Work in this thesis demonstrates a numerical modelling approach to analyse the effect of urban planning strategies on the urban heat island (UHI) intensity and further the feedback on the chemical composition of the urban atmosphere. The urban area of Stuttgart acts as test bed for the modelling.
The mesoscale chemical transport model WRF-Chem is used to investigate the effect of these urban heat island mitigation strategies on the surface concentration of primary (CO, NO, PM10) and secondary pollutants (O3).
Known mitigation strategies such as bright roofs and facades, urban greening and modification of the building density are in the focus. All these measures are able to reduce the urban temperature and thus mitigate urban heat island intensity.
Model results reveal that the most efficient way to cool down urban areas is the increase in the surface reflectivity. Changing the building albedo in the model from 0.2 to 0.7, lead to a reduction of the urban heat island by about 2 °C. The effect of urban greening and decreased building density is less.
The mitigation strategies which have been mentioned before promote changes in energetic and radiative properties of urban surfaces modifying the chemical nature of the urban atmosphere with regard to both primary and secondary compounds. A temperature reduction of 1 °C leads to an increase of NO and CO by 5-25 %, whereas the mean ozone concentration is projected to decrease by 5-8 %.
Reduced temperature on the surface and in the urban canopy layer influences the dynamical structure of the atmosphere, which leads to a reduction in turbulent mixing. The depth of the mixing layer is decreased accordingly. As a result, an increase of the near surface concentration of primary compounds is projected. Additionally, temperature directly controls the reactivity of chemical reactions, which explains the reduction of ozone concentration.
It has to be pointed out however, that different measures can generate secondary effects. The increased portion of short wave radiation due to a reflexion from white roofs for instance can promote photochemical reactions, leading to an increase of peak ozone levels although temperature has been reduced. The additional emission of biogenic compounds coming along with urban greening is not covered in this work.
The main result of this work indicates the dominating role of atmospheric dynamics when analysing the impacts of urban heat island mitigation strategies on urban air quality. Whereas in earlier studies the main effort had been put on the positive effect of temperature dependent reduction of urban ozone concentration, this work analyses a complete air chemistry, being able to show negative effects on primary compounds like CO, NO and PM10 as well.


Management of groundwater resources, especially in arid and semi-arid areas, has great importance. Natural and anthropogenic phenomena in recent decades have caused critical conditions and fall in groundwater table. In such situations artificial recharge of groundwater is amongst the most important management strategies. Purpose of this study is the use of AHP and statistical methods (fuzzy-statistical ranking and parameters optimization of artificial recharge model based on nonlinear regression and sensitivity analysis) to determine suitable areas of artificial groundwater recharge in Kashan aquifer. In this study, SMAGR artificial recharge model was used for site selection artificial recharge in Kashan aquifer based on seven parameters of groundwater contamination (GC), soil infiltration rate (IR), capability of hydraulic conductivity (HC), soil pollution (SP), land use (LU), topographic slope (TS), and water table (WT). Adding layer of aquifer pollution risk was also used for site selection of suitable areas based on considerations of groundwater environmental conditions. The information layers were prepared in GIS environment and the fuzzy-statistical rating was combined based on geometric mean with equal weights. In addition, removal sensitivity analysis was used to determine the effective weight of parameters and to optimize the model. Based on the results obtained from statistical method and optimized model about 15% and 0.1% of the western and southern parts of aquifer are suitable to very suitable for artificial recharge. Also the sensitivity of the model showed a decreasing trend associated to different parameters of removed groundwater contamination, soil infiltration rate, hydraulic conductivity, soil pollution, land use, topographic slope and water table with effective weights of 2.96, 2.83, 2.41, 2.33, 2.21, 2.07 and 1.89, respectively.


Decisions made during design, construction and operation phases have effects on the environmental impacts of buildings throughout their life cycles. However, environmental impacts of construction process are often ignored. Construction techniques affect the overall environmental impacts of construction process by determining the materials, the equipment and the labour to be utilized for the constructability, which in return affects the amount of energy use and emissions and construction wastes generated during the construction process. This study proposes a model (environmental assessment of external wall cladding construction, EACC) to assess the effect of external wall cladding construction techniques on environmental impacts during their construction process. In this context, first- and second-level indicators, environmental impact benchmarks and contributing factors were defined and scores of the contributing factors were calculated. The pilot study of the EACC suggests that construction techniques affect not only resource and energy usage, labour health and safety during the construction process, but also reuse, remanufacturing and recycling possibilities of the materials at the end of their useful life.


Random number generation is critical to many applications. Gaming, gambling, and particularly cryptography all require random numbers that are uniform and unpredictable. For testing whether supposedly random sources feature particular characteristics commonly found in random sequences, batteries of statistical tests are used. These are fundamental tools in the evaluation of random number generators and form part of the pathway to certification of secure systems implementing them. Although there have been previous studies into this subject (Becker, 2013), RNG manufacturers and vendors continue to use statistical tests known to be of dubious reliability, in their RNG verification processes. Our research shows that FIPS-140-2 cannot identify adversarial biases effectively, even very primitive ones. Concretely, this work illustrates the inability of the FIPS 140 family of tests to detect bias in three obviously flawed PRNGs. Deprecated by official standards, these tests are nevertheless still widely used, for example in hardware-level self-test schemes incorporated into the design of many True RNGs (TRNGs). They are also popular with engineers and cryptographers for quickly assessing the randomness characteristics of security primitives and protocols, and even with manufacturers aiming to market the randomness features of their products to potential customers. In the following, we present three biased-by-design RNGs to show in explicit detail how simple, glaringly obvious biases are not detected by any of the FIPS 140–2 tests. One of these RNGs is backdoored, leaking key material, while others suffer from significantly reduced unpredictability in their output sequences. To make our point even more straightforward, we show how files containing images can also fool the FIPS 140 family of tests. We end with a discussion on the security issues affecting an interesting and active project to create a randomness beacon. Their authors only tested the quality of their randomness with the FIPS 140 family of tests, and we will show how this has led them to produce predictable output that, albeit passing FIPS fails other randomness tests quite catastrophically.


There is large evidence that European countries, the EMU in particular, are engaged in an interdependence war, i.e. non-cooperative policies with huge social and economic costs due to mutual negative externalities. In this regard, the EMU as a supranational institution with the overarching end to generate and distribute collective benefits from integration and policy coordination seems off the mark. We present a policy game between two interdependent countries showing that the causes and consequences of interdependence wars lye in non-cooperative strategies dictated by the national social preferences over ''good'' but costly policy choices embedded into the government's policy function. By means of the model we examine what supranational policy regimes may achieve a Pareto improvement. Among the latter, one that we call ''Europe'', minimises the additive loss function of the two countries. The thrust of our analysis is that the supranational regimes which do not take national preferences into account, dubbed ''technocratic regimes'', are dominated, so that the single alternative is between Europe and ''exit'' for the non-cooperative regime. An important result is that Europe is the Pareto-dominant regime only within a limited range of asymmetry between countries' social preferences. The paper concludes with some political-economic implications for the reform of the EMU.


This article investigates the endurance of the civilian tradition in those Southern African countries that received the European component of their law from the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope or the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek. The modern-day constitutions of Swaziland and Zimbabwe guarantee the application of respectively Roman-Dutch law and the law of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope. In order to interpret the constitutional provisions that refer directly to the civilian tradition or to the common law, it is necessary to look at the legislative provisions that first introduced the European law in these countries. Lesotho prima facie affords the least protection to the civilian tradition in its Constitution. A number of legal decisions of the courts of Lesotho are analysed to determine how and to what extent the civilian tradition has been preserved in that Kingdom.


We describe a novel surface micromachining process for the fabrication of ceramic-type MEMS devices, such as free-standing cantilevers, that is based on the use of high-aspect ratio micromolds of SU8 and aluminum as sacrificial layer. 250μm-high and 100-1000μm-wide molds were used to confine a liquid precursor of SiC/Si3N4 based ceramics on the sacrificial layer that enables the detachment of the green body before the pyrolysis step at 1000°C. The final ceramic cantilever has dimensions ranging from 100-500μm x 1-2mm x 50μm and a smooth surface. Details of the processing, structural and material characterization such as Dynamic Rheological and Thermogravimetric Analysis under UV will be presented and compared to those found in the literature.


For a number of reasons - notably its limited administrative resources - the European Commission (the Commission) seems to be relying increasingly on methods of competition law enforcement based on informal pronouncements (press releases, oral statements, etc.) and soft law instruments. Surprisingly, and in stark contrast with the extensive body of literature devoted to the Commission's more muscular enforcement initiatives under Articles 81 and 82 EC and the EC Merger Regulation (the ECMR), the pervasive use of soft law and informal legal instruments in European Community (EC) competition policy has gone relatively unnoticed. In our view, these alternative mechanisms of competition law enforcement raise many important legal questions - not only theoretical but also of very significant practical relevance. For instance, is compliance with such instruments mandatory? Are they amenable to judicial review? Can they introduce new legal standards that depart from established case-law? To what extent can they be relied upon as a reference for competitive assessments, etc.? The aim of this article is therefore to provide a broad picture of the various formal and informal instruments through which the Commission carries out the soft enforcement of EC competition rules. We refer to them as sunshine enforcement instruments and explain the reasons behind this label in Section I. We then provide a typology of those various instruments in Section II. Finally, we explore their advantages and drawbacks in Sections III and IV respectively. Section V concludes.


This document describes an OPTIONAL extension to the Internet Printing
Protocol/1.1: Model and Semantics (RFC 2911, RFC 2910). This extension
allows a client to subscribe to printing related Events. Subscriptions
are modeled as Subscription Objects. The Subscription Object specifies
that when one of the specified Events occurs, the Printer delivers an
asynchronous Event Notification to the specified Notification
Recipient via the specified Push or Pull Delivery Method (i.e.,
protocol). A client associates Subscription Objects with a particular
Job by performing the Create-Job-Subscriptions operation or by
submitting a Job with subscription information. A client associates
Subscription Objects with the Printer by performing a Create-Printer-
Subscriptions operation. Four other operations are defined for
Subscription Objects: Get-Subscriptions-Attributes, Get-Subscriptions,
Renew-Subscription, and Cancel-Subscription. [STANDARDS-TRACK]


Introduction: Chromolaena odorata (L.) R.M. King and H. Rob. (syn. Eupatorium odoratum L.), commonly known as Siam Weed, Christmas Bush, or Common Floss Flower, is a species in family Asteraceae. It has been widely used as medicinal plants for a long time. In Thailand, C. odorata is locally used to treat skin diseases and insect bites. Leave juice from the crushed leaves can be used as a haemostatic and anti-inflammatory in the treatment of skin wounds. Objective: This study aimed to investigate the leaf constant values of microscopic characters of leaf in term of stomatal number, stomatal index, epidermal cell number, trichome number, trichome index and oil gland number of C. odorata in Thailand. Method: Microscopic evaluation of leaf constants are frequency used for the medicinal plant samples. Leaf constant numbers used to identify between some closely related species. Light microscope (LM) attached a digital camera and scanning electron microscope (SEM) were used in this study. Results and Conclusion: The results showed anomocytic stomata and multicellular non-glandular trichomes on both upper and lower epidermis of C. odorata, while oil glands were found on only lower epidermis of the leaf. The microscopic leaf constant numbers of C. odorata were established and could be used for the species identification of C. odorata in Thailand.


Forest managers are restoring and maintaining forest woodlands across substantial areas of the United States, and these efforts typically require the use of frequent prescribed fire. The effects of frequent prescribed fire on important habitat components such as snags remain unknown. We conducted a study to determine how snag densities are affected by repeated prescribed burning in stands being restored to shortleaf pine (Pinus echinata) woodlands in the Ouachita Mountains of western Arkansas during summer 2015. We assessed snag densities in woodland forest stands that had 1, 2, 3, and 4–6 burns (n=6 stands in each burn class) after overstory thinning and midstory removal. In woodlands, density of large snags (≥15 cm dbh) was not significantly related to the previous number of burns, but density of small snags (5–14.9 cm dbh) was lower in stands with greater numbers of burns. Repeated burning did not appear to result in lower numbers of large snags, which are an important habitat component for numerous wildlife species.


Operating practices and resulting production from longwall faces are continually improving. Consequently, longwall operators are continually seeking to improve the dust control capabilities on longwalls. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has been conducting dust surveys at longwalls throughout the country in an effort to document the types of controls that are being used and to quantify the relative effectiveness of these controls. To date, surveys have been completed at longwalls in Alabama, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Utah, and WestVirginia. In addition NIOSH has been reviewing longwall dust parameters provided by mine operators to MSHA to assess the status of dust control technology being used throughout the industry. Results from the underground dust surveys and information obtained from MSHA will be summarized in this paper to provide an update on longwall dust control technology and practices.


Each year, about six million tons of lactose are generated from liquid whey as industrial byproduct, and optimally this large carbohydrate waste should be used for the production of value-added products. Trametes multicolor pyranose 2-oxidase (TmP2O) catalyzes the oxidation of various monosaccharides to the corresponding 2-keto sugars. Thus, a potential use of TmP2O is to convert the products from lactose hydrolysis, D-glucose and D-galactose, to more valuable products such as tagatose. Oxidation of glucose is however strongly favored over galactose, and oxidation of both substrates at more equal rates is desirable. Characterization of TmP2O variants (H450G, V546C, H450G/V546C) with improved D-galactose conversion has been given earlier, of which H450G displayed the best relative conversion between the substrates. To rationalize the changes in conversion rates, we have analyzed high-resolution crystal structures of the aforementioned mutants with bound 2- and 3-fluorinated glucose and galactose. Binding of glucose and galactose in the productive 2-oxidation binding mode is nearly identical in all mutants, suggesting that this binding mode is essentially unaffected by the mutations. For the competing glucose binding mode, enzyme variants carrying the H450G replacement stabilize glucose as the α-anomer in position for 3-oxidation. The backbone relaxation at position 450 allows the substrate-binding loop to fold tightly around the ligand. V546C however stabilize glucose as the β-anomer using an open loop conformation. Improved binding of galactose is enabled by subtle relaxation effects at key active-site backbone positions. The competing binding mode for galactose 2-oxidation by V546C stabilizes the β-anomer for oxidation at C1, whereas H450G variants stabilize the 3-oxidation binding mode of the galactose α-anomer. The present study provides a detailed description of binding modes that rationalize changes in the relative conversion rates of D-glucose and D-galactose and can be used to refine future enzyme designs for more efficient use of lactose-hydrolysis byproducts.


Abstract The problem of supporting decision- and policy-makers in managing issues related to solid waste and water quality was addressed within the context of a participatory modeling framework in the Sagarmatha National Park and Buffer Zone in Nepal. We present the main findings of management-oriented research projects conducted within this framework, thus providing an overview of the current situation in the park regarding solid waste and water quality issues. We found that most of the solid waste generated in the park is composed of organic matter, paper, and minor reused waste that is mainly reused for cattle feeding and manure, while disposal of other nondegradable categories of collected waste (glass, metal, and plastic) is not properly managed. Particularly, burning or disposal in open dumps poses a great hazard to environmental, human, and animal health, as most dump sites situated close to water courses are prone to regular flooding during the rainy season, thereby directly contaminating river water. Pollutants and microbiological contamination in water bodies were found and anthropogenic activities and hazardous practices such as solid waste dump sites, open defecation, and poor conditions of existing septic tanks are suggested as possibly affecting water quality. Collection of these data on solid waste and water quality and compilation of management information on the targeted social-ecological system allowed us to develop consensus-building models to be used as management supporting tools. By implementing such models, we were able to simulate scenarios identifying and evaluating possible management solutions and interventions in the park. This work reveals insights into general dynamics that can support the quest for solutions to waste and water quality management problems in other protected areas and mountain landscapes where traditional livelihood and land use patterns are changing under the influence of a growing population, changing consumption patterns, and international tourism.


Machining operations like milling exhibit complex process kinematics, which restricts the identification and analysis of fundamental cause-effect interrelations. In order to differentiate the impact of relevant process parameters, a reduction of influencing factors is necessary. For this purpose, a cutting operation with a linear cutting motion, like orthogonal cutting, is beneficial. Such an experimental setup requires suitable tools, workpieces and measurement systems. The experimental assessment of a developed modular design is presented in this publication. In addition to orthogonal cuts, oblique cuts, which are representative for machining operations with respect to the helix angle, were investigated. To analyze process dynamics, interrupted cuts, including a specifically compliant tool system, were performed.


YUAN SF, REN H, LIU N, WANG J & GUO QF. 2013. Can thinning of overstorey trees and planting of native tree saplings increase the establishment of native trees in exotic Acacia plantations in South China? Assessing the effect of thinning of overstorey trees and planting of native trees will be helpful to better understand the vegetation restoration. A stand conversion experiment was conducted in a 12-year-old Acacia auriculiformis plantation in 1996. Treatments were thinning and underplanting, underplanting, thinning, and control. Results showed that thinning enhanced the establishment and growth of underplanted and regenerated native seedlings. The thinning and underplanting treatment reduced soil organic matter, soil total nitrogen, soil bulk density and soil water content but increased soil phosphorus and potassium contents. The establishment and growth of underplanted native species depended on their responses to light and soil resources. Thinning increased recolonisation by native species. Since some of the underplanted native trees grow rapidly, the regenerating canopy cover can become dense after thinning, and the density of the new canopy inhibits regeneration of other native tree species. Therefore, moderate thinning should be periodically performed as part of the long-term management of plantation and different thinning intensities can be used to increase spatial variability in the overstorey. The shade tolerance of native species was the most important characteristic in determining the response of the native trees to the treatments.


Title: The Scandinavian approach to the Experience Economy – does it make sense? This paper discusses the concept of the experience economy in a Scandinavian context and shows how the Scandinavian version of the concept has come about from a mix of three different approaches and theories. In the Scandinavian countries the experience economy has been developed in a political context and it is apparently a popular development policy for local government authorities and regions. The Scandinavian definition links the experience economy closely with cultural activities, and besides it is closely linked to expectation of economic return and economic development. This paper discusses the Scandinavian definition of experience economy and questions if it makes any sense. The definition of experiences is not clear, which make the demarcation of the experience economy almost impossible and create other difficulties in relation to policy. The paper shows that the experience economy can follow three different routes to market value creation, and how the growth opportunities for the different experience industries will depend on at least three different trends. Therefore, it can be shown that only some experience industries are growing, and the market value creation occurs in very different ways and to very different extents within, and in relation to, the different experience industries. The greatest growth potential resides probably in the broad value creation in association with the experience industries. But the experience economy does not lend itself to any consistent definition.


Abstract From the end of August to early September 2011, 15 ocean‐bottom seismometers (OBSs) were deployed offshore northeastern Taiwan for approximately 20 days. During this period, the typhoon Nanmadol formed in the western Pacific, moved northwestward from the East Philippines, and made landfall on the island of Taiwan. In this study, we analyzed the seismic signals from the OBSs and the marine metrological data to investigate the influence of the typhoon on submarine seismic records. Our results show that the signals induced by the typhoon occurred mainly at approximately 0.15–0.5 Hz frequency. The magnitude of these signals depends substantially on water depth. Some exceptions, most likely generated by site effects, were observed. Also, a positive correlation exists between the signals energy and the local wave height, which suggests that the microseisms were affected by the pressure changes produced by the local wave activity as the typhoon passed over the stations. However, when an OBS was outside the typhoon periphery, any wave energy variations could only be caused by the elastic wave formed around the typhoon area, the energy of which is transmitted through the ocean bottom to the stations. Thus, no local waves were excited by the strong winds, and only a relatively small amount of energy was recorded.


The Oligocene Somun Cura plateau is the largest volcanic field in the northern extra-andean Patagonia of Argentina. It is mostly composed of alkaline to transitional aphyric olivine basalts that cover a sub-circular area of ~25,000 km2. Several early Miocene post-plateau volcanic events resulted in small monogenetic centres and large bimodal complexes. The Barril Niyeu Volcanic Complex (BNVC) is one of the largest post-plateau bimodal centres built through several stages of eruptive activity outpoured from at least five vents (presently cauldrons) of distinct trachyte/rhyolite and basaltic compositions. New whole rock K/Ar dating of early trachyte (20.6±0.4 Ma) and late basaltic (18.7±0.4 Ma) rocks constrain the time span of the BNVC activity within 2–2.5 My. The earliest eruptive stage of the BNVC produced viscous trachyte lava restricted to the volcanic centre, followed by two explosive eruptive episodes of dominant intermediate to acid composition: The first episode produced air-fall, mainly plinian (lesser strombolian) and pyroclastic flow deposits and the second was dominated by ignimbritic pyroclastic flows. Basaltic lava, minor breccia and spatter cone deposits dominate the final stage. The magmatic series of the BNVC involves basaltic/trachybasaltic and trachyte/rhyolite compositions, with a characteristic gap in the 52–67% SiO2 range. Transitional olivine basalt is the most primitive rock of the series (Mg# = 66; Ni = 160 ppm; Cr = 290 ppm) and shows a chemical composition compatible with a liquid that evolved through the crystal fractionation of a basaltic magma derived from partial melting (8–10%) of a lherzolithic source. Major and trace element contents and element ratios suggest differentiation through crystal fractionation from an olivine basaltic magma. Intraplate-like Th/Yb, and Ta/Yb ratios characterize basalts, whereas high LILE/REE (Ba/La) ratios suggest the contribution of a subordinated subduction zone component. In addition, Rb/Nb ratios along with a relative Th enrichment in some basalt suggest assimilation of upper crustal rocks. Isotopic compositions (Sr-Nd) of BNVC basalts suggest a source from a depleted mantle and minor contribution of EM1 melts. Somun Cura magmatism is attributed to a process of lithospheric delamination associated with gravitational disturbances during plate reorganization, with subordinated contributions from detached segments of a foundered subducted slab (Aluk plate?).


Using a mobile base station (BS) in a wireless sensor network can alleviate nonuniform energy consumption among sensor nodes and accommodate partitioned networks. In the work of Jerew and Liang (2009) we have proposed a novel clustering-based heuristic algorithm for finding a trajectory of the mobile BS that strikes a nontrivial tradeoff between the traffic load among sensor nodes and the tour time constraint of the mobile BS. In this paper, we first show how to choose the number of clusters to ensure there is no packet loss as the BS moves between clusters. We then provide an analytical solution to the problem in terms of the speed of the mobile BS. We also provide analytical estimates of the unavoidable packet loss as the network size increases. We finally conduct experiments by simulation to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm. The results show that the use of clustering in conjunction with a mobile BS for data gathering can significantly prolong network lifetime and balance energy consumption of sensor nodes.


In the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam, women officially competed in track and field for the first time. After a world-record-breaking 800-meter final, the press inaccurately reported that the runners collapsed at the finish and generally called for the race to be eliminated since it called too greatly on feminine strength. In intervening years between the 1928 and 1932 Olympics, the IOC and IAAF voted to eliminate the race from the program. A fuller understanding of 800-meter race, within a broader American cultural milieu about women's health and sport, demonstrates how the media and sport governing bodies intersect with ideologies of femininity.


Indian literature provides examples of multiple renderings of a text that are radically different from the purported original. Scholars have suggested that it is better to refer to these as tellings, since they have a symbolic relationship as different versions of a story. In fact, medieval Indian tellings and renderings could be regarded as cultural transactions with a complex intertextuality amongst them. Multiple tellings and renderings also acted as pluralistic epistemologies for categories such as gender, caste, religion, sect and language, not only interconnecting them but also protecting the rights of these categories over their knowledge. Taking written, oral and non-verbal representations from the Karnataka region, this paper attempts to understand the processes and methods at work in the cultural transactions that produced these representations.


We previously introduced a simple and fast method for computing the scattered field when a TM wave is incident on an arbitrary-shaped multilayer cylindrical object. Here, we propose a modification of this method for the TE illumination case. According to this approach, the magnetic field at each layer is expressed as a series of cylindrical functions with unknown coefficients. These coefficients are determined through the solution of a linear system of equations that is obtained by first imposing the boundary conditions, then expressing cylindrical functions as Fourier series on each boundary, and using the orthogonality of complex exponentials. Numerical simulations show that the proposed modification for the TE case is also an efficient alternative numerical technique.


As a consequence of climate change, China's urban areas are increasingly at risk from sea level rise, storm intensity, and rapid urbanisation. More than 40,000 square kilometres were urbanised in the last three decades, and more than 400 new urban cities have emerged across China. Over a half billion people are living in urban areas, and this number will rise in the near future. Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen are at high risk of climate change, flooding, and other associated problems. Due to a lack of absorption facilities, even small amounts of precipitation create pulse and press disturbances that combine to increase the intensity of flooding in most Chinese urban areas. For the better management of flooding and rainwater storage, expert judgment is necessary. Accordingly, expert views (pilot study n=12) were obtained from flooding and disaster management specialists with knowledge of both flooding and the sponge cities concept. The majority stated that sponge cities were an excellent concept, but that capturing and storing rainwater is somewhat difficult. Very few experts opposed this concept. However, expert opinions should be used as tools for planners and policymakers for developing management strategies to improve urban resilience under the scenarios of climate change and anthropogenic pressures.


To what extent can deeply divided societies develop integrative and connecting symbols that are transgressing political, social and national borders and division lines? The present text addresses this question by analyzing the discourses and memories of the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics in contemporary Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). After examining the discourses around the Games in 1984, the text analyzes the practices and narratives around the official anniversaries of the Games which took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1994, 1999, 2004, 2009, and 2014. It furthermore explores how Olympic symbols are used today in the public urban space in Sarajevo and in East Sarajevo, and how ordinary people from different parts of BiH perceive the Sarajevo Olympics in the present day. The analysis of the official anniversary commemorations shows that the Sarajevo Olympics, a symbol of a united Yugoslavia in 1984, and a symbol of destruction and division within BiH in 1994, have once again become a more integrative symbol in 2014, currently connecting Sarajevo and East Sarajevo. Being officially commemorated and relating to a strong popular memory, both independently from and even across political and ethnic division lines, gives the Sarajevo Winter Olympics an outstanding place in the culture of remembrance of contemporary Bosnia and Herzegovina.


Insect as food and feed has become a global topic of interest as an alternative to protein source. Prediction of food scarcity in the future has also bringing the subject on its importance. Many countries have developed the insect industry yet the legal framework concerning it is still at infancy stage and even uncertain. In Malaysia, as of today, the legislation on insect is scattered with no specific legislation. In this regards the existing Malaysia's legislations only cater for the danger of certain insect such as the Destruction of Disease-Bearing Insects Act 1975 [Act 154] . We explores the need for a structured legislation to foster and support the insect industry in Malaysia. The methodoly used was by exploring the South Korean Act on Fosterage and Support of the Insect Industry as suggestions for Malaysia to consider. Result suggests that Malaysia should have a legislation of its own to regulate the insect industry. The future of insect as food and feed holds a huge potential which Malaysia should not missed out.


Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer among women worldwide with South-East Asian countries jointly contributes to nearly one-third of the global cervical cancer burden. The objective of this study is to review
and determine the knowledge, attitude, also barriers among people in
developing countries of South East Asia region towards human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination against cervical cancer. We performed a literature
search for published articles in English that reported about knowledge,
attitudes and barriers towards HPV vaccination in developing countries of
South-East Asia on UN World Economic Situation and Prospects 2018
classification, prior to recent years (2008-2018). Terms and keywords relevant
to knowledge attitudes towards HPV vaccination were used in a search of the electronic database. A total of 120 studies were initially identified and
10 studies were finally selected that met all eligibility criteria. The percentage
of knowledge on availability of HPV vaccine to protect women against
cervical cancer was varied from 7.8–97.5%. Meanwhile the positive
attitude percentage ranged from 36.1–92.1%. Some barriers of taking
HPV vaccination were because of afraid by the side effects, needle and/or any other safety issues, believed that the vaccine needed only when symptom appears, embarrassment and unaffordable price. Our study find even while levels of knowledge are generally low, individuals are still willing to receive vaccination against HPV. The barriers reflect the importance of immediate implementation of educational campaigns before vaccination is made available through a national HPV vaccination program. It may improve uptake of vaccination and its effectiveness to people in each country.


This paper addresses the two main criticisms made by Cass Sunstein of the ideological rankings of justices in our book on federal judicial behavior. The first was that ranking justices from different time periods is problematic because the justices faced a different mixture of cases. The second questioned our implicit assumption that cases are fungible for the purpose of calculating a justice's ideology. To address the first criticism, we use the votes of moderate justices to create an adjusted voting index for each justice that controls for the influence of nonideological factors (for example, changes in the characteristics of cases). We respond to the second criticism by ranking justices on the basis of their votes in the most significant and controversial cases—5–4 decisions and cases reported in the New York Times. Overall, these adjustments result in only minor changes in the rankings in our book.


For vision, insect and vertebrate eyes use rhabdomeric and ciliary photoreceptor cells, respectively. These cells show distinct architecture and transduce the light signal by different phototransductory cascades. In the marine rag-worm Platynereis, we find both cell types: rhabdomeric photoreceptor cells in the eyes and ciliary photoreceptor cells in the brain. The latter use a photopigment closely related to vertebrate rod and cone opsins. Comparative analysis indicates that both types of photoreceptors, with distinct opsins, coexisted in Urbilateria, the last common ancestor of insects and vertebrates, and sheds new light on vertebrate eye evolution.


This is a coming-of-age novel about familial love, the flawed nature of memory, and the blurred line between self and body. It shifts between two perspectives: a young teenager named Julie who develops an exotic mental disorder, and her brother, Wolfgang, who struggles against the physical and mental barriers between them. To begin, we learn that Julie's mother, father, and brother have gone missing in a deadly plane crash. As a presumed orphan, she is to be raised by her well-intentioned grandmother, Gerty, who must bridge a wide generational gap. Her brother, meanwhile, survives the crash and ekes out a living on an uninhabited island for over a year before finally being rescued along with his father, Vernon, with whom he constantly struggles for power and independence. As Julie finally comes to terms with her family's death, her life suffers another shattering reversal of fate after the surprise return of her brother and father causes her to develop a mental condition which prevents her from seeing or interacting with them. As Wolfgang struggles to reach out to Julie, he finds himself sucked up by his sister's quest to find the long lost love of a man whose crippling and mysterious memory loss has left him trapped in the year 1968.


This paper discusses the problem of marrying structural similarity with semantic relatedness for Information Extraction from text. Aiming at accurate recognition of relations, we introduce local alignment kernels and explore various possibilities of using them for this task. We give a definition of a local alignment (LA) kernel based on the Smith-Waterman score as a sequence similarity measure and proceed with a range of possibilities for computing similarity between elements of sequences. We show how distributional similarity measures obtained from unlabeled data can be incorporated into the learning task as semantic knowledge. Our experiments suggest that the LA kernel yields promising results on various biomedical corpora outperforming two baselines by a large margin. Additional series of experiments have been conducted on the data sets of seven general relation types, where the performance of the LA kernel is comparable to the current state-of-the-art results.


Objective: To describe our experience with surgical intervention for symptomatic intraarticular vascular malformations of the knee in patients with peripheral vascular malformations including Klippel-Trénaunay syndrome (KTS). Methods: Eleven patients underwent surgical intervention for symptomatic intraarticular vascular malformations of the knee between 1987 and 2008. Seven patients had KTS, and 4 patients had venous malformations. Surgical indications, imaging studies, clinical course, surgical procedures, complications, and follow-up visits were reviewed and recorded. Results: A total of 11 patients (8 males; 3 females; mean age, 11.7 years; range, 2.5-23 years) underwent 12 surgical procedures. Five patients had an amputation, and 6 patients had knee synovectomies. One patient had bilateral knee synovectomies. Surgical indications included pain, swelling, limited mobility, and/or loss of knee motion. The average time of follow-up was 54 months (range, 7-109 months). Patient-reported pain scores decreased significantly from a mean of 2.9 ± 1.4 preoperatively to 1.3 ± 0.9 postoperatively (P = 0.01). Conclusions: When necessary, surgical intervention for intraarticular vascular malformations of the knee (amputation or synovectomy) may be effective in decreasing pain and improving mobility in patients with peripheral vascular malformations. It is possible that early synovectomy may slow or prevent the rapid destructive arthritis that occurs in these knees. Surgeons and patients should anticipate complications related to bleeding from vascular malformations. We recommend a multidisciplinary approach to the patient with KTS, particularly when surgical intervention is indicated.


This contribution entails a comparative review or synopsis of the present state of the protection of personality rights. Realistically, this can only be a snapshot of the status quo in various legal systems and is not intended to give a detailed exposition. The aim is to summarise, systemise and to an extent critically reflect on the available literature, as well as to identify particular dogmatic and practical problems. The research results may also stimulate in-depth examination of particular aspects of personality protection. The topics dealt with are the recognition and basis of protection of personality rights, the scope of their protection, the relationship between the general right to personality and specific personality rights, the nature of personality rights and personality harm, the classification of specific personality rights, the distinction between personality rights and certain patrimonial rights, personality rights as human rights, post-mortem personality protection, and the personality rights of juristic persons.


The right of the arrested and accused persons to remain silent at pre-trial and during their trial are significant to ensuring a fair trial. The purpose of the right to remain silent is to ensure that the state bears the duty to prove the guilt of the accused beyond reasonable doubt. In essence, the right serves to dissuade the state from engaging in any manner or form of coercing the accused person to assist the state in meeting its case, whether during pre-trial or during trial. An individual who is accused of committing an offence must not through his or her words or deeds assist the state in satisfying its burden of proof. The Firearm Control Act 20 of 2000 (the Act) seems to dilute these rights. The Act empowers the police official to request an owner of a legal firearm to produce it within seven days of the request at a threat of a criminal sanction. At the time the request is made the individual has been neither arrested for nor accused of a criminal offence. However, on the failure to produce the firearm on demand by a police official the individual may be charged with a criminal offence and evidence that has been obtained in terms of the Act would be admissible at the subsequent trial. This is despite the fact that at the time the request to produce a firearm is made the individual does not have a choice but to comply with the request lest he or she be charged with an offence under the Act. The purpose of this contribution is to investigate whether the individual to whom a request to produce a firearm has been made is entitled to the right to remain silent entrenched in section 35 of the Constitution, and whether the limitation of this right by the Act passes constitutional muster.


AIMS
To prospectively investigate the diagnostic accuracy of dual-source computed tomography coronary angiography (CTCA) to diagnose coronary stenoses in relation to body mass index (BMI), Agatston score (AS), and heart rate (HR) as compared with catheter coronary angiography (CCA).

METHODS AND RESULTS
Hundred and fifty consecutive patients (47 female, mean age 62.9 +/- 12.1 years) underwent dual-source CTCA without HR control. Patients were divided into subgroups depending on the median of their BMI (26.0 kg/m2), AS (194), and HR (66 b.p.m.). CCA was considered the standard of reference. Mean BMI was 26.5 +/- 4.2 kg/m2 (range 18.3-39.1 kg/m2), mean AS was 309 +/- 408 (range 0-4387), and HR was 68.5 +/- 12.6 b.p.m. (range 35-102 b.p.m.). Diagnostic image quality was found in 98.1% of all segments (2020/2059). Considering not-evaluative segments at CTCA as false-positive, overall per-patient sensitivity, specificity, positive, and negative predictive value were 96.6%, 86.8%, 82.6%, and 97.5%, respectively. High HR did not deteriorate diagnostic accuracy of CTCA. High BMI and AS were associated with a decrease in per-patient specificity to 84.1% and 77.8%, respectively, while sensitivity and negative predictive value remained high.

CONCLUSION
Dual-source CTCA provides high diagnostic accuracy irrespective of the HR and serves as a modality to rule-out coronary artery stenoses even in patients with high BMI and AS.


Improving energy efficiency and reducing the cost of the appliance simultaneously is a continuing challenge for refrigerator manufacturers. While conventional system configuration is based on a single evaporator vapor compression cycle, there are several other system configurations that can offer benefits over it. For example, a dual evaporator (one evaporator for freshfood and one for freezer) offers several benefits such as increased efficiency, isolation of odors, and higher humidity levels in the freshfood compartment. Engineers typically use extensive experimentation to optimize the system. This approach takes significant time and resources. Although optimization studies exists for a conventional single evaporator cycle, studies for dual evaporator cycle optimization are limited. Most manufacturers do not explore complex architecture due to time consuming, labor intensive and expensive development procedures. This study presents experimental results obtained from a prototype dual evaporator refrigerator. Further, this study presents a physics-based model and a multi-objective optimization methodology that demonstrates how engineers can optimize a refrigeration system by considering multiple objectives simultaneously. The study presents example optimization results for simultaneously minimizing cost and maximizing performance within a specified design space. Optimization of the novel design uses a genetic algorithm-based optimizer in conjunction with a response surface based metamodel. Using optimization techniques, we can arrive at lowest cost design relatively quickly as shown in the analysis. More work needs to be done to validate optimized solutions as well as alternate methods to improve temperature control.


OBJECTIVE—Insulin binds to the α-subunit of the insulin receptor (IRα) and subsequently exerts its effects in the cells. The soluble ectodomains of several receptors have been found to circulate in the plasma. Therefore, we hypothesized that soluble human insulin receptor (hIR) ectodomain (α-subunit and a part of β-subunit) may exist in the plasma of diabetic patients. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS—We identified soluble hIR ectodomain in human plasma by a two-step purification followed by immunoblotting and gel-filtration chromatography. Furthermore, we established an hIRα-specific enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and measured the plasma IRα levels in patients with diabetes. We also investigated this phenomenon in streptozotocin-induced diabetic hIR transgenic mice. RESULTS—Soluble hIRα, but not intact hIRβ or whole hIR, exists in human plasma. The plasma IRα levels were significantly higher in type 1 (2.00 ± 0.60 ng/ml; n = 53) and type 2 (2.26 ± 0.80; n = 473) diabetic patients than in control subjects (1.59 ± 0.40 ng/ml; n = 123 (P < 0.001 vs. control). Plasma IRα level was positively correlated with blood glucose level, and 10–20% of the insulin in plasma bound to hIRα. In the in vivo experiments using diabetic hIR transgenic mice, hyperglycemia was confirmed to increase the plasma hIRα level and the half-life estimated to be ∼6 h. CONCLUSIONS—We propose that the increased soluble IR ectodomain level appears to be a more rapid glycemic marker than A1C or glycoalbumin.


Variation in factor shares, extensively documented in recent years, implies that standard growth accounting exercises are plagued by measurement issues. First, the standard assumption of constant shares generates a bias in the estimation of the contribution of factors to economic growth. Second, the effect that changes in factor shares have on output depends on the relative abundance of factors and, for this reason, having correct units of measurement for all factors is imperative. We perform a growth accounting exercise that incorporates factor share variation and solves the measurement issue. Results suggest that (i) the correct units of measurement are significantly lower than standard ones for the stocks of physical, natural and human capital per worker (ii) changes in factor shares have an important effect on the growth rates of income per worker for several countries and (iii) the marginal productivity of all factors is positively correlated with per worker income.


By equal measure state-builder and political unifier and ruthless opportunist and bloody-handed aggressor, Alexander II has been praised or vilified by past historians but has rarely been viewed in the round. This book explores the king's successes and failures, offering a fresh assessment of his contribution to the making of Scotland as a nation. It lifts the focus from an introspective national history to look at the man and his kingdom in wider British and European history, examining his international relationships and offering the first detailed analysis of the efforts to work out a lasting diplomatic solution to Anglo-Scottish conflict over his inherited claims to the northern counties of England. More than just a political narrative, the book also seeks to illuminate aspects of the king's character and his relationships with those around him, especially his mother, his first wife Joan Plantagenet, and the great magnates, clerics and officials who served in his household and administration. The book illustrates the processes by which the mosaic of petty principalities and rival power-bases that covered the map of late 12th-century Scotland had become by the mid-13th century a unified state, hybrid in culture(s) and multilingual but acknowledging a common identity as Scots.


This study proposes a methodology to calibrate microscopic traffic flow simulation models. The proposed methodology has the capability to calibrate simultaneously all the calibration parameters as well as demand patterns for any network topology. These parameters include global and local parameters as well as driver behavior and vehicle performance parameters; all based on multiple performance measures, such as link counts and speeds. Demand patterns are included in the calibration framework in terms of turning volumes. A Simultaneous Perturbation Stochastic Approximation (SPSA) algorithm is proposed to search for the vector of the model's parameters that minimizes the difference between actual and simulated network states. Previous studies proposed similar methodologies; however, only a small number of calibration parameters were considered, and none of the demand values. Moreover, an extensive and a priori process was used in order to choose the subset of parameters with the most potential impact. In the proposed methodology, the simultaneous consideration of all model parameters and multiple performance measures enables the determination of better estimates at a lower cost in terms of a user's effort. Issues associated with convergence and stability are reduced because the effects of changing parameters are taken into consideration to adjust them slightly and simultaneously. The simultaneous adjustment of all parameters results in a small number of evaluations of the objective function. The experimental results illustrate the effectiveness and validity of this proposed methodology. Three networks were calibrated with excellent results. The first network was an arterial network with link counts and speeds used as performance measurements for calibration. The second network included a combination of freeway ramps and arterials, with link counts used as performance measurements. Considering simultaneously arterials and freeways is a significant challenge because the two models are different and their parameters are calibrated at the same time. This represents a higher number of parameters, which increases the complexity of the optimization problem. A proper solution from all feasible solutions becomes harder to find. The third network was an arterial network, with time-dependent link counts and speed used as performance measurements. The same set of calibration parameters was used in all experiments. All calibration parameters were constrained within reasonable boundaries. Hence, the design and implementation of the proposed methodology enables the calibration of generalized micro-simulation traffic flow simulation models.


Two of the most important issues in l!leveloping data-driven medical decision support systems are the choice of knowledge representation and the methods and technique for integration with the patient database. The main purpose of the Arden Syntax for Medical Logic Modules, which is the method of choice in this thesis, is to create a standard representation for data-driven decision support systems and to facilitate sharing of medical knowledge among different institutions and clinics. The main feature of the syntax is that it is easily readable and writeable, thereby allowing maintenance and transparency. The knowledge within a domain is braken down inta a number of independent medical logic modules (MLMs), where each module together with its logic also holds a description of its evocation criteria in terms of events and conditions related to patient data.This thesis addresses same of the problems with integration of a decision support system (OSS) inside a specific software engineering environment, together with issues in relation to database query handling. An architecture of a OSS based on Arden Syntax and its integration in an object-oriented environment is presented. The basic components of the OSS are the knowledge base composed of MLMs and the patient database with developed couplings between the knowledge base and the patient database. Since the MLM format is neutral to the local environment such as patient databases and computer platforms, these methods and tools are needed when realizing an efficient run-time OSS.


This book provides a clear exposition of the flourishing field of fixed point theory. Starting from the basics of Banach's contraction theorem, most of the main results and techniques are developed: fixed point results are established for several classes of maps and the three main approaches to establishing continuation principles are presented. The theory is applied to many areas of current interest in analysis. Topological considerations play a crucial role, including a final chapter on the relationship with degree theory. Researchers and graduate students in applicable analysis will find this to be a useful survey of the fundamental principles of the subject. The very extensive bibliography and close to 100 exercises mean that it can be used both as a text and as a comprehensive reference work, currently the only one of its type.


One the biggest burdens facing municipal wastewater treatment plants are the expenses of hauling and disposing of residual biosolids, or sludge. In 2007, United States municipal wastewater treatment plants produced about 7.7 million dry tons of biosolids, according to sources relying on EPA estimates. Hauling costs, tipping fees and the availability of land application sites forces many administrators to search for new ways to reduce the quantity of sludge produced by the wastewater treatment process. A full-scale activated sludge wastewater treatment plant selected an emerging technology to enhance degradation of biosolids without any digestion process at the plant. The results show that using an external source of genus Bacillus bacteria added to the outer reaches of the sewer collection system improved operational performance at the plant and will save the municipality an estimated $96,000 of operating expenses in the first year of treatment. This report describes the plant performance improvements, the evaluation metrics, the history and discussion of the plant process, and the environmental impacts resulting from external bioaugmentation introduced to the sewer collection system.


The effect of a supplemental air distribution system was evaluated in a greenhouse producing tomatoes
(Lycopersicon esculentum Mill cv. Trust). The system used centrifugal fans to force warmer air from above the canopy through
a perforated duct extending longitudinally through each double-canopy row, with the goal of improving yield and decreasing
energy use. The experiment employed two commercial-size greenhouses, one as the treatment greenhouse with the air
distribution system and one as the control using conventional air handling. The experiment duration was two growing seasons
(spring and fall crop). The system significantly reduced vertical temperature and relative humidity gradients while the heater
was on during the spring. The treatment greenhouse consumed 9% less fuel and exhibited 14% greater yield than the control
house. The net benefit from the treatment greenhouse was estimated as slightly less than $1000 for the spring season, and the
benefit/cost ratio of the system was four to one. However, the benefits observed during the spring did not repeat for the fall
season. There were no appreciable environmental differences between the greenhouses, and the yields were essentially the
same. Because of capital and operating costs, the treatment greenhouse experienced a net economic loss of near $300 in the
fall. The difference between fall and spring results is explained by the different relationship between plant size and climate
during those seasons; the combination of small plants and cold weather in the spring can benefit the most from this type of
air circulation system. The results from a single spring/fall trial suggest that the system could be valuable to producers, but
only in the spring.


Contact failures in microelectromechanical system (MEMS) switches, particularly during hot switching, prevent their widespread use. In this paper, a nanoparticle liquid (NPL) lubricant is synthesized and deposited on MEMS switch contacts as a nanotechnology-based lubricant. NPLs are monolithic hybrid materials comprised of an inorganic nanosized metallic core and an organic low viscosity corona. The NPL used here utilizes either Au or Pt nanoparticles as the core and a mercaptoethanesulfonate ionic liquid as the corona. Performance, reliability, and chemical/physical processes on hot-switched NPL-lubricated contact surfaces were investigated at high (1 mA) and low (10 ) currents using a micro/nanoadhesion apparatus as a MEMS switch simulator with in situ monitoring of contact resistance and adhesion force. This was coupled with ex-situ analyses of the contacts using scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and scanning Auger spectroscopy. NPLs exhibited improved electrical performance and durability (orders of magnitude improvement) as compared to uncoated and self-assembled monolayer-coated switch contacts. Improved performance and reliability results from the following: 1) controlled nanoscale surface roughness that spreads current through multiple nanocontacts; 2) restricted size melting regions and termination of nanowire growth (prevents shorting) during contact opening; 3) enhanced thermal and electrical conductivity that reduces lubricant degradation; and 4) lubricant self-healing (flow to damaged areas) as confirmed with physical and chemical analyses. Based on these results, NPLs show excellent potential as surface modifiers/lubricants for MEMS switch contacts.


The mutational effect of the maleless (mle) gene in Drosophila has been reexamined. Earlier work had suggested that mle along with other male-lethal genes was responsible for hypertranscription of the X chromosome in males to bring about dosage compensation. Prompted by studies on dosage sensitive regulatory genes, we tested for effects of mlets on the phenotypes of 16 X or autosomal mutations in adult escapers of lethality. In third instar larvae, prior to the major lethal phase of mle, we examined activities of 6 X or autosomally encoded enzymes, steady state mRNA levels of 15 X-linked or autosomal genes and transcripts from two large genomic segments derived from either the X or from chromosome 2 and present in yeast artificial chromosomes. In contrast to the previously hypothesized role, we detected pronounced effects of mle on the expression of both X-linked and autosomal loci such that a large proportion of the tested genes were increased in expression, while only two X-linked loci were reduced. The most prevalent consequence was an increase of autosomal gene expression, which can explain previously observed reduced X:autosome transcription ratios. These observations suggest that if mle plays a role in the discrimination of the X and the autosomes, it may do so by modification of the effects of dosage sensitive regulatory genes.


Social media - in particular microblogging - is fast becoming important in today's world. A good example is Twitter, which is a rich source of readily-available information by, and about, people. Real-life happenings are constantly reported on Twitter; thus, it functions as a 'mirror' to the real world. These happenings range from the banal (individual thoughts, opinions, and observations), to the dramatic (celebrity announcements, scandals, and Internet memes), to real-world events with serious consequences (riots, coordination during natural disasters, response to terrorism, and political dissent).

Most extant literature treats the message and user domains on Twitter independently of one another. Current research focuses only on a single domain, but rarely on both. Research consists mostly of specialized techniques, such as opinion and sentiment mining, community detection, social network analysis, and trend mining which are merely applied to Twitter data. Rarely are metadata from both the user and message domains analyzed in tandem with each other. My thesis combines metadata from both domains and transforms them into useful inferences for detecting hidden patterns. The basis of my research is the use of metadata from both Twitter users and messages as the raw material, from which we can discover hidden patterns and inferences. Such patterns and inferences, in turn, can be combined with data mining techniques to unearth a wealth of knowledge about Twitter users in particular, and people in general. In this thesis, I investigate two aspects. First, I introduce a new framework for the large-scale gathering and collation of Twitter user and message metadata. Secondly, I introduce and investigate new inference algorithms that combines metadata from both domains, inspired by current literature, which are hitherto absent in research. In doing so, I contributed to the development of novel inference algorithms, and frameworks to harvest raw metadata from Twitter for the provision of ample data for the evaluation of my algorithms.

From the wealth of metadata from the two domains on Twitter, my new algorithms produce three categories of inferences - social demographics, exhibition of online presence by users, and messaging (tweeting) behavior of users. Using these new inference algorithms, I tested my findings on a large-scale real-world dataset, collected from Twitter using data gathering frameworks I have developed. Consequently I was able to draw conclusions of the current 'state of the Twitterverse'. Following that, I introduced a novel application of pattern detection and clustering on inferences generated from my algorithms. This is for the detection of latent traits and identification of non-obvious patterns, with respect to the three categories of inferences that are generated from my algorithms. To conclude my thesis, I showed that my approaches provide useful insights about serious real-world phenomena captured on Twitter pertaining to - environmental activism, terrorism events, and public disorder - all of which are of interest to researchers, governments, and the media alike. Using the approaches proposed throughout my thesis, I was able to discover the behavior of people in the real world, and illustrated how such real-life behavior is translated into expression and social communication in the online realm. The results from these studies covered in my thesis led to a better understanding of who social media consumers are, how they communicate online, and how behavioral patterns from these users 'mirror' the real-world.


This paper is intended to investigate the degree to which interaction and other predictors contribute to student satisfaction in online learning settings. This was a preliminary study towards a dissertation work which involved the establishment of interaction and satisfaction scales through a content validity survey. Regression analysis was performed to determine the contribution of predictor variables to student satisfaction. The effects of student background variables on predictors were explored. The results showed that learner-instructor interaction, learner-content interaction, and Internet self-efficacy were good predictors of student satisfaction while interactions among students and self-regulated learning did not contribute to student satisfaction. Learner-content interaction explained the largest unique variance in student satisfaction. Additionally, gender, class level, and time spent online per week seemed to have influence on learner-learner interaction, Internet self-efficacy, and self-regulation.


Vascular calcification is common in ESRD patients and is important in increasing mortality from cardiovascular complications in these patients. Hyperphosphatemia related to chronic kidney disease is increasingly known as major stimulus for vascular calcification. Hyperphosphatemia and vascular calcification become popular discussion among nephrologist environment more than five decades, and many researches have been evolved. Risk factors for calcification are nowadays focused for the therapeutic prevention of vascular calcification with the hope of reducing cardiovascular complications.


In present investigation the efforts have been made to prepare a therapeutic ready-to-serve (RTS) made from blend of aloe vera, aonla fruits and ginger juice extracts. The blended juice extracts were prepared by using different proportions of aloe vera, aonla fruits and ginger juice as 50:25:25(A), 60:20:20(B), 70:15:15(C) and 80:10:10(D).The different blends were homogenized and pasteurized at 8000 rpm for 2 min and 85°C for 10 minutes respectively. The prepared therapeutic RTS is complying with Indian standards for RTS fruits beverages. The blended therapeutic RTS were analyzed for its different physicochemical as well as sensory quality and sensory quality evaluated by adopting 9 point hedonic scale. Among different blended ratio for therapeutic RTS, sample C blended ratio of 70:15:15 was reached with highest sensory scores for overall acceptability. The developed RTS could be recommended for the large scale production at industrial level.


At present, one of the most important problems in speech recognition and speaker recognition is the extraction of individual information from the speech waveform. This paper describes the extraction of individual information by the vector-quantization and the text-independent speaker information based on that method. A feature vector is proposed for the first time which is the quantized distribution by the frequency of the vector-quantization code to represent the individual features of the speaker. The properties of the feature vector are investigated, and effectiveness is verified by an actual speaker-identification experiment. The quantization distribution is a feature representing the distribution density in the space for the acoustic features, e.g., the spectrum uttered by the individual. As the acoustic feature parameters, the cepstrum for stationary part, and the change of the cepstrum, are used to construct the quantization distribution. The identification rates are compared. As a result of the identification experiment for 10 speakers, an identification rate of 100 percent was achieved by the quantization distribution of cepstrum for 10 input words, which are different from the training samples. In the experiment using 200 speakers, an identification rate of 88 percent was achieved for the first candidates, and a cumulative identification rate of 95 percent was achieved for up to the second candidate.


The indistinguishability of two pieces of data (or two lists of pieces of data) can be represented formally in terms of a relation called static equivalence. Static equivalence depends on an underlying equational theory. The choice of an inappropriate equational theory can lead to overly pessimistic or overly optimistic notions of indistinguishability, and in turn to security criteria that require protection against impossible attacks or - worse yet - that ignore feasible ones. In this paper, we define and justify an equational theory for standard, fundamental cryptographic operations. This equational theory yields a notion of static equivalence that implies computational indistinguishability. Static equivalence remains liberal enough for use in applications. In particular, we develop and analyze a principled formal account of guessing attacks in terms of static equivalence.


Chronic pain is a common condition that people struggle with on daily basis and many strive to find ways to relive their pain. With the development of wearables and smart garments we are now moving from designing an object to be used, to an object to be worn. Technology is an extension of the body and the interaction in itself also becomes part of our body. This development enables different kind of treatments to be implemented in a wearable. Accordingly, this study have investigated if an interactive experience using heat and guided meditation with a wearable can support individuals living with chronic pain, and to what extent the experience can change the perception of pain. The results indicate that an interactive experience including these modalities can have the ability to change perception of pain. The study also suggests implications for design by presenting design qualities that become important in such a design, which resulted in; distraction and immersion, familiarity and practice, personalization and flexibility. Author


Aims: The aims of this study were to assess the impact of pH on the free radical quenching activity of tea infusions using a modified 2,2'-azino-bis (3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulphonic acid (ABTS) assay and three antioxidant compounds as reference.Study Design: In-vitro method.Place and Duration of Study: Faculty of Life and Health Science, School of Biomedical Sciences, Ulster University, UK. From Sept 2014 and May 2016.Methodology: Free radical quenching capacity of tea (Earl grey, black tea, Ceylon tea, & green tea) infusions were investigated using persulfate activated ABTS with acetate buffer (pH 4.5) or phosphate buffer saline (pH 7.0) as solvent. Tests were performed using 96-well microplates, 20 µl of sample and 280 µl of ABTS reagent, and calibrated using ascorbic acid, trolox or gallic acid as reference antioxidants.Results: Gallic acid free radical quenching was pH dependent and unsuitable as reference. The free radical quenching capacity of trolox and ascorbic acid was not significantly different at pH 4.5 and pH 7.0. The radical quenching capacity of tea infusions expressed as Trolox Equivalent Antioxidant Capacity (TEAC) or Ascorbic Acid Antioxidant Capacity (AAEAC) was grater by 50-300% at pH 7 compared to pH 4.5.Conclusion: The modified ABTS assay is suitable for examining the influence of pH on free radical quenching ability of tea samples. Gallic acid was not a suitable reference compound. The radical quenching capacity of tea infusions increases with rising pH.


This thesis is concerned with the use of models in chemical education, in particular the way chemistry students use models in understanding chemistry. The study begins with an outline of the reasons for my interest in the subject of models in chemistry. The report describes some of the problems encountered by undergraduate chemistry students in dealing with three dimensional structures, and surveys literature relating to visualization skills in chemistry. Preliminary broad areas for investigation are identified including the relevance of models to students, problems of representing 3D structures, and students' use of models to solve chemical problems. A pilot study to gather information in these areas and to develop a suitable research instrument for investigation is described. The pilot study proved useful in highlighting errors in understanding chemical concepts, assessing practical model use, and considering students' perceptions of the relevance of models. This is followed by a consideration of the role of models in understanding chemistry in relation to the nature of model, chemistry and understanding, and the links and interactions between them. It discusses issues such as the match between the currently perceived roles of models in chemical practice and in chemistry teaching and the desirability of bringing these into line. It surveys the literature concerning purpose of model use in chemistry and describes the features of chemical structure models used in the research. Criteria for selecting appropriate data collection and analysis methods in a research study are considered and 80me of the methods adopted in recent chemical education research described. The chapter concludes with a description and justification of the particular research methods used in the study. The report gives details of the interviews carried out with selected scientists to consider the notion of 'the good chemist'. It then describes the videorecorded workshop interviews with forty five chemistry students relating to their appreciation and use of models in chemistry, and the follow up int.erviews with eight of the participants. Data from these interviews are analysed in an attempt to answer the research questions posed initially, including individual chemists' purposes in using models, patterns in model appreciation, perceptions of the good chemist, fiexibility of model use as an indicator of competence as a chemist, and the potential of the workshop interview in higher education assessment. The research findings are discussed in relation to existing literature, and the study concludes with a discussion of the implications for chemistry curricula, chemical educat.ion and for future research.


How to undertake distributional comparisons when personal well-being is measured using income is well-established. But what if personal well-being is measured using subjective well-being indicators such as life satisfaction or self-assessed health status? Has average well-being increased or well-being inequality decreased? How does the distribution of well-being in New Zealand compare with that in Australia, or between young and old people in New Zealand? This paper addresses questions such as these, stimulated by the increasing weight put on subjective well-being measures by international agencies such as the OECD and national governments including New Zealand's. The paper reviews the methods appropriate for distributional comparisons in the ordinal data context, comparing them with those routinely used for comparisons of income distributions. The methods are illustrated using data from the World Values Survey.


For the last two centuries, the cephalochordates, commonly known as lancelets or amphioxus, have been central to investigate the evolutionary genesis of vertebrates. At first, by classical morphologists fascinated by their odd but at the same time familiar anatomical traits and later by molecular biologists giving the first insights into their slow evolving nature. The present data available not only holds amphioxus as an organism of preternatural importance within the tree of life but also boosts its potential to untangle the molecular basis underlying the vertebrate complexity. This is a walk through the past and present of the amphioxus field merging morphological and molecular data in linkage with the fossil record and the modern vertebrates. The resulting picture is drawn together with comparative maps of genome organisation, gastrulation and the origin of the vertebrate organiser, neurulation and the origin of the neural crest, and shared signalling mechanisms between vertebrates and amphioxus during development. Special attention is also given to some of the most critical vertebrate novelties and how the pre-duplicative amphioxus genetic toolkit might have contributed to set the basis for evolving complexity in the course of vertebrate evolution.

Key Concepts:

Cephalochordates occupy at present the key phylogenetic position to get insights into the invertebrate–vertebrate transition and the evolutionary genesis of vertebrates.

Whole-genome duplications in the lineage leading to modern vertebrates might have established the basis for molecular and morphological innovation.

The amphioxus genome appears to be the best surrogate available for the ancestral chordate genome regarding the gene content, gene structure and chromosomal organisation.

The amphioxus prototypical body plan with respect to vertebrates facilitates the comparative analysis and linkage between invertebrates and vertebrates.

The pre-duplicative genome of amphioxus offers the possibility of analysing vertebrate-like gene regulatory networks in a simpler biological context with a reduced number of molecular players.

Keywords:

vertebrate novelties;
neural crest;
gastrula organiser;
living fossil;
macrosynteny;
2R Hypothesis;
vertebrate new head;
regulatory networks;
genetic toolkit;
chordate ancestor


Objective: To describe the ocular biometry and determinants of refractive error in an adult population in Myanmar. Methods: A cross-sectional, population-based survey of the inhabitants 40 years of age and over from villages in the Meiktila District was performed; 2481 eligible participants were identified, and 2076 participated in the study. Biometric components including axial length (AL), anterior chamber depth (ACD), vitreous chamber depth (VCD), lens thickness (LT) and corneal curvature (CC) were measured. Lens opalescence was measured using the Lens Opacity Grading System III. Non-cycloplegic refraction was measured with an autorefractor. Results: Complete biometric, refractive and lenticular data were available on 1498 participants. Men had longer ALs, ACDs, VCDs and steeper CCs than women. There was an increase in LT, nuclear opalescence (NO) and myopic shift with increasing age, with no significant change in AL with age. In the 40–59 year age group, VCD was a significant predictor of refractive error, but LT (p<0.001) and NO (p<0.001) were stronger predictors. In the 60+ age group, NO (p<0.001) was also the dominant predictor of refractive error. Conclusion: This Burmese population, particularly women, has a relatively short AL and ACD. NO is the strongest predictor of refractive error across all age groups in this population.


A new method for texture sensing, based on a calculation of the average standard deviation of the data from a thick film piezoelectric sensor, is presented. The repeating patterns in the surface texture of gratings as they move past the sensor are observable in the output signal. A comparison with a previous method has shown an improvement in the variability of the analyzed data. The method applied is not only able to distinguish two patterns of gratings, but also provides the dimension of each grating. The results have demonstrated the suitability of this approach as a fingertip texture sensor.


The potential for predatory infaunal species to increase trophic complexity in marine sedimentary habitats has been debated in the past; however, the status of predatory infauna as a dis- tinct trophic level remains controversial. Specifically, it is unclear whether these assemblages can be accurately depicted by a 3-level trophic model in which predatory infauna constitutes a critical inter- mediate trophic link between epibenthic predators and other infauna. Here, we specifically address whether the key requirement for recognition of a 3-level trophic structure (namely that 'epibenthic predators must selectively prey on predatory infauna') is supported by new experimental evidence from 2 contrasting habitats in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Canada. Our results unambiguously support a 3-trophic level model and raise a series of questions on the current understanding of the trophic structure of marine sedimentary habitats.


The climate change impacts leads to the raise of air temperature, which highly affected on the snow melting process in catchment hydrological system. In catchment water resources management, it gains more interests among local managers and hydrological researchers. In this study, based on the daily discharge (2008-2014) collected at the outlet of Var catchment, which located at French Mediterranean region, two flood periods were first identified during one hydrological year. For the flood occurred at spring time, the runoff produced by snow melting from upstream of the catchment has significant contribution to the flood discharge recorded at downstream. To assess the snow melting impacts in this catchment, a distributed deterministic hydrological model (MIKE SHE) was built to simulate the complex hydrological system in Var catchment from 2011 to 2013 with limited data collection. After calibrating the model with the observed discharge, the simulation of MIKE SHE were able to represent the hydrological process in Var catchment including the snow producing and melting process. The simulation results showed that the hypothesis made for the snow melting process, which not only considered the impacts of raise air temperature but also the sunshine intensity was reasonable and suitable to be applied in French Mediterranean region. The modelling approach described in this study could be beneficial to the assessment of snow melting process in the same region or similar watershed. Engineering EPiC Series in Engineering Volume 3, 2018, Pages 1260–1269 HIC 2018. 13th International Conference on Hydroinformatics G. La Loggia, G. Freni, V. Puleo and M. De Marchis (eds.), HIC 2018 (EPiC Series in Engineering, vol. 3),


1. The rate of in vivo release of iron from plasma transferrin samples at low and high saturation was measured simultaneously in fifteen subjects with differing amounts of body iron and different rates of erythropoiesis. Iron atoms bound to transferrin at low and high plasma iron saturation were identified by using tracer labels 55 Fe and 59 Fe respectively. Results were expressed as the plasma 55 Fe and 59 Fe half-clearance time. 2. Plasma iron clearance times ranged from 15·6 to 350 min, reflecting the different amounts of available iron and marrow requirements of the patients studied. The simultaneous rates of 55 Fe and 59 Fe clearance from the plasma were the same in thirteen patients. Clearances in two subjects showed differences between the two isotopes, but clearances of the identical paired isotopes in two other subjects showed no difference. 3. These results confirm earlier findings of homogeneity in the plasma iron pool, extending the observations to include varying per cent saturation of transferrin and varying rates of iron uptake.


The objective of this opinionated paper is to reflect on the potential of perceptions of different values of human life in influencing ethics violations particularly in health and medical research. It is posited that sometimes members of the research community perceive their own lives as being more precious than other lives. The factor discussed for bioethical violations is the perception of different levels of importance of human lives of people of different races, cultures, regions, countries or ethnic origins in the minds of fellow humans. The experiments carried out on Jews in Nazi camps, African-American people in The Tuskegee experiment, and Guatemalans in The Guatemala Syphilis experiment point to this perception. More often than not, the learned medical scientists know what morally sound medical research is, as is brought forward by an example of Guatemala study; however, sometimes they resort to bioethical violations presumably influenced by their perception of value for other human lives. The researchers for clinical or experimental trials are often drawn to inhabitants of underdeveloped or developing nations as they perceive that if in case there is any harm to the clinical subjects' health, there won't be any big payouts; as the worth of those subjects is less than clinical subjects in a developed country. In some of the unethical human experimentations, the affected populations were vulnerable due to their social or economic conditions: being war personnel, mentally depressed or being inmates in prisons. This vulnerability of the subjects makes the researcher throw away the concept of 'equality in the value of human life'. It is the opinion of the author that as long as this mentality of different values of human life persists, it will have the potential to feed into ethical violations in spite of regulations or laws.


[Excerpt] This report addresses issues associated with the evaluation of teacher effectiveness based on student growth in achievement. It focuses specifically on a method of evaluation referred to as value-added modeling (VAM). Although there are other methods for assessing teacher effectiveness, in the last decade, VAM has garnered increasing attention in education research and policy due to its promise as a more objective method of evaluation. The first section of this report describes what constitutes a VAM approach and how it estimates the so-called "teacher effect." The second section identifies the components necessary to conduct VAM in education settings. Third, the report discusses current applications of VAM at the state and school district levels and what the research on these applications says about this method of evaluation. The fourth section of the report explains some of the implications these applications have for large-scale implementation of VAM. Finally, the report describes some of the federal policy options that might arise as Congress considers legislative action around these or related issues.


Background Funding agencies around the world show gender gaps in grant success, with women often receiving less funding than men. However, these studies have been observational and some have not accounted for potential confounding variables, making it difficult to draw robust conclusions about whether gaps were due to bias or to other factors. In 2014, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) phased out traditional investigator-initiated programs and created a natural experiment by dividing all investigator-initiated funding into two new grant programs: one with and one without an explicit review focus on the caliber of the principal investigator. In this study, we aimed to determine whether these different grant programs had differing success rates among male and female applicants. Methods We analyzed results of 23,918 grant applications from 7,093 unique applicants in a 5-year natural experiment across all open, investigator-initiated CIHR grant programs in 2011 2016. Our primary outcome was whether or not each grant application was successful. We used Generalized Estimating Equations to account for multiple applications by the same applicant and an interaction term between each principal investigator's self-reported sex and the grant program group to determine the extent to which gender gaps in health research grant funding differed by grant program. Because younger cohorts of investigators and fields such as health services research and population health have higher proportions of women, our analysis controlled for principal investigators' ages and applications' research domains. Results The overall grant success rate across all competitions was 15.8%. After adjusting for age and research domain, the predicted probability of funding success among male principal investigators' applications in traditional programs was 0.9 percentage points higher than it was among female principal investigators (OR 0.934, 95% CI 0.854-1.022). In the new program in which review focused on the quality of the proposed science, the gap was 0.9% and not different from traditional programs (OR 0.998, 95% CI 0.794-1.229). In the new program with an explicit review focus on the caliber of the principal investigator, the gap was 4.0% (OR 0.705, 95% CI 0.519-0.960). Conclusions Avoiding bias in grant review is necessary to ensure the best research is funded, regardless of who proposes it. In this study, gender gaps in grant success rates were significantly larger when there was an explicit review focus on the principal investigator. Because of the quasi-experimental study design, these findings offer more conclusive evidence than was previously available about the causes of gender gaps in grant funding. Specifically, this study suggests that such gaps are attributable to differences in how women are assessed as principal investigators, not differences in the quality of science led by women.


Background In recent years, due to scarcity of evidence at the time of registration, approved indications/patient characteristics for anticancer drugs closely resemble those of the pivotal RCTs. At the same time, many authors complain it is hard to transfer the results of clinical trials to clinical practice, due to the high selectivity of patient eligibility criteria. In Italy, at the time of marketing, the majority of new anticancer drugs are subject to a compulsory electronic outcome registry called 'oncoAIFA'. In order to prescribe these drugs and have them dispensed, clinicians need to enter the patient's clinical profile, to prove they correspond to approved indications, and each prescription. Subsequently, hospital pharmacists record every prescription they dispense. At the end of the treatment, physicians need to report the patient's outcome. Purpose To compare baseline characteristics and outcomes of clinical trial patients with the one of a cohort of patients treated with new drugs for renal cell carcinoma, sorafenib and sunitinib, in the Veneto Region (North East of Italy, 4.9 million inhabitants). Materials and methods Pivotal clinical trials for sorafenib and sunitinib for the indication 'renal cell carcinoma' were selected. Data of the Veneto Region patients treated with sorafenib and sunitinib were extracted from the oncoAIFA register for the period January 2007-March 2011. Baseline characteristics were compared between clinical trials and clinical practice: gender, age, ECOG performance status, number of metastatic organs. The outcome compared was the proportion of patients with disease progression or death. Results In the Veneto Region, 209 patients were treated with sorafenib and 570 with sunitinib. For sorafenib, baseline characteristics were similar for gender (% male: 70% RCT, 70% register), ECOG performance status (% ECOG zero: 49% RCT, 49% register). Relevant differences were found for age (median 58 years RCT, 67 years register), number of metastatic sites (% > 2: 57% RCT, 27% register), and previous cytokines use (% yes: 83% RCT, 57% register). For sunitinib, gender (% male: 71% RCT, 69% register), median age (62 years RCT, 66 years register), and ECOG performance status (% ECOG zero: 62% RCT, 56% register) were similar, while the two populations differed greatly for number of metastatic sites (% >= 3: 57% for RCT, 18% for register). Regarding outcome, 38.1% of patients experienced disease progression or death in the sorafenib trial versus 58% in real life; this proportion was 21% in the sunitinib trial versus 46% in the register. Conclusions Although approved indications for new drugs often resemble RCT patient characteristics, patients treated in clinical practice differ from the study populations. This difference is also described in patient outcomes.


This descriptive, non-experimental study examines the strength of the relationship between California school library media programs and student achievement, using data from California criterion-referenced state-wide tests, publically available school and community demographic data, and a state survey of school library programs. Results indicate a substantial discrepancy in library staffing levels from the elementary grades through the high schools. Nevertheless, statistically significant correlations were found between certificated staffing levels and student achievement at each grade. Significant correlations persisted at the elementary and middle school when controlling for five of six school and community variables, and at the high school when controlling for all six of those variables. Bivariate correlations between total staffing and student achievement were significant at both the middle school and high school level when controlling for all school and community variables. Generally, the strength of the correlations between both certificated and total staffing tended to increase with grade level; at the high school level, correlations were among the strongest reported in any statewide study to date. There was a significant positive relationship between a majority of the 21 library services regularly provided and student achievement at all levels. Total library services were significantly related to student achievement at all levels when controlling for all school and community variables. In multiple regression analyses, there was an increasingly stronger relationship between total library programs and student achievement by grade level when controlling for all school and community variables. At every level, certificated and total staffing levels were associated with the strength of library program elements. The findings from this study confirm a host of prior research on the relationship between school libraries and student achievement and point to inequitable access to school library services in California. Results from this study might also provide a baseline of data for qualitative research that more deeply explores ways school library programs contribute to student achievement beyond ways measured by current standardized tests.


The process of water vapor transport across the tropical transition layer (TTL) combines slow advection with both microphysical and convective processes. The bromine budget of the stratosphere can not be reconciled with ground-based, balloon or satellite bromine monoxide (BrO) measurements using long-lived bromine containing substances alone. Much recent modeling work has invested the contribution of the very short- lived bromine substances bromoform (CHBr3) and combined with dibromomethane (CH2Br2) upon the stratospheric Bry budget. In this study we examine these very short lived (VSL) as well as long-lived bromine species including their interaction of the water vapor transport processes through the TTL. Lagrangian back trajectories initiated in the stratosphere are generated using ECMWF Interim reanalysis data. A convective parameterization using the ERA-Interim water vapor data is presented. A simplified microphysical and bromine chemical box model representation along the trajectories is used and the effect of convective processes explored. We present the transport of the VSL bromine in a conceptualized form and investigate sensitivities to the general chemical, microphysical and convective processes that result in VSL bromine contributing to the total stratospheric bromine budget.