This paper reports about a study to analyse the Internet diffusion in Italy by Italian firms, using domain names under the .it ccTLD as metric. The penetration rate calculated according to the number of companies 1 is computed for highly dissimilar geographical areas (regions). A concentration analysis was performed in order to discover whether the geographical distribution of the Internet is less concentrated with respect to both the number of companies present in Italy and income level, suggesting a diffusive effect. Regression analysis was carried out using social, economic and infrastructure indicators. Results show that a "digital divide" exists in terms of geographical distribution (i.e., in macroareas – Northern, Central, and Southern Italy and at the regional level). In future we are going to carry out a research in order to compare the number of domains registered to businesses with that of domains registered in the non-profit sector.


Epiphytes are a characteristic component of tropical rainforests. Out of the 25 000 orchid species currently known to science, more than 70% live in tree canopies. Understanding when and how these orchids diversified is vital to understanding the history of epiphytic biomes. We investigated whether orchids managed to radiate so explosively owing to their predominantly epiphytic habit and/or their specialized pollinator systems by testing these hypotheses from a statistical and phylogenetic standpoint. For the first approach, species numbers of 100 randomly chosen epiphytic and terrestrial genera were compared. Furthermore, the mean number of pollinators per orchid species within the five subfamilies was calculated and correlated with their time of diversification and species richness. In the second approach, molecular epiphytic orchid phylogenies were screened for clades with specific suites of epiphytic adaptations. Epiphytic genera were found to be significantly richer in species than terrestrial genera both for orchids and non-orchids. No evidence was found for a positive association between pollinator specialization and orchid species richness. Repeated associations between a small body size, short life cycle and specialized clinging roots of twig epiphytes in Bulbophyllinae and Oncidiinae were discovered. The development of twig epiphytism in the first group seems repeatedlycorrelated with speciation bursts.


Process models are used to convey semantics about business operations that are to be supported by an information system. A wide variety of professionals is targeted to use such models, including people who have little modeling or domain expertise. We identify important user characteristics that influence the comprehension of process models. Through a free simulation experiment, we provide evidence that selected cognitive abilities, learning style, and learning strategy influence the development of process model comprehension. These insights draw attention to the importance of research that views process model comprehension as an emergent learning process rather than as an attribute of the models as objects. Based on our findings, we identify a set of organizational intervention strategies that can lead to more successful process modeling workshops.


The internet has become a popular resource to learn about health and to investigate one's own health condition. However, given the large amount of inaccurate information online, people can easily become misinformed. Individuals have always obtained information from outside the formal health care system, so how has the internet changed people's engagement with health information? This review explores how individuals interact with health misinformation online, whether it be through search, user-generated content, or mobile apps. We discuss whether personal access to information is helping or hindering health outcomes and how the perceived trustworthiness of the institutions communicating health has changed over time. To conclude, we propose several constructive strategies for improving the online information ecosystem. Misinformation concerning health has particularly severe consequences with regard to people's quality of life and even their risk of mortality; therefore, understanding it within today's modern context is an extremely important task. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Public Health, Volume 41 is April 1, 2020. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.


The Maine 4-H Afterschool Academy trained 369 after-school and out of school time providers in 2011. This easy-to-adapt professional development opportunity used blended learning, a combination of in-person and Web-based opportunities. Providers successfully learned concepts and practical knowledge regarding 4-H, specifically 4-H Science. In post-training evaluations, 86% of participants reported feeling more confident in incorporating science, engineering, and technology in their afterschool program. This blended learning approach eliminated some barriers Extension faculty face when designing programing for afterschool providers.


The analyses this paper reports come from ongoing research into the interactive establishment of local social order in a university setting. Our data are from a collection of video recordings of a particular sort of activity in the setting, namely 'group supervision'. We are interested in a particular set of interactive phenomena, namely how students' contributions can be treated as displays of understanding. We track the occurrence of such displays and their sequential context and amongst several co-participants; attempt to distinguish varieties of understanding displays; and attempt to demonstrate the analytic relevance of the talk's embeddedness within a particular sort of institutional activity. That understanding can be managed collectively in this setting is a significant finding in the study.


A primary task of Chinese planning historians is to show how Chinese urbanization expresses the complex and changing relationship between a strong central government and market forces. Here is one kind of cities called Third-front city, making a pure sample to understand Chinese modern institutional design and related spatial phenomena. Such cities were first built for war-preparing in remote Midwestern China in 1960s, under compulsory power and planned arrangement from central government, which seems not a sustainable mode by general acknowledgement. Yet those cities have still went through transformation and gained follow-up development. With the perspective of historical institutionalism, we assume there exists the interaction of institutional path dependence and endogenous incremental change. This paper takes one typical of them, Shiyan in Hubei Province for empirical study. From the Socialist planned economy stage (1960s to 1970s) to China's Reform stage (since 1980s), we mainly explore how government structural change effected the city's development outcomes as a core institutional factor, especially where planning got involved. We find that the initial institutional system dominated by central government had ensured rapid rise of Third-front city in early stage, while producing path dependence and long-term urban spatial influences. In face of transformation, general environment of modest reformation in China had provided enough buffer space for new institutions; On the other hand, despite path dependence in terms of industry pattern, finance structure, administrative power and so on, new local actors' seeking for incremental changes within original institutional framework also generated transformative effects.


The article is devoted to the analysis of the influence of the indicators of regional economic and social functioning on the results of the regional banking system's activity. The authors chose the indicators of social and economic development of the Rostov region and commercial banks operating in its financial market as objects for the study.In the article the authors analyzed the methodologies that focus on assessing the impact of macroeconomic indicators on the banking system of the region. Besides, on the basis of econometric modeling quantitative and qualitative patterns of interrelations between the indicators of social and economic development of the regional economy and banking in the region are defined.As a result of the study, the authors concluded that the determining socio-economic factors that have a significant positive impact on the development of the banking system in the region are: the number of advanced technologies used; per capita monetary income; the transport infrastructure development level; the level of human capital; internal expenditures on research and development; gross regional product; value of fixed assets; fixed capital investment; retail trade turnover.


The aim of this book is to explain the basic concepts and phenomena of quantum mechanics by means of visualization. Computer-generated illustrations in color are used extensively throughout the text, helping to establish the relation between quantum mechanicswave functions, interference, atomic structure, and so forthand classical physicspoint mechanics, statistical mechanics, and wave optics. Even more important, by studying the pictures in parallel with the text, readers develop an intuition for such notoriously abstract phenomena as the tunnel effect excitation and decay of metastable states wave-packet motion within a well systems of distinguishable and indistinguishable particles free wave packets and scattering in 3 dimensions angular-momentum decomposition stationary bound states in various 3-dimensional potentials hybrid states Kepler motion of wave packets in the Coulomb field spin and magnetic resonance Illustrations from experiments in a variety of fields, including chemistry, and molecular, atomic, nuclear, and particle physics, underline the basic as well as the practical importance of quantum mechanics. In the present, fourth edition all computer graphics are presented in full color. It also contains additional physics topics such as hybridization. Praise for Previous Editions "The book is highly recommended as a complement to any standard textbook in quantum mechanics, but it will also be valuable to all of us who studied quantum mechanics without the pictures." International Journal of Quantum Chemistry "This book would be an excellent basis for the study of special topics in a quantum physics course. Most serious students of physics and all of their teachers will want to consider having this orderly and graphic outline of introductory quantum theory at their fingertips." American Journal of Physics "Their aim is the presentation of the 'principal ideas of wave mechanics' in such a way that students can build a quantum intuition out of their graphics." Scientific American "This is a unique book. It does not provide a complete course in quantum theory, but as a companion work of reference it should be quite useful to students in providing insights into the dynamical structure of the theory." Nature


This article explores the issues surrounding corporate insolvency, the non-remittance of PAYG withholding tax, and the non-remittance of superannuation guarantee charges and civil liability of directors for it. The director penalty regime may ultimately result in bankruptcy proceedings against directors and this article considers the interaction of bankruptcy law with the director penalty regime. Directors of a company will most likely face civil litigation for an unpaid tax debt should the alternative ATO enforcement procedures not succeed. The Commissioner, in order to enforce the judgment debt, will ultimately commence bankruptcy proceedings in the Federal Circuit Court of Australia by way of creditor's petition and after an act of bankruptcy has occurred. This article emphasises, with the recent authority of Soong's case, that it is vitally important for all directors to be vigilant to ensure that the company is meeting its tax obligations, and to take action if it appears that the company is having difficulty paying these amounts.


This document describes an extension of the Stateless IP/ICMP
Translation for IPv6 Internet Data Center Environments (SIIT-DC)
architecture, which allows applications, protocols, or nodes that are
incompatible with IPv6 and/or Network Address Translation to operate
correctly with SIIT-DC. This is accomplished by introducing a new
component called an SIIT-DC Edge Relay, which reverses the
translations made by an SIIT-DC Border Relay. The application and/or
node is thus provided with seemingly native IPv4 connectivity that
provides end-to-end address transparency. The reader is expected to
be familiar with the SIIT-DC architecture described in RFC 7755.


This paper uses the well-known Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition technique to understand the determinants of wage-gaps between men and women, between urban and rural workers, and between those employed in the rural agricultural versus the rural non-agricultural sectors, for the 14 developing and transition economies in the RIGA-L dataset. The unexplained male female wage gaps (i.e. the gaps that remain after controlling for a host of observable characteristics of the job and the worker) provide estimates of labor market discrimination against women that are consistent with prior estimates from other countries, and are generally similar in rural and urban areas. We argue that countries with large unexplained urban-rural gaps, such Tajikistan and Malawi, are those in which rural to urban migration is likely to persist even in face of high urban unemployment rates. Furthermore, we find that large unexplained wage gaps in favor of non-farm employment, versus paid labor in farming, exist in Tajikistan (53%), Ecuador (44%), Nepal (36%), Nicaragua (32%), and Nigeria (30%); these would then appear to be the countries for which a shift of existing workers, with their current attributes, from the farm to the non-farm sector would have the largest impact on rural incomes.


Established in 2012, the New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance (NJSAA) Graduate Student Award recognizes excellence in graduate writing about New Jersey history. It is presented for a paper written by a graduate student that best represents significant research and writing about any aspect of New Jersey history. The 2015 award went to Mr. Cohen. *** Freehold, New Jersey faced two major moments of deindustrialization in the post-World War II period. In the late 1950s, the rug mill that sat at the center of the town's economic and cultural life began to close down. In 1986, a 3M audio-visual tape plant that had helped the town avoid economic ruin shut down as well. This paper illustrates the continuities between these closings, challenging the dogma in labor history that plant closings occur because of management's desire to avoid an entitled and demanding workforce. Though workers at both plants were unionized, neither the rug mill nor the 3M workers made major demands on their employers in the postwar period. This paper analyzes the conditions that prompted shutdowns in Freehold, illustrating the role of broader market forces as well as internal company dynamics in driving capital flight. Furthermore, a close look at the 3M closing reveals the importance of culture in workers' responses to deindustrialization. Following 3M's announcement of its plans to shut down the Freehold plant, workers began a national media campaign to save their jobs. At the heart of this campaign was the memory of the rug mill that had closed 25 years earlier, as represented by their campaign anthem, Bruce Springsteen's 1984 song "My Hometown." This paper demonstrates the role of memory and music in shaping workers' experience with deindustrialization as well as the struggles of unions to codify the relationship between capital and community in the twentieth century.


Fuzzy mediation is an innovative approach to the creation of a framework geared towards supervised and collaborative learning in systems with two controllers, one being an expert controller and the second being a novice one. The nature of fuzzy sets allows for the comparison of inputs to reach a consensus on the overall difference between the controls. In previous works we have highlighted the importance of this concept and the aptitude and ease with which this framework adapts itself to agents based on fuzzy learning mechanisms to navigate through a preset course. In this paper we explore the relationship that different mediation equations have when related to different learning environments. We explore five different functions in relation to the tasks being accomplished by an artificial agent navigating through a preset course. We also look in detail at the reaction times between algorithms when different tightness of control is used within the fuzzy mediation core engine. This paper highlights the appropriateness of each of the five mediation equations in relation to the setting in which the fuzzy mediation framework is deployed. Moreover, we guide potential users through the analysis of tightness of control also as it is appropriate to the same environments of deployment of this framework.


Salamanders and frogs exhibit strong similarities in their habitats, prey preferences and foraging strategies. Despite these similarities, they differ profoundly in the structure and function of the adult feeding apparatus, and in the participation of cranial and spinal nerves and nuclei in the control of feeding behavior. In frogs, the hyolingual skeleton plays no role in tongue projection. Only the tongue is projected out of the mouth under the control of the nn. trigeminus (tongue protraction) and hypoglossus (tongue protraction and retraction). In all salamanders, feeding is based on forward movement of the hyolingual apparatus, which is folded into a slender, far-reaching projectile in the most highly derived salamanders. Tongue protraction is controlled by nn. glossopharyngeus and vagus, and tongue retraction is controlled by the first and second spinal nerves. All muscles related to feeding are activated sequentially in frogs and simultaneously in salamanders. While the descending pathways to the brainstem and cervical spinal motor nuclei are similar in frogs and salamanders, differences in muscle function and activation pattern imply that the premotor reticular formation is also different. In frog tadpoles and salamander larvae, the hyobranchial apparatus plays different roles in feeding and breathing. This has led to differential loss, acquisition and change of function of musculoskeletal elements during the ontogeny and phylogeny of the adult feeding apparatus in frogs and salamanders. These differences in the musculoskeletal periphery imply that a reorganization at or above the level of the reticular formation is likely to have occurred in frogs, but not in salamanders.


OBJECTIVE
The primary objective of this anatomical study was to apply innovative imaging techniques to increase understanding of the microanatomical structures of the brainstem related to safe entry zones. The authors hypothesized that such a high-detail overview would enhance neurosurgeons' abilities to approach and define anatomical safe entry zones for use with microsurgical resection techniques for intrinsic brainstem lesions.

METHODS
The brainstems of 13 cadavers were studied with polarized light imaging (PLI) and 11.7-T MRI. The brainstem was divided into 3 compartments-mesencephalon, pons, and medulla-for evaluation with MRI. Tissue was further sectioned to 100 μm with a microtome. MATLAB was used for further data processing. Segmentation of the internal structures of the brainstem was performed with the BigBrain database.

RESULTS
Thirteen entry zones were reported and assessed for their safety, including the anterior mesencephalic zone, lateral mesencephalic sulcus, interpeduncular zone, intercollicular region, supratrigeminal zone, peritrigeminal zone, lateral pontine zone, median sulcus, infracollicular zone, supracollicular zone, olivary zone, lateral medullary zone, and anterolateral sulcus. The microanatomy, safety, and approaches are discussed.

CONCLUSIONS
PLI and 11.7-T MRI data show that a neurosurgeon possibly does not need to consider the microanatomical structures that would not be visible on conventional MRI and tractography when entering the mentioned safe entry zones. However, the detailed anatomical images may help neurosurgeons increase their understanding of the internal architecture of the human brainstem, which in turn could lead to safer neurosurgical intervention.


Laboratory studies and field measurements were conducted to quantify assimilative capacity of toxic organic contaminants in freshwater wetlands. Studies were conducted for hexachlorobenzene and naphthalene in a mineral-dominated bottomland hardwood forest and an organic matter-dominated freshwater marsh. In laboratory studies, sorption of hexachlorobenzene (HCB) in wetland soil and floodwater was strongly influenced by high levels of naturally occurring dissolved organic carbon (DOC). Organic matter-dominated wetlands (e.g., marshes) demonstrated no advantage over mineral-dominated wetlands (e.g., bottomland hardwood forests) for sorption of HCB due to partitioning in this DOC phase. Over the short-term, sorption of HCB was adequately described using a three-phase equilibrium model that included the DOC phase. Sorptive assimilation of HCB appears to be dependent on unique hydrological conditions that promote sedimentwater exchange rather than any enhanced sorptive ability of wetland substrates, themselves. Sorption of naphthalene was greater in the freshwater marsh due to the increased fraction of organic carbon and the lower affinity of naphthalene for DOC. Small, but measurable, differences were observed in sorption partition coefficients between aerobic and high-DOC, anaerobic incubations. Reductive dechlorination of HCB was observed under low redox conditions (— 200 mV) in both wetland soils. Substantial degradation of HCB (50-60% in the bottomland hardwood soil; 90% in the freshwater marsh soil) occurred over a period of 18 weeks. Mineralization of naphthalene was rapid in the freshwater marsh and bottomland hardwood soil when aerobic, high redox potential conditions were present. No mineralization was observed under anaerobic conditions. Shapes of mineralization curves were dependent on substrate concentration and were well fitted using a three-half order kinetic model. An assimilation model was developed to describe removal of toxic organics in a conceptually simple wetland. External assimilation fluxes are volatilization, reaction (e.g., biodegradation), outflow and burial. Sensitivity analysis indicated that assimilation of hydrophobic compounds (e.g., HCB) is inhibited by high concentrations of DOC. Removal of compounds such as naphthalene is controlled by volatilization. The assimilation model is suited for several uses including estimating the assimilation capacity of wetlands for organic contaminants, testing various treatment or fate scenarios, and estimating the fate of new compounds entering wetlands. CHAPTER


International subcontracting relationships are often characterized by considerable power asymmetries. The actors in global value chain obtained different profits. Different governance dominant modes reflect different roles of countries and enterprises played in the global value chains and result in different industrial international competitiveness in the end Through a relation model of upstream and downstream nodes and a case study of notebook computer industry, the paper identified the status of actors and the market structures in different value nodes influences the rents distribution among global value chains. The leader firms in the global value chains that possess status advantages and market power account for income growing gap between developed and developing countries.


T he Philippines has limited up-to-date information on the current condition of its coral reefs and how this has changed over the last few decades. This comes at a time when threats to corals and coral reefs in general, and our economic and social dependence on them are at their greatest. This document outlines a framework by which a national coral reef assessment can be designed and this hopefully serves as a basis for stimulating urgently needed discussions on precisely how such an assessment could be undertaken. We propose that we should aim for an outcome of the national assessment that goes beyond generating updated information and that moves us to improving the conservation and management of Philippine coral reefs. We further suggest that the objectives of the assessment must first be precisely defined and agreed upon since the sampling design and corresponding costs of the assessment will depend greatly on these. We propose that the assessment should not be limited to estimating the amount of living coral and reef fish left in our reefs, but should also include an assessment of the health of the associated seagrass and even mangrove habitats that operate together with coral reefs in providing the coastal ecosystem services our people derive benefit from. The metrics to quantify the health of the coral reef communities and associated coastal habitats should be carefully selected as well as the assessment units, the sampling strata, and the methodologies involved in such an effort.


The events that hastily came to be called "The Arab Spring" have done much to reopen the question of what it means for a Muslim society to be ruled legitimately and to force Islamist parties to account for their visions of sovereignty and authority in the public sphere. This paper provides a historical and conceptual background to certain modern attempts to harmonize ideals of divine and popular sovereignty. I pay special attention to the pre-2011 doctrines of Tunisian Islamist leader, Rashid al-Ghannushi, particularly his attempt to reconcile visions of divine and popular sovereignty through the doctrine of a universal covenant of vicegerency (istikhlaf). I contrast this doctrine of a "caliphate of man" with other modern attempts to institutionalize divine sovereignty (Saudi Arabia and Iran), while suggesting a set of ambiguities this doctrine raises both for the idea of rule by divine law (shari'a) and for post-revolutionary expectations of democracy within a "civil state" (dawla madaniyya).


Shopping has since long been recognized as a possible source of enjoyment. It has been argued that consumers of today devote ever more of their spare time to shopping. Within the domain of marketing, scholars have been successful in outlining consumers' motives for engaging in shopping as a leisure-time enjoyment. Minor attention has however been devoted to explorations of how or why such shopping is seen as meaningful from the consumers' point of view. Moreover, consumers engaged in leisure shopping have often been portrayed as one segment of consumers, sharing similar behaviours and preferences. Drawing upon a sociocultural approach, this thesis explores the plethora of meanings which leisure shopping embraces. Inspired by the phenomenological tradition, this book turns attention to individuals' experiences and practices at a micro-level, as well as to the social and cultural worlds which contribute in defining these. The thesis thus provides thorough descriptions of how men and women of varying ages relate to leisure shopping in their everyday lives. The thesis illustrates that leisure shopping is a multifaceted phenomenon, characterized by shifts and tensions between multiple and contrasting meanings. It illuminates a variety of ways in which these meanings are manifested in shopping practices, showing that consumers often seek pleasure from retail stores in higly rationalized ways. The thesis thus emphasizes the composite and varying character of leisure shopping experiences and also provides insights into the processes whereby different aspects of the store environment contribute in defining them. As compared with previous research, this thesis presents a somewhat different understanding of the leisure shopping phenomenon. It shows that while such shopping provides various forms of pleasure, at the same time it also involves frustration, stress and disappointments. The thesis improves our understanding of the intricate relationships that exist between consumers' shopping experiences and practices, their meanings, and the contexts in which they evolve. (Less)


Conventional wisdom maintains that early courts never secured patents as constitutional private property under the Takings Clause. In examining long-forgotten judicial opinions and legislative records, this Article reveals that this is a profoundly mistaken historical claim. Nineteenth-century courts, securing to inventors the fruits of their labors, enthusiastically applied the Takings Clause to patents. It is striking that this historical development in both constitutional law and patent law has become obscured to modern courts and scholars. This Article thus concludes with a possible answer to this conundrum, drawing upon the intellectual history of property theory. Ultimately, the eclipse of the nineteenth-century patent takings jurisprudence may be an unintended consequence of the legal realists' radical transformation of property theory at the turn of the last century. This intellectual history is important because it exposes the pervasive misunderstanding of the history concerning two significant constitutional provisions - the Takings Clause and the Copyright and Patent Clause. Courts and scholars can no longer rely on the conventional wisdom to conclude that patents are not protected under the Takings Clause, or that this issue is novel and uncertain. Doctrinally, this Article also uncovers a venerable jurisprudence grappling with constitutional limits on the government pirating patented inventions, which is settled law that courts would use in regulatory takings analyses today. As patented drugs and other inventions are increasingly the subject of regulations, this Essay establishes that the constitutional and policy issues inherent in these governmental actions are not new. Courts have long embraced patents as constitutional private property.


Many real-world networks have a rich collection of objects. The semantics of these objects allows us to capture different classes of proximities, thus enabling an important task of semantic proximity search. As the core of semantic proximity search, we have to measure the proximity on a heterogeneous graph, whose nodes are various types of objects. Most of the existing methods rely on engineering features about the graph structure between two nodes to measure their proximity. With recent development on graph embedding, we see a good chance to avoid feature engineering for semantic proximity search. There is very little work on using graph embedding for semantic proximity search. We also observe that graph embedding methods typically focus on embedding nodes, which is an "indirect'' approach to learn the proximity. Thus, we introduce a new concept of proximity embedding, which directly embeds the network structure between two possibly distant nodes. We also design our proximity embedding, so as to flexibly support both symmetric and asymmetric proximities. Based on the proximity embedding, we can easily estimate the proximity score between two nodes and enable search on the graph. We evaluate our proximity embedding method on three real-world public data sets, and show it outperforms the state-of-the-art baselines.


This thesis will explore the ambiguous nature of the Song of Songs, as it manifests itself in the narrative, the structure, the imagery, and the language of the Song. It will also propose the new interpretative possibilites that this ambiguity leads to, when it is approached asking the question "What does this poem do?" as opposed to "What does it say or mean?" The Song of Songs, whether through the eyes and minds of ancient or modern commentators, has been seen as portraying a mutual and exclusive love relationship, whether it was a relationship between God and his people, Israel, or Jesus and his Church, as was generally believed to be the case up until the middle of this century, or a relationship between two people, as has most often been the case since. Thus, any questions about the Song have principally centered on who the two main characters in the Song represent, or whether they represent anyone other than themselves. Unasked has been the initial question to be explored in this thesis: is the relationship depicted in the Song really mutual and exclusive or does it contain certain aspects that make it more ambiguous than that? This initial question will lead to an even less traditional one: is the relationship between what has been thought to be one couple in the Song, really multiple relationships between different people? Through the examination of these main questions, on the different levels of the Song, new insight will be gained into the spiritual nature of the Song.


John Sung (Song Shangjie) was the premier Chinese evangelist of the twentieth century. He traveled further, spoke more often, and led more Chinese people to faith than any other person. His revivalism was riveting, often doubling people over in laughter before buckling their knees with grief. His acclaim as a preacher was rivaled only by his renown as a healer. Wherever he went, he offered Christ's deliverance from both sin and sickness. He himself, however, was never healed of a chronic illness and spent the last four years of his short life bedridden and learning the quiet ministry of prayer.


We report a new approach to a superconducting joining process for unreacted in situ carbon (C)-doped magnesium diboride (MgB2) wires. To operate a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) magnet in the persistent mode, the superconducting joints between two conductors are as critical as the other key components. In addition, a stable and reliable joining process enables the superconducting magnet to operate without an external power supply. However, joint results using unreacted in situ C-doped MgB2 wires, which are used for high-field operation, have been limited, and only very poor performance has been obtained. By controlling the pressure inside a joint part, in this study, we successfully obtained current carrying retention in the joint of up to 72% compared to wire without a joint. The closed-circuit resistance of our closed-loop coil was less than 1.8 × 10−13 Ω at 16.7 ± 4.7 K, as measured by the field-decay measurement method. These results indicate that MgB2 has a promising future in MRI application.


Detrimental thermal effects affecting optical performances of a Nd:YVO4 bounce laser amplifier are investigated numerically under small-signal gain conditions. Thermally induced lens is stronger due to the increase of the fractional thermal loading with the pump irradiance, which is caused by the Auger energy-transfer upconversion (ETU). At a pump power of 100 W, the focal length of the thermal lens (TL) is comparable to the length of the laser crystal and is shorter than without Auger ETU by a factor of 3 and 2.5 in the bounce plane and, respectively, in the plane orthogonal to bounce. This deleterious influence of Auger ETU on the TL of the bounce laser amplifier can be alleviated by the increase of the pump spot area and by the mismatch between the diode pump spectrum and the absorption band of the crystal.


We consider a general homogeneous continuous-time Markov process with restarts. The process is forced to restart from a given distribution at time moments generated by an independent Poisson process. The motivation to study such processes comes from modeling human and animal mobility patterns, restart processes in communication protocols, and from application of restarting random walks in information retrieval. We provide a connection between the transition probability functions of the original Markov process and the modified process with restarts. We give closed-form expressions for the invariant probability measure of the modified process. When the process evolves on the Euclidean space, there is also a closed-form expression for the moments of the modified process. We show that the modified process is always positive Harris recurrent and exponentially ergodic with the index equal to (or greater than) the rate of restarts. Finally, we illustrate the general results by the standard and geometric Brownian motions.


Over the past three decades, trade with low-wage countries - in first
place China - has grown dramatically. Economic theory has long
recognized that trade liberalization, though enlarging the overall
economic pie, also produces strong redistributive effects: while it
increases aggregate productivity and benefits consumers through lower
prices and a wider range of available goods, at the same time it is also
associated with substantial adjustment costs in the labour market. As the
gains are diffuse but the costs concentrated, the lack of appropriate
compensatory mechanisms is likely to drive a backlash against the
ongoing economic transformations.
The present dissertation aims at providing further understanding on the
consequences of trade globalization for developed countries.
Specifically, our focus is on the political dimension of the phenomenon.
Indeed, ballot boxes represent a litmus test of economic changes with
profound social effects and policymakers are called upon to offer
adequate responses to the citizens' requests.
In chapter 2, we study empirically the role of low-wage import
competition from China in shaping electoral outcomes in Italy over the
period from 1992 to 2013. Given the unequal growth of Chinese exports
across sectors, we compare the voting pattern at the national
parliamentary elections in about 8,000 municipalities differently
exposed to the trade shock according to their ex-ante industry
specialization. The model is estimated in first differences and Italian
imports from China are instrumented by Chinese exports to other highincome countries.
We find that China's trade liberalization has favoured the spread of
populism in Italy. This result is robust to a large number of sensitivity
checks as well as to concurrent shocks that may have contributed to spur
a populist reaction in the Italian electorate - immigration, the
introduction of the Euro and fiscal austerity. Moreover, we show that
import competition from China has triggered also other forms of protest
vote, namely invalid ballot papers and abstentionism. In line with the predictions of economic theory, the channels at work turn out to be
labour market adjustments.
If trade globalization is a key determinant behind the recent wave of
protest vote across the Western World, how can policymakers meet the
challenges associated with it? This dissertation assesses the desirability
of three distinct economic policies, one intervening directly on the labour
market and the other two acting, respectively, at the trade and fiscal
level.
In chapter 3, we present a novel approach to analyse the employment
growth effects of the introduction of a national minimum wage (€8.50
per hour of work) in Germany on January 1st 2015. Thanks to our access
to household survey data and proprietary firm-level data, we compare
firms in heavily affected sectors to similar firms in de facto unaffected
sectors. Industry vulnerability is determined according to the share of
eligible workers with pre-treatment hourly wage below €8.50 -
computed separately for East and West Germany. Treated units are
linked to control units matching on past employment and forward
looking credit ratings.
We detect only very small negative employment effects in East Germany
(0.05 percent of overall employment, 22000 jobs lost), mainly
concentrated among small firms. The lack of a significant occupational
impact still holds when we use different thresholds for treatment
assignment or alternative minimum wage bite measures. To explain our
finding, we provide evidence that, in West Germany, the minimum
wage introduction has also induced positive effects on turnover and a
deterioration of credit ratings, while, among treated firms in East
Germany, turnover remains stable and credit ratings actually improve.
Thus, ex-ante fears for dramatic job losses seem not justified and
minimum wage policy may actually help to mitigate inequality in major
industrial economies.
In chapter 4, we develop a simple theoretical framework that allows us
to investigate the macroeconomic consequences of sector-specific tariffs
on imported intermediates in the presence of input-output linkages
among industries. Our model features a large open economy with multiple perfectly competitive sectors and exogenous market power.
Each industry specializes in the production of a distinct good according
to a nested Cobb-Douglas-CES technology; its output sales (net of
national imports of the same good) meet final demand by a
representative household with Cobb-Douglas preferences and
intermediate input demand by other sectors. Under wasteful
government spending, we establish that a positive sectoral input tariff
shock entails a loss in aggregate value added, by lowering output not
only of the protected industry's immediate customers but also of its
customers' customers and so on.
Assuming next that a given share of each industry's total output is sold
on foreign markets, our model can also be used to evaluate the
macroeconomic implications of the introduction of border-adjustments
into sector-homogeneous corporate profit taxation. We show that a shift
to a destination-based regime induces a change in aggregate value added
that results from the net effect of border-adjustments' two key
components, the impossibility to deduct the costs of imported inputs
from the corporate income tax base but the ability to exclude export sales
from it. For low sectoral export shares, the network propagation
triggered by the implicit import tax is more powerful than that triggered
by the implicit export subsidy, leading to a contraction of overall
economic activity.
Thus, in today's highly vertically integrated advanced economies, the
unilateral adoption of both import tariffs on intermediates and borderadjusted corporate taxes may turn out to be counterproductive for the
imposing country even before retaliation is considered.


Objective. To illustrate attitudes towards future cervical cancer screening and future sexual behavior among young HPV vaccinated women and parents of HPV vaccinated girls.Design. Study with qualitative approach.Setting. Mid-sized cities in the south of Sweden.Sample. Young women aged 17 to 26 years (n=17) and parents of girls aged 13 to 17 years (n=6) vaccinated against HPV.Method. Individual semi-structured interviews were analyzed with qualitative content analysis.Results. The attitudes towards future participation in cervical cancer screening was positive in both groups, but nearly half of the young women did not know what cervical cancer screening meant. Among the young women, there was a lack of understanding about the relation between sexual transmission, HPV and cervical cancer. The parents had better understanding. Future sexual behavior was thought would not be affected by the vaccination, but participants discussed the possibility of it leading to increased sexual risk taking among others. We could also see that discussions prior to the vaccination increased knowledge about sexually transmitted infections and encouraged conversations about safe sex between parents and daughters.Conclusions. Young HPV vaccinated women are unaware of cervical cancer screening and to what extent HPV vaccination offers protection. Accurate information about HPV, sexual transmission and cervical cancer is important to prevent possible negative effects on participation in cervical cancer screening and on future sexual behavior.


Abstract According to Russellianism, the content of a Russellian thought, in which a person ascribes a monadic property to an object, can be represented as an ordered couple of the object and the property. A consequence of this is that it is not possible for a person to believe that a is F and not to believe b is F, when a=b. Many critics of Russellianism suppose that this is possible and thus that Russellianism is false. Several arguments for this claim are criticized and it is argued that Russellians need not appeal to representational notions in order to defeat them. Contrary to popular opinion, the prospects for a pure Russellianism, a Russellianism without representations, are in fact very good.


The interconnectivity between the nature and origins of mathematics and science cannot be overstated. Studies over the past decade have shown that approximately 50% of life science students lack confidence in their mathematical abilities, and as a result, often adopt a rigid attitude to learning mathematics. This study aimed to elucidate the possible reasons how students may have developed a particular attitude to learning mathematics and biology, and determine what effect this had on their academic performance. The study was framed using Bandura in 1977, self-efficacy theory. Students enrolled in an introductory biology course (n=254) were surveyed. Responses to survey items were matched to students' final grades in mathematics and biology. It was found that a majority of students believed that their prior schooling was the most significant factor in shaping their attitudes to learning mathematics and biology. Students who characterised their prior schooling negatively, were more likely to have a negative attitude to mathematics, and achieve significantly lower grades in both mathematics and biology.


Since the early work on defining and analyzing resilience in domains such as engineering, ecology and psychology, the concept has gained significant traction in many fields of research and practice. It has also become a very powerful justification for various policy goals in the water sector, evident in terms like flood resilience, river resilience, and water resilience. At the same time, a substantial body of literature has developed that questions the resilience concept's systems ontology, natural science roots and alleged conservatism, and criticizes resilience thinking for not addressing power issues. In this study, we review these critiques with the aim to develop a framework for power‐sensitive resilience analysis. We build on the three faces of power to conceptualize the power to define resilience. We structure our discussion of the relevant literature into five questions that need to be reflected upon when applying the resilience concept to social–hydrological systems. These questions address: (a) resilience of what, (b) resilience at what scale, (c) resilience to what, (d) resilience for what purpose, and (e) resilience for whom; and the implications of the political choices involved in defining these parameters for resilience building or analysis. Explicitly considering these questions enables making political choices explicit in order to support negotiation or contestation on how resilience is defined and used.


How do cells sense cytosolic viral DNA when infected and trigger a response that helps the body clear these cells? Takaoka et al. provide insight into this question by characterizing a protein previously named DLM-1 or ZPB1, which they rename DAI for their discovery that it appears to function as a DNA-dependent activator of interferon (IFN) regulatory factors. Expression of the gene encoding DAI is stimulated by IFN, which is a common positive feedback mechanism for participants of the IFN pathway. Thus, Takaoka et al. showed that in cells overexpressing DAI, there were enhanced responses (increased expression of IFN genes) to synthetic DNA [poly(dA-dT)•poly(dT-dA)], bacterial DNA, viral DNA, or mammalian DNA, but not to synthetic RNA. Analysis of the response in mouse embryo fibroblasts deficient in various interferon regulatory factors (IRFs) suggested that IRF3 and IRF7 were important for IFN gene induction in response to poly(dA-dT)•poly(dT-dA). When DAI was knocked down by RNAi methods in mouse fibroblasts, increased expression of IFN genes, formation of an IRF3 dimer, and activation of the transcription factor NF-κB in response to DNA was reduced. In addition, the response to infection with a DNA virus was impaired, but not that to an RNA virus. DAI directly interacted with poly(dA-dT)•poly(dT-dA) in the cytosol based on fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) experiments in cells containing labeled DAI and labeled synthetic DNA and based on an assay in which DAI pulled down poly(dA-dT)•poly(dT-dA). Coimmunoprecipitation experiments with transfected cells suggested that DNA stimulated the formation of a complex containing DAI, IRF3, and the kinase TBK1. Thus, DAI may be another weapon in the cell's arsenal against viral infection (see commentary by Chi and Flavell). A. Takaoka, Z. Wang, M. K. Choi, H. Yanai, H. Negishi, T. Ban, Y. Lu, M. Miyagishi, T. Kodama, K. Honda, Y. Ohba, T. Taniguchi, DAI (DLM-1/ZBP1) is a cytosolic DNA sensor and an activator of innate immune response. Nature 448, 501-505 (2007). [PubMed] H. Chi, R. A. Flavell, Sensing the enemy within. Nature 448, 423-424 (2007). [PubMed]


Aim. To describe insulin initiation practices across the United Kingdom (UK) and identify factors influencing current practice.

Background. The number of people commencing insulin therapy has escalated in recent years; due to increased incidence of diabetes and the evidence that improvements in glycaemic control can reduce and delay the onset of diabetic complications. However, the process of insulin initiation is not well described and the optimal way to start insulin therapy is unclear. There is currently a strong emphasis on moving diabetes care from secondary to primary care and this change in policy may also influence insulin initiation.

Methods. A quantitative, cross-sectional, nationwide survey of diabetes specialist nurses (DSNs) and practice nurses (PNs) was completed in 2006. Data were gathered using a postal questionnaire, 1310 were returned (37·7% response rate).

Results. Almost all DSNs working in secondary, or across primary and secondary, care initiate insulin in people with type 1 diabetes, but only 37·7% of DSNs working in primary care or 2·5% of PNs (p < 0·001). Most DSNs initiate insulin in adults with type 2 diabetes compared with only 37·7% of PNs (p < 0·001). Only 23·5% of respondents initiate insulin for those with gestational diabetes (GD), most working in secondary care (p < 0·001). The most commonly used insulin regimen was multiple injection in type 1 diabetes (43·9%), a twice-daily mixture (19·2%) and night only basal insulin (17·9%) in type 2 diabetes and multiple injection in GD (46·8%). Analogue insulins were more frequently used than non-analogues in type 1 and 2 diabetes but almost equally in those with GD.

Conclusion. Despite the drive for much more diabetes care to be delivered in primary care insulin initiation remains largely the province of secondary care, and regardless of the contested nature of the evidence base, analogue insulins are widely used.

Relevance to clinical practice. The focus of this study was on one aspect of diabetes care (insulin initiation), however the findings illustrate that whilst policy relating to the care of people with a long-term condition such as diabetes may change, the practice implications in terms of community provision and availability of appropriate expertise are complex.


Context. In 2004 asteroid (2867) Steins has been selected as a flyby target for the Rosetta mission. Determination of its spin period and the orientation of its rotation axis are essential for optimization of the flyby planning.

Aims. Measurement of the rotation period and light curve of asteroid (2867) Steins at a phase angle larger than achievable from ground based observations, providing a high quality data set to contribute to the determination of the orientation of the spin axis and of the pole direction.

Methods. On March 11, 2006, asteroid (2867) Steins was observed continuously for 24 h with the scientific camera system OSIRIS onboard Rosetta. The phase angle was 41.7 degrees, larger than the maximum phase angle of 30 degrees when Steins is observed from Earth. A total of 238 images, covering four rotation periods without interruption, were acquired.
Results.The light curve of (2867) Steins is double peaked with an amplitude of ~0.23 mag. The rotation period is 6.052 +/- 0.007 h. The continuous observations over four rotation periods exclude the possibility of period ambiguities. There is no indication of deviation from a principal axis rotation state. Assuming a slope parameter of G = 0.15, the absolute visual magnitude of Steins is 13.05 +/- 0.03.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the quantification performance of the perfusion fraction (f) measured with intravoxel incoherent motion (IVIM) MR imaging in a comparison with the histological vascular density in meningiomas.

METHODS
29 consecutive patients with meningioma (59.0 ± 16.8 years old, 8 males and 21 females) who underwent a subsequent surgical resection were examined with both IVIM imaging and a histopathological analysis. IVIM imaging was conducted using a single-shot SE-EPI sequence with 13 b-factors (0, 10, 20, 30, 50, 80, 100, 200, 300, 400, 600, 800, 1000 s mm-2) at 3T. The perfusion fraction (f) was calculated by fitting the IVIM bi-exponential model. The 90-percentile f-value in the tumor region-of-interest (ROI) was defined as the maximum f-value (f-max). Histopathological vascular density (%Vessel) was measured on CD31-immunostainted histopathological specimens. The correlation and agreement between the f-values and %Vessel was assessed.

RESULTS
The f-max (15.5 ± 5.5%) showed excellent agreement [intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) = 0.754] and a significant correlation (r = 0.69, p < 0.0001) with the %Vessel (12.9 ± 9.4%) of the tumors. The Bland-Altman plot analysis showed excellent agreement between the f-max and %Vessel (bias, -2.6%; 95% limits of agreement, from -16.0 to 10.8%). The f-max was not significantly different among the histological subtypes of meningioma.

CONCLUSION
An excellent agreement and a significant correlation were observed between the f-values and %Vessel. The f-value can be used as a noninvasive quantitative imaging measure to directly assess the vascular volume fraction in brain tumors. Advances in knowledge: The f-value measured by IVIM imaging showed a significant correlation and an excellent agreement with the histological vascular density in the meningiomas. The f-value can be used as a noninvasive and quantitative imaging measure to directly assess the volume fraction of capillaries in brain tumors.


Our goal is increasing the users' value and experience and decreasing the implementation time for web portals. To achieve this goal we adopt a subject-centric perspective on information architecture. The fundament of this approach is that portals should be driven by subject-centric models of the portals' domains. Out of these domain models, the interaction and interface design of the portals is self-evident. Amongst others, the international industry standard Topic Maps is a portal technology and an implementation of the subject- centric modelling paradigm. With ActiveTM we introduce a technology, which implements a Model-driven approach to automatically create domain-customised, subject-centric portal engines, based on Topic Maps. Extending ActiveTM, Information Shapes provide domain- specific views of the ActiveTM data, increasing the reusability of view components. ActiveTM and Information Shapes have proved as techniques for reducing the implementation cost of portals enormously and the implied subject-centricness increases the users' value and experience significantly.


This licentiate thesis is focused on the characterization of ultra-wideband wireless channels. The thesis presents results on ultra-wideband communications as well as on the ultra-wideband characterization of materials. The communications related work consisted in the measurement and modeling of outdoor scenarios envisioned for infostation systems. By infostation, we mean a communication system covering a small area, i.e., ranging up to 20 m, where mobile users can pass by or stop while receiving large amounts of data in a short period of time. Considering the expected (but perhaps overly optimistic) 480 Mbps for UWB systems, it should be possible to download a complete DVD in roughly two minutes, which is something not realizable with any of the current wireless technologies. Channel models, commonly based on measurements, can be used to evaluate the performance of such systems. We therefore, we started by performing measurements at one of the scenarios where infostation systems can exist in the future, namely, petrol stations. The idealized model, was one that could correctly describe the continuous evolution of the channel impulse response for a moving user within the system's range, and therefore it was deemed necessary to track the multipath components defining the impulse responses along a path of several meters. To solve this problem we designed a novel high-resolution scatterer detection method, which is described in Paper I, capable of tracking individual multipath components for a moving user by identifying the originating point scatterers in a two dimensional geometrical space. The same paper also gives insight on some properties of clusters of scatterers, such as their direction-selective radiated power. The scatterer detection method described in Paper I provided us with the required tools to create the channel model described in Paper II. The proposed channel model has a geometrical basis, i.e., each realization of the channel is based on a virtual map containing point scatterers that contribute to the impulse response by multipath components. Some of the particular characteristics of the model include non-stationary effects, such as shadowing and cluster's visibility regions. At the end of Paper II, in a simple validation step, the output of the channel model showed a good match with the measured impulse responses. The second part of our work, documented in Paper III, consisted on the dielectric characterization of soil samples using microwave measurements. This project was made in cooperation with the Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Analysis at Lund University, which had been developing research work on methane emissions from the wetlands in Zackenberg, Greenland. In recent years, a lot of attention has been put into the understanding of the methane emissions from soils, since methane is a greenhouse gas 20 times stronger than carbon dioxide. However, whereas the methane emissions from natural soils are well documented, the reason behind this effect is an open issue. The usage of microwave measurements to monitor soil samples, aims to address this problem by capturing the sub-surface changes in the soil during gas emissions. An experiment consisting on the monitoring of a soil sample was performed, and a good correlation was found between the variations of the microwave signals and the methane emissions. In addition, the soil dielectric constant was calculated, and from that, the volumetric fractions of the soil constituents which provided useful data for the elaboration of models to describe the gas emission triggering mechanisms. Based on this laboratory experiment, a complete soil monitoring system was created and is at the time of writing running at Zackenberg, Greenland. (Less)


This Article maps out a new theoretical critique of no-drop prosecution policies, the criminal justice system's predominant approach to domestic violence. No-drop rules compel prosecutors to make decisions about whether to pursue charges against a batterer without regard to the victim's wishes. When the law mandates this approach, it not only enforces the criminal law, but also effectively terminates the relationship between the victim and her partner. This blunt response to what is often a complex situation indiscriminately dispenses with the many reasons a victim may want or need to preserve her intimate relationship.While numerous scholars have grappled with the issue of no-drop prosecutions, with few exceptions, the body of academic literature has neglected to fully consider the norms and values associated with the intimate relationship between the victim and batterer, and between the victim and other communities. his Article introduces an original perspective to this scholarly discourse that draws from a source that at first seems completely unconnected to domestic violence-Relational Contract Theory ("RCT"). RCT has been employed to criticize substantive contract law by arguing that the law ought to analyze a discrete, legally significant incident (e.g., a breach) in the context of the ongoing relationship between the parties. It suggests that for the law to understand any single incident-let alone design an effective remedy for it-it must assess the significance of the multiple and complex human relations that surround the incident. Drawing on that perspective, the Article contends that states' decisions about whether to prosecute would be enhanced by permitting prosecutors to look at discrete incidents of domestic violence with a more nuanced assessment of the parties' relational values rather than unilaterally tossing aside those important considerations. The Article begins by documenting the evolution of the no-drop prosecution rule, and surveys the debate amongst feminist legal scholars with regard to the values and limits of no-drop. This section of the article concludes that scholars have not sufficiently considered the importance of the relation. Next, the Article discusses the methodology of RCT and models how it could be applied to the prosecutorial decisionmaking process in domestic violence cases. Viewing the relationship underlying the incident of violence as an exchange, and applying the relational method to that exchange, brings into focus all that a victim gets from the relationship and all that she loses by leaving it. The Article anticipates and addresses resistance to incorporating relational values into domestic violence law. It also responds to the fear that importing relational principles to this context will mean a return to an era in which the state treats domestic violence as a private, relationship problem rather than a crime. It suggests instead that there is room between the current no-drop regime and the "always-drop" policy of the past to address the relational values of victims. The Article concludes by demonstrating how the application of relational principles to domestic violence prosecution may, in fact, advance feminist values.


Abstract. During the winter of 2013 and 2014 measurements of cloud microphysical properties over a 5-week period at the high-alpine site Jungfraujoch, Switzerland, were carried out as part of the Cloud Aerosol Characterisation Experiments (CLACE) and the Ice Nucleation Process Investigation and Quantification project (INUPIAQ). Measurements of aerosol properties at a second, lower site, Schilthorn, Switzerland, were used as input for a primary ice nucleation scheme to predict ice nuclei concentrations at Jungfraujoch. Frequent, rapid transitions in the ice and liquid properties of the clouds at Jungfraujoch were identified that led to large fluctuations in ice mass fractions over temporal scales of seconds to hours. During the measurement period we observed high concentrations of ice particles that exceeded 1000 L−1 at temperatures around −15 °C, verified by multiple instruments. These concentrations could not be explained using the usual primary ice nucleation schemes, which predicted ice nucleus concentrations several orders of magnitude smaller than the peak ice crystal number concentrations. Secondary ice production through the Hallett–Mossop process as a possible explanation was ruled out, as the cloud was rarely within the active temperature range for this process. It is shown that other mechanisms of secondary ice particle production cannot explain the highest ice particle concentrations. We describe four possible mechanisms that could lead to high cloud ice concentrations generated from the snow-covered surfaces surrounding the measurement site. Of these we show that hoar frost crystals generated at the cloud enveloped snow surface could be the most important source of cloud ice concentrations. Blowing snow was also observed to make significant contributions at higher wind speeds when ice crystal concentrations were


The Public Key Infrastructure(PKI) provides facilities for data encryption, digital signature and time stamping. It is a system where different authorities verify and authenticate the validity of each participant with the use of digital certificates. A Certificate Policy (CP) is a named set of rules and it indicates the applicability of a certificate in a Public Key Infrastructure. Sometimes two companies or organizations with different PKIs merge. Therefore it would be necessary that their PKIs are also able to merge. Sometimes, the unification of different PKIs is not possible because of the different certificate policies. This paper presents a method to compare and assess certificate policies during merger and acquisition of companies.


Milled rice from nine aromatic cultivars was evaluated for physicochemical, cooking, and antioxidant properties. Physical parameters measured were milling outrun, head rice yield (HRY), and appearance (size and shape). Cooking time, water uptake ratio and elongation ratio were determined to study their cooking quality. Chemical parameters included were amylose content (AC), protein content (PC), gel consistency (GC) and alkali spreading value (ASV). Total phenolic content (TPC) was measured using the Folin-Ciocalteu method, while ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP), total antioxidant capacity (TAC), and 1,1-diphenylpicrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical scavenging activity were used to study their antioxidant activity. This study revealed all rice cultivars, except Basmoti-370 and Gopalbhog, showed HRY. Besides, all rice cultivars displayed high protein content. Significant variations (P<0.05) were found in TPC and the antioxidant activities of the rice cultivars. The correlation coefficient between the TPC a...


We consider cooperation situations where players have network relations. Networks evolve according to a stationary transition probability matrix and at each moment in time players receive payoffs from a stationary allocation rule. Players discount the future by a common factor. The pair formed by an allocation rule and a transition probability matrix is called a forward-looking network formation scheme if, first, the probability that a link is created is positive if the discounted, expected gains to its two participants are positive, and if, second, the probability that a link is eliminated is positive if the discounted, expected gains to at least one of its two participants are positive. The main result is the existence, for all discount factors and all value functions, of a forward-looking network formation scheme. Furthermore, we can always nd a forward-looking network formation scheme such that (i) the allocation rule is component balanced and (ii) the transition probabilities increase in the di erence in payo s for the corresponding players responsible for the transition. We use this dynamic solution concept to explore the tension between e ciency and stability.


In human locomotion, the complex structure of the human body is controlled such that conceptual models (e.g., the spring-loaded-inverted-pendulum model) can describe the significant features. This suggests that the interplay of the complex control and musculoskeletal systems projects into a low-dimensional space to perform different movements. Such simplification can involve splitting the task into different modular control subproblems (locomotor subfunctions) that can be solved individually. Here, we asked how two locomotor subfunctions, namely stance and balance, could be coordinated to generate repeatable and robust motor commands. We developed a simple neuromechanical hopping model, based on decoupling axial and perpendicular leg forces. For this, bouncing behaviors and trunk posture control can be addressed by a knee extensor muscle and biarticular thigh muscles, respectively. We suggest utilizing the leg force feedback as interplay among environment, body mechanics, and sensory control to synchronize the decoupled subfunctions. We evaluated this approach in push recovery, attenuating ground drop perturbations and by investigating its sensitivity to the reflex gain as the control parameter. Leg force feedback can improve robustness of hopping by generating rhythmic hopping patterns. Such a parsimony model-based control concept could simplify controlling assistive devices, such as exoskeletons and prostheses.


The book aims to provide an introduction to mathematical models that describe the dynamics of tumor growth and the evolution of tumor cells. It can be used as a textbook for advanced undergraduate or graduate courses, and also serves as a reference book for researchers. The book has a strong evolutionary component and reflects the viewpoint that cancer can be understood rationally through a combination of mathematical and biological tools. It can be used both by mathematicians and biologists. Mathematically, the book starts with relatively simple ordinary differential equation models, and subsequently explores more complex stochastic and spatial models. Biologically, the book starts with explorations of the basic dynamics of tumor growth, including competitive interactions among cells, and subsequently moves on to the evolutionary dynamics of cancer cells, including scenarios of cancer initiation, progression, and treatment. The book finishes with a discussion of advanced topics, which describe how some of the mathematical concepts can be used to gain insights into a variety of questions, such as epigenetics, telomeres, gene therapy, and social interactions of cancer cells. Readership: Researchers in mathematical biology, mathematical modeling, biology, mathematical oncology.


This paper analyses the international equity holdings of a large panel of UK pension funds. We find considerable evidence of market timing activity, as illustrated by the funds' decision to scale back their investments in the US stock market during the 1990s. To explain this we model portfolio weight dynamics as a function of time-varying conditional moments. We find that a substantial part of the evolution in portfolio weights is explained by time-varying conditional expected returns, volatilities and covariances with domestic equity returns. Consequently, controlling for the effect of state variables that track time-variations in investment opportunities significantly affects estimates of returns from international market timing. Our estimates suggest that the portfolio movements that were orthogonal to such state variables accounted for a net loss of 0.2 per cent per annum for the average fund.


Many studies document significantly positive associations between schooling attainment and wages in developing countries. But when individuals enter occupations subsequent to completing their schooling, they not only face an expected work-life path of wages, but a number of other occupational characteristics, including wage risks and disability risks, for which there may be compensating wage differentials. This study examines the relations between schooling on one hand and mean wages and these two types of risks on the other hand, based on 77,685 individuals from the wage-earning population as recorded in six Labor Force Surveys of Pakistan. The results suggest that schooling is positively associated with mean total wages and wage rates, but has different associations with these two types of risks: Disability risks decline as schooling increases but wage risks, and even more, wage rate risks increase as schooling increases. The schooling-wage risks relation, but not the schooling-disability risks relation,is consistent with there being compensating differentials.


We have (a) screened a variety of cell lines and body fluids for plasminogen activators and (b) studied the activity of proteases bound to α2- macroglobulin after exposing the complexes to partial degradation and/or denaturing procedures to unmask proteolytic activity. The respective results show (a) that the plasminogen activators in urine and cell culture media are generally of lower molecular weight than those in plasma; and (b) that proteases bound to α2-macroglobulin recover the ability to attack macromolecular substrates after exposure to sodium dodecyl sulfate while retaining the electrophoretic mobility of the protease inhibitor complex. This indicates that the protease and inhibitor are probably linked by covalent bonds. In contrast, other complexes formed between proteases and inhibitors of lower molecular weight (such as soybean or Kunitz inhibitors) are fully dissociated by sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS). The experiments described were based on a new procedure for detecting proteolytic enzyme activity in SDS-polyacrylamide gels. The method relies on solutions of nonionic detergents for extracting SDS, after which the electrophoretic gel is applied to an indicator gel consisting of a fibrin- agar mixture. The method is sensitive, permitting the detection of proteinases in less than 1 μl of fresh plasma, and it is effective for resolving small differences in molecular weight. The procedure can be quantitated and, with minor modifications appropriate to each particular system, it has been applied to a broad spectrum of serine enzymes and proenzymes, including some that function in the pathways of fibrinolysis, coagulation and kinin-generation. Other potential applications appear likely.


We evaluated the performance of a general circulation model (HadCM3), a regional cir- culation model (HadRM3P) and an artificial neural network (ANN), in reproducing daily maximum and minimum temperature (Tmax and Tmin) at site scale (Florence, Italy) for the present climate. The Tmax and Tmin values that were observed and those reproduced by HadCM3, HadRM3P and ANN for both the present and future climate scenarios (IPCC scenarios A2 and B2) were then used as input data in a cropping systems simulation model (CropSyst). In particular, climatic impact on the pheno- logical developmental stages of a summer crop (sunflower Helianthus annuus L.) and winter crop (durum wheat Triticum aestivum L.) were evaluated. In addition, the frequency of extreme climatic events during specific crop phenological stages (i.e. number of events with Tmax and Tmin above and below stressful thresholds) were evaluated. The comparison between observed Tmax and Tmin, values and those produced by HadCM3, HadRM3P and ANN for the present climate, provided evidence for a higher accuracy of the ANN model in simulating these variables. The crop phenological stages and the related extreme climate events were therefore also better reproduced using the ANN climate data. The use of HadCM3 and HadRM3P climate data in climate change impact assessments seemed to result in an overestimation of the impacts (i.e. greater reduction in the length of development phases and greater changes in the frequency of extreme climate events during the most sensitive development stages) compared with those obtained using ANN climate data.


Understanding water flow around a swimmer is key to reducing the water resistance when swimming and improving propulsive force, since swimmers who produce less turbulent flows around their bodies can, for example, swim faster. However, existing water flow measurement technologies are not suitable for measuring human swimmers because they can only measure a limited area and have potential adverse health effects on swimmers. In this research, we propose a harmless method of water flow measurement using food-grade particles and a harmless light source. To visualize the movement of water, cellulose particles (microcrystalline cellulose) are introduced into the water. We use an optical property of cellulose particles, called birefringence, which becomes brighter than its surroundings when placed between right and left circularly polarized plates and which enables flow measurement by using an existing particle tracking method. The proposed water flow measuring technology aims mainly at enhancing swimming training. However, this technology could also contribute to the advancement of human-computer interaction underwater and to education on basic fluid dynamics more generally. To test the capabilities of the proposed water flow measurement technology for measuring slight water flows, such as turbulent flows, we prepared objects of various shapes, including a spherical object (high resistance), streamlined objects (low resistance), and a human-shaped doll posed in several swimming forms, and put them into a water tank with a steady water flow. Expected water flows were observed and measured using the proposed flow measurement technology.


It is widely known that Muslim society inherited an interest based financial intermediation system from others instead of developing their own banking system. However, Muslim Economists and scholars around the world made efforts to have and develop their own financial intermediation since there was no initial working model to act upon, except the belief that interest-based financial intermediation might be replaced by an Islamic one on the basis of profit-and loss sharing. During the last four decades, Islamic financial intermediation industry became a reality that the Muslim society around the world can see and practice. However, the Islamic financial intermediation in the world has been facing numerous problems of challenges. It raises a number of issues and potential problems which can be seen from the macro and micro operational point of view. Developing the Islamic financial intermediation depends on clarifying these issues and presenting them in order to focus on them studying and remedying. This paper aims to cover the ground of issues of Islamic financial intermediation that rose during its short age. Such issues prevent Islamic financial intermediation from its operating with its full efficiency level. Even no attempt to remedy these issues, presenting these issues and problems and classifying them according to their type is very valuable for sustained growth and development of the Islamic financial intermediation. Such work is a valuable contribution to build the Islamic financial intermediation industry on sound theoretical foundations.


Although it has generally thought that the duration of saccades should be subtracted from the reading time in eye movement research, Irwin (1998) has demonstrated that lexical processing such as word recognition is not suppressed during saccades, and has thus called that conventional wisdom into question (Murray, 2000; Radach & Kennedy, 2004; Rayner, 1998; Vonk & Cozijn, 2003). In Irwin's experiments, however, the subjects were merely reading isolated words, not sentences. It is therefore not clear what we can legitimately infer from the results of these experiments about what happens during saccades when people are reading sentences. In this thesis, I report the result of an eye-tracking experiment which tests whether cognitive processing for reading continues during saccades when people are reading sentences. The subjects in the experiment read the first half of a sentence, and then made either a short or a long saccade, before going on to read the rest of the sentence; in half of the experimental sentences, a low-frequency word was used at the location immediately preceding the saccade, so that some cognitive processing regarding that word would "spill over," that is, continue even after the eyes have left the word. The result of the experiment showed that the spill-over effect, that is, the difference between the effect that a highfrequency word has on the processing of the ensuing material and the effect that lowfrequency word has on the processing of the ensuing material, was smaller after a longer saccade. This result indicates that linguistic processing is not completely suppressed during saccades when people are reading sentences. Saccadic Suppression During Reading Activities 3


The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) does not reveal the text of regulations on which it votes. Instead, after the vote the Commission grants the relevant bureau "editorial privileges" to continue drafting the order. It then releases the final version days, weeks, or even months after the vote. As a result, it is not possible to know if everything in the final rule was actually subject to a vote. In particular, it raises the question of whether the delay between vote and publication is truly for "editorial" changes or if more substantive changes occur after the vote. In this paper, I assemble a dataset of every vote back to the Commission's origin in 1934 to examine when this practice began, as well as a more detailed dataset of every vote from 1994 – 2013 to explore this question. I use a two-stage model to explore the relationship between aspects of the rule, the vote, and the delay between vote and publication. I find, first, that the FCC has not always delayed publication after the vote: until the early 1970s orders were almost always made public immediately following the vote. Second, the more controversial an order, as measured by the ex partes filed, the fewer commissioners vote in favor. The length of the order, as measured by the number of paragraphs, is not correlated with the length of the delay, suggesting that it is not simple copy editing that is responsible for the delay between vote and publication. ∗ I thank Lee Benham, Brad Jensen, Anna-Maria Kovacs, Jeff Macher, John Mayo, Roger Noll, Gregory Rosston, Mary Shirley and many current and former FCC officials for very helpful comments and Nathan Kliewer for excellent research assistance. All mistakes are my own.


Growth cones guide neurites to their targets by monitoring chemoattractive and chemorepellant cues. Many cues elicit localized increases in cytosolic free calcium concentration ([Ca2+]c), but, curiously, both attractive and repulsive diffusible cues can increase [Ca2+]c on the side of the growth cone facing the source of the gradient so that the growth cone turns toward (attraction) or away from (repulsion) the side with greater [Ca2+]c. Ooashi et al. used focal laser-induced photolysis (FLIP) of caged Ca2+ to transiently increase [Ca2+]c in the growth cones of dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons grown on different substrata. Neurons grown on L1 or N-cadherin turned toward, whereas neurons grown on laminin turned away from, the side on which [Ca2+]c was greater. Neurons grown on L1 and N-cadherin had more adenosine 3′,5′-monophosphate (cAMP) and showed increased cAMP binding to the regulatory subunits of cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA) than did neurons grown on laminin. Inhibition of cAMP signaling converted Ca2+-mediated attraction to repulsion, whereas pharmacological activation of PKA converted Ca2+-mediated repulsion to attraction. PKA phosphorylates ryanodine receptors (RyRs), facilitating calcium-induced calcium release (CICR), and pharmacological analysis combined with calcium imaging in conjunction with FLIP showed PKA-dependent activation of RyR-mediated CICR in growth cones on L1 or N-cadherin. Analysis of calcium signals and of the turning behavior of DRG neurons from mice lacking the type 3 RyR isoform (RyR3) implicated RyR3 in PKA-dependent CICR and attractive turning. Experiments with calcium buffers or with different amounts of the Ca2+-caging compound indicated that the source of the cytosolic Ca2+ signal--rather than its amplitude--determined turning behavior. Thus, the authors conclude that a Ca2+ signal that triggers CICR stimulates attractive turning, whereas a Ca2+ signal without CICR elicits repulsion. N. Ooashi, A. Futatsugi, F. Yoshihara, K. Mikoshiba, H. Kamiguchi, Cell adhesion molecules regulate Ca2+-mediated steering of growth cones via cyclic AMP and ryanodine receptor type 3. J. Cell Biol. 170, 1159-1167 (2005). [Abstract] [Full Text]


This book explores questions regarding the justice of war and addresses the lack of comparative perspectives on the ethics of war, particularly with respect to Islam. John Kelsay begins with the war in the Persian Gulf, focusing on the role of Islamic symbols in the rhetoric of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. He provides an overview of the Islamic tradition in regards to war and peace, and then focuses on the notion of religion as a just cause for war.


Abstract. Physiological aspects like heat balance, gas exchange, osmoregulation, and digestion of the early Permian aquatic temnospondyl Archegosaurus decheni, which lived in a tropical freshwater lake, are assessed based on osteological correlates of physiologically relevant soft-tissue organs and by physiological estimations analogous to air-breathing fishes. Body mass (M) of an adult Archegosaurus with an overall body length of more than 1 m is estimated as 7 kg using graphic double integration. Standard metabolic rate (SMR) at 20 °C (12 kJ h−1) and active metabolic rate (AMR) at 25 °C (47 kJ h−1) were estimated according to the interspecific allometry of metabolic rate (measured as oxygen consumption) of all fish (VO2 = 4. 8 M0. 88) and form the basis for most of the subsequent estimations. Archegosaurus is interpreted as a facultative air breather that got O2 from the internal gills at rest in well-aerated water but relied on its lungs for O2 uptake in times of activity and hypoxia. The bulk of CO2 was always eliminated via the gills. Our estimations suggest that if Archegosaurus did not have gills and released 100 % CO2 from its lungs, it would have to breathe much more frequently to release enough CO2 relative to the lung ventilation required for just O2 uptake. Estimations of absorption and assimilation in the digestive tract of Archegosaurus suggest that an adult had to eat about six middle-sized specimens of the acanthodian fish Acanthodes (ca. 8 cm body length) per day to meet its energy demands. Archegosaurus is regarded as an ammonotelic animal that excreted ammonia (NH3) directly to the water through the gills and the skin, and these diffusional routes dominated nitrogen excretion by the kidneys as urine. Osmotic influx of water through the gills had to be compensated for by production of dilute, hypoosmotic urine by the kidneys. Whereas Archegosaurus has long been regarded as a salamander-like animal, there is evidence that its physiology was more fish- than tetrapod-like in many respects.


Despite various proposed Medium Access Control (MAC) approaches, efficient medium access in VANET remains a significant challenge, especially for the broadcast of safety messages. A key contributing factor to packet loss is the hidden terminal problem, which is exacerbated by the high node mobility apparent in VANET. Since the hidden terminal problem is fundamentally a problem of lack of awareness, this work evaluates the effects of increased neighbor awareness at the MAC layer. An increased awareness of neighboring nodes' slot allocation in a TDMA-based MAC, directly impacts on the number of available slots. Therefore, the effects of TDMA frame size is also evaluated for different awareness ranges. To support the analysis, a TDMA-based MAC with configurable neighbor awareness and configurable TDMA frame size is used. The impact is assessed using the packet delivery ratio, receiver throughput, and end-to-end latency. The results show packet delivery ratio and receiver throughput to increase for increased awareness ranges, up to an optimal of 3 hops, after which performance worsens. An increase in TDMA frame size leads to an increase in packet delivery ratio for small awareness ranges, and an oscillating increase for large awareness ranges. The receiver throughput also initially increases for an increased TDMA frame size, but reaches an optimum, also at 3 hops.


The project is a circuit that will basically supply current from the battery to the different stator coils at opportune moments. With a hall-effect sensor on the shaft as a feedback to a microcontroller, I was able to toggle switches based on the position of the shaft at the moments where we would be using as little power as possible. The operation of the control circuit works similar to a stepper motor; it takes a signal from the microcontroller that is sent to some FET drivers, which in turn sends signals to the FETs to open or close as the shaft is rotating. Since the stator coils are set at a certain angle apart from each other, it was an advantage to know where the starting point was, and extrapolate where every other magnet was with respect to the coils by putting the hall-effect sensor in line with one set of permanent magnets. This way, current was only sent to the stator coils when it was necessary to turn the motor. The idea was that we could conserve power by drawing from the battery less often, but made little progress in the final testing stages in conjunction with the motor. We ran into many problems with the inductor coils on the stator due to a communication error, so the core for the inductors needed to be completely redesigned.


Problem statement: Recently, in contrast to the hegemony of optical-based approaches to cinema, a new mainstream in film studies has emerged that its focus is on the capacities of tactile perception in cinematic experiences. Based on haptic ideals, this approach is a kind of tendency toward generating senses and evokes emotional responses. In opposition to the dominant paradigms of film theories based on distance and perspective (optical visualization), haptic visualization provides a theoretical context in which the dynamics of the experience of watching a film could be analyzed. The main question of this study is how the haptic perception is emerged in Persian-Islamic Arts and what are the effects of this emergence on the viewers' perceptions? Here, it is presumed that the Persian-Islamic Arts, with the haptic features embedded in, have the quality of presenting a different manner of seeing to their onlookers. Research objective: Seemingly the paradigms of the haptic perception are inherent to the Persian-Islamic Arts and this special feature can lead to new entries in cinematic expression for Iranian film industry. The objective of this essay is to attain the methods in which the haptic visualization is represented in Persian-Islamic Arts and to understand how it is appeared in films created in this context. Research method: The following essay is compiled by using library resources and tries to define the notion of "haptic perception" by the aid of descriptive-analytical method. Furthermore, the haptic capacities of Persian-Islamic Art are explored by evaluating the case studies. Conclusion: This study shows that according to the haptic visualization characteristics in Persian-Islamic Art, the filmmakers have the opportunity to use it in order to elaborate their narratives. Regarding this objective, The Green Fire (2008), directed by Mohamad Reza Aslani, is analyzed as an Iranian film that has been successful in stimulating viewers' haptic perception by cinematic techniques.


Objective: The aim of the study was to analyze the effects of endurance and high-impact training oriented toward preventing osteoporosis in postmenopausal women with calcium and vitamin D supplementation. Methods: This study was a randomized clinical trial. Thirty-six postmenopausal women were randomized to the control and experimental groups. Thirty-four women completed the 2-year interventions. The control group training involved walking at an intense pace. The experimental group conducted high-impact training specifically oriented to prevent osteoporosis. Dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry was used to estimate the T-scores of the lumbar spine and femoral neck. Results: The fast-walking group showed constant T-scores in the femoral neck and improved T-scores in the lumbar spine. High-impact exercises produced improvements in both anatomical levels. Significant differences were found in the femoral neck (&Dgr;Control = −0.04, &Dgr;Experimental = 0.28). The differences were not significant in the lumbar spine (&Dgr;Control = 0.27, &Dgr;Experimental = 0.47). Cohen's effect size (d = 0.52) suggested a medium practical significance of the trial. The power was 51%. Conclusions: Calcium plus vitamin D supplementation combined with specifically oriented exercises had a higher impact in the femoral neck than walking at an intense pace. As there were no differences at the lumbar spine level, the results were, however, inconclusive concerning which type of exercise was the most convenient. Importantly, the fact that the T-scores did not decrease after 2 years supports the belief that both proposed interventions can be conveniently used to prevent osteoporosis in postmenopausal women. A trial with a larger sample size would provide consistency to the findings and is warranted given the possible effects and benefits.


Trafficking in human beings is not a new social phenomenon, as its history reaches even ancient times. Lately though, because of the rise in migration (caused by economic crisis around the world), its magnitude has increased significantly in Lithuania and other European Union (EU) Member States. In order to tackle this issue, counter-trafficking policies are implemented in these countries, covering both legislation and practical activities related with provision of social assistance to victims as well as other policy measures. This article investigates one of the most urgent issues in this area, namely, the victims' of human trafficking (re-)integration into the labour market as a necessary prerequisite for their integration into society. The research is based on the analysis of the situation in three EU Member States—Austria, Finland and Lithuania, focusing on the role of NGOs and their activities in provision of social assistance for the victims of trafficking. The personal experience and views of experts in the field of counter-trafficking are discussed, providing the main findings of conducted research—which are semi-structured interviews with the representatives of these organizations.


The compatibility between multilingual language policies and the possibilities to use Slovene (as a case-study for lesser-used languages) was researched at the levels of EU institutions and Slovene national politics. In EU institutions, linguistic diversity and the use of Slovene language have a formal, symbolic value while the backstage linguistic habitus is marked by the predominance of English/French, with the majority of Slovene representatives supporting the current linguistic regime. At the level of Slovene political institutions, the protectionist ideology is still prevalent. The new supranational context is mostly perceived as an opportunity to strengthen Slovene language while multilingual guidelines are implemented only when demanded by the EU.


In this experiment, participants (nonmusicians) heard pairs of melodies and had to judge which of the two melodies was happier. Each pair consisted of a single melody presented in two different diatonic modes (Lydian, Ionian, Mixolydian, Dorian, Aeolian, or Phrygian) with a constant tonic of C; all pairs of modes were used. The results suggest that modes imply increasing happiness as scale-degrees are raised, with the exception of Lydian, which is less happy than Ionian. Overall, the results are best explained by familiarity: Ionian (major mode), the most common mode in both classical and popular music, is the happiest, and happiness declines with increasing distance from Ionian. However, familiarity does not entirely explain our results. Familiarity predicts that Mixolydian would be happier than Lydian (since they are equally similar to Ionian, and Mixolydian is much more common in popular music); but for almost half of our participants, the reverse was true. This suggests that the "sharpness" of a mode also affects its perceived happiness, either due to pitch height or to the position of the scale relative to the tonic on the "line of fifths"; we favor the latter explanation.


In July 2005 the Boston School Committee voted to replace the existing Boston school choice mechanism with a deferred acceptance mechanism that simplifies the strategic choices facing parents. This paper presents the empirical case against the previous Boston mechanism, a priority matching mechanism, and the case in favor of the change to a strategy-proof mechanism. Using detailed records on student choices and assignments, we present evidence both of sophisticated strategic behavior among some parents, and of unsophisticated strategic behavior by others. We find evidence that some parents pay close attention to the capacity constraints of different schools, while others appear not to. In particular, we show that many unassigned students could have been assigned to one of their stated choices with a different strategy under the current mechanism. This interaction between sophisticated and unsophisticated players identifies a new rationale for strategy-proof mechanisms based on fairness, and was a critical argument in Boston's decision to change the mechanism. We then discuss the considerations that led to the adoption of a deferred acceptance mechanism as opposed to the (also strategy-proof) top trading cycles mechanism.