Warning colouration reduces predation risk by signalling or mimicking the unpleasantness of prey and therefore increases survival. We tested in two experiments the evolutionary costs and benefits of the yellow colour pattern in fire salamanders (Salamandra salamandra), which display a yellow/black colour pattern usually associated with toxic alkaloids. Our first experiment aimed to test whether the development of colouration is condition dependent and thus related to developmental costs, i.e. influenced by resource availability during the developmental process. Therefore, we reared fire salamander larvae under different nutritional conditions and compared the relative amount of yellow they developed after metamorphosis. Fire salamander larvae reared under limited food conditions had a lower proportion of yellow following metamorphosis than control larvae reared under superior food conditions. In a second experiment we tested whether the proportion of yellow has an impact on the risk of being attacked using artificial models. We tested, in salamander-free and salamander-occupied natural habitats, whether artificial clay models with different proportions of yellow and black receive different attack rates from potential predators (birds, mammals, insects). In clay models the proportion of yellow and the site had a significant effect on predation risk. Models with larger amounts of yellow had fewer bite marks from predators such as carabid beetles and birds, but only in sympatry with salamanders. In conclusion, the early expression of conspicuous colouration seems to be condition dependent and therefore potentially costly. Furthermore, the yellow colouration of fire salamanders act as a signal that potentially reduces their risk of being attacked by predators. Thus, the yellow colouration of fire salamanders seems to represent an adaptive trait that reduces the risk of predation, which can be expressed in higher quantity by individuals of a certain condition.


Scholarship has long considered the style of stone sculpture produced in Mercia during the late eighth and early ninth centuries to reflect the direct influence of artistic activities on the Carolingian continent. Written sources point to the dialogue that existed between the Anglo-Saxon kingdom and the Carolingian courts in the years after Offa's rise to the Mercian throne. This dialogue has been understood to signal Offa's desire to raise his profile and that of his kingdom in the eyes of Charlemagne and the papacy.
Mercian sculpture, unparalleled in its range of form and ornament, has thus been thought to owe its unique character to borrowed contemporary continental styles and motifs.
By means of multi-disciplinary research combining art historical, archaeological and historical approaches, this thesis establishes the nature of the relationship between
Mercian sculpture and continental artistic production. Examination of the development of Carolingian sculptural styles against the backdrop of the enduring legacy of late
Antiquity reveals the variety of artistic models available to Mercian sculptors. Through close analysis of the stylistic parallels between Mercian sculpture and late Antique, eastern Christian, Lombard and Carolingian monumental art, this research reveals the motivations and mechanisms behind the adoption and adaptation of continental motifs.
Exploration of the means by which Mercian patrons and artists accessed continental motifs demonstrates the links between the forms and ornament of Mercian sculpture and the types of sites at which sculpture survives. These associations are argued to be reflective of the hierarchy of exchange networks that linked sites in the kingdom with centres of importance on the Continent and further afield. The development of
Carolingian and papal monumental art highlights the shared interest in and importance of late Antique imperialism. Despite a parallel agenda, Mercian sculptors are shown to
have accessed late Antique artistic sources largely independent of Carolingian intermediaries.


Searching for patterns in conceptual models is useful for a number of purposes, for example revealing syntactical errors, model comparison, and identification of business process improvement potentials. In this contribution, we introduce a formal approach for the specification and matching of structural patterns in conceptual models. Unlike existing approaches, we do not focus on a certain application problem or a specific modelling language. Instead, our approach is generic making it applicable for any pattern matching purpose and most conceptual modelling languages. In order to build sets representing structural model patterns, we define formal operations based on set theory, which can be applied to arbitrary models represented by sets. The basic sets represent the model elements, which in turn originate from the modelling language specification's instances. Besides a conceptual and formal specification of our approach, we present particular application examples and a prototypical modelling tool showing its general applicability.


It has been argued that semantic categories across languages reflect pressure for efficient communication. Recently, this idea has been cast in terms of a general information-theoretic principle of efficiency, the Information Bottleneck (IB) principle, and it has been shown that this principle accounts for the emergence and evolution of named color categories across languages, including soft structure and patterns of inconsistent naming. However, it is not yet clear to what extent this account generalizes to semantic domains other than color. Here we show that it generalizes to two qualitatively different semantic domains: names for containers, and for animals. First, we show that container naming in Dutch and French is near-optimal in the IB sense, and that IB broadly accounts for soft categories and inconsistent naming patterns in both languages. Second, we show that a hierarchy of animal categories derived from IB captures cross-linguistic tendencies in the growth of animal taxonomies. Taken together, these findings suggest that fundamental information-theoretic principles of efficient coding may shape semantic categories across languages and across domains.


This article presents the BFRS Political Violence in Pakistan dataset addressing its design, collection, and utility. BFRS codes a broad range of information on 28,731 incidents of political violence from January 1, 1988 through May 2011. For each incident we record the location, consequences, cause, type of violence, and party responsible as specifically as possible. These are the first data to systematically record all different kinds of political violence in a country for such an extended period, including riots, violent political demonstrations, terrorism, and state violence, as well as asymmetric and symmetric insurgent violence. Similar datasets from other countries tend to focus on one kind of violence—e.g. ethnic riots, terrorism, or combat—and therefore do not allow scholars to study how different forms of violence interact or to account for tactical and strategic substitution between methods of contestation. To demonstrate the utility of the dataset, we apply it to two questions. First, we examine how patterns of tactical substitution vary over time and space in Pakistan, showing they differ dramatically, and discuss implications for the study of political violence more broadly. Second, we show how these data can help illuminate ongoing debates in Pakistan about the causes of the increase in violence in the last ten years. Both applications demonstrate the value of disaggregating violence within countries and are illustrative of the potential uses of these data.


BACKGROUND
In young children with a unilateral congenital inguinal hernia, the relatively high incidence of an occult contralateral patent processus vaginalis (CPPV) has led to the practice of laparoscopic contralateral exploration. The effect on postoperative complications such as surgical site infection from performing the laparoscopy has not been previously reported.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
A retrospective review was conducted on all patients who underwent a unilateral inguinal hernia repair from January 1, 2000 to March 1, 2010. We compared those children who underwent laparoscopic evaluation of the contralateral inguinal ring with those who did not. Patient demographics and operative data outcomes were evaluated. Student's t test was used to compare continuous variables, and the chi-squared test with Yates's correction was used for discrete variables.

RESULTS
There were 1164 patients who underwent a unilateral inguinal hernia repair during the 10-year study period, and laparoscopy was used in 1010 patients. There were no intraoperative complications from the laparoscopy. In the group who underwent laparoscopy, the mean age was 4.0±3.6 years old, and 88% were male. At laparoscopic exploration, 315 (31%) patients were found to have a CPPV. There were 10 patients (1.0%) who developed a surgical site infection. Infection developed in the side used for laparoscopic exploration in 9 patients and in the contralateral side in 1 patient. All patients with surgical site infections were treated initially with oral antibiotics. Abscesses developed in 2 patients, requiring incision and drainage. No patient required hospital admission or reoperation. In the 154 patients who did not undergo laparoscopy, mean age was 4.3±4.4 years (P=.35), and 85.8% were male (P=.54). There was one wound infection identified in this control group (0.6%) (P=1.00). There was no difference in rate of recurrence (control group, 0%; exploration group, 0.6%; P=.72).

CONCLUSIONS
There is minimal risk of infection or recurrence following unilateral inguinal hernia repair, and this risk is not increased with the use of contralateral exploration using laparoscopy.


Abstract. Recent field studies have suggested that sea-salt particulate nitrate (NITs) photolysis may act as a significant local source of nitrogen oxides (NOx) over oceans. We present a study of the global impact of this process on oxidant concentrations in the marine boundary layer (MBL) using the GEOS-Chem model, after first updating the model to better simulate observed gas–particle phase partitioning of nitrate in the marine boundary layer. Model comparisons with long-term measurements of NOx from the Cape Verde Atmospheric Observatory (CVAO) in the eastern tropical North Atlantic provide support for an in situ source of NOx from NITs photolysis, with NITs photolysis coefficients about 25–50 times larger than corresponding HNO3 photolysis coefficients. Short-term measurements of nitrous acid (HONO) at this location show a clear daytime peak, with average peak mixing ratios ranging from 3 to 6 pptv. The model reproduces the general shape of the diurnal HONO profile only when NITs photolysis is included, but the magnitude of the daytime peak mixing ratio is under-predicted. This under-prediction is somewhat reduced if HONO yields from NITs photolysis are assumed to be close to unity. The combined NOx and HONO analysis suggests that the upper limit of the ratio of NITs : HNO3 photolysis coefficients is about 100. The largest simulated relative impact of NITs photolysis is in the tropical and subtropical marine boundary layer, with peak local enhancements ranging from factors of 5 to 20 for NOx, 1.2 to 1.6 for OH, and 1.1 to 1.3 for ozone. Since the spatial extent of the sea-salt aerosol (SSA) impact is limited, global impacts on NOx, ozone, and OH mass burdens are small ( ∼ 1–3 %). We also present preliminary analysis showing that particulate nitrate photolysis in accumulation-mode aerosols (predominantly over continental regions) could lead to ppbv-level increases in ozone in the continental boundary layer. Our results highlight the need for more comprehensive long-term measurements of NOx, and related species like HONO and sea-salt particulate nitrate, to better constrain the impact of particulate nitrate photolysis on marine boundary layer oxidant chemistry. Further field and laboratory studies on particulate nitrate photolysis in other aerosol types are also needed to better understand the impact of this process on continental boundary layer oxidant chemistry.


National Railway Administrations in Northern Europe do not employ systematic procedures in monitoring the current state of vegetation to form the basis of maintenance decision making. Current day vegetation maintenance is largely based on human visual estimates. This paper investigates a machine vision (MV) approach to be able to automatically quantify the amount of vegetation on a given railway section. An investigation assessing the reliability of human estimates is also conducted along the same railway section.A machine vision algorithm was developed and implemented. Initially, the algorithm determines a region of interest (ROI), i.e. the desired monitored area in each collected image. This ROI is dependent on fixed objects in the image, namely the two rails. When the rails are found the algorithm will compute the ROI, which is predetermined by e.g. the railway administrator. After this, a perspective projection correction will be made, and the vegetation will be segmented. Cover is reported as a percentage of the total ROI for each image. Results: The machine vision algorithm is capable of processing 98% of the images. Failure in the remaining 2% of cases is attributed to the algorithms' inability in find the rails within the image. Analysis of variance tests were conducted to compare the observers cover assessments in sample plots. Upon comparing the observers plot wise mean estimates with the machine vision output, results show that the human visual estimates do not correlate with the results reported by the machine vision output. As such, the result indicates that it is very hard to fit human estimates by regression with the machine vision result. Additionally the results show that humans are not in agreement with each other, and often are exaggerating the extent of vegetation cover compared to the machine vision output.The investigation shows that one should be very careful when trusting/interpreting human visual estimates. In conclusion, based on the results, the automated machine vision solution is proposed as complementing, or replacing, manual human inspections serving as a base for vegetation control decisions. Impact: By objectively measuring the quantity of vegetation, the maintenance planning and procurement can be effectively improved over time. A machine vision approach for condition monitoring of vegetation will enable condition based maintenance with prior consideration on issues mainly relevant to vegetation type, quantity and biodiversity.


Scholarly discourse over America's national security policy frequently invites comparison with Germany's policy. Interest in Germany's national security jurisprudence arises because, like the United States, Germany is a constitutional democracy. Yet, in contrast to the United States, Germany's historical encounters with violent authoritarian, anti-democratic, and terrorist movements have endowed it with a wealth of constitutional experience in balancing security and liberty. The first of these historical encounters – with National Socialism – provided the legacy against which Germany's post-World War II constitutional order is fundamentally defined. The second encounter – with leftist domestic radicalism in the 1970s and 1980s – required the maturing German democracy to react to domestic terrorism. The third encounter – the security threat posed in the post-9/11 world by global fundamentalist terrorism – reveals Germany's still unfolding response to global fundamentalist terrorism. Throughout the whole of its sixty-year existence, the Federal Republic of Germany has been engaged in a constitutional balancing of security and liberty in response to, or anticipation of, actual authoritarian and terrorist threats, which the United States, at least prior to 2001, had been fortunate to avoid. To scholars such as Bruce Ackerman, Germany seems a fitting candidate to teach the United States lessons from its experience with the struggle to honor constitutional commitments to liberty while maintaining national security in the face of terrorist threats. This essay answers Ackerman's comparative law summons by providing a brief survey of the decades-long struggle of German jurisprudence to balance security and liberty. The most noteworthy feature of this jurisprudence is the prominent role played by the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court, hereinafter referred to as Constitutional Court, or Court) and its explicit use of proportionality and balancing analyses to resolve these cases. One consequence of the latter phenomenon that is sure to interest hawks in America's so-called "war on terror" is the Court's acknowledgment that national security is a public, constitutional interest of the highest order. American progressives, on the other hand, will take hope from the fact that the Court's proportionality and balancing praxis has meant that national security is regarded as only one among many competing constitutional values, including human dignity, privacy, and individual self-determination. Notwithstanding the high importance that German jurisprudence attributes to national security, the Constitutional Court never has treated it as an absolute value that must be secured at any cost. The practical consequence of the Constitutional Court's balancing approach to maintain both security and liberty has been a shifting jurisprudence, a fact that is bound to buoy and bother American conservatives and progressives in equal measure. There is something in the Court's cases for both camps. Before 9/11, the Court deferred to the legislature's attempts at promoting security. This inclination, however, changed dramatically in the post-9/11 period. In a string of cases the Court has consistently invalidated national security legislation for failing to adequately take account of constitutionally protected liberty interests. After providing a sketch of the German jurisprudence I will offer a few brief observations that, with additional research, might help explain the Court's recent change in direction – and more fully illuminate the lessons Germany's national security jurisprudence has to offer.


Accidents and liability recognise no geographical boundaries. This jurisdiction by jurisdiction approach to personal injury systems in the 15 key counties reflects the mobility within the wider Europe of citizens working and visiting in even greater numbers in adjacent counties and the consequent cross border demand for advice and guidance. Whether instructed in a matter or responding to a request for initial advice,this book provides sound guidance for the personal injury practitioner explaining the procedural and tactical stages in the respective jurisdictions.


This open-label, nonrandomized, single-dose, phase 1 study evaluated the pharmacokinetics and safety of murepavadin, a novel peptide antibiotic for the treatment of serious Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections. The study was conducted in 32 subjects of either sex in 4 groups (up to 8 per group) with mild (group 1), moderate (group 2), and severe (group 3) renal function impairment or with normal renal function (group 4). ABSTRACT This open-label, nonrandomized, single-dose, phase 1 study evaluated the pharmacokinetics and safety of murepavadin, a novel peptide antibiotic for the treatment of serious Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections. The study was conducted in 32 subjects of either sex in 4 groups (up to 8 per group) with mild (group 1), moderate (group 2), and severe (group 3) renal function impairment or with normal renal function (group 4). The degree of renal impairment of the subjects was classified at screening according to the estimated creatinine clearance (CLCr) according to the Cockcroft-Gault equation. All subjects received a single 2.2-mg/kg of body weight intravenous infusion of murepavadin administered over 3 h. Exposure to murepavadin in plasma increased in subjects with renal function impairment, with the area under the plasma concentration-time curve from zero to infinity (AUC0–∞) increasing about 2.0- to 2.5-fold for subjects with renal function impairment compared to subjects with normal renal function, whereas the increases in maximum observed plasma concentration (Cmax) were about 1.5-fold for subjects with renal function impairment compared to subjects with normal renal function. The total clearance (CL) of murepavadin was lower in all groups of subjects with renal function impairment, with group means ranging from 2.4 liters/h to 3.8 liters/h, compared to 7.0 liters/h in subjects with normal renal function. Accordingly, the terminal elimination half-life (t1/2) prolonged up to 24 h with decreasing renal function compared to 7.7 h in subjects with normal renal function. Murepavadin was well tolerated in all renal function groups. As the elimination of murepavadin is affected by renal function, a dose adjustment is warranted in subjects with impaired renal function. (This paper has been registered at ClinicalTrials.gov under identifier NCT02110459.)


Abstract. Open Data, and Open Government Data, are proving to be an important resource for the economic development inside the domain where information has a key role (Carrara et al., 2015). Although, different practices for data publishing have led to misalignment, underuse and repetition of information (Bizer et al., 2011). For this reason, the Public Administrations have undergone efforts on integrating the information and promoting interoperability through the implementation of best practices, as for example, the use of a common semantics vocabulary for the metadata (DCAT) as proposed by the ISA2 programme of the European Commission. The Interreg Italy-Switzerland GIOCOnDA project has been proposed for enhancing the data sharing processes in the cross-border area, particularly addressing tourism and mobility that are key economic activities for the region. For this work, a review on the data catalogues published in dati.lombardia.it and opendata.swiss is presented. The revision of the datasets showed the need for: 1) defining common semantics for the description of the categories of data to avoid the arbitrary use of vocabularies, and 2) adopting standards for the description of geodata. On the other hand, it was observed the potential to gather existing information to produce geodata querying the datasets with specific keywords that can provide spatial information. Open data, as well as the use of best practices for publishing data, push towards the use of FOSS. In this work, Python has been exploited to analyse the content of the catalogues to access web portals resources.


Ever since the invention of EEG have constant attempts been made to give meaning to the oscillating signal recorded. This has resulted in the ability to detect a wide range of different psychological and physiological phenomenon. The goal of this thesis is to be able to recognize different emotions in EEG by the use of a computer and artificial intelligence. Emotions are an especially interesting phenomenon because of the huge impact they have on humans on the daily basis. They constantly guides and modulates our rationality, and is thus in some sense an important part of the definition of human rationality, which again plays an important role in how we behave intelligently and especially how we behave intelligently when interacting with other humans. Machines that interact with humans do however not base their decisions on a rationality that incorporates live human emotions. The effect of this mismatch in rationality between humans and machines results in unwanted behaviour from the machines, and is something most have experienced. The system we propose in this thesis could be used to allow machines to incorporate an interpretation of human emotions in their principles of rationality, in the form of a recognized twodimensional model of emotions, which could result in a more intelligent interaction with humans. We further restricted our system to the hardware limitations of the commercially available Emotiv EPOC EEG headset, in order to get an indication of the commercial value and general implications of our method. Both unsuccessful and successful systems with similar goals have previously been described in the literature. These systems typically rely on computationally expensive feature extractions, which make them less attractive when a relatively quick response is needed. Moreover, the act of choosing what methods to use in order to extract features entails a degree of subjectivity from the creator, which becomes clear by looking at the share variety of completely different methods used in the different systems. Our system effectively minimizes both of these issues by presenting the signal as it is, expressed in the frequency domain, to an artificial neural network trained by a neuroevolutionary method called HyperNEAT, with promising results. This highlights the importance of using a method that is truly in line with nature of the problem.


We propose three new practical methods of smoothing mortality rates (the procedure known in demography as graduation) over two dimensions: age and time. The first method uses bivariate thin plate splines. The second uses a similar procedure but with lasso-type regularization. The third method also uses bivariate lasso-type regularization, but allows for both period and cohort effects. Thus the mortality rates are modelled as the sum of four components: a smooth bivariate function of age and time, smooth one-dimensional cohort effects, smooth one-dimensional period effects and random errors. Cross validation is used to compare these new methods of graduation with existing approaches.


The article analyzes the male daily and leisure activities among the Ukrainian workers, reflected in the press of the 1920–1930s. The objective of the article is to study the specifics of media representations of male daily and leisure activities and to determine the features of modeling the normative masculinity of a proletarian in the 1920s and 1930s.

Research results. Based on the analysis, the conclusions are drawn about the normative masculinity of the Soviet proletarian of the 1920–1930s, reflected in Ukrainian newspapers and magazines. The Soviet construct of masculinity consisted of two models – ideal and real. According to the journalists of that time an exemplary proletarian was a physically strong man, certainly a Komsomol member or communist, capable of performing the labor, sports and / or military heroic acts for the sake of party and homeland. The propaganda of physical education and sport had military connotation, because sports organizations were entrusted with the task of preparing the men for a future war with the capitalist countries. Some forms of cultural recreation were popularized in the press: visits to work and other clubs, libraries, non-alcoholic picnics in nature etc.

However the journalists of the 1920s and the early 1930s designed also another, more reliable model of the proletarian, through reflection of social reality and everyday context of working life. The daily and leisure activities formed the proletarian life style, which included alcohol abuse, primitive habits in everyday life, gambling, etc. Сonclusions. In the Ukrainian Soviet press of the 1920s, two versions of normative masculinity of the proletarian coexisted – official and popular. In the 1920s, a lot of critical materials appeared in the Ukrainian press regarding the life and leisure activities of proletarians. But in the 1930s, such reports almost disappeared from the newspapers, and embellishment of reality and mass dissemination of the ideal proletarian image, ready for labor exploits and defense of the fatherland from capitalist enemies, became a general tendency.

Significance. In the modern media studies one of the key points is that media texts form social identity and subjectivity. The study of interconnections and interactions within the framework of the paradigm media – ideology – society is important and promising area, including the historical aspect.


With this systematic review and meta-analysis, we synthesize the effects of umbilical cord management strategies (timing of clamping and cord milking) in term and late preterm infants. CONTEXT: The International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation prioritized scientific review of umbilical cord management at term and late preterm birth. OBJECTIVE: To assess effects of umbilical cord management strategies (clamping timing and cord milking) in infants ≥34 weeks' gestational age. DATA SOURCES: Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Medline, PubMed, Embase, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, and trial registries searched July 2019. STUDY SELECTION: Two authors independently assessed eligibility of randomized controlled trials. DATA EXTRACTION: Two authors independently extracted data and assessed evidence certainty (Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluations). RESULTS: We identified 46 studies (9159 women and their infants) investigating 7 comparisons. Compared with early cord clamping (ECC) <30 seconds, delayed cord clamping (DCC) ≥30 seconds (33 studies), intact-cord milking (1 study), and cut-cord milking (2 studies) probably improve hematologic measures but may not affect survival without neurodisability, anemia in early infancy, or maternal postpartum hemorrhage. No differences in major neonatal morbidities are seen in studies comparing methods of optimizing placental transfusion (DCC versus cut-cord milking [3 studies], longer delays in clamping [7 studies], or physiologic parameters [3 studies]). Strategies that promote increased placental transfusion may be associated with greater phototherapy use. Evidence for all outcomes was low or very low certainty. LIMITATIONS: Incompleteness and low certainty of findings limit applicability. CONCLUSIONS: Compared with ECC, DCC or cord milking increases hemoglobin and hematocrit immediately after birth in infants ≥34 weeks' gestational age. The uncertain effects of DCC and cord milking compared with ECC on major morbidities limit usefulness of available evidence for policy and practice.


To determine the role insulin resistance may play in the catabolic effect of high-dose prednisone therapy, healthy volunteers were studied on four occasions with the hormone-clamp technique at two insulin infusion rates. Subjects were studied after 5 days of prednisone (60 mg/day) or no steroid treatment and were infused with somatostatin, glucagon, growth hormone, [3H]glucose, [14C]leucine, and insulin (0.1 or 0.2 mil · kg1 · min1). At each rate of insulin infusion, the rate of leucine oxidation was increased (P < .001) after steroid treatment. Leucine flux, an indicator of whole-body proteolysis, was similar in the presence or absence of steroid treatment (2.26 ± 0.08 vs. 2.13 ± 0.04 μmol · kg1 · min1 respectively) at the lower rate of insulin infusion but was higher during steroid treatment (2.18 ± 0.06 vs. 1.84 ± 0.13 μmol · kg1 · min1) at the 0.2-mU · kg1 · min1 insulin infusion. Steroid pretreatment had no significant effect on the nonoxidative rates of leucine disappearance. These data provide strong evidence that the protein wasting associated with glucocorticosteroid therapy is in part the result of steroid-induced resistance to the antiproteolytic effect of insulin and an increase in the oxidation (and thus wasting) of one essential amino acid, leucine.


Asynchronous Sequential Machine Design and Analysis provides a lucid, in-depth treatment of asynchronous state machine design and analysis presented in two parts: Part I on the background fundamentals related to asynchronous sequential logic circuits generally, and Part II on self-timed systems, high-performance asynchronous programmable sequencers, and arbiters.Part I provides a detailed review of the background fundamentals for the design and analysis of asynchronous finite state machines (FSMs). Included are the basic models, use of fully documented state diagrams, and the design and characteristics of basic memory cells and Muller C-elements. Simple FSMs using C-elements illustrate the design process. The detection and elimination of timing defects in asynchronous FSMs are covered in detail. This is followed by the array algebraic approach to the design of single-transition-time machines and use of CAD software for that purpose, one-hot asynchronous FSMs, and pulse mode FSMs. Part I concludes with the analysis procedures for asynchronous state machines.Part II is concerned mainly with self-timed systems, programmable sequencers, and arbiters. It begins with a detailed treatment of externally asynchronous/internally clocked (or pausable) systems that are delay-insensitive and metastability-hardened. This is followed by defect-free cascadable asynchronous sequencers, and defect-free one-hot asynchronous programmable sequencers--their characteristics, design, and applications. Part II concludes with arbiter modules of various types, those with and without metastability protection, together with applications.Presented in the appendices are brief reviews covering mixed-logic gate symbology, Boolean algebra, and entered-variable K-map minimization. End-of-chapter problems and a glossary of terms, expressions, and abbreviations contribute to the reader's learning experience. Five productivity tools are made available specifically for use with this text and briefly discussed in the Preface.Table of Contents: I: Background Fundamentals for Design and Analysis of Asynchronous State Machines / Introduction and Background / Simple FSM Design and Initialization / Detection and Elimination of Timing Defects in Asynchronous FSMs / Design of Single Transition Time Machines / Design of One-Hot Asynchronous FSMs / Design of Pulse Mode FSMs / Analysis of Asynchronous FSMs / II: Self-Timed Systems/ Programmable Sequencers, and Arbiters / Externally Asynchronous/Internally Clocked Systems / Cascadable Asynchronous Programmable Sequencers (CAPS) and Time-Shared System Design / Asynchronous One-Hot Programmable Sequencer Systems / Arbiter Modules


Lysophosphatidic acid (LPA), a potent bioactive phospholipid, is a natural component of food products like soy and egg yolk. LPA modulates a number of epithelial functions and has been shown to inhibit cholera toxin-induced diarrhea. Antidiarrheal effects of LPA are known to be mediated by inhibiting chloride secretion. However, the effects of LPA on chloride absorption in the mammalian intestine are not known. The present studies examined the effects of LPA on apical Cl(-)/OH(-) exchangers known to be involved in chloride absorption in intestinal epithelial cells. Caco-2 cells were treated with LPA, and Cl(-)/OH(-) exchange activity was measured as DIDS-sensitive (36)Cl(-) uptake. Cell surface biotinylation studies were performed to evaluate the effect of LPA on cell surface levels of apical Cl(-)/OH(-) exchangers, downregulated in adenoma (DRA) (SLC26A3), and putative anion transporter-1 (SLC26A6). Treatment of Caco-2 cells with LPA (100 muM) significantly stimulated Cl(-)/OH(-) exchange activity. Specific agonist for LPA2 receptor mimicked the effects of LPA. LPA-mediated stimulation of Cl(-)/OH(-) exchange activity was dependent on activation of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase/Akt signaling pathway. Consistent with the functional activity, LPA treatment resulted in increased levels of DRA on the apical membrane. Our results demonstrate that LPA stimulates apical Cl(-)/OH(-) exchange activity and surface levels of DRA in intestinal epithelial cells. This increase in Cl(-)/OH(-) exchange may contribute to the antidiarrheal effects of LPA.


The observed excess price variability in cross-border city pairs compared to that in withincountry city pairs has been defined as the "border effect." We used a unique data set from cities that were in the same country at one time and were in two separate countries later on to examine the effects of the presence of a national border on price variability. Interestingly a border-like effect was detected even during the period when all the cities were in the same country. We also found a large border effect when cities were in two separate countries. However, we found no change in the price variability at crossborder city pairs during the periods both before and after the cities separated into two different countries. This finding suggests that the observed systematic higher variability of consumer prices in cross-border city pairs might not be due to the presence of a border as suggested in the literature. JEL Classification: F40, F41.


The main concern of this paper is to study large-time behavior of solutions to an ideal polytropic model of compressible viscous gases in one-dimensional half-space. We consider an outflow problem and obtain a convergence rate of solutions toward a corresponding stationary solution. Here the existence of the stationary solution is proved under a smallness condition on the boundary data with the aid of center manifold theory. We also show the time asymptotic stability of the stationary solution under smallness assumptions on the boundary data and the initial perturbation in the Sobolev space, by employing an energy method. Moreover, the convergence rate of the solution toward the stationary solution is obtained, provided that the initial perturbation belongs to the weighted Sobolev space. The proof is based on deriving a priori estimates by using a time and space weighted energy method.


This research is aimed to design an Eudiscoaster and Heliodiscoaster recognition system. There are two main steps to verify the goal. First: applying image processing techniques on the fossils picture for data acquisition. Second: applying neural networks techniques for recognition. The image processing techniques display the steps for getting a very clear image necessary for extracting data from the acquisition of image type (.jpg). This picture contains the fossils. The picture should be enhanced to bring out the pattern. The enhanced picture is segmented into 144 parts, then an average for every part can easily be computed. These values will be used in the neural network for the recognition. For neural network techniques, Self Organization Maps (SOM) neural network was used for clustering. The weights and output values will be stored to be used later in identification. The SOM network succeeded in identificatio n and attained to (False Acceptance Rate = 15% - False Rejection Rate = 15%).


This study is concerned with the dialectic of the development of natural law theory from
the third century B.C. to the beginning of the seventeenth century. Our thesis will be that
this dialectic was driven by the tension between two alternative understandings of natural
law: one, rooted in Stoicism, being an intellectualistic interpretation of law as human
reason; and the other, rooted in the Old Testament, being a voluntaristic interpretation of
law as God's command.
The Stoic exposition of natural law was marked by a change undergone between the early
Stoics and the late Roman Stoics - from a repudiation of common moral norms to an
embrace of them, as a result of the dialectic of development of the key Stoic notion of
'living according to nature' from the early Stoics' 'right reason of the sage' to Cicero's
'dictate of common reason' and Seneca's common moral precepts.
The alternative vision of moral law, as God's Commandments, and not as human reason,
was rooted in legalism and voluntarism of the Old Testament. This Old Testament legalistic
(anti-intellectualistic) voluntarism was transmuted, in Paul's hands, in the New Testament,
into a new anti-legalistic (anti-intellectualistic) voluntarism.
The Church Fathers were divided over how to deal with the conflict between the Old and
New Testaments' voluntarism and pre-Christian intellectualism. On one side, the antilegalistic voluntarism of Paul and Augustine denied the relevance for salvation of earthly
works. On the other, the legalistic intellectualism of Irenaeus and Tertullian incorporated
the Stoic 'dictate of common reason' into the legalism of the Old Testament, and asserted
the inherent value of earthly life, and thereby natural law. The core Patristic divide was
between the legalism of Irenaeus and Tertullian and the anti-legalism of Augustine, and it
brought a new focus on the corruption of human will.
In Scholastic thought a new divide had emerged - between the new Aristotelian
intellectualism of Aquinas, and the 'new legalistic voluntarism' of Scotus and Ockham. A
new ontological issue was at stake - the place of the free will of God in Creation. For both
sides, natural law was a dictate of right reason. Nevertheless, in the matter of epistemology,
to the intellectualists, human reason in discerning natural law was 'by itself' participating in
God's eternal law, whereas to the voluntarists human reason discerned only what God
willed to make clear.
The late Scholastics attempted a new synthesis of intellectualism and voluntarism. Suarez'
contribution was to separate the question of the content of natural law, as discerned by
human reason, from the question of the source of obligation under natural law, as created
by God's will.
The early modern Protestant natural lawyers, such as Hooker and Grotius, attempted to
revive intellectuallism, upholding of self-sufficiency of human reason. Nevertheless, they still were unable to discard the voluntaristic question about the source of obligation under
natural law.


As the increasing complexity of large-scale research requires the combined efforts of scientists with expertise in different fields, the advantages and costs of interdisciplinary scholarship have taken center stage in current debates on scientific production. Here we conduct a comparative assessment of the scientific success of specialized and interdisciplinary researchers in modern science. Drawing on comprehensive data sets on scientific production, we propose a two-pronged approach to interdisciplinarity. For each scientist, we distinguish between background interdisciplinarity, rooted in knowledge accumulated over time, and social interdisciplinarity, stemming from exposure to collaborators' knowledge. We find that, while abandoning specialization in favor of moderate degrees of background interdisciplinarity deteriorates performance, very interdisciplinary scientists outperform specialized ones, at all career stages. Moreover, successful scientists tend to intensify the heterogeneity of collaborators and to match the diversity of their network with the diversity of their background. Collaboration sustains performance by facilitating knowledge diffusion, acquisition and creation. Successful scientists tend to absorb a larger fraction of their collaborators' knowledge, and at a faster pace, than less successful ones. Collaboration also provides successful scientists with opportunities for the cross-fertilization of ideas and the synergistic creation of new knowledge. These results can inspire scientists to shape successful careers, research institutions to develop effective recruitment policies, and funding agencies to award grants of enhanced impact.


Observers have expressed concern about growing inequality in resources across universities. But are universities really becoming more unequal? We argue that the typical approach of examining endowment growth alone is not sensible. In line with the literature on household inequality, we focus instead on a comprehensive income measure. We find that although there is considerable inequality among institutions, concerns about the inexorable growth of inequality are overblown. Whether one looks at income, endowment wealth, or expenditure, inequality has been high but stable, exhibiting only negligible increases in recent years. Furthermore, there has been little mobility within the higher education sector.


of a dissertation at the University of Miami. Dissertation supervised by Professor Benjamin P. Kirtman. No. of pages in text. (208) There is an active research debate regarding how weather and climate interact – this is particular noted in terms of understanding ENSO predictability and the influence of "weather noise". This weather noise view argues that the irregularity of ENSO and ultimately the loss of predictability are largely driven by stochastic forcing. If the stochastic forcing or noise is of primary importance then it is possible that the details (e.g., space-time structure and state dependence) of the noise are also important – that is weather and climate interactions. The overarching goal of this dissertation research is to develop a framework to study the role, if any, that noise plays in sustaining/modifying/modulating ENSO and tropical Pacific climate variability and predictability. The methodology used here follows two different approaches: (a) assessing the impact of the noise in a non-phenomenological manner recognizing that it can occur on all temporal and spatial scales and (b) assuming the noise is associated with a specific phenomena with clear constrains on its location and spatial-temporal structure. A noise reduction technique, namely the interactive ensemble (IE) approach is adopted to reduce non-phenomenological noise at the air-sea interface due to internal atmospheric dynamics in a state-of-the-art coupled general circulation model (CGCM), namely the Community Climate System Model (CCSM3). To study the impact of weather noise and resolution in the context of a CGCM, two IE experiments are performed at different resolutions. Atmospheric resolution is an important issue since the noise statistics will depend on the spatial scales resolved. A simple formulation to extract atmospheric internal variability is presented. The results are compared to their respective control cases where internal atmospheric variability is left unchanged. The non-phenomenological noise reduction has a major impact on the coupled simulation and the magnitude of this effect strongly depends on the horizontal resolution of the atmospheric component model. Specifically, applying the noise reduction technique reduces the overall climate variability more effectively at higher resolution. This suggests that "weather noise" is more important in sustaining climate variability as resolution increases. ENSO statistics, dynamics, and phase asymmetry are all modified by the noise reduction, in particular ENSO becomes more regular with less phase asymmetry when noise is reduced. All these effects are more marked for the higher resolution case. In contrast, ENSO frequency is unchanged by the reduction in the weather noise, but its phase-locking to the annual cycle is strongly dependent on noise and resolution. At low resolution the noise structure is similar to the signal, whereas the spatial structure of the noise deviates from the spatial structure of the signal as resolution increases. It is also suggested that event-to-event differences are largely driven by atmospheric noise as opposed to chaotic dynamics within the context of the large-scale coupled system, suggesting that there is a well-defined "canonical" event. The next step is to study the importance of phenomenological noise forcing of the climate system. Here, westerly wind bursts or events (WWBs or WWEs) are taken as example of phenomenological noise forcing of the tropical Pacific Ocean. The impact of parameterized WWBs on ENSO variability in CCSM3 and CCSM4 is analyzed. To study the impact of WWBs three experiments are performed. In the first experiment, the model is integrated for several hundred years with no prescribed WWBs events (i.e., the control). In the second case, state-independent WWBs events are introduced. In other words, the occurrence, location, duration, and scale of the WWBs are determined (within bounds) randomly. For the third case, the WWBs are introduced but as multiplicative noise or state-dependent forcing, modulated by SST anomalies. State-dependent case produced larger ENSO. There is very little difference between the control and the state-independent WWB simulations suggesting that the deterministic component of the burst is responsible for reshaping the ENSO events. There is a shift towards a more self sustained mechanism as the experiments progress from the control to the state dependent WWBs. Overall, the parameterized WWBs have the capability to modify the ENSO regime in the CGCM, demonstrating the importance of sub-seasonal variability on interannual time scales. This study also investigates the effect of parameterized WWBs on the diversity of ENSO warm events, namely eastern Pacific (EP) and central Pacific (CP) ENSO in CCSM3 and CCSM4. It is found that parameterized WWBs tend to enhance EP variability more relatively to CP variability. This enhancement in the case of statedependent WWBs forcing is due to an increase in the so-called thermocline feedback as opposed to the so-called zonal advective feedback. Lastly, we test whether phenomenological stochastic forcing of the form of WWBs impacts ENSO predictability. An ensemble ENSO prediction experiment is presented in which CCSM3 control and CCSM3 with state-dependent WWBs parameterization are used as both truth and as predictor systems. The inclusion of WWBs does not improve nor degrades ENSO predictability if the truth lacks WWBs activity. ENSO predictability increases substantially if a forecast system that produces WWBs activity is used to predict a truth that includes these wind events. It is also found that the so-called forecast spring prediction barrier (SPB) is partially caused by the lack of WWBs representation in the forecast system. The
  argument
  for
  the
  SPB
  is
  that
  the
  coupled
  system
  is
  more
  susceptible
  to noise
   forcing
   in
   spring.
  The
   signal-‐to-‐noise
   ratio
   (SNR)
   is
   larger
  with
  WWBs,
   so
   it must
   be
   that
   the
   increase
   in
   the
   signal
   due
   to
   state-‐dependent
   WWBs
   is
   more important
   that
   the
   added
   noise.
   These results were further validated with the more recent version of this model, namely CCSM4. It turned out that CCSM4, at least with the coarse resolution used here, has a much-reduced seasonality in the SNR and therefore reduced seasonality in the forecast skill of SSTA. To further test these results, CCSM3 with and without WWBs parameterization were used to make real predictions of observed tropical Pacific SSTA. It was demonstrated that predictability skill are enhanced when WWBs were included and these improvements were mostly over the low SNR season. These results were further validated by a case study of a warm event with considerable WWBs activity, mimicking the strong 1997-98 event. It was found that the presence of WWBs in the prediction system enhances the forecast ensemble spread, leading to a more reliable probabilistic forecast. But most importantly, the number of ensemble members depicting the correct "truth" increases considerably. This is best observed for those forecasts progressing through the SPB.


We conducted a microcosm experiment aimed at studying the interactive effects of high CO2, nutrient loading and irradiance on the metabolism of a planktonic community sampled in the Western Mediterranean near the coast of Malaga. Changes in the metabolism of phytoplankton and bacterioplankton were observed for 7 d under 8 treatment conditions, representing the full factorial combinations of 2 levels each of CO2, nutrient concentration and solar radiation exposure. The initial plankton sample was collected at the surface from a stratified water column, indicating that phytoplankton were naturally acclimated to high irradiance and low nutrient concentrations. Nutrient addition combined with high irradiance resulted in a significant increase in primary production. Nitrate uptake by phytoplankton was also stimulated under high nutrient conditions. High nutrients, high irradiance and the combi- nation of low CO2 and high irradiance positively affected bacterial production. Light was the main factor affecting the respiration rates of the community, which were higher at the high light level. After 7 d of incubation, nutrient loading was the only factor that significantly affected the amount of particulate organic carbon (POC) accumulated in the microcosms. Therefore, the changes in metabolic rates produced at high CO2 had no effect on net produc- tion of particulate organic matter. If these results are extrapolated to the natural environment, it could be hypothesized that high levels of CO2 will have a limited impact on biological pump activity in the northern Alboran Sea since it is assumed that POC export towards deeper layers determines the potential for carbon sequestration.


Since 2009, CIFOR has implemented the policy component of the Global Comparative Study of REDD+ in fourteen countries: Bolivia, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Laos, Mozambique, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Tanzania and Vietnam. In analyzing national REDD+ policy arenas and emerging strategies, researchers have developed five areas of work for each country. These include a country profile, media analysis, policy network analysis, strategy assessment and a fifth area of specific policy studies to be determined by emerging research results.This country profile for Tanzania provides an overview on the socioeconomic and political context within which REDD+ policies and processes emerge. It explores the Tanzanian REDD+ policy processes and strategies at the national level, identifying barriers, limits and opportunities in national REDD+ arenas to inform future REDD+ design by providing research-based options for achieving efficient, effective and equitable REDD+ (i.e. the 3Es of REDD+). Both direct and indirect drivers of deforestation and forest degradation are at work, including forest conversion to small-scale agriculture, timber extraction driven by demand from national and international markets, fuelwood and charcoal, and population growth. The prospects for REDD+ rest on improving a number of issues: tenure arrangements, forest governance, reliability of long-term funding, benefit-sharing mechanisms, and technical, human and financial capacity. We recommend the continuation of support towards decentralized sustainable forest management and utilization of the participatory forest management model as an entry point for REDD+ initiatives. Participatory land-use planning practices coupled with improved spatial planning and strengthening mechanisms against illegal activities entrenched in driving forest degradation are needed. In addition, for REDD+ to succeed it will need to challenge and overcome the powerful actors invested in and driving the business-as-usual model.


9:20 A.M., September 11, 2001Fear, the rush of adrenaline, mounting hysteria. I open my door to an eerie sight: hundreds of people are standing in the middle of Washington Street, looking worried and lost. My neighbors, my friends, the maintenance workers who take care of my building, total strangers—all staring at the huge, ugly black clouds engulfing what once was the World Trade Center. There are those poised with their camcorders and cameras, ever ready to document any catastrophic event. I, too, stare at the smoke and flames, mesmerized by the awesome beauty of destruction. The sky is a hard, brilliant blue. It is the end of the world, yet the sun is blazing and it is a crisp, gorgeous morning. We are very much alive. All around me, eyewitness accounts are repeated like some gruesome mantra: Not one plane, but two. Not two, but four. Not accidentally, but on purpose. I saw the whole thing go down, bodies falling from the sky.


Judges, legislators, practitioners, and scholars all conduct their work based on some working conception of what "corporate law" is. Strangely, however, the question of what this conceptual vessel actually contains is seldom asked, let alone answered with any specificity. This article investigates the domain of corporate law - that is, the scope, content, and boundaries of the field. In so doing, the article aims to illuminate why it is that defining the field with any precision has been so difficult, and what such insights have to tell us about corporate law's nature and significance.

The article first explores the general challenges faced in any project of legal taxonomy, focusing on the inherent tension between internal and external views of law and the dynamic relationship between legal doctrine and social context. Through that lens, the analysis turns to extant modes of defining corporate law as a field - including frameworks emphasizing core constituencies, core features, and core theories, respectively - as well as our increasing resort to the related though distinct "corporate governance" concept. In light of the strengths and limitations of these frameworks, the article ultimately turns to contextual and historical dynamics that foreclose a single stable conception of corporate law's domain across all places and times.

Failure to appreciate these dynamics obscures critical drivers of difference across jurisdictions and narrows our sense of the possible at home. Strategic definition of the "corporation" may cloak contestable normative claims with an air of inevitability, burying the conclusion in the premise and thereby taking off the table propositions that ought to remain contestable. Similarly, assignment of a particular form of regulatory problem to one legal field or another - perhaps "corporate law," but perhaps something else - may impact how we think about the values at stake, the menu of regulatory options, and who possesses regulatory competence.

The article provides examples from the United States and other jurisdictions that illustrate the taxonomic limitations and challenges discussed - a comparative approach that I consider warranted in light of the universalizing thrust of much contemporary corporate law literature. The goal is to promote recognition of corporate law's contingency, and to argue that this is a feature rather than a bug - a capacity for dynamism that allows the corporate form and corporate law to respond to social and economic needs that may differ markedly from one jurisdiction to another, and change markedly within a given jurisdiction over time.


This article, which is based on the author's Presidential address to the American Finance Association in 1993, argues that squeezing out excess capital and capacity is one of the most formidable ongoing challenges facing not only the U.S. economy, but the economies of all industrialized nations. In making this argument, the article draws striking parallels between the 19th‐century industrial revolution and worldwide economic developments in the last three decades. In both periods, technological advances led to not only sharp increases in productivity and dramatic reductions in prices, but also massive obsolescence and overcapacity. And much as the great M&A wave of the 1890s reduced capacity by consolidating some 1,800 companies into roughly 150, the leveraged takeovers, LBOs, and other leveraged recapitalizations of the 1980s provided "healthy adjustments" to overcapacity that was building in many sectors of the U.S. economy. To help public companies make the necessary adjustments to overcapacity, the author urges them to consider adopting some of the features of private equity, including significant equity stakes for managers, high leverage or payouts, and the recruiting of active investors as "partners in the business."


The two volumes of the Learning to Photograph series give students and interested amateur photographers essential information about technique and design as well as an understanding of the big concepts of photography. Beginning and advanced photographers alike will find the content instructive, thoroughly explained, and effectively illustrated, making this book a useful resource for readers to develop their own craft. This second volume addresses the topics of visual design and composition. The authors describe various methods of visual design and how you can use these methods effectively. You will learn which techniques to use to design your images while at the same time training your photographic eye. You will develop the ability to support the message of your subject purposefully, hone your photographic style, and analyze your own work and the work of others competently. The striking images and informational graphics not only illustrate the concepts at hand, but also make the lessons visually pleasing and offer useful examples for readers to mimic in their own work. Topics include:Visual perception Composition, shapes, and lines Managing light Color and its effects Sharpness, blur, and movement The interplay of visual design elements Image analysis and evaluation The previous volume in the Learning to Photograph series addresses cameras, equipment, and basic photographic techniques.


By the Riesz representation theorem using the Riemann-Stieltjes integral, linear continuous functionals on the set of continuous functions from the unit interval into the reals can either be characterized by functions of bounded variation from the unit interval into the reals, or by signed measures on the Borel-subsets. Each of these objects has an (even minimal) Jordan decomposition into non-negative or non-decreasing objects. Using the representation approach to computable analysis, a computable version of the Riesz representation theorem has been proved by Jafarikhah, Lu and Weihrauch. In this article we extend this result. We study the computable relation between three Banach spaces, the space of linear continuous functionals with operator norm, the space of (normalized) functions of bounded variation with total variation norm, and the space of bounded signed Borel measures with variation norm. We introduce natural representations for defining computability. We prove that the canonical linear bijections between these spaces and their inverses are computable. We also prove that Jordan decomposition is computable on each of these spaces.


Indian hedgehog (Ihh), one of the three mammalian hedgehog (Hh) proteins, coordinates proliferation and differentiation of chondrocytes during endochondral bone development. Smoothened (Smo) is a transmembrane protein that transduces all Hh signals. In order to discern the direct versus indirect roles of Ihh in cartilage development, we have used the Cre-loxP approach to remove Smo activity specifically in chondrocytes. Animals generated by this means develop shorter long bones when compared to wild-type littermates. In contrast to Ihh mutants (Ihh(n)/Ihh(n)), chondrocyte differentiation proceeds normally. However, like Ihh(n)/Ihh(n) mice, proliferation of chondrocytes is reduced by about 50%, supporting a direct role for Ihh in the regulation of chondrocyte proliferation. Moreover, by overexpressing either Ihh or a constitutively active Smo allele (Smo*) specifically in the cartilage using the bigenic UAS-Gal4 system, we demonstrate that activation of the Ihh signaling pathway is sufficient to promote chondrocyte proliferation. Finally, expression of cyclin D1 is markedly downregulated when either Ihh or Smo activity is removed from chondrocytes, indicating that Ihh regulates chondrocyte proliferation at least in part by modulating the transcription of cyclin D1. Taken together, the present study establishes Ihh as a key mitogen in the endochondral skeleton.


In this paper, we propose a simple but effective way of improving the performance of channel estimation (CE) for pilot cyclic prefixed single carrier (PCP-SC) system. The proposed method utilizes the property that the shifting signal of the PCP pilot signal can also be utilized to estimate the channel information. The receiver can continuously estimate the channel information by just shifting the received pilot signal. Regardless of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the pilot type, the proposed method can achieve about a 1.72dB performance gain in terms of the mean squared error (MSE) of channel estimation with a slight increase in computational complexity. The BER performance with the proposed CE improvement are evaluated in a multipath fading channel using a zero-forcing (ZF) equalizer and an minmum mean squared error (MMSE) equalizer by computer simulation. It is shown that the proposed CE improvment method using an MMSE equalizer which has an unbiased vlaue of noise variance (NV) estimator gives a promising BER performance. The proposed method also benefits the estimation of the SNR for the single carrier system.


Extracted from text ... REGISTRAR PRIZE
45
Endothelium derived factors and pulmonary hypertension
level.
Several genetic factors clearly play a role in this disease. It has
recently been discovered that primary pulmonary hypertensives lack
a receptor for Transforming Growth Factor-??which may allow clonal
expansion of endothelial cells.4
Nitric Oxide
Previously known as Endothelin Derived Relaxant Factor, Nitric
Oxide (NO) is a potent vasodilator of pulmonary and systemic blood
vessels. Pulmonary selectivity relies on inhaled NO being delivered
directly to ventilated pulmonary vasculature with rapid plasma inactivation
before reaching the systemic circulation.
Inhaled NO has been used for persistent pulmonary hypertension
of the newborn, ..


Nowadays, the aviation industry is one of the most important sectors in our society with a great variety of aircraft. Its development and evolution has brought the appearance of new aircraft and, consequently, an increase in the number of aircraft operations in both air and on the ground. Increasing the number of activities in both Air Traffic Management (ATM) and Air Traffic Flow Management (ATFM) has also led to a greater use of the airspace capacity. What it means is that the capacity has been optimized in order to perform more aircraft operations per minute without taking into account the aerial rules and regulations already established. One of the consequences of the optimization of the airspace capacity was the closer approximation between aircraft, that is to say, a reduction of the distance between the leading and the following aircraft. The approximation, which was carried out without taking into account any law, led to some really dangerous situations between aircraft due to the appearance of an effect on the following aircraft, called turbulences or shaking effects, which had never experienced before and which led them to be crashed. Thus, scientists established an uncertainty area, called Wake Turbulence, which should be avoided by all aircraft flying behind another aircraft in order to prevent such dangerous situations. Consequently, the aim of this thesis is to understand what a wake turbulence is and to establish safety distances requirements between aircraft. On the one side, what it is going to be studied is what a wake turbulence is, including its properties and characteristics, for a better understanding of what it is. On the other side, a type of modeling of the wake turbulence done previously is going to be studied in order to know how much the wake turbulence descends and moves and, once it is done, a new modeling of the wake turbulence is going to be performed basing on previous studies. In addition to it, another simulation is going to be performed in order to see some collision scenarios between aircraft where the wake turbulence is involved. And, finally, once it is done, the minimal safety distance that UAS will have to maintain respect to other aircraft may be estimated.


A two-year ocean experiment involving wave-induced forces on a test pipe mounted on the sea floor [Grace and Nicinski (1976)] involved the measurement of various quantities other than the pipe forces per se. A pair of these involved surface wave characteristics and wave-induced water motion at the level of the pipe centerline but off to one end of the pipe. These wave-kinematics data have been combined, and the results of this work make up this paper in which the emphasis is on the deterministic approach to data interpretation. Presented are comparisons of the velocity and acceleration data with the predictions of Airy and stream function theories plus discussion of the dispersion of the field data. The primary intent of the paper is to suggest to designers of bottom-laid structures, such as pipes, how values of the peak velocity and maximum acceleration of the water motion associated with a non-breaking design wave of specified characteristics can be chosen.


BACKGROUND
Individuals with fragile X-associated tremor/ataxia syndrome frequently have associated features of parkinsonism, often leading to an initial diagnosis of Parkinson disease or other parkinsonism spectrum disorders. Parkinson disease populations may thus include individuals who harbor premutation expansions (55-200 CGG repeats) of the fragile X mental retardation 1 (FMR1) gene.

OBJECTIVE
To screen DNA samples (male) from an Italian Parkinson disease clinic for an excess of premutation expansions of the FMR1 gene.

DESIGN
DNA samples obtained from 903 unrelated males through consecutive clinic visits were analyzed by an enhanced polymerase chain reaction method for detecting expanded CGG repeats.

SETTING
Diagnostic assessments were performed at the Parkinson Institute, Istituti Clinici di Perfezionamento, Milan, Italy. Genotyping was conducted at the University of California Davis School of Medicine.

PARTICIPANTS
A cohort of unrelated males with clinical features of parkinsonism. All but 12 males were of Italian origin, and all reported Caucasian ethnicity.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE
CGG repeat number.

RESULTS
Three premutation carriers (61, 69, and 80 CGG repeats) were identified (0.33%), which is not significantly higher than the frequency of premutation alleles in the general population. The outcome of the current study, the largest screen of individuals with parkinsonism to date, supports previous screens of smaller parkinsonism cohorts.

CONCLUSION
Broad screening for premutation alleles in Parkinson disease populations is unlikely to be productive in the absence of additional clinical or family history data that suggest involvement of the FMR1 gene.


In recent years, the decay η → 3π has received considerable attention from experimental and theoretical side. It is of particular theoretical interest because it allows for the determination of (mu −md). In addition, for many years now theory has had difficulties to understand the slope of the neutral channel Dalitz plot distribution, which in contrast is very well measured. I discuss here the relation of the decay to the masses of the light quarks and review a number of theoretical and experimental works that are concerned with these questions.


Herbs with antioxidants and antimicrobial activity play a vital role in prevention and cure of certain complex diseases. Cycas circinalis and Ionidium Suffruticosum are the herbs taken to study its antimicrobial and antioxidant activity. The ethanolic extract of the above 2 herbs were taken and the antimicrobial activity was studied by Kirby-Bauer disk diffusion method and the antioxidant activity was analyzed by percentage inhibition of DPPH activity. Around 8 species of microorganisms were taken for antimicrobial assay. The Cycas circinalis showed 0.7mm of zone of inhibition for Staphylococcus aureus in culture whereas Ionidium Suffruticosum showed 1mm and 0.4 mm of zone of inhibition for Escherichia colli and Salmonella typhi respectively. The rest of all species were non-reactive for both the herbal extracts. The IC 50 values of I.suffruticosum at various concentrations were 95.6, 96.0 and 97.6 respectively whereas for C.circinalis, it was 78.7, 85.9 and 87.5 respectively. The IC 50 value of I.suffruticosum shows that the herb has more antioxidant property when compared to that of C.circinalis and standard (ascorbic acid). The study shows that I.suffruticosum and C.circinalis both have mild antimicrobial activity acting only on 2 species of bacteria and the rest were dormant. I.suffruticosum and C.circinalis both were found to have antioxidant activity. This is a preliminary study done on the above 2 herbs which is a part of vast ongoing research work.


Many books discuss the theology and doctrine of the medieval liturgy: there is no dearth of information on the history of the liturgy, the structure and development of individual services, and there is much discussion of specific texts, chants, and services. No book, at least in English, has struggled with the difficulties of finding texts, chants, or other material in the liturgical manuscripts themselves, until the publication of Medieval Manuscripts for Mass and Office in 1982. Encompassing a period of several centuries, ca 1200-1500, this book provides solutions for such endeavours. Although by this period the basic order and content of liturgical books were more or less standardized, there existed hundreds of different methods of dealing with the internal organisation and the actual writing of the texts and chants on the page. Generalization becomes problematic; the use of any single source as a typical example for more than local detail is impossible. Taking for granted the user's ability to read medieval scripts, and some codicological knowledge, Hughes begins with the elementary material without which the user could not proceed. He describes the liturgical year, season, day, service, and the form of individual items such as responsory or lesson, and mentions the many variants in terminology that are to be found in the sources. The presentation of individual text and chant is discussed, with an emphasis on the organisation of the individual column, line, and letter. Hughes examines the hitherto unexplored means by which a hierarchy of initial and capital letters and their colours are used by the scribes and how this hierarchy can provide a means by which the modern researcher can navigate through the manuscripts. Also described in great detail are the structure and contents of Breviaries, Missals, and the corresponding books with music. This new edition updates the bibliography and the new preface by Hughes presents his recent thoughts about terminology and methods of liturgical abbreviation.


ABSTRACT Acinetobacter baumannii A118 was isolated from a patient's blood culture. It is susceptible to several antibiotics, is naturally competent, and supports replication and stable maintenance of four plasmid replicons. A. baumannii A118 took up a fluorophore-labeled oligonucleotide analog. These characteristics make this isolate a convenient model for genetic studies.


English has become a global language and the number of users of English who are not native speakers has exceeded the numbers of native speakers. While studies show that Scandinavians are proficient users of English very little is known about how much English the average Icelander encounters on a daily basis. English has become a lingua franca in many companies and private and public institutions in Iceland where it may primarily be used among non-native speakers. Previous research done at the University of Iceland suggests that Icelandic users of English may overestimate their English proficiency, and as exposure to English is largely confined to reading and listening, proficiency may be much higher in receptive language skills than productive skills causing difficulty when professionals are called to use English in communication. Research is being done on Icelandic companies and institutions and this thesis examines the six social service centers in Reykjavik. The role of these centers is to inform, assist and serve all those living in Reykjavik. Can the staff speak, read and write English as the demands of their job dictate? How do they view their own proficiency and how often do they actually use English? To answer these questions, an electronic survey was sent to the 198 employees currently working for the Reykjavik Division of Welfare and located at the six social service centers scattered around Reykjavik. The results were similar to the results of previous studies in Iceland as the respondents over-estimated their English proficiency since their usage is mostly receptive and they do not actually produce English on a daily basis.


Higher Education institutes and staff are under more pressure to provide skills that go beyond the knowledge acquisition and deepening that Universities have been known for traditionally. The need to provide transferrable skills, to offer practical experience and to develop employability amongst students challenges existing assessment structures. External-facing assessments could provide one solution. I present a cross-institutional staff-student project in relation to the introduction and practical implementation of external-facing assessments. The aim of the project is to formulate dual purpose portfolios with structured tasks and evaluation criteria, which can then be integrated into or fully replace existing module assessments. In this roundtable contribution, I present findings from the first stage of the project, which include practical, ethical, legal and methodological issues, such as concerns around the use of technology and added pressures on students, the sharing of personal reflections with the public, and matters relating to copyrights and property rights.


As the frequency of multiple pregnancies is increasing, every obstetrician has to know that the correct, accurate, and timely determination of gestational age, chorionicity, and amnionicity has significant importance in the management of a multiple pregnancy. Surveillance, complications, outcome, morbidity, and mortality are totally different in a monochorionic and a dichorionic pregnancy. In this chapter, we will present the sonographic figures that are visualized in the first trimester in a multiple pregnancy and help us define the gestational age, chorionicity, and amnionicity. We will classify them into two periods: the early first trimester, including the 10 first weeks of gestation and the late first trimester including the period between the 10th and 14th week of gestation. Finally, we will review some interesting, although infrequent, cases from the literature, showing that pitfalls in the determination of both chorionicity and amnionicity exist and highlighting the importance of being aware of their subsistence.


Probabilistic modeling is cyclical: we specify a model, infer its posterior, and evaluate its performance. Evaluation drives the cycle, as we revise our model based on how it performs. This requires a metric. Traditionally, predictive accuracy prevails. Yet, predictive accuracy does not tell the whole story. We propose to evaluate a model through posterior dispersion. The idea is to analyze how each datapoint fares in relation to posterior uncertainty around the hidden structure. This highlights datapoints the model struggles to explain and provides complimentary insight to datapoints with low predictive accuracy. We present a family of posterior dispersion indices (PDI) that capture this idea. We show how a PDI identifies patterns of model mismatch in three real data examples: voting preferences, supermarket shopping, and population genetics.


Wyre Council has introduced a number of dog control orders aimed at encouraging responsible dog ownership and reducing dog related anti-social behaviour


This study provides an improved methodology for investigating the trade‐offs between the health risks and economic benefits of using atrazine in the agricultural sector by incorporating public attitude to pesticide management in the analysis. Regression models are developed to predict finished water atrazine concentration in high‐risk community water supplies in the United States. The predicted finished water atrazine concentrations are then used in a health risk assessment. The computed health risks are compared with the total economic surplus in the U.S. corn market for different atrazine application rates using estimated demand and supply functions developed in this work. Analysis of different scenarios with consumer price premiums for chemical‐free and reduced‐chemical corn indicate that if the society is willing to pay a price premium, risks can be reduced without a large reduction in the total economic surplus and net benefits may be higher. The results also show that this methodology provides an improved scientific framework for future decision making and policy evaluation in pesticide management.


Templating is an important and established step in the preoperative planning process of total hip arthroplasty (THA) in order to select the size and position of the implant. In severely arthritic cases, the unaffected contralateral side is sometimes used as a reference to reconstruct morphological parameters of the planned implantation (ipsilateral) side, for example the femoral offset, the leg length or the antetorsion. Recent studies have shown that a significant side-to-side asymmetry of important proximal femoral parameters already exists in healthy subjects questioning the validity of the contralateral side as a reference. However, if preoperative asymmetry is larger than asymmetry in healthy subjects, preoperative planning can still make use of the contralateral side to target a postoperative result within the range of physiological asymmetry. Therefore, the specific objective of this study was to quantify the preoperative side-to-side asymmetry of five important morphological parameters of the proximal femur. Significant side-toside differences between the ipsilateral side and the contralateral side were detected for the antetorsion, the offset, the neck length and the femoral length. The antetorsion is significantly higher for the ipsilateral side whereas offset, neck length and femoral length are significantly smaller. Mean and maximum difference in antetorsion is almost twice as high for the THA patients in comparison to healthy subjects. The same trend can be observed for the femoral length, less pronounced also for the caput-collum-diaphyseal angle. The comparison of proximal femoral side-to-side differences for subjects before THA and healthy subjects leads to the conclusion that contralateral templating can be a reasonable basis for THA planning of severely arthritic hips if the contralateral side shows no signs of osteoarthritis or developmental dysplasia. Health Sciences EPiC Series in Health Sciences Volume 3, 2019, Pages 127–132 CAOS 2019. The 19th Annual Meeting of the International Society for Computer Assisted Orthopaedic Surgery P. Meere and F. Rodriguez Y Baena (eds.), CAOS 2019 (EPiC Series in Health Sciences, vol. 3), pp. 127–132


Nanotechnology is a technology of the design and the applications of nanoscale materials with their fundamentally new properties and functions. Nanosensor devices based on nanomaterials provide very fast response, low-cost, long-life time, easy to use for unskilled users, and provide high-efficiency.1-D ZnO nanostructures materials have great potential applications in various sensing applications. ZnO is a wide band gap (3.37 eV at room temperature) semiconductor materials having large exciton binding energy (60 meV) and excellent chemical stability, electrical, optical, piezoelectric and pyroelectric properties. By doping the transition metals (TM) into ZnO matrix, the properties of ZnO nanostructures can be tuned and its room temperature ferromagnetic behavior can be enhanced, which provide the TM-doped ZnO nanostructures as promising candidate for optoelectronic, spintronics and high performance sensors based devices. The synthesis of ZnO and TM-doped ZnO nanostructures via the low temperature hydrothermal method is considered a promising technique due to low cost, environmental friendly, simple solution process, diverse 1-D ZnO nanostructures can be achieved, and large scale production on any type of substrate, and their properties can be controlled by the growth parameters. However, to synthesize 1-D ZnO and TM-doped ZnO nanostructures with controlled shape, structure and uniform size distribution on large area substrates with desirable properties, low cost and simple processes are of high interest and it is a big challenge at present.The main purpose of this dissertation aims to develop new techniques to synthesize 1-D ZnO and (Fe, Mn)-doped ZnO nanostructures via the hydrothermal method, to characterize and to enhance their functional properties for developing sensing devices such as biosensors for clinical diagnoses and environmental monitoring applications, piezoresistive sensors and UV photodetector.The first part of the dissertation deals with the hydrothermal synthesis of ZnO nanostructures with controlled shape, structure and uniform size distribution under different conditions and their structural characterization. The possible parameters affecting the growth which can alter the morphology, uniformity and properties of the ZnO nanostructures were investigated. Well-aligned ZnO nanorods have been fabricated for high sensitive piezoresistive sensor. The development of creatinine biosensor for clinical diagnoses purpose and the development of glucose biosensor for indirect determination of mercury ions for an inexpensive and unskilled users for environmental monitoring applications with highly sensitive, selective, stable, reproducible, interference resistant, and fast response time have been fabricated based on ZnO nanorods.The second part of the dissertation presents a new hydrothermal synthesis of (Fe, Mn)-doped-ZnO nanostructures under different preparation conditions, their properties characterization and the fabrication of piezoresistive sensors and UV photodetectors based devices were demonstrated. The solution preparation condition and growth parameters that influences on the morphology, structures and properties of the nanostructures were investigated. The fabrication of Mn-doped-ZnO NRs/PEDOT:PSS Schottky diodes used as high performance piezoresistive sensor and UV photodetector have been studied and Fe-doped ZnO NRs/FTO Schottky diode has also been fabricated for high performance of UV photodetector. Finally, a brief outlook into future challenges and relating new opportunities are presented in the last part of the dissertation.


One major challenge for monocular 3D human pose estimation in-the-wild is the acquisition of training data that contains unconstrained images annotated with accurate 3D poses. In this paper, we address this challenge by proposing a weakly-supervised approach that does not require 3D annotations and learns to estimate 3D poses from unlabeled multi-view data, which can be acquired easily in in-the-wild environments. We propose a novel end-to-end learning framework that enables weakly-supervised training using multi-view consistency. Since multi-view consistency is prone to degenerated solutions, we adopt a 2.5D pose representation and propose a novel objective function that can only be minimized when the predictions of the trained model are consistent and plausible across all camera views. We evaluate our proposed approach on two large scale datasets (Human3.6M and MPII-INF-3DHP) where it achieves state-of-the-art performance among semi-/weakly-supervised methods.


A new species of Russula , subgenus Compactae , is described growing in association with coast live oak ( Quercus agrifolia ) in California.  This species has previously been referred to locally as Russula subnigricans Hongo and Russula eccentrica Peck, but morphological and DNA evidence show that it is a distinct species which we call R. cantharellicola . Our analysis shows that there are multiple clades of what is called R. subnigricans , and that the California species clearly falls within one of those clades. As R. subnigricans has caused deaths in Japan, China, and Taiwan, the California species should be cautioned as potentially dangerous to those who consume it.


A central question in mass media research concerns whether the American press observes the journalistic norm of objectivity or not. Some scholars believe that the American press covers international news from the American perspective. They also propose that the American press 1S dominated by such American ideologies as ethnocentrism, individualism, anticommunism and free market economic principles. But there are other scholars who argue that the American press holds a detached and objective manner toward international affairs. This study attempts to apply W. L. Bennett's theory of political symbolism to approach the issue of objectivity. A content analysis is designed to examine the symbol usage of Newsweek and Time in their coverage of the 1989 Chinese Student Movement. It is assumed that referential symbols represent the objective attitude of the journalists and condensational symbols show the journalists' biased tendency in their news reports. By examining the usage of these two kinds of symbols, the author hopes that the findings will make some empirical contribution to the academic research concerning the objectivity of the American press. At the same time, a qualitative approach of text analysis in the discussion of American press ideologies will add some new evidence to the similar research.


AIMS
Little is known about smoking during the transition to college. The current study examined trajectories of smoking among college freshmen, how trajectories predicted later smoking and the social context of smoking.

DESIGN
Weekly assessments of daily smoking were collected via the web during the first year of college for a large cohort with a previous history of smoking.

PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING
A total of 193 college freshmen from a large public university with a previous history of smoking who smoked frequently enough to be included in trajectory analysis.

MEASUREMENTS
Measures included weekly reports of daily smoking, family smoking, perceived peer attitudes and smoking, social norms and social smoking environment.

FINDINGS
Seven trajectories were identified: one of low-level sporadic smoking, one of low-level smoking with a small increase during the year, two classes with a substantial decrease during the year, two classes with relatively small decreases and one class with a substantial increase in smoking. Trajectories of smoking in the freshman year predicted levels of sophomore year smoking, and some social context variables tended to change as smoking increased or decreased for a given trajectory class.

CONCLUSIONS
The transition into college is marked by changes in smoking, with smoking escalating for some students and continuing into the sophomore year. Shifts in social context that support smoking were associated with trajectories of smoking. Despite the focus of developmental models on smoking in early adolescence, the transition into college warrants further investigation as a dynamic period for smoking.


We describe the design of a school-based healthy lifestyle intervention for eight-year-old to nine-year-old school children from lower socio-economic backgrounds, intended to increase physical activity, decrease sedentary behaviours, reduce screen-time behaviours, encourage healthy attitudes and behaviours to nutrition, and reduce body mass index. The intervention complemented the statutory curriculum and was delivered by aspiring Physical Education teachers in partnership with professional teachers. A non-randomised controlled trial of 416 children aged eight to nine years from 24 schools in Northern Ireland was performed. Schools were randomly assigned to one of two groups, an intervention or control, with 12 schools in each group. The intervention group received the 12-week healthy lifestyles programme based on social cognitive theory. Each week children received a one-hour lesson that included moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity. Lessons were progressive and included follow-up, classroom-based activities. As a motivator to be active, the intervention culminated in a visit to the university for a celebration festival with participants from other schools. At baseline and at 12-week follow-up, physical activity, screen-time behaviours, dietary patterns and self-perceptions were assessed. Anthropometric assessments of height and weight were also taken. Preliminary baseline findings showed no differences on self-report physical activity, and accelerometer-observed vigorous, moderate, light and sedentary behaviour, screen-time behaviours, attitudes to nutrition or self-perceptions. We predict that the intervention will increase physical activity, reduce sedentary behaviour, have a positive influence on nutritional behaviour, reduce screen time, regulate body mass index and increase self-perception. With the findings we will provide further information on the effects of a school-based intervention to a sample of children from social and financial disadvantage.


This working paper examines the origins and development of the Koc Group, which grew to be the largest business group in Turkey. This enterprise was an important actor in the emergence of modern business enterprise in the new state of the Republic of Turkey from the 1920s. After World War II it diversified rapidly, forming part of a cluster of business groups which dominated the Turkish economy alongside state-owned firms. This study shows how the founder of the Group, Vehbi Koc, formulated his business model, and analyzes how his firm evolved into a diversified business group. The research supports prevailing explanations of business groups which identify the role of institutional voids, government policies and contact capabilities, but it also builds on and extends earlier suggestions in both the management and business history literatures that entrepreneurship needs incorporating more strongly as an explanatory factor. This working paper argues that Koc acted as both a Kirznerian and Schumpeterian entrepreneur to build his business group, both in its formative stages and later in its subsequent growth into a diversified group.


We present an optical tweezer sensor for shear stress mapping in microfluidic systems of different internal geometries. The sensor is able to measure the shear stress acting on microspheres of different sizes that model cell based biological operations. Without the need for a spatial modulator or a holographic disk, the sensor allows for direct shear stress detection at arbitrary positions in straight and curved microfluidic devices. Analytical calculations are carried out and compared with the experimental results. It is observed that a decrease in the microsphere size results in an increase in the shear stress the particle experiences.


During the Elsterian Glaciation, the Scandinavian Ice Sheet, before reaching its maximum extent, advanced over the mountainous foreland of Southern Poland, which was characterized by a substrate of increasingly varied relief. One such area was the hilly Rybnik Plateau of the southern part of the Raciborz–Oświecim Basin, located directly north of the Ostrava Basin and Moravian Gate, where the ice sheet advanced far south and formed a large lobe. In this study, till from the Łaziska site, located in southern part of the Rybnik Plateau, was analysed and interpreted. The till was deposited at the top of an W–E oriented ridge composed of Neogene clays. The study indicates that a high basal water pressure occurred at the base of the ice sheet, favouring a basal mechanism of ice sheet movement. Till fabric and kinematic structures indicate that ice flowed easily from the west over the ridge, parallel to its axis. Reconstructed patterns of ice flow direction reflect an ice sheet that was characterized by a strong spatially varied dynamics. The Odra Valley was the main corridor of fast flowing ice to the Ostrava Basin, from where ice was distributed radially in different directions. The second corridor of actively flowing ice was probably located in the Ruda palaeovalley to the north of the Rybnik Plateau. In the central part of the Rybnik Plateau, ice flow was restricted. This less dynamic ice sheet behaviour resulted mostly from the much higher location of the area. This study indicates that the large morphological and lithological variations of the ice sheet substrate induced varied frictional resistance, producing a spatially varied stress field within the ice sheet. This generated active zones of streaming ice adjacent to more passive zones. Potential switching between neighbouring active zones transporting ice towards the ice sheet margin is postulated.


Fideism, or basing one's religious belief on faith, is popular especially amongst modern Protestant Christians. For the fideist, religious belief-systems are not subject to rational evaluation, and faith as the act of belief forms the essence of truth and the ultimate criterion for embracing a religion. Critics of fideism say that epistemologically, a hierarchy of methods can be used to derive the truth, and each method gives us varying confidence levels. These methods include mathematics and logic, science, personal experience, history, expert testimony, inference and Faith. Among these, the critic says, pure faith in something is the least successful in getting at the truth. Radical fideists like Kierkegaard do not cite logical reasons for defending their belief that God exists. Personal reasons are instead offered for their decision to believe. In this thesis I seek to demonstrate that the radical fideism advocated by Kierkegaard constitutes good justification for belief in the Christian God. I will begin with a discussion on fideism and some of its proponents, followed by a discussion on the place of faith (as a non-rational belief in God's existence) in religion. I will then appeal to Kierkegaard's philosophy in defending my view that religious belief in God is a matter of faith and personal commitment, feeling and passion, and this is an inner process not grounded in arguments. References will be drawn from Kierkegaard's themes of faith, subjectivity and inwardness. I conclude by saying that even if no objective grounds exist to justify our belief, Kierkegaard standpoint remains right in two ways: Firstly, the fideist rejection of the attempt to justify his belief through offering reasons for it is precisely what makes his decision to believe deeply meaningful in his life. Secondly, those who 'try to judge faith by objective, critical reflection will go on forever that way, and will never reach the point of having faith and of being religious'. (Peterson et al, 2003:53)