Paediatric training and the practise of paediatrics is built on the bedrock of ensuring best possible health outcomes for all children, optimising opportunity for those without full health and contributing to a voice, in advocacy, for children. In the world's high-income countries (HICs), child health outcomes are comparatively good, and the paediatric workforce well trained to manage the health issues of children. Paediatric training and continuing professional development is generally under the authority of paediatric societies or colleges. Such organisations are well funded and supported, have long traditions of curriculum and resource development with supervisors trained in postgraduate training and supervision. They have a history of matching training needs to the health needs of their children. Some attempt at supporting advocacy and a voice for children is made, and a sense that paediatricians do all they can for the underprivileged is instilled during training. Such approaches are right and proper, but do they miss something fundamental?

The global context of child health is somewhat different from that in the HICs. Mortality is far greater in the low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), and morbidity is also much higher, not just from communicable disease but increasingly from non-communicable disease. Newborn deaths make up half of childhood deaths. Much has been made of the fall in under-5 mortality rates during the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) era, implying that we are on a steady trajectory to eliminating under-5 deaths. However, rates of improvement have slowed, indeed in some countries there has been a decline in survival rates. We know that under-5 mortality is around 6 million, which is too many, let alone the enormous morbidity which is not counted or measured.1 There are many excellent publications such as the recent paper by Liu  et al, 2 which analyses data and provides statistics to the global community on …


October 19,1996 Chicago, Illinois Remarks, Citation, and Response DONALD JAMES KIRK Max M. Fisher College of Business THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY REMARKS by Paul Kolton Stamford, Connecticut It's a pleasure to celebrate one of those human curios who brings distinction to everything he does and in the case today, to the Hall of Fame itself. Don Kirk has had a number of careers-accounting professional, corporate director, (top) civic official, executive in residence at Columbia University, leader of important not-for-profit organizations-and for fourteen astonishing and tumultuous years, an FASB Board member and for nine of those years, Chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board. It was during that period as head of the Board's Advisory Council that I learned a great deal about standard setting but I learned a great deal more about Don Kirk. In the perspective of time I have come to think of him as a kind of historical accident. He has the brains, the patience, the eloquence, the high standards-that combination that one person rarely possesses-and he was in the right place and it was the right time. For the Board and for the idea that private people can effectively and independently set their own standards, the Kirk years will be a kind of watershed, a golden age. Without a lot of high drama, without more emotion that he needs and without rhetoric he went about the business of orchestrating change with three strikingly necessary characteristics: an in flexible fidelity to independence and high standards that serve a public purpose; an irresistible insistence that things move forward, that they get done openly, and get done right; and, finally, he developed a heat resistant shield that NASA should explore. The result, I think, is that it will still be years before we appreciate what the FASB has become and what Don and his associates constructed. He also, as we learned, opened a door that was often closed. It is called "communications" and he showed us about the meaning of messages and how to read them. It is a complicated, continuing process. Jack Benny once complained to a reporter that although he and George Burns were very close and had been so for years, he (Benny) could never-but never-communicate well enough with Burns to make him laugh. "Once, though," he said, "I thought I had him. George called my hotel room from the lobby and said he was coming up. I got undressed, stood naked on a table, posing like a statue with a rose in my hand. I thought he'd come in the door; he'd have to laugh." "So .... What happened?" the reporter said. "He sent the maid in first," Benny replied. And so the process goes on, but this special moment is for someone who by way of Ohio and Yale and Price Waterhouse came to the Board in its very early days under Marshall Armstrong, who over the years established the institution's independence so that it is curiously rock-hard and fragile at the same time, who reached the high places the hard way, who had a sense of what the Board ought to be and made it that way. You look back and realize, as someone once described it, that nobody captured his colors and nobody silenced his drums. CITATION written by Daniel L. Jensen, Professor Fisher College of Business The Ohio State University read by Paul Kolton Stamford, Connecticut This newest member of the Accounting Hall of Fame was born to a father who emigrated from Scotland at the age of 18 to become a self-educated C.P.A. and a mother born in Cleveland of parents who emigrated from Latvia. He put most of his teen-age energies into athletics, culminating in being captain of his Shaker Heights (Ohio) High School football, basketball, and golf teams. Encouraged by his father to pursue a liberal arts education, he enrolled at Yale. During his freshman year, injuries, and what he describes as limited skills, quickly ended his collegiate athletic career. …


Systematic studies on the structure of platinum clusters consisting of N = 2-15 atoms were performed using density functional theory. The results show that up to N = 9 atoms planar structures are as stable as three- dimensional ones. For larger clusters, both distorted and disordered spatial structures are preferred. The global minima of N = 10- and 14-atom clusters were found to possess fcc-like structures with significantly higher stability.


Indigenous Capitalism through Tourism?: A Case Study of Economic Development in Native Southeast Alaska Michael Douglas Tillotson Chair of the Supervisory Committee Professor Marc L. Miller School of Marine and Environmental Affairs On the coasts of the United States, dense human populations tend to occur alongside valuable natural resources and important ecosystems. In these areas, efficient management of competing uses frequently relies on economic valuations. Often eluding valuation and thus failing to meet capitalist standards of economic efficiency, unique coastal ways of life and their associated cultural identities are increasingly at risk of being lost. This potential loss of cultural identity is particularly important to indigenous peoples. However, for the nation's many persistently poor Native communities reducing poverty, achieving self-determination and revitalizing culture often require engaging with the same capitalist system that threatens traditional ways of life. In the case of Alaska Natives, this relationship has been formalized by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act which tied Native prosperity and sovereignty to capitalism through a system of Native corporations. This thesis employs the case study method of qualitative research to examine the economic development strategy of one of these entities; Sealaska Corporation. After identifying relevant theories and concepts, a historical approach is employed to identify important events and patterns in Sealaska's past involvement with economic development efforts. Tourism is then evaluated as a potential component of culturally relevant and environmentally sustainable economic development. The tension between achieving financial profitability and maintaining cultural identity emerges as a key challenge for Sealaska. In addition, it is found that development of innovative cultural and nature-based tourism products represents a significant but currently unfulfilled opportunity for the Corporation. Tourism appears to be uniquely flexible in its ability to balance the competing goals that emerge from the interaction of capitalism and Native cultural, and therefore strategic tourism development is recommended for Sealaska Corporation. Following from these findings it is concluded that innovation represents an important middle ground between overt hostility towards capitalism and cultural assimilation.


This book is a collection of the major scientific papers of Sir Rudolf Peierls (1907-95), including the Peierls-Frisch Memoranda of 1940 on the feasibility, and the predicted human effects, of an atomic bomb made of uranium-235. His papers range widely in topic. They include much on the fundamentals of solid state physics, the thermal and electric conductivity of materials as a function of temperature T (especially T→0), the interpretation of the de Haas-van Alphen effect observed for a metal in a magnetic field, and the basics of transport theory. Many are on problems in statistical mechanics, including his constructive paper demonstrating the existence of a phase transition for Ising's model for a two-dimensional ferromagnet. In nuclear physics, they include the first calculations (with Bethe) on the photo-disintegration of the deuteron (made in response to a challenge by Chadwick), the Kapur-Peierls theory of resonance phenomena in nuclear reactions, the Bohr-Peierls-Placzek continuum model for complex nuclei (which first explained the narrow resonances observed for low energy neutrons incident on very heavy nuclei), and the Peierls-Thouless variational approach to collective phenomena in nuclei. Several of Peierls's wartime papers, now declassified, are here published for the first time.Brief commentaries on most of the papers in this book were added by Peierls, to indicate subsequent developments and their relationship with other work, or to correct errors found later on. A complete bibliography of his writings is given as an appendix.


Light storage on the minute scale is an important capability for future scalable quantum information networks spanning intercontinental distances. We employ an ultracold atomic gas confined in a one-dimensional optical lattice for long-term light storage. The differential ac Stark shift of the ground-level microwave transition used for storage is reduced to a sub-Hz level by the application of a magic-valued magnetic field. The 1/e lifetime for storage of coherent states of light is prolonged up to 16 s by a microwave dynamic decoupling protocol.


Inclusion of disabled students in higher education has been gathering momentum in various countries, although until recently, it has not been under the spotlight. This study was born because of the absence of research on personal experiences of disabled students in higher education in Zimbabwe. The study's major object was to investigate the current provision for disabled students in higher education in Zimbabwe. Narrative research and ethnography are the methodologies that informed this study. Fifteen University of Zimbabwe disabled students were the main informants of this study. Inevitably, the study took into cognisance, the researcher's vast personal and professional experience, and diverse views from other scholars through a comprehensive literature review. The study established that attitudes and disability awareness could be either catalysts or obstacles to inclusion. Institutional barriers that incorporate physical access, inappropriate application and admission procedures, inappropriate teaching methods, inadequate support services and resources, and most importantly - absence of legislation and political will, hampered participation of disabled students in higher education in Zimbabwe. Lack of coordinated disability activism among disabled people's organisations was also reported in this study. It was from these research outcomes that the researcher constructed the social ecosystem framework, which embodied the theoretical resources, namely, postcolonial theory, globalisation, disability studies and inclusive education. Critical determinants in the applicability and effective use of the social ecosystem framework in promoting the inclusion of disabled students in higher education in Zimbabwe and beyond were identified. These include enabling socio-cultural beliefs, genuine family and community support, stable political and economic climate, appropriate legislation and political will, appropriate/accessible information and technology, self-belief, proactive disability activism, and sustainable partnerships. Conclusions drawn and practical recommendations were made to various stakeholders in the education of disabled students in higher education. Finally, the research study also signposted areas for further research.


Panelists from various industry sub-segments involved with computer graphics and interactive techniques discuss what students must do, and can do, to prepare themselves for opportunities in industry, including how pandemic-induced changes in the recruiting process have and have not affected school to industry transitions. Components of the recruiting process such as demo reels have been submitted remotely as part of the digitally-mediated hiring process before the advent of COVID-19. But other aspects of hiring and recruiting have changed. Also, there are alternative paths to industry that students can follow or map out for themselves with unique combinations leading to innovative careers. Individual representatives talk both generally, and specifically (as examples) about their own companies. What entry-level applicants should and could have and do (as well as should not have and not do) will be discussed. Also included are suggestions for educators to help prepare students for changing scenarios. Industry segments represented include animation, special/visual effects, and interactive/experience design. Discussion includes preparation, training, and attributes students need to enter the workforce. Panelists will describe changes in the transition from school to work due to the current global pandemic and speculate on what changes may become permanent or absorbed into new standard processes. Questions considered include how schools can help students transition to industry, and what students can do on their own to be pro-active in obtaining requisite credentials.


The 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) is currently causing a widespread outbreak centered on Hubei province, China and is a major public health concern. Taxonomically 2019-nCoV is closely related to SARS-CoV and SARS-related bat coronaviruses, and it appears to share a common receptor with SARS-CoV (ACE-2). Here, we perform structural modeling of the 2019-nCoV spike glycoprotein. Our data provide support for the similar receptor utilization between 2019-nCoV and SARS-CoV, despite a relatively low amino acid similarity in the receptor binding module. Compared to SARS-CoV, we identify an extended structural loop containing basic amino acids at the interface of the receptor binding (S1) and fusion (S2) domains, which we predict to be proteolytically-sensitive. We suggest this loop confers fusion activation and entry properties more in line with MERS-CoV and other coronaviruses, and that the presence of this structural loop in 2019-nCoV may affect virus stability and transmission.


Abstract Background The World Health Organization now recommends the use of typhoid conjugate vaccines (TCVs) in typhoid-endemic countries, and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, added TCVs into the portfolio of subsidized vaccines. Data from the Severe Typhoid Fever in Africa (SETA) program were used to contribute to TCV introduction decision-making processes, exemplified for Ghana and Madagascar. Methods Data collected from both countries were evaluated, and barriers to and benefits of introduction scenarios are discussed. No standardized methodological framework was applied. Results The Ghanaian healthcare system differs from its Malagasy counterpart: Ghana features a functioning insurance system, antimicrobials are available nationwide, and several sites in Ghana deploy blood culture–based typhoid diagnosis. A higher incidence of antimicrobial-resistant Salmonella Typhi is reported in Ghana, which has not been identified as an issue in Madagascar. The Malagasy people have a low expectation of provided healthcare and experience frequent unavailability of medicines, resulting in limited healthcare-seeking behavior and extended consequences of untreated disease. Conclusions For Ghana, high typhoid fever incidence coupled with spatiotemporal heterogeneity was observed. A phased TCV introduction through an initial mass campaign in high-risk areas followed by inclusion into routine national immunizations prior to expansion to other areas of the country can be considered. For Madagascar, a national mass campaign followed by routine introduction would be the introduction scenario of choice as it would protect the population, reduce transmission, and prevent an often-deadly disease in a setting characterized by lack of access to healthcare infrastructure. New, easy-to-use diagnostic tools, potentially including environmental surveillance, should be explored and improved to facilitate identification of high-risk areas.


The rapid development in miniaturized personal wearable devices has significantly stimulated the pursuit for ultrathin, flexible, and lightweight energy storage devices. As one of the most promising power supply devices, supercapacitors have attracted great interest owing to their long operating lifetime, high power density, and fast charge–discharge rate. However, conventional supercapacitors pose challenges when being integrated with miniaturized wearable devices. In this regard, micro‐supercapacitors with unique in‐plane interdigitated electrode design provide flexibility and ease of integration with wearable and portable electronics. This review discusses the recent progress on fabrication strategies of interdigitated electrode arrays for flexible supercapacitors. Strategies toward their practical applications for powering integrated systems are presented. Finally, the future perspectives of flexible micro‐supercapacitor are discussed.


Episodic memory formation and recall are complementary processes that put conflicting requirements on neuronal computations in the hippocampus. How this challenge is resolved in hippocampal circuits is unclear. To address this question, we obtained in vivo whole-cell patch-clamp recordings from dentate gyrus granule cells in head-fixed mice navigating in familiar and novel virtual environments. We find that granule cells consistently show a small transient depolarization of their membrane potential upon transition to a novel environment. This synaptic novelty signal is sensitive to local application of atropine, indicating that it depends on metabotropic acetylcholine receptors. A computational model suggests that the observed transient synaptic response to novel environments may lead to a bias in the granule cell population activity, which can in turn drive the downstream attractor networks to a new state, thereby favoring the switch from generalization to discrimination when faced with novelty. Such a novelty-driven cholinergic switch may enable flexible encoding of new memories while preserving stable retrieval of familiar ones.


Abstract. The relationship between personality and salary was investigated among 4,150 managers. Individuals at five different managerial levels completed a measure of the Big Five personality dimensions as part of a work-related psychological assessment. The validity of personality for predicting salary was examined separately by managerial level, sex, as well as by purpose of assessment (selection versus development). Results indicated that personality predicts managerial salaries with useful levels of validity and thus is valuable for predicting extrinsic career success. While there was no evidence for differential validity by sex or purpose of assessment, results differed across managerial levels, with stronger relationships among the lowest and highest managerial groups (i. e., supervisors and top executives) largely due to increased predictor and criterion score variability.


Bloom filters have been extensively applied in many network functions. Their performance is judged by three criteria: query overhead, space requirement, and false positive ratio. Due to wide applicability, any improvement to the performance of Bloom filters can potentially have a broad impact in many areas of networking research. In this paper, we study Bloom-1, a data structure that performs membership check in one memory access, which compares favorably with the k memory accesses of a standard Bloom filter. We also generalize Bloom-1 to Bloom-g and Bloom-Q, allowing performance tradeoff between membership query overhead and false positive ratio. We thoroughly examine the variants in this family of filters, and show that they can be configured to outperform the Bloom filters with a smaller number of memory accesses, a smaller or equal number of hash bits, and a smaller or comparable false positive ratio in practical scenarios. We also perform experiments based on a real traffic trace to support our filter design.


Intestinal fibrosis is a common complication of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) that is usually the consequence of chronic inflammation. Although the currently available anti-inflammatory therapies have had little impact on intestinal fibrosis in Crohn's disease (CD), increased understanding of the pathophysiology and the development of therapies targeting fibrogenic pathways hold promise for the future. One of the critical challenges is how reduction or reversal of intestinal fibrosis should be defined and measured in the setting of clinical trials and drug approval. The International Organization for Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IOIBD) organized a workshop in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, on December 19th and 20th, 2018 in an attempt to review the current knowledge of the biological background, diagnosis, treatment of intestinal fibrosis and clinical trial endpoints. Basic and clinical scientists discussed the pathophysiology of intestinal fibrosis, the current status of biomarkers and imaging modalities in stenosing CD, and recent clinical studies in this area. Researchers from outside of the IBD field presented advances in the understanding of fibrotic processes in other organs, such as the skin, liver and lungs. Lastly, the design of clinical trials with antifibrotic therapy for IBD was discussed, with priority on patient populations, patient reported outcomes (PROs) and imaging. This report summarizes the key findings, discussions and conclusions of the workshop.


Incentives-Donald E. Campbell 2006-05-01 This book, first published in 2006, examines the incentives at work in a wide range of institutions to see how and how well coordination is achieved by informing and motivating individual decision makers. The book examines the performance of agents hired to carry out specific tasks, from taxi drivers to CEOs. It investigates the performance of institutions, from voting schemes to kidney transplants, to see if they enhance general well being. The book examines a broad range of market transactions, from auctions to labor markets, to the entire economy. The analysis is conducted using specific worked examples, lucid general theory, and illustrations drawn from news stories. Of the seventy different topics and sections, only twelve require a knowledge of calculus. The second edition offers new chapters on auctions, matching and assignment problems, and corporate governance. Boxed examples are used to highlight points of theory and are separated from the main text.


Four formulations of cranberry gels using raw materials manufactured by a variety of different processes were examined for their rheological and textural properties. Generally, with higher treatment temperature and holding times, the gels" rheological and textural properties improved. Gels were examined 24 hours, 48 hours, and 4 days after being prepared. Gels generally showed some further improvement of gel strength during the storage, particularly for gels that were initially processed for the shortest time at the lowest temperature. The pectin molecular properties of five different types of raw cranberry purees were examined for the effect of processing conditions. Pectin was extracted from each type of puree, yield determined and FT-IR analysis was performed in order to determine degree of esterification of each type of extracted pectin. Degree of esterification ranged from ~60-90%. Puree from fresh fruit and cranberry puree concentrate had the highest yield and degree of esterification, whereas purees from the byproducts of puree processing had lower yields and degree of esterification. Purees exposed to elevated temperatures and prolonged heating times showed signs of hydrolysis.


The article examines the notion of city in its two expressions. In the first, reader is introduced to the analytic method and its Vitruvian source. In the second, several possibilities of phenomenological approaches are weighed and the Cartesian cogito discourse together with its cognitive framework is re-conceptualized and a new approach is posited. In the Classical conception of time, its beginning was an indivisible entirety (apeiros) that Chaos separated from, then with the help of gods, moon, stars, and planets were born from the Chaos. The precondition for the Renaissance school of perspective and for plans of the ideal city, is order and geometry that helps man to create his own world, to give an idea a form and signify man-made things. The author attempts to extend the genius loci, a notion previously employed by Christian Norberg-Schultz, based on preceding work in the tradition of classical  phenomenology from Immanuel Kant and Martin Heidegger onward, the semiotic aspect of perception found in Yuri Lotman's work is integrated with the phenomenological thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Paul Ricoeur.  Also, Jacques Derrida has a prominent place in the text, the author owes him the primary example – treatment of the University City in its visible and hidden extensions. Together these extensions express the difference between two poles of knowledge – united in the notion differance. CV: Juhan Maiste is professor and Head of Department of Art History at the University of Tartu. As a prolific writer he has authored a large number of of monographs and articles on architecture, classicism, cultural heritage, the philosophy and poetics of art history. Also among his scholarly interests have been Estonian and Livonian manor architecture, the phenomenon of park landscapes as well as the work of Johann Wilhelm Krause. In addition to teaching and research, professor Maiste curates the publication of the Baltic Journal of Art History.


Gromphadorholaelaps schaeferi is a symbiotic mite associated with the Madagascar hissing cockroach Gromphdorhina portentosa. The population structuring of G. schaeferi is described based on examination of 19,421 mites collected from 1,915 individuals of G. portentosa taken from a large laboratory colony. The mites exhibited an overall prevalence of 50.7% and mean intensity (+SE) of 20.0 (+0.6) with an infestation intensity range of 1-116, and relative abundance (+SE) of 10.1 (+0.4). Both prevalence and mean intensity of infestation exhibited a dramatic increase with increasing cockroach size/age. By the time cockroaches reach 40 mm the prevalence is nearly 100%. Mean intensity increases with cockroach length up to about 60 mm and then levels off at about 43 mites/cockroach. Overall, the mite distribution among cockroaches exhibited pronounced overdispersion with a variance to mean ratio of 30.1 and k value of 0.182101. Nevertheless, the distribution of mites on G. portentosa did not conform to expected values of the "classic" negative binomial distribution due to a greater number of moderate infestations than expected and a lower number of heavy infestations than expected.


Problem topology is the key to efficient parallelization support for partially regular applications. Specifically, problem topology provides the information necessary for automatic data distribution and regular application optimization of partially regular applications. Problem topology is the dimensionality, size, and connectivity of the problem. Problem topology has traditionally been used in explicit parallelization of regular problems such as physical simulation applications. In languages such as High Performance Fortran, problems that are regular allow many optimizations not applicable to irregular application codes. Unfortunately, many applications must sacrifice regularity to some extent for computational efficiency. This research focuses on partially regular problems and strives to take advantage of partial regularity in the parallelization and compilation process.
This dissertation uses topology for automatic, natural-topology, data distribution in linearized and composite grid (or multiblock) applications. For linearized applications, Fortran D is extended with logical topology and index array specifications. With the information provided in these specifications, it is shown how regular, linearized applications can be parallelized automatically in Fortran D as regular computations using their natural topology. In composite grid problems, meshes are coupled to form larger, more complex topology structures. Composite grid problems arise in important application areas such as fluid flow simulation, aerodynamic simulation, electric circuit simulation, and nuclear reactor simulation. Such physical phenomenon are inherently parallel and their simulations are computationally intensive. This dissertation presents a programming style and template for writing High Performance Fortran programs for these applications, algorithms for automatic distribution of composite grid applications with mesh configurations included in the input, and a discussion of compiler issues for composite grid problems. The automatically generated distributions for composite grid applications guarantee that all communication associated with the distribution of any given mesh will remain regular and nearest-neighbor in the mapping to processors. This research allows High Performance Fortran compilers to perform regular application optimizations on the codes for this class of partially regular applications. Finally, the research is supported by experimental results, which indicate that substantial performance improvements are possible when topology is used in the parallelization of partially regular applications.


Hypoxia (oxygen concentrations of <2 ml/L) and so-called "dead zones" are a growing concern in coastal marine environments. The Baltic Sea is a shelf sea that is highly sensitive to hypoxia, and may serve as a laboratory for studying the interplay between natural and anthropogenic forcing of redox conditions in the global coastal zone. Past occurrences of hypoxia in the Baltic Sea have been shown by previous studies, but high-resolution, quantitative reconstructions of past hypoxia intensity are lacking. Here we present bulk sediment geochemical records from the deep basins of the Baltic Sea that show multicentennial oscillations during intervals of past hypoxia, suggesting rapid alternations between hypoxic and relatively oxic conditions. While the onset of past hypoxic events was likely forced by climatic variability, these events intensified and terminated rapidly due to feedbacks in the phosphorus (P) cycle. The modern intensity of hypoxia is similar to several past events, suggesting that hypoxia in the Baltic Sea has a maximum potential intensity. However, using ultrahigh-resolution laser ablation–inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry scanning of sediment blocks, we show that modern hypoxia intensified more rapidly than any past event. This confirms the role of anthropogenic nutrient loading in driving this system into its current hypoxic state.


Abstract. Predicting how European air quality could evolve over the next decades in the context of changing climate requires the use of climate models to produce results that can be averaged in a climatologically and statistically sound manner. This is a very different approach from the one that is generally used for air quality hindcasts for the present period; analysed meteorological fields are used to represent specifically each date and hour. Differences arise both from the fact that a climate model run results in a pure model output, with no influence from observations (which are useful to correct for a range of errors), and that in a "climate" set-up, simulations on a given day, month or even season cannot be related to any specific period of time (but can just be interpreted in a climatological sense). Hence, although an air quality model can be thoroughly validated in a "realistic" set-up using analysed meteorological fields, the question remains of how far its outputs can be interpreted in a "climate" set-up. For this purpose, we focus on Europe and on the current decade using three 5-yr simulations performed with the multiscale chemistry-transport model MOCAGE and use meteorological forcings either from operational meteorological analyses or from climate simulations. We investigate how statistical skill indicators compare in the different simulations, discriminating also the effects of meteorology on atmospheric fields (winds, temperature, humidity, pressure, etc.) and on the dependent emissions and deposition processes (volatile organic compound emissions, deposition velocities, etc.). Our results show in particular how differing boundary layer heights and deposition velocities affect horizontal and vertical distributions of species. When the model is driven by operational analyses, the simulation accurately reproduces the observed values of O3, NOx, SO2 and, with some bias that can be explained by the set-up, PM10. We study how the simulations driven by climate forcings differ, both due to the realism of the forcings (lack of data assimilated and lower resolution) and due to the lack of representation of the actual chronology of events. We conclude that the indicators such as mean bias, mean normalized bias, RMSE and deviation standards can be used to interpret the results with some confidence as well as the health-related indicators such as the number of days of exceedance of regulatory thresholds. These metrics are thus considered to be suitable for the interpretation of simulations of the future evolution of European air quality.


We have evaluated the cultivation potential of sugar kelp (Saccharina latissima) as a function of latitude and position (near- and offshore) along the Norwegian coast using a coupled 3D hydrodynamic-biogeochemical-kelp model system (SINMOD) run for four growth seasons (2012-2016). The results are spatially explicit and may be used to compare the suitability of different regions for kelp cultivation, both inshore and offshore. The simulation results were compared with growth data from kelp cultivation experiments and in situ observations on coverage of naturally growing kelp. The model demonstrated a higher production potential offshore than in inshore regions, which is mainly due to the limitations in nutrient availability caused by the stratification found along the coast. However, suitable locationsareas for kelp cultivation were also identified in areas with high vertical mixing close to the shore. The results indicate a latitudinal effect on the timing of the optimal period of growth, with the prime growth period being up to 2 months earlier in the south (58 °N) than in the north (71 °N). Although the maximum cultivation potential was similar in the six marine ecoregions in Norway (150-200 tons per unit area per year) in the six marine ecoregions in Norway, the deployment time of the cultures seems to matter significantly in the south, but less so in the north. The relevance of the results is discussed with a view towards use in decision support tools and a management context. The results are discussed, focusing on their potential significance for optimized cultivation and to support decision making towards sustainable management.


This paper uses granular bond portfolio data to study how banking systems across the European Union (EU) adjust their asset holdings in response to regulatory solvency shocks. We also study the impact of these shocks at financial intermediaries on the prices of bonds in their portfolio. Despite the creation of a Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) in the EU, we find that risk-shifting interacts with regulatory arbitrage motives to explain how banks adjust their portfolios after adverse solvency shocks. After regulatory solvency declines, banks increase their exposure to domestic bonds, including higher yielding but zero risk-weight sovereign bonds. The increase in banking system risk might therefore be even larger than the decline in risk-weighted solvency ratios suggests. Distress in the banking system also feeds back onto bond prices. Bonds owned by less-well capitalized banking systems trade at a discount relative to otherwise similar bonds owned by better capitalized intermediaries.


Mental imagery as a form of human cognition is still not well understood, particularly in the area of spatiality. This thesis attempts to find the relationship between the mental images of places created while reading a story (ekphrastic) and the mental images created while viewing a cinematic adaptation of that story. Using Bakhtin's idea of chronotope, and Panofsky's theory of iconography, associations can be made between places in text and film that inform the themes that readers/spectators identify and evaluate. Netlytic, an online text analysis tool, permits the analysis of online message board fan opinions of J.R.R. Tolkien's and Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings according to themes of visualization and of place. Analysis of findings suggests that mental images created from the text and from the filmic adaptation are both passively and actively integrated in order to increase comprehension of spatial elements in Tolkien's epic.


Street networks may be planned according to clear organizing principles or they may evolve organically through accretion, but their configurations and orientations help define a city's spatial logic and order. Measures of entropy reveal a city's streets' order and disorder. Past studies have explored individual cases of orientation and entropy, but little is known about broader patterns and trends worldwide. This study examines street network orientation, configuration, and entropy in 100 cities around the world using OpenStreetMap data and OSMnx. It measures the entropy of street bearings in weighted and unweighted network models, along with each city's typical street segment length, average circuity, average node degree, and the network's proportions of four-way intersections and dead-ends. It also develops a new indicator of orientation-order that quantifies how a city's street network follows the geometric ordering logic of a single grid. A cluster analysis is performed to explore similarities and differences among these study sites in multiple dimensions. Significant statistical relationships exist between city orientation-order and other indicators of spatial order, including street circuity and measures of connectedness. On average, US/Canadian study sites are far more grid-like than those elsewhere, exhibiting less entropy and circuity. These indicators, taken in concert, help reveal the extent and nuance of the grid. These methods demonstrate automatic, scalable, reproducible tools to empirically measure and visualize city spatial order, illustrating complex urban transportation system patterns and configurations around the world.


The author of "The Land That Lost Its Heroes", an award-winning study of Argentina and the Falklands War, embarks on journeys of discovery to the South American countries of Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia, relating his adventures with the diverse people who make up this continent. He conducts us by steam train up the Andes and down to the depths of a Bolivian tin mine. We find a hotbed of Argentine loyalties in Tierra del Fuego, beaches of bodies beautiful in Brazil and Peruvian streets where fanantical Sendero Luminoso guerrillas wage a permanent power struggle with the military. Burns introduces us to Sixto Vazquez, Indian intellectual with an unshakeable faith in legend and animism; to Tina, White Russian Duchess of Platinov, who now presides over a domain of moths in the Ecuadorean rain forest; and to Father Renato Hevia, editor of a Jesuit magazine in Chile who is harassed and detained if he fails to mention Pinochet in every edition. Jimmy Burns is a journalist who works for the "Financial Times". He is the recipient of the 1988 Somerset Maugham Award for Non-Fiction.


The anatomical characteristics of leaf blades of the major species of sect. Elymus, sect. Turczaninoviaand sect. Macrolepis in Elymus were examined. The results showed that: (1) The leaf epidermis usually consists of long and short cells, stomatal apparatus and prickle -hairs. It belongs to the typical festucoid type. Its long-cells are usually rectangle and its cell-walls are thin and straight or thick with densely undulant curve. Its subsidiary-cells approximately unfold flathead shape. The short-cells are paired or single with saddle or crescent shape. The prickle-hair is often distributed in major taxa. There are also obvious differences existing in the morphological characteristics of leaf epidermis in the followings: length and width of long-cells, lack  of and growing modality of short-cells, magnitude and distribution of stomatal apparatus, shapes, number and volume of subsidiary-cells and styles of prickle-hairs etc; (2) The leaf blade consists of epidermis, mesophyll and vascular bundle, known as isobilateral leaf. It also belongs to the typical festucoid type. Its shape, magnitude and arrangement of epidermis are asymmetric. Its mesophyll is not distinguished into palisade tissue and spongy tissue. It has double layer bundle sheath. The ambient mesophyll cells are arranged irregularly and sclerenchyma is joined to the epidermis. There are also obvious differences existing in the transverse section characteristics of leaf blades in the followings: shape, magnitude and depth of furrows in upper epidermis, number of large vessels etc. (3) According to the evolutionary trends of anatomical characteristics of the three sects, their evolutionary positions and relationships were inferred. The results show that sect. Elymus is the most primitive one among the three sects, sect. Turczaninovia is slightly more advanced than the former and sect. Macrolepis is the most advanced of them. Sect.Elymus might produce immediately after sect. Turczaninovia, whereas sect. Macrolepis might derive immediately from sect. Turczaninovia. The biosystematic relationships of the three sects are corroborated by the evolutionary trend of external morphology. Besides, the biosystematic relationship of partial tested species in Elymus was discussed to a certain extent. The results are basically concordant with the conclusion of the external morphology.

 Key words: sect. Elymus, sect. Turczaninovia, sect. Macrolepis, leaf anatomical characteristics, biosystematic relationship.


This research aimed to provide fresh perspectives and experiences in technology-based learning, in an endeavour to produce new knowledge that would further inform the literature on the utilisation of technology in education. The Case Study research (Merriam, 1988) attempted to develop an understanding of the change in pre-service teacher trainees' pedagogical practices in the integration of ICT in learning environments during a 12-week undergraduate course where synchronous networked tasks were developed and implemented. The contributions by the trainees (n=16) to the process of the iterative task design, post-task discussions, and commentaries on a Bulletin Board System, provided insights to the research question regarding changing beliefs and the impact of synchronous networking in affecting such change. This qualitative data was supported by quantitative data in the form of weekly surveys that situated synchronous and asynchronous task activities and cognitive outcomes (Knipe & Lee, 2002). In summary, the research highlighted a development of academic competencies (Morrison & Collins, 1996) considered appropriate for informed ICT integration; namely, generic, epistemic and declarative competencies. In addition, after taking into consideration the competencies developed during this Case Study, a framework consisting of four key elements, namely, the communication, the task, the learning and the technology, was drawn. It is thus anticipated that the competencies and the framework contribute new knowledge to the literature on technology in education on how best facilitate the 'informed' integration of ICT (Towndrow & Vallance, 2004) by teachers to support 'good' learning (Goodyear, 2001).


ABSTRACT Forensic laboratories, and less so field forensic organizations, are familiar with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and other standards principally through third-party accreditation against ISO 17025. However, there are a limited number of forensic-specific standards. The often quoted 2009 National Research Council (NRC) and National Academies (NAS) report on strengthening forensic science identified the lack of formal standards as a major issue. Where such standards do exist, such as the American Society for Testing and Materials' (ASTM International) forensic standards, they are usually very specific to a particular technique. This paper describes the development of a different approach in Australia. Recognizing the end-to-end nature of the forensic enterprise from crime scene to the court, a standard has been developed that is intentionally not discipline-specific. In four parts, this standard (AS 5388) covers the recognition, recording, recovery, transport and storage of material (Part 1,) the analysis of material (Part 2), interpretation (Part 3), and reporting (Part 4). The management of the process that was used to develop this standard is described, and lessons for the future development of standards identified and discussed. Finally, how this standard can be used as a platform for the development of discipline standards and as an international standard is discussed.


Business Process Management Systems (BPMS) aim to support the Business Pro- cess Management paradigm and to ease legacy application integration. Often, they rely on Service-oriented Architecture (SoA). However, do such systems really meet real-world require- ments? This paper introduces and discusses a set of criteria which are important for BPMS and applies these criteria in comparing tools from three important vendors, namely IDS Scheer, Oracle and Intalio based on a case study.


Abstract. The objective of this analysis is to provide a quantitative estimate of the fluctuations of land surface temperature (LST) with varying near surface soil moisture (SM) on different land-cover (LC) types. The study area is located in the Canterbury Plains in the South Island of New Zealand. Time series of LST from the MODerate resolution Imaging Spectro-radiometer (MODIS) have been analysed statistically to study the relationship between the surface skin temperature and near-surface SM. In-situ measurements of the skin temperature and surface SM with a quasi-experimental design over multiple LC types are used for validation. Correlations between MODIS LST and in-situ SM, as well as in-situ surface temperature and SM are calculated. The in-situ measurements and MODIS data are collected from various LC types. Pearson's r correlation coefficient and linear regression are used to fit the MODIS LST and surface skin temperature with near-surface SM. There was no significant correlation between time-series of MODIS LST and near-surface SM from the initial analysis, however, careful analysis of the data showed significant correlation between the two parameters. Night-time series of the in-situ surface temperature and SM from a 12 hour period over Irrigated-Crop, Mixed-Grass, Forest, Barren and Open- Grass showed inverse correlations of -0.47, -0.68, -0.74, -0.88 and -0.93, respectively. These results indicated that the relationship between near-surface SM and LST in short-terms (12 to 24 hours) is strong, however, remotely sensed LST with higher temporal resolution is required to establish this relationship in such time-scales. This method can be used to study near-surface SM using more frequent LST observations from a geostationary satellite over the study area.


The growth of pulp and paper mills in the US from 1970 to 2000 depended mostly on size and age. Mills grew according to Gibrat's law, and post-1970 mills grew faster than pre-1971 mills. Mills stopped growing at approximately 22 years of age. But most mills survived beyond that, thus growth was not necessary for survival, but characteristic of the early phase of the mill life cycle. Less integrated mills grew slower. So did more specialized mills and more so if they produced mostly paper. Mill location was uncorrelated with growth, but location mattered indirectly by facilitating or hindering mills with growth-conducive characteristics. r 2004 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved. JEL classification: C5; D23; L11; M11


This paper presents the findings of a case based study that will explore the initial implementation of the Business Excellence Model (BEM) framework within a not-for-profit Third sector (charitable) organisation called Bournemouth Churches Housing Association (BCHA). BCHA provides accommodation, learning support and social care to their service users across 60 sites throughout the South West of England. The relationship with the academic has forged links with two universities and resulted in a long term partnership involving synergistic mutually beneficial outcomes that have continued long after the conclusion of the initial project.
The KTP concentrated on the development and implementation of a performance management system within a third sector organisation to improve organisational effectiveness. The project exceeded all expectations and provided the foundations for a successful alliance continuing long after the completion of the KTP that has generated results that far exceed the original scope and vision.
This paper will assess the partnership and relationship impact of a longitudinal research case study that evolved from a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) started in 2004. Such a case study approach is the preferred method of study for gaining deeper insight (Yin, 1994; Meredith 1998; Saunders et al 2003)


In large parts of the world, the reduction in viability of agriculture and rural areas is an escalating problem. Driven by a range of factors, including insufficient economic returns from land used agriculturally, ageing populations in rural areas and limited economic perspectives from agriculture and other land-based activities, marginalisation could induce harmful abandonment of the land or the loss of biodiversity and landscape features. New perspectives arise in rural areas and multifunctionality is often seen as a strategy to cope with marginalisation. This important book offers a contemporary overview of strategies employed to cope with marginalisation of the land and improve viability of the rural countryside. The study is based on detailed case studies undertaken in Europe, the USA, Japan and a number of developing countries.


A network built around the kinase ALK reveals potential targets to enhance ALK inhibitor efficacy in some lung cancer patients. Networking ALK for combination therapies Some lung cancers have high activity of the kinase ALK as the result of rearrangements between the genes EML4 and ALK. ALK inhibitors are effective in some patients, but resistance to single-agent therapy is common. Using phosphoproteomics and an RNA interference screen, Zhang et al. derived a signaling network mediated by ALK in EML4-ALK–rearranged lung cancer cell lines. From this network, they identified many candidates that could sensitize cells to ALK inhibition. Indeed, knocking down either of two of these two proteins, the scaffolding proteins FRS2 and CC2D1A, sensitized cell lines to the ALK inhibitors crizotinib and alectinib. Thus, a clinical strategy that inhibits FRS2 or CC2D1A might enhance the efficacy of ALK inhibitors in some patients. Patients with lung cancers harboring anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) gene fusions benefit from treatment with ALK inhibitors, but acquired resistance inevitably arises. A better understanding of proximal ALK signaling mechanisms may identify sensitizers to ALK inhibitors that disrupt the balance between prosurvival and proapoptotic effector signals. Using affinity purification coupled with mass spectrometry in an ALK fusion lung cancer cell line (H3122), we generated an ALK signaling network and investigated signaling activity using tyrosine phosphoproteomics. We identified a network of 464 proteins composed of subnetworks with differential response to ALK inhibitors. A small hairpin RNA screen targeting 407 proteins in this network revealed 64 and 9 proteins that when knocked down sensitized cells to crizotinib and alectinib, respectively. Among these, knocking down fibroblast growth factor receptor substrate 2 (FRS2) or coiled-coil and C2 domain–containing protein 1A (CC2D1A), both scaffolding proteins, sensitized multiple ALK fusion cell lines to the ALK inhibitors crizotinib and alectinib. Collectively, our data set provides a resource that enhances our understanding of signaling and drug resistance networks consequent to ALK fusions and identifies potential targets to improve the efficacy of ALK inhibitors in patients.


Ladders to Fire, Children of the Albatross, The Four-Chambered Heart, A Spy in the House of Love, Seduction of the Minotaur. Haunting and hypnotic, these five novels by Anais Nin began in 1946 to appear in quiet succession. Though published separately over the next fifteen years, the five were conceived as a continuous experience-a continuous novel like Proust's, real and flowing as a river. The full impact of Anais Nin's genius is only to be found through reading the novels in context and in succession. They form a rich, luminous tapestry whose overall theme Nin has called "woman at war with herself." Characters, symbols appear and reappear: now one, now another unfolding, gradually revealing, changing, struggling, growing, and Nin had forged an evocative language all her own for the telling. "The diary taught me that there were no neat ends to novels, no neat denouement, no neat synthesis," she explains. "So I began an endless novel, a novel in which the climaxes consisted of discoveries in awareness, each step in awareness becoming a stage in the growth like the layers in trees." Cities of the Interior fulfills a long-time desire on the part of readers, publisher, and Anais Nin herself to reunite the five novels in a single volume."


In this paper, we review the tourism impact from state supported events associated with Texas Rural Economic Development program and in the process of funding measure aspects of events that are found to be related to economic value. The economic values are the result of visitor spending and extrapolated to total event attendance creates economic value. Communities receiving funding were responsible for collecting visitor surveys to measure consumer spending as well as the community completing a survey to record descriptors of the event. The overall program results were that state support represented 14 percent of the total event investment and total event value from visitor spending created approximately $7.50 return for every $1 of state funding. However, this paper focuses on visitor spending and factors that contribute to economic impacts from those activities. The results indicate that there is a high positive correlation (Spearman Rho=.51) between miles traveled and visitor spending. Also found were significant low positive correlations for art events (r=.041) to higher spending while local heritage events had low negative correlations (r=-.038), which identifies lower spending. Visitors recognizing higher spending at events also visited surrounding communities and traveled over 60 miles to attend. Another target results was to measure the value of those traveling over 60 miles to attend, which resulted in recognized spending three-times above those traveling less than 60 miles ($129 versus $326 per person). In the area of advertising, web promotions were the only category related to higher spending values.


Objective: To assess the relationship between copayment level and drug switching among insured patients who initiated a medication regime for treatment of type 2 diabetes. Study Design: Retrospective observational study. Methods: Medical claims data were used to examine continuous periods of use for therapeutic classes of drugs within formulary tiers. Switching to more expensive drugs or drugs of equal or lesser cost was based on the relevant out-of-pocket costs to the patient for the initial drug versus the drug the patient switched to. Data were analyzed using multistate proportional hazards models. Results: A total of 9260 participants met the inclusion criterion. Each $5 increase in copayment was associated with decreased rates of switching to a relatively more expensive drug (hazard ratio [HR] = 0.49, 95% confi dence interval [CI] = 0.43, 0.56) and an increased rate of switching to drugs of equal or lesser cost (HR = 1.04, 95% CI = 1.03, 1.05). Patients with better glycemic control were more likely to switch to relatively less expensive drugs in response to increased copayments (HR = 1.10, 95% CI = 1.07, 1.13). Compared with Japanese patients, Filipinos and Native Hawaiian or Pacifi c Islanders had the greatest difference in rates of drug switching at lower copayments, whereas Chinese patients had the greatest rates of switching at higher copayments. Conclusions: Cost sharing can shift patients with diabetes toward use of less expensive drugs. Clinical and sociodemographic factors affect the rates of switching. Clinical implications of drug switches should be examined.


Secretion is an attractive production mode for proteins that require posttranslational modifications carried out in the secretory pathway. For example, amino acid chains fold properly, disulfide bonds form correctly, and glycosylation occurs accurately as the protein is secreted. In addition, recovery of secreted proteins is simplified by the fact that cells need not be broken and the product may be a major species present in a minimal synthetic culture medium. The current state of the art permits the production and secretion of proteins by heterologous cells. While future efforts will be required to improve the efficiency of secretion, current methods yield commercially interesting levels of secretion from E. coli, B. subtilis, S. cerevisiae, Aspergilli, and many mammalian cell types. Each of these systems offers certain advantages, and the choice of system depends on the specific protein to be secreted. High-value human therapeutic products such as plasminogen activators are reasonable candidates for secretion from mammalian cell lines, while industrial proteins such as calf prochymosin require a more economical host, such as baker's yeast or Aspergillus. The wide variety of posttranslational modifications observed in nature may prevent any single secretion system from dominating the field for many years to come.


This paper estimates the extent of globalisation for the Middle East and North African (MENA) countries using the Kearney/foreign policy approach for the period 1995-2005. This index is composed of four components: economic integration, technology, personal contact and political engagement and it is used to identify the extent of globalisation of MENA countries and to show how globalisation has evolved over time in these countries. UAE, Bahrain and Malta are ranked as the three most globalised countries in the MENA region while Algeria, Libya and Djibouti are among the lowest. As far as the sources of globalisation is concerned the technology and the economic integration play a key role in the globalisation process in the region followed by personal contacts while the political engagement exhibits negligible role. Our results also show a strong positive association between globalisation and economic growth for the MENA countries.


ABSTRACT Policy formulation is a criminal sanction in formulating policies and establish criminal sanctions against the perpetrators of corruption. Legislation combating corruption establish criminal sanctions against offenders by determining the minimum criminal sanctions specifically, a higher penalty, and a sentence of death which is a criminal weighting and includes imprisonment for perpetrators of corruption. In the application of criminal sanctions against the perpetrators of corruption can be seen based on the formulation of the offense in article 2 and article 3, where the criminal sanctions imposed on the perpetrators of corruption, especially in some of the Medan District Court decisions are imprisonment, criminal penalties, and criminal confinement. Key words : criminal, sanction, corruption


Domestic violence has been under public scrutiny for some time both internationally and in Estonia. A highly negative social phenomenon, it causes considerable harm to individuals` basic rights and thereby poses an acute legal problem. Accordingly, the objective with the article is to address the attitudes of Estonia's practising legal experts towards domestic violence from the perspective of recognising it and to support the idea of exploring options for further systematising the relevant legislation. World judicial practice uses two fundamental types of regulation to address domestic violence: reconciling and punitive. According to a survey carried out among Estonia's practising lawyers in 2014, legal professionals may favour either kind of regulation. The authors of the article hold the view that Estonia needs fairly separate regulation for preventing and combating domestic violence yet regulation that is integrated well into the system at large. Obviously, laws cannot solve all problems related to domestic violence on their own; however, the potential of laws should not be underestimated.


The concept of work ethic has evolved from the writings of the early 20th century scholar, Max Weber (Weber, 1904-1905), who has been frequently credited with contributing to the success of capitalism in western society with what became known as the Protestant work ethic (PWE) (Chusmir and Koberg, 1988; Hill and Petty, 1995; Hirschfeld and Field, 2000; Kalberg, 1996). Weber highlighted the value of work commitment and raised questions as to why some people place a greater importance on work and appear more conscientious than others. For many years, this remained a dominant theme in the psychological investigation of occupational behavior (Pryor and Davies, 1989). However, in recent years, applied psychological literature has provided decidedly little clarity to this issue, even though practitioners express a growing concern about the waning commitment to the value and importance of work (Hirschfeld and Field, 2000; Miller et al., 2002). Perhaps researchers have been discouraged from continuing studies in this domain because of the high frequency of ambiguous results from prior studies. The enigmatic data may be due to the attempt to study the work ethic construct without considering each of its individual dimensions (Miller et al., 2002). Challenging as it may be, more empirical research of work ethic is needed. Greater understanding of the desires, requirements, and work-related values of the newest generation of employees may provide a win-win opportunity where both employers and employees benefit. Conversely, the adverse consequences of a knowledge shortfall are enormous. Mismatches between job design and employees will negatively affect job attitudes (Porter, 1969), which in turn may affect a firm's ability to compete. Understanding the values of employees is a requirement for any company that wishes to operate with vigor and vitality (Ralston et al., 1997), and it offers potential benefits to an entire society (Hansen, 1963) as healthy organizations can translate into economically prosperous cultures (Hofstede, 1984). Key to the future success of any company is its ability to manage, train, develop, and reward (Vroom, 1960) a satisfied (Herzberg, 1968) and motivated workforce (Lawler, 1968) at all levels of its organization. This cannot be accomplished unless changes in work-related values are understood. While most organizations have human resource management policies and procedures that mirror the company's culture (Jain, 1990) and are influenced by the root national culture (Hofstede, 1983), they are not always attuned to the values of the changing workforce (Smola and Sutton, 2002). While the existence of differences in the overall work ethic between established workers and new employees is generally accepted (Hirschfeld and Field, 2000; Loscocco and Kalleberg, 1988), the degree and extent to which they differ is not fully understood (Cherrington et al., 1979). The literature review yielded a wide range of studies that found differences in the work ethic of younger and older people (Cherrington, 1977; Cherrington et al., 1979; Loscocco and Kalleberg, 1988; Taylor and Thompson, 1976). However, findings may be incomplete or misleading since they focus on only one or two dimensions of work ethic (Miller et al., 2002). Differentiation The purpose of this study is to understand where differences in work ethic arise between college students and workforce professionals. This investigation differs from related studies in that it compares each of the distinctive dimensions of work ethic of individuals about to begin their professional careers to those already working in those careers. Understanding the differences in these populations provides guidance to employers regarding their current and future workforce. This study also differs from those involving psychological contracts, organizational commitment, or generational differences. For example, psychological contracts have been described as general perceptions of an exchange agreement between two parties (De Meuse et al. …


Well-known theories suggest that administrative procedures may be used as mechanisms of political control of the bureaucracy. This study investigates whether three common regulatory analysis procedures—cost-benefit analysis, risk assessment, and economic impact analysis—lead to greater influence by political officials on bureaucratic policymaking. Multivariate analyses of data from a unique survey of state administrators indicate that regulatory analysis requirements are associated with decreases in the perceived influence of elected political officials on the content of administrative rules. This association is particularly evident in cases where proposed rules are subjected to a cost–benefit test. These findings contradict prominent theories of administrative procedures, but are consistent with recent research on the political power of administrative agencies.


This article reports on a systematic review of research on the effectiveness of interventions aimed at increasing teacher attendance in developing countries. After a comprehensive search process, nine studies met the inclusion criteria. Pooled effects sizes of included studies were estimated (with the exception of three studies that had unavailable information to calculate their effect sizes). Results show that direct interventions coupling monitoring systems with incentives and indirect interventions involving the community and parents in students' education had statistically significant effects on teacher attendance, suggesting that close monitoring and attractive incentives are mechanisms of high potential to reduce teacher absenteeism.


Introduction: Myasthenia gravis (MG) is a neuromuscular autoimmune disease of unknown etiology, characterized by generalized muscle weakness and fatigue, especially after repetitive physical activities, with consequent improvement after rest. The MG follows a slowly progressive course, which can be fatal failure of the ventilatory muscles. The manifestations of the respiratory system are generally attributed to the weakness of the diaphragm and also accessory muscles of ventilation. Objetive: The objective was to evaluate the volumes and lung capacities and maximum pressure ventilation in patients with clinically stable MG. Methods: This is an observational study involving 15 patients (2 men) with MG. Subjects were recruited consecutively and screened for eligibility using the standardized protocol. Results: Spirometry, only two patients showed abnormalities of respiratory pattern, being a moderate restrictive pattern (50-60% predicted), and another patient with the congenital form showed a severe restrictive pattern. Not obstructive patterns were observed. Our results of spirometry showed an average value of FVC: 3.15 ± 0.77 and FEV1: 2.64 ± 0.65. Regarding the maximum pressure generated by the ventilatory muscles, the average value for the MIP was 45.5 cmH2O among women and the value of 56 cmH2O for men was observed. To MEP it was observed the average value of 45 cmH2O for women and 55 cmH2O for men. Conclusion: We conclude that patients with MG have lower values of maximal inspiratory and expiratory ventilatory associated with normal lung function values.


Building extraction has been a challenging task due to complex structures and features of various land use with matching spectral and spatial attributes in a satellite data. We attempted to extract building as features using machine-learning algorithms such as Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random Forests (RF), Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Improved Ensemble Technique as Gradient Boosting. The techniques used increases their classification accuracies using spectral properties as well as indices such as Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) as attributes. Extracted results through various methods, performance of three different machine learning such as Ensemble method, RF and SVM are applied and results are analyzed for their behavior in different building distribution. Different algorithms showed variations in accuracies and performance in different built-up conditions. Ensemble algorithm performed very well in all conditions followed by RF and SVM performed better in coarse resolution, while ANN performed better in high resolution and overall accuracies of all algorithms increased with better spatial resolution. Ensemble algorithm showed relatively efficient performance in regions with extensive heterogeneous features. These analyses can helpful to provide quantitative data for various stocktaking analysis and city managers for better administration capabilities.


A theoretical model for the dynamic behaviour of a soil compaction tamping machine is derived. The Matlab toolbox Simulink is used to solve the equations of motion. Simulink is used because it is possible to combine the kinetic model of the machine with a more complex FE-model. The theoretical model has been verified experimentally, where the soil compaction tamping machine was run on a simulated soil material. The agreement between the simulation and the experiment is very good, which implies that this simplified model of the machine can be used for a more complete study of the total system, including a more correct soil model.


Investigations of open barn systems of horses regarding the correlation of health and housing system

The aim of this thesis was investigating if improved husbandry has a positive influence on the recovery of special health issues. Therefor 600 horse owners were asked to answer an on-line questionnaire about their horses' behavior and health status. All horses were kept in housing systems, which had been rated positively by the Laufstall-Arbeits-Gemeinschaft (LAG), and had permanent access to a paddock or a pastern.
The prevalence of coughing, gastrointestinal diseases, orthopedic disorders, injuries and unwanted behaviour patterns were compiled. Further it was asked, how the health or the behaviour had changed since the horse had been stabled in the new farm.
The improvement of respiratory diseases was recognized by 52.9 % of the horse owners, gastrointestinal diseases by 55.7 % and orthopedic disorders by 45.3 %. 53.9% of the horses showed an improvement of unwanted behaviour patterns. The tendency to injuries improved only by 28.4 %.
Horses, which had been individually stabled before, needed significantly more often veterinary care for gastrointestinal diseases (p = 0.002), orthopedic disorders (p = 0.004) or injuries (p = 0.0001) than horses which have not been stabled in another farm than the current. Further these horses coughed less (p = 0.002) and showed less unwanted behaviour patterns (p = 0.003). These horses more often never had a demand for veterinary care (p = 0.0001).
Horses, which had been individually stabled before, showed significantly more often respiratory diseases (p = 0.044) and unwanted behavior patterns (p = 0.023) than horses, which had been stabled in other group housing systems before. In particular the differences regarding orthopedic disorders (p = 0.002) became clearly.
Not changing the farm has a significantly positive impact on the categories "injuries" (p = 0.002) and "never having needed a veterinary" (p = 0.002) compared to horses which came from another group housing system. Also the
Summary 119
prevalence for disorders of the digestive system was the lowest for horses, which have not been stabled in another farm than the current before (p = 0.031).
Considering the rates of the improvements discriminating between the corresponding prior housing systems, it becomes clear, that horses, which were stabled in boxes, show increased improvement rates compared to horses, which were stables in open barn systems. In particular the differences regarding both, coughing (p = 0.001) and orthopedic disorders (p = 0.0001), are significant.
The grading of the stables did not show a significant correlation to the frequency of the health issues nor unwanted behaviour patterns, probably due to the low variation of the grades among the stables.
Summing up according to the owners' opinions changing from boxes to an open barn system resulted in a significant improvement of the heath of the respiratory and the musculoskeletal system as well as the behavior of the horses. Frequent changes of the farm should be avoided due to both, the effects on the digestive system and the occurrence of injuries.


Irradiation hardening due to voids can be a significant result of radiation damage in metals, but treatment of this by elasticity theory of dislocations is difficult when the mechanisms controlling the obstacle strength are atomic in nature. Copper has long been used to approximate austenitic stainless steels in computer simulations because of their shared face-centered cubic structure and similar Stacking Fault Energy (SFE). Their stacking fault properties are however not identical; the SFE in stainless steel is significantly lower than that in Cu. Low values of SFE lead to wide dissociation of dislocations in their glide planes into Shockley partial dislocations, severely affecting the hardening process of the metal. Molecular Dynamics simulations have been conducted in order to highlight the implications of stacking fault energy on the interaction between dissociated dislocations and nanoscale voids. A recently developed set of interatomic potentials with a range of stacking fault energies based on FCC copper was used in order to investigate the Critical Resolved Shear Stress (CRSS) and other interaction details for a range of void sizes, temperatures, impact parameters and void separation distances for both edge and screw dislocations. Changes in SFE were found to affect the pinning interactions for dissociated edge dislocations in a relatively weak but systematic manner. The CRSS needed for any given dislocation to overcome the array of voids was in all cases shown to decrease with decreasing SFE and vice versa. This was also concluded for dissociated screw dislocations, but with an extra layer of complexity: The advent of complex cross-slip mechanisms sometimes lead to highly unpredictable void pinning dynamics, mainly through multiple cross-slip and its consequences; the creation of temporary immobile dislocation structures. The value of SFE is shown to be very influential on the distribution, probability and form of complex cross-slip mechanisms, which may double or triple the pinning strength of voids.


In this paper, we propose an approach to automatically estimate relationship among people in a family image collection based on results from face analyses technologies including automated face recognition and clustering, demographic assessment, and face similarity measurement, as well as contextual information such as people co-appearance, people's relative positions in photos and image timestamps. As the result, a relation tree can be estimated which provides important semantic information regarding people involved in a photo collection and has numerous applications in photo sharing and browsing, social networking, etc. The methods for deriving and integrating information from photos and the process for estimating a relation tree are described. Experimental results on two typical consumer photo collections and examples of using these results in consumer image retrieval are presented.


The Oregon Water Resources Department is designing and using a geographic information system (GIS) to manage water rights. The system allows automation of many tasks including: production of survey maps, overlaying and edgematching maps of various scales, sorting and searching large data files, analysis and modeling of water uses within a subbasin, and map displays for many audiences and purposes. The Department has set up a GIS to accomplish the above tasks in a user friendly manner. It has designed data formats and efficient methods of filing and retrieving data to make maximum use of the system. There are opportunities at the state, local and federal levels for cooperative efforts in designing and using such a system.


The DNA methyltransferases DNMT3A and DNMT3B are primarily responsible for de novo methylation of specific cytosine residues in CpG dinucleotides during mammalian development. While loss-of-function mutations in DNMT3A are highly recurrent in acute myeloid leukemia (AML), DNMT3A mutations are almost never found in AML patients with translocations that create oncogenic fusion genes such as PML-RARA, RUNX1-RUNX1T1, and MLL-AF9. Here, we explored how DNMT3A is involved in the function of these fusion genes. We used retroviral vectors to express PML-RARA, RUNX1-RUNX1T1, or MLL-AF9 in bone marrow cells derived from WT or DNMT3A-deficient mice. Additionally, we examined the phenotypes of hematopoietic cells from Ctsg-PML-RARA mice, which express PML-RARA in early hematopoietic progenitors and myeloid precursors, with or without DNMT3A. We determined that the methyltransferase activity of DNMT3A, but not DNMT3B, is required for aberrant PML-RARA-driven self-renewal ex vivo and that DNMT3A is dispensable for RUNX1-RUNX1T1- and MLL-AF9-driven self-renewal. Furthermore, both the PML-RARA-driven competitive transplantation advantage and development of acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) required DNMT3A. Together, these findings suggest that PML-RARA requires DNMT3A to initiate APL in mice.


The claim that oil wealth tends to block democratic transitions has recently been challenged by Haber and Menaldo, who use historical data going back to 1800 and conclude there is no "resource curse." We revisit their data and models, and show they might be correct for the period before the 1970s, but since about 1980, there has been a pronounced resource curse. We argue that oil wealth only became a hindrance to democratic transitions after the transformative events of the 1970s, which enabled developing country governments to capture the oil rents that were previously siphoned off by foreign-owned firms. We also explain why the Haber–Menaldo study failed to identify this: partly because the authors draw invalid inferences from their data and partly because they assume that the relationship between oil wealth and democracy has not changed for the past 200 years.


Objective To explore the sexual behavior especially focusing on prevalence of premarital sex among college men and to investigate the factors surrounding premarital sexual behavior.Methods A total of 3 992 male students from 13 colleges in Hangzhou were investigated by self-developed questionnaire on premarital sexual behavior.Results About 91.0% respondents approved premarital sex behavior under certain conditions.About 22.5% of all the college men reported having premarital sexual behavior.Mean age of first sexual behavior was 18.8 years old.Money spend very months was the most important factor affecting attitude and behaviors towards premarital sex.By using Logistic regression analysis,parental educational level,family connection,attitude toward premarital sex and multiple sex partners associated with premarital sexual behavior among male college students.Conclusion Most male college students approve premarital sex.Appropriate sexual health education and guidance should be strengthened among college students by family,school and society


Consistent practice of yoga postures and pranayama increases the lung's airflow, air capacity, stamina and efficiency. Back bending postures open the chest, improving both lung and heart functions. Upper back bends and chest opening postures relieve hardness if it is harder to exhale during asthma attacks. Forward bends and lower back bending poses relieve difficulty if it is more difficult to inhale. Inverted postures drain excess mucus from the lungs and balance the immune system. A general yoga practice reduces stress, physical tension, and muscle tightness and increases overall feelings of well being by activating the parasympathetic nervous system. Blood carries oxygen in two forms, the majority is bound to haemoglobin (oxyhaemoglobin) and the rest is dissolved in the aqueous phase of blood (the plasma). The dissolved fraction is dependent upon the partial pressure of oxygen. As the partial pressure increases, the dissolved fraction of oxygen increases. Hence the experimenter was very much interested in studying the effect of asanas and pranayama in blood oxygen saturation level at ear. Thus three groups were studied – control, experimental-I and experimental-II. However the groups were assigned randomly to three conditions namely no treatment, treatment as asanas and treatment as pranayama. The analysis of covariance had been worked out and the obtained F is 3.75 for 2 and 11 df falls short of the critical value of 3.98 at 0.05 level. It was observed from the study that the three groups differ significantly.


Pomadasys incisus is one of the most abundant coastal demersal species around the Canary Islands. It is a gonochoric species with similar biological characteristic in males and females. The adult sex ratio is not significantly different from 1:1, and the mean size of males and females is similar. It reaches first maturity at the end of the second year of life (183 mm). Spawning takes place throughout the year. Growth analysis reveals that the species is fast-growing and relatively short-lived (7 years). Length at age is well described by the von Bertalanffy growth model. Individuals grow quickly in their immature first year, attaining approximately 45% of their maximum length. After one year, the annual growth rate drops rapidly. The direct effects of fishing result in changes in abundance, with an 80% reduction from the unexploited equilibrium level. Recruitment into the commercial fisheries occurs before size at sexual maturity, resulting in all spawners being accessible using the current fishing pattern. The length at first capture (168 mm) is less than the length at maturity; 45% of the total catch are smaller than this, indicating a danger of recruitment-overfishing.


We measure the asymmetry in the charge-weighted rapidity of the lepton in semileptonic ttbar decays recorded with the CDF II detector using the full Tevatron Run II sample, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 9.4/fb. A parametrization of the asymmetry as a function of the charge-weighted rapidity is used to correct for the finite acceptance of the detector and recover the production-level asymmetry. The result of afb(lep) = 0.094 +0.032 -0.029 is to be compared to the standard model next-to-leading-order prediction of afb(lep) = 0.038 +-0.003.


Why do young firms pay less? Using confidential microdata from the US Census Bureau, we find lower earnings among workers at young firms. However, we argue that such measurement is likely subject to worker and firm selection. Exploiting the two-sided panel nature of the data to control for relevant dimensions of worker and firm heterogeneity, we uncover a positive and significant young-firm pay premium. Furthermore, we show that worker selection at firm birth is related to future firm dynamics, including survival and growth. We tie our empirical findings to a simple model of pay, employment, and dynamics of young firms.


Tourism and Indigenous Peoples is a unique text examining the role of indigenous societies in tourism and how they interact within the tourism nexus. Unlike other publications, this text focuses on the active role that indigenous peoples take in the industry, and uses international case studies and experiences to provide a global context to illustrate best practice and aid comparison. First published over ten years ago the editors, Butler and Hinch, have thoroughly revised and updated the text to bring together a new collection of contributions and case studies from recognised international authors and those with first hand experiences in this area. Divided into five main sections, the text looks at this topic under the following headings: Involvement: Uses case studies to discuss and compare such as 'campfire' programmes in east Africa, and the employment of indigenous peoples as guides, amongst other cases, Turbulence: Host guest relationships, conflicts on communities and contrasting strategies and results of tourism in indigenous villages in South Africa. Issues: Discusses issues such as authenticity, religious beliefs and managing indigenous tourism in a fragile environment. Progress: Looks at tourism education, tourism and cultural survival and examples of the policy and practice of indigenous tourism. Conclusions: Five contributions from indigenous people on North America, Australasia and Europe to discuss implications and experiences. Each section uses international case studies from, for example, Australia, New Zealand, Nepal, Namibia, Thailand, Saudi Arabia and South America.


The paper explores the professional practice of "cultural mediation" in the Italian context. This activity is taken here as a vantage point from which the dynamics of identity projections can be observed, as they emerge from a real-life interaction. The analysis is carried out on a recorded and transcribed encounter involving three participants: a service provider working for a Foreigners Advice Bureau run by the municipal authorities of a major Italian city; a French-speaking asylum seeker from Cameroon; and a Moroccan mediator. The encounter is characterised by a high degree of interactional heterogeneity; triadic configurations where the mediator acts as "interpreter" alternate with parallel conversations and with long dyadic exchanges between the mediator and the service user, in the absence of the service provider. Within this changeable participation framework, the interlocutors' discursive choices are closely examined. The theoretical framework brings together two complementary paradigms, a linguistic-interactional and a socio-psychological one. The resulting discussion, which revolves around the concepts of "role", "discourse", "position" and "narrative", reveals cultural mediation as an area of instability, where competing identities are interactively constructed and reconstructed.


In November, members of the Hague Conference on Private International Law will meet to discuss the draft Hague Principles on Choice of Law in International Contracts. The draft Principles were produced by an expert working group, established in 2009 to consider the topic and which met on three occasions between 2009 and 2011 to discuss the Principles, and their detailed formulation. Three working papers which the author prepared as a member of the Working Group have been uploaded to this site in their original form. The first (SSRN Abstract ID: 2168056, prepared in July 2010) addresses issues as to the place of public policy and mandatory rules in the draft Principles, and provides the basis on which Art. 11 of the draft Principles was prepared. The second (SSRN Abstract ID: 2168057, prepared in June 2011) updates that note in light of the discussions within the Working Group. The third (SSRN Abstract ID: 2168058, prepared in June 2011) considers issues of the material validity of a choice of law agreement, and its independence from the contract of which it forms part.


How America left its indelible footprint on the culture and politics of Singapore In the first decade after World War II, Singapore underwent radical political and socioeconomic changes with the progressive retreat of Great Britain from its Southeast Asian colonial empire. The United States, under the Eisenhower administration, sought to fill the vacuum left by the British retreat and launched into a campaign to shape the emerging Singapore nation-state in accordance with its Cold War policies. Based on a wide array of Chinese- and English-language archival sources from Great Britain, the Netherlands, Singapore, and the United States, Safe for Decolonization examines in depth the initiatives--both covert and public--undertaken by the United States in late-colonial Singapore. Apart from simply analyzing the effect of American activities on the politics of the island, author S. R. Joey Long also examines their impact on the relationship between Great Britain and the United States, and how the Anglo-American nuclear policy toward China and the establishment of a regional security institution (the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization) affected the security and decolonization of a strategic British base. Long sketches a highly detailed and nuanced account of the relations between the United States, Great Britain, and Singapore. He not only describes the often clumsy attempts by covert American operatives to sway top political leaders, infiltrate governments, influence labor unions, and shape elections, but he also shows how Eisenhower's public initiatives proved to have far-reaching positive results and demonstrates that the Eisenhower administration's policies toward Singapore, while not always well advised, nonetheless helped to lay the foundation for friendly Singapore-U.S. relations after 1960. As the first multi-archival work on the U.S. intervention in Singapore, Safe for Decolonization makes an important contribution to the literature on Southeast Asia-U.S. relations. It will be of interest to specialists in decolonization, diplomatic history, modern Southeast Asian history, and the history of the early Cold War.


We study continuous action reinforcement learning problems in which it is crucial that the agent interacts with the environment only through safe policies, i.e.,~policies that do not take the agent to undesirable situations. We formulate these problems as constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs) and present safe policy optimization algorithms that are based on a Lyapunov approach to solve them. Our algorithms can use any standard policy gradient (PG) method, such as deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) or proximal policy optimization (PPO), to train a neural network policy, while guaranteeing near-constraint satisfaction for every policy update by projecting either the policy parameter or the action onto the set of feasible solutions induced by the state-dependent linearized Lyapunov constraints. Compared to the existing constrained PG algorithms, ours are more data efficient as they are able to utilize both on-policy and off-policy data. Moreover, our action-projection algorithm often leads to less conservative policy updates and allows for natural integration into an end-to-end PG training pipeline. We evaluate our algorithms and compare them with the state-of-the-art baselines on several simulated (MuJoCo) tasks, as well as a real-world indoor robot navigation problem, demonstrating their effectiveness in terms of balancing performance and constraint satisfaction. Videos of the experiments can be found in the following link: this https URL.


Idiopathic aplastic anemia (AA) has two key characteristics: an autoimmune response against hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells and regulatory T cells (Tregs) deficiency. We have previously demonstrated reduction in a specific subpopulation of Treg in AA, which predict response to immunosuppression. The aims of the present study were to define mechanisms of Treg subpopulation imbalance and identify potential for therapeutic intervention. We have identified two mechanisms that lead to skewed Treg composition in AA. Firstly, FasL mediated apoptosis on ligand interaction and, secondly, relative IL-2 deprivation. We have shown that IL-2 augmentation can overcome these mechanisms. Interestingly, when high concentrations of IL-2 were used for in vitro Treg expansion cultures, AA Tregs were able to expand. The expanded populations expressed high level of p-BCL-2, which makes them resistant to apoptosis. Using a xenograft mouse model, the function and stability of expanded AA Tregs were tested. We have shown that these Tregs were able to suppress the macroscopic clinical features and tissue manifestations of T cell-mediated graft-versus-host disease. These Tregs maintained their suppressive properties as well as their phenotype in a highly inflammatory environment. Our findings provide an insight into the mechanisms of Treg reduction in AA. We have identified novel targets with potential for therapeutic interventions. Supplementation of ex vivo expansion cultures of Tregs with high concentrations of IL-2 or delivery of IL-2 directly to patients could improve clinical outcomes in addition to standard immunosuppressive therapy.


This thesis presents a system approach with the aim to develop improved concepts for small capacity, high temperature lift air-water heat pumps. These are intended to replace fuel fired heating systems in the residential sector, which leads to a major reduction of the local greenhouse gas emissions. Unfavorable temperature conditions set by the existing heat distribution systems and by the use of atmospheric air, as the only accessible heat source, have to be overcome. The proposed concepts are intended to cover the total application range and to provide the full heat demand without any additional (electric) heat supply. A systematic approach, using a multi objective optimization tool, has been applied to evaluate possible alternate refrigerants, which perform best, regarding to the system COP and the specific heat output. All the optimal refrigerant blends are composed by flammable refrigerants and a potential increase of the COP of 8% (compared to the commercial blend R-407C) has been determined. These potential improvements highly depend on the acceptance to use flammable refrigerants, as can be shown by this evaluation. The standard concepts of small capacity heat pumps suffer from a restricted application range and show highly decreasing performances (COP and provided heat) at extreme operating conditions. From the examination of the thermodynamic cycle, different improved concepts are proposed and are assembled in a generalized super-configuration. The most promising concepts have been built as prototype units and have been tested in laboratory. These concepts are: a) the two-stage compression cycles with economizer heat exchanger or b) with economizer flash tank at the intermediate pressure level, c) the booster-compressor setup, d) the one-stage compression cycle including a new developed hermetic compressor, which enables intermediate injection of saturated vapor flow and e) a small capacity auxiliary cycle for liquid subcooling. In all these concepts the application range could be extended, by achieving reduced discharge temperatures and the heat rate provided at extreme operating conditions could be substantially increased (20%-35%, +100% for the booster setup), using the same compressor and evaporator size. System COP has been improved ( 5%) over a large application range, and specifically in high temperature lift operating conditions. The experimental evaluation reveals the major problem of unbalanced oil migration in two-stage compression cycles (except for the booster concept). An extensive evaluation has been applied, to analyze the oil migration in two-stage compression heat pumps. A new developed measurement technique, using a Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometry combined with a high pressure supporting ATR cell, has been calibrated (with a lower detection limit at 0.2% - 0.4%, and a sensitivity of 0.1%) with the used refrigerant-oil mixtures (R-134a/POE oil and R-407C/POE oil). It has been applied to perform on-line oil concentration measurements during two-stage and one-stage steady stage and during transitory operating modes. A generalized steady state simulation model has been developed including namely the new developed compressor model with an intermediate injection port, considering the geometrical flow path of the tested prototype compressors. A flow map based extensive heat transfer model is integrated into a finned tube evaporator model and taking into account oil effects on the heat transfer. General models of plate heat exchangers and for capillary tube expansion devices complete this modular simulation model, on which the concepts of the super-configuration can be calculated and some parametric analysis has been performed. An in house developed fluid interface module includes the fluid properties calculation program Refprop and allows to define new mixtures or to use the large number of predefined refrigerants.