A lot of rules systems generated from decision trees (like CART, ID3, C4.5, etc) or from counting frequencies direct methods, usually provides non-significant or even contradictory rules. Most existing papers on the subject reach very important reductions over generated rules sets by searching and removing redundancies and conflicts and simplifying similarities between them. In this paper we propose an algorithm (RBS: Reduction Based on Significance) for allocating a significance value to each rule in the system. This significance value may be used by experts to point out which of these rules must be considered preferable and to understand the exact correlation degree between different rule attributes. The significance is calculated from support and confidence parameters. For each rule, if its support is over a minimum level and its confidence is into a critical interval, its significance ratio is calculated by the algorithm. Thus, the rules space is divided according to these critical boundaries which are calculated by an incremental method. Finally, the significance function is defined in each of these intervals. Like other rules reduction methods, our approach can also be applied to rules sets generated from decision trees or frequency counting algorithms, in an absolutely independent way and after the rules set was created. So, our RBS algorithm does not change the original accuracy of the rules. The proposed method has been executed over three different data sets: two of them belong to UCI (University of California, Irvine) standard repository and the third is a real irrigation data set provided by the users. The validity of our reduction approach on the later data set is supervised and contrasted by experts. The computational experience provided in this paper supplies rules sets more reduced, ordered and easily understandable than the original ones.


Lithuania is currently undergoing the development of new social relations and new legal norms that not only facilitate the emergence of economic entities but also simplify the procedure of their discontinuation. One of the main elements of discontinuation relates to insolvency (failure of an economic entity to fulfill its monetary obligations in relation to its financial and credit liabilities). It is this criterion that enables to distinguish when a company is profitable and when it is operating at a loss, and when the state needs to intervene in order to protect a certain public or private interest. Solvency is an economic concept regulated by legal norms. This term is discussed in relation to business economics, microeconomics, financial analysis as well as other economic sciences; however, in this work economic concepts and theory will only help to mould key theses and conclusions, while the problems of solvency will be discussed from the point of view of legal effectiveness and justice. The work analyses, by means of different methods, insolvency proceedings, conditions determining insolvency, grounds for instituting bankruptcy proceedings, conditions necessary to address a court with a request to recognize a company insolvent, the main financial criteria – indicators allowing the conclusion that an economic entity is insolvent. It also tries to search for the most acceptable concept of insolvency and for solutions to the problems arising in an attempt to determine whether a company is insolvent or not. The article reveals the content of legal norms regulating insolvency (laws, secondary legislation, court decisions), describes how insolvency proceedings are regulated in other legal systems, what problems arise in an attempt to determine insolvency and their possible solutions, and discusses the impact of insolvency taking into account the existing economic conditions.


The text which is hereby made available in translation originates as a lengthy
appendix to Stein's main work Finite and Eternal Being. It was, however, left out
of the first edition of this work (1950) and in the reprint of Edith Steins Werke 1
and thus the editors of the Collected Works of Edith Stein likewise left it for a
future occasion. The omission has been emended in the new critical edition Edith
Steins Gesamtausgabe, 2 and a completed English translation will follow in due
course.
The essay is divided into four sections, each concerned with one of
Heidegger's (until then) published works: Being and Time Kant and the Problem
of Metaphysics The Essence of Reasons and What is Metaphysics? About two
thirds is taken up with an analysis of Being and Time, again simply divided into
an 'Outline of the Argument' and an 'Evaluation'. The latter part addresses three
questions: 'What is Dasein'? 'Is the Analysis of Dasein Accurate?' and 'Is it
sufficient for adequately addressing the Question of the Meaning of Being?'.


Background: Rhinoplasty surgery, performed for the treatment of "saddle-back" nose, has significantly improved in the last decades due to better management of grafts and implants. However, the choice of these materials is controversial and remains a subject of discussion. Scar contracture forces in nasal deformities prevent any type of reconstruction that is not rigid or semi-rigid. Therefore, the bone graft is an appropriate choice because it is stable, available, and reliable with regard to aesthetic outcomes. The olecranon bone graft is easily harvested and has a single cortical thickness, which is essential for resisting bone resorption and for providing long-lasting cosmetic results. The aim of this study is to discuss the advantages of the olecranon bone graft in rhinoplasty and to demonstrate our experience with this procedure. Methods: In this descriptive and retrospective study, we reviewed the medical records of patients who underwent olecranon bone grafting for nasal dorsal augmentation between January 2000 and January 2010 and were consequently followed-up for an equivalent period, at the Plastic Surgery Service of Hospital Daher Lago Sul (Daher Lago Sul Hospital, Brasília, DF, Brazil). Possible graft resorption was monitored by anthropometric measurements of the nose with photographic documentation and graft radiological control. Results: Satisfactory aesthetic results were achieved for the 9 patients who underwent surgery. According to the examinations performed to monitor possible graft resorption, projection loss or signs of bone resorption were not observed for up to 6 years after surgery. Conclusions: The olecranon bone graft proved to be a suitable choice for primary or secondary rhinoplasty to treat "saddle-back" nose, with no long-term resorption or morbidity of the donor area observed up to this point. Moreover, the olecranon bone graft provides satisfactory, predictable, and long-lasting aesthetic results.


The isolation of the pneumococcus (Streptococcus pneumoniae) was improved, and gave large mucoid colonies, when incubated in an anaerobic environment containing extra CO2. Both reduction of oxygen tension, with a reduction in the formation of peroxides, and a variable requirement for CO2 were necessary for optimal recovery of strains from children. During a four year period 1736 pneumococci isolated from samples at the Children's Hospital, Sheffield were serotyped, their requirement for CO2 and sensitivity to antibiotics were collated with patients details. This information was analysed for patterns both in health and disease as a background to clinical management and the introduction of vaccination in high risk patients. Serotyping of strains by co-agglutination of sensitised protein-A particles, was quicker and as sensitive as crossed immuno-electrophoresis (CIE), without requiring the complex CIE equipment. The increased and more active growth obtained under anaerobic conditions enhanced detection of pneumococcal enzymes, including sugar fermentation. New specific substrates, e.g. the APIZYM system, and those linked to nitrophenyl compounds were found to be applicable to the pneumococcus. A second new area of investigation, the differentiation of the pneumococcus by its sensitivity to a range of dye substances, was discovered and developed. Further unique differences were seen in the shape and colour of colonies on Mitis salivarius agar, CO2 requirement, haemolysins and sensitivity to tetracycline. Another antibiotic, mecillinam, was found for the practical recognition of penicillin-tolerant strains as an alternative to the use of cloxacillin for this purpose. Much of the work in this study has not previously been reported and should form the basis of a number of new approaches and may lead to a scheme, at present not available, for the differentiation and characterisation of the pneumococcus beyond the capsular serotype.


This paper presents the use of polyelectrolyte-decorated amyloid fibrils as gate electrolyte in electrochromic electrochemical transistors. Conducting polymer alkoxysulfonate poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT-S) and luminescent conjugate polymer poly(thiophene acetic acid) (PTAA) are utilized to decorate insulin amyloid fibrils for gating lateral poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrene sulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) electrochemical transistors. In this comparative work, four gate electrolytes are explored, including the polyelectrolytes and their amyloid-fibril complexes. The discrimination of transistor behaviors with different gate electrolytes is understood in terms of an electrochemical mechanism. The combination of luminescent polymers, biomolecules and electrochromic transistors enables multi functions in a single device, for example, the color modulation in monochrome electrochromic display, as well as biological sensing/labeling.


OBJECTIVE
Adequate restoration of intravascular volume remains an important maneuver in the management of the surgical patient. Influence of different volume replacement regimens on inflammation/endothelial activation in elderly surgical patients was assessed.

DESIGN
Prospective, randomized study.

SETTING
Surgical intensive care unit of a university-affiliated hospital.

PATIENTS
Sixty-six patients >65 years undergoing major abdominal surgery.

INTERVENTIONS
Ringer's lactate (RL; n=22), normal saline solution (NS; n=22) or a low-molecular HES (mean molecular weight 130 kD) with a low degree of substitution (0.4; HES 130/0.4; n=22) were administered after induction of anesthesia until the 1st postoperative day (POD) to keep central venous pressure between 8-12 mmHg.

MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS
C-reactive protein, interleukins (IL-6, IL-8), adhesion molecules [endothelial leukocyte adhesion molecule-1 (ELAM-1) and intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1)] were measured prior to volume therapy at the end of surgery, 5 h after surgery and at the morning of the 1st POD. RL patients received 10,150+/-1,660 ml of RL, NS patients 10,220+/-1,770 ml of NS and the HES-treated group 2,850+/-300 ml of HES 130/0.4 and 2,810+/-350 ml of RL. Hemodynamics were similar in all groups. CRP, IL-6 and IL-8 plasma levels increased significantly higher in both crystalloid groups (IL-6 in the NS group: increase to 407+/-33 pg/ml; RL: increase to 377+/-35 pg/dl) than in the HES-130 treated group (IL-6: increase to 197+/-20 pg/dl). Plasma levels of ELAM-1 and ICAM remained almost unchanged in the HES 130-, but significantly increased in the RL- and NS-treated patients.

CONCLUSIONS
In elderly patients, markers of inflammation and endothelial injury and activation were significantly higher after crystalloid- than after HES 130/0.4-based volume replacement regimens.


Introduction: Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan, is located at latitude 30,25; longitude 67.00. It has a population of 759,245; 425,474 males (56%) and 333,771 females (44%); Census 1998. The majority of residents are Persian or Baluchi speaking Baluchs. Methodology: The cancer cases from Quetta reported to the Karachi Cancer Registry were reviewed. The data included cases from the Aga Khan University Hospital (AKUH), Pathology Department (Quetta collection point) and health care facilities in Karachi. The residents of Baluchistan were ascertained and cancer cases residents of Quetta identified with the help of recorded addresses and retraceable telephone numbers. Results: During a 2-year period, 1st January 1998 to 31st December 1999 the Karachi Cancer Registry received 1077 cancer notifications from Quetta. Approximately half the cases were registered from the AKUH Quetta collection point. Others were the referral patterns in Karachi. The age-standardized incidence rate (ASR) of cancer, all sites (1998-99) was 137.0 for males and 92.8/100,000 for females. The commonest cancer in the males and females was cancer of the esophagus (lCD10 categories C15; malesASR 25.5, 17.2 %; femalesASR 23.4, 23.1%). One of the highest in the world, for both genders. Incidence of cancer breast in the females (lCD-10 categories C50; ASR 11.8, 13.3%) was low, Conclusion: The cancer data from Quetta is quite distinct from the cancer pattern of Karachi. It represents only a part of the cancer burden of Quetta; nonetheless it gives a glimpse into the cancer profile of Baluchistan. The high incidence of esophageal cancer indicates an extension of the geographical limits of the esophageal cancer belt (JPMA 52:560; 2002).


The group I intron from Tetrahymena catalyzes phosphodiester transfer reactions on various RNA substrates. A modified RNA substrate with a phosphorothioate group in one stereoisomeric form at the site of reaction was synthesized in order to determine the stereochemical course of an RNA-catalyzed reaction. The reaction product was digested with a stereospecific nuclease to determine the configuration of the product phosphorothioate. The reaction occurs with inversion of configuration at phosphorus, implying an in-line pathway for the reaction.


Abstract Our point of analytical departure is that the state of the global environment is deteriorating despite the accumulating body of international environmental law. By drawing on the recent Earth system science concept of interlinked planetary boundaries, this article makes a case for a goal-oriented, purposive system of multilateral environmental agreements. The notion of 'goal' is used here to mean a single, legally binding, superior norm – a grundnorm – that gives all international regimes and organizations a shared purpose to which their specific objectives must contribute. A bird's eye view of the international environmental law system reveals how the absence of a unifying goal has created a condition that is conducive to environmental problem shifting rather than problem solving. We argue that a clearly agreed goal would provide the legal system with a point of reference for legal reasoning and interpretation, thereby enhancing institutional coherence across Earth's subsystems. To this end, this article concludes by observing that the protection of the integrity of Earth's life-support system has emerged as a common denominator among international environmental law instruments. Accordingly, we suggest that this notion is a strong candidate for the overarching goal of international environmental law.


Dispersion in retail prices of identical goods is inconsistent with the standard model of price competition among identical firms, which predicts that all prices will be driven down to cost. One common explanation for such dispersion is the use of a loss-leader strategy, in which a firm prices one good below cost in order to attract a higher customer volume for profitable goods. By assuming each consumer is forced to buy all desired goods at a single firm, we create the possibility of an effective loss-leader strategy. We find that such a strategy cannot occur in equilibrium if individual demands are inelastic, or if demands are diversely distributed. We further show that equilibrium loss leaders can occur (and can result in positive profits) if there are demand complementarities, but only with delicate relationships among the preferences of all consumers. K. Price competition, price dispersion, loss leaders. JEL . D40, D43.


The Fermilab Steering Group has developed a plan to keep U.S. accelerator-based particle physics on the pathway to discovery, both at the Terascale with the LHC and the ILC and in the domain of neutrinos and precision physics with a high-intensity accelerator. The plan puts discovering Terascale physics with the LHC and the ILC as Fermilab's highest priority. While supporting ILC development, the plan creates opportunities for exciting science at the intensity frontier. If the ILC remains near the Global Design Effort's technically driven timeline, Fermilab would continue neutrino science with the NOVA experiment, using the NuMI (Neutrinos at the Main Injector) proton plan, scheduled to begin operating in 2011. If ILC construction must wait somewhat longer, Fermilab's plan proposes SNuMI, an upgrade of NuMI to create a more powerful neutrino beam. If the ILC start is postponed significantly, a central feature of the proposed Fermilab plan calls for building an intense proton facility, Project X, consisting of a linear accelerator with the currently planned characteristics of the ILC combined with Fermilab's existing Recycler Ring and the Main Injector accelerator. The major component of Project X is the linac. Cryomodules, radio-frequency distribution, cryogenics and instrumentation for the linac are themore » same as or similar to those used in the ILC at a scale of about one percent of a full ILC linac. Project X's intense proton beams would open a path to discovery in neutrino science and in precision physics with charged leptons and quarks. World-leading experiments would allow physicists to address key questions of the Quantum Universe: How did the universe come to be? Are there undiscovered principles of nature: new symmetries, new physical laws? Do all the particles and forces become one? What happened to the antimatter? Building Project X's ILC-like linac would offer substantial support for ILC development by accelerating the industrialization of ILC components in the U.S. and creating an engineering opportunity for ILC cost reductions. It offers an early and tangible application for ILC R&D in superconducting technology, attracting participation from accelerator scientists worldwide and driving forward the technology for still higher-energy accelerators of the future, such as a muon collider. To prepare for a future decision, the Fermilab Steering Group recommends that the laboratory seek R&D support for Project X, in order to produce an overall design of Project X and to spur the R&D and industrialization of ILC linac components needed for Project X. Advice from the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel will guide any future decision to upgrade the Fermilab accelerator complex, taking into account developments affecting the ILC schedule and the continuing evaluation of scientific priorities for U.S. particle physics. Fermilab should also work toward increased resources for longer-term future accelerators such as a muon collider, aiming at higher energies than the ILC would provide.« less


Over the past 10 years, Salmonella enterica serovar Enteritidis has emerged as a new serovar and a frequent cause of foodborne diseases in Taiwan. We used two molecular subtyping methods to investigate the development of the infections by S. enterica Enteritidis in Taiwan. Twenty-eight strains of S. enterica Enteritidis isolated from Taiwan during the period of 1992 to 1998 were collected. The primer pairs, MseⅠ+C/EcoRⅠ+0 and MseⅠ+G/PstⅠ+C, were used in amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) analyses, and the restriction enzyme, AvrⅡ, was used in pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). Twenty-two AFLP profiles with 53~59 fragments in each profile were found by using the primer pair, MseⅠ+G/PstⅠ+C. In the PFGE analysis, 7 PFGE types were identified. Some of the collected strains, especially the imported strains, had closer relationships with the SE 02 strain isolated from Taipei County. As our results indicate, AFLP analysis was time-saving, easy to perform, and highly discriminative. In this study, AFLP and PFGE were used to analyze the S. enterica Enteritidis isolated from patients in Taiwan. These results provide the epidemiological distribution of these isolated strains and additional evidence to illustrate the sources of the food-borne pathogens.


We demonstrate experimentally a previously proposed add-drop multiplexer in a two-moded structure with a symmetric Bragg grating. The strong dispersion in the forward direction outside the reflective region of the grating is used to create a phase change for frequencies between the bandgaps of the supermodes of a twin core fiber. The phase change in transmission inverts the interference pattern at the end of the device. Signals within a narrow wavelength range couple out to one core; all other wavelengths couple out to the opposite core. Preliminary experimental results show a crosstalk ratio of 15 dB.


Sol LeWitt, one of the most important American artists of this century, has spent the past four decades creating artworks that explore the potential of ideas for the making of visual forms. LeWitt transforms these ideas into objects of exquisite beauty and elegance, deliberately introducing elements of chance, intuition, or irrationality into the systems that govern the creation of his works. LeWitt's delicate balancing act between thought and form, between order and disorder, between authorship and anonymity, has exerted an enormous influence on artists of subsequent generations. This book, the first retrospective of LeWitt's work in more than twenty years, fosters a deeper understanding of the artist's career and its significance to American art and thought. Including essays by Gary Garrels, Martin Friedman, Brenda Richardson, and other distinguished curators and art historians, the book charts the evolution of LeWitt's art from his groundbreaking work in Conceptualism during the early 1960s through his turn toward a more lyrical and sensual form of abstraction around 1980. With more than 350 images, the book provides a stunning visual survey of LeWitt's oeuvre from 1960 to the present, including sumptuous wall drawings, three-dimensional structures, and works on paper. This handsome book is the catalogue for an exhibition that will open at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from 19 February through 30 May 2000, and will then travel to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago from July to October and to the Whitney Museum of Art in New York from November to February 2001.


Due to the fundamental satellite system characteristics such as global coverage, broadcast nature, and bandwidth on demand, satellite systems are excellent candidates for providing high data rate Internet access and global connectivity accommodating the a wide variety of applications. Provisioning of quality of service (QoS) within the advanced satellite system is the critical requirement. Congestion remains the main obstacle to Quality of Service (QoS) on the Internet. Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) is the only mechanism that delivers explicit congestion signals to the source. So improving the ECN feedback is essential for the future data and satellite networks and their QoS guarantees. In this paper we present a new traffic management scheme based on an enhanced ECN mechanism. In particular we used the mark-front strategy instead of the mark-tail one in ECN. The main advantage of mark-front strategy is that it sends faster feedback information about the congestion and consequently enables faster reaction from the source. Our analysis and simulation results show that the mark-front strategy of ECN provides better link-efficiency, fairness among users, lesser buffer requirements and much less losses than the mark-tail strategy.


It is well understood that classical sample selection models are not semiparametrically identified without exclusion restrictions. Lee (2009) developed bounds for the parameters in a model that nests the semiparametric sample selection model. These bounds can be wide. In this paper, we investigate bounds that impose the full structure of a sample selection model with errors that are independent of the explanatory variables but have unknown distribution. The additional structure can significantly reduce the identified set for the parameters of interest. Specifically, we construct the identified set for the parameter vector of interest. It is a one‐dimensional line segment in the parameter space, and we demonstrate that this line segment can be short in practice. We show that the identified set is sharp when the model is correct and empty when there exist no parameter values that make the sample selection model consistent with the data. We also provide non‐sharp bounds under the assumption that the model is correct. These are easier to compute and associated with lower statistical uncertainty than the sharp bounds. Throughout the paper, we illustrate our approach by estimating a standard sample selection model for wages.


The VuFind open–source, next-generation catalog system was implemented by the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois as an alternative to the WebVoyage OPAC system. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign began offering VuFind alongside WebVoyage in 2009 as an experiment in next generation catalogs. Using a faceted search discovery interface, it offered numerous improvements to the UIUC catalog and focused on limiting results after searching rather than limiting searches up front. Library users have praised VuFind for its Web 2.0 feel and features. However, there are issues, particularly with catalog data.


The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is considering the pros and cons of moving to semi-annual reporting from quarterly reporting at least for certain segments of the market. However, documenting causal evidence on the consequences of mandatory quarterly reporting has been difficult, due to either the absence of a clear exogenous shock or older data. We exploit the start of mandatory quarterly reporting by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in 2007 and the end of the requirement in 2014 in the United Kingdom to examine corporate and capital market behavior. After imposition of mandatory quarterly reporting in 2007, we find (i) a dramatic decline in the number of companies that issue reports with quantitative information (defined as including both sales and earnings numbers for the quarter); (ii) a substantial increase in companies announcing managerial guidance for the upcoming year's earnings or sales; and (iii) an increase in analyst following for all sample companies. However, using a difference-in-differences analysis, we find that the imposition of mandatory quarterly reporting has virtually no impact on firms' investment decisions. Companies that voluntarily moved back from quarterly to semi-annual reporting after 2014 have experienced a reduction in analyst coverage, but no detectable increases in their levels of corporate investments.


In recent years, evaluation of the quality of academic research has become an increasingly important and influential business. It determines, often to a large extent, the amount of research funding flowing into universities and similar institutes from governmental agencies and it impacts upon academic careers. Policy makers are becoming increasingly reliant upon, and influenced by, the outcomes of such evaluations. In response, university managers are increasingly attracted to simple metrics as guides to the dynamics of the positions of their various institutions in league tables. However, these league tables are invariably drawn up by inexpert bodies such as newspapers and magazines, using arbitrary measures and criteria. Terms such as "critical mass" and "h-index" are bandied about without understanding of what they actually mean. Rather than accepting the rise and fall of universities, departments and individuals on a turbulent sea of arbitrary measures, we suggest it is incumbent upon the scientific community itself to clarify their nature. Here we report on recent attempts to do that by properly defining critical mass and showing how group size influences research quality. We also examine currently predominant metrics and show that these fail as reliable indicators of group research quality.


Climate change and the emergence of new animal diseases emphasize the need to maintain and conserve plant and animal resources because of their adaptive capacity. For hundreds of millions of poor rural households, livestock production and crop farming are a key resource for life. Livestock production has great contribution and is vitally important for the life and safety of crop production. Conservation of animal genetic resources is not easy and simple, but it is of concern that in the past some animal genetic resources have been lost before their characterization and their genetic potential has not been studied. It is known that with the loss of a single breed or strain, the genetic diversity contained within also disappears. That is why it is necessary to continuously work on the conservation of animal genetic resources using various methods of conservation. The preservation and improvement of livestock production and animal genetic diversity, the preservation and the development of locally adapted (autochthonous) new breeds, as well as the preservation of genetically diverse populations provide society with a greater range of options to meet future challenges and further develop agriculture.


The main objective of this research is to demonstrate that the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), an instrument created under a global international treaty, can achieve multiple objectives beyond those for which it has been established. As such, while being already a powerful tool to contribute to the global fight against climate change, the CDM can also be successful if applied to different sectors not contemplated before. In particular, this research aimed at demonstrating that a wider utilization of the CDM in the tourism sector can represent an innovative way to foster sustainable tourism and generate additional benefits.
The CDM was created by Article 12 of the Kyoto Protocol of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and represents an innovative tool to reduce greenhouse gases emissions through the implementation of mitigation activities in developing countries which generate certified emission reductions (CERs), each of them equivalent to one ton of CO2 not emitted in the atmosphere. These credits can be used for compliance reasons by industrialized countries in achieving their reduction targets.
The logic path of this research begins with an analysis of the scientific evidences of climate change and its impacts on different economic sectors including tourism and it continues with a focus on the linkages between climate and the tourism sector. Then, it analyses the international responses to the issue of climate change and the peculiar activities in the international arena addressing climate change and the tourism sector. The concluding part of the work presents the objectives and achievements of the CDM and its links to the tourism sector by considering case studies of existing projects which demonstrate that the underlying question can be positively answered. New opportunities for the tourism sector are available.


Preeminent Civil War historian Frank Vandiver always longed to see an interpretive biography of Jefferson Davis. Finally, more than twenty years after Vandiver expressed that wish, publication of "Jefferson Davis, Unconquerable Heart" makes such an interpretive biography available.Felicity Allen begins this monumental work with Davis's political imprisonment at the end of the Civil War and masterfully flashes back to his earlier life, interweaving Davis's private life as a schoolboy, a Mississippi planter, a husband, a father, and a political leader. She follows him from West Point through army service on the frontier, his election to the U.S. House of Representatives, his regimental command in the Mexican War, his service as U.S. secretary of war and senator, and his term as president of the Confederate States of America.Although Davis's family is the nexus of this biography, friends and enemies also play major roles. Among his friends intimately met in this book are such stellar figures as Andrew Jackson, John C. Calhoun, Zachary Taylor, Franklin Pierce, Albert Sidney Johnston, and Robert E. Lee.With the use of contemporary accounts and Davis's own correspondence, "Jefferson Davis, Unconquerable Heart" casts new light upon this remarkable man, thawing the icy image of Davis in many previous accounts. Felicity Allen shows a strong, yet gentle man; a stern soldier who loved horses, guns, poetry, and children; a master of the English language, with a dry wit; a man of powerful feelings who held them in such tight control that he was considered cold; and a home-loving Mississippian who was drawn into a vortex of national events and eventual catastrophe. At all times, "duty, honor, country" ruled his mind. Davis's Christian view of life runs like a thread throughout the book, binding together his devotion to God, his family, and the land."Jefferson Davis, Unconquerable Heart" brings Davis to life in a way that has never been done before. The variety of his experience, the breadth of his learning, and the consistency of his beliefs make this historical figure eminently worth knowing.


Why did limited government and 'constitutionalism' (the rule of law, constitutional rules, and political representation) evolve in some societies but not others? Guided by history, this paper examines why this evolution reflects dependence on administrators to implement policy choices including those affecting them. Limited government and constitutionalism are manifestations of equilibria in which the administrators have the power to influence choices. The thesis that constitutionalism reflects an equilibrium among the powerful differs from the prevailing one, which asserts that it reflects gains to the weak from constraining the powerful. Analyzing the determinants and implications of administrative power reveals its impact on trajectories of economic development. Distinct administrative-power equilibria have different impacts on the security of the non-elite's property rights; intra-state and inter-state violence (e.g. civil wars and wars, respectively); policies; entry barriers to new technologies and economic sectors; the nature of political conflicts; and the means to resolve conflicts concerning political rights.


PURPOSE
To evaluate the addition of cetuximab to neoadjuvant chemotherapy before chemoradiotherapy in high-risk rectal cancer.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
Patients with operable magnetic resonance imaging-defined high-risk rectal cancer received four cycles of capecitabine/oxaliplatin (CAPOX) followed by capecitabine chemoradiotherapy, surgery, and adjuvant CAPOX (four cycles) or the same regimen plus weekly cetuximab (CAPOX+C). The primary end point was complete response (CR; pathologic CR or, in patients not undergoing surgery, radiologic CR) in patients with KRAS/BRAF wild-type tumors. Secondary end points were radiologic response (RR), progression-free survival (PFS), overall survival (OS), and safety in the wild-type and overall populations and a molecular biomarker analysis.

RESULTS
One hundred sixty-five eligible patients were randomly assigned. Ninety (60%) of 149 assessable tumors were KRAS or BRAF wild type (CAPOX, n = 44; CAPOX+C, n = 46), and in these patients, the addition of cetuximab did not improve the primary end point of CR (9% v 11%, respectively; P = 1.0; odds ratio, 1.22) or PFS (hazard ratio [HR], 0.65; P = .363). Cetuximab significantly improved RR (CAPOX v CAPOX+C: after chemotherapy, 51% v 71%, respectively; P = .038; after chemoradiation, 75% v 93%, respectively; P = .028) and OS (HR, 0.27; P = .034). Skin toxicity and diarrhea were more frequent in the CAPOX+C arm.

CONCLUSION
Cetuximab led to a significant increase in RR and OS in patients with KRAS/BRAF wild-type rectal cancer, but the primary end point of improved CR was not met.


Rubus geoides Sm. is a wild raspberry native in Patagonia. Its domestication can broaden the genetic base of the cultivated raspberry, prevent over exploitation of wild populations, and diversify fruit production in areas where few fruit species can be cultivated, like the Chilean Patagonia. One important step in the domestication of plant species is the unveiling of the reproductive biology of the species, particularly seed germination. The goal of this work was to study seed morphology and anatomy of R. geoides in order to identify possible factors that may affect germination and species identification based on seed morphology, since seed shape, surface sculpturing and raphe characteristics are discriminating factors for species identification within Rubus . Morphoanatomical studies were performed using both scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and light microscopy. Rubus geoides seeds turned out to be similar to those of R. idaeus . Seeds were pale brown, with a semi globular shape, sharpened at the apical region and oval toward the opposite end. Seed size was variable, showing an average 1.9 mm width, 2.6 mm length, and 1.3 mm thickness. Small rounded depressions and ridges sculptured seed surface. The endocarp was hard and rough, and consist of several layers of sclerenchymatous lignified cells with 139 μm averaged thickness, which suggest that to enhanced germination seed may require its weakening or eventual elimination, as is done in other Rubus species. The embryo varied with seed size between 1.6 and 2.0 mm. Energy Dispersive X-Ray Spectroscopy allowed for the identification of the endosperm cells. ABSTRACT


With the provision of innumerable benefits, cloud has become an emerging standard that brings about various technologies and computing ideas for internet. Massive storage centers are provided by the cloud which can be accessed easily from any corner of the world and at any time. The on-demand service provision with utilization of fewer resources of client system benefits the client. However, data outsourcing paradigm in cloud is one of the biggest security concerns. Frequent integrity checking is needed to keep an eye on data. The proposed scheme makes use of Merkle Hash Tree (MHT) and AES algorithm to maintain data integrity at the untrusted server. In most of the previously proposed schemes, RSA algorithm was used for storage security. AES being faster in encryptiondecryption and the buffer-space requirement being less as compared to RSA, we try to improve the performance by making use of AES algorithm. The cloud must not impose on user the responsibility to verify his/ her stored data. Taking this into consideration and relieve client from the overhead of data integrity verification, we introduce an entity called the Third Party Auditor (TPA), which acts on behalf of client for data integrity checking and send an alert to notify the status of the stored data. The proposed storage security scheme also assures recovery of data, in case of data loss or corruption, by providing a recovery system. Thus the proposed scheme aims at keeping the user data integrated and support data restore. The system also reduces the server computation time when compared with previous systems. Keywords— Advanced Encryption Standard; Cloud Computing; Merkle Hash Tree; Public Auditability; Recovery System; Third Party Auditor


The authors studied how capital flows affect hedge fund returns and found that funds with high inflows outperform funds with high outflows during the month of the flows. This immediate reaction, combined with feedback trading, gives rise to a cycle: Flows exert price pressure, this effect on returns induces more flows, and these flows cause further price pressure. The cycle is so strong that it takes two years for a full return reversal, and it contributes to the observed persistence in hedge fund performance. The impact of flows on returns has clear implications for performance evaluation: One-third of estimated hedge fund alphas are due to flows.


When the novel coronavirus moved around the planet in early 2020, reconfiguring, slowing down, or halting everyday mobilities, another transport mode was mobilized: the pandemic drone. We highlight the increasing prominence of this aerial device by surveying international media coverage of pandemic drone use in the spring of 2020. To address a range of pandemic drone affordances and applications, we organize manifold cases under two broad categories: sensing and moving with the pandemic drone. Here we ask: what roles do, and could, drones play during the pandemic? Following the empirical examples and related mobilities research, we theorize the drone versus virus and the drone as virus. As such, the work identifies avenues for mobilities research into pandemic drones as a growing mobility domain. Moreover, in thinking through the pandemic drone, we demonstrate creative extensions of mobilities thinking that bridge biological and technological, as well as media and mobility frameworks when multiple public health and safety crises unfolded and intersected.


Increasing evidence suggests that personality structure differs between species, but the evolutionary reasons for this variation are not fully understood. We built on earlier research on New World monkeys to further elucidate the evolution of personality structure in primates. We therefore examined personality in 100 family-reared adult common marmosets ( Callithrix jacchus ) from three colonies on a 60-item questionnaire. Principal components analyses revealed five domains that were largely similar to those found in a previous study on captive, ex-pet, or formerly laboratory-housed marmosets that were housed in a sanctuary. The interrater reliabilities of domain scores were consistent with the interrater reliabilities of domain scores found in other species, including humans. Four domains---conscientiousness, agreeableness, inquisitiveness, and assertiveness---resembled personality domains identified in other nonhuman primates. The remaining domain, patience, was specific to common marmosets. We used linear models to test for sex and age differences in the personality domains. Males were lower than females in patience, and this difference was smaller in older marmosets. Older marmosets were lower in inquisitiveness. Finally, older males and younger females had higher scores in agreeableness than younger males and older females. These findings suggest that cooperative breeding may have promoted the evolution of social cognition and influenced the structure of marmoset prosocial personality


Abstract Bats are killed by wind turbines in North America and Europe in large numbers, yet a satisfactory explanation for this phenomenon remains elusive. Most bat fatalities at turbines thus far occur during late summer and autumn and involve species that roost in trees. In this commentary I draw on existing literature to illustrate how previous behavioral observations of the affected species might help explain these fatalities. I hypothesize that tree bats collide with turbines while engaging in mating behaviors that center on the tallest trees in a landscape, and that such behaviors stem from 2 different mating systems (resource defense polygyny and lekking). Bats use vision to move across landscapes and might react to the visual stimulus of turbines as they do to tall trees. This scenario has serious conservation and management implications. If mating bats are drawn to turbines, wind energy facilities may act as population sinks and risk may be hard to assess before turbines are built. Researchers could observe bat behavior and experimentally manipulate trees, turbines, or other tall structures to test the hypothesis that tree bats mate at the tallest trees. If this hypothesis is supported, management actions aimed at decreasing the attractiveness of turbines to tree bats may help alleviate the problem.


Four decades after arranging a historic meeting in the White House of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and African-American leaders on June 23, 1958 former Eisenhower assistant Rocco Siciliano recounted the back-story of the meeting, highlighting its inherent drama and significance. In the course of sharing his recollections Siciliano paid tribute to an African-American member of the White House staff, E. Frederic Morrow, calling him a "true pioneer in the American black civil rights movement." Added Siciliano: "[Morrow's] impact on civil rights progress has yet to be appreciated." Judging "impact" by one individual on a large-scale movement is tricky business. But, as this article notes, there should be no doubt that in serving President Eisenhower New Jersey native Fred Morrow advanced the civil rights cause. The fact that his five-and-a-half-year tenure as a black man in the White House was not always happy or consistently productive of the kinds of initiatives on behalf of racial equality that he advocated should not obscure his contributions.


With the rapid growth of online video streaming, recent years have seen increasing concerns about profane language in their content. Detecting profane language in streaming services is challenging due to the long sentences appeared in a video. While recent research on handling long sentences has focused on developing deep learning modeling techniques, little work has focused on techniques on improving data pipelines. In this work, we develop a data collection pipeline to address long sequence of texts and integrate this pipeline with a multi-head self-attention model. With this pipeline, our experiments show the self-attention model offers 12.5% relative accuracy improvement over state-of-the-art distilBERT model on profane language detection while requiring only 3% of parameters. This research designs a better system for informing users of profane language in video streaming services.


Multi-core, multi-processor, and Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) computer architectures pose significant challenges with respect to the efficient exploitation of parallelism for large-scale, scientific computing simulations. For example, a simulation of the human tonsil at the cellular level involves the computation of the motion and interaction of millions of cells over extended periods of time. Also, the simulation of Radiative Heat Transfer (RHT) effects by the Photon Monte Carlo (PMC) method is an extremely computationally demanding problem. The PMC method is example of the Monte Carlo simulation method⎯an approach extensively used in wide of application areas. Although the basic algorithmic framework of these Monte Carlo methods is simple, they can be extremely computationally intensive. Therefore, an efficient parallel realization of these simulations depends on a careful analysis of the nature these problems and the development of an appropriate software framework. The overarching goal of this dissertation is develop and understand what the appropriate parallel programming model should be to exploit these disparate architectures, both from the metric of efficiency, as well as from a software engineering perspective. In this dissertation we examine these issues through a performance study of PathSim2, a software framework for the simulation of large-scale biological systems, using two iii different parallel architectures⎯distributed and shared memory. First, a message-passing implementation of a multiple germinal center simulation by PathSim2 is developed and analyzed for distributed memory architectures. Second, a germinal center simulation is implemented on shared memory architecture with two parallelization strategies based on Pthreads and OpenMP. Finally, we present work targeting a complete hybrid, parallel computing architecture. With this work we develop and analyze a software framework for generic Monte Carlo simulations implemented on multiple, distributed memory nodes consisting of a multi-core architecture with attached GPUs. This simulation framework is divided into two asynchronous parts: (a) a threaded, GPU-accelerated pseudo-random number generator (or producer), and (b) a multi-threaded Monte Carlo application (or consumer). The advantage of this approach is that this software framework can be directly used within any Monte Carlo application code, without requiring application-specific programming of the GPU. We examine this approach through a performance study of the simulation of RHT effects by the PMC method on a hybrid computing architecture. We present a theoretical analysis of our proposed approach, discuss methods to optimize performance based on this analysis, and compare this analysis to experimental results obtained from simulations run on two different hybrid, parallel computing …


Abstract Fertilizer subsidy programs have re‐emerged as popular policy tools in sub‐Saharan Africa. Despite a burgeoning body of literature on program impacts, the political economy of the programs remains poorly understood. In particular, there is a dearth of empirical evidence to support or refute the conventional wisdoms that governments systematically target subsidized inputs to certain areas based on past voting patterns and that fertilizer subsidies win votes. This article discusses the theoretical links between government targeting of subsidized fertilizer and voter behavior, then uses panel data from Zambia to empirically test these conventional wisdoms. Results suggest that Zambia's Movement for Multi‐Party Democracy governments targeted more subsidized fertilizer to households in areas where it had strong support in the previous presidential election. However, contrary to conventional wisdom, marginal changes in the scale or coverage of the fertilizer subsidy program had no statistically significant effect on the share or number of votes won by incumbent presidents.


This study employs general system archetypes to the purpose of identifying problems which hinder fulfilling orders quickly and serving more customers in Iran's manufacturing SMEs in wind and solar energy. In order to better understand the system structures, the problems and their consequences, causal loop diagrams and dynamic modeling are applied. Some archetypes related to inventory supply, technology design, technology manufacturing, and technology maintenance are illustrated in accordance with the archetypes of shifting the burden, success to successful, and accidental adversaries. Besides, causal loop diagrams and a general dynamic model are proposed with regard to the functions of absorbing customers and marketing, technological innovation, technology manufacturing, and technology maintenance which are related to the identified system archetypes. For choosing the firms, non-random accessibility sampling method is used and two SMEs are selected. The results show that existing patterns of behavior reduce the budget, performance of each function and company, customer satisfaction, reputation of the company, and the number of potential customer and customer base. It is proposed that company should focus on the fundamental solutions, higher level goals including the success of all functions, and collaboration based on aligning organizational aims, values and priorities between functions.


Many different constraint programming (CP) systems exist today. For each CP system, there are many different filtering algorithms. Researchers and developers usually choose a CP system of their choice to implement their filtering algorithms. To use these filtering algorithms on another system, we have to port the code over. This situation is clearly not desirable. In this paper, we propose a generic C++ interface for writing filtering algorithms called GIFT (Generic Interface for FilTers). By providing the generic interface on different CP systems, we can reuse any filtering algorithms easily. A case study on reusing scheduling filtering algorithms between Mozart and Figaro further highlights the feasibility of this approach.


This essay looks at the social, aesthetic, and violent life of fake documents. It suggests that fakes and forgeries, both as a general phenomenon and in the specific context of communal violence, offer a useful analytical site for an investigation into the relationship between empathy, power, and authenticity. Based on an analysis of a series of false letters that appeared in the lead-up to violent conflict in Indonesia, I approach the politics and poetics of forgery by setting the fake letters within a broader political discourse about falsity in Indonesia and beyond. Exploring the dynamics of empathy and intimacy that are necessary for the production and validation of fake documents and letters during conflict, I suggest that, contrary to received wisdom, empathy may be closely associated with violence. I also argue that empathy arises within particular political ontologies and specific forms of cultural intimacy that circulate in and beyond nation-states. An ethnographic enquiry into the social life of fake documents is therefore a useful starting point for an inquiry into the emotional aspects of instigation as well as for a political ethnography of empathy.


Curcumin is a phytochemical which is extracted from Turmeric root. It is used as Ayurvedic Medicine. Curcumin (diferuloylmethane) is a yellow pigment present in the turmeric ( Curcuma longa ) which gives the yellow color to turmeric that has been associated with antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, antiviral, and antibacterial activities. Curcumin, these effects are mediated through the regulation of various transcription factors, growth factors, inflammatory cytokines, protein kinases, and other enzymes. Most westerners know turmeric as gold colored Indian spice. Turmeric and curcumin are not the same thing. The antioxidant and anti-inflammatory property of curcumin is much more potent in an extracted form. In the recent research findings of curcumin that it can also eliminate 3% of cancer stem cells present inside the malignant tumor and remaining 97% of cancer cells undergo gradual cell shrinkage which ultimately leads to cell death. Pharmacologically, curcumin has been found to be safe. Human clinical trials indicated no dose-limiting toxicity when administered at doses up to 10 g/day. All of these studies suggest that curcumin has enormous potential in the prevention and therapy of various diseases. KEYWORDS:  Curcumin, phytochemical,  Curcuma longa , Ayurvedic Medicine.


ITAGGG Repeat Binding Factor 2 (TRF2) is a ubiquitous human telomeric protein present at all telomeres throughout the cell cycle. TRF2 has been proposed to remodel telomeres into large lasso-like structures named t-loops. Removal of TRF2 from telomeres by expression of a dominant negative allele of TRF2 (TRF2ABAM) led to dissolution of these structures and appearance of end-to-end fusions visible in metaphase and anaphase cells. Fusion formation was accompanied by the loss of Goverhang, but not by the loss of double stranded telomeric DNA, which can be documented to persist at the sites of fusions. Fusions were covalent and their formation was dependent on the nonhomologous end-joining (NHEJ) pathway as evidenced by the failure to form fusions in cells lacking Ligase IV. Furthermore, the fusions initiated genomic instability. Expression of TRF2ABAM in primary human cells resulted in induction of senescence. The arrested cells exhibited elevated levels of p53, stabilization of which was accompanied by induction of its downstream effectors p21 and Bax. The Rb pathway was also affected, with pRb becoming hypophosphorylated. The importance of both the p53 and the Rb pathways was further evident from the fact that the expression of SV40 Tag alone bypassed the growth arrest. Separate elimination of p53 or Rb function could not do so, and the activity of the ATM PI3 kinase was not necessary for the arrest. Expression of a different truncation allele of TRF2, TRF2AB also resulted in senescence but the growth arrest was accompanied by rapid loss of telomeric DNA. In addition, this allele induced an unanticipated chromosome breakage phenotype. Long-term overexpression of full length T R F 2 resulted in the gradual shortening of telomeres, suggesting that TRF2 is a regulator of telomere maintenance. Although it is clear that TRF2 acts through positively regulating the shortening activities at telomeres, it is unknown at this time whether it influences the telomerase pathway. Besides being present at telomeres, TRF2 also appears to be localized to centrosomes. The functional consequences of such localization are not known at this time; however, it is shown that telomere dysfunction can result in genome reduplication.


Induced sputum is safe in both children (Venge et al. 1977) and adults (Gibson et al. 2002; Green et al. 2002a), repeatable, inexpensive, and provides a clinically relevant marker of airway inflammation in the assessment and treatment of asthma. It can also be used to measure a variety of cells, effector mediators, cellular markers, and cytokines and its use has led to new insights into the pathophysiology and management of asthma and other airways disease. FENO is a reasonably reliable marker of eosinophilic airway inflammation that can be measured simply and noninvasively. The clinical value of measuring FENO has not been explored extensively but it could be a valuable tool for diagnosis and monitoring of corticosteroid-responsive airways disease in primary care. © 2008 Blackwell Publishing.


Cultural diversity encompasses a wider range of ideas and notions focussing on different products, industries and methods of expression. Deciding what makes this range of activity 'cultural' is not fixed, but changes from individual to individual. It's impossible to find a single magical 'core' of what the problem is, 'culture' should be regarded as a complex, or 'polycentric' problem with multiple strands, each representing a different description of what the problem is. Traditional regulatory solutions based on a definition of what 'culture' is are therefore not appropriate, instead a more fluid approach is required which makes full use of diplomatic settlement where all can be accommodated. This article shows how disagreements between the WTO negotiators on the Doha Development Round agenda topics are inevitable in the light of deep cultural divisions because each negotiator perceives each subject, the existing rules and the necessary amendments differently. Rather than ideas which might be described as traditional cultural industries like telecommunications and audiovisual products, this article focuses on the issue of international agricultural trade, trying to illustrate the breadth and importance of 'culture' to all aspects of international trade regulation.


Emotion is caused by many factors, some of which are evolutionary, neurological, chemical, environmental, societal, personal and religious. Mostly, however, we are oblivious of the causal factors, many of which may function on a biological level or subconsciously, although the emotional effect is experienced physically and consciously. Emotions change as the trigger mechanisms in the cultural context change. This usually happens unnoticed over long periods. Internet databases have now made it possible to study the use of emotive words; this point is discussed. Of particular interest is the interaction between emotion and reason. Models that reduce emotion to the physical level are scrutinised critically. Reason is not emotionless and emotion is not always irrational. The close interrelationship of emotion and reason often makes it difficult to distinguish accurately between the two. The so-called affective turn takes cognisance of cultural, social, religious and other environmental factors; this broader approach clarifies the importance of affect's role in rationality. One way of viewing emotion and affect is to look at the accompanying language; here the role of metaphor and narrative is pertinent. The traditional elevation of reason above emotion is examined critically as part of the affective turn that broadens the meaning and scope of emotions. I focus on the role of emotion in religion and factors that influence it, and explore the accent of affect in new spiritualities.


The Lec35 gene product (Lec35p) is required for utilization of the mannose donor mannose-P-dolichol (MPD) in synthesis of both lipid-linked oligosaccharides (LLOs) and glycosylphosphatidylinositols, which are important for functions such as protein folding and membrane anchoring, respectively. The hamster Lec35 gene is shown to encode the previously identified cDNA SL15, which corrects the Lec35 mutant phenotype and predicts a novel endoplasmic reticulum membrane protein. The mutant hamster alleles Lec35.1 and Lec35.2 are characterized, and the human Lec35 gene (mannose-P-dolichol utilization defect 1) was mapped to 17p12-13. To determine whether Lec35p was required only for MPD-dependent mannosylation of LLO and glycosylphosphatidylinositol intermediates, two additional lipid-mediated reactions were investigated: MPD-dependent C-mannosylation of tryptophanyl residues, and glucose-P-dolichol (GPD)-dependent glucosylation of LLO. Both were found to require Lec35p. In addition, the SL15-encoded protein was selective for MPD compared with GPD, suggesting that an additional GPD-selective Lec35 gene product remains to be identified. The predicted amino acid sequence of Lec35p does not suggest an obvious function or mechanism. By testing the water-soluble MPD analog mannose-beta-1-P-citronellol in an in vitro system in which the MPD utilization defect was preserved by permeabilization with streptolysin-O, it was determined that Lec35p is not directly required for the enzymatic transfer of mannose from the donor to the acceptor substrate. These results show that Lec35p has an essential role for all known classes of monosaccharide-P-dolichol-dependent reactions in mammals. The in vitro data suggest that Lec35p controls an aspect of MPD orientation in the endoplasmic reticulum membrane that is crucial for its activity as a donor substrate.


The widespread adoption of electric vehicles and electric heat pumps would result in radically different household electrical demand characteristics, while also possibly posing a threat to the stability of the electrical grid. In this paper, a micro-trigeneration system (composed of a 6.0 kWel cogeneration device feeding a 4.5 kWcool electric air-cooled vapor compression water chiller) serving an Italian residential multi-family house was investigated by using the dynamic simulation software TRNSYS. The charging of an electric vehicle was considered by analyzing a set of seven electric vehicle charging profiles representing different scenarios. The simulations were performed in order to evaluate the capability of micro-cogeneration technology in: alleviating the impact on the electric infrastructure (a); saving primary energy (b); reducing the carbon dioxide equivalent emissions (c) and determining the operating costs in comparison to a conventional supply system based on separate energy production (d).


Objective: To analyze a case which appears to support chiropractic success in treating neurovascular symptoms through adjustment of the first cervical vertebrae. Clinical Features: The patient was a 75 year old female presenting with gait ataxia, strabismus, fatigue, blood pressure fluctuations, seizures of two weeks duration, and history of concussion with similar symptoms. Previous medical diagnosis and care had been unrewarding. Intervention and Outcomes: The patient presented to an Atlas Orthogonal chiropractic clinic where she was examined and her atlas vertebra adjusted per the SCALE method. The patient's symptoms were quickly and painlessly reduced and/or resolved. Conclusion: Results suggest that Atlas Orthogonal care may be responsible for the reduction and elimination of neurological symptoms in this patient. Removal of intracranial insufficiency due to chronic compression of the vertebral artery by misalignment of the first cervical vertebra is a possible explanation for the mechanism of management success. These results suggest that chiropractic care, specifically adjustment of the atlas vertebrae, may be a useful treatment for conditions with neurovascular symptomatology.


Thermal errors are often quoted as being the largest contributor to inaccuracy of CNC machine tools, but they can be effectively reduced using error compensation. Success in obtaining a reliable and robust model depends heavily on the choice of system variables involved as well as the available input-output data pairs and the domain used for training purposes. In this paper, a new prediction model "Grey Neural Network model with Convolution Integral (GNNMCI(1, N))" is proposed, which makes full use of the similarities and complementarity between Grey system models and Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) to overcome the disadvantage of applying a Grey model and an artificial neural network individually. A Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm is also employed to optimize the Grey neural network. The proposed model is able to extract realistic governing laws of the system using only limited data pairs, in order to design the thermal compensation model, thereby reducing the complexity and duration of the testing regime. This makes the proposed method more practical, cost-effective and so more attractive to CNC machine tool manufacturers and especially end-users.


Inflation remains a potential longer-run threat to the health of the economy despite the progress made in reducing the inflation rate in recent years. The Fed must have a credible strategy in place to meet this threat. As Richmond Fed president Robert P. Black notes in this speech to business economists, a strategy centered around targeting monetary aggregates may still be the best approach over time, even after account is taken of the technical problems encountered in using aggregates as targets in the 1980s. Black argues that the substitution of a rule for the present discretionary approach to monetary policy would significantly increase the Fed's potential contribution to the economy's performance.


Abstract Controls on mudstone deposition at high latitudes are poorly known relative to low latitudes. In recent sediments deposited in these environments, ice significantly influences sediment transport and primary productivity. The products of ice transport are relatively well known in glacimarine settings, but are less well known from below melting sea ice. This latter setting is significant as today it is associated with high primary organic productivity. The aim of this study is to assess how sea ice might have controlled lithofacies variability and organic-matter distribution and preservation in an ancient marine, siliciclastic mudstone-dominated succession deposited at high latitudes. Combined sedimentary logging, optical and electron optical (backscattered electron imagery), geochemical, and isotopic methods were used to determine sample variability in forty-five samples collected from the Lower Cretaceous succession in the Mikkelsen Bay State #1 borehole (North Slope, Alaska). The succession overall fines upward and contains muddy sandstones and sand- and silt-bearing, clay-rich mudstones towards its base in contrast to clay-rich and clay-dominated mudstones towards its top. Some of the mudstone units exhibit thin (< 5 mm), relic-beds that fine upward weakly. In some units small (0.5 mm), bed-parallel silt-filled microburrows disrupt depositional laminae whereas in others pervasive burrowing completely obliterates original depositional textures. Many of the units are pelleted. These mudstones are unusual in that they contain minor but very striking outsize grains, composed of subrounded to rounded sand and granule-size material. In addition, they are good petroleum source rocks, with between 2.8 and 5.9 wt % total organic carbon, of predominantly Type II kerogen. The organic matter has an isotopic signature ranging from −25.4‰ δ13C to −28.1‰ δ13C. Thin tuffs (< 20 mm) and carbonate-cemented units are also present. Given the absence of significant polar ice in the Early Cretaceous the outsized grains are interpreted to have been deposited from a combination of melting, dirty anchor, and fast ice. The mud fraction, which forms the bulk of the sediment, is interpreted to have been deposited from melting, sediment-laden frazil ice, and fast ice. After deposition sediments were partially reworked by bottom currents generated by brine rejection during sea ice formation. Sympagic organisms, grazing on algae and bacteria both within and below the ice, pelleted the sediment. Bioturbation, which varies through the succession, indicates that sedimentation probably occurred beneath a predominantly oxic or dys-oxic water column. In this setting productivity was fueled by nutrients released from melting sea ice in the marginal ice zone. The good petroleum source potential of these mudstones is attributed to high organic productivity coupled to episodic and rapid sedimentation rather than existence of bottom-water anoxia linked to upwelling. Because sea-ice rafting was probably the dominant sediment transport mechanism it is not appropriate to use sequence stratigraphic methodology to predict lithofacies variability in this environment.


This paper examines whether and how cheap talk communication can facilitate within-group coordination when two unequal sized groups compete for a prize that is shared equally among members of the winning group, regardless of their (costly) contributions to the group's success. We find that allowing group members to communicate before making contribution decisions improves coordination. To measure how much miscoordination remains, we employ a control treatment where miscoordination is eliminated by asking group members to reach a unanimous contribution decision. Average group contributions are not significantly different in this control treatment. Cheap talk communication thus completely solves miscoordination within groups and makes group members act as a single agent. Furthermore, it is the larger group that benefits from communication at the expense of the smaller group. Finally, content analysis of group communication reveals that after the reduction of within-group strategic uncertainty, groups reach self-enforcing agreements on how much to contribute, designate specific contributors according to a rotation scheme, and quickly discover the logic of the mixed-strategy equilibrium.


India is a federal country comprising 28 States and seven Union Territories. It gained independence in 1947. After following relatively inward-looking economic policies for several decades since gaining independence, India adopted an open-economy - open-society strategy of economic growth in 1991, with the aim of integrating with the world economy in a market-consistent manner (Kelkar, 2004).

As India addresses the challenges of the twenty-first century and manages its rise globally, constructing and implementing a modern social security system represents one of its major imperatives. A modern social security system can enable India to cushion the burden on workers of restructuring public and private organizations; to increase the legitimacy of further reforms; and to encourage individuals and firms to engage in entrepreneurship and make creative career choices. All three are essential for India to emerge as a resilient knowledge-driven economy and society.

This paper analyzes India's social security system, with primary focus on pensions or retirement income arrangements. It also discusses reform themes which the policymakers and provident and pension fund organizations may consider in improving the sustainability, coverage and resilience to economic and other shocks of the current system. The paper is organized as follows. In section II, a broad overview of macroeconomic, demographic and labor market trends is provided. This is followed by a discussion of India's current social security system and its various components in section III. As social security related services must be provided by organizations, this section also provides suggestions for improving their effectiveness. Section IV provides a brief overview of India's healthcare financing system. The final section suggests five broad reform themes designed to transform the current system into a system more appropriate for meeting India's social security challenges in the 21st century.


Using the most recent data available, the Central Mass regional labor market profile provides a detailed picture of the region's current and future labor supply. For context, it also provides detailed information on labor demand in the region over the past decade. This profile is designed to help guide workforce development professionals, policy makers, and civic, education, and business leaders as they make decisions about education and training opportunities.


Roots of month-old tomato plants (Lycopersicon esculentumMill.) were flooded for up to 36h. Shoots were removed just below the cotyledonary node, and the roots subjected to external pneumatic pressures ( ΔP=0.02 – 0.4MPa). Rates of resulting sap flow (Jv) from the hypocotyl stump were measured and solute content assessed. Increasing ΔPraisedJvand diluted sap osmolites. Dilution was proportional to flow in well-drained plants but less than proportional in flooded plants. Sap flow increased linearly over a ΔPrange of 0.2 –0.4MPa; the slope of this line representing hydraulic conductance (LP), an estimate of inherent root hydraulic conductivity. Flooding for 24h did not changeLPrelative to well-drained controls. Despite this similarLP,Jvat given values of ΔPwere always faster through flooded root systems. This is explained by greater osmolality of xylem sap and thus more negative osmotic potentials ( πsap) creating an additional driving force promotingJv. Overall, solute osmolality and solute delivery in flowing xylem sap increased as flooding was prolonged from 6 to 36h flooding. On arrival in the shoot, these solutes would exert a negative effect on leaf water potentials down to -0.08MPa. The extra solutes exported from roots of flooded plants compared with controls, included potassium, sulphate, protein, serine, 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid and sucrose. Flooding decreased the delivery of nitrate, hydrogen ions, most protein amino acids, glutamine, and abscisic acid. These changes in delivery of solutes are systemic messages passing from flooded roots to shoots. Their osmotic and physiological properties may modify shoot growth and development and have adaptive significance.


We carried out field experiments in two clear mountain lakes of both hemispheres (Lake Los Cántaros, Patagonia, Argentina, and Lake La Caldera, Sierra Nevada, Spain) performing a full factorial design (light × nutrients: unfiltered sun light (ultraviolet radiation treatment [UVR]) and screened sunlight (> 380 nm; photosynthetically active radiation treatment), with and without nutrient enrichment. We analyzed the direct effect of UVR on enzymatic antioxidant responses (catalase [CAT], glutathione S‐transferase [GST], and glutathione reductase [GR]) of two calanoid copepod species‐Boeckella gibbosa and Mixodiaptomus laciniatus‐ and the indirect effects of food quality (carbon : nutrient ratio) potentially affecting body elemental compositions and hence enzymatic activities. Responses for the three enzymes were different: GST increased its activity under UVR exposure in the two copepods, CAT activity was null and showed no response, and GR activity differed between species. Light treatments also affected sestonic elemental ratios; UVR exposure lowered carbon : phosphorus (C : P) ratios, which in turn affected the C: P elemental compositions of the copepods. However, nutrient addition had different effects on the two species; it did not affect final somatic C: P ratio of B. gibbosa but had a substantial effect on body elemental composition of M. laciniatus. Finally, the relationship between grazer's C: P ratio and GST antioxidant enzyme activity was negative. UVR and nutrient inputs affected food quality, grazer somatic stoichiometry, and subsequently enzymatic responses. The ability of calanoid copepods to overcome increased UVR may depend, at least for GST, on the elemental nutrient balance of the food.


In this thesis we consider the need to generate efficient solvers for inverse imaging problems in a way that supports both quality and performance in software, as well as flexibility in the underlying mathematical models. Many problem domains involve large data sizes and rates, and changes in mathematical modelling are limited only by researcher ingenuity and driven by the value of the application. We use a problem in Magnetic Resonance Imaging to illustrate this situation, motivate the need for better software tools and test the tools we develop. The problem is the determination of velocity profiles, think blood-flow patterns, using Phase Contrast Angiography. Despite the name, this method is completely noninvasive, not requiring the injection of contrast agents, but it is too time-consuming with present imaging and computing technology. Our approach is to separate the specification, the mathematical model, from the implementation details required for performance, using a custom language. The Domain Specific Language (DSL) provided to scientists allows for a complete abstraction from the highly optimized generated code. The mathematical DSL is converted to an internal representation we refer to as the Coconut Expression Library. Our expression library uses the directed acyclic graphs as an underlying data structure, which lends itself nicely to our automatic simplifications, differentiation and subexpression elimination. We show how parallelization and other optimizations are encoded as rules which are applied automatically rather than schemes that need to be implemented by the programmer in the low-level implementation. Finally, we present results, both in terms of numerical results and computational performance.


Introduction: The rate of cancer mortality is18.4/100,000 in Ethiopia, and cancer of the cervix is the second-most common cancer, with an incidence of 16.4/100,000. Cancer of the cervix is easily prevented through vaccinations against human papilloma virus, regular screening, and treatment. Assessing the perception of women with regard to the benefits and barriers of cervical cancer screening among women is important to decrease the barriers and increase the screening rate for early detection. The aim of this study was to describe women's perceived benefits and barriers to cervical cancer screening and their associated factors in Arsi zone, Southeastern Ethiopia. Materials and Methods: This community-based cross-sectional study design was conducted in Arsi zone, Southeastern Ethiopia among 906 women aged >15 years using a multi-stage sampling technique. After data had been coded and entered into Epi info, it was exported into SPSS for analysis. A binary logistic regression model was used to determine associations between sociodemographic characteristics and reproductive variables on the knowledge of cervical cancer and perception of screening at a value of P < 0.05. Results: Most of the participants had higher perceptions of the benefits and barriers to screening (567 [62.6%] and 487 [53.8%], respectively). The women who would like to undergo cervical cancer screening in the future when the service was available were 2.6 times more likely to believe in the benefits of undergoing screening than those who did not wish to undergo screening (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] = 2.3, 95% confidence interval [CI]: [1.2–4.6]). Women living in rural areas were four times more likely to perceive the benefits of cervical cancer screening than those living in semi-urban areas (AOR = 3.9, 95% CI: [1.9–7.7]). Women who started sexual intercourse at age <16 years were two times more likely to perceive barriers to cervical cancer screening than those who started sexual intercourse at age >16 years (AOR = 2.2, 95% CI: [1.5–3.3]). Moreover, the women who had >3 children were 1.5 times more likely to perceive barriers to cervical cancer screening than those who had <3 children (AOR = 1.5, 95% CI: [1.1–2.0]). Conclusion and Recommendation: There were high perceived benefits and barriers to screening in the community. We recommend decreasing the perceived barriers toward screening through education intervention and expanding screening services, as this can increase the uptake of screening in the community.


Fasciolosis is caused by digenean trematodes of the genus Fasciola. The principal definitive hosts are cattle, sheep and goats. Humans are infected as accidental hosts. Fasciolosis is one of the major neglected tropical diseases and is considered an emerging zoonotic infection. This study was aimed at determining the prevalence of human and domestic animal fasciolosis in selected counties in Kenya. Stool samples for Fasciola diagnosis were collected from humans and domestic animals and transported to the laboratory at Egerton University and processed using sedimentation technique and examined for the presence of eggs. A total of 272 human samples collected were all negative for Fasciola eggs. A total of 582 domestic animals (cattle [46.0%], sheep [29.9%] and goats [24.1%]) samples collected had overall prevalence of 30.9% for Fasciola infection. There was no significant differences (p > 0.05) between the prevalence of fasciolosis and origin of the animals, sex and season. There was a significant difference (p < 0.05) between the prevalence of fasciolosis and domestic animals, age and body condition. The prevalence of fasciolosis was high in two irrigation schemes which favour the breeding of intermediate host snail and grazing of animals along the irrigation canals where metacercaria of Fasciola parasites could be present on the vegetation. Although human fasciolosis was not detected in this study, the presence of animal fasciolosis can pose public health risk because of its zoonotic nature. Therefore, it is important to introduce measures which would help to reduce the exposure of animals to Fasciola infection.


The Strategic Management Journal (SMJ) has now entered its third decade of publication and consistently ranks among the most influential journals in management. While several authors have examined the impact of SMJ vis-a-vis other management publications, few studies have examined the internal changes in the publication over time, particularly with regard to the diversity and content of the journal. The current study finds that there has been a significant shift in the number of authors, publication lags, reference lists, and page lengths in SMJ over the past 20 years, while the diversity of authorship has stayed relatively constant. There has also been a marked rise in the proportion of empirical papers being published. The implications of these results are discussed. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


MHC class I alleles are the major genetic determinants associated with people able to control HIV infection without therapy. Approximately 1 in 300 people infected with HIV are HIV "controllers" who are able to maintain long-term control of the virus without medication and who do not progress to AIDS. Uncovering the genetic basis for this ability is of great interest. The International HIV Controllers Study group (see the Perspective by McMichael and Jones) now present genome-wide association results from patients enrolled in the International HIV Controllers Study. The analysis compared HIV controllers of European, African-American, and Hispanic descent with HIV progressors and found >300 variants that reached genome-wide significance, all of which were in the major histocompatibility class I (HLA) region on chromosome 6. Analysis of the effects of individual amino acids within classical HLA proteins revealed six independently significant residues, five of which lined the peptide-binding groove. Thus, differences in binding to viral peptide antigens by HLA may be the major factors underlying genetic differences between HIV controllers and progressors. The International HIV Controllers Study, The major genetic determinants of HIV-1 control affect HLA class I peptide presentation. Science 330, 1551–1557 (2010). [Abstract] [Full Text] A. J. McMichael, E. Y. Jones, First-class control of HIV-1. Science 330, 1488–1490 (2010). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Understanding the mechanisms of workflow interruptions is crucial for reducing employee strain and maintaining performance. This study investigates how interruptions affect perceptions of performance and irritation by employing a within-person approach. Such interruptions refer to intruding secondary tasks, such as requests for assistance, which occur within the primary task. Based on empirical evidence and action theory, it is proposed that the occurrence of interruptions is negatively related to satisfaction with one's own performance and positively related to forgetting of intentions and the experience of irritation. Mental demands and time pressure are proposed as mediators. Data were gathered from 133 nurses in German hospitals by means of a five-day diary study (four measurements taken daily; three during a morning work shift and one after work, in the evening). Multilevel analyses showed that workflow interruptions had detrimental effects on satisfaction with one's own performance, the forgetting of intentions, and irritation. The mediation effects of mental demands and time pressure were supported for irritation and (partially) supported for satisfaction with performance. They were not supported for the forgetting of intentions. These findings demonstrate the importance of reducing the time and mental demands associated with interruptions.


A synthesis inversion based on the atmospheric zoom model TM5 is used to derive top-down estimates of CH 4 emissions from individual European countries for the year 2001. We employ a model zoom over Europe with 1° × 1° resolution that is two-way nested into the global model domain (with resolution of 6° × 4°. This approach ensures consistent boundary conditions for the zoom domain and thus European top-down estimates consistent with global CH 4 observations. The TM5 model, driven by ECMWF analyses, simulates synoptic scale events at most European and global sites fairly well, and the use of high-frequency observations allows exploiting the information content of individual synoptic events. A detailed source attribution is presented for a comprehensive set of 56 monitoring sites, assigning the atmospheric signal to the emissions of individual European countries and larger global regions. The available observational data put significant constraints on emissions from different regions. Within Europe, in particular several Western European countries are well constrained. The inversion results suggest up to 50-90% higher anthropogenic CH 4 emissions in 2001 for Germany, France and UK compared to reported UNFCCC values (EEA, 2003). A recent revision of the German inventory, however, resulted in an increase of reported CH 4 emissions by 68.5% (EEA, 2004), being now in very good agreement with our top-down estimate. The top-down estimate for Finland is distinctly smaller than the a priori estimate, suggesting much smaller CH 4 emissions from Finnish wetlands than derived from the bottom-up inventory. The EU-15 totals are relatively close to UNFCCC values (within 4-30%) and appear very robust for different inversion scenarios.


Karl Marx has long been criticized for his so-called ecological "Prometheanism"—an extreme commitment to industrialism, irrespective of natural limits. This view, supported even by a number of Marxists, such as Ted Benton and Michael Lowy, has become increasingly hard to accept after a series of careful and stimulating analyses of the ecological dimensions of Marx's thought, elaborated in Monthly Review and elsewhere. The Prometheanism debate is not a mere philological issue, but a highly practical one, as capitalism faces environmental crises on a global scale, without any concrete solutions. Any such solutions will likely come from the various ecological movements emerging worldwide, some of which explicitly question the capitalist mode of production. Now more than ever, therefore, the rediscovery of a Marxian ecology is of great importance to the development of new forms of left strategy and struggle against global capitalism.… Yet there is hardly unambiguous agreement among leftists about the extent to which Marx's critique can provide a theoretical basis for these new ecological struggles.… This article… [takes] a different approach… [investigating] Marx's natural-scientific notebooks, especially those of 1868, which will be published for the first time in volume four, section eighteen of the new Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe(MEGA).Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.


The workflow of a high throughput screening setup for the rapid identification of new and improved sensor materials is presented. The polyol method was applied to prepare nanoparticular metal oxides as base materials, which were functionalised by surface doping. Using multi-electrode substrates and high throughput impedance spectroscopy (HT-IS) a wide range of materials could be screened in a short time. Applying HT-IS in search of new selective gas sensing materials a NO2-tolerant NO sensing material with reduced sensitivities towards other test gases was identified based on iridium doped zinc oxide. Analogous behaviour was observed for iridium doped indium oxide.


This paper sheds light on domestic/international production networks in machinery industries and examines how the economic crisis and natural/technological disaster that Japan encountered in recent years affected the networks and trade, mainly from the viewpoint of Japan's exports. More specifically, the paper first decomposes changes in machinery exports into extensive and intensive margins and then examines the probability of trade declines and recoveries, using a logit estimation, in order to capture the natures of international production/distribution networks under the crises, i.e., the 2008-2009 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake (EJE). Discussion is also presented focusing on domestic activities as well as the impacts of the 2011 Thailand floods. Moreover, considering that the 2011 EJE is not only a natural disaster but also a technological disaster that seriously affected Japan's agriculture and food exports, the impacts on their exports are investigated as well. Our analyses suggest that, regardless of whether demand shock or supply shock, the economic/natural disasters revealed the stability and robustness of production networks in machinery sectors, though their negative impacts are severe and transmitted through production networks at the beginning. At the same time, our analyses draw various policy implications from the experiences of these crises.


Large-scale customer service call records include lots of valuable information for business intelligence. However, the analysis of those records has not utilized in the big data era before. There are two fundamental problems before mining and analyses: 1) The telephone conversation is mixed with words of agents and users which have to be recognized before analysis; 2) The speakers in conversation are not in a pre-defined set. These problems are new challenges which have not been well studied in the previous work. In this paper, we propose a four-phase framework for role labeling in real customer service telephone conversation, with the benefit of integrating multi-modality features, i.e., both low-level acoustic features and semantic-level textual features. Firstly, we conduct ΔBayesian Information Criterion (ΔBIC) based speaker diarization to get two segments clusters from an audio stream. Secondly, the segments are transferred into text in an Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) phase with a deep learning model DNN-HMM. Thirdly, by intergrating acoustic and textual features, dialog level role labeling is proposed to map the two clusters into the agent and the user. Finally, sentence level role correction is designed in order to label results correctly in a fine-grained notion, which reduces the errors made in previous phases. The proposed framework is tested on two real datasets: mobile and bank customer service calls datasets. The precision of dialog level labeling is over 99.0%. On the sentense level, the accuracy of labeling reaches 90.4%, greatly outperforming traditional acoustic features based method which achieves only 78.5% in accuracy.


This paper describes aspects of the revision and refinement of Technology curriculum provision in one Australian state. Within the redesign of the whole Birth-Year 12 curriculum there were particular issues and challenges facing those responsible for the Technology Learning Area. The paper reports on differences between the existing and the proposed frameworks; competing educational interests in the field; process-content issues including the proposal for a new strand of 'critiquing'; an attempt to move away from a singular construct of design 'process' as a core methodology; the outline of technological literacy as a basis for Technology curriculum design; issues of cross-curricular relationships with other Learning Areas, and debates and proposals for a name change for the field. While the proposals are currently in the final stage of refinement and are not conclusive, the theoretical curriculum issues addressed in the paper will be applicable to many Technology Education revision processes.


The aim of the present study was to compare the effects of resistance training performed with no external load (NLRT) versus resistance training performed with elastic bands (RTEB) on muscle hypertrophy and functional performance in hospitalized patients. Twenty hospitalized females (age, 59.05±3.2 years; height 163.6±2.5 cm; body mass 70.2±3.6 kgs) were randomly assigned to RTEB or NLRT. Both groups trained three times a week for five weeks. RTEB was performed with elastic bands, while NLRT involved maximum voluntary contractions with no external loads. Biceps brachii, triceps brachii and pectoralis muscle thickness (MT) were measured by ultrasound. Functional performance was measured by the 30s elbow flexion test. MT significantly increased in all muscles tested for both groups, with no differences between groups. Changes ranged from 14 to 38%. Functional performance significantly improved by 42.7% for NLRT and 52.1% for RTEB, with no difference between them. The present results suggest that NLRT might be an efficient, feasible and low-cost strategy to promote morphological and functional benefits in the upper limb of hospitalized patients.


In 1915 the 1st Australian Division led the way ashore at Gallipoli. In 1916 it achieved the first Australian victory on the Western Front at Pozieres. It was still serving with distinction in the battles that led to the defeat of the German army in 1918. To Win the Battle explains how the division rose from obscurity to forge a reputation as one of the great fighting formations of the British Empire during the First World War, forming a central part of the Anzac legend. Drawing on primary sources as well as recent scholarship, this fresh approach suggests that the early reputation of Australia's premier division was probably higher than its performance warranted. Robert Stevenson shows that the division's later success was founded on the capacity of its commanders to administer, train and adapt to the changing conditions on the battlefield, rather than on the innate qualities of its soldiers.


This paper describes an automated attendance management system that can be employed at professional gatherings of different types (conferences, exhibitions, training courses, etc.) and scales (from small-to-medium seminars and workshops to large congresses and technical shows). The system is based on application of RFID, mobile communication and IT technologies. It is capable of collecting, recording and processing data on participants of a technical gathering and their activities, attendance or different sessions, visiting different exhibition booths, etc. The system can also generate real-time combined detail reports on attendance, inflow and outflow of the participants during the event, their most and least preferred interests and activities, etc. This can be done for a multitude of locations and premises, and during an extended period of time.


Abstract The calibration of gamma-ray cylindrical detectors is often required in the analysis of high or low environmental samples and the homogenously distributive nuclear waste drums. Therefore, a new analytical simulation method is proposed in the present work to calculate the full-energy peak efficiencies of high-purity germanium cylindrical detectors using extended sources of low and high volumes. The sources were mounted at three different positions with respect to the detector's axis (coaxial, parallel, and perpendicular), labeled as Position 1, Position 2, and Position 3, respectively. The self-attenuation and the coincidence summing effects at low source-detector distance are also included in the algorithm. A remarkable agreement between the measured and the calculated efficiencies is achieved with discrepancies <4% for the first two positions and between 5 and 7% for the last one.


This article evaluates the recent evolution of farm structure in Kazakhstan's grain region against the reform objectives of the 1990s and the family farm theory that underpinned the latter. In the study region, super-large agroholdings, large-scale enterprises and smaller individual farms emerged side-by-side and now compete for resources in a homogenous production environment. Drawing on two survey rounds of farm-level data, we find that the agroholdings display the highest factor productivity and are the most competitive on land and labour markets among all farms. However, we also find constant technical returns to scale across farm types and a layer of smaller family farms that is highly competitive on land markets. It is thus too early to conclude that large corporate farms are economically superior to individual (family) farms. But the present analysis clearly calls into question that family farms are a per-se desirable or even the only viable way of organising agricultural production. A revision of the received family farm theory may thus be due.