale to monitor hematologic toxicity. A recent study of nevirapine prophylaxis given for 6 months in breast-feeding Zimbabwean infants reported several cases of relative neutropenia in clinically well infants, raising concerns of drug toxicity. However, the DAIDS tables are based on normal blood counts for white infants, although there is evidence that black African infants may have lower absolute neutrophil counts (ANCs) than white infants. To establish normal hematologic values in black Zimbabwean infants and to quantify the apparent prevalence of relative neutropenia in this population, we evaluated HIV-uninfected healthy infants born to HIV-uninfected women at birth, 10 days, 6 weeks, 3, and 4 months of life. A physical examination and blood count were performed at each visit, and an HIV test was performed at the final visit. The ANC values were graded using the DAIDS table. A total of 145 healthy term infants satisfied the inclusion criteria. The mean ANC values for Zimbabwean infants were less than half of the corresponding standard values at all 5 time points (P < 0.0001). Using the DAIDS table in use at the time that the blood was collected, 57% of these healthy infants had relative neutropenia of any grade at birth, followed by 29% at day 10, 53% at 6 weeks, 32% at 3 months, and 37% at 4 months of life. Our data indicate that relative neutropenia exists in healthy black Zimbabwean infants. The guidelines for identifying toxicity were changed in December 2004. However, even by the new DAIDS tables, 43%, 23%, 24%, 42%, and 43% of these healthy babies had relative neutropenia at the time of the 5 visits. Future HIV prevention and treatment trials in sub-Saharan Africa should use normal hematologic values derived from African infants to avoid the overestimation of antiretroviral drug toxicity.


From the palaces of the Habsburg Empire to the torture chambers of Stalin's Soviet Union, this is the extraordinary story of a life suspended between the collapse of the imperial order and the violent emergence of modern EuropeWilhelm Von Habsburg wore the uniform of the Austrian officer, the court regalia of a Habsburg archduke, the simple suit of a Parisian exile, the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece, and, every so often, a dress. He could handle a sabre, a pistol, a rudder or a golf club; he handled women by necessity and men for pleasure. He spoke the Italian of his archduchess mother, the German of his archduke father, the English of his British royal friends, the Polish of the country his father wished to rule, and the Ukrainian of the land Wilhelm wished to rule himself.In this exhilarating narrative history, prize-winning historian, Timothy D Snyder offers an indelible portrait of an aristocrat whose life personifies the wrenching upheavals of the first half of the twentieth century, as the rule of empire gave way to the new politics of nationalism. Coming of age during the First World War, Wilhelm repudiated his family to fight alongside Ukrainian peasants in hopes that he would become their king. When this dream collapsed he became by turns an ally of German imperialists, a notorious French lover, an angry Austrian monarchist, a calm opponent of Hitler and a British spy against Stalin.Played out in Europe's glittering capitals and bloody battlefields, in extravagant ski resorts and dank prison cells, "The Red Prince" captures an extraordinary moment in the history of Europe, in which the old order of the past was giving way to an undefined future - and in which everything, including identity itself, seemed up for grabs.


Emergence of chironomids started in mid-April, and reached a peak at the end of April and in the beginning of May. Most "spring" chiro nomids emerged around noon, whereas the majority of chironomids emerg ing later in the season, appeared at night. In general, there was a positive correlation between the seasonal emergencl~ of chironomids and gleaning frequency by individual Wigeon. Gleaning was observed exclusively on emergent vegetation in the morning and evening. During midday, gleaning occurred most frequently on water surface probably due to the diel emergence and swarming patterns of chironomids. Gleaning was most frequently used by females, which is mainly due to their higher energetic requirements during the breeding seasons. I conclude that the increasing abundance of emerging chironomids in the spring is one important factor affecting time of nesting by Wigeon.


We demonstrate a simple all-fiber device that can transform a Gaussian-shaped laser beam into a uniform intensity beam. The device is based on the interaction of a core mode and a cladding mode partially coupled out by a long-period grating. We have achieved good beam uniformity (<4% intensity variation) and reduced beam divergence (1.5deg of half divergence angle) while keeping the insertion loss to 0.1 dB. The measured beam uniformity matches well with simulated results. The device can also change the beam shape from a Gaussian to a donut, to top hat, and back to a Gaussian, dynamically by tuning the laser wavelength.


The nitrogen fixation rates of planktonic and intertidal benthic cyanobacteria were investigated in Sanya Bay from 2003 to 2005. Trichodesmium thiebautii was the dominant species of planktonic cyanobacteria during our study. Significant seasonal and spatial variations in Trichodesmium spp. abundance were observed (P < 0.01). The highest Trichodesmium concentrations occurred during intermonsoon periods and in the outer region of Sanya Bay (Outer Bay stations). At fixed station S03 the abundance of T. thiebautii ranged from 1.14 x 10(3) to 2060 x 10(3) trichomes m(-2), with an annual mean of 273 x 10(3) trichomes m(-2). The average nitrogen fixation rate per colony of T thiebautii was 0.27 nmol N h(-1) colony(-1) and it did not show any obvious seasonal variations. Nitrogen fixation by planktonic cyanobacteria was highest in the Outer Bay stations, where the estimated amount of new nitrogen introduced by Trichodesmium contributed 0.03 to 1.63% of the total primary production and up to 11.64% of the new production. Statistical results showed that significant seasonal and spatial variations of nitrogen fixation rates were found among the intertidal communities. The main benthic nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria were identified as members of the genera Anabaena, Calothrix, Lyngbya, Nostoc and Oscillatoria. The highest nitrogen fixation rate was found in microbial mats and the lowest in reefs and rocky sediments. All the benthic communities studied presented their highest nitrogen fixation activity in summer, with an average nitrogen fixation rate of 33.31 mu mol N h(-1) m(-2), whereas the lowest nitrogen activity was detected in winter, with an average nitrogen fixation rate of 5.66 mu mol N h(-1) m(-2). A Pearson correlation analysis indicated that the nitrogen fixation rate of three types of intertidal communities was significantly positively correlated to seawater temperature (P < 0.05), whereas only the nitrogen fixation rate of the reefs and rock communities was significantly negatively correlated to seawater salinity (P < 0.05).


In oligotrophic tropical coral reef environments tightly coupled benthic-pelagic material fluxes
represent key biogeochemical processes sustaining high benthic productivity and overall ecosystem functioning.
Tropical storms can severely impact the physico-chemical state of marine coastal ecosystems and are predicted
to increase in intensity on global scale. Although tropical storms cause large-scale habitat devastation, there is
only little information regarding their influence on ecosystem metabolism and benthic-pelagic coupling in
coastal coral reef environments. Thus, this study investigates these processes in a typical Caribbean shallow
water reef lagoon close to Puerto Morelos (Mexico) over the course of the tropical storm "Dolly" (2008).
Pelagic and benthic lagoon metabolism were assessed by measuring oxygen fluxes along with dissolved organic
carbon (DOC), particulate organic matter and chlorophyll a concentrations in lagoon waters. Our findings
characterize the pelagic lagoon compartment as an overall heterotrophic environment, while the benthic
community was generally net autotrophic. Tropical storm impact was clearly detectable by change in monitored
lagoon water parameters and a significantly influence on pelagic and benthic lagoon metabolism, which
responded rapidly (within 1-2 d) to storm-induced environmental change by increased pelagic and lowered
benthic net primary production. Pelagic respiration was significantly increased (up to 11 d) following the later
development of a phytoplankton bloom and concomitantly elevated DOC concentrations, while benthic
respiration remained below pre-storm levels up to the end of the study period. These findings emphasize
compartment-specific and rapid responses by reef lagoon communities with implications for the functioning of
benthic-pelagic coupling affected by tropical storm disturbances.


This essay argues that what has been going on in Palestine for a century has been mischaracterized. Advancing a different perspective, it illuminates the history of the last hundred years as the Palestinians have experienced it. In doing so, it explores key historical documents, including the Balfour Declaration, Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, and UN Security Council Resolution 242, none of which included the Palestinians in key decisions impacting their lives and very survival. What amounts to a hundred years of war against the Palestinians, the essay contends, should be seen in comparative perspective as one of the last major colonial conflicts of the modern era, with the United States and Europe serving as the metropole, and their extension, Israel, operating as a semi-independent settler colony. An important feature of this long war has been the Palestinians9 continuing resistance, against heavy odds, to colonial subjugation. Stigmatizing such resistance as "terrorism" has successfully occluded the real history of the past hundred years in Palestine.


This study examined the effects of feeding of two dietary probiotics on growth performance and feed utilization, intestinal colonization and related health criteria, biochemical parameters, hematological indices, and immune parameters and protection against Yersinia ruckeri in Oncorhynchus mykiss during a period of 56 days. The study included 3 groups:1(a control group of fish, 2) a group of fish fed with a basal commercial diet supplemented with 2 × 10 6 CFU g -1 Pediococcus acidilactici (PAgroup and 3) a group of fish fed with a basal commercial diet supplemented with 2.5 × 10 8 CFU g –1 Enterococcus faecium strain IR5 (EF-group). Each group was run in triplicate. The PA-group and EF-group showed significant improvement with respect to WG, SGR, FCR, PER, lactic acid bacteria (LAB) (%) in intestinal, intestinal colonization (log CFU g– 1 ), survival (%), RBCs, WBCs, hematocrit percentage (Hct %), and respiratory burst activity (RBA) levels, each of which was significantly higher than that in the control group (p<0.05). The WG and PER in the EF-group were significantly higher than that in the PA and control groups (p<0.05). Levels of immune-system response across a variety of measures, some of the measured hematological indices, LAB (%) in intestines, and survival rate (%) were higher in the PA group than that in the EF group on 56th days of feeding. Mortality in the PA group (20%) and EF group (33.3%) were significantly lower compared with that in the positive control (73.3%) during the 10 days following exposure to Y. ruckeri (p<0.05).


The Cryptographic Message Syntax (CMS) allows revocation information
to be conveyed as part of the SignedData, EnvelopedData,
AuthenticatedData, and AuthEnvelopedData content types. The preferred
format for revocation information is the Certificate Revocation List
(CRL), but an extension mechanism supports other revocation
information formats. This document defines two additional revocation
information formats for Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP)
responses and Server-Based Certificate Validation Protocol (SCVP)
requests and responses. [STANDARDS-TRACK]


We compute the form factors for the B → Kl+l- semileptonic decay process in lattice QCD using gauge-field ensembles with 2+1 flavors of sea quark, generated by the MILC Collaboration. The ensembles span lattice spacings from 0.12 to 0.045 fm and have multiple sea-quark masses to help control the chiral extrapolation. The asqtad improved staggered action is used for the light valence and sea quarks, and the clover action with the Fermilab interpretation is used for the heavy b quark. We present results for the form factors f+(q2), f0(q2), and fT(q2), where q2 is the momentum transfer, together with a comprehensive examination of systematic errors. Lattice QCD determines the form factors for a limited range of q2, and we use the model-independent z expansion to cover the whole kinematically allowed range. We present our final form-factor results as coefficients of the z expansion and the correlations between them, where the errors on the coefficients include statistical and all systematic uncertainties. Lastly, we use this complete description of the form factors to test QCD predictions of the form factors at high and low q2.


This paper develops and implements a scalable methodology for (a) estimating the noisiness of labels produced by a typical crowdsourcing semantic annotation task, and (b) reducing the resulting error of the labeling process by as much as 20-30% in comparison to other common labeling strategies. Importantly, this new approach to the labeling process, which we name Dynamic Automatic Conflict Resolution (DACR), does not require a ground truth dataset and is instead based on inter-project annotation inconsistencies. This makes DACR not only more accurate but also available to a broad range of labeling tasks. In what follows we present results from a text classification task performed at scale for a commercial personal assistant, and evaluate the inherent ambiguity uncovered by this annotation strategy as compared to other common labeling strategies.


Aim: The purpose of this study was to determine kisspeptin levels in healthy newborns and to show whether there is significant difference in kisspeptin levels between males and females in the hypothyroid newborns and healthy term newborns. Subjects and Methods: This study was performed prospectively. The newborns were admitted to the Erzurum Atatürk University Medical Faculty Research Hospital Pediatric Endocrinology and Neonatal polyclinic between July and November 2014. In hypothyroid newborns, blood sampling was performed 14−30 days after birth. Twelve hypothyroid newborns, 14 premature newborns and 36 term newborns (as control group) were included. Plasma specimens were investigated using enzyme-immune assay. Significance was set at p < 0.01. Results: In the hypothyroid group, minimum kisspeptin level was 0.48 ng/mL, maximum value 0.78 ng/mL, mean 0.61 ± 0.08 ng/mL. In the premature group, minimum kisspeptin level was 0.27 ng/mL, maximum level 0.97 ng/mL, mean 0.64 ± 0.17 ng/mL. In the control group of healthy term newborns, minimum kisspeptin level was 0.25 ng/mL, maximum level 0.99 ng/mL, mean 0.49 ± 0.17 ng/mL. A statistically significant difference in kisspeptin levels was determined between the hypothyroid and the control groups (p = 0.004). There was also a significant difference in kisspeptin levels between the premature and the control groups (p = 0.010). Conclusion: Kisspeptin may be indicating various play role clarification in the newborn period of various changes. A statistically significance in kisspeptin levels was determined between the hypothyroid and the control groups and also between the premature and the control groups. Kisspeptin levels may point to various clinical states in the newborn.


The mTORC1-dependent signaling pathway is mainly involved in the adverse left ventricular remodeling (ALVR) process after myocardial infarction (MI). However, whether mTORC1 inhibition by cardamonin attenuates ALVR after MI is still not reported. Twenty mice were randomly assigned into three groups: sham group (10 ml/kg/day PBS, n=6), model group (MI and 10 ml/kg/day PBS, n=7) and cardamonin-treated group (MI and 20 mg/kg/day cardamonin, n=7). All groups received an intraperitoneal injection accordingly for two weeks. Heart and body mass were measured. Cardiac function was assessed by echocardiography. The collagen deposition, area of cardiomyocytes and cell apoptosis of border area were evaluated using Masson's staining, WGA staining and TUNEL assay, respectively. The 4E-binding protein 1 (4E-BP1) and ribosomal S6 (S6) in myocardium were determined by western blot. mTOR-Raptor association was tested by co-immunoprecipitation assay in H9C2 cell line. Treatment with cardamonin, MI mice displayed that heart hypertrophy and heart dysfunction were alleviated, and cardiac fibrosis, cardiomyocyte size and cell apoptosis of border area were decreased (P<0.05). Besides, cardamonin can inhibit 4E-BP1 and S6 phosphorylation in heart of MI mice and H9C2 cell line (P<0.05). Furthermore, cardamonin disrupted mTOR-Raptor association in vitro. Cardamonin exerted cardio-protection against ALVR through mTORC1 inhibition.


King Alexander's dictatorship in Yugoslavia (proclaimed in January 1929) was an expression of a real political need for consolidation in the country; however, in essence, it was an autocratic and repressive regime. More decisive moves toward a return of democracy did not occur, even later, after the replacement of his regime in June 1935. The political methods in the internal political life followed the pattern from the first half of the 1930s to the very eve of World War II. Such a situation also defined the relationship between the Slovenes and Yugoslavia. Slovene politics continued to look at the state from two angles – a unitary/centralist angle on the one hand and an autonomist/federalist angle on the other. Both camps (as well as other Yugoslav political players), however, failed to create an environment that would enable truly democratic compromises. The state was stuck at a "standstill," but in spite of all its flaws, in the view of the Slovene political groups it represented the most suitable environment for the political and national life of Slovenes. Any serious political calculations that would go beyond this framework hardly existed.


This thesis presents a new methodology named CASADEMA (CApturing Semi-Automated DEcision MAking) which captures the interaction between humans and the technology they use to support their decision-making within the domain of Information Fusion. We are particularly interested in characterising the interaction between human decision makers and artefacts in semi-automated fusion processes. In our investigation we found that the existing approaches are limited in their ability to capture such interactions in sufficient detail. The presented method is built upon a distributed-cognition perspective. The use of this particular theoretical framework from cognitive science enables the method to take into account not only the role of the data captured in the physical and digital artefacts of the fusion system (e.g., radar readings, information from a fax or database, a piece of paper, etc.), but also the cognitive support function of the artefacts themselves (e.g., as an external memory) as part of the fusion process. That is, the interdependencies between the fusion process and decision-making can be captured. This thesis thus contributes to two main fields. Firstly, it enables, through CASADEMA, a distributed-cognition perspective of fusion processes in the, otherwise, rather technology-oriented field of Information Fusion. This has important conceptual implications, since it views fusion processes as extending beyond the boundary of physical/computer systems, to include humans, technology, and tools, as well as the interactions between them. It is argued that a better understanding of these interactions can lead to a better design of fusion processes, making CASADEMA an important contribution to the information fusion field. Secondly, the thesis provides, again in the form of CASADEMA, a practical application of the distributed-cognition theoretical framework. Importantly, the notations and definitions introduced in CASADEMA structure the otherwise currently rather loosely defined concepts and approaches in distributed cognition research. Hence, the work presented here also contributes to the fields of cognitive science and human-computer interaction.


ABSTRACT Carnivorous wasps of the family Vespidae are known to seek out and disperse the diaspores of at least two North American and two Asian plant species. Attraction of the wasps to the diaspores is likely due to the release of volatile compounds that signal availability of an eliaiosome rich in protein and fat, which the wasps remove before releasing the diaspore. It is thought that this interaction between carnivorous wasps and plants is rare, occurring in just a few plant species. Here, we present our findings on dispersal of spicebush (Calycanthus occidentalis Hook. & Arn.) achenes by carnivorous wasps of the genus Vespula. Observations and experiments were performed with the goals of discovering: how geographically widespread this interaction is; what the reward system is, if any; and, how wasps detect the achenes. Eight populations of C. occidentalis in northern California were used to observe wasps and plants, and to perform experiments on wasp attraction to the achenes. In all examined populations, workers of western yellowjacket (Vespula pensylvanica [de Saussure, 1857]) were observed entering mature Calycanthus receptacles, removing achenes, taking flight with them, and successfully transporting achenes through the air. Receptacles were found to open upward at an average angle of 45° (SD = 29°), preventing the achenes from falling to the ground when mature. No animals other than wasps were observed visiting the receptacles during the observations. Experiments suggest that wasps are attracted to an elaiosome-like organ of the achene. Nutritional analysis shows that this organ is high in fat and protein. Further experiments using solvent extracts of the achenes suggest that the attraction is likely mediated by volatile compounds.


Data augmentation is a simple yet effective way to improve the robustness of deep neural networks (DNNs). Diversity and hardness are two complementary dimensions of data augmentation to achieve robustness. For example, AugMix explores random compositions of a diverse set of augmentations to enhance broader coverage, while adversarial training generates adversarially hard samples to spot the weakness. Motivated by this, we propose a data augmentation framework, termed AugMax, to unify the two aspects of diversity and hardness. AugMax first randomly samples multiple augmentation operators and then learns an adversarial mixture of the selected operators. Being a stronger form of data augmentation, AugMax leads to a significantly augmented input distribution which makes model training more challenging. To solve this problem, we further design a disentangled normalization module, termed DuBIN (Dual-Batch-and-Instance Normalization), that disentangles the instance-wise feature heterogeneity arising from AugMax. Experiments show that AugMax-DuBIN leads to significantly improved out-of-distribution robustness, outperforming prior arts by 3.03%, 3.49%, 1.82% and 0.71% on CIFAR10-C, CIFAR100-C, Tiny ImageNet-C and ImageNet-C. Codes and pretrained models are available: https://github.com/VITA-Group/AugMax.


We present a comprehensive high spatial-resolution imaging study of globular clusters (GCs) in NGC 1399, the central giant elliptical cD galaxy in the Fornax galaxy cluster, conducted with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Using a novel technique to construct drizzled PSF libraries for HST/ACS data, we accurately determine the fidelity of GC structural parameter measurements from detailed artificial star cluster experiments and show the superior robustness of the GC half-light radius, rh, compared with other GC structural parameters, such as King core and tidal radius. The measurement of rh for the major fraction of the NGC 1399 GC system reveals a trend of increasing rh versus galactocentric distance, Rgal, out to about 10 kpc and a flat relation beyond. This trend is very similar for blue and red GCs which are found to have a mean size ratio of rh,red/rh,blue = 0.82 ± 0.11 at all galactocentric radii from the core regions of the galaxy out to ∼ 40 kpc. This suggests that the size difference between blue and red GCs is due to internal mechanisms related to the evolution of their constituent stellar populations. Modeling the mass density profile of NGC 1399 shows that additional external dynamical mechanisms are required to limit the GC size in the galaxy halo regions to rh ≈ 2 pc. We suggest that this may be realized by an exotic GC orbit distribution function, an extended dark matter halo, and/or tidal stress induced by the increased stochasticity in the dwarf halo substructure at larger galactocentric distances. We compare our results with the GC rh distribution functions in various galaxies and find that the fraction of extended GCs with rh ≥ 5 pc is systematically larger in late-type galaxies compared with GC systems in early-type galaxies. This is likely due to the dynamically more violent evolution of early-type galaxies. We match our GC rh measurements with radial velocity data from the literature and split the resulting sample at the median rh value into compact and extended GCs. We find that compact GCs show a significantly smaller line-of-sight velocity dispersion, 〈σcmp〉 = 225±25 km s−1, than their extended counterparts, 〈σext〉 = 317±21 km s−1. Considering the weaker statistical correlation in the GC rh-color and the GC rh-Rgal relations, the more significant GC sizedynamics relation appears to be astrophysically more relevant and hints at the dominant influence of the GC orbit distribution function on the evolution of GC structural parameters. Subject headings: galaxies: star clusters: general — globular clusters: general — galaxies: formation — galaxies: evolution — galaxies: individual: NGC 1399


Summary

1
Farmland is readily divisible into linear habitats such as hedges, and non-linear habitats such as fields and woodlots. In agricultural landscapes, conservationists have generally focused on enhancing linear habitats, but there are few data from which to judge whether or not this is a good strategy for biodiversity.

2
We investigated whether the linear or non-linear character of habitat patches, mediated by edge effects, has an impact on the abundance, diversity and richness of the small mammal communities that live within and between them.

3
In particular, we hypothesized, first, that edge effects cause narrow linear habitats to be avoided by specialists such as the bank vole Clethrionomys glareolus, but not by generalists such as the wood mouse Apodemus sylvaticus; secondly, that edge effects lead to specialists being present in atypical habitat, through excursions at the interface between two habitats.

4
We tested these hypotheses by live-trapping small mammals in grids in the centres of three non-linear farmland habitats (woodlots, set-aside and crop fields) and in field boundaries consisting of a series of adjoining linear habitats. We compared mammal communities in the non-linear habitats with the field boundary as a whole, and with the individual linear habitat elements within the boundary.

5
There was no evidence that specialists avoided linear habitats. Indeed, the field boundary was the most species-rich habitat surveyed, and bank voles were more abundant in linear hedgerow than in non-linear woodland. Bank voles were present in linear set-aside and in the crop edge, but never in non-linear blocks of set-aside or crop, implying that they diffused out of the hedgerow into the adjacent habitats. There was no evidence of an effect of habitat linearity on field voles Microtus agrestis, wood mice or common shrews Sorex araneus.

6
Our results suggest that on uncropped land such as set-aside, the linear or non-linear character of habitats will make little difference to small mammal abundance and diversity. We advocate similar assessments for other taxa so that the effects of farm management and habitat configuration on biodiversity can be understood more fully.


On the 2nd of December 2015 the House of Commons of the UK Parliament passed a resolution approving military involvement by British forces in Syria. On the 4th December 2015 the German Bundestag followed suit. Both decisions were precipitated by the attacks in Paris on the 13th November 2015, and United Nations Security Council Resolution 2249 which followed them.

There were however some significant differences: In the UK House of Commons the motion which ended by saying that the House "supports Her Majesty's Government in taking military action, specifically airstrikes, exclusively against ISIL in Syria; and offers its wholehearted support to Her Majesty's Armed Forces" was passed by a majority of 397 to 223. In the German Bundestag the recommendation of the foreign affairs committee on the application of the federal government for the deployment of German armed forces for the averting and preventing of terrorist activities by the terrorist organisation IS was approved by a majority of 445 to 146 with 7 abstentions. The House of Commons debate lasted about ten hours. The Bundestag debate lasted for two periods of 77 minutes.

In France, where the attacks took place, a 4 hour Parliamentary debate without a vote had already preceded a military intervention on 15 Sep. 2015. Parliament further approved a continuation of the French military intervention in Syria on 25 November 2015 following a 2 hour by an overwhelming majority of 515 to 4 with 10 abstentions at the Assemblee Nationale and a near unanimous majority of 325 to 0 with 21 abstentions at the Senat.

These debates demonstrate a clear recognition that democratic legitimation of some kind is necessary when a government uses armed force outside its territory, but the basis, procedure, timing for doing so is markedly different.

It therefore seems appropriate to review the stages reached in these three countries in a growing tendency to require democratic legitimation of the use of armed force abroad, and determine whether it is heading towards a jus common, or whether the differences will remain entrenched as highlighted by Pierre Legrand's theory that, despite the appearances, European legal systems are actually not converging


The direct path from prebiotic chemistry to the RNA World requires a plausible route for the synthesis of activated ribonucleotides and RNA templates, along with a means for the complete replication of potentially useful RNA sequences. However, many apparent roadblocks make non-enzymatic RNA replication look quite difficult, if not impossible. These problems include the slow rate, low accuracy and poor regioselectivity of non-enzymatic template copying, the hydrolysis of activated monomers and absence of good re-activation chemistry, the difficulty of strand separation after template copying, the rapidity of strand reannealing, the absence of primers in any realistic replication scenario, and the apparent incompatibly of RNA copying chemistry (which requires a high Mg2+ concentration) with fatty acid-based protocell membranes, which are destroyed by low Mg2+ concentrations. I will discuss recent progress from my laboratory on four of these issues. We have found that functional RNAs such as aptamers and ribozymes can tolerate moderate levels of 2′–5′ linkages without great loss of activity. It therefore appears that the presence of 10–25% of such linkages in the products of non-enzymatic copying would not prevent the evolution of functional RNAs. Furthermore, 2′–5′ linkages can be helpful, as they decrease the melting temperature of RNA duplexes enough to allow strand separation to occur under geophysically plausible conditions. Recently, we have found that small chemical changes to the nucleobases can greatly increase the fidelity of non-enzymatic template copying, and we have found conditions that render RNA copying chemistry compatible with vesicle integrity, thereby allowing RNA copying to occur inside fatty acid-based model protocell membranes. I will discuss potential approaches to solving the remaining issues that stand in the way of complete RNA replication. If all of the problems with RNA replication can be overcome, it should be possible to construct functioning protocells in the laboratory.


Background: The causes of noncontact anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury pose a great mystery in the orthopedic field.[1] About 100,000 ACL injuries are sustained annually in the United States of America, approximately 70% of the previously mentioned cases are of a noncontact origin.[2],[3],[4] For such a common injury, it will be a great effort to search and address possible modifiable risk factors associated with noncontact ACL injury to establish a preventive measures that will decrease the incidence of it. Hypothesis: The anthropometric measurements are risk factors for noncontact ACL injury. Materials and Methods: This study was held in a retrospective fashion, the population will include patients from our institution with a sample size of 2000 cases that will be filtered according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Data analysis was performed by expertise. Data Collection: We used medical records of patient with noncontact ACL injury reconstruction for analysis and review. Data included anthropometric measurements (height, mass, gender, and age at the time of surgery). The targeted population for the study thus includes the following; patients who sustained ACL injuries. We obtained data from records of around 2000 patients with noncontact ACL injuries from 1996 to 2012, which were filtered according to inclusion and exclusions criteria. Inclusion criteria include (1) patients with noncontact ACL injury and (2) subjects with an age range from 25 to 55. Exclusion criteria are (1) traumatic ACL injury, (2) partial ACL injuries, (3) previous ACL reconstructions, (4) multiligamentous injuries, and (5) acute or previous hamstring injuries. Data Analysis: In our analysis, the sample size was 468 subjects, 212 among contacts (45.3%), and 256 among noncontact (54.7%) although we could have benefit from a large number of female subjects (male 98.9%, female 1.1%) to compare the results with male subjects, the current number that we have is proved to be a good predictive model. The mean age of subjects, 27.16 years for subjects with contact ACL injury, standard deviation (SD) = 6.330 and 28.00 years for subjects with noncontact ACL injury, SD = 6.873, and P = 0.172. Results: Incidence of ACL injury in obese and nonobese subjects: We define obesity in our study as subject with a body mass index (BMI) >30 is considered as an obese while a subject with a BMI <30 considered as nonobese, the results has showed that subjects who sustained contact ACL injury and obese = 27%, subjects with contact ACL injury and nonobese = 73.2%. While subjects with noncontact ACL injury and obese = 27%; nonobese = 73%. Noncontact ACL versus contact ACL injury in terms of anthropometric measurements: The anthropometric measurements that we study are height, weight, BMI. There was no main significant difference of anthropometric measurement on contact and noncontact ACL injuries groups. We have found that the mean of the weight of contact ACL injury group = 79.64 ± 15.6 and in noncontact ACL injury group was found to be 80.314 ± 16.4 with a P = 0.664. The other variable is height: in contact ACL injury group, the mean was 170.406, and in noncontact ACL injury group, it was 170.509, with P = 0.884. The last variable is BMI with mean 27.377 ± 5.05 among contact ACL injury, while 27.56 ± 5.21 among noncontact ACL injury group. Conclusion: In this study, we addressed the relationship between anthropometric measurement and noncontact ACL injury in middle-aged patient. Our results show that BMI, weight, height are not significantly considered as risk factor for noncontact ACL injury. There was no comparison in men and women.


Quality control measures are needed in distance education. The author examined the strengths and weaknesses of course delivery in distance education and provided recommendations for a successful series of steps that should be followed in course development to assure quality control. Quality control measures can become valuable tools to enhance the educational delivery of distance and online coursework and develop the professional competence of instructors. Measures can range from course oversight by trained personnel, to mandated components that are common within all courses. New technologies especially in rich multimedia and asynchronous communication methods allow for increased learning opportunities. Students can have access to a vast wealth of content available over various media, and if correctly designed and navigated, take control of their own learning. However, quality high-value learning will not take place unless common design elements are put into place for all distance learning courses. These elements include rich multimedia, asynchronous communication, and the mentoring of faculty that teach distance and online courses. Distance learning is gaining momentum in higher education. The student of today would select a distance or online course over a formal class if given the chance to choose. The literature on distance education and online learning is growing and this contribution will add to that body of literature.


Given the ever-increasing complexity of adaptable software systems and their commonly hidden internal information (e.g., software runs in the public cloud), machine learning based performance modeling has gained momentum for evaluating, understanding and predicting software performance, which facilitates better informed self-adaptations. As performance data accumulates during the run of the software, updating the performance models becomes necessary. To this end, there are two conventional modeling methods: the retrained modeling that always discard the old model and retrain a new one using all available data; or the incremental modeling that retains the existing model and tunes it using one newly arrival data sample. Generally, literature on machine learning based performance modeling for adaptable software chooses either of those methods according to a general belief, but they provide insufficient evidences or references to justify their choice. This paper is the first to report on a comprehensive empirical study that examines both modeling methods under distinct domains of adaptable software, 5 performance indicators, 8 learning algorithms and settings, covering a total of 1,360 different conditions. Our findings challenge the general belief, which is shown to be only partially correct, and reveal some of the important, statistically significant factors that are often overlooked in existing work, providing evidence-based insights on the choice.


The issue central to this study can be considered one of the most pressing facing the World Council of Churches today and in the decades to come, and is much greater than that which confronted the International Mission Council in the years 1910 to1938. The question answered in this study is: what significance can the theology of religions, as it developed between 1910 (Edinburgh) and 1938 (Tambaram), have for present-day endeavours to develop a more common understanding and vision within the ecumenical movement as regards the theological problem of religious plurality? This significance becomes clear in the conclusions and suggestions in the final chapter. One of these conclusions is that classic Trinitarian theology and Pneumatology will be incapable of drawing the theology of religions out of the present impasse as long as traditional Christological models continue to exist within them. A commemoration of the Edinburgh meeting will undoubtedly be organized in 2010; and in view of this commemoration Dr van Lin suggests considering the possibility of starting a process of reflection on the World Council of Churches' theology of religions, similar to those on Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, and Towards the Common Expression of the Apostolic Faith Today. Given the fact that the study of religious plurality shakes the ecumenical movement to its foundations, within the foreseeable futures serious thought has to be given to placing the study of the theology of religions on the agenda of Faith and Order within the World Council of Churches.


According to the mental continuity claim (MCC), human mental faculties are physical and beneficial to human survival, so they must have evolved gradually from ancestral forms and we should expect to see their precursors across species. Materialism of mind coupled with Darwin's evolutionary theory leads directly to such claims and even today arguments for animal mental properties are often presented with the MCC as a premise. However, the MCC has been often challenged among contemporary scholars. It is usually argued that only humans use language and that language as such has no precursors in the animal kingdom. Moreover, language is quite often understood as a necessary tool for having representations and forming beliefs. As a consequence, by lacking language animals could not have developed representational systems or beliefs. In response to these worries, we aim to mount a limited defense of the MCC as an empirical hypothesis. First, we will provide a short historical overview of the origins of the MCC and examine some of the motives behind traditional arguments for and against it. Second, we will focus on one particular question, namely whether language as such is necessary for having beliefs. Our goal is to show that there is little reason to think language is necessary for belief. In doing so, we will challenge a view of belief that is widely accepted by those working in animal cognition, namely representational belief, and we will argue that if belief is non-representational, then different research questions and methods are required. We will conclude with an argument that to study the evolution of belief across species, it is essential to begin the study of subjects in their social and ecological environment rather than in contexts that are not ecologically valid along the social and ecological dimensions. Thus, rather than serving as a premise in an argument in favor of animal minds, the MCC can only be defended by empirical investigation, but importantly, empirical investigation of the right sort.


Abstract Phosphoglycerate kinase 2 (PGK2), an isozyme that catalyzes the first ATP-generating step in the glycolytic pathway, is encoded by an autosomal retrogene that is expressed only during spermatogenesis. It replaces the ubiquitously expressed phosphoglycerate kinase 1 (PGK1) isozyme following repression of Pgk1 transcription by meiotic sex chromosome inactivation during meiotic prophase and by postmeiotic sex chromatin during spermiogenesis. The targeted disruption of Pgk2 by homologous recombination eliminates PGK activity in sperm and severely impairs male fertility, but does not block spermatogenesis. Mating behavior, reproductive organ weights (testis, excurrent ducts, and seminal vesicles), testis histology, sperm counts, and sperm ultrastructure were indistinguishable between Pgk2−/− and wild-type mice. However, sperm motility and ATP levels were markedly reduced in males lacking PGK2. These defects in sperm function were slightly less severe than observed in males lacking glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase, spermatogenic (GAPDHS), the isozyme that catalyzes the step preceding PGK2 in the sperm glycolytic pathway. Unlike Gapdhs−/− males, the Pgk2−/− males also sired occasional pups. Alternative pathways that bypass the PGK step of glycolysis exist. We determined that one of these bypass enzymes, acylphosphatase, is active in mouse sperm, perhaps contributing to phenotypic differences between mice lacking GAPDHS or PGK2. This study determined that PGK2 is not required for the completion of spermatogenesis, but is essential for sperm motility and male fertility. In addition to confirming the importance of the glycolytic pathway for sperm function, distinctive phenotypic characteristics of Pgk2−/− mice may provide further insights into the regulation of sperm metabolism.


We study the propagation of elastic waves in the time-harmonic regime in a waveguide which is unbounded in one direction and bounded in the two other (transverse) directions. We assume that the waveguide is thin in one of these transverse directions, which leads us to consider a Kirchhoff-Love plate model in a locally perturbed 2D strip. For time harmonic scattering problems in unbounded domains, well-posedness does not hold in a classical setting and it is necessary to prescribe the behaviour of the solution at infinity. This is challenging for the model that we consider and constitutes our main contribution. Two types of boundary conditions are considered: either the strip is simply supported or the strip is clamped. The two boundary conditions are treated with two different methods. For the simply supported problem, the analysis is based on a result of Hilbert basis in the transverse section. For the clamped problem, this property does not hold. Instead we adopt the Kondratiev's approach, based on the use of the Fourier transform in the unbounded direction, together with techniques of weighted Sobolev spaces with detached asymptotics. After introducing radiation conditions, the corresponding scattering problems are shown to be well-posed in the Fredholm sense. We also show that the solutions are the physical (outgoing) solutions in the sense of the limiting absorption principle.


We introduce a density-functional perturbational scheme based on ultrasoft pseudopotentials for calculating dielectric tensors of periodic systems. We obtain a variational functional for the second-order derivative of the energy with respect to an electric field. Our scheme makes use of the correspondence between all-electron and pseudo-wave-functions introduced in the projector augmented wave method. While we here specifically focus on ultrasoft pseudopotentials, our scheme also covers the case of norm-conserving ones. In the latter case, our formulation coincides with earlier ones but highlights the implied approximations. By construction, our scheme also applies to the all-electron projector augmented wave method. We first assess the validity of our scheme by calculating polarizability tensors and Raman intensities of small molecules (H2O, CH4, NH3). We find good agreement with both experimental data and previous all-electron results. We then illustrate the potential of our scheme for treating systems of relatively large size through an application to a disordered model structure of vitreous silica.


This research aims to explore the human and nonhuman means by which human agency
in MMOGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Games) is governed and negotiated. In this
thesis a theoretical framework incorporating three theoretical perspectives is adopted to
cope with the composite virtual, technical, and social 'spaces' of MMOGs.
The spaces of the MMOG are situated within Bourdieu's theories of field and capital,
while the strategies and position-taking by actors within these fields are framed in a
post-Foucauldian dialectic of governance, with particular emphasis on themes of control
and surveillance. Finally, the complexity and agency of MMOGs in comparison to the
architecture of the traditional panoptic institution, as arrays of interrelated technical
objects, is accounted for by incorporating an actor network (ANT) perspective on nonhuman
agency, with specific reference to Madeline Akrich's 'De-Scription of Technical
Objects'.
Participant observation has been selected for the methodological approach to data
collection for this study, conducted in two month-long participant observation periods in
two vastly different MMOGs: 'World of Warcraft' (WoW) and 'Eve-Online' (Eve).
Mixed methods are used in analysis, consisting of a grounded theory approach to open
coding, supported by documentary sources. Findings are discussed in comparative
mode, allowing for a greater level of understanding of the human and nonhuman forms
of governance and the different impact the coded game environment has upon human
agency.
Key findings highlight that the most significant forms of player agency and governance
in each case are those are those negotiated by players, through obtaining authorial
control over the coded rules that define the gameworld, despite publishers' vast power
to define the gameworld through inscribing the code itself. These player-mandated
practices of governance are usually framed as game play, and as they may be negotiated,
their form and function are complex and shifting. This study aims to illustrate this by
contrasting players' practices of governance and with coded rules in each case.


This report provides an overview of capacity-building activities undertaken after 18 months of implementation of the PforR and draws the lessons learned that can be replicated by other similar programs in the region and beyond. All activities in this report have been planned and implemented by the government and WSP provided funding and technical support. The remainder of this report is structured as follows: section two provides an overview of the design of capacity-building support. Section three presents the methodology for the implementation of the capacity-building activities and the challenges faced during implementation. Section four presents the case studies which provide detailed information on capacity-building support for procurement, citizen engagement, and M&E. Section five draws lessons learned from the abovementioned case studies. Appendix B includes the main outputs and materials produced as part of the capacity-building support.


Mediated mega-events are essentially projects of belonging: about imagining communities and about creating attachment to such collective selves. However, events like the Olympic Games are not only an opportunity for states to reinforce official constructions of belonging but can also be sites for the articulation and dissemination of contesting identity narratives. This article investigates Russian media narratives around the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, mainstream as well as alternative. It is argued that the Russian regime uses the Olympics to create national and global visibility for a specific project of belonging: that of a re-emerging great power — strong and united — but also an inclusive and tolerant place which can serve as an international example of ethnic and religious conviviality. This imagined community, however, rests on exclusions and silences. In addition, three alternative projects of belonging, emerging from the Circassian diaspora, LGBT rights activists and Islamists, are examined. Although these are very different, they all attempt to use the spotlight of the Sochi Olympics to disrupt the mainstream narrative and create visibility for challenging imaginations of community. On the more general level the article argues that the media contestations around the Sochi Olympics provide an insight into how the quest for visibility has become a central dynamic in the Russian media environment.


Since around the 1950s, hundreds of articles have been published in social science that are concerned with the concept of authority and authoritarianism and how both relate to religion. Despite this tremendous volume of research, two camps have emerged that have failed to incorporate the ideas of the other. Psychologists contend that deference to authority is primarily a personality-driven variable and is often shaped by subconscious and undetected psychological processes that are unchangeable once established. In contrast, sociologists contend that authoritarianism is largely a product of interaction in a social environment. This perspective suggests that religion is one of many factors that help to shape the authoritarian outlook of individuals, along with political and economic variables. Neither of these approaches has managed to synthesize their perspectives into a unified whole.
 In addition, while many scholars have included some aspect of religion in their analysis, little scholarship has placed it at the center of the inquiry. As a result, there has been no well-defined and thoroughly tested theory of religious authority, despite the fact that authority has driven two of the most important recent religious movements in the United States: the Religious Right and the Emergent Church Movement.
 Several suggestions are offered as means to make measurable progress in the field of religion and regard for authority. One way forward is to generate and test a battery of questions that measures authority from a uniquely religious perspective. Another opportunity lies in scholars measuring the deference to authority levels that exist in different religious traditions. These comparisons could be between Jews and Catholics, or even inside the larger Protestant tradition. Finally, scholars should make a concerted effort to connect clergy with their congregations as a means to discern if perceptions of authority are congruent between a religious leader and his or her parishioners.


Democratic theories that argue for expanding the scope and domain of democracy assume that democratic experiences will transform individuals in democratic ways. Individuals are likely to become more public-spirited, tolerant, knowledgeable, and self-reflective than they would otherwise be. This assumption depends on viewing the self as socially and discursively constituted, a view that contrasts with the standard liberal-democratic view of the self as prepolitically constituted and narrowly self-interested. The importance of the social and discursive view of the self is that it highlights how standard assumptions about the self help to justify limits to democratic participation. As now conceptualized, however, the transformational assumption does not meet standard objections to expanding democracy. I sketch an approach that distinguishes classes of interests according to their potentials for democratic transformation, and strengthens—by qualifying—transformative expectations in democratic theory.


In the nineteen-thirties, Irish poet and critic Thomas MacGreevy elaborated a project of interpreting and promoting artistic and literary modernism as complementary to a Catholic worldview. He published a handful of slim volumes, including one collection of poems and two particularly important studies of T.S. Eliot and Jack B. Yeats, which set forth an aesthetic program arguing that the great American poet and Irish painter were each, in some sense, expressive of a sensibility that found its full realization only within the Catholic Church. A decade ago, critics Terence Brown and Tim Armstrong suggested that MacGreevy was engaged in an explicit project to Catholicize modernism, and that this was by and large an aberrant performance exiled from the main stage of the movement and fated to signify little? (1) ********** I want to examine MacGreevy's critical works in the interest of suggesting three related propositions that can help us reevaluate common assumptions about the nature of artistic modernism as well as its historical constitution. First, following Pericles Lewis's recent essay, "Church Going in the Modern Novel," I want to call into question the "secularization hypothesis" that claims the aesthetics of modernism were intrinsically hostile to Christianity as it existed historically in the West, and were therefore part of a large cultural shift in which technological, economic and political modernization were thought to bring about a secular society. (2) For the scope of this essay, I shall follow the conventional analysis that modernist aesthetics is driven by a desire to represent in capacious form the diverse, often irreconcilably fragmented, elements of experience; by an equally powerful desire to acknowledge the fragmentation of culture and the individual, even as it longs for a means of ordering it by a historically recuperative or transcendental system. As Lewis suggests, these features of modernism do not necessitate opposition to traditional Christianity. Or rather, they are not themselves a secularizing process. As Fredric Jameson has argued, the very concept of a historical-cultural break throws us back on those "cyclical" and "typological" practices that inform Christian historiography. (3) In a very different way, I shall consider how MacGreevy recognized that this despair of and concern with fragmentation characteristic of literary modernism insisted desperately upon the need for a god. Second, and corollary to this first point, I hope to show that MacGreevy constructed a critical framework in which to define modernist art so that it seemed to reflect attributes he believed were central to Catholicism. In doing so, he was asserting that Catholicism was the condition of possibility for all great art and that it was the answer to the particular questions posed by modernist artistic methods. Third, I wish to situate MacGreevy's readings of Eliot and Yeats in the context of the Irish Free State. MacGreevy did not merely recast the traditional sectarian baiting between Protestants and Catholics that has racked Irish politics for generations by figuring modernism as Catholic. Rather, MacGreevy advanced his idea of Catholic modernism, or the Catholicity of modernism, as a way of transcending those lines of conflict. His writing is directed against the primarily Irish Protestant program of Celtic cultural nationalism forged during the revival period in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The revivalists hoped to unite Protestants and Catholics alike within the roman tic anthropology of pagan folk traditions. Even more so, his critical project seeks to correct the program of Irish Catholic nationalism that writers like Daniel Corkery had been promoting since the Irish Free State came into being in the early nineteen twenties. Corkery promoted ruralism and Catholicism, stitched to the flag of nationalism, as the defining trinity of Irish identity. (4) While MacGreevy had evident sympathy with all three, he insisted that mankind's final cause lay well beyond the political in the eschatological, and that, therefore, to subordinate Catholicism as a facet of Irish identity was a serious intellectual and moral error. …


For the analysis of an algorithm to generate binary trees, the behaviour of a certain sequence of numbers is essential. In the original paper, it was expressed by a recursion. Here, we show how to solve this (and similar) recursions, both explicitly and asymptotically. Some additional information about useful mathematical software is also provided.


DEAD-box RNA helicases play important roles in remodeling RNA molecules and in facilitating a variety of RNA-protein interactions that are key to many essential cellular processes. In spite of the importance of RNA, our knowledge about RNA helicases is limited. In this study, we investigated the role of the four DEAD-box RNA helicases in the Gram-positive model organism Bacillus subtilis . A strain deleted of all RNA helicases is able to grow at 37°C but not at lower temperatures. The deletion of cshA , cshB , or yfmL in particular leads to cold-sensitive phenotypes. Moreover, these mutant strains exhibit unique defects in ribosome biogenesis, suggesting distinct functions for the individual enzymes in this process. Based on protein accumulation, sever-ity of the cold-sensitive phenotype, and the interaction with components of the RNA degradosome, CshA is the major RNA helicase of B. subtilis . To unravel the functions of CshA in addition to ribosome biogenesis, we conducted microarray analysis and identified the ysbAB and frlBONMD mRNAs as targets that are strongly affected by the deletion of the cshA gene. Our findings suggest that the different helicases make distinct contributions to the physiology of B. subtilis . Ribosome biogenesis and RNA degradation are two of their major tasks in B. subtilis .


Background and aims
Intrathecal drug delivery (IDD) is a last resort treatment for the management of severe chronic pain due to its invasive nature, high initial cost, concerns about long-term opioid use and possible complications related to the procedure. Although it has been available since 1981 some of the possible complications of this treatment have only recently been observed and are not fully understood. Additionally the current available literature exploring the longterm effectiveness and cost effectiveness of IDD is limited. The aims of this study were to explore some of the least investigated complications, long-term effectiveness and cost effectiveness of IDD.

Methods
The methodology used included both retrospective and prospective data collection to investigate intrathecal morphine dose escalation, granuloma formation, hormonal effects, bone mineral density (BMD), long-term effectiveness and cost effectiveness of IDD.

Results
A model was developed that allows the prediction of the intrathecal opioid dose at year six of therapy based on year two dose and the duration of pain prior to initiation of intrathecal therapy. An association between opioid concentration and formation of intrathecal granulomas was confirmed for the first time in humans and a tool to assist recognition of asymptomatic granulomas was identified. It was observed that hypogonadism is prevalent in this population and free testosterone is a more reliable method to diagnose this condition. An association between low BMD and hypogonadism as a result of IDD was reported for the first time. Effectiveness of IDD was verified following a mean of 13.5 years of therapy. A new concept with implications for cost analyses was identified.

Conclusion
This study presents a thorough analysis of IDD therapy. Despite potential side effects, this therapy can be effective over periods longer than 10 years in appropriately selected patients. The cost effectiveness of IDD systems was confirmed based on real patients' data. Most side effects can be prevented with attentive follow-ups.


Within healthcare, patient satisfaction is a combination of need, expectation and the experience of care being provided. Patient satisfaction is an intermediate outcome, and is an important measure of the quality of the overall care provided. Healthcare which does not satisfy the patient is usually less effective, because less satisfied patients tend not to comply with instructions, they take longer to follow up with appointments and they have a poor understanding of their medical condition (Wilkin, Hallam and Dogget, 1994; AI-Assaf, 1998). The provision of overall quality healthcare for patients is a key motivation for many service providers. Therefore, determining the level of patient satisfaction forms a very important part of managing and fulfilling the patients' healthcare needs (Smith, 2001a). Furthermore, surveys of patient satisfaction form an essential role in assessing public opinion of the service provided. Thus, the evaluation of the service provided by a clinic can be reflected in the degree of satisfaction perceived by individuals receiving the services as elicited by a patient perception survey. This study assess patient's perception of the service provided at the Homoeopathic Day Clinic (HDC) at the Durban University of Technology (DUT). The use of a self-administered questionnaire to establish patient satisfaction was applied. No names were required and all data has been kept strictly confidential. This information will subsequently be used to improve the quality of the service offered at this facility and increase the degree of patient satisfaction experienced. The sample group of the first 100 patients that consulted the HDC at the DUT between July and November 2007 that voluntarily participated in this study were included in the study by means of convenience sampling.In this study there is generally a high degree of satisfaction with the healthcare and services provided. Areas of particularly high satisfaction are related to patients' arrival to the clinic where they were both promptly and politely greeted, as well as in relationship to the approachability/friendliness of the Homoeopathic student, and the instructions given on how to take the medicine. Areas that revealed lower degrees of satisfaction are advertising, both in media and by signage, as well as the accessibility of the clinic for disabled patients.


Substance use is a major cause of disability globally. This has been recognized in the recent United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in which treatment coverage for substance use disorders is identified as one of the indicators. There have been no estimates of this treatment coverage cross‐nationally, making it difficult to know what is the baseline for that SDG target. Here we report data from the World Health Organization (WHO)'s World Mental Health Surveys (WMHS), based on representative community household surveys in 26 countries. We assessed the 12‐month prevalence of substance use disorders (alcohol or drug abuse/dependence); the proportion of people with these disorders who were aware that they needed treatment and who wished to receive care; the proportion of those seeking care who received it; and the proportion of such treatment that met minimal standards for treatment quality ("minimally adequate treatment"). Among the 70,880 participants, 2.6% met 12‐month criteria for substance use disorders; the prevalence was higher in upper‐middle income (3.3%) than in high‐income (2.6%) and low/lower‐middle income (2.0%) countries. Overall, 39.1% of those with 12‐month substance use disorders recognized a treatment need; this recognition was more common in high‐income (43.1%) than in upper‐middle (35.6%) and low/lower‐middle income (31.5%) countries. Among those who recognized treatment need, 61.3% made at least one visit to a service provider, and 29.5% of the latter received minimally adequate treatment exposure (35.3% in high, 20.3% in upper‐middle, and 8.6% in low/lower‐middle income countries). Overall, only 7.1% of those with past‐year substance use disorders received minimally adequate treatment: 10.3% in high income, 4.3% in upper‐middle income and 1.0% in low/lower‐middle income countries. These data suggest that only a small minority of people with substance use disorders receive even minimally adequate treatment. At least three barriers are involved: awareness/perceived treatment need, accessing treatment once a need is recognized, and compliance (on the part of both provider and client) to obtain adequate treatment. Various factors are likely to be involved in each of these three barriers, all of which need to be addressed to improve treatment coverage of substance use disorders. These data provide a baseline for the global monitoring of progress of treatment coverage for these disorders as an indicator within the SDGs.


Computable general equilibrium (CGE) models are ubiquitous in energy and environmental economics research. Recent technological advancements in electricity fuels, generation technologies, and environmental policies which target specific generation technologies (e.g., emission regulations) have motivated detailed CGE modeling of the electricity sector. Modeling these issues requires distinct electricity generating technologies in a CGE database. Researchers using the GTAP database have disaggregated the electricity sector into generating technologies independently using largely disparate, incomparable methodologies. This paper presents a methodology to create an electricity-detailed CGE database with transmission and distribution and several generating technologies, termed the GTAP-Power database. The GTAPPower database extends the GTAPv9 database in that all of the GTAPv9 data are included in the GTAP-Power version. The methodology leverages available economic and technological data along with informed expert assumptions regarding the structure of the electricity sector. Furthermore, it is transparent, repeatable, and publicly-available to encourage a common electricity-detailed CGE database for researchers and to promote continuous improvement of the database. Major limitations in the initial version accompanying GTAPv9 database are the lack of regional coverage in input cost data and disparity between available data and the total values for the electricity aggregate.


The initiation and growth of damage in composite materials are phenomena that precede the failure event where a material sample or component separates into two pieces. In fatigue, the damage grows slowly and leads to a gradual deterioration of mechanical properties. For the prediction of the fatigue behavior of unidirectional and laminated titanium composites, it is necessary to be able to take account of the effects on the thermoelastic constants of matrix cracking that is induced by fatigue stress cycling. The values of the thermoelastic constants for microcracked composites are determined by the way in which stress is transferred between fiber and matrix in unidirectional composites, and between neighboring plies in laminates, as a result of microcrack formation in the matrix. A summary is given of the recent progress that has been made at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) on the development of analytical stress transfer models for unidirectional and laminated composites. The models are each based upon just a single assumption concerning the stress field that leads to stress and displacement solutions for which the Reissner energy function, used in a variational calculation, has stationary values. The use of the Reissner function allows both applied traction and displacement conditions to be imposed on the fiber/matrix interface and external boundary. In contrast to other applications of variational techniques, the models provide both the stress and displacement distributions at every point in the composite. Thus, complete solutions can be derived that satisfy exactly the equilibrium equations, the interface conditions, the stress-strain relationships apart from one, and the boundary conditions involving tractions. The remaining stress-strain relationship and boundary conditions involving displacements are satisfied in an average sense. For unidirectional composites, both perfectly bonded and frictionally slipping interfaces (such that the interfacial shear stress is a constant) are considered; while for laminates, consideration is restricted to interfaces that remain perfectly bonded in the presence of transverse cracks. The analytical stress transfer models are of high quality to the extent that they represent the best models that can be derived subject to the single assumption on which they are based. The models do, therefore, offer life prediction methodologies the opportunity of confidently making use of analytical methods that obey the important principles of mechanics. The estimation of effective stress intensity factors for bridged matrix cracks that occur in titanium composites subject to fatigue loading at modest load levels is an important element in the prediction of composite performance. Assuming that fibers remain intact, the paper makes use of the stress transfer models to predict the dependence of stress intensity factors (for long cracks) on the applied stress and crack separation, for bridged cracks in both unidirectional and laminated composites. The effects of crack interaction are determined, and the new model predictions are compared to those of shear-lag theory modified to take account of residual stresses arising from thermal expansion mismatch effects. It is also shown how predictions can be made for the dependence of the thermoelastic constants of unidirectional and laminated titanium matrix composites on the nonuniform spacings of matrix cracks that can be encountered in practice.


During the last few years the safety of the Hungarian Paks Nuclear Power Plant was reassessed in the framework of the AGNES project. Results of the program revealed that the safety of VVER-440/213 type reactors could be enhanced by modernizing a number of event oriented emergency operating procedures (EOPs) and the implementation of accident management (AM). Before the accomplishment of systematic AM all the possible thermal-hydraulic effects and consequences should be considered and experimentally verified.
 This paper summarizes the most important findings of the relevant tests performed in the PMK-2 facility, which is a full-pressure, integral-type model of the Paks NPP. The present analysis concentrates on a particular method, the bleed-and-feed, applied in the primary or secondary circuit and conclusions are drawn for the effectiveness of this AM measure. Modelling of the thermal-hydraulic processes is extended with computer simulations using the RELAP5/MOD3.2 system code. Finally, a short assessment is given for the code capabilities to represent some significant phenomena of the transients.


Abstract The extant literature indicates that remittance inflows from developed to developing countries provide liquidity for domestic financial institutions, which aids in the development process. However, the reverse effect has been neglected. This paper tests whether more financial services and opportunities in the home country attract remittances to developing countries. It addresses this hypothesis using a dataset of 72 developing countries over the period 1997–2011. The paper finds evidence that remittance inflows are driven by increased availability of domestic financial services. In particular, the presence of microfinance institutions is found to be a key driver in stimulating migrant remittances. These findings, perhaps, suggest that remittance-sending migrants may not be altruistic and send remittances to maximize their own future income. Alternatively, the results suggest that microfinance organizations have been successful in attracting remittances by lowering transaction costs and proving linked services.


Proteins are the effector molecules of life. They are encoded in DNA that is inherited from generation to generation, but most cellular functions are executed by proteins. Proteins rarely act on their own – most actions are carried out through an interplay of tens of proteins and other biomolecules.Here I describe how synthetic DNA can be used to study proteins and protein complexes. Variants of proximity ligation assays (PLA) are used to generate DNA reporter molecules upon proximal binding by pairs of DNA oligonucleotide-modified affinity reagents. In Paper I, a robust protocol was set up for PLA on paramagnetic microparticles, and we demonstrated that this solid phase PLA had superior performance for detecting nine candidate cancer biomarkers compared to other immunoassays. Based on the protocol described in Paper I I then developed further variants of PLA that allows detection of protein aggregates and protein interactions. I sensitively detected aggregated amyloid protofibrils of prion proteins in paper II, and in paper III I studied binary interactions between several proteins of the NFκB family. For all immunoassays the selection of high quality affinity binders represents a major challenge. I have therefore established a protocol where a large set of protein binders can be simultaneously validated to identify optimal pairs for dual recognition immunoassays (Paper IV).


This paper explores the ecological effects of the top-down Ganges Basin water management systems in Chapra, Bangladesh, based on my ethnographic fieldwork a data collected in 2011-12. An example of this top-down system is the Farakka Barrage in India that causes major ecological system failures and challenges to community livelihoods. The reduction in Ganges Basin water flow in Bangladesh based on the pre and post Farakka comparison is helpful in understanding these failures and their effects on community livelihoods. My argument is that basin communities are capable of becoming empowered by Ganges Basin water management and failures in the management create major challenges to the livelihood of these communities. In this context, I analyze the current Ganges Basin management practices, focusing specifically on the Joint River Commission and the 1996 Ganges Treaty between India and Bangladesh, and their effects on the basin communities in Chapra. My fieldwork data point out that the current shortcomings in basin management can be overcome with an improved management system. Water governance based on a multilateral approach is a way to restore the basin's ecological systems and promote community empowerment. Based on this empowerment argument, this paper is divided into the following major sections: importance of the basin ecosystems for protecting community livelihoods, limitations of current basin management practices and community survival challenges, and proposed water governance for community empowerment.


The objective of this thesis is the development of cooperative localization and tracking algorithms using nonparametric message passing techniques. In contrast to the most well-known techniques, the goal is to estimate the posterior probability density function (PDF) of the position of each sensor. This problem can be solved using Bayesian approach, but it is intractable in general case. Nevertheless, the particle-based approximation (via nonparametric representation), and an appropriate factorization of the joint PDFs (using message passing methods), make Bayesian approach acceptable for inference in sensor networks. The well-known method for this problem, nonparametric belief propagation (NBP), can lead to inaccurate beliefs and possible non-convergence in loopy networks. Therefore, we propose four novel algorithms which alleviate these problems: nonparametric generalized belief propagation (NGBP) based on junction tree (NGBP-JT), NGBP based on pseudo-junction tree (NGBP-PJT), NBP based on spanning trees (NBP-ST), and uniformly-reweighted NBP (URW-NBP). We also extend NBP for cooperative localization in mobile networks. In contrast to the previous methods, we use an optional smoothing, provide a novel communication protocol, and increase the efficiency of the sampling techniques. Moreover, we propose novel algorithms for distributed tracking, in which the goal is to track the passive object which cannot locate itself. In particular, we develop distributed particle filtering (DPF) based on three asynchronous belief consensus (BC) algorithms: standard belief consensus (SBC), broadcast gossip (BG), and belief propagation (BP). Finally, the last part of this thesis includes the experimental analysis of some of the proposed algorithms, in which we found that the results based on real measurements are very similar with the results based on theoretical models.


In the time since the condition was originally labelled in 1943, a wide range of theories have been put forward to explain the emergence, maintenance and treatment of autism. There is often controversy in this area, as different paradigms often disagree about the aetiology of autism, and its subsequent treatment. This paper reviews and compares conceptualisations of autism based on the psychoanalytic and cognitive paradigms, exploring separate theories within these models such as weak central coherence, theory of mind, executive function, autistic identification, drives and attachment in autism, and refrigerator mother theory. The cognitive and psychoanalytic models approaches to treatment, and their subsequent effectiveness are also reviewed, and consideration is given to controversies in the treatment of this pervasive developmental disorder. It is concluded based on the available literature that the psychodynamic model focuses primarily on the emergence and causes of autism, whereas the cognitive model is more concerned with the maintenance of the disorder and its cognitive consequences and symptoms, whilst neither give sufficient consideration to its treatment.


This study aims to assess the relation between the so called "Ecotourism" behavior and Willingness-To-Pay (WTP) in order to compensate on site for their carbon foot print, plus their familiarity with common environmental terms, in the Monteverde Region of Costa Rica. A Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) was decided upon as the best way to determine the willingness to pay (WTP). While the scope of this study is limited by the low season for tourism, the study finds a paradox between the behaviors of the self-called ecotourist suggesting that the term is more related to the location of the area visited, rather than any attempt by the tourist to alter their travel behavior. That could have a negative impact on the very wildlife where the park is trying to protect.