Six Eurasian species of Carduus thistles (Compositae: Cynareael are troublesome weeds in North America. They are attacked by about 340 species of phytophagous insects, including 71 that are oligophagous on Cynareae. Of these Eurasian insects, 39 were extensively tested for host specificity, and 5 of them were sufficiently damf..ghg and stenophagous to warrant their release as biological control agents in North America. They include four beetles: Altica carduorum Guerin-Meneville, repeatedly released but not established; Ceutorhynchus litura (F.), established in Canada and Montana on Cirsium arvense (L.) Scop.; Rhinocyllus conicus (Froelich), widely established in the United States and Canada and beginning to reduce Carduus nutans L. populations; Trichosirocalus horridus ~Panzer), established on Carduus nutans in Virginia; and the fly Urophora stylata (F.), established on Cirsium in Canada. Potentially useful and probably host-specific fungi attacking Carduus include five species of Puccinia and two species of Uredo.


Background: Benefit–harm tradeoffs of melanoma screening depend on disease risk and treatment efficacy. We developed a model to project outcomes of screening for melanoma in populations with different risks under historic and novel systemic treatments. Methods: Computer simulation model of a screening program with specified impact on overall and advanced-stage incidence. Inputs included meta-analyses of treatment trials, cancer registry data, and a melanoma risk prediction study Results: Assuming 50% reduction in advanced stage under screening, the model projected 59 and 38 lives saved per 100,000 men under historic and novel treatments, respectively. With 10% increase in stage I, the model projects 2.9 and 4.7 overdiagnosed cases per life saved and number needed to be screened (NNS) equal to 1695 and 2632 under historical and novel treatments. When screening was performed only for the 20% of individuals with highest predicted risk, 34 and 22 lives per 100,000 were saved under historic and novel treatments. Similar results were obtained for women, but lives saved were lower. Conclusions: Melanoma early detection programs must shift a substantial fraction of cases from advanced to localized stage to be sustainable. Advances in systemic therapies for melanoma might noticeably reduce benefits of screening, but restricting screening to individuals at highest risk will likely reduce intervention efforts and harms while preserving >50% of the benefit of nontargeted screening. Impact: Our accessible modeling framework will help to guide population melanoma screening programs in an era of novel treatments for advanced disease.


THE MIDDLE SCHOOL TRANSITION IN PRIVATE SCHOOLS: STUDENT PERCEPTIONS By Eileen Irby Atkinson, Ph.D. A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2010 Director: Cheryl Magill, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Leadership Students transitioning into the middle school often experience difficulty adjusting to their new environment. During this transition, declines in academic motivation, academic achievement, and connectedness have been noted. Most research on this transition has taken place in public school settings. This research investigated the impact of the middle school transition in a private school setting. This study examined students" perceptions of the middle school transition as it related to the connectedness students perceived to their new school, those individuals whom students perceived as most helpful during their transition, academic motivation and achievement following the transition, and perceived helpfulness of transition activities conducted by the school. In addition, the study examined significant differences of the transition experience based on gender and race. Five hundred and two private middle school students in 35 private schools in Virginia completed a paper and pencil survey in which they responded to 47 questions regarding their transition into middle school. It was found that students generally felt connected to middle school, and the number of extracurricular activities in which a student participated did not appear to correlate significantly with connectedness. Most new middle school students did not perceive their transition experience as difficult. Middle school teachers, parents and friends appeared to be the most helpful to students during their transition. As compared to elementary school, newly transitioned middle school students were more academically motivated, and academic achievement showed a slight improvement in middle school. Students reported that visits made to the middle school as an elementary student were most helpful to their transition, and that the summer orientation and tour were also found to be helpful. Males perceived parents, middle school teachers and elementary school counselors as more helpful to their transition than did females, who considered friends most helpful. Parents were perceived as most helpful to the transition by Asian students. Caucasians reported higher academic achievement in middle school than African American students, and African American students perceived their academic achievement as higher than that of Hispanic students. African American students, more than any of the other groups represented, believed that the information given to the middle school by the elementary school was very helpful to their transition. Native American students, and students identifying their race as "Other" felt that the assignment of an older middle school buddy was more helpful to the transition than did Caucasian or Hispanic students. In terms of the relative contribution of the variables to the prediction of ease of transition, the number of transition activities has the greatest influence, followed by level of support from others, perception of connectedness to middle school, and middle school academic performance.


ABSTRACT China is now a major actor in global development and wields considerable influence in large parts of the world. The success of the Chinese development model has not only challenged the notion that democracy is necessary for development but also questioned the hegemony of the neo-liberal state encouraging and laying the foundations for a thriving private market economy. The Chinese model of aid, loans, and investments highlights the principles of 'win-win', 'mutual respect', and 'non-interference', based on the needs of a country as articulated by the recipient government. Yet, although Chinese aid does not explicitly aim to affect domestic policies and institutions in recipient countries, it does affect them. In this article, we explore the impact of Chinese aid practices – including grants, loans, and investment policies – on state legitimacy and the capacity of state institutions in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. We argue that while Chinese development interventions have highly diverse impacts in various geographical contexts, they tend to strengthen the elites that are in power – whether in government, or those supporting it from the outside. The extent to which Chinese policies contribute to strengthening state capacity depends on the incentives and visions that local elites possess.


Biomass has attracted keen interest as a renewable resource and an environmental friendly material that is essential to realize a sustainable world. Lignin as biomass has been long labeled with waste material. But now the innate chemistry of lignin and a phenolic heteropolymer, has allowed it to make inroads into the high value polymer and natural biomass material industries. Supercritical fluids (SCF) have been shown to be a promising technique for future large-scale biofuel and base-chemicals production, especially for depolymerization production from lignin. This paper reviews the research progress of lignin-depolymerization processes, including effects of process parameters, such as reaction time, temperature, pressure and catalyst, product analysis, and reaction mechanism with different supercritical fluids. The problems of depolymerization with supercritical fluid technology and its development direction are also briefly discussed. Compared with conventional lignin production methods, the SCF technology processes of lignin can produce smaller fragments through breakage of the ether linkages and produce larger fragments through cross linking between the reactive fragments, and the depolymerization lignin processes are typically conducted at mild operating conditions, and the monomeric products have a high economic value because the aromatic products can be readily blended into current transportation fuels or used in chemical industry.


Comparison of multiple protein sequence alignments (MSA) reveals unexpected evolutionary relations between protein families and leads to exciting predictions of spatial structure and function. The power of MSA comparison critically depends on the quality of statistical model used to rank the similarities found in a database search, so that biologically relevant relationships are discriminated from spurious connections. Here, we develop an accurate statistical description of MSA comparison that does not originate from conventional models of single sequence comparison and captures essential features of protein families. As a final result, we compute E-values for the similarity between any two MSA using a mathematical function that depends on MSA lengths and sequence diversity. To develop these estimates of statistical significance, we first establish a procedure for generating realistic alignment decoys that reproduce natural patterns of sequence conservation dictated by protein secondary structure. Second, since similarity scores between these alignments do not follow the classic Gumbel extreme value distribution, we propose a novel distribution that yields statistically perfect agreement with the data. Third, we apply this random model to database searches and show that it surpasses conventional models in the accuracy of detecting remote protein similarities.


An expert offers a guide to where we should use artificial intelligence—and where we should not. Before we know it, artificial intelligence (AI) will work its way into every corner of our lives, making decisions about, with, and for us. Is this a good thing? There's a tendency to think that machines can be more "objective" than humans—can make better decisions about job applicants, for example, or risk assessments. In Awkward Intelligence, AI expert Katharina Zweig offers readers the inside story, explaining how many levers computer and data scientists must pull for AI's supposedly objective decision making. She presents the good and the bad: AI is good at processing vast quantities of data that humans cannot—but it's bad at making judgments about people.
 AI is accurate at sifting through billions of websites to offer up the best results for our search queries and it has beaten reigning champions in games of chess and Go. But, drawing on her own research, Zweig shows how inaccurate AI is, for example, at predicting whether someone with a previous conviction will become a repeat offender. It's no better than simple guesswork, and yet it's used to determine people's futures.
 Zweig introduces readers to the basics of AI and presents a toolkit for designing AI systems. She explains algorithms, big data, and computer intelligence, and how they relate to one another. Finally, she explores the ethics of AI and how we can shape the process. With Awkward Intelligence, Zweig equips us to confront the biggest question concerning AI: where we should use it—and where we should not.


The viscous and inviscid linear stability of the incompressible flow past a square open cavity is studied numerically. The analysis shows that the flow first undergoes a steady three-dimensional bifurcation at a critical Reynolds number of 1370. The critical mode is localized inside the cavity and has a flat roll structure with a spanwise wavelength of about 0.47 cavity depths. The adjoint global mode reveals that the instability is most efficiently triggered in the thin region close to the upstream tip of the cavity. The structural sensitivity analysis identifies the wavemaker as the region located inside the cavity and spatially concentrated around a closed orbit. As the flow outside the cavity plays no role in the generation mechanisms leading to the bifurcation, we confirm that an appropriate parameter to describe the critical conditions in open cavity flows is the Reynolds number based on the average velocity between the two upper edges. Stabilization is achieved by a decrease of the total momentum inside the shear layer that drives the core vortex within the cavity. The mechanism of instability is then studied by means of a short-wavelength approximation considering pressureless inviscid modes. The closed streamline related to the maximum inviscid growth rate is found to be the same as that around which the global wavemaker is concentrated. The structural sensitivity field based on direct and adjoint eigenmodes, computed at a Reynolds number far higher than that of the base flow, can predict the critical orbit on which the main instabilities inside the cavity arise. Further, we show that the sub-leading unstable time-dependent modes emerging at supercritical conditions are characterized by a period that is a multiple of the revolution time of Lagrangian particles along the orbit of maximum growth rate. The eigenfrequencies of these modes, computed by global stability analysis, are in very good agreement with the asymptotic results.


Planck has mapped the microwave sky in temperature over nine frequency bands between 30 and 857 GHz and in polarization over seven frequency bands between 30 and 353 GHz in polarization. In this paper we consider the problem of diffuse astrophysical component separation, and process these maps within a Bayesian framework to derive an internally consistent set of full-sky astrophysical component maps. Component separation dedicated to cosmic microwave background (CMB) reconstruction is described in a companion paper. For the temperature analysis, we combine the Planck observations with the 9-yr Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) sky maps and the Haslam et al. 408 MHz map, to derive a joint model of CMB, synchrotron, free-free, spinning dust, CO, line emission in the 94 and 100 GHz channels, and thermal dust emission. Full-sky maps are provided for each component, with an angular resolution varying between 7.5 and 1deg. Global parameters (monopoles, dipoles, relative calibration, and bandpass errors) are fitted jointly with the sky model, and best-fit values are tabulated. For polarization, the model includes CMB, synchrotron, and thermal dust emission. These models provide excellent fits to the observed data, with rms temperature residuals smaller than 4μK over 93% of the sky for all Planck frequencies up to 353 GHz, and fractional errors smaller than 1% in the remaining 7% of the sky. The main limitations of the temperature model at the lower frequencies are internal degeneracies among the spinning dust, free-free, and synchrotron components; additional observations from external low-frequency experiments will be essential to break these degeneracies. The main limitations of the temperature model at the higher frequencies are uncertainties in the 545 and 857 GHz calibration and zero-points. For polarization, the main outstanding issues are instrumental systematics in the 100–353 GHz bands on large angular scales in the form of temperature-to-polarization leakage, uncertainties in the analogue-to-digital conversion, and corrections for the very long time constant of the bolometer detectors, all of which are expected to improve in the near future.


Trade liberalization affects real-wage inequality through two channels: the distribution of nominal wages across workers and, if the rich and the poor consume different bundles of goods, the distribution of price indices across consumers. I provide a unified framework incorporating both channels by allowing for nonhomothetic preferences and worker heterogeneity across jobs. I parametrize the model for 40 regions using sector-level trade and production data and find that China's productivity growth decreases the relative nominal wage of the poor and the relative price index for the poor in Mexico and Brazil. On net, real-wage inequality falls in the two countries in the baseline case.


Commentators increasingly challenge religion's privileged legal status, arguing that it is not "special" or distinct from other associations or philosophical or conscientious claims. I propose that religion is "special" because it functions metaphorically as a legal sovereign, asserting supreme authority over a realm of human life. Under a religion-as-sovereign theory, religious freedom can be understood as at least partial deference to a religious sovereign in a system of shared or overlapping sovereignty. This Article suggests that federalism, which also involves shared sovereignty, can provide a useful heuristic device for examining religious freedom. Specifically, the Article examines a range of federalism theories and the values of (and concerns about) federalism that they identify and draws strong parallels with a range of theories of religious freedom, highlighting its similar values and potential weaknesses. This comparative endeavor highlights the powerful resonance of sovereignty talk in the religion and law field and suggests that sovereignty is part of the deep structure of our understanding of religious liberty.


We explore how an accounting measure of information asymmetry between lead and participating lenders influences syndication structures by examining whether lead lenders' commercial and industrial (C&I) loan loss provision validity affects the fraction of loans they retain. Consistent with C&I provision validity reflecting banks' underlying screening and monitoring effectiveness, we find that this measure reflects lead lender's past relationship with borrowers and is associated positively with equity market reactions to loan announcements and future loan loss recovery rate and negatively with future large borrower bankruptcies. We then find lead lender's loan share decreases specifically with C&I provision validity, but not with non-C&I provision validity. Consistent with an information effect, we further find that this association is attenuated by i) alternative information sources, including borrowers' credit ratings and industry-level accounting debt contracting value and ii) by previous lead/participant relationships and participant/borrower relationships.


There is growing evidence suggesting that the United States' roots are not in a state of "pristine" nature but rather in a "human-modified landscape" over which Native people have since long exerted vast control and use. The longleaf pine is a typical woodland use largely shaped by fires, lightning and by Native Americans. The frequent fires, which were used to reduce fuels and protect themselves from wildfires, enhance wildlife habitats and for hunting, protect themselves from predators and enemy tribes, led to the establishment of the fire dependent and fire tolerant longleaf pine across the southern landscape. In the last 3 centuries however, the range of longleaf ecosystem has been gradually replaced first by agriculture and then by loblolly pine farming. The joint effects of agricultural expansion, intense logging of the longleaf in the late 1800s, expanded fire control since the early 20th century, and subsequent bare-root planting beginning in the 1930s, has permitted loblolly pine to become dominantly established in the south. Longleaf and loblolly pines represent two distinct woodland uses and represent separate human values. This study investigated the change from longleaf pine use to loblolly pine farming in Southern US from perspectives of human values of land and natural resources.


Gliricidia is a small genus of flowering plants in the Fabaceae family. Gliricidia sepium is a multipurpose tree native to Mesoamerica and possibly northern South America. The chemical composition of the hydrodistilled essential oils of G. sepium , growing wild in the Central Pacific coast of Costa Rica, was analyzed by capillary gas chromatography-flame ionization detector (GC-FID) and capillary gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) using the retention indices on DB-5 type capillary column. A total of 96 and 109 compounds were identified in the leaf and flower oils, respectively, corresponding to 87.9% and 89.2% of the total amount of the oils. The leaf oil consisted mainly of aliphatics (54.9%) and terpenoids (28.1%). The major compounds from the leaf oil were pentadecanal (18.7%), ( Z )-phytol (7.8%), methyl linolenate (6.0%) and nonanal (5.1%). The flower oil consisted mainly of aliphatics (58.9%) and terpenoids (25.8%). The major components of the flower oil were hexadecanoic acid (19.7%), myrtenol (7.7%) and ( E )-nerolidol (5.9%).


To efficiently schedule superscalar and superpipelined processors, it is necessary to move instructions across branches. This requires increasing the scheduling scope beyond the basic block. Superblock scheduling, a static scheduling method, is a variant of trace scheduling that removes the bookkeeping complexity associated with branches into a trace by removing these entrances using a method called tail duplication. Once the scheduling scope is enlarged, there are hazards to moving an instruction above a conditional branch because the instruction is normally only executed on one path of the conditional branch. To allow the compiler to schedule code more aggressively, hardware support can be provided to prevent such hazards. In this paper we analyze the architecture support and performance of three superblock scheduling models. Index terms Conditional branches, exception handling, speculative execution, static code scheduling, superblock, superpipelining, superscalar.


Quitobaquito Springs, in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument near the south end of the northwestward-trending Quitobaquito Hills, are less than 0.25 mile north of the international boundary between the United States and Mexico. The National Park Service is concerned that the natural flow from Quitobaquito Springs might be reduced by ground-water withdrawals in the adjacent State of Sonora, Mexico. Quitobaquito and other nearby springs flow from a highly fractured granite that forms the Quitobaquito Hills. Fractures in the granitic intrusive rocks provide conduits for ground water to flow from an alluvial flow system along Aguajita Wash to a line of springs on the southwest side of Quitobaquito Hills. The chemical composition of water from all the springs is similar. Carbon-14 analysis of water from Quitobaquito Springs indicates that the spring water probably is between 500 and several thousand years old. Discharge at Quitobaquito Springs averaged 28 gallons per minute and ranged from 15 to 40 gallons per minute for 1981 92. Rainfall at two gages in the area of recharge to the northeast of Quitobaquito Hills averaged 6.6 inches per year during the 11-year monitoring program ending in September 1992. The lack of correlation between spring discharge and local rainfall indicates that local annual recharge may be small relative to the total quantity of ground water in storage. Surface-geophysical data indicate that a thin alluvial aquifer overlies the shallow crystalline rocks northeast of Quitobaquito Hills along Aguajita Wash. Results of the study indicate that the ground-water flow system along Aguajita Wash provides a source of water to the springs and may be hydraulically connected to the ground-water system that is pumped for agricultural purposes in Mexico. The altitude and low permeability of the granite bedrock near the international boundary, however, may provide a barrier to and (or) delay the effect of a northwestward propagation of water-level declines caused by pumping near the Rio Sonoyta in Mexico.


Broad-band AlGaAs-GaAs superluminescent diodes are fabricated using asymmetric dual quantum wells. With a proper design of the quantum-well structure, the spectral width of the superluminescent diodes could be engineered. By choosing 40 /spl Aring/ and 75 /spl Aring/, respectively, for the two quantum wells, the spectrum remains bell-shaped and is broadened to 2/spl sim/3 times that of the conventional superluminescent diodes. The measured spectra show that there is no obvious preference on the transition in either well at any pumping current.


The effect of tumor promoters and growth factors on the synthesis of urokinase and urokinase mRNA in human carcinoma cells has been investigated. In urokinase-producing human carcinoma cells (A1251), a 20-40-fold increase in urokinase mRNA level is obtained after treatment with 10 nM phorbol myristate acetate (PMA), a smaller effect (two- to fourfold) with 2 ng/ml platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF) and no effect with epidermal growth factor (EGF) (up to 50 nM). After treatment with PMA, urokinase mRNA level increases already at 30 min peaking 2-4 h thereafter. Cell line A431, which has an abnormally high number of EGF receptors, shows the same response to PMA, but also responds to EGF (two- to fourfold increase in mRNA). The kinetics are similar to those of A1251. Nuclear transcription experiments show that the PMA-induced increase in urokinase mRNA is due to increased synthesis. The protein synthesis inhibitor, cycloheximide (10 micrograms/ml), also increases the level of urokinase mRNA. When both cycloheximide and PMA are used, super-induction is observed. This result may indicate that a short-lived protein negatively regulates the level of urokinase. The different efficiency of the effectors (PMA and PDGF better than EGF) and their kinetics, as well as the effect of cycloheximide on urokinase mRNA synthesis, (a) are reminiscent of the effect of PDGF and PMA on competence phase genes (Kelly, K., B.H. Cochran, C.D. Stiles, and P. Leder, 1983, Cell, 35: 603-610), (b) demonstrate that the synthesis of urokinase is part of the early cellular response to these factors, and (c) provide a preliminary insight in the overproduction of urokinase by primary malignant tumors and transformed cells in culture.


If you think in terms of your lifetime, you may ponder that while the hours, minutes, and seconds of a day have remained the same, the amount of information that you have received, let's say, in the 1980s compared with now, 2008, is drastically different. The size of information received in a day now is larger than what you have received in the past years. The information age has also created a wide range of tools, technologies, and techniques that continuously deliver enormous amounts of data, information, and knowledge. We are increasingly flooded with e-mails that routinely have a plethora of documents (in electronic form) that come in all shapes and forms (multimedia etc.) and more sophisticated types of data and information transmissions from sensing and monitoring devices as well. To compound this issue, there are usually no rules or standards, other than common sense, on how or where we should store all this information or knowledge. The bad news is that, with so much of information flow, it is difficult to filter in just the piece that may be needed at the right time. In many cases, we may not be aware where that information may be or if it exists somewhere at all. However, an information glut caused by a combination of pervasive systems and converging technologies may allow us to get useful and, at times, critical information anywhere and at the right time. In the past decade, with the proliferation of the Internet and the World Wide Web, many past and ongoing efforts have tried to improve the movement from text documents and database records to automated reasoning. This process is critical in particular for information sharing. This article provides a background of knowledge management for public health information infrastructure, followed by an illustration of the complexity of knowledge management for health care. We then present an evolving framework for semantic expression that would enable the sharing and exchange of knowledge in public health.


Newly available in paperback, this book remains the only comprehensive international survey of one of the most neglected but most important building types of the modern era: the parking garage. An introduction sets out the history and architectural significance of these buildings and their relevance today, and is followed by four main chapters that define the most influential aspects of parking design: elevations and facade; construction and materiality; the use of light; and, experimentation. The book's wide-ranging importance and detailed plans make it an indispensable and inspirational resource for students, professional architects, engineers, urban planners and developers.


This paper explores to what extent and how defendants (re)initiated talk in the English courtroom during the period 1760–1860. Adopting both a qualitative and quantitative approach to the analysis of a sample of the Old Bailey Proceedings, I investigate defendants' moves in terms of their illocutionary force, their addressees and whether there is evidence of change in frequency and format over the period under examination. The achievement of full defence by counsels in 1836 is expected to bring defendants' behaviour closer to what it is like nowadays. In line with this hypothesis, the study shows a gradual decrease in defendants' turn transitions, reporting moves and informing acts over the nineteenth century. However, the turn-allocation technique used to gain the turn as well as the increase of (re)initiating moves and questioning acts produced by defendants over the course of time disconfirms the hypothesis of a more active participation of counsels.


In this paper we describe an easy method to deposit thin films from soluble Polypyrrole (Ppy) synthesizedby chemical polymerization using SDBS as surfactant. Ultrasonic spray technique was adopted to deposit these films, using a commercial domestic humidifier, on alumina substratescoated with two interdigitated electrodes, to be used as chemiresistor sensor. The obtained films were characterized by FTIR, X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscope (SEM), and four point probe techniques. We also investigatedthe effect of polymerization time,molar ratios of Pyrrolemonomer to the oxidant (FeCl3) [Mo] / [Ox] on sensing property. X-ray diffraction pattern of Ppy with SDBS showed a shift of diffraction peak angle of about (2e = 11.46i'°), relatively to pure Ppy, indicating that SDBS acted as a spacer between the conducting polymer chains, and induced a very high d-spacing comparing to the pure one. This has a positive impact on sensor sensitivity, as it makes more easily for analyte molecules to penetrate inside the films. Small peaks shifts were also observed between Ppy prepared with different molar ratios [Mo] / [Ox], indicating that the higher the molar ratio, the higherthe space between chains is. Conductivity measurements were made for the selected molar ratios. The best conductivity was 0.62(S/cm) corresponding to amolar ratio of 3. Finally, sensors showed a good sensitivity towardsmethanol and ethanolwhich could be explained by the high specific surface area and porosity as demonstrated by SEM images.


Author(s): Gillis, Editor, Christina | Abstract: Seeing the Difference brings together the texts of a two-day institute on death and dying, aimed at facilitating an interdisciplinary conversation between artists, humanists, and medical practitioners. It explores the techne of dying, representations of death, and what one might call an ethics of dying. The project proceeds from a doubled sense of "difference": a view of death as separation or "difference," and an acknowledgement that the various disciplines also view death "differently," developing languages that are too often particular to their own fields.Dying bridges a no man's land where the unfathomed and the unknowable confront the scientific and the humanistic imaginations. While death may be the vanishing point of medical knowledge and representation, it is also a point of mediation. Neither doctors nor humanists, nor artists nor policy makers, can provide answers where death is concerned; any inquiry into its cultural, scientific, and perhaps even spiritual contours must be a plural one. The multiple conceptual frameworks engaged here offer different ways of understanding the dying body: the medical view of the body as literal text for implementing physical and psychological change; the humanist1s view of the body as the site of complex layers of meaning to be explored through a range of interpretive strategies; and the artist1s creation of the body in terms of alternative explanatory systems that may mediate between the physical and the metaphysical, that may confront an "unknowable" or "inexplicable" and give it form.


Regional gravity and magnetic data from the Irish Midlands have been studied in an attempt to map the structures within and beneath the Lower Carboniferous Limestones. The magnetic data suggest that the Precambrian crystalline basement is at a depth of 3–4 km and is overlain by Ordovician volcanics of varying magnetization. A Fourier analysis of the gravity field has been used to construct a residual gravity map which represents principally the gravity effect of shallow sources. These sources are probably the topographic variations of dense Ordovician volcanics beneath a less dense succession of Ordovician to Carboniferous sediments. The residual gravity clearly shows the presence of a series of linear volcanic blocks and sedimentary troughs trending NE–SW. The major mineralized zones in the area all occur close to the margins of these troughs. This investigation indicates that the initial position of the Midland Plain was controlled by Caledonide factors, some of which modified the later subsidence which we attribute to Hercynian plate-margin processes. The genesis of the major ore-bodies is probably associated with de-watering of the shale-filled troughs, the subsequent concentration of metal-bearing fluids along the trough margins and their deposition in relatively unloaded carbonate host rocks on the up-standing blocks.


An experiment has been conducted in which a 180-mm thick reactor pressure vessel (RPV) wall has been simulated using eighteen 10-mm slices and irradiated under test reactor conditions to investigate the through wall attenuation of neutron embrittlement. Attenuation of neutron radiation damage through the wall of an RPV is a process that involves a changing neutron flux spectrum. The effect of the changing spectrum has not been fully studied to define the change in fracture toughness properties through the RPV wall. One low copper content base metal and one high copper content Linde 80 weld metal have been irradiated in various positions through the simulated wall to allow quantification of an improved experimentally-based embrittlement attenuation model. Comparisons are made of predicted attenuation changes in toughness properties with measured fracture toughness and Charpy V-notch results for the high copper content weld metal and the low copper content plate. The predictions of through-wall attenuation follow the practice defined in ASTM E 900-02, in which the attenuation of high energy neutron fluence (E >1 MeV) is projected based upon displacements per atom (dpa) change through the wall thickness. The resultant degree of material damage (Charpy V-notch 41 J transition temperature, T41J) using this dpa-based fluence change is estimated also using the ASTM E 900-02 embrittlement model. The irradiation-induced shift in T41J (ΔT41J) is typically assumed to infer the shift in fracture toughness transition temperature to be used for structural integrity assessments for the reactor pressure vessel. This assumption will be checked by measuring Master Curve fracture toughness properties for the high copper content weld metal and the low copper content plate.


Attracting and retaining public transport passengers is a common policy goal amongst cities worldwide. Understanding new users of services is crucial to achieving this goal. This thesis addresses this challenge by examining unfamiliar public transport travel. The overarching aim of the research is: To explore unfamiliar public transport trips to better understand their circumstances, experiences and significance to mode choice. This aim is being addressed through exploration of 'first trips' or 'unfamiliar public transport travel'; that is, the first time using a public transport route never taken before. There is very limited previous research directly concerning experiences of unfamiliar transit journeys and their impact on subsequent travel behaviour; therefore the Review of Literature draws from a wider, multi-disciplinary pool of research to explore the conceptual framework of unfamiliar public transport travel. For example, studies in psychology have repeatedly shown that first impressions are associated with higher rates of recall and influence on subsequent attitudes, a phenomenon referred to as the 'primacy effect' (Stiff et al. 1989; Forgas 2011; Le-Klahn et al. 2014). This suggests that unfamiliar public transport trips could be particularly important to attitudes and subsequent travel behaviour. Four research methods were employed to collect and analyse primary data related to the topic. 1) Thirty audio-recorded semi-structured interviews provided rich qualitative data and insights about unfamiliar public transport travel. 2) The Origin-Destination (OD) Survey involved working with the research sponsor, Public Transport Victoria (PTV), to add questions to a very large annual origin-destination survey of transit users to better understand circumstances of unfamiliar transit travel. 3) The University Access Survey employed a web-based survey of Monash University staff and students to learn about their first trips to campus by public transport and compare those experiences with their subsequent transit travel to campus. 4) The PTV Journey Planner Poll & Follow up Survey utilised a popular transit passenger information website to conduct a poll and then recruit respondents to complete a 'post-trip' follow up survey, enabling monitoring of any shifts in attitudes and reporting about unfamiliar travel experiences soon after they occurred. The Discussion and Conclusions draws together the key findings from the research and confers the practical applications and implications of the research, as well as suggesting the direction for further research.


A sequence of aerial photographs of Mendel Glacier, a debris-covered glacier in the central Sierra Nevada, California, suggests that at least one outburst flood originated from a subglacial reservoir beneath a prominent mid-glacier surface depression. By 1962, a ring of crevasses 250 m in diameter was centered within the depression, implying recent ice collapse. In 1972, the crevasses had almost disappeared, and by 1987, a lake of similar area had replaced the crevasse ring. No lake was present in 1995/6. Theoretical examination of ice overburden and hydrostatic pressure at the glacier bed indicate that a subglacial water reservoir may have formed beneath the surface depression prior to 1962. According to theory, as water accumulates within the reservoir, the hydrostatic pressure increases until it is equal to the ice overburden pressure down-glacier from the reservoir, at which point an outburst flood initiates. Cesium-137 measurements from the Mendel Glacier outwash plain indicate the post-bomb-testing deposition of approximately 20 cm of sand, lending support to the flood hypothesis. The supraglacial lake is ephemeral, and likely reflects relatively high inflow rates or low outflow rates. This sequence of events is possible because the debris cover reduces local ablation rates, forming a depression up-glacier of the debriscover, which in turn forces water to flow into a subglacial reservoir. As long as the debris content is relatively low (<13% by weight), the reservoir water will eventually float the glacier and initiate an outburst flood. Debris-covered glaciers should be recognized as potential sources of outburst floods in alpine regions.


For sustainable water management in water scarce areas available quantity of water is consumptively used and saved water is conjunctively supplied in addition to insufficient quantity available in water deficit months. Such storages are generated season wise and selecting suitable technique of aquifer storage as against preservation in a surface water body is a vital issue. Conjunctive planning require survival of both surface and subsurface water, however sustainability of an individual storage levy risk on the augmentation of the other. In the present paper, such analyses are discussed for a cultural command of 11.51 sq km in Ozar irrigation command under the Waghad Right Bank canal in Nasik District of Maharashtra.


Under conditions of conflict and uncertainty, forging a new constitutional consensus is a monumental task. If we hope to address climate change through a new global constitutionalism, we must challenge current approaches to assessing the costs, benefits, and uncertainties of environmental regulation, and arrive at an international consensus regarding those approaches. In doing so, input from experts in a variety of fields should be sought. A positive example of this approach is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's inclusive and democratic process of environmental assessment. However, we must avoid abdicating responsibility in favor of complete reliance on experts, and remind ourselves that expertise—legal or scientific—should be questioned and tested by democratic participation.


The politically contentious issue of calculating countries' contributions to climate change is strongly dependent on methodological choices. Different principles can be applied for distributing efforts for reducing human-induced global warming. According to the 'Brazilian Proposal', industrialized countries would reduce emissions proportional to their historical contributions to warming. This proposal was based on the assumption that the political process would lead to a global top-down agreement. The Paris Agreement changed the role of historical responsibilities. Whereas the agreement refers to equity principles, differentiation of mitigation efforts is delegated to each country, as countries will submit new national contributions every five years without any international negotiation. It is likely that considerations of historical contributions and distributive fairness will continue to play a key role, but increasingly so in a national setting. Contributions to warming can be used as a background for negotiations to inform and justify positions, and may also be useful for countries' own assessment of what constitutes reasonable and fair contributions to limiting warming. Despite the fact that the decision from COP21 explicitly rules out compensation in the context of loss and damage, it is likely that considerations of historical responsibility will also play a role in future discussions. However, methodological choices have substantial impacts on calculated contributions to warming, including rank-ordering of contributions, and thus support the view that there is no single correct answer to the question of how much each country has contributed. There are fundamental value-related and ethical questions that cannot be answered through a single set of calculated contributions. Thus, analyses of historical contributions should not present just one set of results, but rather present a spectrum of results showing how the calculated contributions vary with a broad set of choices. Our results clearly expose some of the core issues related to climate responsibility.


Canada has sometimes been called the United States' attic: a useful feature, but one easily forgotten. Of all countries, it has historically resembled the United States the most closely, in terms of culture, geography, economy, society, politics, ideology and, especially, history. A shared culture—literary, social, legal, and political—is a crucial factor in Canadian-American relations. Geography is at least as important. It provides the United States with strategic insulation to the north and enhances geographic isolation to the east and west. North-south economic links are inevitable and very large. It has been a major recipient of American investment, and for most of the time since 1920 has been the United States' principal trading partner. Prosperous and self-sufficient, it has seldom required American aid. There have been no overtly hostile official encounters since the end of the War of 1812, partly because many Americans tended to believe that Canadians would join the republic; when that did not occur, the United States accepted an independent but friendly Canada as a permanent, useful, and desirable neighbor—North America's attic. The insulation the attic provided was a common belief in the rule of law, both domestic and international; liberal democracy; a federal constitution; liberal capitalism; and liberal international trade regimes.
 That said, the United States, with its large population, huge economy, and military power, insulates Canada from hostile external forces. An attack on Canada from outside the continent is hard to imagine without a simultaneous attack on the United States. Successive American and Canadian governments have reaffirmed the political status quo while favoring mutually beneficial economic and military linkages—bilateral and multilateral. Relations have traditionally been grounded in a negotiating style that is evidence-based, proceeding issue by issue. A sober diplomatic and political context sometimes frames irritations and exclamations, but even these have usually been defined and limited by familiarity. For example, there has always been anti-Americanism in Canada. Most often it consists of sentiments derived from the United States itself, channeled by cultural similarities. No American idea, good or bad, from liberalism to populism, fails to find an echo in Canada. How loud or how soft the echo makes the difference.


Education, together with family and culture, is one of the fundamental building blocks of the social construction of reality. It is more and more evident that we need a paradigm change in the field of education in order to enable people to deal effectively with the mounting challenges facing humanity. This retooling needs to start with our frames of reference. We need to create a new paradigm of education in order to enable education to serve people's needs and to have relevance in public service, social responsibility and sustainable governance and development. Education is one of the main narratives to prepare new generations to be an active and constructive part of the society and is one of the main carriers of values. Values can be implicit or explicit. In Person-Centered Education (PCE), also called student-centered education, values are made explicit to facilitate students to have a critical and proactive role and an effective training to become fully functioning members of the Polis. The Person-Centered Approach (PCA) was originated by Dr. Carl Rogers. PCA is a scientifically validated systemic, holistic approach with applications in almost all professions: Psychology, Education, Medicine, Social Work, Management, Intercultural Communication, Conflict Prevention, etc. The central hypothesis of the Person-Centered Approach is that individuals have within themselves vast resources for self-understanding and for changing their self-concepts, basic attitudes and self-directed behavior, and these resources can be tapped if a climate of facilitative psychological conditions is provided. PCA focuses on health, not illness; on "The purpose of Person-Centered Education is to protect and promote a person's innate creative capacities of learning from their experiences, to promote wholeness and integration in the individual by focusing on their personal growth, and develop them into creative and competent members of the society who can contribute effectively to their community." CADMUS Volume 2 Issue 5, October 2015 Person-Centered Education Alberto Zucconi 60 61 solutions, not on problems. PCA empowers rather than cures and promotes the development of potentialities of individuals, groups and organizations through interpersonal relationships characterized by respect, trust, empathetic understanding and authenticity. It makes people responsible for what they do rather than encouraging dependency. The purpose of Person-Centered Education is to protect and promote a person's innate creative capacities of learning from their experiences, to promote wholeness and integration in the individual by focusing on their personal growth, and develop them into creative and competent members of the society who can contribute effectively to their community. A large body of research carried out by David N. Aspy and Flora N. Roebuck and many other colleagues shows that schools, colleges and universities with student-centered education attain higher rates of student retention and better learning. The student-centered approach requires a willingness from teachers to share their power and have better trust in their students. At the Person-Centered Approach Institute (IACP), the post graduate courses are organized as a learning community where professors and students intentionally create a facilitative climate of learning and collaboratively strive to achieve common goals. Every day there is an encounter group and students can call a community meeting if they want to address specific problems. Exams at IACP are very different from traditional practice: the students share their self-evaluation with the group and receive their peers' and the professors' feedback. In addition, each professor and tutor receive feedback from the students. The secretaries and the facilities are also evaluated by the students. Suggestions for improvements are given to each professor, tutor and secretary as well as to each faculty member. The feedback of the students is discussed in a staff meeting after which the course director and the local IACP branch director communicate to the students the changes and improvements that they are willing to make and they implement this with the students' active involvement. During written exams, questions are distributed and a time duration is set, but at the end of the allotted time the students don't return their answer sheets, but take them home and evaluate their answers by consulting the literature, edit what they have written in the classroom and send the answer sheets to their professors. Thus, the role of the student-centered teacher is a professional commitment to learning and towards effective, democratic and value-based education, the capacity to share her/his passion about learning, relating to the students with respect, empathy and congruence. The teacher needs to be capable of being in touch with herself, her students, the members of her community and the world and having the needed skills and attitudes to be a facilitator of learning, an effective mentor promoting student creativity and autonomy and capable of helping students develop their personal and social skills. CADMUS Volume 2 Issue 5, October 2015 Person-Centered Education Alberto Zucconi 60 61 The role of the student in Person-Centered Education is learning to take responsibility for their own personal development, with interest in the development of social, personal and problem-solving skills, and for learning to learn, learning from mistakes, willing to contribute to a cooperative and tolerant school ethos and able to learn how to relate to herself/himself and others with respect, empathy and congruence. Author Contact Information Email: firstname.lastname@example.com


Today, the rapid growth of the use of technology in education has substantially increased the focus and relevance of educational technology research. This study addresses the question of whether technology can provide significant support in teaching and learning approaches and the associated issue of the elements needed for an effective implementation of technology within an educational reform context. Mixed methodological approach was adopted. Observations, interviews and questionnaires administration were the main form of data collection techniques employed by the researcher. Participants for the study were selected by purposive random sampling, which includes 20 teachers from business schools from four case study universities in Ghana together with 396 students. The study also took into consideration other stakeholders in the higher educational setting by interviewing 5 educational/learning technologists from the United Kingdom. The findings from the study suggest that most students and teachers do not use some form of educational technology due to the absence of these technologies and the poor training arrangement given by university authorities. Poor attitude was also seen to be an important factor for accepting and incorporating technologies in teaching and learning. The research provides an indication that information technology supports virtually every aspect of higher education, including research and e-learning which improves digital literacy of students and sustainability, and educators need to understand the range of problems their students face so they apply IT where it brings greatest value. The study also demonstrate that creating this IT support environment will require collaboration across organizational and national boundaries, bringing together the collective intelligence of people from backgrounds including education, corporations, and government.
Keywords:
Education, Learning, ICT, Educational technology, Higher Education, Leadership


Analyses of spatial or network data are now very common. Nevertheless, statistical inference is challenging since unobserved heterogeneity can be correlated across neighboring observational units. We develop an estimator for the variance-covariance matrix (VCV) of OLS and 2SLS that allows for arbitrary dependence of the errors across observations in space or network structure and across time periods. As a proof of concept, we conduct Monte Carlo simulations in a geospatial setting based on U.S. metropolitan areas. Tests based on our estimator of the VCV asymptotically correctly reject the null hypothesis, whereas conventional inference methods, e.g., those without clusters or with clusters based on administrative units, reject the null hypothesis too often. We also provide simulations in a network setting based on the IDEAS structure of coauthorship and real-life data on scientific performance. The Monte Carlo results again show that our estimator yields inference at the correct significance level even in moderately sized samples and that it dominates other commonly used approaches to inference in networks. We provide guidance to the applied researcher with respect to (i) whether or not to include potentially correlated regressors and (ii) the choice of cluster bandwidth. Finally, we provide a companion statistical package (acreg) enabling users to adjust the OLS and 2SLS coefficient's standard errors to account for arbitrary dependence.


India's record of undernutrition presents a stubborn challenge. Given the multiple determinants of child undernutrition, effective action to tackle this problem in India and globally requires a range of inputs across various sectors. Delivering nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive interventions to entire populations requires that these various sectors come together at critical points and in meaningful ways to ensure delivery of key nutrition-related actions for communities and households. However, currently in India, a major challenge is bringing sectors together to deliver for a common goal. Although the lack of convergence is well documented, there lingers a substantial gap in articulating what needs to be assessed to ensure that convergence is indeed happening, or not happening. In an effort to close this gap, in this paper we describe a possible framework to enable convergence across sectors for action on nutrition. Our framework notes that issues related to convergence must be resolved in relation to three major steps in the policy process: policy formulation, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation. We articulate here questions related to convergence that must be asked at each of these stages of the policy process. We also conduct a desk review to analyze health and nutrition policies in India for evidence of attention to these aspects of convergence.


Abstract. The Himalayas of South Asia are home to many glaciers that are retreating due to climate change and causing the formation of large glacial lakes in their absence. These lakes are held in place by naturally deposited moraine dams that are potentially unstable. Specifically, an impulse wave generated by an avalanche or landslide entering the lake can destabilize the moraine dam, thereby causing a catastrophic failure of the moraine and a glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF). Imja-Lhotse Shar Glacier is amongst the glaciers experiencing the highest rate of mass loss in the Mount Everest region, in part due to the expansion of Imja Tsho. A GLOF from this lake may have the potential to cause catastrophic damage to downstream villages, threatening both property and human life, which prompted the Nepali government to construct outlet works to lower the lake level. Therefore, it is essential to understand the processes that could trigger a flood and quantify the potential downstream impacts. The avalanche-induced GLOF process chain was modeled using the output of one component of the chain as input to the next. First, the volume and momentum of various avalanches entering the lake were calculated using Rapid Mass Movement Simulation (RAMMS). Next, the avalanche-induced waves were simulated using the Basic Simulation Environment for Computation of Environmental Flow and Natural Hazard Simulation (BASEMENT) model and validated with empirical equations to ensure the proper transfer of momentum from the avalanche to the lake. With BASEMENT, the ensuing moraine erosion and downstream flooding was modeled, which was used to generate hazard maps downstream. Moraine erosion was calculated for two geomorphologic models: one site-specific using field data and another worst-case based on past literature that is applicable to lakes in the greater region. Neither case resulted in flooding outside the river channel at downstream villages. The worst-case model resulted in some moraine erosion and increased channelization of the lake outlet, which yielded greater discharge downstream but no catastrophic collapse. The site-specific model generated similar results, but with very little erosion and a smaller downstream discharge. These results indicated that Imja Tsho is unlikely to produce a catastrophic GLOF due to an avalanche in the near future, although some hazard exists within the downstream river channel, necessitating continued monitoring of the lake. Furthermore, these models were designed for ease and flexibility such that local or national agency staff with reasonable training can apply them to model the GLOF process chain for other lakes in the region.


The influences of different levels of concentrate on the growth characteristics of Holstein Friesian calves reared under an original calf-rearing program were investigated in this study. Forty-one new-born calves (20 male and 21 female) were allocated to the four concentrate groups: 2, 2.5, 3 kg/calf and ad libitum. The calves were weaned at 5 weeks of age, and the trial lasted for 6 months. The results with regard to weights at 6 months of age revealed that an increasing amount of concentrate supplementation resulted in a significantly (P < 0.01) higher live weight. Furthermore, daily weight gains between birth and 6 months of age was also significantly higher (P < 0.01) in the ad libitum group than in the 2, 2.5 and 3 kg/day groups. The highest overall gains in body measurements, for example body length and heart girth, were obtained from calves fed concentrate ad libitum. However, feed efficiency ratios were not significantly influenced by the various amounts of concentrate offered to calves. The overall results suggest that the appropriate level of concentrate for the new calf-rearing program should be ad libitum.


Along with the growing penetration of renewable energy sources, demand side management (DSM) is becoming a key component of future energy systems such as smart grids. DSM aims at balancing the demand for power with intermittent renewable energy sources such as wind and solar units. DSM deploys various mechanisms to influence customer's capability and willingness to modify their power consumption according to the utility's energy production and the distribution capacity. DSM aims at either saving energy in sustainable manner (i.e. energy response) or/and shifting the time of energy use to off-peak hours (i.e. demand response). Indeed, DSM does not necessarily reduce the total customer's power consumption but reshapes consumption patterns. Hence, DSM is expected to reduce the need for investments in networks and power plants in order to meet peak demands. In this paper, we propose an advanced demand response (DR) solution for individual households. Considering a household equipped with various domestic loads, we aim at optimally scheduling the day-ahead power consumption under timevariable rates while taking advantage of modular and deferrable loads, e.g. electric vehicle. Our proposal is numerically illustrated through real-life scenarios, elaborated using an existing simulator of human behavior regarding power consumption.


A new HCV homolog in dog provides the first nonprimate animal model for HCV therapeutics discovery. The dog days of summer have finally arrived—for scientists who study human hepatitis C virus (HCV); these researchers have long been limited by the lack of a small-animal model for HCV infection. Now, Kapoor et al. have discovered canine Hepacivirus (CHV), the closest genetically similar HCV homolog identified to date. The new virus makes possible the development of a nonprimate animal model of viral persistence that can be used for testing vaccine efficacy and therapeutic drug discovery. HCV chronically infects 3% of the global population, and nearly 80% of people who contract an acute HCV infection develop chronic viral hepatitis with subsequent risk of cirrhosis and liver cancer. Although HCV was first identified in the late 1980s, a vaccine has remained elusive; one reason is the lack of a closely related animal virus homolog that would enable study of the virus in its native state in a model system. In a study focused on the viral flora found in companion animals, Kapoor et al. found a previously unidentified hepacivirus (CHV). Nasal swabs were isolated from sick shelter dogs during a respiratory infection outbreak and used to recover RNA viruses. The viral genomes were amplified, sequenced, and compared with known viral genome sequences by using BLAST analysis. Analyzing 6500 continuous nucleotides, the authors demonstrated a unique viral sequence (CHV) with a surprisingly close homology to HCV. To validate their findings, the authors performed similar experiments on nasal swabs from an additional 33 dogs that had become ill during five separate respiratory outbreaks and demonstrated a high degree of genetic relatedness to CHV among viruses isolated from the infected animals. Samples from healthy animals did not show the presence of CHV. Comparison of the putative CHV genome cleavage map for structural and nonstructural proteins with that of HCV revealed a similar number of predicted polyproteins with intriguing homology in the envelope protein domain (E2), a feature not found in the hitherto closest known viral relative of HCV (GBV-B). For an animal model of HCV disease to be of use in therapeutics discovery, it must display persistent infection; to do so, CHV needs to have the proper associated viral apparatus to cause persistent infection, similar to that found in HCV. The investigators used a predictive model (MFOLD) to show that CHV genome RNAs encode GORS (genome-scale ordered RNA structure), a stable secondary structure found in persistent HCV infection. Kapoor and colleagues speculate that HCV arose from a zoonotic source (CHV), which would explain the degree of pathogenicity in humans and the difficulty in propagation via an oral or inhaled route. Before CHV can be used as a model for HCV, additional studies must determine whether CHV, like HCV, infects the liver and whether any of the few genomic differences between HCV and CHV are biologically important. A. Kapoor et al., Characterization of a canine homolog of hepatitis C virus. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 24 May 2011 (10.1073/pnas.1101794108). [Abstract]


One of the primary debates in Turkish political science literature is the surprisingly weak and rigid character of the center-left parties which caused social democracy to become a generic name for a progressive political culture and attitude instead of a fully-fledged ideology. This is more clearly seen when Turkish mainstream left parties are juxtaposed to their European counterparts. This is mainly an epistemological problem that revolves around the question of whether Turkish mainstream left ideology is compatible with the universal norms of social democracy. The aim of this study is to examine the roots and parameters of the inability of Social Democratic Populist Party to reformulate its static organizational body in accordance with societal demands and reinvigorate its ideology and political programme to better address the contemporary problems. A comprehensive analysis of the intra-party debates that occurred in this period is conducted by linking them with the important developments in the Turkish political landscape to detect epistemological causes of the question at hand. The ideological crisis of Turkish social democracy during the early 1990s is thoroughly discussed to get a full account of the intra-party attempts for renewal and understand why they have failed. The study has revealed that the failure of the SDPP leadership to more closely adopt the universal norms of social democracy is closely tied to the demise of statism that restrained the organizational structure and mission of the party, the crisis of Turkish modernity that distanced the party administration from the constituent groups and decline of Kemalism that challenged the ideological framework of Turkish center-left.


This thesis titled "Essays in Labour Economics" is comprised of three essays investigating various determinants of earnings inequality.
Chapter 1 provides a novel explanation for labor market polarization—the rise in employment shares of high and low skill jobs at the expense of middle skill jobs, and the fall in middle-skill wages. We argue that recent and historical episodes of polarization resulted from increased automation. In our theoretical model, firms deciding whether to employ machines or workers in a given task weigh
the cost of using machines, which is increasing in the complexity (in an engineering sense) of the task, against the cost of employing workers, which is increasing in training time required by the task. Some tasks do not require training regardless of complexity, while in other tasks training is required and increases in complexity. In equilibrium, firms are more likely to automate a task that
requires training, holding complexity constant. We assume that more-skilled workers learn faster, and thus it is middle skill workers who have a comparative advantage in tasks that are most likely to be automated when machine design costs fall. In addition to explaining job polarization, our model makes sense of observed patterns of automation and accounts for a set of novel stylized facts
about occupational training requirements.
Chapter 2 establishes a novel source of wage differences among observationally similar high skill workers. We show that degree class — a coarse measure of performance in university degrees — causally affects graduates' earnings. We employ a regression discontinuity design comparing graduates who differ only by a few marks in an individual exam, and whose degree class is thus assigned randomly. A First Class is worth roughly three percent in starting wages which translates into £1,000 per annum. An Upper Second is worth more on the margin—seven percent in starting
wages (£2,040). In addition to identifying a novel source of luck in the determination of earnings, our findings also show the importance of simple heuristics for hiring decisions.
Chapter 3 asks whether public policy affects the degree of intergenerational transmission of education. The chapter investigates this question in the context of secondary school transitions in Germany. During the last three decades, several German states changed the rules for admission to secondary school tracks. Combining a new data set on transition rules with micro data from the German Socioeconomic Panel (SOEP), I find that allowing free track choice raises the probability of attending the most advanced track by five percentage points. However, the effect is twice as large for children of less educated parents. The results suggest that the correlation between parents' and children's educational attainment may be reduced by more than one third when no formal restrictions to choosing a secondary school track exist.


Genomic scientists often test thousands of hypotheses in a single experiment. One example is a microarray experiment that seeks to determine differential gene expression among experimental groups. Planning such experiments involves a determination of sample size that will allow meaningful interpretations. Traditional power analysis methods may not be well suited to this task when thousands of hypotheses are tested in a discovery oriented basic research. We introduce the concept of expected discovery rate (EDR) and an approach that combines parametric mixture modelling with parametric bootstrapping to estimate the sample size needed for a desired accuracy of results. While the examples included are derived from microarray studies, the methods, herein, are 'extraparadigmatic' in the approach to study design and are applicable to most high dimensional biological situations. Pilot data from three different microarray experiments are used to extrapolate EDR as well as the related false discovery rate at different sample sizes and thresholds.


There are indications that the current generation of models used to simulate the geography of housing choice has reached the limits of its usefulness under existing specifications. The relative stasis in residential choice modeling--and urban simulation in general--contrasts with simulation efforts in other disciplines, where techniques, theories, and ideas drawn from computation and complexity studies are revitalizing the ways in which we conceptualize, understand, and model real-world phenomena. Many of these concepts and methodologies are applicable to housing choice simulation. Indeed, in many cases, ideas from computation and complexity studies--often clustered under the collective term of geocomputation, as they apply to geography--are ideally suited to the simulation of residential location dynamics. However, there exist several obstructions to their successful use for these puropses, particularly as regards the capacity of these methodologies to handle top-down dynamics in urban systems. This paper presents a framework for developing a hybrid model for urban geographic simulation generally and discusses some of the imposing barriers against innovation in this field. The framework infuses approaches derived from geocomputation and complexity with standard techniques that have been tried and tested in operational land-use and transport simulation. As a proof-of-concept exercise, a micro-model of residential location has been developed with a view to hybridization. The model mixes cellular automata and multi-agent approaches and is formulated so as to interface with meso-models at a higher scale.


Ireland is one of the world's ten older democracies, yet it lags behind all of the others in terms of open and transparent government and policy-making. The aim of this discussion paper is to show the integral links between democracy and public access to information held by government and public bodies, and to make the case that a radical shift in political culture is needed in Ireland to ensure that citizens have easy access to records relevant to public policy, many of which are not made accessible.


Background and Aim: New blood forming vessels are produced by differentiation of mesodermal precursor cells to angioblasts that b ecome endothelial cells (ECs) which in turn give rise to primitive capillary netw ork. Human cord blood (HCB) contains large subsets of mononuclear cells (MNCs) that can be differentiated into endothelial-like cells in vitro . Methods: Human mononuclear progenitor cells were purified f rom fresh umbilical cord blood by the expression of CD34 and FLK-1 antigens expressed in both angioblasts and hematopoetic stem cells. The H CB derived mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) can differentiate into adipocyte, osteocyte, chondrocyte and ECs. Results: In this study, the differentiation of human cord b lood mesenchymal stem cells (hCBMSCs) into endothelial-like cells was ind uced in presence of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and insulin-like g rowth factor (IGF-1). The differentiated ECs were then examined for their abi lity to express VEGF receptor- 2 (VEGFR2) and von Willebrand factor (vWF). These cells were adopted to grow, proliferate and develop into a capillary network in a semisolid gel matrix in vitro . Conclusion: The capillary network formation in each well of 24 -well plate was found to be 80% in presence of VEGF (40 ng/ml) and IGF-1 (20 ng/ml) of culture media, suggesting that the capillary network format ion is associated with endothelial-like cells derived from hCBMSCs by expression of their markers .


Hospital 7 days working. Recommendations and feasibility Introduction: There is increasing evidence that mortality rates for patients admitted to hospitals are higher at weekends. Furthermore, there is evidence that five-day working costs lives. Increased mortality rates over weekends equate to an increased risk of dying of 11% for a patient presenting on a Saturday and a similar rise of 16% for a Sunday when compared to patients presenting Monday to Friday. One reason suggested for this increased mortality rate is the lack of senior doctor cover and the decreased availability of services over the weekend. During the weekend, on average, only 10-15% of consultants are present in the hospital, even though the weekend comprises 30% of the week. There is also data that shows that the risk of death from an elective procedure is 1.4 times higher if the operation is done on a Friday and 1.8 times higher for a Saturday. We review Sir Bruce Keoh's report -NHS medical Director of the UK by focusing on the feasibility and the impact on health services by putting patient in the centre of care. Methods: The Keoh report was published in November 2013 after concerns have been raised about the discrepancy in mortality and morbidity between weekday and weekends. Levels of service has been categorised into 4 levels as shown in the table 1 Most Hospitals currently are at the level 2-3. Results: In order to implement this change into the health care, 10 standards have been recommended (table 2). The local and national incentives are estimated to be over a 3 year period as follows: Year 1 - local contracts will include an Action Plan to deliver the clinical standards within the Service Year 2 - Clinical standards with the greatest impact will be incorporated into the NHS Standard Contract. Year 3 - all clinical standards will be incorporated nationally into the NHS Standard Contract with sanctions in place for non-compliance. Conclusion: With the implementation of this 7 days working model, morbidity and mortality for the weekends is estimated to decrease to the weekday level, resulting in an overall reduction in total mortality and morbidity rates over the whole week. Furthermore, the inappropriate admissions caused by the decreased availability of weekend senior decision making will diminish, in turn, reducing the costs incurred by unnecessary and protracted hospital stays and additional use of health services. Nevertheless one should consider the constrains of such services (table 3) These recommendations are set for the National Health services of the UK and perhaps could be adjusted as per country, locality and patient needs.


Tantalum pentoxide thin films are prepared by oblique angle electron beam
 evaporation. The influence of flux angle on the surface morphology and
 microstructure is investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The
 Ta2O5
 thin films are anisotropic with highly orientated nanostructure of slanted columns.
 The porous microstructure of the as-deposited films results in the decrease of
 effective refractive index and packing density with increasing deposition angle. The
 anisotropic structure results in optical birefringence. The in-plane birefringence
 increases with the increase of deposition angle and reaches the maximum of 0.055 at
 the deposition angle of 70. Anisotropic microstructure and critical packing density
 are the two key factors to influence the in-plane birefringence.


In recent years it has been well documented that the bubble surface area flux plays a fundamental role in the performance of industrial flotation machines. Modern instrumentation is not yet capable of providing a robust direct measurement of this parameter, and the widespread industrial use of the available indirect methods have been hampered by the limitations of the available instruments and the complexity of the required calculations. This paper describes a reliable and maintenance-free method for online inference of bubble diameter and bubble surface area flux using CiDRA's GH-100 gas holdup meter. A method is presented for coding the iterative drift-flux analysis calculations for column cell bubble diameter and surface area flux using standard expert system or DCS programming language. An alternative empirical method applicable to mechanical cells is also demonstrated. Operating data from an industrial plant historian is presented.


There are three great challenges facing researchers in modern macroeconomics today, all brought into sharp relief by the recent financial crisis. The first is to find more realistic, and yet tractable, ways to incorporate financial market frictions into our canonical models for analyzing monetary policy. The second is to rethink the role of countercyclical fiscal policy, particularly in the response to a financial crisis where credit markets seize. A third great challenge is to achieve a better cost‐benefit analysis of financial market regulation.


Can people remember correctly their past well-being? We study three national surveys of the British, German and French population, where more than 50,000 European citizens were asked questions about their current and past life satisfaction. We uncover systematic biases in recalled subjective well-being: on average, people tend to overstate the improvement in their well-being over time and to understate their past happiness. But this aggregate figure hides a deep asymmetry: while happy people recall the evolution of their life to be better than it was, unhappy ones tend to exaggerate its worsening. It thus seems that feeling happy today implies feeling better than yesterday. These results offer an explanation of why happy people are more optimistic, perceive risks to be lower and are more open to new experiences.


We propose a novel framework for the classification of single trial ElectroEncephaloGraphy (EEG), based on regularized logistic regression. Framed in this robust statistical framework no prior feature extraction or outlier removal is required. We present two variations of parameterizing the regression function: (a) with a full rank symmetric matrix coefficient and (b) as a difference of two rank=1 matrices. In the first case, the problem is convex and the logistic regression is optimal under a generative model. The latter case is shown to be related to the Common Spatial Pattern (CSP) algorithm, which is a popular technique in Brain Computer Interfacing. The regression coefficients can also be topographically mapped onto the scalp similarly to CSP projections, which allows neuro-physiological interpretation. Simulations on 162 BCI datasets demonstrate that classification accuracy and robustness compares favorably against conventional CSP based classifiers.


This study assesses the accuracy of state-of-the-art regional climate models for agriculture applications in West Africa. A set of nine regional configurations with eight regional models from the ENSEMBLES project is evaluated. Although they are all based on similar large-scale conditions, the performances of regional models in reproducing the most crucial variables for crop production are extremely variable. This therefore leads to a large dispersion in crop yield prediction when using regional models in a climate/crop modelling system. This dispersion comes from the different physics in each regional model and also the choice of parametrizations for a single regional model. Indeed, two configurations of the same regional model are sometimes more distinct than two different regional models. Promising results are obtained when applying a bias correction technique to climate model outputs. Simulated yields with bias corrected climate variables show much more realistic means and standard deviations. However, such a bias correction technique is not able to improve the reproduction of the year-to-year variations of simulated yields. This study confirms the importance of the multi-model approach for quantifying uncertainties for impact studies and also stresses the benefits of combining both regional and statistical downscaling techniques. Finally, it indicates the urgent need to address the main uncertainties in atmospheric processes controlling the monsoon system and to contribute to the evaluation and improvement of climate and weather forecasting models in that respect.


Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) are emerging in the computer game industry as a very popular genre. These games have existed since the late 1990s, but in the last few years the market has become increasingly strong. This relatively new genre is attracting a widespread audience, bringing together those who previously enjoyed both pen and paper and computer role-playing games, as well as those who enjoy socializing with other players in a virtual environment. Game developers see MMORPGs as a potentially profitable business due to its widespread appeal, but the reality is that only a small percentage of MMORPGs that are released become a success [Kosak 2006].
 This article attempts to determine the many aspects that make a successful MMORPG; it also attempts to ascertain what new and innovative features are expected by the users from the next generation of MMORPGs. This is achieved by looking at and discussing past literature and surveying the MMORPG community's perception of previous and current MMORPGs, as well as their expectations of the next generation.
 An online survey attracted 122 participants to provide their perceptions of current and past MMORPGs. This article determines and outlines the respondents' preferences in the MMORPG genre, discussing what implications these could have on its future. The survey also gave insight into the respondents' expectations of the future of MMORPGs. We conclude this article with a discussion of aspects of current MMORPGs that the participants would like improved, as well as new features they would like incorporated into the next generation of games.


Layout Decision Analysis and Design is a ubiquitous problem in a variety of work domains that is important from both strategic and operational perspectives. It is largely a complex, vague, difficult, and ill-structured problem that requires intelligent and sophisticated decision analysis and design support.
Inadequate information availability, combinatorial complexity, subjective and uncertain preferences, and cognitive biases of decision makers often hamper the procurement of a superior layout configuration. Consequently, it is desirable to develop an intelligent decision support system for layout design that could deal with such challenging issues by providing efficient and effective means of generating, analyzing, enumerating, ranking, and manipulating superior alternative layouts.
We present a research framework and a functional prototype for an interactive Intelligent System for Decision Support and Expert Analysis in Multi-Attribute Layout Optimization (IDEAL) based on soft computing tools. A fundamental issue in layout design is efficient production of superior alternatives through the incorporation of subjective and uncertain design preferences. Consequently, we have developed an efficient and Intelligent Layout Design Generator (ILG) using a generic two-dimensional bin-packing formulation that utilizes multiple preference weights furnished by a fuzzy Preference Inferencing Agent (PIA). The sub-cognitive, intuitive, multi-facet, and dynamic nature of design preferences indicates that an automated Preference Discovery Agent (PDA) could be an important component of such a system. A user-friendly, interactive, and effective User Interface is deemed critical for the success of the system. The effectiveness of the proposed solution paradigm and the implemented prototype is demonstrated through examples and cases.
This research framework and prototype contribute to the field of layout decision analysis and design by enabling explicit representation of experts' knowledge, formal modeling of fuzzy user preferences, and swift generation and manipulation of superior layout alternatives. Such efforts are expected to afford efficient procurement of superior outcomes and to facilitate cognitive, ergonomic, and economic efficiency of layout designers as well as future research in related areas.
Applications of this research are broad ranging including facilities layout design, VLSI circuit layout design, newspaper layout design, cutting and packing, adaptive user interfaces, dynamic memory allocation, multi-processor scheduling, metacomputing, etc.


CFRP composite plate structures have been generally known as that those have high specific mechanical properties. The CFRP composite plate, therefore, has been widely applied to many kinds of aircraft structures. The composite plate structures, however, have a week point at interlamina strength. Since a delamination resistance of its plate is very low, delaminations easily yield by a low velocity impact loading or fatigue loading. For this reason, a smart structure to detect a delamination is desired now. In this study, therefore, an applicability of an electrical potential method to detect a delamination was examined experimentally from a stand point of a sensor for a smart structure. Effects of prepreg thickness, kind of electric current of electrical resistance bridge, loading mode and stacking sequence were all experimentally researched by using T 300/Epoxy. Mode I and II types of tests were conducted and the electrical resistance changes were measured by the electrical resistance bridge circuit. As a result, the followings were obtained. (1) In the case that there are many interlaminae by using thin prepreg sheet, the electrical resistance change is smaller than that of thick one because the electrical resistance to the plate thickness becomes large. (2) The AC is better for an electrical resistance bridge circuit than DC because it gave more stable results than those by DC. (3) Though the delamination crack surfaces contact with each other in the mode II tests. The electrical resistance change could be measured by the AC electrical resistance bridge method. (4) In the actual composite, plates, the nonlinear relations between the delamination crack growth and the electrical resistance of the specimen were obtained due to the delamination crack plane transition.


An unpublished pilot study at a charitable youth organisation in the North East of Scotland found that young people (aged 16 to 25) accommodated by the organisation consumed a diet high in sugar and low in levels of foods such as meat, fish, fruit, and vegetables (Perry, 2013). The Foodways and Futures project (2013-2016), combining ethnographic and action research methodology, set out to explore why the diet of young people was sub-optimal, despite the organisation having a number of support services in place that would—it was perceived—encourage better eating habits amongst the young people housed within the organisation. Photovoice (PV) was identified as a participatory research method that was suitable, and that would encourage young people to participate as co-researchers in the investigation. However, despite young people getting involved in other research methods that were employed in the study, PV was generally not taken up as anticipated. This article explores how the method was employed, and argues that what could be deemed the 'failure' of PV instead may be interpreted as evidence of young people's awareness and sensitivity about the potential judgements of others on personal food choices. In this sense, poor uptake of PV actually reveals much more about young people's lived experiences than the data that it generates. The use of PV as a research method is therefore powerful, in that it allows participants to indicate, through inactivity, their sensitivity to 'discourses of blame'.