Since the accidental introduction of red imported fire ants (Solenopsis invicta Buren, RIFA) into Mobile, Alabama in the 1930's, the invasion of this species into other areas across the southeast has increased drastically. RIFA have been implicated in the disruption of ecosystems and decreases in biodiversity. Most research on effects of RIFA on vertebrates and invertebrates have focused on small spatial scales and single species. I examined established populations of RIFA in relation to native ground-dwelling arthropods and small mammal communities in longleaf-pine and pine-hardwood forests. I evaluated the efficacy of using Amdro® to control RIFA and determined the effect of RIFA predation on arthropod and small mammal communities. RIFA suppression occurred in April, August, and October 2003. In the longleafpine forest, RIFA suppression was effective in June between years (P = 0.088) and treatments (P = 0.093). This was consistent with an increase in cotton mice abundance on treated (17.7 ± 2.7) versus control (6.0 ± 2.5) plots (P = 0.035), with 90% of cotton mice captured during the June sampling period. Across seasons, significant differences were observed for Collembola in August between years (P = 0.001) and in December between treatments (P = 0.01). Likewise, abundance of Coleoptera was greater in December between years (P = 0.023) and in May between treatments (P = 0.002). In the pine-hardwood forest, RIFA suppression was effective in April and June (P = 0.001, P = 0.004, respectively) when compared across seasons. No significant differences were observed for any small mammal species captured in the pinehardwood site. Acari were greater on treated (11.0 ± 1.7) than control (4.7 ± 1.9) plots (P = 0.067); however, no significant differences were observed for any invertebrate group across


A systematic review of studies pertaining to employment interventions for consumers with HIV/AIDS was conducted in order to ascertain what programs and services have resulted in employment for people in this population. Research shows that programs specifically designed for individuals with HIV/AIDS have been beneficial for this population in regards to obtaining employment. This study discusses four employment interventions for people with HIV/AIDS including participation rates and employment outcome for program participants. A review of literature pertaining to employment interventions for individuals with HIV/AIDS is presented. Additionally, the systematic review methodology and results are presented. Finally, I discuss the results, limitations in regards to conducting the study, current research and recommendations for future research.


We present a systematic study of the reconstruction of non-negative functions via maximum entropy approach utilizing the information contained in a finite number of moments of the functions. For testing the efficacy of the approach, we reconstruct a set of functions using an iterative entropy optimization scheme, and study the convergence profile as the number of moments is increased. A wide variety of functions are considered that include a distribution with a sharp discontinuity, an oscillatory function, a distribution with singularities and finally a distribution with several spikes and fine structure. The last example is important in the context of the determination of the natural density of the logistic map. The convergence of the method is studied by comparing the moments of the approximated functions with the exact ones. Furthermore, by varying the number of moments and iterations, we examine to what extent the features of the functions, such as the divergence behavior at singular points within the interval, is reproduced. The proximity of the reconstructed maximum entropy solution to the exact solution is examined via Kullback–Leibler divergence and variation measures for different number of moments.


Robotics provides answers to amputees. The most expensive solutions surgically connect the prosthesis to nerve endings. There are also several types of non-invasive technologies that recover nerve messages passing through the muscles. After analyzing these messages, myoelectric prostheses perform the desired movement. The main goal is to avoid all surgeries, which can be heavy and offer cheaper alternatives. For an amputee, we use valid muscles to recover the electrical signal involved in a muscle movement. EMG sensors placed on the muscle allows us to measure a potential difference, which our program transforms into control for a robotic arm with two degrees of freedom. We have shown the feasibility of non-invasive prostheses with two degrees of freedom. Signal analysis and an increase in degrees of freedom is still being improved. Keywords—Prosthesis, electromyography (EMG), robotic arm, nerve message.


Bruno Simma mentioned briefly standard of proof in the ICJ. The Court has not been very good in facing that issue. The Court has set its face against setting a standard of proof of facts which it will determine in any given case. This is because many of the civil-law judges believe that there can be nothing objective about this matter, and that it is simply a question of the intime conviction du juge. One has only to look at the Oil Platforms case to see, in my opinion, that the lack of any objective standard means that different judges can look at the very same set of facts and reach diametrically opposite conclusions as to what the evidence shows. What the Court does do, and I think does very well, is to explain in particular cases what evidence it has found unreliable, and why, and what evidence--including findings of fact by others--it deems very weighty. There is much of interest in Court practice on that. I think you have heard some first-rate presentations by some very knowledgeable people on a wide range of issues, and we all hope you have enjoyed this session. (1) Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission, Rules of Procedure, art. 14(1) (Oct. 200l), available at http://www.pca cpa.org. (2) Id. art. 14(4). (3) Central Front, Ethiopia's Claim 2, Partial Award, para. 112 (Apr. 28, 2004), 43 I.L.M. 1275 (2004). (4) Prisoners of War, Eritrea's Claim No. 17, Partial Award, para. 44 (July 1, 2003), 42 I.L.M. 1083 (2003). (5) Id. para 46; see Ethiopia's Central Front Claim, supra note 3, para. 20. (6) See, e.g., Prisoners of War, Ethiopia's Claim No. 4, Partial Award, para. 38 (July 1, 2003), 42 I.L.M. 1056 (2003). (7) Id. (8) Algiers Agreement, Eth.-Eri., art. 5(12), Dec. 12, 2000, 2138 U.N.T.S. 94, 40 I.L.M. 260 (2001). The Commission's work ultimately lasted about eight years. (9) Ethiopia's POW Claim, supra note 6, para 54; Western Front, Aerial Bombardment and Related Claims, Eritrea's Claims 1, 3, 5, 9-13, 14, 21, 25 & 26, Partial Award, para. 91 (Dec. 19, 2005), 45 I.L.M. 396 (2006). (10) Ethiopia's POW Claim, supra note 6, para. 54. (11) Id. (12) Ethiopia's Central Front Claim, supra note 3, para. 37; Civilians Claims, Ethiopia's Claim 5, Partial Award, para. 85 (Dec. 17, 2004), 40 I.L.M. 430 (2005). (13) Id. (14) Rules of Procedure, supra note 1, art. 14(2). (15) Ethiopia's POW Claim, supra note 6, para. 44. (16) Eritrea's POW Claim, supra note 4, para. …


This essay applies the idea of the witness tree to the Golden State. Reflexively, Californians turn their historical attention to giant sequoias, and wonder what these trees would say about the ancient past if trees could speak. The author argues that hang trees—sites of lynching in the settlement period—are better witnesses of California's past. Lynching was common in frontier California, and native trees, mainly oaks and sycamores, were used by vigilance committees for extrajudicial executions. Once the Gold Rush was distant enough for commemoration, hang trees became objects of folklore, fakelore, and heritage. As sites of violence and collective memory, California's trees speak truths and lies.


Abstract Rice has a vital role in food security but the production is limited in infertile and degraded soils. Rice is cultivated on acid sulphate soil in the coastal area of Peninsular Malaysia. Soil amendment using biological charcoal (biochar) increases the soil fertility. Thus, empty fruit bunch biochar (EFBB) was applied in a pot experiment under a controlled environment using an organic system of rice intensification (SRI) practice and its effects on the floodwater pH, acid sulphate soil properties and growth performance of rice and yield of rice MR219 were preliminarily investigated. EFBB increased grain yield by 141 to 472%. Plant growth and yield parameters in EFBB amended soils were significantly higher than in soil without biochar. The number of tillers increased significantly with the increase in biochar applied; 28 tillers were produced in the control, while up to 80 tillers were produced in the plots applied 40 t ha–1 EFBB. Moreover, the decline of Al3+ in flood water indicated that EFBB mitigated Al3+ toxicity. Soil water pH increased from 3.5 to 6 with increasing EFBB application rates. The grain yield was linearly correlated to the application rate of EFBB. This pot study demonstrates that the application of EFBB combined with organic fertilization and intermittent irrigation has the potential to improve rice yield on acid sulphate soil. Further study in the field is warranted to determine the effect of EFBB on large scale rice production.


Abstract. In vivo chlorophyll a fluorescence is a proxy of chlorophyll a concentration, and is one of the most frequently measured biogeochemical properties in the ocean. Thousands of profiles are available from historical databases and the integration of fluorescence sensors to autonomous platforms has led to a significant increase of chlorophyll fluorescence profile acquisition. To our knowledge, this important source of environmental data has not yet been included in global analyses. A total of 268 127 chlorophyll fluorescence profiles from several databases as well as published and unpublished individual sources were compiled. Following a robust quality control procedure detailed in the present paper, about 49 000 chlorophyll fluorescence profiles were converted into phytoplankton biomass (i.e., chlorophyll a concentration) and size-based community composition (i.e., microphytoplankton, nanophytoplankton and picophytoplankton), using a method specifically developed to harmonize fluorescence profiles from diverse sources. The data span over 5 decades from 1958 to 2015, including observations from all major oceanic basins and all seasons, and depths ranging from the surface to a median maximum sampling depth of around 700 m. Global maps of chlorophyll a concentration and phytoplankton community composition are presented here for the first time. Monthly climatologies were computed for three of Longhurst's ecological provinces in order to exemplify the potential use of the data product. Original data sets (raw fluorescence profiles) as well as calibrated profiles of phytoplankton biomass and community composition are available on open access at PANGAEA, Data Publisher for Earth and Environmental Science. Raw fluorescence profiles: http://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.844212 and Phytoplankton biomass and community composition: http://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.844485


The present study investigates the use of equivalents of the English adverbials seemingly and apparently with a specific morphological structure in Romance languages and Russian, i.e. Spanish al parecer, Portuguese ao parecer and ao que parece, French avoir l'air de, Italian all'apparenza and in apparenza as well as Russian по-видимому. The underlying hypothesis is that the function and syntactic behaviour of these adverbial locutions are motivated by their morphological composition. It is to investigate whether the adverbials may be used sentence-initially, parenthetically, as an adverbial with broad or narrow scope or as a component of a modalised predication. The adverbial locutions are treated as means of expression where evidentiality and epistemic modality represent overlapping functional-semantic categories.


ABSTRACT: All states in the U.S. regulate the practice of public accounting. An important part of the regulatory apparatus is the state accountancy board (SAB). SABs implement the laws that govern public accounting. State societies of CPAs (SSCPAs), in contrast, are advocacy mechanisms that can potentially be used by members of the profession to achieve their regulatory objectives. Economic theory raises the possibility that regulatory bodies such as SABs might be captured by the profession that they regulate. We examine the composition of SABs and find that the majority of members are CPAs. A survey of CPA SAB members reveals that nearly one-third of the respondents are past leaders of their SSCPAs. We further find that the percentage of board members who are CPAs and the percentage of our respondents who are past leaders of their SSCPAs are positively associated with the rapidity with which states adopt two important accountancy laws (interstate mobility and the 150-hour education requirement) that can ...


Credit cards, debit cards, and ACH have increased the share of electronic payments both at point-of-sale locations and for bill payments. Although the adoption of electronic payments in the consumer-to-consumer payments setting has lagged behind these other areas, online person-to-person payment systems have recently been reporting strong growth. This article analyzes the growth of online P2P payments, the problems and opportunities faced by payment providers, and the future of electronic C2C payments.


The present study was an experimental investigation of the effects of a sex education workshop in an adolescent in-patient psychiatric population. Eleven adolescent patients (seven males, four females) participated in the eight session sex education workshop (SEW). The attention control group was composed of eight patients (four males, four females) who participated in eight informal discussion (ID) sessions. The research utilized a pretest-posttest design. The dependent variables were sex knowledge as measured by the Sex Knowledge Inventory, self-concept as measured by the Total Positive, Self Criticism, and General Maladjustment scales of the Tennessee Self Concept Scale, and personal adjustment as measured by the K, D, Pt, Sc, and Es scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. The data was analyzed using a multivariate analysis of variance followed by univariate ANOVAS on each of the nine dependent measures. Results of these analyses indicated that participation in the sex education workshop led to neither positive changes in self-concept nor increased personal adjustment as predicted because the subjects as a group yielded pretest TSCS and MMPI scores within normal limits. However, the SEW subjects obtained statistically significant increases in sex knowledge compared to the ID subjects. A specially designed partivii cipant evaluation form was administered to SEW subjects at the posttest. Subjects' ratings of the workshop were positive in terms of the helpfulness of the workshop, teaching format, and changes in self acceptance, acceptance of others, and comfort in a variety of interpersonal situations. The results of the study were discussed, noting factors idiosyncratic to the particular population used, including psychiatric diagnoses of the subjects and familial and social factors. Suggestions for future research on the effects of sex education in adolescent psychiatric patients were offered.


Chinua Achebe's The Education of A British-Protected Child A review of The Education of a British-Protected Child by Chinua Achebe (London: Penguin Books, 2009, pp.172. ISBN: 978-1846-14259-8) by Uzoechi Nwagbara (firstname.lastname@example.com) of the University of Wales, United Kingdom. The Education of a British-Protected Child is a conversation that continues from where Chinua Achebe's The Trouble with Nigeria (1983) stops (see Achebe's remarks in this regard, p.138-9). While Achebe's other critical essay collections: Morning yet on Creation Day (1975), Hopes and Impediments (1988), and Home and Exile (2000) primarily deal with literature and efforts to decolonise African literature and art, The Education of a British-Protected Child is about his experience of Nigeria and the world in general beyond the contours of literature. In the sixteen essays presented in the book excluding preface and notes, Achebe chronicles his experience of the world within and outside Ogidi, his native village in Eastern Nigeria; the antinomies of being British-protected and educated; the need for Nigeria to rise from her development ashes like the phoenix; the imperatives of restoring African heritage; the urgency to revamp Nigeria through the agency of ''university leadership''; and the discontents of ''resource curse'' hypothesis. In attendance at the inaugural lecture of Audrey Richards Annual Lecture in November 2010 at Centre of African Studies at University of Cambridge, where I bought myself a copy of The Education of a British-Protected Child, Achebe, who was the guest lecturer touched on the legacy of colonialism and failure of Nigeria's leadership, which he said were central to the book's message. Talking on the subject matter ''Nigeria's Painful History'' at University of Cambridge, Achebe brought once again to the fore his usual mantra: Nigeria's leadership failure and its attendant woes. Similarly, How to solve Nigeria's political leadership issue percolates Achebe's writings as an artist, philosopher and public intellectual. This is basically the main thrust of this book. Achebe confirms this: So the question of leadership was and is pre-eminent, in my mind, among Nigeria's numerous problems such as tribalism, corruption, indiscipline, social injustice, indulgence for mediocrity, et cetera. My thesis is that without good leadership none of the other problems stands a chance of being tackled, let alone solves (139). The Education of a British-Protected Child is a panoramic snapshot of Achebe's journey for over eighty decades on planet earth; it is about his contemplations on Nigeria's state of siege; it is also about his personal experience regarding family, recognition, friendship, travel, African heritage, education and politics. The chapters in the book were written at different times and represent a pot-pourri of Achebe's intellectual musings on postcolonial Nigeria, the paradox inherent in acquiring Western education and his views from outside - but they all coalesce to address one theme: Nigeria's leadership conundrum as well as Africa (Nigeria) being in the shadow of the West given the pressure of leadership malaise. The style of the book is more of story-telling that is characteristic of Achebe, a novelist of repute. The stories range from his childhood days at Ogidi, his village in Eastern Nigeria to the present - his self-exile to the United States of America. The narratological style is a melange of foreshadowing, flashback and stream of consciousness. It is not actually an academic book, but not lacking in scholarship. As a gifted narrator, Achebe takes us on a journey of Nigeria's independence and the attendant disillusionment that greeted this nation thereafter, which he stated is about failure of leadership. …


This is the second paper in the invited collection. Dieleman provides an overview of the "state-of-the-field" debate between Analytic Social Epistemology (ASE), represented by Alvin Goldman, and what Dieleman calls the Sociological Social Epistemology (SSE), represented by Steve Fuller. In response to this ongoing debate, this paper has two related and complementary objectives. The first is to show that the debate between analytic and sociological versions of social epistemology is overly simplistic and doesn't take into account additional positions that are available and, indeed, have been available since social epistemology was (re)introduced in the mid to late 1980s. The second is to uncover and tell a story of how Lorraine Code's Epistemic Responsibility is one such additional position. Looking to Code's Epistemic Responsibility reveals the artificiality of the debate between analytic and sociological social epistemologists.


Background: Working Lean, i.e. "eliminating non-value activities from work processes by applying a robust set of performance change tools and emphasizing excellence in operations to deliver superior customer service," has received significant attention and become a concept of interest for businesses, especially during recent years. Fundamentally, the concept of Lean is built on the aims of waste reduction and value creation with keywords such as continuous improvement, quality, and efficiency guiding the process. Lean was originally developed with production in mind, but many in the field argue that its applicability reaches further and holds potential within other contexts, such as service, as well. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to derive lessons learned from individuals working in the service sector regarding whether or not Lean is applicable in the context of service and to explore what factors and challenges are perceived to influence the likeliness of success. Method: An abductive approach has been pursued by the use of semistructured interviews with employees from different levels within organizations in the Swedish service sector. In addition, an external perspective by interviewing a Lean consultant has been of interest. The data gained has been analysed to identify patterns which have then been searched for in existing literature. Conclusion: The findings provide evidence that Lean is applicable in service. Furthermore, success factors related to the following core categories; employee engagement and competence, having a philosophical approach, leadership, management, implementation, organizational and national culture, and management of variation were identified. Lastly, a misconception of Lean, employee resistance and suboptimization were three challenges found.


This paper examines diversity in online news reporting and explanatory factors that shape news production. The analysis is based on online news from six countries (the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, France, and Italy), comparing online-only news sites and legacy media. The analysis shows that most online media reported in a diverse way, comprising multiple topics and actors. Furthermore, event-driven news journalism explains the occurrence of high diversity in news reporting. Available resources and the intensiveness of online reporting (the extent as well as the editing style) also account for diversity. We draw from these findings to make a contribution to research on diversity in online news and to comparative communication studies. Qualitative comparative analysis is used to reflect on the direction and meaning of changes in journalistic practices in the current media environment.


This book explores the unity of life. It proposes that the concept of information is the inner essence of what we today call life.
The importance of information for our species is obvious. Human beings are highly dependent on information, constantly exchanging with conspecifics. In a less apparent way, we are the product of genetic and epigenetic information which determines our development in a given environment from a fertilized egg to the adult stage. Even less apparent is that information plays a determining role in ecosystems. This observation may include the prebiotic systems in which life emerged.
Our claim is that Nature processes information continuously. This means that even beyond living entities, we can see messages and decoding procedures. Nature can be said to send messages to its own future and then to decode them. Nature "talks" to itself! The systematic organization of messages suggests that, in some respects, we should even speak of the "languages" of Nature.


Data from a thermistor chain and wind sensor collected over an annual stratification cycle in Lake Kinneret (Israel) during 2000 were used to investigate the seasonal evolution of wind/internal wave resonance. Internal wave periods determined from an analytical model were compared with observations, and we show that resonance during 2000 occurred during three distinct times of the year—at the onset of stratification (March), during the heating phase (June), and during the cooling phase (November). In all cases, resonance was between the wind and the dominant radial, azimuthal, and vertical mode‐one cyclonic (Kelvin) wave previously observed in Lake Kinneret.


When Allied governments passed sentence on Japanese war criminals from 1945 onwards, they expected that those convicted would stay in prison for their full terms. Within a comparatively short time, however, each government controlling Japanese war criminals' sentences had granted them some form of clemency, and by the end of 1958, the last remaining war criminals, including those sentenced to life imprisonment, had been released with the agreement of the prosecuting governments. This article examines the ethical, political and pragmatic considerations that led to the granting of parole and clemency to convicted Japanese war criminals between 1945 and 1958, the bureaucratic processes through which clemency was arranged, and the shifting political positions of the Japanese and Allied authorities in regard to war criminals. In so doing, it contributes to the extension of studies of war crimes justice to the post-sentencing phase, and highlights the role of the Japanese authorities and the Japanese public in determining the fate of war criminals in the Pacific theatre of the war.


Children are exposed to various kind of non-ionizan radiation in their daily life involuntarily. The potential sensitivity of developing organism to the effects of radiofrequency (RF) signals, the higher estimated specific absorption rate (SAR) values of children and greater lifetime cumulative risk raised the scientific interest for children's vulnerability to electromagnetic fields (EMFs). In modern societies, children are being exposed to EMFs in very early ages. There are many researches in scientific literature investigating the alterations of biological parameters in living organisms after EMFs. Although the international guidelines did not report definite, convincing data about the causality, there are unignorable amount of studies indicating the increased risk of cancer, hematologic effects and cognitive impairment. Although they are less in amount; growing number of studies reveal the impacts on metabolism and endocrine function. Reproductive system and growth look like the most challenging fields. However there are also some concerns on detrimental effects of EMFs on thyroid functions, adrenal hormones, glucose homeostasis and melatonin levels. It is not easy to conduct a study investigating the effects of EMFs on a fetus or child due to ethical issues. Hence, the studies are usually performed on virtual models or animals. Although the results are conflicting and cannot be totally matched with humans; there is growing evidence to distress us about the threats of EMF on children.


This article examines the Special Olympics' Youth Unified Sports programme across five countries within its Europe/Eurasia region. It focuses upon the process by which impact is achieved, led for the most part by coaches involved in preparing participants for competition through training. This is realized through the creation of sports teams, which in the case of this research means association football and basketball teams, in which athletes (young people with intellectual disabilities, ID) are selected alongside partners (contemporaries without an ID) to form coherent units that then compete against other such teams locally, nationally and, occasionally, internationally. The results of this investigation reveal the positive impact, upon integration and inclusion, for athletes offered by the Unified Sports programme and point to the powerful outcomes for a host of stakeholders, ranging from Special Olympics at an organizational level, relatives of participants, partners and coaches as well as the athletes themselves.


The physical and chemical properties of polymeric materials can be modified by
treatment with ionizing radiation. This radiation processing technique has been used to
modify the structural and electrical properties of polymer composites for use as
electrical devices. Alkaline composite polyrner electrolytes (ACPEs) are materials that
have attracted great attention for their vast application in the development of solid-state
ionic devices. The materials have their chemical and electrical properties change with
radiation dose allowing modification of the electrolytes in the solid state form. One
serious problem of the ACPEs is low ionic conductivity at room temperature because
they have a tendency to crystallize. In this study radiation-processing technique was
chosen to increase the ionic conductivity at room temperature. The ACPE consists of
poly(viny1 alcohol) (PVA) as the host polymer, potassium hydroxide (KOH) as an ionic
blend and propylene carbonate (PC) as a plastisizer. The compositions of KOH and PC
were varied from 40 to 70%. The electrolytes were prepared by chemical method and the
finished films were obtained by solvent-casting technique. The films were irradiated
with 1.25 MeV gamma rays with dose from 0 to 200 kGy at room temperature. The
sample of irradiated and unirradiated films of different compositions was placed
between two parallel-plate metal electrodes and the conductivity and dielectric
properties were measured using an impedance analyzer at different frequencies ranging
from 20 Hz to 1 MHz. For the unirradiated samples, the conductivity and dielectric
properties were also measured at different temperatures of narrow range from room
temperature to 343 K. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurements were performed to
characterize the change of molecular structure of the electrolytes with radiation dose and
compositions of the blend and plastisizer.
The results show that the ACPE sample of PVA-KOH (40 wt.%)- PC (60 wt.%)
irradiated with dose 200 kGy exhibits the highest ionic conductivity of 2.7 x 10'~s cm-'
at room temperature. For ACPE sample with PVA-KOH (40 wt.%)-PC (60 wt.%) the
highest ionic conductivity value is 7.8 x scm-' at 343 K. The results show that the
frequency dependent conductivity and dielectric constant of the ACPEs depend on
radiation dose, temperature and composition of the blends and plastisizer. From the
XRD analysis, the molecular structure of the electrolytes change from semi-crystalline
to amorphous when the composition of PC increased to 60% and the radiation dose
increased to 200 kGy. Finally, we have demonstrated that radiation processing can be
used to modify ACPEs to increase their ionic conductivity for the development of solidstate
ionic devices.


We present a photo-realistic training and evaluation simulator (Sim4CV) with extensive applications across various fields of computer vision. Built on top of the Unreal Engine, the simulator integrates full featured physics based cars, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and animated human actors in diverse urban and suburban 3D environments. We demonstrate the versatility of the simulator with two case studies: autonomous UAV-based tracking of moving objects and autonomous driving using supervised learning. The simulator fully integrates both several state-of-the-art tracking algorithms with a benchmark evaluation tool and a deep neural network (DNN) architecture for training vehicles to drive autonomously. It generates synthetic photo-realistic datasets with automatic ground truth annotations to easily extend existing real-world datasets and provides extensive synthetic data variety through its ability to reconfigure synthetic worlds on the fly using an automatic world generation tool.


When discussing present issues, vulnerable groups often compare such issues to historical atrocities, thereby injecting histories of vulnerability and oppression into contemporary debate. In 2006, the Norwegian health authorities introduced a program for registration of information about the level of functioning and the care needs of care receivers in the municipal service system, where mostly disabled people and elderly people were registered. The project triggered strong protests. The central charges were that such registration was humiliating, violated the subject's integrity, and reduced human beings to their biological (dys)functions. At one point, the protesters related the registration program to the story of the Holocaust, evoking the historical fact that registration of deviation was fundamental to the "euthanasia" killings in Nazi Germany. Numerous scholarly works discuss the legitimacy of such comparisons, but none discusses how the agents in debates think about their own use of such comparisons. In this article, we describe how the disability activists and health professionals who participated in the controversy understood, framed, and legitimated the rhetorical use of the Holocaust. Referring to Bauman's normality perspective, we try to understand the logic behind the evoking of the Holocaust in debates on the situation of vulnerable groups in general. This case serves for discussion on the communication strategies (and possibilities) of minority movements within their historical and cultural legacy.


Hybridization in wild Anatidae is a regular occurrence, especially in the smaller species of waterfowl (Milstein 1979). Wildfowl are also more prone to hybridize in wild populations than other bird groups, mainly because of the close genetic proximity of species, their mating systems where pair bonds are renewed each year in some species and similarity of courtship displays (del Hoyo et al. 1992). Milstein (1979) found hybridization at Barberspan Nature Reserve, Delareyville, North West Province mainly between native duck species such as Southern Pochard Netta erythrophthalma, Redbilled Teal Anas erythrorhynncha and Yellowbilled Duck Anas undulata. Hybridization in the wild occur mainly as a consequence of the close relationship between different species such as the Alopochen and Tadorna genera of the subfamily Tadorninae on which this paper reports (del Hoyo et al. 1992).


As gas hydrate energy assessment matures worldwide, emphasis has evolved away from confirmation of the mere presence of gas hydrate to the more complex issue of prospecting for those specific accumulations that are viable resource targets. Gas hydrate exploration now integrates the unique pressure and temperature preconditions for gas hydrate occurrence with those concepts and practices that are the basis for conventional oil and gas exploration. We have aimed to assimilate the lessons learned to date in global gas hydrate exploration to outline a generalized prospecting approach as follows: (1) use existing well and geophysical data to delineate the gas hydrate stability zone (GHSZ), (2) identify and evaluate potential direct indications of hydrate occurrence through evaluation of interval of elevated acoustic velocity and/or seismic events of prospective amplitude and polarity, (3) mitigate geologic risk via regional seismic and stratigraphic facies analysis as well as seismic mapping of amplitude distribution along prospective horizons, and (4) mitigate further prospect risk through assessment of the evidence of gas presence and migration into the GHSZ. Although a wide range of occurrence types might ultimately become viable energy supply options, this approach, which has been tested in only a small number of locations worldwide, has directed prospect evaluation toward those sand-hosted, high-saturation occurrences that were presently considered to have the greatest future commercial potential.


This paper addresses questions related to the cost of China's bank restructuring and financing. We first propose a framework for recognizing losses. Then, we examine the recent major moves by the Chinese government to repair the country's bank balance sheets. Finally, we explore the implications of the Chinese ways of funding the bank restructuring. We find that the Chinese government has been decisive in confronting the costly task of bank restructuring. Looking through the elaborate funding arrangements adopted so far, the Chinese taxpayers have paid most of the bill.


OBJECTIVE
To compare the quality of visualization of canine carpal ligaments by using computed tomography (CT), MRI, CT arthrography (CTA), and magnetic resonance arthrography (MRA).

STUDY DESIGN
Prospective descriptive study.

STUDY POPULATION
Cadavers from dogs weighing more than 20 kg.

METHODS
A 16-slice CT scanner and a 3 Tesla MRI were used for the investigation. A dilute contrast medium was injected into the middle carpal and radiocarpal joints under fluoroscopic control, and CTA and MRA images were acquired. To evaluate the difference between imaging modalities, 3 observers graded carpal ligaments of clinical interest using a scale from 0 to 4 for their quality of visualization. Data were analyzed by using a random-effect ordinal logistic regression with Bonferroni adjustment. The interobserver agreement was calculated by using the weighted Cohen's κ.

RESULTS
Normal carpal joints (n = 9) were investigated. Magnetic resonance arthrography improved visualization of the majority of carpal ligaments compared with MRI (P < .05) and offered the best visualization overall. Magnetic resonance imaging and MRA offered better visualization compared with both CT and CTA (P < .05). There was no difference between CT and CTA. Interobserver agreement was discrete (0.2 < κ ≤ 0.4) for all observers.

CONCLUSION
Arthrography improved the capabilities of MRI but not of CT for visualization of the canine carpal ligaments. Magnetic resonance arthrography was particularly useful for evaluation of the stabilizers of the antebrachiocarpal joint.

CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE
3 Tesla MRA and MRI allow excellent visualization of the ligamentous morphology and may be helpful in the diagnostic process of carpal sprains in dogs.


Tim Williams' article provides a valuable review of how decisions are made and although much of the commentary about ethical decision-making is by extrapolation it does offer important insights. He then applies this review to the steps for decision-making recommended in the preamble to the 2002 Code of Ethics for Psychologists Working in Aoteatoa/New Zealand. We are grateful for the opportunity to respond to his paper, particularly as he appears to us misunderstand the purpose of our recommendations. We will make only tangential reference to his review of decision-making models, and instead comment on the model that we offer and the justification for it. In the preparation of the revised Code the working party responsible for the review produced versions for comment and progressively integrated these comments to produce the final document. Williams is correct in his assumption that we did not receive comments on the preamble. His commentary provides grounds for revision in some areas. In particular, the code preamble should clarify that it is not expected that all ethical decisions are made, or must be made, by applying systematically the six steps described. We agree that psychologists are confronted daily with ethical decisions, and that on most occasions psychologists will follow a process that adheres to the direct application of a "rule" (e.g., make sure to gain explicit informed consent) and/or that psychologists make ethical decisions by a process that appears to be automatic or intuitive. The preamble should acknowledge this in a future revision, albeit without losing the emphasis on care in all decision-making. We also agree that the Canadian Code provides valuable additional points in the steps it describes; in particular, the consideration of personal bias and of actions that may be taken to prevent future occurrences of the dilemma. The present Code was shaped by our consideration of the old New Zealand code, and equivalent codes from other countries. To a great extent we relied upon the Canadian Code with its emphasis on principles, related values, and related practice implications. That is, we wished to emphasize the way in which a particular ethical decision is arrived at, rather than provide a prescriptive set of rules (as was the model employed in the previous Code). The Code provides in its very structure a guideline for decision-making. The six steps spell out the process recommended in making a particular decision. The Code was further shaped by a survey conducted with Registered Psychologists in which we asked them to describe ethical dilemmas that they, or a colleague, had recently faced (Davis, Seymour & Read, 1997). This demonstrated the type of ethical issue that could not be considered "routine" and that demanded of practitioners that a deliberate, rational decision-making process is followed. We also considered the clear evidence from complaints against psychologists that suggested the need for clearer direction in ethical decision-making. …


SUMMARY

Spatial and temporal variations in sea-level are produced by the melting of the Late Pleistocene ice and by the Earth's response to the redistribution in surface loads. By examining different parts of the sea-level curves of the past 20 000 yr from geographically widely distributed regions it becomes possible to constrain models of the melting history of the ice sheets and of the Earth's rheology. Observations from sites away from the former Arctic ice sheets, such as the Australian and South Pacific region, are particularly important for constraining the total meltwater volumes added into the oceans in the past 20 000 yr and the rates at which this occurred. These observations indicate that the Antarctic ice sheets provided a significant contribution to the sea-level rise at a rate that was approximately synchronous with the melting of the Laurentide ice sheet, except for the interval 9000–6000 yr ago when it may have lagged behind. Minor melting of the Antarctic ice sheet appears to have continued throughout the Late Holocene. Differential observations of the Late Holocene sea-level change recorded at sites in the same region are particularly useful for estimating parameters describing the Earth's non-elastic response to surface loading. The effective parameters used here are a lithospheric thickness, an upper mantle viscosity, and a lower mantle viscosity describing the response below 670 km depth. With the observations used here, it is not possible to separate the lithospheric thickness H from the upper mantle viscosity and the viscosity results are based on the assumption that 50 ≤H≤ 100 km. Neither do these observations provide a resolution of the depth dependence of viscosity in the upper mantle and the resulting estimates are effective parameters only. Differential sea-levels along continental margins and along the shores of large gulfs and bays constrain the effective upper mantle viscosity to be about (1–2) × 1020 Pa s−1 while differential values from islands of different sizes are suggestive of a somewhat lower value. The lower mantle (taken to be below 670 km depth) viscosity is about two orders of magnitude greater than this. The estimated ice and rheological models explain many of the Holocene sea-level observations throughout the Australian and southern Pacific region. The tilting of continental margins, as exemplified by observations of variable amplitudes of the Holocene high-stands and the variable times at which sea-levels first reached their present level along the north Queensland coast and Great Barrier Reef, is well represented by these models. Differential Holocene sea-levels observed along the narrow Spencers Gulf of South Australia are also well explained by the models and in neither case is it necessary to invoke tectonic motions. Predicted Late Holocene sea-levels at small-to medium-sized islands are characterized by small amplitude high-stands that reached their maximum values about 4000–2000 yr ago, consistent with observations from the Society, Cook and Tuamotu Islands.


The present study was planned to investigate the effects of two different concentrations (10 and 40 mg/kg) of monensin, carboxylic ionophore antibiotic, on the ECG and the serum Na + and K + concentrations of rabbits. Fifteen male rabbits, about 2 kg and 1 year old, were used. ECGs were recorded by a direct writing electrocardiograph. Blood samples for measuring serum Na + and the K + concentrations were collected and the leads I, II, II, aVR, aVL and aVF were recorded before and 6 hours after monensin was given. The durations and amplitudes of waves on the trace were measured in lead II and electrical axis also measured in leads I and III. We found that the effects of monensin on ECG and the serum Na + and the K + concentrations were dose dependent. In low doses (10 mg/kg) it produced a sinusoidal tachycardia by decreasing the time interval between two impulse production by sinoatrial node without changing the serum ion balance. However, in high doses (40 mg/kg) it produced a sinusoidal tachycardia with increasing the serum K + and decreasing the serum Na + concentrations.


Humans are able to speak in synchrony with each other. The present study investigated whether four temporal correlates of speech rhythm (%V, nPVI-C, nPVI-V, nPVI-CV) adapt when speaking in synchrony with a recording. The experimental setting consisted of three conditions: Eight participants read three sentences out loud (read), four of them were asked to speak in synchrony (sync) with the same sentences recorded by the four others (target). Correlation analysis was carried out between the rhythmic measurements of the sync condition and the two others (read/target). Results revealed that there are typically strong significant correlations between speech rhythm of the read and synchronous speech. The impact on speaker identification, in particular under forensic circumstances, is discussed.


Rationally engineering photocatalytic devices that power water splitting or CO2 reduction reactions requires identifying economical materials that efficiently absorb sunlight and have suitable band edge placements. Recent theoretical investigations have predicted that a 1 : 1 alloy of MnO and ZnO meets these criteria. However, poor hole conductivity in undoped MnO:ZnO alloys (with up to 10% ZnO) severely limits this material's utility in electronic devices, and its electron conductivity has not yet been characterized. Here we investigate carrier transport in pure and doped MnO and MnO:ZnO with ab initio quantum chemistry calculations. Electrostatically embedded clusters are used to compute and compare relative electron/hole transfer barriers within the small polaron model. We assess the effects of Al, Ga, In, Sc, Y, Ti, Sb, Gd, F (n-type dopants) and Li (a p-type dopant) to determine which may enhance conductivity in MnO:ZnO. Our findings indicate that Ga, Sc, Ti, F, and Sb dopants create deep traps whereas In forms shallower traps that merit further investigation. Y, Al, Gd, and Li dopants should increase the carrier concentration while maintaining favorable electron and hole transport pathways. The latter are recommended for increasing the conductivity of MnO:ZnO and its effectiveness for solar energy conversion.


The Polycythemia Vera is a myeloproliferative neoplasia whose overall incidence is 0.7-2.6 cases per 100.000 inhabitants/year; 92.3% of the patients were positive to the JAK2 V617F mutation (exon 14) and 7.7% were negative also to the mutations on the exon 12. Around 29.16% of the JAK2 V617F positive patients had arterial or venous thrombosis. The percentage of patients with the JAK2 V617F mutation and the frequency of thrombosis in PV JAK2 positive patients demonstrated in our study are according to the data presented in the literature.


Background: Immunosuppression in melanoma is mediated by increased accumulation of Myeloid Derived Suppressor Cells (MDSCs). Olive Leaf Extract (OLE) has been developed as a natural anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant, anti-proliferative and antiapoptotic agent on cancer immunotherapy.
Objective: To investigate whether OLE could inhibit MDSCs, enhance anti-tumor activities and consequently increase the survival rate of the murine melanoma model.
Methods: The C57BL/6 mice were inoculated subcutaneously with B16/F10 melanoma tumor cell lines. Induced mice were orally treated with 500 mgkg-1 of olive extract per kg of body weight for 8 consecutive days. The frequency and function of MDSCs and induction of inflammatory mediators as well as tumor growth and survival rate were assessed in treated and untreated mice.
Results: The results of current study revealed that the optimal dose of OLE (500 mgkg-1) reduced the tumor growth (40%), and prolonged mice survival (25%) by significant decreasing (P<0.05) the number (over 50%), and suppressive function of MDSCs (over 60%) (P<0.05). OLE was also significantly (P<0.05) down regulated the induction of inflammatory agents in melanoma-bearing mice (over 50%) at the applied dose (500 mgkg-1).
Conclusion: Therefore, these results altogether provided some evidence that regulation of immunosuppression were the possible therapeutic effects of OLE in tumor cells.


Meeting the growing water and food demands in a densely populated country like India is a major challenge. It requires an extensive investigation into the changing patterns of the checks and balances behind the maintenance of food security at the expense of depleting groundwater, along with high energy consumption. Here we present a comprehensive set of analyses which assess the present status of the water-food-energy nexus in India, along with its changing pattern, in the last few decades. We find that with the growth of population and consequent increase in the food demands, the food production has also increased, and this has been made possible with the intensification of irrigation. However, during the recent decade (after 1996), the increase in food production has not been sufficient to meet its growing demands, precipitating a decline in the per-capita food availability. We also find a statistically significant declining trend of groundwater storage in India during the last decade, as derived from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite datasets. Regional studies reveal contrasting trends between northern and western-central India. North-western India and the middle Ganga basin show a decrease in the groundwater storage as opposed to an increasing storage over western-central India. Comparison with well data reveals that the highest consistency of GRACE-derived storage data with available well measurements is in the middle Ganga basin. After analysing the data for the last 2 decades, we further showcase that, after a drought, the groundwater storage drops but is unable to recover to its original condition even after good monsoon years. The groundwater storage reveals a very strong negative correlation with the electricity consumption for agricultural usage, which may also be considered as a proxy for groundwater pumped for irrigation in a region. The electricity usage for agricultural purposes has an increasing trend and, interestingly, it does not have any correlation with the monsoon rainfall as computed with the original or de-trended variables. This reveals an important finding that the irrigation has been intensified irrespective of rainfall. This also resulted in a decreasing correlation between the food production and monsoon rainfall, revealing the increasing dependency of agricultural activities on irrigation. We conclude that irrigation has now become essential for agriculture to meet the food demand; however, it should be judiciously regulated and controlled, based on the water availability from monsoon rainfall, specifically after the drought years, as it is essential to recover from the deficits suffered previously.


About one in six women in the United States will be a victim of rape. For many of these women, the rape does not end there—this crime against their body will result in an unplanned pregnancy. In recent years, rape awareness has increased both in the government and among the public: a new federal definition of rape encompasses a broader spectrum of victims and pregnancy resulting from rape was splashed across national headlines. But this is not enough. Most states lack sufficient legal protections for a pregnant rape victim: criminal prosecutions and convictions for rape are rare, and many states lack an efficient means through which a victim could terminate her rapist's parental rights over the child. This Note illuminates this legislative omissions by discussing the current statutory schemes in effect and illustrates how judicial applications of these statutes leave many victims and their children without sufficient legal processes. To resolve this inadequacy, this Note suggests changes to the parental rights termination statutes, particularly concerning pregnancies resulting from rape, to create a more predictable outcome and protect the choices a rape victim must make.


Electronic systems with physical properties matched to the human epidermis can be used in clinical monitoring. We report classes of electronic systems that achieve thicknesses, effective elastic moduli, bending stiffnesses, and areal mass densities matched to the epidermis. Unlike traditional wafer-based technologies, laminating such devices onto the skin leads to conformal contact and adequate adhesion based on van der Waals interactions alone, in a manner that is mechanically invisible to the user. We describe systems incorporating electrophysiological, temperature, and strain sensors, as well as transistors, light-emitting diodes, photodetectors, radio frequency inductors, capacitors, oscillators, and rectifying diodes. Solar cells and wireless coils provide options for power supply. We used this type of technology to measure electrical activity produced by the heart, brain, and skeletal muscles and show that the resulting data contain sufficient information for an unusual type of computer game controller.


There are two conventional types of hinges for in-space deployment applications. The first type is mechanically deploying hinges. A typical mechanically deploying hinge is usually composed of several tens of components. It is complicated, heavy, and bulky. More components imply higher deployment failure probability. Due to the existence of relatively moving components among a mechanically deploying hinge, it unavoidably has microdynamic problems. The second type of conventional hinge relies on strain energy for deployment. A tape-spring hinge is a typical strain energy hinge. A fundamental problem of a strain energy hinge is that its deployment dynamic is uncontrollable. Usually, its deployment is associated with a large impact, which is unacceptable for many space applications. Some damping technologies have been experimented with to reduce the impact, but they increased the risks of an unsuccessful deployment. Coalescing strain energy components with shape memory composite (SMC) components to form a hybrid hinge is the solution. SMCs are well suited for deployable structures. A SMC is created from a high-performance fiber and a shape memory polymer resin. When the resin is heated to above its glass transition temperature, the composite becomes flexible and can be folded or packed. Once cooled to below the glass transition temperature, the composite remains in the packed state. When the structure is ready to be deployed, the SMC component is reheated to above the glass transition temperature, and it returns to its as-fabricated shape. A hybrid hinge is composed of two strain energy flanges (also called tape-springs) and one SMC tube. Two folding lines are placed on the SMC tube to avoid excessive strain on the SMC during folding. Two adapters are used to connect the hybrid hinge to its adjacent structural components. While the SMC tube is heated to above its glass transition temperature, a hybrid hinge can be folded and stays at folded status after the temperature is reduced to below its glass transition temperature. After the deployable structure is launched in space, the SMC tube is reheated and the hinge is unfolded to deploy the structure. Based on test results, the hybrid hinge can achieve higher than 99.999% shape recovery. The hybrid hinge inherits all of the good characteristics of a tape-spring hinge such as simplicity, light weight, high deployment reliability, and high deployment precision. Conversely, it eliminates the deployment impact that has significantly limited the applications of a tape-spring hinge. The deployment dynamics of a hybrid hinge are in a slow and controllable fashion. The SMC tube of a hybrid hinge is a multifunctional component. It serves as a deployment mechanism during the deployment process, and also serves as a structural component after the hinge is fully deployed, which makes a hybrid hinge much stronger and stiffer than a tape-spring hinge. Unlike a mechanically deploying hinge that uses relatively moving components, a hybrid hinge depends on material deformation for its packing and deployment. It naturally eliminates the microdynamic phenomenon.


Only about 60% of eligible people participate in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and evidence indicates that these recipients do not claim all of the benefits available to them. Transaction costs and negative stigma associated with participating in the program are likely to discourage eligible people from enrolling, and enrollees from redeeming all of their benefits. As of November 2016, sixteen states have implemented Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) for WIC, potentially reducing the amount of time required for each transaction and making it more difficult to identify beneficiaries. In this manuscript we analyze the impact the transition to WIC EBT has on enrollment, WIC benefits redemption, and non-WIC food expenditures using enrollment data for five states, and expenditure data for 17,714 households enrolled in WIC. We find no evidence that EBT increases the chance that eligible people enroll in the WIC program. We do find evidence that WIC recipients redeem more benefits two to four months after the transition, and there is no evidence that they increase expenditures on non-WIC foods.


COLLABORATION BASED SPECTRUM SHARING ALGORITHMS IN COGNITIVE RADIO NETWORKS By Chowdhury Sayeed Hyder Radio spectrum assignment to wireless providers using traditional fixed allocation policy will no longer be a viable technique to meet the growing spectrum demand of emerging wireless applications. This is because while the available pool of unassigned radio spectrum is low, the spectrum already assigned to existing applications is also often underutilized in time, frequency, and location. With features like transmission flexibility and adaptability cognitive radio (CR) provides a useful means of spectrum sharing among growing users as an alternative to the current fixed policy. The cognitive radio network (CRN), based on the functionality of CR, consists of two types of users — primary users (PU) and secondary users (SU). Primary users are licensed users who have exclusive access rights of a fixed spectrum range. Secondary users are unlicensed users who opportunistically exploit the spectrum holes or negotiate with primary users to earn transmission access rights. The CRN based efficient spectrum sharing algorithms work on different forms of collaboration between the PUs and the SUs (inter-user collaboration) and among the SUs themselves (intra-user collaboration). In the sensing based collaboration model, the SUs sense licensed spectrum and collaboratively decide about its availability based on the sensing results without any involvements from the PUs. In the relay based collaboration model, the SUs coordinate with the PUs directly, relay primary packets in exchange for transmission opportunities, and thus build a win-win cooperative framework to attain mutual benefits. In the auction based collaboration model, the SUs bid for temporary or permanent usage rights of unused licensed spectrum bands that are put into auction for sale by the PUs. Each of these collaboration models faces different sets of challenges towards achieving high spectrum utilization. In this dissertation, we address some of these challenges and present a set of efficient spectrum sharing algorithms based on these collaboration models. The first work in this dissertation addresses the spectrum sensing data falsification (SSDF) attack in IEEE 802.22 wireless regional area network (WRAN) under the sensing based collaboration model. We discuss different strategies of manipulating sensing reports by one or more malicious users and how these manipulation strategies may affect the spectrum utilization. To defend against such malicious attacks, we present an adaptive reputation based clustering algorithm. The algorithm combines the clustering technique with feedback based reputation adjustment to prevent independent and collaborative SSDF attacks and quarantines the attackers from the decision making process. Our next set of work in this dissertation falls under the relay based collaboration model. We investigate the feasibility of this collaboration model in the case of real-time applications. We quantify the impact of packet deadlines and cooperation overhead on the system performance. We discuss the impact of interference that may cause from secondary transmissions. Based on the analysis, we develop an interference aware reliable cooperative framework which improves the packet reception rate of both users with low overhead. We extend our investigation of this relay based collaboration model from single hop to multiple hops in the form of cooperative routing. We formulate the routing problem as an overlapping coalition formation game where each coalition represents a routing path between primary source and destination consisting of multiple SUs as intermediate relays. The proposed model allows SUs to participate in more than one coalitions and creates more transmission opportunities for them while achieving stable routing paths for PUs. Our final set of work in this dissertation deals with the challenges in the auction based collaboration model. We consider an online setting of spectrum auctions where participation and valuation of both bidders and sellers are stochastic. We analyze the behavior of bidders and sellers in such settings and develop truthful auction mechanisms with respect to bid and time, improving spectrum reuse, auction efficiency, and revenue. The findings from our research will help to understand the underlying challenges in future networks, build a better spectrum ecosystem, and encourage new spectrum sharing models in wireless broadband communications.


Political analyses of the reform period China are plentiful, and for each analysis, there seems to be another version of a "China Model" or "Beijing Consensus" for economic and social development. This paper argues that these vague conceptualizations need to be rooted in empirical observations; they need to be products of induction rather than deductive processes that reiterate the preconceptions of any given author. This paper pursues the state financial side of China's development, focused primarily on the China Development Bank (CDB) and its massive operations domestically and abroad, and their implications for international politics and economics and theories of China's development model. The paper aims not to produce a novel and comprehensive model, but to illustrate and argue for one fundamental pillar of the model to be built on findings from modern Chinese state finance. The paper examines CDB, historically, domestically, and internationally, and suggests an essential starting point in Chinese state finance. The research uses sources from government, interviews, academia, and publicly available literature. The findings illustrate the size and importance of CDB in almost all "hot" areas of China's foreign policy (FDI, resources, Cross-Strait relations, etc.) and the pragmatism and flexibility of China's global financial power. Furthermore, the paper assuages some concerns about radical changes and "locking-up" of resource by China. However, the paper illustrates a very real potential for disruption of standard sovereign borrowing practices of resource-rich developing countries. The paper also examines the "theory" of good governance, and finds it lacking both in substantive powers of extrapolation and robustness as a viable theory of development for foreign recipient countries of CDB's financing. (Less)


Larval settlement in the fouling polychaete Hydroides elegans Haswell (1883) is mediated by natural biofilms, a complex consortium of marine bacteria, benthic diatoms, protozoa, fungi and adsorbed organic matter. Currently, the inductive effect of natural biofilms on larval settlement is attributed to the bacterial component. In this paper, we present results of an investigation of the diatom component of natural biofilms with respect to induction of larval settlement in H. elegans. Thirty-two diatom strains were isolated from natural biofilms, identified and individually investigated in still-water laboratory settlement assays. A multiple pairwise comparison of larval settlement rates grouped the diatoms into 3 statistical categories: (1) 'inductive'; same percentage of larval settlement as in the positive control (glass slide with natural biofilm); (2) 'no effect'; same percentage of larval settlement as in the negative control (clean glass slide); and (3) 'weakly inductive'; percentage of larval settlement significantly higher and lower than in the negative and the positive control, respectively. Out of 32 diatom strains, 3 (10 %) fell into the first, 19 (59%) into the second and 10 (31%) into the third category. The variability in larval settlement was not correlated with the density of diatoms in the monospecific films. Despite sterile measures and the use of antibiotics, diatom films under investigation were not axenic, with bacterial abundances ranging from 200 to 8000 cells mm -2 . No quantitative correlation between the bacterial abundance in diatom films and the percentage of larval settlement was observed. To evaluate the qualitative impact of the bacterial fraction in the mixed diatom-bacteria films on the induction of larval settlement, 6 representative diatom strains, comprising the 3 categories stated above, were selected to create diatom-free microbial films with the bacterial contaminants of each culture. Whilst the bacterial abundance in the non-axenic diatom films and the diatom-free control films was statistically the same, the percentage of larval settlement towards these treatments differed significantly for the diatom strains belonging to category (1) and (3). These categories comprised 4 different genera of diatoms, indicating that the observed inductive effect on larval settlement was not restricted to a certain diatom genus. Our results suggest that in addition to microbial films, benthic diatoms may significantly contribute to the mediation of larval settlement behaviour in H. elegans by marine biofilms.


Within the tourism industry there is a growing consensus on the need for research to investigate the economic, social and environmental impacts of tourism. However, existing research methods texts are based solely on either the business approach or the social science approach to tourism. They often fail to provide real world examples of how to plan, implement or analyse tourism related research. This book aims to address this divide by integrating theory with practice through the inclusion of specific tourism research case studies alongside research theory. It considers a wide range of research issues, approaches and techniques with contributions from both experienced and new researchers.


First published in 1931 and long out of print, "Red Bread" is Russian-born journalist Maurice Hindus's account of his return to his native village in 1929-30 to see for himself how Stalin's collectivization campaign was transforming the lives of the peasants among whom he had grown up in prerevolutionary times. This warm and human narrative conveys in personal and immediate terms his peasant neighbors' responses to being forced out of a centuries-old way of life and into the unfamiliar social setting and industrialized large-scale agriculture of the kolkhoz. Convinced that collectivized farming would bring Russian agriculture and the Russian peasant into the modern age, Hindus was nonetheless deeply troubled by the huge social cost and personal suffering inflicted by Stalin's ruthless campaign. "Red Bread" contributes an invaluable grassroots perspective on the era's dynamism and despair to the current discussion of the Soviet historical experience in the Soviet Union and the West. Maurice Hindus (1891-1969) emigrated to America in 1905. As a writer, lecturer, and war correspondent, he made many trips to Russia during the 1920's, thirties, and forties. Among his best-known books about Russia are "Broken Earth" and "Humanity Uprooted".


Artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) has been an important source of income for communities in the Madre de Dios River Basin in Peru for hundreds of years. However, in recent decades, the scale of ASGM activities in the region has increased dramatically, and exposures to a variety of occupational and environmental hazards related to ASGM, including mercury, are becoming more widespread. The aims of our study were to: (1) examine patterns in the total hair mercury level of human participants in several communities in the region and compare these results to the 2.2 µg/g total hair mercury level equivalent to the World Health Organization (WHO) Expert Committee of Food Additives (JECFA)'s Provisional Tolerable Weekly Intake (PTWI); and (2), to measure the mercury levels of paco (Piaractus brachypomus) fish raised in local aquaculture ponds, in order to compare these levels to the EPA Fish Tissue Residue Criterion of 0.3 µg Hg/g fish (wet weight). We collected hair samples from 80 participants in four communities (one control and three where ASGM activities occurred) in the region, and collected 111 samples from fish raised in 24 local aquaculture farms. We then analyzed the samples for total mercury. Total mercury levels in hair were statistically significantly higher in the mining communities than in the control community, and increased with increasing geodesic distance from the Madre de Dios headwaters, did not differ by sex, and frequently exceeded the reference level. Regression analyses indicated that higher hair mercury levels were associated with residence in ASGM communities. The analysis of paco fish samples found no samples that exceeded the EPA tissue residue criterion. Collectively, these results align with other recent studies showing that ASGM activities are associated with elevated human mercury exposure. The fish farmed through the relatively new process of aquaculture in ASGM areas appeared to have little potential to contribute to human mercury exposure. More research is needed on human health risks associated with ASGM to discern occupational, residential, and nutritional exposure, especially through tracking temporal changes in mercury levels as fish ponds age, and assessing levels in different farmed fish species. Additionally, research is needed to definitively determine that elevated mercury levels in humans and fish result from the elemental mercury from mining, rather than from a different source, such as the mercury released from soil erosion during deforestation events from mining or other activities.


Decentralization and Local Governance in Developing Countries Pranab Bardhan 2006-06-16 Over the past three decades the developing world has seen increasing devolution of political and economic power to local governments. Decentralization is considered an important element of participatory democracy and, along with privatization and deregulation, represents a substantial reduction in the authority of national governments over economic policy. The contributors to Decentralization and Local Governance in Developing Countries examine this institutional transformation from comparative and interdisciplinary perspectives, offering detailed case studies of decentralization in eight countries: Bolivia, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, South Africa, and Uganda. Some of these countries witnessed an unprecedented "big bang" shift toward comprehensive political and economic decentralization: Bolivia in 1995 and Indonesia after the fall of Suharto in 1998. Brazil and India decentralized in an uneven and more gradual manner. In some other countries (such as Pakistan), devolution represented an instrument for consolidation of power of a nondemocratic national government. In China, local governments were granted much economic but little political power. South Africa made the transition from the undemocratic decentralization of apartheid to decentralization under a democratic constitution. The studies provide a comparative perspective on the political and economic context within which decentralization took place, and how this shaped its design and possible impact. Contributors Omar Azfar, Gianpaolo Baiocchi, Pranab Bardhan, Shubham Chaudhuri, Ali Cheema, JeanPaul Faguet, Bert Hofman, Kai Kaiser, Philip E. Keefer, Asim Ijaz Khwaja, Justin Yifu Lin, Mingxing Liu, Jeffrey Livingston, Patrick Meagher, Dilip Mookherjee, Ambar Narayan, Adnan Qadir, Ran Tao, Tara Vishwanath, Martin Wittenberg


W HEREVER the methods of science have been inapplicable, or for some reason been left unapplied, opinion has held sway, and, as the adage has it, the number of opinions has equalled that of the men holding them. This, it need hardly be pointed out, is seen clearly in the histories and literatures of religion, philosophy, ethics, politics and many branches of the newer social sciences. It is notoriously true of discussions of race problems, even when the opinions have been held by scientists eminent in their own special domains. Thus we have a Boaz, who can see no essential difference between the negro and white races, and a Le Bon, who is equally certain that a "mental abyss" forever separates the two peoples, and that the negro is the much inferior of the two. In the hope that the Binet tests would yield a few grains of fact which might leaven the lump of opinion, the writer directed Miss Alice C. Strong, a graduate student of the University of South Carolina, to measure with the Binet scale, as revised by Dr. H. H. Goddard, the white and colored school children of Columbia, S. C. The same tests were given to both the white and colored children under practically uniform conditions, with the exception that some of the colored children tested were older than twelve years. The course of study in the colored school, which is a part of the public school system, is essentially the same as in the white schools, and the quality of teaching is good. The children seemed to be at ease in the presence of the white examiner, and to do their best. No marked variation from the white children in the manner of responding could be noted. In almost every case the dress, cleanliness and manners of the children indicated that they came from good homes. The replies were usually couched in fewer words than those of the white children. There was less tendency to enter into conversation, and it was soon found that they were more at ease when reacting to the tests than when an attempt was made to talk with them about other things. The following are the tests which were given to the children of both races, ranging from six to twelve years inclusive.


The 1991 census did not ask women how many children they had ever had. Because of this, there has been a gap in our understanding of fertility trends. The author uses the `own-children' method which allows him to fill this gap. He analyses the fertility of immigrant women in Australia and discovers that, by 1991, most had lower fertility than Australian-born women. Most also had lower fertility than women of a comparable age in their countries of origin. Second-generation `migrants' had converged even more closely to the Australian norm.


This paper compares the water quality of rainwater tanks throughout the Sydney metropolitan area to that in rural New South Wales, Australia. The water quality is compared against the Australian Guidelines for Water Recycling (AGWR) to determine if the untreated rainwater from both areas can be considered suitable for non-potable water supply without filtration. Additionally this paper reports on a set of experiments where rainwater collected from a typical domestic roof in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia was treated by a pre-treatment of granular activated carbon (GAC) adsorption filter followed by micro-filtration. The GAC column removed the pollutants through an adsorption mechanism. GAC is a macroporous solid with a very large surface area providing many sites for adsorption and it is this property that makes it an efficient adsorbent. The parameters analysed were ammonia, anions and cations, heavy metals, nitrate and nitrite, pH, total hardness, total organic carbon, total suspended solids and turbidity. The results indicate that before treatment, the rainwater already complied to many of the parameters specified in the AGWR, certain pollutants have the potential at times to exceed the AGWR. The water quality was within the AGWR limits after the treatment. The micro-filtration flux values demonstrate that rainwater was able to be filtered through the membranes under low gravitational heads that are typically available in a rainwater tank while still producing sufficient membrane flux and pollutant removal rates.


Background: Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) is the sudden cessation of the heart in an out of hospital setting. In the United States, the incidence of OHCA is estimated at 110 individuals per 100,000 per year with an overall survival rate of 5.2%. The American Heart Association guidelines recommends angiography for patients who have ST elevation in electrocardiogram followed by proper treatments. In patients without ST elevation, other general tests and observations would be conducted before further interventions. Some evidence suggests that immediate angiography and appropriate intervention for OHCA patients could result in better healthcare outcomes regardless of the presence of ST elevation in electrocardiogram. The goal of this study is to investigate whether immediate angiography and PCI are cost-effective compared to the standard of care. Methods: We built a decision tree in TreeAge Pro Software to compare the cost-effectiveness of immediate angiography followed by proper interventions to standard care. The model calculates the costs and benefits of each strategy over a short-term period. We reviewed the literature to obtain the model parameters, including probabilities for choosing interventions, intervention costs, quality of life and life expectancy estimates. We calculated incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of immediate angiography strategy compared to standard of care. In addition, we tested the robustness of our outcomes using Tornado analysis, and probabilistic sensitivity analysis (PSA) in which we varied all the parameters jointly. Results: Immediate angiography was less expensive than the standard care ($1,281) per patient treated per year, and more effective [0.03 quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs)]. These findings were robust to all one-way sensitivity analyses. In addition, PSA showed there is more than 91% chance that immediate angiography is more cost effective than the standard care conditional on $100,000/QALY willingness to pay threshold. Conclusion: Our results suggest that immediate angiography is more cost effective than the standard care for OHCA patients from a societal perspective because the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) is well below the threshold that is generally considered to be cost-effective by many health-care agencies. Cost-effectiveness analysis results from our group and others may help inform treatment strategy of OHCA patients and lead to improved allocation of healthcare resources for CVD treatment. Globally, public health resources are limited; the saved resources in the cardiovascular disease area could be used in other areas, like HIV/AIDS, purification water or poverty. From a public health point of view, the research we conducted can provide evidence and support for allocation of limited public health resources.


Albinism seen in very young seedlings from seeds infected with Alternaria fungi and that seen in variegated leaves is known in Citrus. However, genetic control of albinism has not been reported in Citrus accessions probably because of their apomixis, self-incompatibility, long generation time and cross breeding. In the present study, albino seedlings were observed for the first time in the zygotic seedlings obtained from the crosses or backcrosses with grapefruit and Hanayu with the segregation ratio of 1 albino:3 green and 1 albino:7 green. The 1:3 ratio indicated that Hanayu and grapefruit have independent single recessive gene for the albino seedlings. The albino genes detected in Hanayu and grapefruit designated al1 and al2 respectively. On the other hand, the 1:7 ratio indicated that Hanayu or Yuzu has independent single dominant gene designating R2 a green-restorer for restoration of genetic albinism in the crosses with grapefruit. Albinism observed in the seedlings showed the stability in terms of the two albino genes and all the albino seedlings showing slow growth died several months after seed germination. When grapefruit (pummelo×sweet orange?) was crossed to 46 monoembryonic Citrus accessions including 28 pummelo accessions, albino seedlings did not segregate in the progenies of all crosses. The albino seedlings found in this study may be useful as markers in various experiments and contribute to chloroplast research in Citrus.


Drawing on structured interviews of 29 conservation practitioners with first‐hand experience working with successful community forest conservation projects in eight countries around the world, this article explores how context influences the importance of Mancur Olson's five requisites for collective action, and Elinor Ostrom's eight design principles for effective common‐pool resource management. Results suggest that Olson was correct that social cohesion is a common attribute of successful community forest management efforts. But the survey also suggests that it is shared identity that is most the important contributor to cohesion and that this can occur largely absent of regular, positive face‐to‐face interactions as Olson suggests. Interviews also show that all eight of Ostrom's design principles are manifest by successful community forest conservation efforts. Although recognition of a community rights to self‐determination was reported to be essential, it was also considered insufficient without the timely and competent support of national authorities to help communities effectively exercise their rights when faced with threats from more economically and politically powerful external actors.


Abstract. This paper presents a new approach to segment low quality fingerprint images which are collected by low quality fingerprint readers. Images collected using such readers are easy to collect but difficult to segment. The proposed approach is based on combining global and local processing to achieve segmentation of fingerprint images. On the global level, the fingerprint is located and extracted from the rest of the image by using a global thresholding followed by dilation and edge detection of the largest object in the image. On the local level, fingerprint's foreground and its border image are treated using different fuzzy rules. These rules are based on the mean and variance of the block under consideration. The approach is implemented in three stages: pre-processing, segmentation, and post-processing. Segmentation of 100 images was performed and compared with manual examinations by human experts. The experiments showed that 96% of images under test are correctly segmented. The results from the quality of segmentation test revealed that the average error in block segmentation was 2.84% and the false positive and false negatives were approximately 1.4%. This indicates the high robustness of the proposed approach.


Race and Equality Across the Law School Curriculum: Tax Exempt Law chronicles the possibilities for racial examinations of tax exempt law in the law school environment, either through teaching or scholarship. The Article, prepared in conjunction with Association of American Law School's Summer 2004 "Racial Justice" professional development conference, relates the racial study of tax exempt law to the broader critical race theory movement in law generally. Thus, the Article highlights critical race theory's initial focus on constitutional law issues and traces its development to a focus on more neutral-looking areas of law such as tax law. The Article then outlines the basic scholarship concerning tax law generally as it relates to race, demonstrating how this general tax and race scholarship has effectively exposed racial bias in the federal tax imposed on wages and income of individuals. Finally, the Article outlines a laundry list of race issues in tax exempt law that might also contribute to improved notions of justice and fairness in the law. For example, the Article discusses the public policy limitation imposed on tax exempt charities, the role that racial diversity might play on tax exempt organization boards of directors and the current statutory prohibition on racial discrimination by tax exempt social clubs.


International Institute of Tropical Agriculture maintains 2544 cassava accessions (Manihot esculenta Crantz) from 28 countries in its field bank. Being vegetatively propagated, this poses challenges in maintenance in terms of cost as well as in labour requirements. A core collection representing the range of phenotypic diversity present in the entire collection would enhance the conservation aspects and increase the potential for its exploitation in crop improvement programmes. The present study aimed to establish a core collection using 40 agro-morphological traits evaluated at two locations using a different number of accessions in each location. To meet the challenges generated by the types of variables and include maximum diversity in the core collection, a sequential strategy based on five major concepts was used: hierarchical multiple factor analysis allowing the mixture of variables of different kinds; three-way analysis that included the effect of genotype × environment interaction in the clustering process; linear discriminant function to assign all those individuals who were included in one location but not in the other to the groups that were generated from the common number of accessions evaluated in both locations; and D-allocation method to select samples from each cluster. The representativeness of the core subset to the entire collection was further estimated by comparing means and variances, range, and distances between accessions. The established cassava core collection consisted of 428 accessions that conserved 15% higher phenotypic diversity with no redundancies. The phenotypic diversity represented in this core collection will be a guide to users of cassava germplasm in their crop improvement programmes.


Background: Urinary tract infection (UTIs) are considered to be the most common infections in humans.
Aims:The present study aimed to investigate the association between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the toll-like receptor 4 (Tlr4) gene (Thr399Ile) and the incidence of Urinary Tract Infection.
Subjects and Methods:A total of 49 patients with Urinary Tract Infection and 25 apparently healthy control were enrolled in this study. Urine samples from patients with UTI was collected in AL-Imam AL-Hussain teaching hospital  in Thi- Qar province, during the period from February 2014 to March 2015.. Urinary isolates were identified by conventional methods.DNA was extracted from the blood samples taken from these participants. TLR4 gene was amplified with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using specific primers. Genotyping of the SNPs of interest was done by restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP).
Results:The present study was showed 26 (53.06%)isolates Escherichia coli; 9 (18.37%) isolates  had Pseudomonas aeruginusa;7 (14.29 %) isolates had  Klebsiella pneumonia; 4 (8.16%) had Proteus and 3 (6.12%) isolates  had Klebsiellaoxytoca, the results showed the presence of  heterozygous in one sample from  study group at site 399 (C / T) after using restriction enzyme Hinf1.
Conclusion: Escherichia coli was most common causative agent in UTI, Thr399Ile may be considered as a risk factor that increases susceptibility to Urinary TractInfection


Recent studies have documented cognitive and neural processes related to human abilities for prospection and prospective memory. In this review article, I discuss functional neuroimaging findings on these two inter-related neurocognitive processes in humans, which are both thought to develop in relation to episodic memory. Prospection is the ability to construct ideas about possible future events, whereas prospective memory involves the formation and encoding of personal behavioural plans that are then maintained and retrieved at a planned time (or condition) during other ongoing activities. A growing body of neuroimaging studies investigating human prospection has consistently identified a core brain network consisting of medial regions of the frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes. The medial prefrontal cortex has also been identified to play a significant role for executive processes in prospective memory. Further investigations will be needed to disambiguate the contributions of the medial temporal lobe in constructing, encoding, and remembering future plans.


A new factor M is proposed to characterize the similarity of the behavior of a partially coherent beam (PCB) to its coherent counterpart when propagating through atmospheric turbulence. It is shown that there exists a boundary in the range of the source coherent length. The decreasing rates of free space angular spreading and of turbulence distance with the source coherent length are different before and after the coherent length arriving at the boundary value, by which the change trend of M can be concluded.


The Covid-19 pandemic, and measures to contain the spread of the virus, such as border closures, quarantine requirements, mandatory PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) tests, curfews, and social distancing requirements, have had a significant impact on research methods and approaches. Most of the available literature assumes that remote data collection is the only viable means of collecting primary data during the pandemic, so that is the focus of this report. While there is an extensive discussion of challenges associated with undertaking primary data collection during this time, there are also several commentaries and opinion pieces that highlight the opportunities and positive aspects of remote data collection.


Stump wood is a possible alternative to fossil fuel. Its harvesting, however, disturbs the ground and this has not yet been quantified at stump level. Such disturbance is likely to be dependent on stump size, type of soil and timing of stump harvesting. Therefore, we measured ground disturbance and root breakage diameter at two Norway spruce sites with sandy glacial till soil. The sites were harvested with a fork type head, 6 and 18 months after clear cutting. Measurements were made within 2 weeks of harvest. No difference was found between the two sites. The mean area of disturbed ground was 6.06 (std 3.14) m2 per stump and increased exponentially with stump size. A regression function modelling the relationship was constructed. Unexpectedly, many fine roots where extracted in the harvest. The arithmetic and basal area weighted mean root breakage diameter was 4.6 (std 2.2) and 29.5 (std 17.9) mm, respectively. There seems to be a limited increase in root breakage diameter with increased stump size. The small root breakage diameter is associated with reduced fuel quality and greater nutrient removal. It appears that much of the ground disturbance is associated with the creation of ruts rather than stump harvest per se. Stump harvesting disturbs a larger percentage of the area of a harvested site than mounding. Postponing stump harvest by one year did not decrease the ground disturbance or increase the root breakage diameter. To achieve less disturbance and larger root breakage diameter, probably new stump harvesting technology is required.


Diamond tools are essential in various industries. The high hardness of diamond enables the machining of a wide range of different materials. The materials processed with diamond cutting tools vary from ceramic or metal components to natural materials like stone. In most cases, the abrasive diamonds of such cutting tools are embedded in a metal matrix. Depending on the application, this metal matrix has to fulfill certain requirements of wear resistance in order to achieve a sufficient tool life in combination with optimal cutting results. Laser cladding offers the opportunity to produce metal bond diamond tools with different matrix materials. In this process, the matrix is applied as metal powder. Together with the diamond particles, the metal powder is blown into the focus of the laser beam. By moving the laser over the workpiece, an abrasive line trace, consisting of diamonds embedded in a metal matrix, is built. In this way, arbitrary geometries (only limited by the handling system) can be generated. For example, dot patterns or spiral tracks can easily be processed. The use of an Yb-fiber laser with high beam quality (1.05 mm mrad) enables us to build up structures with dimensions less than 1 mm. In contrast to our process, the established ways of manufacturing (electroplating or brazing) require huge efforts to produce abrasive coatings with complex shapes. In order to rate the potential of this laser cladding method, especially for small structures, 1 mm and below, the ability and the influence of different matrix materials are of great interest. Therefore, this work examines the evaluation of three different matrix materials: Co-based matrix, Fe-based matrix, and Ti-based matrix. The abrasive clads were analyzed by light optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM); in some cases, preparation took place by focused ion beam etching. Moreover, the diamonds were chemically leached out of the metal matrix and analyzed by SEM and Raman microscopy in order to understand the interfacial reactions between the diamond and the matrix melt. The diamond strength, after the laser cladding process, was measured by mechanical tests.Diamond tools are essential in various industries. The high hardness of diamond enables the machining of a wide range of different materials. The materials processed with diamond cutting tools vary from ceramic or metal components to natural materials like stone. In most cases, the abrasive diamonds of such cutting tools are embedded in a metal matrix. Depending on the application, this metal matrix has to fulfill certain requirements of wear resistance in order to achieve a sufficient tool life in combination with optimal cutting results. Laser cladding offers the opportunity to produce metal bond diamond tools with different matrix materials. In this process, the matrix is applied as metal powder. Together with the diamond particles, the metal powder is blown into the focus of the laser beam. By moving the laser over the workpiece, an abrasive line tra...


A new weighted-least-squares algorithm for phase estimation from the bispectrum is presented. The algorithm uses phasors instead of phases to avoid modulo-2π ambiguities present in the bispectrum phases. The performance of this algorithm is compared with the performances of several other previously proposed algorithms from both simulated and field data. It is shown that the new algorithm results in more accurate phase-spectrum estimates than the other approaches.


This RFC discusses the TCP Maximum Segment Size Option and related
topics. The purposes is to clarify some aspects of TCP and its
interaction with IP. This memo is a clarification to the TCP
specification, and contains information that may be considered as
"advice to implementers".


The construction of hegemonic masculinity cannot be understood outside its relationship to emphasized femininity. Women's negotiation of masculinity is dependent on their own feminine identity narratives (emphasized or liberated) in a corresponding context. Replicating and extending previous work, this study is aimed at exploring women's construction of masculinity in the contexts of work, family, friendship and romantic relationships. However, where previous studies explored this in the South African context, the present study is aimed at determining if women's construction of masculinity followed similar patterns for women from different countries across the world. The UNDP inequality index was used to estimate the developmental status (low, medium and high) of the country to explore whether participants from countries with different levels of development showed differing constructions of masculinity across the different contexts. The results supported Brittain (2010, 2011), in that this sample advocated for traditional hegemonic masculine traits in the context of family, romance and work, while constructing non-hegemonic 'nice guy' masculinities in the context of friendship. It was found that women from high and medium equality countries incorporated a few acceptable non-hegemonic and majority hegemonic masculine traits in their constructions of the ideal man across work, romance and family, while predominantly choosing non-hegemonic traits for friendship. In Low equality countries, women advocated predominantly for traditional hegemonic masculine traits across all four contexts. It seems that women's negotiation of masculinity (traditionally hegemonic or non-hegemonic) is interdependent on their own identity narrative and their ability to construct and negotiate their own femininity (emphasized and liberated) in the same contexts. This study demonstrates that (1) despite the level of equality women have gained in society, they continue to advocate for and perpetuate hegemonic masculine ideals (2) that male/masculine and female/feminine identities are intrinsically bound together; and the production of female identities valued by women requires the simultaneous production of complementary masculinities.