The authors assessed the psychology curricula at 251 American universities and colleges to determine whether they offered a career planning course. The majority of institutions (n = 219) did not offer such a course. However, larger universities were significantly more likely to offer these courses than were smaller universities. ********** Colleges and universities in the United States generally provide three complementary services to undergraduate students. First, universities generate new knowledge through research. Second, colleges and universities disseminate this information to new generations of learners. Third, and most relevant here, the economic structure of society also pressures college to be a place where career training and preparation occurs. In fact, an American Psychological Association (APA) Task Force included career planning and development as 1 of the 10 recommended learning outcomes for psychology majors (Halonen et al., 2002). To address this issue, career planning courses have appeared in the psychology curricula at some universities (Brewer, 1998; Lloyd, 2002; Murray, 1999). Research indicates that these courses are successful in increasing career-related knowledge (Green, McCord, & Westbrook, 2005; Thomas & McDaniel, 2004), job search skills (Ware, 1988), career exploration and career decidedness (Thomas & McDaniel, 2004), graduate school related knowledge (Dodson, Chastain & Landrum, 1996), and self-knowledge (Ware, 1988). The results of these investigations imply that most psychology programs should make this type of course available to their students. We investigated whether the accumulated research on careers in psychology courses has had any impact on psychology curricula in the United States. More specifically, we assessed whether careers in psychology courses were offered to students, as either required or elective courses, and if the size of the institution played a role in the availability of the course. Method Using Peterson's Four Year Colleges (2004) and a random number table, we selected 251 colleges/universities for investigation. (1) The authors visited each university's website and collected the following information: (a) Was a careers in psychology course required for the major; (b) If not required for the major, was the course available as an elective; (c) If the course was a part of the psychology curriculum, how many credits did a student receive for passing the course; (d) Student enrollment at the university. Results Of the 251 universities investigated, 17 required the course for the major. The course was worth one-credit at 13 of the 17 universities. An additional 15 universities offered the course as an elective for the psychology major. Of these 15 universities, eight offered a 1 credit section of the course, three a 2 credit course, and four universities offered a 3 credit course. On the basis of enrollment, colleges were placed into two categories: (a) colleges with fewer than 5000 students enrolled; (b) colleges with 5000 or more students. Eleven out of 129 (8.5%) "small" universities offered the course, whereas 21 of 122 (17.2%) "large" universities did. This difference was significant, [chi square] (1) = 4.25, p = .04. Conclusion The results indicate that psychology departments, in general, have not yet adopted (or, perhaps, have discarded) career courses as part of the curriculum. Considering that the extant literature indicates that students benefit from these courses in a number of ways this result is unfortunate. However, looking at the relationship between appearance of a careers course in the curriculum and enrollment provides two potential explanations. First, smaller universities/colleges tend to align themselves with the liberal arts tradition. The educational philosophy of liberal arts institutions typically emphasizes learning for the sake of learning, and thus may downplay an explicit emphasis on career preparation. …


Glioblastomas, or glioblastoma multiforme tumors (GBM), are aggressive high-grade malignant gliomas. They are the most frequent brain tumors in adults, corresponding to 12% to 15% of all intracranial tumors and 50% to 60% of astrocytic tumors (1). GBM are heterogeneous tumors caused by mutations in epidermal growth factor receptor ( EGFR ), isocitrate dehydrogenase ( IDH ) and platelet derived growth factor receptor alpha ( PDGFRA ) genes (1). Recent reports support the notion that GBM growth is mediated by stem cells [GBM stem cells (GSCs)] (2-4) that express neural stem cell markers (2) and can differentiate into pericytes and endothelial cells to support tumor vascularization (3,4). Different markers have been described for specific GSC sub-populations (2-4), but no common stem cell marker has been defined yet. Identification of GSC stem cell markers is critical for the development of new therapeutic targets for GBM.


Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, provides unique functionalities, which allows area surveillance, inspection, surveying, unarmed cargo, armed attack machines, and aerial photography. Drones are susceptible to GPS spoofing attacks, integrity attacks and de-authentication attacks, which can allow criminals to access data, intercept the drone and use it commit a crime. Thus, this paper is presented to report on potential attacks against the Parrot Bebop 2 drone, and the ability for an investigator to collect evidence about the attacks on the drone. This paper aims at examining the possibility of establishing ownership and collecting data to reconstruct events, linking the drone controller with the drone to prove ownership, flight origins and other potentially useful information necessary to identify the proprietor of a crime. In addition, we have also proposed small-scale drone ontology for modelling drone context data, and simple forensic processing framework for small-scale drones.


Increasingly there is a design impulse to "solve" problems for communities in India, especially through technological imaginations and interventions imported from elsewhere that are often irrelevant and unsuited to their context. As public goods, such as education, heritage, health care, and the like, in India shift from ideals of social equity to profit-making, designers engaged in "development" face an important question about their role in the change-making process, with ethical and political implications.
 In response to this question, we describe our efforts as a newly formed collective, Design Beku, which emerged from our desire to explore if and how technology and design can be decolonial, local, and ethical. Informed by cross-disciplinary theoretical and methodological underpinnings, we present a series of autoethnographic accounts by the collective's founding members, woven together to describe our experiences, influences, learnings, and reflections on the life of the collective so far. Through articulating the commonalities and differences across our projects, we highlight how co-design becomes for us a care-in-practice, an onto-epistemology enabling us to align with local matters of concern to collaboratively evolve systemic solutions, enabled by but not led by technology. We believe the most powerful critique and challenge to the fascism of corporate and politically motivated technological regimes is by responding through community-centric design practice. We hope that our experiences and reflections will find resonance with other practitioners working within the larger context of the themes articulated by the call for this special issue.


The objective video quality assessment is a quick and low cost alternative compared with the subjective evaluation. However, the objective evaluation is not as reliable, because their results are not always according to the perceived quality of the human visual system. This paper presents a new metric for objective video quality assessment, called PW-SSIM, based on the investigation of how the spatial perceptual information can be used as an estimate to predict the visual attention to a particular region of the video and insert a quality weighting according to the spatial perceptual information values. The PWSSIM presents higher correlation coefficients when compared to popular models (PSNR and SSIM), for a subjective evaluation with 40 participants, considering degraded videos with salt and pepper, blurring and blocking, and 24 participants considering videos subject to Gaussian noise, suggesting that the PW-SSIM has a better ability to predict the perceived video quality for a group of spectators. Keywords— Video Quality Assessment, Structural Similarity, Visual Attention, Spatial Perceptual Information, Human Visual System.


3D face reconstruction is a fundamental Computer Vision problem of extraordinary difficulty. Current systems often assume the availability of multiple facial images (sometimes from the same subject) as input, and must address a number of methodological challenges such as establishing dense correspondences across large facial poses, expressions, and non-uniform illumination. In general these methods require complex and inefficient pipelines for model building and fitting. In this work, we propose to address many of these limitations by training a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) on an appropriate dataset consisting of 2D images and 3D facial models or scans. Our CNN works with just a single 2D facial image, does not require accurate alignment nor establishes dense correspondence between images, works for arbitrary facial poses and expressions, and can be used to reconstruct the whole 3D facial geometry (including the non-visible parts of the face) bypassing the construction (during training) and fitting (during testing) of a 3D Morphable Model. We achieve this via a simple CNN architecture that performs direct regression of a volumetric representation of the 3D facial geometry from a single 2D image. We also demonstrate how the related task of facial landmark localization can be incorporated into the proposed framework and help improve reconstruction quality, especially for the cases of large poses and facial expressions. Code and models will be made available at http://aaronsplace.co.uk


The analysis of the free vibration of rectangular sandwich plates with viscoelastic cores is purposed. The analysis focuses on evaluating two displacement theories of sandwich plates for various geometric and material properties and boundary conditions. The first theory was developed for the vibratory bending of unsymmetrical sandwich plates by Rao and Nakra1. The theory is a layerwise theory that models the displacement of the face layers with classic plate theory (i.e. normals to the midplane remain normal to the midplane and undeformed after deformation of the plate) and the continuity of the displacements at the interfaces between the face layers and the core used to derive the displacements of the core. The core is assumed to be in a state of pure transverse shear and in-plane strains are considered negligible. This theory is not only restricted by the assumed displacement field, but is specific to a sandwich plate composed of three isotropic layers. The second theory is a third order plate theory that was developed for composite plates that required the inclusion of transverse strains by Reddy2. The theory assumes a cubic displacement in terms of the thickness resulting in quadratic transverse shear stresses that vanish at the free surfaces of the plate. The advantage of this displacement field is that it does not require shear correction factors which are dependent on the specific plate materials and boundary conditions like first order plate theories (e.g. Mindlin plates). The theory is an equivalent single layer theory that integrates the displacement of the plate over the thickness, resulting in generalized stiffnesses that apply to a general plate composed of monoclinic layers. Both theories are analyzed and compared to finite element models generated in ANSYS for simply supported boundary conditions. The purpose of the simply supported analysis is to determine the characteristics of each theory with respect to variations of the geometric and material properties of the sandwich plate. Damping is introduced to the sandwich plate using the linear elastic-viscoelastic correspondence principle for harmonic analysis and loss factors are calculated for several specific geometries of the simply supported plates. The cantilever plate is also examined for both theories using the semi-analytical superposition method with a state space approach. The closed form superposition method developed by Gorman3 for classic plate theory is extended to both sandwich plate theories and a new semi-numerical approach is taken. The only numerical error introduced in the analysis is the calculation of the eigenvalues and corresponding eigenvectors for the state space solutions that 1 Rao, Y.V.K.S. and Nakra, B.C. 1973 Archive ofMechanics 25, 213-225. Theory of vibratory bending of unsymmetrical sandwich plates. 2 Reddy, J.N. 1984 Journal of Applied Mechanics 45, 745-752. A simple higher-order theory for laminated composite plates. 3 Gorman, D. J. 1982 Free Vibration Analysis of Rectangular Plates New York: Elsevier are superimposed to solve for the cantilever boundary conditions. Fourier series solutions are obtained for the mode shapes such that each term of the series exactly satisfies the prescribed boundary conditions. The approach is directly compared to finite element models generated in ANSYS for the cantilever plate. Table of


The term 'non-cognitive skills' refers to a set of attitudes, behaviours, and strategies that are thought to underpin success in school and at work, such as motivation, perseverance, and self-control. They are usually contrasted with the 'hard skills' of cognitive ability in areas such as literacy and numeracy, which are measured by academic tests. Non-cognitive skills are increasingly considered to be as important as—or even more important than—cognitive skills or IQ in determining academic and employment outcomes. Indeed, there is now growing attention from policymakers on how such 'character' or 'soft' skills can be developed in children and young people. However, despite growing interest in this topic, the causal relationship between non-cognitive skills and later outcomes is not well established. This rapid literature review is intended to summarise the existing evidence on how 'non-cognitive skills' can be defined and measured; assess the evidence that such skills have a causal impact on later outcomes; and the role of select interventions that aim to improve non-cognitive skills in children and young people. It has been jointly funded by the Education Endowment Foundation and Cabinet Office to inform future work in this area.


We describe an auction mechanism in the class of Groves mechanisms that has received attention in the computer science literature because of its theoretical property of being more "learnable" than the standard second price auction mechanism. We bring this mechanism, which we refer to as the "clamped second price auction mechanism," into the laboratory to determine whether it helps human subjects learn to play their optimal strategy faster than the standard second price auction mechanism. Contrary to earlier results within computer science using simulated reinforcement learning agents, we find that both in settings where subjects are given complete information about auction payoff rules and in settings where they are given no information about auction payoff rules, subjects converge on playing their optimal strategy significantly faster in sequential auctions conducted with a standard second price auction mechanism than with a clamped second price auction mechanism. We conclude that while it is important for mechanism designers to think more about creating learnable mechanisms, the clamped second price auction mechanism in fact produces slower learning in human subjects than the standard second price auction mechanism. Our results also serve to highlight differences in behavior between simulated agents and human bidders that mechanism designers should take into account before placing too much faith in simulations to test the performance of mechanisms intended for human use.


Recently published results show promising developments in using MEMS-based accelerometers to record static gravity at microgravity-scale resolution. The challenge of adapting MEMS accelerometers from the seismic realm to the task and their potential to be a good platform for development are presented, and several advances are suggested to improve their very low frequency and static performance. An implementation is envisioned that would add a dedicated gravity-measurement chip to a seismic sensor, and provide microgravity data with minimal added cost in the field.


MODEL-DRIVEN ARCHITECTURE VIEW CONSISTENCY CHECKING Gülsüm Ece Ekşi M.S. in Computer Engineering Advisor: Bedir Tekinerdoğan December 2015 Software architecture is one of the key artefacts in the software development process since it provides the gross-level structure of the system and supports the stakeholder concerns. To benefit from the architecture it is important that the code is consistent with the architecture and the corresponding design decisions. Unfortunately, changing requirements and/or the adaptations to the code can lead to undesired inconsistencies among the architecture and the code. This so-called architectural drift problem is the discrepancy between the architecture description and the resulting implementation. Several approaches have been proposed to detect the inconsistencies between the software architecture and the code to ensure that the original design goals are maintained. In practice, software architecture is documented using a coherent set of architecture views, each of view addresses particular stakeholder concerns. Similar to the consistency with the code it is important that an architecture view is consistent within itself and with other related architecture views. Unfortunately, the existing architecture conformance analysis approaches have primarily focused on checking the inconsistencies between the architecture and code, and did not explicitly consider the consistency among views. In this thesis, we provide a systematic architecture conformance analysis approach that explicitly focuses on conformance analysis among architecture views. The approach is used for detecting the inconsistencies within and across architectural views. To this end, we define the meta-models of architecture viewpoints, present the conformance analysis approach, and provide the tool ArchViewChecker. We illustrate our approach for detecting inconsistencies using the Views and Beyond approach. We adopt a fault injection approach to evaluate the effectiveness of the approach. The results show that the approach is effective in detecting inconsistencies within views and across views.


Background: Dimethylnitrosamine (DMN) is a potent member of nitrosamine family, which has toxic and carcinogenic potential. Several beneficial effects of statins have been described in patients with chronic kidney disease and in experimental models. The aim of this study is to investigate the protective effects of Simvastatin (SMN), Nigella Sativa Oil (NSO) and Thymoquinone (TQ) on DMN-induced nephrotoxicity in rats.
Methods: The animals were divided into five groups as: DMN Group, DMN+NSO Group, DMN+TQ Group and Control Group. Total antioxidant status (TAS), total oxidant status (TOS), Lipid hydroperoxide (LOOH) levels, and Total Thiol concentrations were measured.
Results: There was a remarkable difference between groups in terms of TAS, OSI, Total Thiol and LOOH concentrations (p values were <0,001; 0,014; <0,001 and 0,003 respectively) and was no remarkable difference between groups in terms of TOS (p=0,575). LOOH was significantly lower in DMN+NSO group than in DMN Group (p=0,046). None of the parameters were found significantly different between DMN Group and DMN+TQ Group. TAS and total thiol concentrations were significantly higher while OSI and LOOH were found significantly lower in DMN+SMN group than in DMN Group.
Conclusions: SMN prevented the kidney damage via its antioxidant effect whereas NSO had partial effect. But TQ did not have a remarkable protective effect.


The Australian chicken meat indutstry is rapidly expanding due to the increasing consumption of chicken meat. As a result, the industry has growing issues of sourcing new bedding materials and disposing of spent litter, which can be attributed, in part, to a lack of widespread litter re-use for rearing chickens. According to insights and perspectives recently gathered from industry stakeholders, it is believed that re-using litter will become more common in the future, so as to reduce production costs and ease pressures on both the supply of new bedding materials and disposal of spent litter. However, there are potential risks that need to be addressed if litter re-use increases, particularly with regard to the production and mitigation of ammonia, which can negatively affect chicken health if not managed correctly. The present review discusses the potential benefits reported for different types of litter amendments, which have the primary goal of reducing ammonia volatilisation, but may also contribute to improvements in bird performance, welfare, pathogen loads, fertiliser value of spent litter, and reduced costs associated with purchasing new bedding materials. Acidifiers have been shown to be the most effective of all amendment types, with sodium bisulfate or alum being among the most commonly tested products mentioned in research literature. Litter amendments are currently rarely used in Australia, but it is hoped that the information provided in the present review, based mostly on overseas usage and research, will help inform future decision-making on the use of these products in Australian poultry production systems.


C# has matured over the past decade: Its now a rich language with generics, functional programming concepts, and support for both static and dynamic typing. This palette of techniques provides great tools for many different idioms, but there are also many ways to make mistakes. In Effective C#, Second Edition, respected .NET expert Bill Wagner identifies fifty ways you can leverage the full power of the C# 4.0 language to express your designs concisely and clearly. Effective C#, Second Edition, follows a clear format that makes it indispensable to hundreds of thousands of developers: clear, practical explanations, expert tips, and plenty of realistic code examples. Drawing on his unsurpassed C# experience, Wagner addresses everything from types to resource management to dynamic typing to multicore support in the C# language and the .NET framework. Along the way, he shows how to avoid common pitfalls in the C# language and the .NET environment. Youll learn how to Use both types of C# constants for efficiency and maintainability (see Item 2) Employ immutable data types to promote multicore processing (see Item 20) Minimize garbage collection, boxing, and unboxing (see Items 16 and 45) Take full advantage of interfaces and delegates (see Items 22 though 25) Make the most of the parallel framework (see Items 35 through 37) Use duck typing in C# (see Item 38) Spot the advantages of the dynamic and Expression types over reflection (see Items 42 and 43) Assess why query expressions are better than loops (see Item 8) Understand how generic covariance and contravariance affect your designs (see Item 29) See how optional parameters can minimize the number of method overloads (see Item 10) Youre already a successful C# programmerthis book will help you become an outstanding one.


Smad proteins regulate the generation of microRNAs by binding to precursor molecules and promoting their processing. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are short, noncoding RNAs that regulate gene expression by targeting messenger RNAs (mRNAs) for degradation as part of the RNA-induced silencing complex. MiRNAs are transcribed as primary miRNAs (pri-miRNAs), which are processed to precursor miRNAs (pre-miRNAs) in the nucleus by the enzyme Drosha. Pre-miRNAs are processed to generate mature miRNAs by the enzyme Dicer in the cytoplasm. Davis et al. previously showed that Smad proteins, which are activated by transforming growth factor–β (TGF-β) and bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) signaling, promote the processing of specific miRNAs, but the mechanism involved was unclear. Here, the authors performed array analysis to identify miRNAs in human primary pulmonary smooth muscle cells (PASMCs) whose abundance was increased in response to TGF-β or BMP4. They identified 20 miRNAs, 17 of which contained a sequence (R-SBE) similar to the consensus sequence found in the promoters of Smad target genes. Mutation of this sequence prevented the TGF-β– and BMP-dependent processing of pri-miRNAs to pre-miRNAs. The increased abundance of R-SBE–containing miRNAs was not due to Smad-dependent induction of pri-miRNA transcription. Smad1 bound to the R-SBE sequence in vitro through its MH1 domain, which is used to bind to DNA in target genes. Knockdown of Smad1 or Smad5 in PASMCs inhibited the TGF-β– or BMP-dependent recruitment of Drosha to R-SBE–containing pri-miRNAs, thus preventing their processing. Together, these data indicate a role for Smad proteins in promoting the processing of a specific subset of miRNAs. As Treiber and Meister suggest in commentary, these findings should stimulate investigation of the potential ability of other DNA-binding proteins to regulate miRNA expression. B. N. Davis, A. C. Hilyard, P. H. Nguyen, G. Lagna, A. Hata, Smad proteins bind a conserved RNA sequence to promote microRNA maturation by Drosha. Mol. Cell 39, 373–384 (2010). [PubMed] T. Treiber, G. Meister, SMADs stimulate miRNA processing. Mol. Cell 39, 315–316 (2010). [PubMed]


When Imtiaz Raina leaves England for the first time, to bury his father on his family's land near Lahore, he exchanges his uncertain life in Sheffield for a road that leads to the mountains of Kashmir and Afghanistan. Once back in Yorkshire, he writes through the night to his young wife Becka and baby daughter Noor, and tries to explain, in a story full of affection and yearning, what has happened to him -- and why he has a devastating new sense of home. From the reviews: 'Genuine, poignant ...A moral work of real intelligence and power' John Burnside, The Times 'What Sahota creates is not an exploration of the psyche of a suicide bomber, but an exploration of a man' Yorkshire Post 'Startling. This book successfully humanizes one of the great demons of contemporary society, and for that, Sunjeev Sahota should be given a high five off the Queen or something' Dazed and Confused, 'Book of the Month' 'Imtiaz's journey to Pakistan, and his sense of belonging, gives the novel much of its eloquence. Great literary promise' Independent 'Excruciatingly well-written' Guardian 'The book's great force lies in its voice: that of a young man straining to express instincts, fears and emotional conflicts, lending his writing a distinctive vibrancy' Observer 'An acute debut. What is most chilling, and most successful, is that it all seems so familiar, so close and so easy' Sunday Times


To determine the pattern of oral and maxillofacial injuries among patients attended at the Muhimbili National Hospital, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Descriptive cross-sectional hospital based study. The study was done at oral and maxillofacial surgery firm and emergency medicine department of Muhimbili National Hospital (MNH). All patients who attended the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery firm and Emergency Medicine departments of MNH for treatment of oral and maxillofacial injuries during the period of the study and consented were included in the study. An interview of the patients with oral and maxillofacial injuries was done through structured questionnaire to obtain relevant information from the patient. Social-demographic information (age, sex, address, education level and marital status), patient's main complaint, type of injury, place where injury took place, cause of injury, general condition of patient immediately after injury and afterwards and the time interval from injury to reporting to hospital were recorded. Clinical findings were recorded as follows: type of injury, site of injury, single or multiple, soft tissue or hard tissue injury. Soft tissue injuries were categorized as bruises, abrasions, cut wound, contusion, lacerations, avulsions, and burn. Hard tissue injury was categorized as fracture of facial bones such as nasal bone, maxilla, mandible, zygoma, frontal palatal and orbital bones. Accompanying injuries to the TMJ were also recorded. Radiological investigations including plain skull radiography (posterior anterior view, Water's view, submental vertex view), orthopantomograph and where necessary a computed tomography (CT) were ordered. The interpretation of the radiological investigations was done by the principal investigator with the assistance of an experienced clinician and was recorded in a special form as fracture or no fracture, site and type of fracture. Treatment offered and treatment outcomes were also recorded. For admitted patients the number of days spent in hospital was recorded against the type of injury and treatment done. The data was entered into computer and analysis was done using Statistical Package for Social Sciences programme (SPSS) Version 15. Association of maxillofacial injury parameters vii (demographic factors, aetiology, treatment and complications) and type of injuries was evaluated using Chi –square test (X2). Significant level p<0.05 was used to draw out conclusion. A total of 137 patients, 123 (89.8%) males and 14 (10.2%) females with the male- female ratio of 9:1 were included in this study. The age range was from 4 to 70 years with a mean age of 30.13 years. The 21-30 and 31-40 years age groups were the most affected. Road traffic accidents (RTA) were the most (64.2%) common causes of oral and maxillofacial injuries. The most common soft tissue injury was laceration in 63 (26.9%) patients followed by bruises in 57 (24.4%) and cut wounds in 54 (23.1%). Ninety-three patients (67.9%) had sustained fractures of either the mandible, mid face or both and of those 93 patients who sustained fracture, most had mandibular fractures 42 (45.2%). All patients received basic resuscitation procedures, for stabilization of the patient. Almost all (97.8%) patients with oral and maxillofacial injuries were given analgesics for pain control and prophylaxis antibiotics (96.4%). Surgical wound debridement and wound suturing were the most (62.8% and 53.3% respectively) common treatment for soft tissue injuries, while intermaxillary or mandibulomaxillary fixation was the most (51%) common hard tissue injuries treatment. A total of 27 (19.7%) patients suffered some complications after treatment. Infection was the most (59.3%) common complication followed by malunion (33.3%). This study showed that road traffic accidents were the most common cause of maxillofacial injuries. Assaults/interpersonal violence were the second most common cause of maxillofacial trauma. These findings should alert the authorities, particularly the government and the road safety commission to the need for improvement of our roads, enforcement of existing traffic laws, and improvement of socio-economic conditions of the general population.


Topical Sessions: on Circumbinary Planets, in Honor of the Contributions of Bill Ward, and in Honor of the Contributions of Andrea Milani Special Talks: Brouwer Award [2], Rubin Prize [3] Social Events: Opening Reception, June 9th, 5-8PM, Koenig Alumni Center [4] Banquet & Show, June 10th, 5-9PM, Fiske Planetarium [5] Public Talk: "Exploring Ocean Worlds" by Dr. Alyssa Rhoden [6], SwRI Boulder, June 11, 7-9PM, Upslope Brewery [7] Directions & Maps CU Boulder campus map [8] Map to Venue (MATH Building) [9] Boulder, CO Google map [10] Travel Options Fly into Denver International Airport [11] Take the AB bus to Boulder [12] Lodging Affordable on-campus housing link [13] List of recommended hotels [14] Comprehensive list of hotels from Boulderlodging.c om [15] Local Organizing Committee [16] Scientific Organizing Committee [17] AAS Press Office [18]


The thermal power plants are used to generate power. The thermal power plants are designed based on required conditions (like a good quality of steam, pressure and temperature of steam etc.), but actually inlet conditions are not as per the designed conditions. In practical situations, when power plants are installed there are lots of constraints. This tends to reduce or increase output power and heat rate of thermal power plants. Due to these conditions, the designed power and heat rate are never achieved. Variations in the power outputs from plant are always a matter of disputes. So the parameters for power and heat rate are generated for different conditions of condenser pressure, flow rate of water through the condenser, Temperature difference. On the basis of site measurement and design data collection performance of the Condenser unit can be evaluated. These evaluations indicate that if operating conditions vary, then power output and heat rate also vary. This paper deals with the factors or parameters which reduced the efficiency of the condenser.


Abstract Hemocytin, a multidomain protein from Bombyx mori L. (Lepidoptera: Bombycidae), is an ortholog of von Willebrand factor and is expected to be a major mediator of hemocyte aggregation. Antiserum was generated against hemocytin, and immune staining of hemocytes, hemolymph, and nodules was performed. Hemocytin was observed in steady-state hemocytes but not in plasma, even after bacterial injection. When hemolymph was smeared on glass slides, hemocytin-containing fibrous structures formed a cellular network mainly consisting of granulocytes and oenocytoids. Hemocytin was stained only in the granules of the granulocytes. When nodule-like aggregates formed 30 sec after bacterial injection, both granulocytes and bacterial cells were observed binding to hemocytin-containing fibrous structures. When nodule sections were stained with antiserum, hemocytin was seen in the matrix of the nodules surrounding the hemocytes. These data suggest that hemocytin plays a major role in nodule formation as a component of the sticky fibrous structure exocytosed from granulocytes.


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY As a result of the Enron debacle and based on a wave of revelation of accounting irregularities and securities fraud inter linked to Adelphia, Tyco and WorldCom, Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) in June 2002. This was the most significant securities law change since passage of the original Federal Securities Law in 1933 and 1934. This paper provides background information on sections 302 and 404 of the Act. Based on that information, The Internal Controls Report of management and the Independent Auditor's Report of General Motors Corporation and Ford Motor Company from the years 2002 through 2008 are summarized, analyzed, and compared. Keywords: Financial reporting, Auditors, Management, Internal controls, Sarbanes-Oxley Act. INTRODUCTION In response to numerous accounting scandals that rocked corporate America at the turn of the 21st century, the US Government passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX). Scandals affecting corporations such as Tyco International, Enron, WorldCom, HealthSouth, and Adelphia resulted not only in the loss of millions of dollars in shareholdings and thousands of jobs, but also in the decline of public trust in financial accounting and reporting. BACKGROUND Accordingly, SOX established standards for all public company boards, management, and public accounting firms in the United States and thus giving publicly traded companies a much greater understanding of internal controls and the need for such controls. These standards require corporations to evaluate and disclose the effectiveness of their internal controls as they relate to financial reporting as well as the Independent Auditor's Report attesting to such disclosure. In addition, SOX requires that any material weaknesses in a corporation's financial reporting be disclosed in the annual and quarterly filings, and that the CEOs and CFOs verify financial reports. This paper focuses on the internal control reporting format and content as well as the Independent Auditor's Report. This complex and wide ranging statute deserves section-by-section analysis. The provisions include accounting reforms, the SEC, financial reporting, corporate governance, Wall Street practices, securities fraud, officer conduct, document destruction, whistleblowers, attorneys, and internal ramifications. The focus in this paper is on financial reporting. After addressing auditor's shortcomings, Congress turned directly to the corporations themselves and set forth a broad range of rules addressing corporate disclosure, the responsibility of officers and directors, and corporate governance reforms. The Sections 302 and 404 of the Act are considered applicable for corporate reporting. The problem, solution, implications and consequences for those two sections are clearly stated by Robert Prentice in his Student Guide Booklet on the Act. His presentation includes: SECTION 302 The Problem Corporate management has the primary responsibility for the presentation of financial statements and the creation of processes and systems of control to ensure that accurate information finds its way into those statements. That theoretical responsibility notwithstanding, in the white hot competition and excitement of the dot.com bubble, many corporate executives seemed to believe that it was their job to not produce accurate financial statements for the auditors to certify, but to bully the auditors into certifying as aggressive a set of financial statements as possible. Accuracy was not an important consideration if the auditor's certification could be obtained to "CY" the company's "A." In litigation, CEOs occasionally disclaimed any responsibility at all for financial statements, even though they had signed them. The Solution Section 302 requires each public company's CEO and CFO to certify that they have reviewed the quarterly and annual reports filed with the SEC, that based on their knowledge the reports do not contain any materially untrue statements or half-truths, and that based on their knowledge the financial information is fairly presented. …


Purpose: EU policy investing in children involves a social assessment of the high value of household spending on having and bringing up children. Therefore, the question arises as to what loss the household as investor will bear in the event of the child's death, and what the economic value of the child. The research questions are as follows: How to assess the economic importance, economic value of a child in a household? What factors influence this economic value? Is it necessary to model it in time? Design/Methodology/Approach: We present the loss suffered by a household as a result of a child's death, based on selected economic theories and concepts for estimating human life and goods, assuming the child is a good of a given value. We build the model using financial mathematics, discounted cash flow calculations, annuity calculations, as well as social elements and intergenerational transfers. Findings: The obtained results indicate the high economic value of the child for the current, but also and even the most the future economic situation of the household. The compensatory awards in liability cases do not cover even the expenses incurred for the lost asset. It may lead to financial instablity of individual and externalisation of loss, especially when it comes to support during old age. Practical Implications: The modelling concept could determine the minimum economic and ethical value of the child from the point of view of the household and allow evaluation in the financial decisions and loss compensation instruments areas, such as life insurance, liablity claims or the systemic policy of supporting fertility and investing in children. Originality/Value: The study offers an in-depth insight into modelling of the household financial loss and valuation of the child.


Over the past two decades, molecular technologies have been developing rapidly for clinical applications. Recently these tools have begun making significant impacts on environmental monitoring programs. The ability to replicate specific genes using PCR is the most powerful tool to date and has already improved the capability of environmental analysis in order to address emerging societal needs. These tools can be applied for microbial source tracking, analysis of emerging pathogens, disaster responses, and prevention of infectious disease within an integrated risk assessment framework that will enhance decision making within the current limited economic constraints.


Two types of near-UV light-emitting diodes (LEDs) with an InGaN/GaN single quantum well (QW) differing only in the presence or absence of an underlayer (UL) consisting of an InAlN/GaN superlattice (SL) were examined. The InAlN-based ULs were previously shown to dramatically improve internal quantum efficiency of near-UV LEDs, via a decrease in the density of deep traps responsible for nonradiative recombination in the QW region. The main differences between samples with and without UL were (a) a higher compensation of Mg acceptors in the p-GaN:Mg contact layer of the sample without UL, which correlates with the presence of traps with an activation energy of 0.06 eV in the QW region, (b) the presence of deep electron traps with levels 0.6 eV below the conduction band edge (Ec) (ET1) and at Ec 0.77 eV (ET2) in the n-GaN spacer underneath the QW, and the presence of hole traps (HT1) in the QW, 0.73 eV above the valence band edge in the sample without UL (no traps could be detected in the sample with UL), and (c) a high density of deep traps with optical ionization energy close to 1.5 eV for the LEDs without UL. Irradiation with 5 MeV electrons led to a strong decrease in the electroluminescence (EL) intensity in the LEDs without UL, while for the samples with UL, such irradiation had little effect on the EL signal at high driving current, although the level of driving currents necessary to have a measurable EL signal increased by about an order of magnitude. This is despite the 5 times higher starting EL signal of the sample with UL. Irradiation also led to the appearance in the LEDs with UL of the ET1 and HT1 deep traps, but with concentration much lower than without the UL, and to a considerable increase in the Mg compensation ratio.Two types of near-UV light-emitting diodes (LEDs) with an InGaN/GaN single quantum well (QW) differing only in the presence or absence of an underlayer (UL) consisting of an InAlN/GaN superlattice (SL) were examined. The InAlN-based ULs were previously shown to dramatically improve internal quantum efficiency of near-UV LEDs, via a decrease in the density of deep traps responsible for nonradiative recombination in the QW region. The main differences between samples with and without UL were (a) a higher compensation of Mg acceptors in the p-GaN:Mg contact layer of the sample without UL, which correlates with the presence of traps with an activation energy of 0.06 eV in the QW region, (b) the presence of deep electron traps with levels 0.6 eV below the conduction band edge (Ec) (ET1) and at Ec 0.77 eV (ET2) in the n-GaN spacer underneath the QW, and the presence of hole traps (HT1) in the QW, 0.73 eV above the valence band edge in the sample without UL (no traps could be detected in the sample with UL), and...


Generating high-resolution, photo-realistic images has been a long-standing goal in machine learning. Recently, Nguyen et al. [37] showed one interesting way to synthesize novel images by performing gradient ascent in the latent space of a generator network to maximize the activations of one or multiple neurons in a separate classifier network. In this paper we extend this method by introducing an additional prior on the latent code, improving both sample quality and sample diversity, leading to a state-of-the-art generative model that produces high quality images at higher resolutions (227 × 227) than previous generative models, and does so for all 1000 ImageNet categories. In addition, we provide a unified probabilistic interpretation of related activation maximization methods and call the general class of models Plug and Play Generative Networks. PPGNs are composed of 1) a generator network G that is capable of drawing a wide range of image types and 2) a replaceable condition network C that tells the generator what to draw. We demonstrate the generation of images conditioned on a class (when C is an ImageNet or MIT Places classification network) and also conditioned on a caption (when C is an image captioning network). Our method also improves the state of the art of Multifaceted Feature Visualization [40], which generates the set of synthetic inputs that activate a neuron in order to better understand how deep neural networks operate. Finally, we show that our model performs reasonably well at the task of image inpainting. While image models are used in this paper, the approach is modality-agnostic and can be applied to many types of data.


Managed aquifer recharge focuses on increasing the availability of potable water within the subsurface. Under managed aquifer recharge, recycled or excess water is diverted into large infiltration basins that allow water to percolate into the subsurface thus increasing the volume of water within the shallow aquifer. Water can then be extracted during periods of increased demand and provided water security. This widely used technique has low energy costs and can significantly enhance the amount of groundwater recharge. However, infiltration rates can decrease as a result of clogging of sand grains within these infiltration basins and thus increase the percentage of water lost to evaporation. Rapid detection of decreases in infiltration can trigger remedial action in order to prevent further water loss. The research presented here focuses the development of passive thermal tomography; a new technology to (1) quantifying infiltration rates of managed aquifer recharge at meter scale resolution and (2) to determine aquifer heterogeneity within the subsurface. Passive thermal tomography uses temperature as a groundwater tracer to monitor infiltration rates over large areas, such as infiltration basins. The temperature of the surface water in infiltration basins fluctuates due to the daily solar heating and cooling cycle, and the resulting diel signal propagates down into the subsurface. As the rate of infiltration increases or decrease, the thermal signal produced at the land surface will shift at depth as a result of the advective transport of groundwater. Through the monitoring of shifts in the temperature signals at two discrete depths it is possible to quantify the rate of groundwater infiltration. By extracting the amplitude ratio or diel phase-shift at these two depths, recharge rates can be quantified across the infiltration basin. These methods assume vertical and steady flow of water, quasi-steady (cyclic) flow of heat, through homogeneous, isotropic, fully saturated sediments, and temperature measurements collected in a vertical profile. It should be noted that sensitivity analyses have demonstrated the uncertainty of flux calculations due to inaccurate thermal properties and sensor spacing. Uncertainties in both thermal properties and sensor spacing have been evaluated in this research using a fully coupled numerical model. Taking advantage of this natural passive signal, it is possible to detect temporal changes in the daily rate of groundwater recharge as well as seasonal changes, due to clogging of the pores. Using the calculated rates of groundwater infiltration, an inverse, fully coupled groundwater flow and heat transport model is run in order to determine heterogeneity in hydraulic conductivity within the aquifer. Using thermal and hydraulic boundary conditions at the surface and groundwater flux estimates based on the evaluation of amplitude/phase-shits in the thermal signature with depth, it is possible to determine a suite of hydraulic conductivity scenarios that match the true conditions within the aquifer. This inverse modeling approach using thermal tomography allows for the quantification of changes in hydraulic conductivity across the infiltration basin. While groundwater flux is based on a two dimensional grid, the inversion of the numerical model is able to represent a quasi three-dimensional change in hydraulic conductivity. Passive thermal tomography addresses the protection and management of groundwater resources through the quantification of artificial recharge. Current techniques to quantify artificial recharge are either based on point measurements or simple conservation of mass calculations. Through the use of this new technique it is possible to better monitor and maintain artificial infiltration basins in order to support sustainable and secure groundwater resources in Qatar.


HOPE FOR THE FATHERLESS?: A GROUNDED INTERPRETIVE STUDY Anna Manja Larcher Department of Psychology Masters of Science Psychology's literature regarding fatherlessness is not only grim, mainly pointing out the negative consequences of fatherlessness, but it also does not provide much specific information about fatherless individuals' experiences. A pilot study revealed that fatherless individuals do not always suffer from the loss of their father and that they also have the ability to overcome the negative consequences commonly associated with father loss. The research questions for this study presented themselves naturally after reviewing the literature and after considering the results of my pilot study, namely, "What do fatherless individuals actually experience in being fatherless, and what is the nature of the experience of being fatherless in people who seem to display successful coping and resilience?" Phenomenology and the Grounded Interpretive research method were employed to explore in depth the lived experience of three participants. My interviews show that cultural, family, and educational background and the individual's interpretations of his or her situation significantly contributed to how fatherlessness was experienced. In contrast to the generally grim literature on fatherlessness, the results of the present study suggest that the consequences of fatherlessness do not have to be as grim as they are generally portrayed. While fatherlessness is difficult, there is hope for the fatherless in that they can overcome the negative implications of their situation—a finding that contributes to a more holistic understanding and a perspective of fatherlessness that has not yet been sufficiently been documented by the literature.


By breeding TRAMP mice with S100A9 knock-out (S100A9−/−) animals and scoring the appearance of palpable tumors we observed a delayed tumor growth in animals devoid of S100A9 expression. CD11b+ S100A9 expressing cells were not observed in normal prostate tissue from control C57BL/6 mice but were readily detected in TRAMP prostate tumors. Also, S100A9 expression was observed in association with CD68+ macrophages in biopsies from human prostate tumors. Delayed growth of TRAMP tumors was also observed in mice lacking the S100A9 ligand TLR4. In the EL-4 lymphoma model tumor growth inhibition was observed in S100A9−/− and TLR4−/−, but not in RAGE−/− animals lacking an alternative S100A9 receptor. When expression of immune-regulating genes was analyzed using RT-PCR the only common change observed in mice lacking S100A9 and TLR4 was a down-regulation of TGFβ expression in splenic CD11b+ cells. Lastly, treatment of mice with a small molecule (ABR-215050) that inhibits S100A9 binding to TLR4 inhibited EL4 tumor growth. Thus, S100A9 and TLR4 appear to be involved in promoting tumor growth in two different tumor models and pharmacological inhibition of S100A9-TLR4 interactions is a novel and promising target for anti-tumor therapies.


Since its establishment in 1959 the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) has defused the risks of sovereign competition which arose from the early era of exploration in Antarctica, and were later brought to a head in the early years of the Cold War. On the whole it has produced a peaceful, stable, effective and widely accepted regime for cooperation on a range of scientific, environmental, and related issues. Rising powers, such as China (which joined in 1983), have been brought into the system. The ATS has proven sufficiently flexible to accommodate new challenges and risks, even as the number of state parties has expanded, thus making consensus on many issues more difficult to achieve. It has also seen off challenges to its normative and institutional authority in the United Nations General Assembly. There is nonetheless ongoing speculation about the future of the Antarctic regime, including rising concerns about security risks. So far there is no serious evidence that tensions arising from these issues threaten to unravel the half-century consensus on the Antarctic regime. To the contrary, the growing number of states participating in the ATS is testament to its vitality. In the long term, the persisting uncertainty about the final status of sovereign territorial, maritime and continental shelf claims will present the greatest challenge to Antarctic stability. The ATS embodies an uneasy truce and cannot indefinitely defer disputes over sovereign title (and thus sovereign rights to exploit Antarctica's riches). The time will come when it may be necessary to reconsider sovereign claims and to desire an alternative legal architecture for securing Antarctica's future. This essay provides an overview of the ATS from its inception to the present, and introduces a collection of key primary legal materials, hard and soft, which sustain the ATS and are reproduced in the book which the essay introduces.


STUDY OBJECTIVES
Aging is associated with detrimental changes in sleep physiology, a process accelerated in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Fine-tuned temporal interactions of NREM slow oscillations (SO) and spindles were shown to be particularly important for memory consolidation, and to deteriorate in healthy older adults. Whether this oscillatory interaction further declines in early stages of AD such as mild cognitive impairment (MCI) has not been investigated to date, but may have important therapeutic implications.

METHODS
Here, we assessed differences in sleep architecture and memory-relevant SO, sleep spindles and their functional coupling during a 90-min nap between healthy young and older adults, and in older patients with MCI. Furthermore, associations of nap-sleep characteristics with sleep-dependent memory performance change were evaluated.

RESULTS
We found significant differences between young and older healthy adults, and between young adults and patients with MCI, but not between healthy older adults and patients for several sleep metrics, including SO-spindle coupling. Moreover, sleep-dependent retention of verbal memories was significantly higher in young healthy adults versus older adults with and without MCI, but no difference between the two older groups was observed. Associations with sleep metrics were only found for pre-nap memory performances.

CONCLUSIONS
In conclusion, our results indicate changes in nap sleep physiology and sleep-related memory consolidation in older adults with and without MCI. Thus, interventions targeted at improving sleep physiology may help to reduce memory decline in both groups, but our study does not indicate additional benefits for patients with MCI.


Electrical actuation of liquid droplets at the microscale offers promising applications in the fields of microfluidics and lab-on-chip devices. Much prior research has targeted the electrical actuation of electrically conducting liquid droplets using dc voltages (classical electrowetting). Electrical actuation of conducting droplets using ac voltages and the actuation of insulating droplets (using dc or ac voltages) has remained relatively unexplored. This paper utilizes an energy-minimization-based analytical framework to study the electrical actuation of a liquid droplet (electrically conducting or insulating) under ac actuation. It is shown that the electromechanical regimes of classical electrowetting, electrowetting under ac actuation and insulating droplet actuation can be extracted from the generic electromechanical actuation framework, depending on the electrical properties of the droplet, the underlying dielectric layer and the frequency of the actuation voltage. This paper also presents experiments which quantify the influence of the ac frequency and the electrical properties of the droplet on its velocity under electrical actuation. The velocities of droplets moving between two parallel plates under ac actuation are experimentally measured; these velocities are then related to the actuation force on the droplet which is predicted by the electromechanical model developed in this work. It is seen that the droplet velocities are strongly dependent on the frequency of the ac actuation voltage; the cut-off ac frequency, above which the droplet fails to actuate, is experimentally determined and related to the electrical conductivity of the liquid. This paper then analyzes and directly compares the various electromechanical regimes for the actuation of droplets in microfluidic applications.


In this paper we provide analytical and Monte Carlo evidence that Chow and Predictive tests can be consistent against alternatives that allow structural change to occur at either end of the sample. Attention is restricted to linear regression models that may have a break in the intercept. The results are based on a novel reparameterization of the actual and potential break point locations. Standard methods parameterize both of these locations as fixed fractions of the sample size. We parameterize these locations as more general integer valued functions. Power at the ends of the sample is evaluated by letting both locations, as a percentage of the sample size, converge to zero or one. We find that for a potential break point function, the tests are consistent against alternatives that converge to zero or one at sufficiently slow rates and are inconsistent against alternatives that converge sufficiently quickly. Monte Carlo evidence supports the theory though large samples are sometimes needed for reasonable power.


The advertising agency-client relationship is an important element in maintaining client loyalty. In this regard, the study attempts to explain why a number of clients maintain loyal relationships with their advertising agencies. Loyalty in advertising agency-client relationship is generally
determined by such factors as the business environment in which they operate, organizational structure, well developed general policies, compatible interpersonal characteristics, actual account performance, positive attitudes towards suppliers and effective processes involving suppliers.
For the study, both telephone interviews and self-administrated questionnaires were used to collect the data. The respondents consisted of personnel within client organizations who are knowledgeable about advertising practices. A final sample of 133 respondents was obtained from the Klang Valley area to represent the advertising industry. The data was analysed using Univariate Descriptive Analysis and Factor Analysis. Descriptive Analysis gave the overall picture about the study. For the factor analysis, 16 factors were extracted that illustrate the advertising
agency-client relationship contributing 72.05% of the variance explained, with Cronbach alpha of 0.909 (90.9%), showing the items used were highly reliable. The 16 factors obtained have a good explanatory power with respect to agency-client loyalty which includes performance oriented partnership, client control and agency leadership, formally
structured organization, client centereness and market stability, agency management competency,centralized authority, mutuality of interest, compatibility, conflict resolution and co-operation, creativity, interdependence,co-ordination and specialization, low competition and technological change, matured product, continuity and conformity of norms, absence of erratic changes in
strategies and objectives, and strong commitment.


In this contribution it is argued that in spite of their homogeneousmorphological and syntactic properties, there are compelling reasons to differentiate the central modal auxiliaries of English with respect to grammaticalization. The main differential semantic criterion comes from their contribution as grounding predications, as understood by Cognitive Grammar. The implications of this differentiation will mainly be investigated for their treatment (as p-operators or otherwise) in Functional Grammar, but it will also entail a modified view for their status as grounding predications in Cognitive Grammar (as compared with Langacker's). Insights from the diachronic development of must are taken to support the position defended here.


In the context of British Asian theatre and the search for a diasporic theatre aesthetics the practice of adaptation has emerged as a recurring feature. Over the last decades, British Asian theatre has sought to create a language of the theatre that can reflect the cultural heritage of Asians in Britain; this search has taken different directions testified also by the plurality of voices that today make up British Asian theatre and has responded to the need to challenge the conceptual binary of British and Asian, aiming to affirm South Asian culture on the stage as an integral part of British culture. Adaptation also plays a role in highlighting the dialectic between local and the global particularly in those cases where regions of Britain such as the Northwest of England can be recreated on stage as South Asian British cultural spaces. After tracing Tara Arts's pioneering journey from adaptation to tradaptation, we will examine two British Asian plays that are adaptations of English plays which belong to a tradition of playwriting located in the social and cultural life of the Northwest of England and which are given a new life or an afterlife in translations.


Markov blanket (Mb) and Markov boundary (MB) are two key concepts in Bayesian networks (BNs). In this paper, we study the problem of Mb and MB for multiple variables. First, we show that Mb possesses the additivity property under the local intersection assumption, that is, an Mb of multiple targets can be constructed by simply taking the union of Mbs of the individual targets and removing the targets themselves. MB is also proven to have additivity under the local intersection assumption. Second, we analyze the cases of violating additivity of Mb and MB and then put forward the notions of Markov blanket supplementary (MbS) and Markov boundary supplementary (MBS). The properties of MbS and MBS are studied in detail. Third, we build two MB discovery algorithms and prove their correctness under the local composition assumption. We also discuss the ways of practically doing conditional independence tests and analyze the complexities of the algorithms. Finally, we make a benchmarking study based on six synthetic BNs and then apply MB discovery to multi-class prediction based on a real data set. The experimental results reveal our algorithms have higher accuracies and lower complexities than existing algorithms.


A literature review is generally a compendium of written material on a topic presented as research background. It functions to describe what is known in academic circles and to justify research questions that step beyond the known. A more nuanced approach involves getting "beneath the skin" of the literature itself; considering the fabric of the literature; what worldviews are evident, the questions that started inquiry, and the usefulness to communities of the knowledge gained. In this article, we discuss the place of the literature review by going beyond a compendium approach. We offer summaries of literature from the Pacific Island Countries of Solomon Islands, Tonga, and Marshall Islands as background to a research effort on leadership indigenous to the Pacific region, before getting beneath the skin of our reading. We augment our approach by imagining a conference tok stori discussion of Pacific leadership literature as a form of literature itself. This acts to re-value real-time discursive exploration and erodes the boundaries between the written and oral. Our aim is to investigate a more open and inclusive research space that honours Pacific-origin processes so that our research contribution can be increasingly permeated by Pacific values, wisdom and perspectives.


This study aimed to evaluate the influence of the application of magnesium oxide associated with phosphogypsum and micronutrients (zinc and boron) in the form of granular fertilizer on the soil pH, calcium and magnesium in the soil, dry matter production and contents of calcium, magnesium, zinc and boron in plant, in an experiment carried out in a greenhouse. The experimental design was a randomized block with three replicates distributed in a split plot in time, the main plots consisting of six treatments (without fertilization control; N + P + K; phosphogypsum; magnesium oxide; phosphogypsum/MgO (70/30); phosphogypsum/MgO (70/30) + Zn + B); and the split composed of nine sampling periods. The results show higher levels of calcium (1.19 cmolc dm-3), magnesium (1.87 cmolc dm-3) and zinc (7.33 mg dm-3) in the soil for treatments with application of phosphogypsum, granulated phosphogypsum/MgO (70/30) and phosphogypsum/MgO (70/30) + Zn + B respectively. The application of phosphogypsum also shows higher calcium content (89.66 and 27.74 mg/plant leaves and stem, respectively) and higher dry matter production of leaves (11.22 g/plant), stem (5.67 g/plant) and roots (9.88 g/plant). Treatment with granulated phosphogypsum/MgO (70/30) show higher contents of magnesium (33.86 mg/plant), stem (13.36 mg/plant) and roots (62.97 mg/plant). The greatest contents in leaves B (2.83 mg/plant) and stem (0.24 mg/plant) are found in the treatment phosphogypsum/MgO (70/30) + Zn + B.


Reinforced polymeric piling (RPP) is a sustainable piling product that is gaining attention for use instead of timber piling in coastal and waterfront applications. However, unlike conventional construction materials that have well-documented creep behavior, there is virtually no reliable data on the compressive creep behavior of RPP. RPP is composed of a recycled plastic matrix made of high density polyethylene (HDPE) that is reinforced with steel or fiber reinforced polymer rods (FRP, E-glass, or fiberglass). In this study, an accelerated test method to predict the compressive creep of both recycled HDPE and FRP is employed. The method is based on the equivalence of strain energy density (SED) between conventional constant-stress creep tests and stress-strain tests, conducted at different strain rates. Test results indicate that the tested recycled HDPE exhibited a pronounced viscoelastic or viscoplastic response, at low strains, when loaded in compression. At room temperature, SED predicts that recycled HDPE will creep about 1.1 % in 100 years when loaded at an ultimate stress of 8.3 MPa (1200 psi). FRP exhibits a small viscoelastic tendency. SED predicts that the FRP loaded in compression will creep by less than 0.5 % in 100 years when loaded at an ultimate stress of 88 MPa (12 800 psi). The stress-strain behavior of RPP depends on strain compatibility of both HDPE and FRP. Creep of RPP will depend on the percentage of FRP reinforcement in the cross section. Creep of RPP is estimated to be on the order of 0.2 % to 1.8 % in 100 years under loading and reinforcement ratios employed for this research.