Abstract. The fluctuation-dissipation theorem (FDT) has been proposed as a method of calculating the response of the earth's atmosphere to a forcing. For this problem the high dimensionality of the relevant data sets makes truncation necessary. Here we propose a method of truncation based upon the assumption that the response to a localised forcing is spatially localised, as an alternative to the standard method of choosing a number of the leading empirical orthogonal functions. For systems where this assumption holds, the response to any sufficiently small non-localised forcing may be estimated using a set of truncations that are chosen algorithmically. We test our algorithm using 36 and 72 variable versions of a stochastic Lorenz 95 system of ordinary differential equations. We find that, for long integrations, the bias in the response estimated by the FDT is reduced from ~75% of the true response to ~30%.


We present the theory for retarded resonance interaction between two identical atoms at arbitrary positions near a metal surface. The dipole-dipole resonance interaction force that binds isotropically excited atom pairs together in free space may turn repulsive close to an ideal (totally reflecting) metal surface. On the other hand, close to an infinitely permeable surface it may turn more attractive. We illustrate numerically how the dipole-dipole resonance interaction between two oxygen atoms near a metal surface may provide a repulsive energy of the same order of magnitude as the ground-state binding energy of an oxygen molecule. As a complement we also present results from densityfunctional theory.


In a relatively short period of time, Indonesia has become a significant centre of clothing production within the global economy. Its overall growth can be explained primarily by the intersection between two sets of political-economic processes: those operating at the global level of the industry in general and those specific to Indonesia itself. Within these general processes, we explore the particular organizational mechanisms through which this growth has occurred. Detailed field evidence shows how the Indonesian clothing industry is deeply embedded in production networks which connect domestic producers with international networks of production and distribution, notably those organized by Korean, Taiwanese, US, and European firms. Although such networks are generally consistent with Gereffi's concept of the buyer-driven global commodity chain, we show that the precise shape and the driver of the company-specific production networks in Indonesia are highly dependent on the specific market being served. Finally, brief attention is given to the potential impact of the current East Asian economic crisis on Indonesian clothing firms.


In this paper, we investigate economics of software development. We first identify several dimensions of
software quality from user's perspectives. We model the tradeoff between having more features and
functionalities and the ease of learning in usability, and the tradeoffs among ease of use, ease of
learning, and usage frequency. Based on the impacts of quality dimensions on user's utility, we analyze
the software monopoly's economic incentives to provide high quality software products and build
analytical model to analyze the software company's optimal design decisions. (Keywords: Software,
Usability, Economics)


Drawing on my fieldwork experience in Inhambane, southern Mozambique, where I conducted research on mobile phone use amongst youth, my paper tackles issues of acceptance and rejection. As I sought to gain acceptance amongst youth I found myself participating in various controversial and, at times, dangerous activities that made me the victim of intense gossip and outright rejection by some. The fact that I came to the field accompanied by my husband and daughter only made matters worse. In this paper, I present the challenges of "being cool", while also "being good", and the repercussions of my research choices on my social standing. I then discuss how, instead of compromising my research, this predicament had a positive outcome by revealing social dynamics that might otherwise have remained hidden, namely the importance of concealment and the ambiguous role mobile phones play in deceit.


Objective—Identification of novel factors that contribute to myocardial repair and collateral vessel growth hold promise for treatment of heart diseases. We have shown that transient prokineticin receptor-1 (PKR1) gene transfer protects the heart against myocardial infarction in a mouse model. Here, we investigated the role of excessive PKR1 signaling in heart. Methods and Results—Transgenic mice overexpressing PKR1 in cardiomyocytes displayed no spontaneous abnormalities in cardiomyocytes but showed an increased number of epicardial-derived progenitor cells (EPDCs), capillary density, and coronary arterioles. Coculturing EPDCs with H9c2 cardiomyoblasts overexpressing PKR1 promotes EPDC differentiation into endothelial and smooth muscle cells, mimicking our transgenic model. Overexpressing PKR1 in H9c2 cardiomyoblasts or in transgenic hearts upregulated prokineticin-2 levels. Exogenous prokineticin-2 induces significant outgrowth from neonatal and adult epicardial explants, promoting EPDC differentiation. These prokineticin-2 effects were abolished in cardiac explants from mice with PKR1-null mutation. Reduced capillary density and prokineticin-2 levels in PKR1-null mutant hearts supports the hypothesis of an autocrine/paracrine loop between PKR1 and prokineticin-2. Conclusion—Cardiomyocyte-PKR1 signaling upregulates its own ligand prokineticin-2 that acts as a paracrine factor, triggering EPDCs proliferation/differentiation. This study provides a novel insight for possible therapeutic strategies aiming at restoring pluripotency of adult EPDCs to promote neovasculogenesis by induction of cardiomyocyte PKR1 signaling.


This book review argues for reorienting how we think about federalism in relation to foreign affairs. In considering state and local engagement in foreign affairs, legal scholars often focus on the opportunities and limits provided by constitutional law. Foreign Affairs Federalism: The Myth of National Exclusivity by Michael Glennon and Robert Sloane does precisely this in a thoughtful and well-crafted way. But while the backdrop constitutional principles studied by Glennon and Sloane are important, so too are other types of law that receive far less attention. International law, administrative law, particular statutory schemes, and state law can all affect how state and local governments act in relation to foreign affairs – and can affect how they interact with each other, with the federal government, and with transnational actors.
The scholarly literature on cooperative and uncooperative federalism with respect to domestic issues serves as a starting point for understanding how foreign affairs federalism operates today. This literature explores how the federal government can incentivize state and local governments to help advance federal interests, how these state and local governments can influence or resist federal policy, and how both Congress and the executive branch can use state and local action to muster power at the expense of the other branch. At a high level of generality, these insights apply to issues with transnational dimensions. But because of the added complexity of the foreign affairs context – including its ties to international law and its increased reliance on strong executive power – the specifics cannot simply be imported wholesale. The book review therefore closes by suggesting several ways in which the practice and doctrine associated with cooperative and uncooperative foreign affairs federalism should differ from the domestic context.


This paper proposes and validates a daylighting design sequence for sidelit spaces. Since the design sequence uses the daylight factor as a performance metric, it is aimed towards spaces that primarily receive diffuse daylight. It should be complemented by a design analysis that looks at direct sunlight for glare and energy considerations. The sequence interconnects and refines earlier proposed rules of thumb and is intended to be used during the earliest design stages when concepts regarding programming, floor plans, massing and window areas are initially explored. All steps within the sequence were 'validated' using Radiance simulations of over 2300 sidelit spaces. During step one of the sequence the effective sky angles are calculated and target daylight factors are defined for all potential daylit zones within a building. In step two a refined version of the 'daylight feasibility study' is used to help the design team to identify building zones with high daylighting potential based on a target mean daylight factor criterion. During step three suitable interior room dimensions and surface reflectances are determined using a combination of the Lynes' limiting depth, 'no sky line', and window-head-height rules of thumb. Step four provides a more accurate estimate of the required glazing area for each zone based on the Lynes daylight factor formula which is also validated as part of this work. The effect of external obstructions is considered throughout the process. The paper closes with a discussion of the merits of the design sequence compared to the glazing factor spreadsheet calculation method promoted by LEED-NC 2.2.


During the past few years, the problem of school bullying has gained national prominence. Scholars, policy-makers, and media outlets have belatedly begun to address the long-term physical consequences of bullying for children, as well as the corrosive effect of this destructive conduct on the learning environment. Because the problem is complex and multi-factored, however, solutions remain elusive.This article examines and compares two approaches to dealing with bullying. First, litigation is considered as a way of responding to the most serious cases. Suing school districts that allow bullying to go unchecked can be helpful: victims are often entitled to compensation, officials in other school districts can be deterred by news of liability against other schools, and the ability to have one's story heard in court can be a powerful balm in some cases. Yet litigation has substantial limitations. It is only an option in a small number of cases involving the most serious harms, but most bullying does not result in that level of injury. And even where settlements compel a student to create antibullying initiatives, often the resulting programs are designed to avoid litigation rather than to address the deeper issues that cause bullying in the first place.With the limitations of a litigation strategy thus described, the article moves on to consider how a public health approach can lead to better outcomes. Public health takes account of all affected populations, and is committed to an evidence-based model of problem-solving. The article examines state laws and policies for fit with sound public health principles, and provides analysis of how these initiatives might result in an overall reduction in the incidence and prevalence of bullying.


Abstract Following the submission of application EFSA‐GMO‐RX‐008 under Regulation (EC) No 1829/2003 from Pioneer Hi‐Bred International, Inc. and Dow AgroSciences LLC, the Panel on Genetically Modified Organisms of the European Food Safety Authority was asked to deliver a scientific risk assessment on the data submitted in the context of the renewal of authorisation application for the insect‐resistant, herbicide‐tolerant genetically modified maize 1507 × NK603, for food and feed uses, import and processing, excluding cultivation within the EU. The data received in the context of this renewal application contained a systematic search and evaluation of literature, updated bioinformatic analyses and additional documents or studies performed by or on behalf of the applicant. The GMO Panel assessed these data for possible new hazards, modified exposure or new scientific uncertainties identified during the authorisation period and not previously assessed in the context of the original application. In conclusion, under the assumption that the DNA sequence of the events in maize 1507 × NK603 considered for renewal are identical to the newly reported 1507 sequence and the NK603 sequence of the originally assessed two‐event stack maize, the GMO Panel concludes that there is no evidence in the renewal application EFSA‐GMO‐RX‐008 for new hazards, modified exposure or scientific uncertainties that would change the conclusions of the original risk assessment on maize 1507 × NK603 (EFSA, 2006).


Introduction Approximately 10% of all babies born require admission to the neonatal unit and term infant represent a significant percentage of NICU admission and are major contributors to workload. Aim To identify potentially avoidable admissions of term babies to neonatal unit and common avoidable factors. Background Neonatal intensive care and special care nurseries provide a level of care that is both high in cost and low in volume. Term infant represent a significant percentage of NICU admission and are major contributors to workload. Methods Retrospective audit from 01/01/2011 to 31/12/2011, patient list obtained from SCBU data base. Results Total number of deliveries was 3882. Total admissions to SCBU were 316. Term baby admissions (>37 wks) were 117 (37%). 55% of babies stayed 3 to 5 days in SCBU. 19% babies required respiratory support. Readmission needed in 4 cases. External transfer was done in 8% (9) cases for reasons like cooling, surgical opinion and severe jaundice. No perinatal mortality was noted in these series. Maternal profile 70% of the mothers were without any obstetric or medical risk factors. 50% mothers came in spontaneous labour. 50% of these mothers were delivered by vaginal delivery. In RDS group –50% (vaginal delivery) and 20% (Elective LSCS). In hypoglycaemic group-39% were diabetic mothers and 33% had good intrapartum blood sugar control. Conclusions 70% of mothers were low risk and 50% of them were admitted in spontaneous labour. There were no major avoidable factors in the mothers to reduce term neonatal admissions. Recommendations To set up a transitional care unit where babies needing intermediate care can be managed and this will reduce the cost of admissions to SCBU. References An audit of neonatal respiratory morbidity following elective caesarean section at term. Nicoll Black C, Princess Royal Maternity Hospital, 16 Alexandra Parade, Glasgow. Niger J Clini Practice 2009 Dec; 12(4):389–94. Morbidity and mortality patterns of admissions into the Special Care Baby Unit of University of Abuja Teaching Hospital, Gwagwalada, Nigeria. Full term; an artificial concept, Neil Marlow, Arch Dis Child Fetal Neonatal Ed 2012; 97:F158-F159 doi: 10.1136/fetalneonatal-2011–301507. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2009 Oct 7;( 4):CD006614. Corticosteroids for preventing neonatal respiratory morbidity after elective caesarean section at term. Sotiriadis A, Makrydimas G.


Sugar beet is considered one of the most important crops in Egypt because it was used in the production of sugar as it contains 15-20% sugar Pegomyia hyoscami (Vill) ((Diptera: Anthomyidae); harmful insect pest causing a lot of damage of the sugar crop. Chitosan (CS)-g-poly (acrylic acid) (PAA) nanoparticles, which are well dispersed and stable in aqueous solution have been prepared by template polymerization of acrylic acid in chitosan solution which have an insecticidal effect on insect pests. The usage of chitosan and nano chitosan test against Pegomyia hyoscami Results showed that, the LC50 obtained 111 and 56 ppm after P. hyoscami treated with different concentrations of chitosan and nano chitosan. Also, under field conditions when P. hyoscami treated with the chitosan and nano chitosan, the number of eggs significantly 53±1.7and 9±8.3eggs/ female as compared to 272±8.7 eggs /female in the control. The percentage of egg hatching, larval mortality, malformed pupae and malformed adults significantly decreased in case of chitosan treatments and almost reduced after nano chitosan treatments. The weight of sugar beet significantly increased to 2490±66.11and 1220±45.09 kg/ feddan as compared to 1780±55.43and 1220±45.09 kg/ feddan in the control during season 2016 and 2017 respectively.


Small organic molecules that inhibit functional bacterial amyloid fibers, curli, are promising new antibiotics. Here we investigated the mechanism by which the ring-fused 2-pyridone FN075 inhibits fibrillation of the curli protein CsgA. Using a variety of biophysical techniques, we found that FN075 promotes CsgA to form off-pathway, non-amyloidogenic oligomeric species. In light of the generic properties of amyloids, we tested whether FN075 would also affect the fibrillation reaction of human α-synuclein, an amyloid-forming protein involved in Parkinson's disease. Surprisingly, FN075 stimulates α-synuclein amyloid fiber formation as measured by thioflavin T emission, electron microscopy (EM), and atomic force microscopy (AFM). NMR data on 15N-labeled α-synuclein show that upon FN075 addition, α-synuclein oligomers with 7 nm radius form in which the C-terminal 40 residues remain disordered and solvent exposed. The polypeptides in these oligomers contain β-like secondary structure, and the oligomers are detectable by AFM, EM, and size-exclusion chromatography (SEC). Taken together, FN075 triggers oligomer formation of both proteins: in the case of CsgA, the oligomers do not proceed to fibers, whereas for α-synuclein, the oligomers are poised to rapidly form fibers. We conclude that there is a fine balance between small-molecule inhibition and templation that depends on protein chemistry.


Lifelong learning has developed enormously as a distinct area of study within education in recent years not least because numerous governments and educational strategists have become very vocal supporters of new ways of learning throughout all stages of life. This up-to-the-minute guide to the topic brings together new writing from some of the leading thinkers in the field to offer a broad ranging and detailed snapshot of the position to date. The book provides a critical summary of current developments in understanding adult learning and the social context in which they are located. This provides a background for the framing of issues and the problems that emerge in institutional and non-formal contexts of lifelong learning. Students undertaking courses of study in this area as well as a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate students in a variety of professional areas will find the material essential reading.


Recent work has shown that deep reinforcement-learning agents can learn to follow language-like instructions from infrequent environment rewards. However, this places on environment designers the onus of designing language-conditional reward functions which may not be easily or tractably implemented as the complexity of the environment and the language scales. To overcome this limitation, we present a framework within which instruction-conditional RL agents are trained using rewards obtained not from the environment, but from reward models which are jointly trained from expert examples. As reward models improve, they learn to accurately reward agents for completing tasks for environment configurations---and for instructions---not present amongst the expert data. This framework effectively separates the representation of what instructions require from how they can be executed. In a simple grid world, it enables an agent to learn a range of commands requiring interaction with blocks and understanding of spatial relations and underspecified abstract arrangements. We further show the method allows our agent to adapt to changes in the environment without requiring new expert examples.


Through a critical state of the art, this thesis explores new methods of knowledge engineering for the development of a collective intelligence focused stimulation, expression and knowledge sharing in human environments. Along with theoretical research on the epistemology of symbolic languages and overruns by the use of languages allegorical questions about a method of conceptualization from an ethical-ontological mapping are discussed with reference to concepts from philosophical works, anthropological and information and communication sciences. The objective is to lay the foundation for interdisciplinary research on the design of a generic model of information design inspired by the analogy of the garden to grow knowledge.


Nollywood is further gaining popularity due to its transformations, which bear resemblances to the processes of gentrification and professionalization. This is formalizing the industry as well as attracting professionals and instigating existing filmmakers to improve on their art. So far, filmmakers have continued to avail themselves for further trainings, aligning themselves with the emerging new and professionalizing Nollywood. This study is interested in finding out whether these changes within the industry are simply a professionalization process or a regeneration that can potentially gentrify the industry. Gentrification, an urban development term which captures the process that alters the structure of a district to suit middle- or upper-class taste, is burdened with the baggage of displacement and so attracts negativity. This study adopts gentrification as a metaphor. Thus, it captures a process where a once-not-so-aesthetic item available exclusively to the general masses becomes fanciful as a result of middle- or upper-class engagement. This study contextualizes the concepts of gentrification and professionalization to put in perspective class separation, formalization of Nollywood, emergence of the new Nollywood, and other transformations reshaping Nollywood and bringing about sectoring within the industry. This study concludes that Nollywood is currently gentrifying as well as professionalizing. Its gradual progression from its old, traditional form into a new quality and aesthetics conscious nature results from availability of resources for production and distribution, and an interaction with corporate bodies and between new film professionals and existing industry players who avail themselves for further trainings.


Excerpt] Educational reformers and most of the American public believe that teachers ask too little of their pupils. African-American and Hispanic parents, in particular, criticize the low expectations and goals that teachers and school administrators often set for their children. These low expectations, they believe, result in watered down curricula and a tolerance of mediocre teaching and inappropriate student behavior. The result is that the prophecy of low achievement becomes self-fulfilling. The problem of low expectations is not limited to minority students or lower income communities. It's endemic. High school subjects are taught at vastly different levels. Research has shown that learning gains are substantially larger when students take more demanding courses. Controlling for teacher qualifications and student ability and socio-economic status does not significantly reduce the positive effects of course rigor on test score gains (Kulik 1984, Monk 1994, Bishop 1996). Why then do students not flock to more demanding courses? First, these courses are considerably more work and grades tend to be lower. Secondly, the rigor of these courses is not well signaled to parents, neighbors, employers and colleges, so the rewards for the extra work are small for most students. Admissions staff of selective colleges learn how to read the transcripts of high schools they recruit from and they evaluate grades in the light of course demands. However, most colleges have, historically, not factored the rigor of high school courses into their admissions decisions. Employers hardly ever consider the rigor of high school courses when they make hiring decisions. Consequently, the bulk of students who do not aspire to attend a selective college quite rationally avoid rigorous courses and demanding teachers.


Given an area of interest in a video sequence, one may want to manipulate or edit the area, e.g. remove occlusions from or replace with an advertisement on it. Such a task involves three main challenges including temporal consistency, spatial pose, and visual realism. The proposed method effectively seeks an optimal solution to simultaneously deal with temporal alignment, pose rectification, as well as precise recovery of the occlusion. To make our method applicable to long video sequences, we propose a batch alignment method for automatically aligning and rectifying a small number of initial frames, and then show how to align the remaining frames incrementally to the aligned base images. From the error residual of the robust alignment process, we automatically construct a trimap of the region for each frame, which is used as the input to alpha matting methods to extract the occluding foreground. Experimental results on both simulated and real data demonstrate the accurate and robust performance of our method.


Pollution caused by heavy metals has become a serious problem to the environment nowadays. The treatment of wastewater containing heavy metals continues to receive attention because of their toxicity and negative impact on the environment. Recently, various types of adsorbents have been prepared for the uptake of heavy metals from wastewater through the batch adsorption technique. This study focused on the removal of zinc from aqueous solution using microwave incinerated sugarcane bagasse ash (MISCBA). MISCBA was produced using microwave technology. The influence of some parameters such as pH, contact time, initial metal concentration and adsorbent dosage on the removal of zinc was investigated. The competition between H + and metal ions has affected zinc removal at a low pH value. Optimum conditions for zinc removal were achieved at pH 6.0, contact time 180 min and adsorbent dosage of 10 g/L, respectively. The maximum adsorption capacity for the removal of zinc was found to be 28.6 mg/g. The adsorption process occurred in a multilayered surface of the MISCBA. Chemical reaction was the potential mechanism that regulates the adsorption process. MISCBA can be used as an effective and cheap adsorbent for treatment of wastewater containing zinc metal ions.


This review critically assesses the body of research about Measles-Mumps-and-Rubella (MMR) vaccine attitudes and uptake in the United Kingdom (UK) over the past 10 years. We searched PubMed and Scopus, with terms aimed at capturing relevant literature on attitudes about, and uptake of, the MMR vaccine. Two researchers screened for abstract eligibility and after de-duplication 934 studies were selected. After screening, 40 references were included for full-text review and thematic synthesis by three researchers. We were interested in the methodologies employed and grouped findings by whether studies concerned: (1) Uptake and Demographics; (2) Beliefs and Attitudes; (3) Healthcare Worker Focus; (4) Experimental and Psychometric Intervention; and (5) Mixed Methods. We identified group and individual level determinants for attitudes, operating directly and indirectly, which influence vaccine uptake. We found that access issues, often ignored within the public "anti-vax" debate, remain highly pertinent. Finally, a consistent theme was the effect of misinformation or lack of knowledge and trust in healthcare, often stemming from the Wakefield controversy. Future immunisation campaigns for children, including for COVID-19, should consider both access and attitudinal aspects of vaccination, and incorporate a range of methodologies to assess progress, taking into account socio-economic variables and the needs of disadvantaged groups.


Critical design, a conceptual offshoot of industrial and product design, has been encouraging debate through provocative design work for the last ten years. It may now be time to use the established principles of the critical approach to design to actually create change by using it in tandem with technology to create new digital territories for political commons. These Designed Conflict Territories would take on the role of the commons lost to proprietary and securitised technology which was originally promised as political liberation as well as the gradual collapse of the effectiveness of protest.

But there are also problems with this proposal, at a point in time where critics begin to doubt the veracity of critical design and designers as a whole, are fearful of appearing subjective to a political viewpoint. Should designers as masters of contemporary communication radicalise themselves to encourage or enact change?

This article for Open Democracy approaches with a historical take on critical design practice and speculates on a version of it outside of the gallery setting and how it might be applied and live in the world.

It is part of a body of work and writing culminating in a series of articles examining the role of design in providing platforms and sites for political discourse, particularly in regard to digital technology.


Sea surface temperature and oxygen isotopic records from two well‐dated Indian Ocean cores covering the last deglaciation show the occurrence of two periods of increased salinity along the route of warm surface water transport from the Indian to the Atlantic Ocean, one between 18 and 14.5 ka and the other during the Younger Dryas. Our results imply that during these periods, salt accumulated in the tropical Atlantic, creating favorable conditions for an abrupt resumption of the thermohaline circulation and abrupt northern hemisphere warming. Furthermore, we suggest that the observed pattern of millennial climate variability during the last glacial and deglaciation resulted from the interaction between the relatively slow rhythm of expansion and decay of the northern hemisphere ice sheets, and El Niño–Southern Oscillation variability, through changes in the position of the Intertropical Convergence Zone. This interaction generated an oscillator with millennial time response that operated at times of sufficient northern hemisphere ice sheets extent.


The present study aims at assessing the innovation strategies adopted within a regional economic system, the Italian region Emilia-Romagna, as it faced the challenges of a changing international scenario. As the strengthening of the regional innovative capabilities is regarded as a keystone to foster a new phase of economic growth, it is important also to understand how the local industrial, institutional, and academic actors have tackled the problem of innovation in the recent past. In this study we explore the approaches to innovation and the strategies adopted by the main regional actors through three different case studies.
Chapter 1 provides a general survey of the innovative performance of the regional industries over the past two decades, as it emerges from statistical data and systematic comparisons at the national and European levels. The chapter also discusses the innovation policies that the regional government set up since 2001 in order to strengthen the collaboration among local economic actors, including universities and research centres.
As mechanics is the most important regional industry, chapter 2 analyses the combination of knowledge and practices utilized in the period 1960s-1990s in the design of a particular kind of machinery produced by G.D S.p.A., a world-leader in the market of tobacco packaging machines. G.D is based in Bologna, the region's capital, and is at the centre of the most important Italian packaging district.
In chapter 3 the attention turns to the institutional level, focusing on how the local public administrations, and the local, publicly-owned utility companies have dealt with the creation of new telematic networks on the regional territory during the 1990s and 2000s.
Finally, chapter 4 assesses the technology transfer carried out by the main university of the region – the University of Bologna – by focusing on the patenting activities involving its research personnel in the period 1960-2010.


We examined litter breakdown and fungal communities at three sites along a small mountain stream affected by mine drainage in Colorado. One site was located in the drainage from an abandoned mine, and the 2 other sites were upstream and downstream of the confluence of the drainage with a pristine stream. At the 2 sites affected by the mine drainage, pH was depressed, zinc concentration was elevated, and metal hydroxides were deposited onto the stream bottom and leaf litter. At these sites, litter breakdown was slower, shredding invertebrates were absent, and microbial activity was also lower compared to the upstream site. Conidia production by aquatic hyphomycetes was limited at all sites, but indicated differences in species diversity and identity. The mining sites were both dominated by Varicosporium elodea, while the upstream site had several taxa that produced conidia. Molecular analysis by denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis of PCR-amplified ITS regions showed similar patterns, but revealed more taxa at the upper and lower sites than seen with conidia examination. In these stressed streams, litter breakdown was slower and associated biota, including shredders and fungi, reflected changes from the suite of stressors associated with acid mine drainage.


The growth of a planar crack through a heterogeneous brittle material is investigated using a discrete cubic lattice of springs with distributed spring toughnesses and lattice Green's functions to determine crack propagation. The toughness, or stress required to grow an initial crack, is found to be a stochastic quantity and depends on the width of the distribution. For narrow distributions, the toughness is less than the thermodynamic value and is controlled by the nucleation of kinks at low toughness regions (weakest links), which then grow laterally in an unstable manner. For brood distributions, the average toughness approaches the thermodynamic value, with some specific configuration having greater values, and is controlled by high toughness regions pinning a rough crack front. The rough crack front exhibits nontrivial scaling with crack width and a ''strongest-link'' behavior that differs from the usual weak-link behavior found in weakly disordered materials. Materials with broad distributions are also less sensitive to small preexisting defects. The difference in toughness between narrow and broad distributions is only about 10%; that is much smaller than suggested by similar studies on 2d materials and demonstrates the very important role played by geometry-dimensionality in this problem. One implication of these results is that toughness in complex or heterogeneous materials does not stem from simple disorder in toughnesses; more complex and microstructure-specific mechanisms such as microcracking and grain bridging must occur.


This study was to investigate the specific antibodies of Leishmania using Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay to detect the specific antibodies of the Leishmania donovani complex (L.infatum, L.chagasi, L. donovani) in 80 dogs of both types (domestic and stray dogs) of different ages and both sexes in the Nineveh Province for the period from February 2017 to October 2018. Some animals suffered from the appearance of skin ulcers in the face and quarters and diarrhea, vomiting, Paw pad fissures, the other animals did not show any clinical finding. The results showed that the total infection rate was 55%, the highest percentage of dogs with skin lesions 80.9% with significant differences with other groups, the stray dog's groups recorded high infective rate when compared with domestic dog group 62.96 and 38.4% respectively with significant


Condensing research concerning questions of religion which encompass the social history of ideas and the religious uses of language, this book deals with three questions: the relationship of the Mishnah to Scripture, the relationship of the religious ideas people hold to the world in which they live, and the religious meaning of the formalization of language that characterizes the Mishnah in particular. This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.


At the heart of any colonization project, and therefore any move to de-colonize, are ways of seeing nature and society, that then allow particular ways of governing each. This is plainly visible in a number of tools that exist to measure progress towards (or regress from) environmental sustainability. The tools use indices and indicators constructed mostly by environmental scientists and ecologists. As such, they are not neutral scientific instruments: they reflect the worldviews of their creators. These worldviews depend on three dimensions: the values they prioritize, the explanatory theories they use and the futures they envision. Through these means different tools produce conflicting notions of the sustainability of our economies and societies. In this article, we shed light onto the theoretical and epistemological assumptions that lie behind key international sustainability indices and indicators: the Environmental Performance Index,Domestic Material Consumption, Material Intensity, the Material Footprint, the Carbon Footprint, the Ecological Footprint and CO2 emissions (territorial). The variables included in these indices, the way they are measured, aggregated and weighted all imply a particular way of understanding the relationships between economy, society and environment. This divergence is most clearly visible in the fact that some indices are negatively correlated with each other. Where one index might plot growing environmental sustainability, another shows its decline. Our results highlight that those devices and the theories informing them are particularly interesting for way how colonialism is materialized. Some of these measurements hide the material roots of prosperity and the ecological (and economic) distributional conflicts exported to the poorer countries by the global North, and others show how its production and consumption levels are reliant upon a socio-ecological 'subsidy' imposed on Southern countries. These subsidies represent injustices that present a primafacie case for decolonizing indices and indicators of environmental governance.


Gangs and militias have been a persistent feature of social and political life in Indonesia. During the authoritarian New Order regime they constituted part of a vast network of sub-contracted coercion and social control on behalf of the state. Indonesia's subsequent democratisation has seen gangs adapt to and take advantage of the changed political context. New types of populist street based organisations have emerged that combine predatory rent-seeking with claims of representing marginalised social and economic groups.

Based on extensive fieldwork in Jakarta this book provides a comprehensive analysis of the changing relationship between gangs, militias and political power and authority in post-New Order Indonesia. It argues that gangs and militias have manufactured various types of legitimacy in consolidating localised territorial monopolies and protection economies. As mediators between the informal politics of the street and the world of formal politics they have become often influential brokers in Indonesia's decentralised electoral democracy. More than mere criminal extortion, it is argued that the protection racket as a social relation of coercion and domination remains a salient feature of Indonesia's post-authoritarian political landscape.

This ground-breaking study will be of interest to students and scholars of Indonesian and Southeast Asian politics, political violence, gangs and urban politics.

Contents
1. Protection, Violence and the State 2. Reconfigured Rackets: Continuity, Change and Consolidation 3. A New Order of Crime: Suharto's Racket Regime 4. The Changing of the Preman Guard 5. The Rise of the Betawi 6. Jakarta's Political Economy of Rackets 7. Coercive Capital, Political Entrepreneurship and Electoral Democracy 8. Conclusions


Would-be infringers target university patents because faculty inventors are more likely to make inadvertent disclosures than industrial inventors, possibly because of the importance of quick disclosure and publishing in academic science. In Klopfenstein, the Federal Circuit held that the posting of lecture slides after a talk triggered the printed publication bar of the patent statute. First, I argue (contrary to other commentators) that the Federal Circuit is consistent with prior precedent; that the public accessibility and dissemination inquiries should rest on substance rather than form. The focus of the § 102(b) inquiry remains on the inventor, who should lose the right to patent his invention if he makes a public disclosure. Klopfenstein possibly shows that the Federal Circuit will interpret the statute in light of advances in technology. Second, I argue that Klopfenstein is wholly consistent with the policies behind both the printed publication bar and the patent laws generally. Third, I argue that Congress need not amend the patent laws to protect university inventors; rather the solution to the publish-patent tension lies in the university's proper management of technology.


People engage in small talk and conversational storytelling to provide information in engaging ways and to serve interpersonal goals such as building rapport and credibility. Embodied conversational interface agents, that represent the computer in its interaction with human users by way of a graphical humanoid body on a screen, can also profitably engage in these behaviors. We describe the ongoing development of an embodied conversational interface agent that is capable of multimodal input understanding and output generation and operates in a limited application domain in which both social and task-oriented dialogue are important. We discuss our plans for adding small talk and conversational storytelling capabilities to the system, and the unique requirements these phenomena place on the understanding, discourse planning, and generation components of a real-time conversational interface.


This article investigates structural conditions for women's inclusion/exclusion in peace negotiations by focusing on the linkage between acts of gender stereotyping and cultural framing. Through a narrative analysis of semi-structured interviews with Israeli negotiators and administrators who participated in official negotiations during the Oslo peace process, I link two recent claims about how gender may affect negotiators' understandings of strategic exchange: the gendered devaluation effect and the gender–culture double bind hypothesis. Building upon postcolonial feminist critique, I argue that narratives about women and cultural difference (a) demonstrate and engage with Israeli essentialist and Orientalist discourses about Arab culture and masculinity; (b) manifest how ideas about strategic dialogue and negotiations are gendered; and (c) convey how policymakers and negotiators may use cultural claims to rationalize women's exclusion from diplomatic and strategic dialogue. Furthermore, the study implies that dominant framings of Israeli–Palestinian negotiations as a binary East–West encounter need to be replaced by a more nuanced conceptualization of cultural identity that captures contextual aspects of difference, including the existence of military power and masculine dominance.


A laboratory exercise based on the performance testing of small consumer-grade water pumps provides a versatile and economical platform for teaching engineering technology students the basics of industrial experimental testing practices. This exercise also provides a practical means for students to learn firsthand about the basic operating characteristics of centrifugal pumps and closely related devices such as centrifugal compressors and fans. This experimental platform provides ample opportunities for students to gain experience with pre-test planning and uncertainty estimation, with unanticipated situations that may arise during tests that may introduce measurement error, and with post-test statistical analysis of the derived pump performance parameters. As an example, in this experiment flow rate is determined by measuring the time it takes for a pump to discharge a measured volume of water at a fixed pumping height. The flow rate is thus derived from measurement of two variables, volume and time, each prone to sources of experimental error that are easily visualized by the students. Such tangible examples of experimental uncertainty go a long way in helping students to understand techniques such as the Kline-McClintock method of uncertainty estimation, since the KlineMcClintock method involves mathematics (partial derivatives) to which many engineering technology students have had little or no exposure. The equipment used consists of consumergrade submersible pumps sold in home improvement stores that are intended for use in small fountains. With maximum head rises of about four feet and maximum flow rates of a few gallons per minute, quantities of water involved are small meaning that the testing can be carried out in minimally equipped lab spaces, in classrooms, and even outdoors. Other equipment consists of readily available measuring vessels, stopwatches, and hardware grade buckets and tubing. The pumps are nearly silent in operation, creating no noise issues on campus. Because of the low cost of purchase and operation of the pumps, each laboratory group can have its own test setup. It has been found beneficial to have lab groups swap pumps after a first round of tests. Comparisons of performance results obtained by different groups with a common pump allows for reflection on discrepancies that may have resulted from differences in experimental techniques, care taken with measurements, and differences in compensation for various sources of loss (such as hydraulic friction in the pump discharge tubing) which are not necessarily directly attributable to the capabilities of the basic pump.


This paper analyzes how climate risks are priced on financial markets. We show that climate tipping thresholds, disagreement about climate risks, and preferences that price in long-run risks are crucial to an understanding of the impact of climate change on asset prices. Our model simultaneously explains several findings that have been established in the empirical literature on climate finance: (i) news about climate change can be hedged in financial markets, (ii) the share of green investors has significantly increased over the past decade, (iii) investors require a positive, although small, climate risk premium for holding "brown" assets, and (iv) "green" stocks outperformed "brown" stocks in the period 2011–2021. The model can also explain why investments in mitigating climate change have been small in the past. Finally, the model predicts a strong, non-linear increase in the marginal gain from carbon-reducing investments as well as in the carbon premium if global temperatures continue to rise.


The molecular signature that defines tumor microvasculature will likely provide clues as to how vascular-dependent tumor proliferation is regulated. Using purified endothelial cells, we generated a database of gene expression changes accompanying vascular proliferation in invasive breast cancer. In contrast to normal mammary vasculature, invasive breast cancer vasculature expresses extracellular matrix and surface proteins characteristic of proliferating and migrating endothelial cells. We define and validate the up-regulated expression of VE-cadherin and osteonectin in breast tumor vasculature. In contrast to other tumor types, invasive breast cancer vasculature induced a high expression level of specific transcription factors, including SNAIL1 and HEYL, that may drive gene expression changes necessary for breast tumor neovascularization. We demonstrate the expression of HEYL in tumor endothelial cells and additionally establish the ability of HEYL to both induce proliferation and attenuate programmed cell death of primary endothelial cells in vitro. We also establish that an additional intracellular protein and previously defined metastasis-associated gene, PRL3, appears to be expressed predominately in the vasculature of invasive breast cancers and is able to enhance the migration of endothelial cells in vitro. Together, our results provide unique insights into vascular regulation in breast tumors and suggest specific roles for genes in driving tumor angiogenesis.


Nowadays, many surgical procedures require preoperative planning, mostly relying on data from 3D imaging techniques like computed tomography or magnetic resonance imaging. However, preoperative assessment of this data is carried out on the PC (using classical CT/MR viewing software) and not on the patient's body itself. Therefore, surgeons need to transfer both their overall understanding of the patient's individual anatomy and also specific markers and labels for important points from the PC to the patient only with the help of imaginative power or approximative measurement. In order to close the gap between preoperative planning on the PC and surgery on the patient, we propose a system to directly project preoperative knowledge to the body surface by projection mapping. As a result, we are able to display both assigned labels and a volumetric and view-dependent view of the 3D data in-situ. Furthermore, we offer a method to interactively navigate through the data and add 3D markers directly in the projected volumetric view. We demonstrate the benefits of our approach using DIEP flap breast reconstruction as an example. By means of a small pilot study, we show that our method outperforms standard surgical planning in accuracy and can easily be understood and utilized even by persons without any medical knowledge. CCS Concepts • Applied computing → Health informatics; • Computing methodologies → Ray tracing; Mixed / augmented reality;


The growing emergence of an appreciation of the significance of narrative, within philosophy, the social sciences and the humanities, has had a significant impact on theory and practice within the field of counseling and psychotherapy. The influence of narrative thinking has been felt in two main ways. First, concepts of narrative have been assimilated into established forms of practice. For example, within psychoanalysis and psychodynamic therapy, it is now accepted that attention to narrative structures within the discourse of therapy can be used to generate a fuller understanding of the operation of well-known phenomena such as transference. The primary intention of this area of work has been to utilise narrative concepts to permit a deeper understanding of existing ideas about therapeutic processes and procedures. Second, a quite separate set of developments has seen the construction of an approach to therapy which begins from an acknowledgement of the central role of narrative and storytelling in lives and relationships. This alternative approach, generally described as "narrative therapy", can be characterised as the formation of a postpsychological approach to therapy, which focuses on issues surrounding the performance of narratives within relationships, community and culture, rather than on inner psychological processes within individuals. It is argued that postpsychological narrative therapies have the potential to address key contemporary personal and social dilemmas in ways that are not possible within individualist models of therapy.


Natural regeneration is a critical component of forest ecosystems sustainability. Local extinction can occur without adequate regenerationor seedling recruitment prior to adult senescence. The urban and peri-urban environment is particularly challenging for recruitment. For example, although many forest species have specific requirements involving fire events, few opportunities associated with fire exist in contemporary urban and peri-urban environments. For our study species, Eucalyptus gomphocephala, en masse recruitment can occur in ashbeds following a hot fire. However, this may not occur following low-intensity, fuel reduction burns that are prescribed for many E. gomphocephala woodlands and forests. Nevertheless, ashbeds could be created by constructing and burning coarse woody debris (CWD) piles. In a series of collaborative case studies involving community groups, NGOs and Local and State Government agencies, we investigated whether seedling recruitment could be facilitated through broadcast seeding after: a) creating CWD piles prior to a low intensity, prescribed burn; b) naturally-occurring ashbeds following a hot summer wildfire; and c) creating CWD piles and then burning the piles only. We found that regeneration of this post-fire, canopy gap regenerator can be facilitated by broadcast seeding naturally occurring or created ashbeds. However, it seems that protection from seed harvesters and herbivores is vital. These case studies provide tools that can be used to preserve the natural demographics in populations with specific regeneration requirements in a range of environments by leveraging natural recruitment processes and community involvement. Importantly, it is the conservation of these urban and peri-urban ecosystems that will be vital in maintaining connection between people and the environment into the future.


This article traces the intellectual history of Arnold J. Toynbee. It centers on early twentieth-century British social thought and its synthesis of idealism and evolution. Toynbee used this framework to interpret imperial and international affairs, and, like his mentors, he focused especially on the unprecedented, progressive possibilities of global integration. With the failure of the Paris Peace Conference, however, Toynbee began to regard globalization as a contradiction between social unity and spiritual disjuncture. A Study of History, his endeavor to bring historical writing into its global present, followed from this opposition, which he sought to explain and hoped to resolve. By the mid 1930s, world events finally overwhelmed Toynbee's commitment to the old conceptual synthesis. He returned to such thinking after World War II, but his brief declaration of methodological limitations illuminated for historical study the antinomy of the global scale.


This thesis describes the investigation of the effects of ocular supplements with different levels of nutrients on the macular pigment optical density (MPOD) in participants with healthy eyes. Abstract A review of the literature highlighted that ocular supplements are produced in various combinations of nutrients and concentrations. The ideal concentrations of nutrients such as lutein (L) have not been established. It was unclear whether different stages of eye disease require different concentrations of key nutrients, leading to the design of this study. The primary aim was to determine the effects of ocular supplements with different concentrations of nutrients on the MPOD of healthy participants. The secondary aim was to determine L and zeaxanthin (Z) intake at the start and end of the study through completion of food diaries. The primary study was split into two experiments. Experiment 1 was an exploratory study to determine sample size and experiment 2 the main study. Statistical power was calculated and a sample size of 38 was specified. Block stratification for age, gender and smoking habit was applied and from 101 volunteers 42 completed the study, 31 with both sets of food diaries. Four confounders were accounted for in the design of the study; gender, smoking habit, age and diet. Further factors that could affect comparability of results between studies were identified during the study and were not monitored; ethnicity, gastro-intestinal health, alcohol intake, body mass index and genetics. Comparisons were made between the sample population and the Sheffield general population according to recent demographic results in the public domain. Food diaries were analysed and shown to have no statistical difference when comparing baseline to final results. The average L and Z intake for the 31 participants who returned both sets of food diaries was initially 1.96mg and 1.51mg for the final food diaries. The effect of the two ocular supplements with different levels of xanthophyll (6mg lutein/zeaxanthin and 10mg lutein only) on MPOD was not significantly different over a four-month period.


We study generalization properties of distributed algorithms in the setting of nonparametric regression over a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS). We investigate distributed stochastic gradient methods (SGM), with mini-batches and multi-passes over the data. We show that optimal generalization error bounds can be retained for distributed SGM provided that the partition level is not too large. Our results are superior to the state-of-the-art theory, covering the cases that the regression function may not be in the hypothesis spaces. Particularly, our results show that distributed SGM has a smaller theoretical computational complexity, compared with distributed kernel ridge regression (KRR) and classic SGM.


Hierarchical feature learning based on convolutional neural networks (CNN) has recently shown significant potential in various computer vision tasks. While allowing high-quality discriminative feature learning, the downside of CNNs is the lack of explicit structure in features, which often leads to overfitting, absence of reconstruction from partial observations and limited generative abilities. Explicit structure is inherent in hierarchical compositional models, however, these lack the ability to optimize a well-defined cost function. We propose a novel analytic model of a basic unit in a layered hierarchical model with both explicit compositional structure and a well-defined discriminative cost function. Our experiments on two datasets show that the proposed compositional model performs on a par with standard CNNs on discriminative tasks, while, due to explicit modeling of the structure in the feature units, affording a straight-forward visualization of parts and faster inference due to separability of the units.


A method is described for measuring the absolute phase change on reflection of semitransparent films which is both precise and accurate. The films are deposited on portions of two fuzed-quartz optical flats and the shift in the fringes of equal chromatic order between the coated and uncoated portions of the interferometer is measured. Since the phase change is very sensitive to small changes in the optical constants, this method is useful for studying the effects of aging, applied electromagnetic fields, oxide growth, and other factors. Also, since areas of the order of 1.3 by 0.0033 mm are sufficient for each measurement, the phase change can be used to study possible variations in the film structure over the interferometer surface. Measured values of phase change on reflection versus wavelength are smooth to ±0.1°. When systematic errors have been taken into account, the measurements are still accurate to about ±1°.


An empirical model relating food requirements to morphometric indices of metabolic rate was used to calculate consumption/biomass ratios (Q/B) for 16 species of fish that make the pelagic fish community in Lake Malawi/Niassa. The Q/B/year varied from 3.31 to 9.82, with the large catfish (Dinotopterus nyasensis) having the lowest and a small cyprinid (Engraulicypris sardella) having the highest Q/B ratio. Direct estimates of Q/B for four of the most abundant species, based on analysis of diel feeding patterns, ranged from 4.20 to 24.70; the extreme values in this range representing replicate studies on the same species, the predatory cichlid Rhamphochromis longiceps. Previous studies that indicated exceptionally low Q/B ratios (1.0) in pelagic cichlids from Lake Malawi are not supported by this more recent work.


If someone has any relationship at all to their web browsing history, it is probably best summarized in one word, "delete." Despite the sensitive nature of this data, if given the ability to explore and better understand their own data and remove what they choose, some web users may opt-in to sharing this data with researchers they trust. In fact, the informed consent process could demystify this often poorly understood source of information and give individuals better tools for understanding and controlling their own browsing data logs. Furthermore, this user-focused data crosses between platforms where data is often siloed, such as different social media sites and web services making it particularly useful for extending the insights of platform-based studies of digital traces. The Herodotus (name changed for anonymous review) project has developed an open-source web browser extension with the goal of informing users of the insights available in their browsing history data through visualizations and analytics. The extension allows users to opt-in to share their data with a research project after viewing interactive visualizations of the browsing data that already exists on their browser. Participants are directed to an online survey which allows for the collection of both observed and self-reported information about web browsing. This can help researchers assess the accuracy of self-reports, but perhaps more importantly it can address questions about the impact (or lack thereof) of attitudes on behaviors in a more valid way than self-reported behavior data can provide.


These days, visitors to airports are more discerning than before and continuously seek new and meaningful experiences. This approach has caused airports to evolve from being, simply, a point of transit for visitors into elaborate attractions; providing much more facilities and services. The notion of experiences is, however, an abstract concept which makes it difficult to measure and, furthermore, experiences differ from individual to individual. In this context, it is important that airport management should understand the type of experiences that visitors seek within an airport environment in order to create higher levels of satisfaction which, ultimately, would result in increased revenue.
The purpose of this exploratory research was to identify the key success factors that influence the experience of visitors in the context of an international airport. Determining the key success factors (KSF) may provide management with knowledge of those key areas within an airport that are viewed as necessary for a memorable airport experience by the visitors. Quantitative research was conducted by means of a self-administrated questionnaire and a total of 490 (n) questionnaires were obtained during the research period.
A factor analysis identified seven KSFs which will facilitate airport management in creating and managing a memorable experience for visitors.


In recent years there has been a great deal of interest in "modular reinforcement learning" (MRL). Typically, problems are decomposed into concurrent subgoals, allowing increased scalability and state abstraction. An arbitrator combines the subagents' preferences to select an action. In this work, we contrast treating an MRL agent as a set of subagents with the same goal with treating an MRL agent as a set of subagents who may have different, possibly conflicting goals. We argue that the latter is a more realistic description of real-world problems, especially when building partial programs. We address a range of algorithms for single-goal MRL, and leveraging social choice theory, we present an impossibility result for applications of such algorithms to multigoal MRL. We suggest an alternative formulation of arbitration as scheduling that avoids the assumptions of comparability of preference that are implicit in single-goal MRL. A notable feature of this formulation is the explicit codification of the tradeoffs between the subproblems. Finally, we introduce A2BL, a language that encapsulates many of these ideas.


The death and resurrection of Sherlock Holmes, a contrarian reading in which Holmes helps the murderer, and the century-long tradition of the Holmesian Great Game with its pseudo-scholarly readings in light of an ironic conviction that Holmes is real and Arthur Conan Doyle merely John Watson's literary agent. This paper relies on these events in the afterlife of Sherlock Holmes in order to trace an outline of the author function as it applies to the particular case of Doyle as the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories. The operations of the author function can be hard to identify in the encounter with the apparently natural unity of the individual work, but these disturbances at the edges of the function make its effects more readily apparent. This article takes as its starting point the apparently strong author figure of the Holmesian Great Game, in which "the canon" is delineated from "apocrypha" in pseudo-religious vocabulary. It argues that while readers willingly discard provisional readings in the face of an incompatible authorial text, the sanctioning authority of the author functions merely as a boundary for interpretation, not as a personal-biographical control over the interpretation itself. On the contrary, the consciously "writerly" reading of the text serves to reinforce the reliance on the text as it is encountered.The clear separation of canon from apocrypha, with the attendant reinforced author function, may have laid the ground not only for the acceptance of contrarian reading, but also for the creation of apocryphal writings like pastiche and fan fiction.


Phosphoinositide Contributions To study the roles of phosphoinositides in the plasma membrane of mammalian cells, Hammond et al. (p. 727, published online 21 June; see the Perspective by Fairn and Grinstein) engineered phosphatase molecules that could be targeted to the membrane on demand, where they would alter the concentrations of the phospholipids phosphatidylinositol (4,5)-bisphosphate [PI(4,5)P2] and phosphatidylinositol 4-phosphate (PI4P). PI4P was thought to provide a major source for the synthesis of PI(4,5)P2, but depletion of PI4P did not have much affect on synthesis of PI(4,5)P2. Instead, PI4P appears to help to establish the negative charge at the membrane and thus promote electrostatic interactions with positively charged amino acids in membrane-associated proteins and influencing function of ion channels. The phospholipid phosphatidylinositol 4-phosphate defines important physical properties of the cell membrane. The quantitatively minor phospholipid phosphatidylinositol (4,5)-bisphosphate [PI(4,5)P2] fulfills many cellular functions in the plasma membrane (PM), whereas its synthetic precursor, phosphatidylinositol 4-phosphate (PI4P), has no assigned PM roles apart from PI(4,5)P2 synthesis. We used a combination of pharmacological and chemical genetic approaches to probe the function of PM PI4P, most of which was not required for the synthesis or functions of PI(4,5)P2. However, depletion of both lipids was required to prevent PM targeting of proteins that interact with acidic lipids or activation of the transient receptor potential vanilloid 1 cation channel. Therefore, PI4P contributes to the pool of polyanionic lipids that define plasma membrane identity and to some functions previously attributed specifically to PI(4,5)P2, which may be fulfilled by a more general polyanionic lipid requirement.


About the book: The associations between human rights and the work of development activists didn't receive widespread attention from international development agencies until the mid to late 1990s. The most visible sign that attitudes were changing occurred when the UN held its World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen in 1995. From that point on, rights became a stated objective of most agencies, regardless of the level of effort they actually spent in incorporating these ideas into their activities.

Now, over a decade after that crucial turning point, Rights-Based Approaches to Development reflects on the effect of the development community's major shift in focus from market-based frameworks to a rights-based one. Contributors, both academics and practitioners, reflect on their experience with rights-based development activities. They draw out the current debates, theoretical and practical concerns and achievements, and larger implications about poverty and the relationship between citizens and the state. With powerful insights into where the development community has been and where it needs to go, Rights-Based Approaches to Development is critical to understanding the role of social justice in the context of development.


Vision Transformers (ViT) have achieved remarkable success in large-scale image recognition. They split every 2D image into a fixed number of patches, each of which is treated as a token. Generally, representing an image with more tokens would lead to higher prediction accuracy, while it also results in drastically increased computational cost. To achieve a decent trade-off between accuracy and speed, the number of tokens is empirically set to 16x16. In this paper, we argue that every image has its own characteristics, and ideally the token number should be conditioned on each individual input. In fact, we have observed that there exist a considerable number of "easy" images which can be accurately predicted with a mere number of 4x4 tokens, while only a small fraction of "hard" ones need a finer representation. Inspired by this phenomenon, we propose a Dynamic Transformer to automatically configure a proper number of tokens for each input image. This is achieved by cascading multiple Transformers with increasing numbers of tokens, which are sequentially activated in an adaptive fashion at test time, i.e., the inference is terminated once a sufficiently confident prediction is produced. We further design efficient feature reuse and relationship reuse mechanisms across different components of the Dynamic Transformer to reduce redundant computations. Extensive empirical results on ImageNet, CIFAR-10, and CIFAR-100 demonstrate that our method significantly outperforms the competitive baselines in terms of both theoretical computational efficiency and practical inference speed.


Discoveries from seafloor hydrothermal vent environments continue to challenge accepted notions about microbial metabolism and survivability, geochemical and biochemical interactions, and the limits to and origins of life itself. Recent evidence suggests that a significant and extensive subsurface biosphere exists associated with these vent systems that may support bacteria of unique and unknown lineages using as yet uncharacterized metabolic pathways. With restricted access to the subsurface environment and availability of an extremely limited biomass, microbiologists have resorted to powerful molecular approaches to survey, characterize, and even assist in the later cultivation of these novel subsurface bacteria. Advances in molecular phylogenetic techniques (molecular microbial systematics) based on the small subunit rRNA (16S rRNA) and a knowledge of certain diagnostic metabolic genes have provided an alternative and more comprehensive framework to study microbial populations and communities without the necessity of cultivation. These approaches have been used by a number of investigators in deep-sea hydrothermal vents and terrestrial hot springs with astonishing results. In this paper we introduce some of these current and emerging molecular techniques and demonstrate their efficacy in the context of the subsurface biosphere. Simple gene amplification methods coupled with more sophisticated genomic approaches and fine resolution in situ geochemical tools (see Luther et al., this volume) provides a new-found capability to more fully characterize the diversity of metabolic strategies used by these complex subsurface microbial communities. Understanding these unique microbial communities is not only important from the basic biological perspective but has ramifications for possible industrial applications.


Amongst material from the island of Flores forwarded by the Rev. Fr. J. A. J. Verheijen SVD and the Rev. Fr. E. Schmutz SVD is a monarchine flycatcher which appears to represent an undescribed species. It may be known and diagnosed as follows. Monarcha sacerdotum species nova Type and unique specimen, ♂ ad., with large gonads (the testes measured about 7 X 41/2 mm each), 25 September 1971, Sesok, Flores, 1000 m, collected in the lower stages of primary forest by E. Schmutz. Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie no. 68135. Diagnosis. — A morphologically very normal member of the genus Monarcha; measurements, including size and shape of bill, similar to those of M. t. trivirgata (Temminck), but plumage different in two conspicuous characters : 1° there is no trace of rust colour or brown in the plumage, the underparts (except for the black throat patch) being pure white; 20 the outer pair of rectrices with much more white : the outer web is white to its base, the inner web is distally white over a length of 38 mm. In M. t. trivirgata the white part of the inner web varies from 24-33 mm in length, and on the outer web it is at most a few millimetres longer. The second and third pairs of rectrices have a decreasing amount of white, but also much more than in the corresponding pairs of M. t. trivirgata. The upper parts are similar to those of M. t. trivirgata : forehead, sides of head, chin and throat patch glossy black, central three pairs of rectrices and upper tail coverts black, remiges and upper wing coverts blackish with grey outer edges, remainder of upper parts grey. In general appearance M. sacerdotum is remarkably close to Heteranax mundus (Sclater), but differs in the greater extent of white on the tail, the


ABSTRACT One of the most well-characterized tests for diagnosing neurocysticercosis (NCC) is the enzyme-linked immunoelectrotransfer blot (EITB) assay developed at the CDC, which uses lentil lectin-bound glycoproteins (LLGP) extracted from Taenia solium cysticerci. Although the test is very reliable, the purification process for the LLGP antigens has been difficult to transfer to other laboratories because of the need for expensive equipment and technical expertise. To develop a simpler assay, we previously purified and cloned the diagnostic glycoproteins in the LLGP fraction. In this study, we evaluated three representative recombinant or synthetic antigens from the LLGP fraction, individually and in different combinations, using an immunoblot assay (recombinant EITB). Using a panel of 249 confirmed NCC-positive and 401 negative blood serum samples, the sensitivity of the recombinant EITB assay was determined to be 99% and the specificity was 99% for diagnosing NCC. We also tested a panel of 239 confirmed NCC-positive serum samples in Lima, Peru, and found similar results. Overall, our data show that the performance characteristics of the recombinant EITB assay are comparable to those of the LLGP-EITB assay. This new recombinant- and synthetic antigen-based assay is sustainable and can be easily transferred to other laboratories in the United States and throughout the world.


This article presents an overview of the main strategies, variables and, of course, of the approach that enables IoT technologies and brain-computer interfaces to provide a significant contribution to a better, healthier lifestyle. This paper describes two current technology breakthroughs that are extremely popular at the moment, provides a brief description of the issues concerning brain disorders and of the impact of these brain-computer interfaces and it also debates the way these two main breakthroughs may pull together in order to achieve an impressive progress in medicine and in other fields, as well. The observations and main results that sum up this paper are meant to show that persistent research and development of this technology aim to use brain activity strictly in order to help people with severe motor disabilities. Furthermore, this technological breakthrough may serve as an instrument for the early detection of neurological diseases and its use must definitely not be targeted for the hacking process of the human brain.


Marine cage farming of salmonid fish (salmon and trout) is well established in Tasmania.
There is an established regulatory framework, administered by the Department of
Primary Industries, Water and Environment (DPIWE), which controls licenses, leases and
environmental conditions on cage farms and associated land-based facilities. Similarly,
there is an established land-based freshwater hatchery industry primarily focussed on
producing juvenile/pre-smolt fish for the marine cage sector, but also involved in
producing some table fish. Again, there is a regulatory framework for this sector, with
licensing, EIA and EPMP requirements, administered by DPIWE and the Inland Fisheries
Commission (IFC), now the Inland Fisheries Service (IFS).
The aquaculture industry is seeking the establishment of cage salmonid culture facilities
at several locations in freshwater lakes. There is, at present, no specific policy or
regulatory framework in relation to this development. This report has been commissioned
by IFC to address several key issues including:

- identification and assessment of any environmental risks, including any disease
management issues, that are relevant to a decision to allow or disallow freshwater
lake cage culture in Tasmania;

- investigation of best practice in the cage farming sector;

- proposal of a best practice environmental management approach to lake cage farming,
with an emphasis on methods to reduce potential risks and impacts;

- documentation of overseas experiences with freshwater cage culture.


Abstract Aim: To correlate dose-volume histogram (DVH) parameters with appearance of grade ≥2 acute and late gastrointestinal toxicity of stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) in patients with abdominopelvic solitary or oligometastatic disease outside the liver. Material and methods: Acute and late bowel toxicity of 84 abdominopelvic oligometastatic patients was registered. A logistic regression was performed between different DVH parameters and presence of grade ≥2 acute and late toxicity. A Normal Tissue Complication Probability (NTCP) model was built with significant parameters to determine complication probabilities (CP). Results: Thirteen (15%) of 84 patients experienced of grade ≥2 acute toxicity, while 8 (10%) reported late toxicity complications. A significant relationship was found for EQD2 (V30Gy, V40Gy, V50Gy and V65Gy) and grade ≥2 acute toxicity. Dmax and D2 were not significant. Late grade ≥2 toxicity was not significantly correlated with any DVH parameter. According to our NTCP model for V40Gy, an irradiated bowel volume of 10 cm3 of V40Gy resulted in CP of grade ≥2 acute toxicity of less than 10%. Local control was 87% at 2 years and 82% at 5 years. Overall survival was 61% at 2 years and 32% at 5 years. Conclusions: After SBRT for abdominopelvic oligometastases, in general, the presence of acute and late toxicity was low. A significant relationship was found for V30Gy, V40Gy, V50Gy and V65Gy and grade ≥2 acute toxicity. We estimated acute complication probabilities per volume of irradiated bowel by V40Gy and V50Gy


Africas World Cup: Critical Reflections on Play, Patriotism, Spectatorship, and Space focuses on a remarkable month in the modern history of Africa and in the global history of football. Peter Alegi and Chris Bolsmann are well-known experts on South African football, and they have assembled an impressive team of local and international journalists, academics, and football experts to reflect on the 2010 World Cup and its broader significance, its meanings, complexities, and contradictions. The World Cups sounds, sights, and aesthetics are explored, along with questions of patriotism, nationalism, and spectatorship in Africa and around the world. Experts on urban design and communities write on how the presence of the World Cup worked to refashion urban spaces and negotiate the local struggles in the hosting cities. The volume is richly illustrated by authors photographs, and the essays in this volume feature chronicles of match day experiences; travelogues; ethnographies of fan cultures; analyses of print, broadcast, and electronic media coverage of the tournament; reflections on the World Cups private and public spaces; football exhibits in South African museums; and critiques of the World Cups processes of inclusion and exclusion, as well as its political and economic legacies. The volume concludes with a forum on the World Cup, including Thabo Dladla, Director of Soccer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Mohlomi Kekeletso Maubane, a well-known Soweto-based writer and a soccer researcher, and Rodney Reiners, former professional footballer and current chief soccer writer for the Cape Argus newspaper in Cape Town. This collection will appeal to students, scholars, journalists, and fans. Cover illustration: South African fan blowing his vuvuzela at South Africa vs. France, Free State Stadium, Bloemfontein, June 22, 2010. Photo by Chris Bolsmann.


Abstract The upper Jequitinhonha Valley is located within the Serra do Espinhaço Meridional mountain range in the State of Minas Gerais, Brazil. The topography is flat or gently undulating with large flat areas known as chapadas ('high plains') that are dissected by rivers forming swamps known locally as veredas ('paths'). The present study is concerned mainly with a representative toposequence in the watershed of the Lagoa do Leandro vereda, a swamp near the city of Minas Novas on a chapada of the highlands of the Alto (Upper) Jequitinhonha region. The soils of this sequence were studied by a variety of physical and chemical techniques, including Mössbauer, electron spin resonance (ESR) and photoacoustic (PAS) spectroscopies, as well as X-ray diffraction (XRD) and carbon isotope data. Mössbauer spectra of the silt fraction of a grey Xanthic Haplustox (Munsell 10YR 3/2) from the Lagoa do Leandro vereda, referred to here as a 'Grey Haplustox' ('LAC'), proved the existence of Fe2+ - and Fe3+ -bearing components. Photoacoustic spectroscopy confirmed the presence of Fe2+, as shown by Mössbauer spectroscopy, probably in an octahedrally coordinated site, but the principal optical absorption bands are due to different Fe3+ sites. A ferrimagnetic contribution and three other paramagnetic lines attributed to Fe3+ and Ti3+ were demonstrated by means of ESR. The ESR and PAS results are thus in agreement with the chemical composition and Mössbauer spectroscopy, allowing a detailed characterization of the mineralogy of this silt. Carbon isotope data indicate the climate to have varied during the past: a wetter climate in the Pleistocene, with drier phases in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene, and again a more humid climate 1200 years ago. δ13C data indicate the C3 scrubland vegetation to have occupied the bottom of the vereda in the past (Bispo & Silva, 2014). Greyish Oxisols that consist chiefly of phyllosilicate minerals of the kaolinite group (which are usually associated with binary oxides and hydroxides) are of common occurrence in tropical soils resulting from leaching and precipitation. Such Oxisols of greyish appearance and similar mineralogy have been described elsewhere from Brazil and, for example, from India. Such soils are therefore proposed here as a new hierarchical level of the Soil Classification System.


Several proteins contain the domain homologous to the N-terminal half of band 4.1 protein, indicating the existence of a superfamily. The members of this 'band 4.1' superfamily are thought to play crucial roles in the regulation of cytoskeleton-plasma membrane interaction just beneath plasma membranes. We examined the structural diversity of this superfamily by means of the polymerase chain reaction using synthesized mixed primers. We thus identified many members of the band 4.1 superfamily that were expressed in mouse teratocarcinoma F9 cells and mouse brain tissue. In total, 15 cDNA clones were obtained; 8 were identical to the corresponding parts of cDNAs for the known members, while 7 appeared to encode novel proteins (NBL1-7: novel band 4.1-like proteins). Sequence analyses of these clones revealed that the band 4.1 superfamily can be subdivided into 5 gene families; band 4.1 protein, ERM (ezrin/radixin/moesin/merlin/NBL6/NBL7+ ++), talin, PTPH1 (PTPH1/PTPMEG/NBL1-3), and NBL4 (NBL4/NBL5) families. The NBL4 family was first identified here, and the full-length cDNA encoding NBL4 was cloned. The deduced amino acid sequence revealed a myristoylation site, as well as phosphorylation sites for A-kinase and tyrosine kinases in its N-terminal half, suggesting its involvement in the phosphorylation-dependent regulation of cellular events just beneath the plasma membrane. In this study, we describe the initial characterization of these new members and discuss the evolution of the band 4.1 superfamily.


SMEs, that represent the greater part of European food firms producing traditional food products (TFPs), meet difficulties in adapting their strategies to market changes, and in competing with big enterprises. Marketing management capabilities play a key role in good SMEs performance in the market. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the marketing capabilities of SMEs that produce TFPs. The theoretical framework considers the Market Orientation approach and marketing management capabilities in terms of marketing research, marketing strategy, planning and implementation, control and evaluation. A self evaluation tool was developed by means of an interactive questionnaire, available on the web, aimed at assessing traditional food firms competitive position in the marketing area. The sample consists of 112 Italian firms. Descriptive analysis shows that the most problematic dimensions of the marketing management are planning and implementation and control and evaluation. Moreover, the firms' size is not a relevant feature to determine the marketing capabilities, whereas quality voluntary certifications have a direct linkage with marketing capabilities, as the more a firm is certified the more t improves its marketing performance. Linear Regression model confirms these results.


The financial crisis showed that levels and quality of bank capital were too low for banks to be able to absorb the losses they faced. Policymakers have responded by increasing the amount of equity all banks are required to have in their capital structures and imposing additional equity requirements on those banks considered to be globally systemically important. Contingent capital has been put forward by some as another way of potentially enhancing the resilience of banks. Several contingent capital instruments have been issued and some authorities have proposed that banks could issue such instruments to meet certain regulatory requirements. This paper takes stock of the current debate about contingent capital. The various possible designs of contingent capital are described and the key potential systemic risk implications of these instruments are highlighted. The paper suggests the considerations any policymaker would need to make if considering in future whether contingent capital is an appropriate means of ensuring banks' resilience.


. The germline encoding of a non-immune immunoglobulin M (IgM) molecule in mammals was experimentally documented for the first time as a result of the specifically timed ovariectomy of C57BL/10 mice. The target of this innate antibody involves a trans-species developmental antigen that signifies malignancy when expressed in any non-developmental tissue. Although ovariectomy and castration result in uncontrolled and/or enhanced humoral and cellular immunity involving increased weights of the spleen and thymus with pronounced B and T cell production, the development of mercaptoethanol-sensitive, complement-binding, non-immune anti-A reactivity in murine plasma was not enhanced after an ovariectomy that was performed in C57BL/10 mice prior to the onset of puberty. This non-immune murine anti-A, which is complementary to the trans-species, syngeneic ovarian GalNAc-glycan-bearing glycolipids and distinct from the cross-reactive adaptive anti-A antibody, was strongly down-regulated or did not appear in plasma of animals ovariectomized at the age of 20 days. Thus, contrary to our previous view, this reactivity is unlikely to originate from a somatic, primary immune or autoimmune response. All of the murine tissues expressed the species-specific Forssman reactivity, and further A-like structures were identified in the male and female reproductive and endodermal organs by reaction with innate human anti-A antibody, while the murine anti-A was exclusively inhibited by syngeneic ovarian glycolipids. Moreover, the early ovarian tissue, which represents a last evolutionary and/or developmental location, showed a developmental polymorphism characterized by reactivity to the lectin from Dolichos biflorus and the agglutinin from Helix pomatia indicating the functional involvement of the O -GalNAc-determined mucin-type A-like, Tn and TF (Thomsen-Friedenreich) epitopes that signify malignancy when accumulated and expressed in non-developmental tissues.


Eliminating the opportunities to successfully acquire data from mobile devices is a critical security objective for certain organisations. In particular, Government agencies require assurance that classified data is secured against hostile forensic analysis. The Secure Systems Silicon Data Vault (SDV) is a hardware based data encryption and access control device that has been accredited by the Australian Government to secure classified information held on laptops and portable hard disk drives; hardware is recognised as a superior trusted platform to implement security mechanisms. The SDV's 128bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) cryptography, sophisticated key management & access controls and total disk encryption makes the SDV an extremely difficult device from which to acquire data and perform forensic analysis. With the increasing functionality and storage capabilities of Smartphones strong security mechanisms are required by organisations that may hold sensitive data on these devices. Software based security applications exist for Smartphones that provide good security and severely impact the acquisition of data suitable for forensic analysis. If strong hardware based security can be integrated into a Smartphone, forensic analysis could be further constrained. This paper considers the feasibility of implementing the SDV technology into a Palm Treo. An overview of the SDV is given and six security design principles are enumerated. Implementation of the six design principles ensure the SDV provides strong security. The Treo architecture is reviewed and the concept of operation enumerated. The challenges with respect to implementing a Smartphone SDV that is conformant with the security design principles are discussed. Possible Smartphone SDV conceptual designs are presented. The concept of operation, implementation issues and conformance of each conceptual design to the SDV security design principles are discussed.


This paper describes how Central Washington University Libraries (CWUL) interacted and collaborated with the Orbis Cascade Alliance (OCA) Shared Integrated Library System's (SILS) Implementation Team and Ex Libris to process systems and data migration from Innovative Interfaces Inc.'s Millennium integrated library system to Alma/Primo, Ex Libris' next-generation library management solution and discovery and delivery solution. A chronological review method was used for this case study to provide an overall picture of key migration events, tasks, and implementation efforts, including pre-migration cleanup, migration forms, integration with external systems, testing, cutover, postmigration cleanup, and reporting and fixing outstanding issues. A three-phase migration model was studied, and a questionnaire was designed to collect data from functional leads to determine staff time spent on the migration tasks. Staff time spent on each phase was analyzed and quantitated, with some top essential elements for the success of the migration identified through the case review and data analysis. An analysis of the Ex Libris' Salesforce cases created during the migration and post-migration was conducted to be used for identifying roles of key librarians and staff functional leads during the migration.


The objective of this research work is to investigate and demonstrate potential accuracy improvements in the RSS indoor positioning process, by introducing directional antennas in the radio network infrastructure. The position and orientation is selected in such a way as to decrease the correlation levels of the Received Signal Strength (RSS) fingerprints which form the radio-map. Localization algorithms are expected to perform better with reduced correlation level, thus reducing the positioning error. Due to the necessity to generate several radio-maps for the setup and environment of interest, the use of 3D ray tracing (RT) to construct the radio-maps is proposed, instead of carrying out time consuming and expensive radio measurement campaigns. The approach was evaluated in an indoor environment and the results obtained, suggest a significant reduction of the positioning error.


The 4 million articles of the English Wikipedia have been written in a collaborative fashion by more than 16 million volunteer editors. On each article, the community of editors strive to reach a neutral point of view, representing all significant views fairly, proportionately, and without biases. However, beside the English one, there are more than 280 editions of Wikipedia in different languages and their relatively isolated communities of editors are not forced by the platform to discuss and negotiate their points of view. So the empirical question is: do communities on different language Wikipedias develop their own diverse Linguistic Points of View (LPOV)? To answer this question we created and released as open source Manypedia, a web tool whose aim is to facilitate cross-cultural analysis of Wikipedia language communities by providing an easy way to compare automatically translated versions of their different representations of the same topic.


The canonical Reelin signaling cascade regulates correct neuronal layering during embryonic brain development. Details of this pathway are still not fully understood since the participating components are highly variable and create a complex mixture of interacting molecules. Reelin is proteolytically processed resulting in five different fragments some of which carrying the binding site for two different but highly homologous receptors, apolipoprotein E receptor 2 (ApoER2) and very low density lipoprotein receptor (VLDLR). The receptors are expressed in different variants in different areas of the developing brain. Binding of Reelin and its central fragment to the receptors results in phosphorylation of the intracellular adapter disabled-1 (Dab1) in neurons. Here, we studied the changes of the arrangement of the receptors upon Reelin binding and its central fragment at the molecular level in human embryonic kidney 293 (HEK293) cells by time-resolved anisotropy and fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM). In the off-state of the pathway ApoER2 and VLDLR form homo or hetero-di/oligomers. Upon binding of full length Reelin ApoER2 and VLDLR homo-oligomers are rearranged to higher order receptor clusters which leads to Dab1 phosphorylation. When the central fragment of Reelin binds to the receptors the cluster size of homo-oligomers is not affected and Dab1 is not phosphorylated. Hetero-oligomerization, however, can be induced, but does not lead to Dab1 phosphorylation. Cells expressing only ApoER2 or VLDLR change their shape when stimulated with the central fragment. Cells expressing ApoER2 produce filopodia/lamellipodia and cell size increases, whereas VLDLR-expressing cells decrease in size. These findings demonstrate that the primary event in the canonical Reelin pathway is the rearrangement of preformed receptor homo-oligomers to higher order clusters. In addition the possibility of yet another signaling mechanism which is mediated by the central Reelin fragment independent of Dab1 phosphorylation became apparent.


One of the most important steps toward interpretability and explainability of neural network models is feature selection, which aims to identify the subset of relevant features. Theoretical results in the field have mostly focused on the prediction aspect of the problem with virtually no work on feature selection consistency for deep neural networks due to the model's severe nonlinearity and unidentifiability. This lack of theoretical foundation casts doubt on the applicability of deep learning to contexts where correct interpretations of the features play a central role.
In this work, we investigate the problem of feature selection for analytic deep networks. We prove that for a wide class of networks, including deep feed-forward neural networks, convolutional neural networks, and a major sub-class of residual neural networks, the Adaptive Group Lasso selection procedure with Group Lasso as the base estimator is selection-consistent. The work provides further evidence that Group Lasso might be inefficient for feature selection with neural networks and advocates the use of Adaptive Group Lasso over the popular Group Lasso.