Objective – This study examined information literacy tutorials in science. The goals of the research were to identify which of the information literacy standards for science, engineering and technology were addressed in the tutorials, and the extent that the tutorials incorporated good pedagogical elements.

Methods – The researcher chose for review 31 of the tutorials selected by members of the ACRL Science & Technology Section (STS) Information Literacy Committee. She carefully analyzed the tutorials and developed a database with codes for the topic of each tutorial, the STS information literacy standard(s) addressed by the tutorial, and whether good pedagogical elements were incorporated. The entire analysis and coding procedure was repeated three times to ensure consistency.

Results – The tutorials analyzed in this study covered various subjects and addressed all the (STS) information literacy standards. The tutorials presented information clearly and allowed users to select their own learning paths. The incorporation of good pedagogical elements was limited, especially in relation to active learning elements.

Conclusions – Web tutorials have been accepted as effective information literacy instruction tools and have been used to teach all elements of the STS information literacy standards. Yet, ensuring they provide a real learning experience for students remains a challenge. More serious thought needs to be given to integrating good pedagogy into these instructional tools in order to attain deep learning.


Over the years, all parts of a commercial refrigerator, such as the compressor, heat exchangers, refrigerant, and packaging, have been improved considerably due to the extensive research and development efforts carried out by academia and industry. However, the achieved and anticipated improvement in conventional refrigeration technology are incremental since this technology is already nearing its fundamentals limit of energy efficiency is described is 'magnetic refrigeration' which is an evolving cooling technology. The word 'green' designates more than a colour. It is a way of life, one that is becoming more and more common throughout the world. An interesting topic on 'sustainable technologies for a greener world' details about what each technology is and how it achieves green goals. Recently, conventional chillers using absorption technology consume energy for hot water generator but absorption chillers carry no energy saving. With the aim of providing a single point solution for this dual purpose application, a product is launched but can provide simultaneous chilling and heating using its vapour absorption technology with 40% saving in heating energy. Using energy efficiency and managing customer energy use has become an integral and valuable exercise. The reason for this is green technology helps to sustain life on earth. This not only applies to humans but to plants, animals and the rest of the ecosystem. Energy prices and consumption will always be on an upward trajectory. In fact, energy costs have steadily risen over last decade and are expected to carry on doing so as consumption grows.


Prosody refers, most broadly, to versification and pronunciation. Historically, prosody referred to the branch of grammar that contained versification as a subsection, but since the late 19th century literary scholars and poets have interchanged versification and prosody, while linguists use prosody to refer to pronunciation. Since the beginning of the 20th century scholars have also referred to prosody as a "poetics," or a system of meaning-making, and do not directly engage in analysis of meter but rather use the term prosody to signify any aspect of literary style or figurative language that might contribute to the affective register of verse-form. The philological register of prosody may use versification in order to make a claim about how a verse-form reflects a national, historical, or even ethnic character, a practice that began in earnest during the mid-18th century and persists into the 21st century, though with some critical distance. Because the measure of verse is subjective and historically contingent, debates and discussions about prosody are a constant and tend to repeat. There is no one progress narrative of prosody, writ large, but the progress narrative of poetry within prosodic discourse is one of its main tropes. That is, while there are theories of prosody that posit progression, there is little agreement about the evolution or even naming of prosodic systems. Each history of prosody therefore posits a new theory. Thus, the theory of prosody might always be seen as the proliferation of conflicting theories about prosody, in no way limited to one national language; in fact, theories of prosody from other languages applied to English are much older and more robust than theories of prosody that derive from only English—for instance, measuring English by Latin prosody, or French, or German, and so on. Despite the proliferation of conflicting theories, scholars who work on prosody nevertheless agree broadly that, like the subject of grammar under which prosody was historically a subset, prosody is a set of interrelated features in language that, according to how you measure these features, either appear to adhere to a particular system or do not. Also, scholars agree that, like grammar, prosody as an interpretive system often hovers between the prescriptive and the descriptive. In the conflicts over theories of prosody, adherents to one system attempt to convince adherents to another that theirs is superior, and these debates and conflicts continue unabated in linguistic prosodic criticism. Those who practice literary prosodic criticism in the 21st century tend to adopt a system of verse-measure with little interest in its history, or even with what linguistic prosodic critics might call a sharp disregard for its inaccuracy. Linguistic prosodists—who have made significant advances in the field—are sidelined by the momentum of a literary history that has rendered their ongoing work too specialized for general use. There are also those who believe that prosody—or, rather, specific paralinguistic features of prosody—exists, like grammar, in particular bodies, to be awakened or cultivated by a particular kind of reading or hearing ear or a particular kind of feeling body. Trends in cognitive science have influenced one strain of theorizing about prosody as a form of subconscious knowledge in no way dependent on the cultural formations that may have organized sonic features into recognizable systems. Historical prosodists, those who study the history of thinking about prosodic form but also practice prosodic reading, posit that prosody is culturally contingent and, along with phenomenology, might be better considered as a part of cultural criticism rather than a privileged key to poetic meaning. Finally, where prosodic theory happens is a live question. Whether discourse about prosody (or meta-metrical discourse, as in Gascoigne or the various grammars discussed here) is prosodic theory or whether poets writing in a variety of prosodic forms (whether interpreted by critics or not) posit prosodic theories in their practice is at the heart of what many mischaracterize as a divide between historical prosody and other theories of reading. This divide is artificial, but the fact is that disagreements about what and how prosody means have led to a variety of approaches to the study of prosody in poetry, and despite this disagreement prosody is nevertheless taught in most academic settings as if it has an agreed upon past, present, and future.


Representing the available information about rehabilitation robots in a structured form, like ontologies, facilitates access to various kinds of information about the existing robots, and thus it is important both from the point of view of rehabilitation robotics and from the point of view of physical medicine. Rehabilitation robotics researchers can learn various properties of the existing robots and access to the related publications to further improve the state-of-the-art. Physical medicine experts can find information about rehabilitation robots and related publications (possibly including results of clinical studies) to better identify the right robot for a particular therapy or patient population. Therefore, considering also the advantages of ontologies and ontological reasoning, such as interoperability of various heterogenous knowledge resources (e.g., patient databases or disease ontologies), such an ontology provides the underlying mechanisms for translational physical medicine, from bench-to-bed and back, and personalized rehabilitation robotics. In this thesis, we introduce the first formal rehabilitation robotics ontology, called RehabRobo-Onto, to represent information about rehabilitation robots and their properties. We have designed and developed RehabRobo-Onto in OWL, collaborating with experts in robotics and in physical medicine. We have also built a software (called RehabRobo- Query) with an easy-to-use intelligent user-interface that allows robot designers to add/modify information about their rehabilitation robots to/from RehabRobo-Onto. With RehabRobo-Query, the experts do not need to know about the logic-based ontology languages, or have experience with the existing Semantic Web technologies or logic-based ontological reasoners. RehabRobo-Query is made available on the cloud, utilizing Amazon Web services, so that rehabilitation robot designers around the world can add/modify information about their robots in RehabRobo-Onto, and rehabilitation robot designers and physical medicine experts around the world can access the knowledge in RehabRobo-Onto by means of questions about robots, in natural language, with the guide of the intelligent userinterface of RehabRobo-Query. The ontology system consisting of RehabRobo-Onto and RehabRobo- Query is of great value to robot designers as well as physical therapists and medical doctors. On the one hand, robot designers can access various properties of the existing robots and to the related publications to further improve the state-of-the-art. On the other hand, physical therapists and medical doctors can utilize the ontology to compare rehabilitation robots and to identify the ones that serve best to cover their needs, or to evaluate the effects of various devices for targeted joint exercises on patients with specific disorders.


Salinity is one of the major abiotic stresses that may affect yield and quality of crops. Salinization, in combination with the presence of aggressive weeds, such as barnyard grass (Echinochloa spp.), can be considered one of the factors responsible for reducing yield in rice fields. The aims of the study were to evaluate the salt effect on germination and first seedling growth of six different Italian common barnyard grass (E. crus-galli) populations (three sensitive and three resistant to ALS-inhibitor herbicides) and to verify the presence of differences in salt response between populations sensitive and resistant to the ALS-inhibitor herbicides. Germination tests were conducted under nine different NaCl concentrations (from 0 mM to 400 mM). Significant differences in germination capacity were found between sensitive and resistant populations from 0 mM to 250 mM NaCl; in particular, germination capacity of the sensitive populations was higher (up to 90%) than that of the resistant ones (about 70%). The increase in salinity over 250 mM reduced progressively the germination capacity: from 300 mM onwards, no significant differences were found between sensitive and resistant populations and the germination resulted inhibited for two of them (one sensitive and one resistant). Speed of germination and root and shoot length of seedlings were also inversely related to salt concentration. Time required for achieving 50% of final germination capacity was extended from about three days at 0 mM NaCl up to about 10-12 days at 400 mM NaCl. Root length and shoot length ranged from 9.88 cm and 6.16 cm, at 0 mM NaCl, to 0.36 cm and 0.41 cm, at 400 mM NaCl. According to the results, there is no a clear evidence that response to saline conditions was related to resistance towards ALS-inhibitor herbicides, as in some cases significant differences were found between populations showing a similar herbicide sensitivity. Responses of barnyard grass to salinity are may play a role in the importance of this weed in future scenarios of salt intrusion: for example, a lower speed of germination at increasing salt levels could suggest a delayed emergence of this weed during crop establishment and first growth. To evaluate the real consequences in terms of competitions towards the crop, future studies are needed for assessing the response to salinity of the main rice varieties cultivated in the environment in which the E. crus-galli populations tested in this study were collected.


Kirkby Stephen is a relatively isolated parish in Rural North Westmorland. The population is concentrated in a small town and nearby farms and cottages. The economy is considered to be in a state of crisis due to factors beyond the control of the local people. Several attempts are being made to revitalise it, but these are frustrated by parochial loyalties, traditional ways of doing things and the fact that it is impossible to isolate economic from political factors and the other factors which make up the social system, Kirkby Stephen has many points in common with rural Wales and pre Second World War Ireland. The peculiarity of Kirkby Stephen is that, in spite of its many contacts with urban influences, it retains so many of the features by which Frankenberg characterises the 'truly rural' community. Although the majority of the population oppose 'new' ideas and attempt to reject urban values, social change is taking place. Formal and informal non-sectarian leisure time activities are changing in character. In the sectarian activities changes are less obvious. For, although attendance at religious services in Kirkby Stephen has followed the national trend, sectarian activities are well patronised. The religious sphere has several distinctive features, the two most outstanding being the stressing of Temperance as an important aspect of Nonconformity, in particular Methodism, and the fact that 19th Century Nonconformist Ideals very largely form the basis of the local value system. The most socially active age group in the society is the over 60's. It is the old in years and residence who are the decision- takers in the society. Society respects them and in extreme old age cares for them. In doing this the people display independence of the Welfare State and the fact that they are a community not just an association of people. In conclusion the community's orientation towards the rural rather than the urban life is evaluated and the belief that they are isolated from other communities is seen to result in intensification of kinship obligations and the social interdependence of the whole community.


This chapter highlights the ways in which the application of recently developed techniques for spatial analysis contributes to our understanding of homicide. We begin with a brief historical review of the role of geographic space in the sociological study of crime and then discuss generic methodological issues involved in the study of areal units. The logic of important techniques for spatial analysis is explained and illustrated using two empirical case studies of variation in homicide rates across U. S. counties. One case study involves the use of techniques of Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA), and the other applies spatial regression modeling. The analyses yield suggestive evidence of diffusion processes and also reveal the incompleteness of well-accepted baseline models of homicide rates. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of pressing issues for future research on the spatial dynamics of crime. SPATIAL ANALYSES OF HOMICIDE WITH AREAL DATA


Newnes has worked with Marty Brown, a leader in the field of power design to select the very best design-specific material from the Newnes portfolio. Marty selected material for its timelessness, its relevance to current power supply design needs, and its real-world approach to design issues. Special attention is given to switching power supplies and their design issues, including component selection, minimization of EMI, toroid selection, and breadboarding of designs. Emphasis is also placed on design strategies for power supplies, including case histories and design examples. This is a book that belongs on the workbench of every power supply designer! Marty Brown, author and power supply design consultant, has personally selected all content for its relevance and usefulness. This book covers best design practices for switching power supplies and power converters. The emphasis is on pragmatic solutions to commonly encountered design problems and tasks.


This paper examines the propagation of waves in media which are spatially homogeneous but whose properties vary with time abruptly or continuously. Emphasis is placed on the excitation problem and on source-dependent phenomena which are not evident when attention is given only to the source-free case. After a presentation and interpretation of various exact closed-form solutions for simple nondispersive and dispersive media undergoing sudden or gradual temporal changes, attention is given to integral representations required under more general conditions. In the ensuing far-zone asymptotic analysis, dispersion surfaces and space-time rays are used extensively for identification of wave packets and other wave constituents descriptive of the field, and a comparison is made between the asymptotic results and the exact solutions noted above. Asymptotic field solutions are then derived by a direct ray procedure, without intervention of integral representations. The examples considered exhibit a variety of phenomena, among which the most interesting is the focusing of reflected waves when a dispersive medium undergoes a sudden change.


A single-phase full-color emitting Sr10[(PO4)5.5(BO4)0.5](BO2): Ce3+, Mn2+, Tb3+ phosphor was synthesized by solid-state reaction for the first time. The characteristic luminescence property of Ce3+ is investigated by Gauss fitting. Energy transfer from Ce3+ to Mn2+ and Ce3+ to Tb3+ in Sr10[(PO4)5.5(BO4)0.5](BO2) is detailedly studied by luminescence spectra, energy-transfer efficiency and lifetimes. Through effective energy transfer, the wavelength-tunable warm white light can be realized with superior chromaticity coordinates of (0.35, 0.32), high color rendering index (Ra = 89) and low correlated color temperature (CCT = 4373K) by coupling the emission bands centered at 441, 542 and 649 nm attributed to the contribution from Ce3+, Mn2+ and Tb3+, respectively. The results indicate the white Sr10[(PO4)5.5(BO4)0.5](BO2):Ce3+, Mn2+, Tb3+ phosphor can serve as a promising candidate for phosphor-converted white-light UV-LEDs.


The relationships between intersectoral export and local employment and regional economic growth are analyzed in a long-run equilibrium framework. Dynamic location quotients decompose regional employment into export and local components for multiple sectors. Johansen's Full-Information Maximum Likelihood (FIML) approach is used to identify the existence and resultant rank of the co-integrating relationship between sectoral export and local employment in West Virginia's four metropolitan areas. Empirical results indicate inter-sectoral basic and non-basic employment form a co-integrating system of equations. Furthermore, this analysis shows that inter-sector shocks to local and export employment may cause multipliers to be positive or negative in magnitude.


This classic description of the interaction between the vast central plains of America and the people who lived there has, since its first publication in 1931, been one of the most influential, widely known, and controversial works in western history. Arguing that "the Great Plains environment...constitutes a geographic unity whose influences have been so powerful as to put a characteristic mark upon everything that survives within its borders," Webb singles out the revolver, barbed wire, and the windmill as evidence of the new phase of civilization required for settlement of that arid, treeless region. Webb draws on history, anthropology, geography, demographics, climatology, and economics to substantiate his thesis that the 98th meridian constituted an institutional fault-comparable to a geological fault-at which "practically every institution that was carried across it was either broken and remade or else greatly altered."


The new LHC particle accelerator now being built at CERN will have a radically increased event rate and higher energy. To accommodate this, instrumentation for LHC experiments has had to be constructed using new ideas and the latest available technology. A part of this effort was the development and test of a digitizer unit for the hadron calorimeter (TileCal) of the ATLAS experiment. To try out ideas and promote system integration, prototypes were tested in a subsystem using a particle beam to simulate the final conditions. During the development of these prototypes an application-specific integrated circuit was constructed to control the digitizer system. Tests made at the test beam facility have verified that all requirements were met. The final digitizer design and its components were radiation tested to verify full functionallity in its radiation environment during the full ATLAS life-span. Test devices were also constructed to test all production units. In addition to the digitizer system, an optical readout link was designed to meet the requirements for the digitizer readout. Preliminary studies indicate that the digitizer could also be used in an upgraded LHC, with presently considered scenarios.


Background:Trauma is considered to be a major cause of morbidity and mortality all over the world. This descriptive study has an emphasize on the epidemiology, mechanism and patterns of trauma, with a consideration of why trauma code was activated, and the imaging results in regard to the severity of the trauma. Method: A descriptive study was conducted in Al Ain Hospital over the year of 2017. Totally 886 patients were included who presented with a trauma and considered dangerous according to hospital guidelines. They underwent a full body trauma CT, and were admitted to the hospital. We looked at the mechanisms, patterns, time of the day and radiological findings. Injury severity score (ISS) and Revised trauma score (RTS) were calculated, and the cause of trauma code activation was evaluated.Results: The study showed that; positive imaging findings were found in 364 (41%) of patients while 522 (59%) had normal radiological tests. The principal mechanism of injury was motor vehicle accident (54.4%) followed by falls (21.4%) and pedestrian accidents (10.2%). Overall, 69.75% (618 patients) were admitted to the hospital, 22 patients (2.5 %) needed immediate interventions and 36 patients (4 %) needed ICU admission. Only 2 patients (0.25 %) died in the emergency room.Conclusion:The hospital policy in activating a trauma code should be revised, with more care being paid to the mechanisms of injury and the condition of the patient, without missing any injury that could harm the patient. So, the emergency physician should be better prepared to do a detailed physical examination and weigh the risk of radiation against missing a dangerous injury.


The paper analyzes the TAM negation in Songhay as a complex paradigm, data from different sub-structures of various tonal and non-tonal dialects of Songhay are contrasted.Two exponents of negatives, displaying different dialectal varieties of *MANA/*NA and *SI/SU, are used in the indicative perfective and imperfective. In these core paradigms, polarity contrasts of positive/negative is expressed in a suppletive way. For less gramaticalised periphrastic TAM paradigms, the features of suppletivity are weaker or non/existent. Classical, non/suppletive negation is used for non/indicative subjunctive paradigms.Typological parallels in Chadic (Hausa) and Niger/Congo (including Mande and Bantu) are thus no specific exceptions, their more general roots are yet to be established


Saccharomyces cerevisiae produces the sphingolipid ceramide by de novo synthesis as well as by hydrolysis of complex sphingolipids by Isc1p (inositolphosphoceramide-phospholipase C), which is homologous with the mammalian neutral sphingomyelinases. Though the roles of sphingolipids in yeast stress responses are well characterized, it has been unclear whether Isc1p contributes to stress-induced sphingolipids. The present study was undertaken in order to distinguish the relative roles of de novo sphingolipid biosynthesis versus Isc1p-mediated sphingolipid production in the heat-stress response. Ceramide production was measured at normal and increased temperature in an ISC1 deletion and its parental strain (ISC1 being the gene that codes for Isc1p). The results showed that Isc1p contributes specifically to the formation of the C24-, C24:1- and C26-dihydroceramide species. The interaction between these two pathways of sphingolipid production was confirmed by the finding that ISC1 deletion is synthetically lethal with the lcb1-100 mutation. Interestingly, Isc1p did not contribute significantly to transient cell-cycle arrest or growth at elevated temperature, responses known to be regulated by the de novo pathway. In order to define specific contributions of ISC1, microarray hybridizations were performed, and analyses showed misregulation of genes involved in carbon source utilization and sexual reproduction, which was corroborated by defining a sporulation defect of the isc1Delta strain. These results indicate that the two pathways of ceramide production in yeast interact, but differ in their regulation of ceramides of distinct molecular species and serve distinct cellular functions.


Two-dimensional compound-specific isotope analysis (2D-CSIA), combining stable carbon and chlorine isotopes, holds potential for monitoring of natural attenuation of chlorinated ethenes (CEs) in contaminated soil and groundwater. However, interpretation of 2D-CSIA data sets is challenged by a shortage of experimental Cl isotope enrichment factors. Here, isotope enrichments factors for C and Cl (i.e., εC and εCl) were determined for biodegradation of tetrachloroethene (PCE) and trichloroethene (TCE) using microbial enrichment cultures from a heavily CE-contaminated aquifer. The obtained values were εC = -5.6 ± 0.7‰ (95% CI) and εCl = -2.0 ± 0.5‰ for PCE degradation and εC = -8.8 ± 0.2‰ and εCl = -3.5 ± 0.5‰ for TCE degradation. Combining the values for both εC and εCl yielded mechanism-diagnostic εCl/εC ratios of 0.35 ± 0.11 and 0.37 ± 0.11 for the degradation of PCE and TCE, respectively. Application of the obtained εC and εCl values to a previously investigated field site gave similar estimates for the fraction of degraded contaminant as in the previous study, but with a reduced uncertainty in assessment of the natural attenuation. Furthermore, 16S rRNA gene clone library analyses were performed on three samples from the PCE degradation experiments. A species closely related to Desulfitobacterium aromaticivorans UKTL dominated the reductive dechlorination process. This study contributes to the development of 2D-CSIA as a tool for evaluating remediation strategies of CEs at contaminated sites.


The data summarized in this RiMG volume reflect the growing interest among geoscientists in the characterization of atomic transport in natural materials. Interest in diffusion dates back to the early 20th century (e.g., Bowen 1921), but the need for constraints on mobility of atoms became especially important in the 1950s and 60s with our increasing reliance upon radioactive decay for determination of mineral and rock ages: the question of decay-product retention in relevant phases became vitally important. With a few notable exceptions, however, experimental geoscientists did not take up the cause of diffusion in solids until the 1970s and 80s. By that time, the motivation for acquiring diffusion data had spread to many areas of petrology, mineralogy and geochemistry, and experimental techniques began to blossom. The result is very much in evidence in this volume.

All experiments aimed at measuring a diffusion coefficient have two things in common: a technique to introduce the diffusant of interest to the sample, and a method to determine the extent of diffusion. Traditionally, diffusion experiments are designed to take advantage of an existing solution to the non-steady state diffusion equation, and experiments are conducted in such a way as to reproduce as well as possible the boundary conditions specified for the solution. For ease of analysis and interpretation, most experiments are set up to limit diffusion to just one dimension. Most researchers have further settled on one of three general experiment designs: 1) the interdiffusion couple; 2) the "thin-film" geometry; or 3) the "constant surface concentration" design (Fig. 1⇓). Noble-gas geochemists (including those interested in K/Ar, Ar/Ar and U-Th/He dating methods) have exploited 3-D variants of this last approach by conducting bulk degassing studies of minerals in which radiogenic noble gases have accumulated over time in the natural environment (Baxter 2010, …


The Nigerian power sector reform is necessitated by the chronic poor performance of the sector and has as its compass the 2005 Electric Power Sector Reform Act and the Roadmap for Power Sector Reform 2010. Implementing reform has resulted in significant progress that includes unbundling and privatization of the long-standing government-owned monopoly in the power sector. The paper provides a comprehensive assessment of the reform, isolating the major challenges facing it, and focusing on political economy developments surrounding regulatory, institutional, legislative, and fiscal issues, with mainstreaming clean renewable energy being the main theme running through the analysis.


IN a 1924 letter published in the transatlantic review, Mina Loy chastises those readers who ignore the impact of modernity and modernism: Modernism is a prophet crying in the wilderness of stabilized culture that humanity is wasting its aesthetic time. For there is a considerable extension of time between the visits to the picture gallery, the museum, the library. It asks what is happening to your aesthetic consciousness during the long long intervals? The flux of life is pouring its aesthetic aspect into your eyes, your ears - and you ignore it because you are looking for your canons of beauty in some sort of frame or glass case of tradition [...]. Would not life be lovelier if you were constantly overjoyed by the sublimely pure concavity of your wash bowls? (Loy, "Gertrude" 429-30) Loy reiterates a familiar avant-garde pitch: one must seize the present moment, accept the impact of modernism and recognize the beauty of unexpected, lowly, contemporary objects. Instead of experiencing modern art and literature at particular times, such as when we pick up Ulysses or visit the Armory Show, she asks us to acknowledge the everyday experience of both modernity ("the flux of life") and modern/sm ("its aesthetic aspect") in quotidian life. Just as Marinetti's later Futurist Cookbook proposes a constant absorption of art and life via your stomach, Loy asks that we accept the aesthetic even when it appears as the morning bath. Henry Sayre rightly associates Loy's appreciation of the sublimely concave wash bowl with her friend Marcel Duchamp's aesthetic defense of his Readymades, particularly the urinal titled Fountain (1917) (Sayre, "Ready-mades" 11). Loy's letter thus reveals the influence of both futurism and Dadaism on her thinking. But there are echoes of Duchamp's aesthetics in another part of the quotation. When Loy writes that we mistakenly look for beauty "in some sort of frame or glass case of tradition," she is not only asking us to recognize the shock of art in unaccepted ways and places (futurist food for dinner, a urinal turned on its side and placed on a pedestal). She is also making the point that picture frames and glass cases are similarly flawed examples of "stabilized culture": both cut off the spectator from "the flux of life" - the living world of the art object - thus making art appear sterile and lifeless. Her logic implicitly makes a claim about how frames and glass cases function. In Loy's formulation, painting frames (by keeping the "flux of life" out of the painting) and glass cases (by preserving the art object from the corrosive effects of the "flux of life") do the same kind of unnecessary work. That is, in effect, the work of window frames, separating the world of one environment from that of another while permitting each environment to be mutually viewable. For if a frame is understood as trapping a painting in the stifling, airless atmosphere of the museum, just as a sealed glass case removes a precious object from the world, then, according to Loy, the physical world as we experience it can enter - and should be allowed into - art. We need only eliminate the windows: the painting frames and glass cases of tradition. At first, this observation seems unremarkable. By the early twentieth century, the history of art was also a history of picture frames (if not glass cases) imagined as windows onto another world. This history begins, at least, with Leon Battista Alberti's fifteenth-century description of the picture frame as "an open window through which I see what I want to paint," and Leonardo da Vinci's claim that "perspective is nothing else than the seeing of an object behind a sheet of glass" (Alberti 55; Leonardo 369). By the nineteenth century, an expanded window/ painting metaphor informed the development and theorization of realism such that, in the 1860s, French art critic Charles Blanc used "the window metaphor" to describe naturalism, while Emile Zola praised Monet's paintings as a "window open to nature" (Levine 98). …


Benjamin Leigh Smith was born on 12 March 1828 at Whatlington, East Sussex, a son of Benjamin Smith (1783–1860). The family into which he was born carried a strong independent line of thought and adherence to often unpopular views from one generation to the next. William Smith, our subject's grandfather, was a staunch supporter of William Wilberforce and his advocacy of the abolition of slavery. William also supported the views of the American rebels and refused to seek compensation for the loss of family estates in Savannah after the Declaration of Independence. William's son Benjamin, a friend of Thackeray and Member of Parliament for Norwich, 1834–37, was a radical politician and advocate of the repeal of the corn laws. Benjamin senior, a convinced Unitarian, had strong views on the education of his children, and when very young they were taught in what, even now, might be regarded as a progressive manner. A committee, headed by Smith and Lord Brougham, gave funds for the Westminster Infant School which provided elementary education for about 100 poor children in the neighbourhood. Whenever young Benjamin and his brothers and sisters were in London they attended this school which was run by James Buchanan: he had begun life as a weaver in Lanarkshire, and ran the school with the aid of his wife on Swedenborgian principles. There was no corporal punishment; outbreaks of indiscipline were overcome by Buchanan calling all the children to dance together to the sound of his flute. The lack of conventional discipline scandalized the committee and they all withdrew their support leaving Smith to foot the bill. He generously gave £1000 for building baths and a small theatre at the school. Progress was made nonetheless, and Benjamin Senior was sufficiently impressed to invite this unconventional pedagogue to the family estates and continue his children's education during the holidays.


Supercritical chemical fluid deposition (SCFD) has attracted considerable attention recently due to its ability to fill high aspect ratio templates. One technologically relevant example is the damascene process deposition of conformal low-resistivity copper interconnects within the latest generation 32nm node integrated circuits. Furthermore, SCFD technology can be extended to a wide range of metals, including Cu, Ni,[6] Au, Ru, Co, Rh, and Ir into macro- and meso-structured environments for a variety of applications, particularly micro-electronics. More recently SCFD has been demonstrated as uniquely suitable for the deposition of metals, polymers, and elemental semiconductors into "micro-structured" optical fibers enabling a new generation of photonic devices including chemical sensors and optical modulators. The ability to deposit a conformal coating of metals, oxides, and indirect bandgap, elemental semiconductor materials via SCFD inside meso- and micro-scale template structures has been clearly demonstrated, with the depositions yielding continuous tubes, or wires without detectable central voids, ca. 3 nm diam. It is clear that the extension of SCFD to the deposition of optoelectronic quality direct bandgap semiconductors would be a valuable technological advance, with important niche applications.


This paper investigates the European CDS markets response to earnings announcements between the years 2011-2013. Through the use of event study methodology, we investigate if the CDS market reacts to earnings news in terms of abnormal spread changes. Furthermore, by exploring the pre- and post announcement window the study examines the efficiency of the CDS market. The results imply that earnings announcements provide valuable information to the CDS market, with statistically significant results on the 5 % and 10 % significant level for negative and positive news respectively. Additionally, the paper shows that the market has a rather symmetric reaction to negative and positive earnings news since there is no significant difference in effects. The paper further reveals that there is no significant difference in the response between different credit rating groups. In terms of market efficiency, the study cannot confirm that there is anticipation for earnings announcements. The study further shows that there is no post-earnings announcement drift in the CDS market and that the market, overall, is efficient in incorporating the information into the spreads. Finally, a cross-sectional regression analysis confirms that negative earnings surprises are linked to large announcement day reactions, while positive earnings surprises are not. efficiency connection earlier accounting


In this paper, we present an incremental learning framework for efficient and accurate facial performance tracking. Our approach is to alternate the modeling step, which takes tracked meshes and texture maps to train our deep learning-based statistical model, and the tracking step, which takes predictions of geometry and texture our model infers from measured images and optimize the predicted geometry by minimizing image, geometry and facial landmark errors. Our Geo-Tex VAE model extends the convolutional variational autoencoder for face tracking, and jointly learns and represents deformations and variations in geometry and texture from tracked meshes and texture maps. To accurately model variations in facial geometry and texture, we introduce the decomposition layer in the Geo-Tex VAE architecture which decomposes the facial deformation into global and local components. We train the global deformation with a fully-connected network and the local deformations with convolutional layers. Despite running this model on each frame independently - thereby enabling a high amount of parallelization - we validate that our framework achieves sub-millimeter accuracy on synthetic data and outperforms existing methods. We also qualitatively demonstrate high-fidelity, long-duration facial performance tracking on several actors.


For anyone who's ever wondered what it takes to capture the nuances of a snowy landscape, to do justice to fall leaves, to catch reflections in a dewdrop, or to convey the exuberant joy of a summer picnic, Tom Ang's Digital Photography Through the Year is the essential companion to photography throughout the changing seasons. Divided into seasons, each chapter features beautiful, evocative images, and provides details of how to recreate the look. With advice on which settings to use, overcoming potential challenges, dealing with tricky lighting situations, capturing and freezing movement, composing with color, and more, Tom's informal style makes stunning photographic results achievable for both the casual cameraphone user and the SLR expert.


- Uploading data streams to a resource-rich cloud server for inner product evaluation, an essential building block in many popular stream applications (e.g., statistical monitoring), is appealing to many companies and individuals. On the other hand, verifying the result of the remote computation plays a crucial role in addressing the issue of trust. Since the outsourced data collection likely comes from multiple data sources, it is desired for the system to be able to pinpoint the originator of errors by allotting each data source a unique secret key, which requires the inner product verification to be performed under any two parties' different keys. However, the present solutions either depend on a single key assumption or powerful yet practically inefficient fully homomorphism cryptosystems. In this paper, we focus on the more challenging multi-key scenario where data streams are uploaded by multiple data sources with distinct keys. We first present a novel homomorphism verifiable tag technique to publicly verify the outsourced inner product computation on the dynamic data streams, and then extend it to support the verification of matrix product computation. We prove the security of our scheme in the random oracle model. Moreover, the experimental result also shows the practicability of our design.


Abstract Constitutions traffic in magic and deceit, argues Günter Frankenberg, promising freedom and democracy even as they underwrite the exercise of coercive power on a massive scale. Scholars should approach constitutions with a healthy skepticism, but, Frankenberg contends, most mainstream scholars are too credulous, especially regarding the claims of liberal constitutionalism. Comparative Constitutional Studies serves as his corrective to the perceived blind spots and predilections of mainstream comparative constitutional scholarship, and it gives attention to little-known constitutions, forgotten histories, and alternatives to liberal constitutionalism. It's a rich, challenging, and valuable book, one that takes the reader to some off-the-beaten-track places and offers some new perspectives on well-studied landmarks. It does not, however, represent such a radical break from mainstream scholarship as the author supposes, both because the book's own analysis, in practice, is not deeply unconventional, and because mainstream scholarship is more diverse than Frankenberg gives it credit for.


Background:   Milk is one of the most used foodstuffs by humans in their diet. The quality of goat milk is already regulated by Law, which takes into consideration its physical-chemical and microbiological composition parameters. Several factors contribute for the alteration of the physical-chemical and microbiological parameters of caprine milk. These include breed, age, lactation phase and diet, among others. The health status of animals may interfere in the quality of the milk produced, both regarding food safety and milk processing and, for that reason, the identification of mastitis-causing agents is important, so that prevention and control measures can be implemented. The present study aimed at analyzing the occurrence of mastitis and the milk composition of dairy goats in a semi-intensive production system. Materials, Methods & Results : In a private goat farm with a flock composed of 32 female animals of breeds such as Saanen and Anglo-Nubian, raised on a semi-confined system, the diagnosis of mastitis was made through methods such as California Mastitis Test (CMT), Somatic Cells Count (SCC) and bacterial isolation. A total of 136 milk samples were analyzed, which were individualized per teat. Additionally, the study determined the volume of milk produced individually and the chemical composition of milk samples (fat, raw protein, lactose and total solids). In 37 (27.2%) samples, subclinical mastitis caused by CNS was identified. A negative response to CMT was observed in 125 (91.92%) samples. Only four samples presented a coincidence (OR=1.239) between CMT and bacterial isolation (P=0.7470). It was observed that the daily milk production ranged between 207.90 mL and 2.68 L. Moreover, it became clear that the milk production in half of the teats with subclinical mastitis was smaller (P=0.0026). A tendency to a significant reduction (p -1 ) during the sampling months. A significant concordance (P Discussion : Mastitis is an inflammation of the mammary gland and, in the majority of cases, it is manifested in its subclinical form, having CNS as its main agent, both in Brazil and in other countries. Methods such as bacterial isolation, SCC and CMT are used for the diagnosis of mastitis. In the present study, no relation among these diagnostic methods has been found. This fact had already been reported in Brazilian literature. The herd configuration may have contributed for the occurrence of mastitis, since this disease is influenced by genetic factors and age. Moreover, its occurrence was higher in Anglo-Nubian females which, in addition to being older and consequently having undergone a higher number of lactations, presented an udder conformation with fragile ligaments and pending teats. Such conformation of the mammary glands may collaborate to the occurrence of infection. Mastitis is responsible for damages in the dairy production system, due to economical losses and reduction in the quality and volume of milk. However, the present study did not observe a variation in milk production due to bacterial contamination or an increase of SCC. A reduction in solid and fat contents did coincide with the beginning of the lactation period in Saanen goats; animals belonging to this breed tend to produce a higher volume of milk and, consequently, a smaller proportion of its components is observed. Based on the results obtained, the study concluded that the herd composition with regard to breed and lactation phase has an influence in the occurrence of subclinical mastitis, as well as in milk composition. Methods such as the CMT and SCC should be used carefully in the diagnosis of mastitis in goats.


Purpose of review Studies over the last 2 years have added important new information on the relationship between air pollution and asthma incidence and severity. Recent findings Outdoor air pollution has been associated with asthma exacerbations, including emergency department visits and hospitalizations, as well as with the onset of asthma. Possible mechanisms mediating both incidence and severity effects include the induction of oxidative stress, and/or allergic sensitization, as well as increased susceptibility to viral infections. Some of these mechanisms may be occurring in utero including epigenetic changes that may increase risk for development of asthma. Factors related to increased susceptibility for air pollution-related asthma severity include age, season and genetic polymorphisms related to antioxidant enzymes. Summary Ambient pollution levels may be associated with both asthma incidence and severity. Susceptibility to air pollution may be higher in children with genetic polymorphisms related to the 'oxidant stress pathways'. Potential interventions for susceptible children at risk for asthma development and/or severity include decreased exposure on high air pollution days, especially in the summer months, and antioxidant supplementation. On the population level, changes in school and home zoning to increase distance from busy roadways may help reduce both asthma incidence and severity.


This report is a summary of the financial and production records kept by swine farmers enrolled in the Telfarm/MicroTel record program through Michigan State University Extension. Farm records were included if a Finan summary was completed on 1999 data including beginning and ending balance sheets, plus income and expenses. The summary was included if cash discrepancy was less than 10% of gross cash inflow, and if the debt discrepancy was less than $1,000. The averages are reported in the tables below; it should be recognized that considerable variability exist in the data. Six (6) of the nine (9) farms grew crops in addition to hogs. The unweighted mean of acres cropped was 1,047 acres; the standard deviation of the mean was 583 acres and the median was 1,074. The unweighted mean of the net farm income for all nine (9) farms was $(38,306). The standard deviation of the mean was $130,884 and the median was $3,008 of the net farm income. This report has three purposes: 1) to provide statistical information about the financial results on swine farms during 1999; 2) to provide production costs for comparative analysis and forward planning; and 3) to provide information on the trends in resource use, income and costs during the last few years. For swine farm averages in 1995, see Staff Paper 96-86, Michigan Farm Database, New Directions for 1995; it contains averages of 19 swine farms calculated with Finansum. Staff Paper 97-30, Business Analysis Summary for Swine Farms, contains averages of 17 swine farms for 1996. Staff Paper 98-23, 1997 Business Analysis Summary for Swine Farms, contains averages of 20 swine farms for 1997. Staff Paper 99-34, 1998 Business Analysis Summary for Swine Farms, contains averages of 14 swine farms for 1998. These staff papers are available from the author at http://www.msu.edu/user/nott


However, current methods that are used in the processing of juice products, such as thermal treatments, has been reported significantly reduces nutritional quality. UV-C treatment is an alternative method that could extend the shelf life as well as maintain the quality of juice. In this study, the quality attributes of the juice blend upon exposure to ultraviolet light and thermal treatment were studied. Freshly squeezed orange, carrot and celery juice blend was exposed to ultraviolet light (for 15, 30, and 60 minutes) and thermal pasteurization (at 90°C, for 30 s and 60 s). Microbial analysis, physicochemical properties, antioxidant activity as well as other quality parameters were carried out on all samples. The results showed no significant difference in physicochemical properties among all samples studied. Nevertheless, a significant increase was observed in polyphenol content, antioxidant capacity, and flavonoid content in samples treated with UV-C compared to control and thermal treated. Moreover, juice blend exposed to UV-C treatment (30 and 60 minutes) showed increase in extractability of carotenoids. UV-C treated samples also exhibited reduction in microbial load and prolonged shelf life. The results obtained support the use of UV-C as an alternative to thermal treatment in improving the quality of juice blend.


Delayed payments of work done by clients on construction projects in the Ghanaian construction industry are considered to be a factor of significant concern. It causes severe cash-flow problems to contractors and this can have a devastating effect down the contractual payment chain. It is not uncommon to find a contractor or sub-contractor who has not been paid what is due to him threatening to suspend work under the contract until the balance due to him is paid in full. The practice of efficient and timely payment in construction projects is a major factor that can contribute to the success of a project. This study was conducted to identify the causes and effects of delayed payments for work done in the Ghanaian construction industry. In order to obtain indicative data for the study, questionnaires were designed and distributed to a randomly selected sample of 210 individuals among contractors, subcontractors and clients in the Ghanaian construction industry. In total, 174 completed questionnaires were returned and then analysed statistically. The Relative Importance Index was used to determine the ranking of the results of the study. Employers' poor financial management, conflict among parties involved in the contract, and delay in certification are some of the potential causes of delayed payment identified in the study. Withholding or delaying payment creates financial hardship for the construction companies and its impacts are sometimes so harsh that some companies have to close down. To improve the payment situation, the findings of the study suggest that there must be enforcing clauses of delayed payment in contracts, i.e. levying charges on overdue payments and the establishment of a payment department which would be responsible for keeping records of the history of delayed payment and penalties given to those who fail to pay on time as stipulated in the contract.


We use census data to examine the impact of industrialization on children's education in Mexico. We find no evidence of reverse causality in this case. We find small positive effects of industrialization on primary education, effects which are larger for domestic manufacturing than for export-intensive assembly(maquiladoras). In contrast, teen-aged girls in Mexican counties(municipios) with more growth in maquiladora employment 1990-2000 have significantly less educational attainment than do girls in low-growth counties. These results shed light on literatures analyzing the impacts of industrialization, foreign investment, and intra-household bargaining power.


Hot parts of burners for residential boilers are subject to irregular heating cycles up to 800 °C and higher, simultaneously exposed to alkali salts, variable oxygen partial pressure - and thermal shock. Fundamental hot corrosion studies under well-controlled conditions, in combination with simple ranking tests simulating the effect of ash deposited on the alloy surface, have been performed. The investigation included four types of high-alloyed steel and two types of ash from wood and bark pellets. The work was complemented with field studies of selected damaged parts. Two mechanisms involving interaction of potassium as well as carbon under intermittent oxygen-deficient conditions with chromium from the alloys have been corroborated. A simple ranking test procedure has also been designed. It proved relevant as a screening method only after incorporating a mild thermal shock in the heat treatment sequence. A significant difference in corrosive effect, particularly on a lower chromium-alloy like 304 L, has been observed for the ash derived from the wood and bark pellets, respectively.


We perform a consistent comparison of the mass and mass profiles of massive (M⋆ > 1011.4 M⊙) central galaxies at z ∼ 0.4 from deep Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) observations and from the Illustris, TNG100, and Ponos simulations. Weak lensing measurements from HSC enable measurements at fixed halo mass and provide constraints on the strength and impact of feedback at different halo mass scales. We compare the stellar mass function (SMF) and the Stellar-to-Halo Mass Relation (SHMR) at various radii and show that the radius at which the comparison is performed is important. In general, Illustris and TNG100 display steeper values of α where $M_{\star } \propto M_{\rm vir}^{\alpha }$. These differences are more pronounced for Illustris than for TNG100 and in the inner rather than outer regions of galaxies. Differences in the inner regions may suggest that TNG100 is too efficient at quenching in situ star formation at Mvir ≃ 1013 M⊙ but not efficient enough at Mvir ≃ 1014 M⊙. The outer stellar masses are in excellent agreement with our observations at Mvir ≃ 1013 M⊙, but both Illustris and TNG100 display excess outer mass as Mvir ≃ 1014 M⊙ (by ∼0.25 and ∼0.12 dex, respectively). We argue that reducing stellar growth at early times in $M_\star \sim 10^{9-10} \, \mathrm{M}_{\odot }$ galaxies would help to prevent excess ex-situ growth at this mass scale. The Ponos simulations do not implement AGN feedback and display an excess mass of ∼0.5 dex at r < 30 kpc compared to HSC which is indicative of overcooling and excess star formation in the central regions. The comparison of the inner profiles of Ponos and HSC suggests that the physical scale over which the central AGN limits star formation is r ≲ 20 kpc. Joint comparisons between weak lensing and galaxy stellar profiles are a direct test of whether simulations build and deposit galaxy mass in the correct dark matter haloes and thereby provide powerful constraints on the physics of feedback and galaxy growth. Our galaxy and weak lensing profiles are publicly available to facilitate comparisons with other simulations.


A Dictionary of Human Geography is a brand new addition to Oxford's Paperback Reference Series, offering over 2,000 clear and concise entries on human geography terms. From basic terms and concepts to biographical entries, acronyms, organisations, and major periods and schools in the history of human geography, it provides up-to-date, accurate, and accessible information. It also includes entry-level web links that are listed and regularly updated on a dedicated companion website. This dictionary is a reliable reference for students of human geography and ancillary subjects, for researchers and professionals in the field, and for interested generalists.


Objectives Social Autopsy (SA) is an innovative strategy where a trained facilitator leads community groups through a structured, standardised analysis of the physical, environmental, cultural and social factors contributing to a serious, non-fatal health event or death. The discussion stimulated by the formal process of SA determines the causes and suggests preventative measures that are appropriate and achievable in the community. Here we explored individual experiences of SA, including acceptance and participant learning, and its effect on rural communities in Bangladesh. The present study had explored the experiences gained while undertaking SA of maternal and neonatal deaths and stillbirths in rural Bangladesh. Design Qualitative assessment of documents, observations, focus group discussions, group discussions and in-depth interviews by content and thematic analyses. Results Each community's maternal and neonatal death was a unique, sad story. SA undertaken by government field-level health workers were well accepted by rural communities. SA had the capability to explore the social reasons behind the medical cause of the death without apportioning blame to any individual or group. SA was a useful instrument to raise awareness and encourage community responses to errors within the society that contributed to the death. People participating in SA showed commitment to future preventative measures and devised their own solutions for the future prevention of maternal and neonatal deaths. Conclusions SA highlights societal errors and promotes discussion around maternal or newborn death. SA is an effective means to deliver important preventative messages and to sensitise the community to death issues. Importantly, the community itself is enabled to devise future strategies to avert future maternal and neonatal deaths in Bangladesh.


This thesis focuses on the experiences of women and couples who have undergone in vitro fertilisation (IVF) unsuccessfully and who have subsequently stopped treatment. The thesis is feminist in that it aims to make visible the gendered power relations within which IVF failure is experienced and accounted for. IVF is viewed here not as a neutral artefact, or the violent imposition of male power, but as a form of disciplinary technology, the experience of which is always contradictory and ambivalent. The thesis takes a discourse analytic approach to the interview data. This approach necessarily conceptualises the participants as active, but constrained, agents in the production of meaning in relation to IVF, and the analysis seeks to identify the discursive strategies which they employ in accounting for their experiences. It is argued that those who have stopped treatment occupy an ambiguous liminal space among the dominant discourses of gender, technology and body, and that this constitutes an unusually productive location from which to think about IVF, both in terms of challenging the apparent inevitability of those discourses and creating openings for the production of new knowledges. The analysis is organised around four key themes which emerged from the interview data: the negotiation of discourses of nature and technology; the location of IVF within consumer culture; the distribution of responsibility when treatment fails; and the seeking of resolution around the end of treatment. This thematic structure forms a platform from which to consider not only the specificities of the experience of IVF failure, but which also generates broader insights at the theoretical and conceptual level, focusing particularly on the limitations of oppositional paradigms of transgression / conformity, material / discursive, agency / constraint and theory / practice in the feminist theorising of IVF.


It has been a long-standing dream to design artificial agents that explore their environment efficiently via intrinsic motivation, similar to how children perform curious free play. Despite recent advances in intrinsically motivated reinforcement learning (RL), sample-efficient exploration in object manipulation scenarios remains a significant challenge as most of the relevant information lies in the sparse agent-object and object-object interactions. In this paper, we propose to use structured world models to incorporate relational inductive biases in the control loop to achieve sample-efficient and interaction-rich exploration in compositional multi-object environments. By planning for future novelty inside structured world models, our method generates free-play behavior that starts to interact with objects early on and develops more complex behavior over time. Instead of using models only to compute intrinsic rewards, as commonly done, our method showcases that the self-reinforcing cycle between good models and good exploration also opens up another avenue: zero-shot generalization to downstream tasks via model-based planning. After the entirely intrinsic task-agnostic exploration phase, our method solves challenging downstream tasks such as stacking, flipping, pick&place, and throwing that generalizes to unseen numbers and arrangements of objects without any additional training.


The literature on the wage curve provides considerable evidence in favor of a negative relationship between unemployment and wages. It is thus often seen as a refutation of the Harris-Todaro model, who point to a positive relationship. This paper shows that both strands of literature are special cases of a more general approach by combining a New Economic Geography model with monocentric cities and efficiency wages. Whether the relationship is positive or negative depends on the transportation costs between the cities and commuting costs within them. The model helps explain whether and under which conditions the agglomeration of economic activity is associated with higher unemployment and why controls for agglomeration should be included in wage curve regressions.


The population of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) has exploded in recent years, with ETFs in a vast array of portfolios tied to specific asset classes, industries, active and passive trading strategies, and so on. In some cases, there are multiple leveraged long and short versions based on the same underlying factor. In this article, Tang and Xu examine nine leveraged ETFs tied to oil. Five are based on portfolios of oil stocks, and the other four use commodity futures to track the price of oil itself. Two main questions are: How correlated are the ETFs with the underlying energy risk factors they are designed to hedge? And, do the leveraged versions succeed in producing their target multiples of the exposure to the oil market? The authors find stock-based ETFs are much more correlated with the stock market than with oil prices, whereas the reverse is true of the crude oil ETFs. But all of the ETFs tend to fall short of their intended multiples, especially over longer holding periods, for several reasons. Tang and Xu decompose the shortfall to see how much is due to the product's inherent convexity, which causes compounding to produce underperformance; how much comes from discrepancy between the ETF's market price and its net asset value; and how much is the result of management's inability to hit their target return even on a single day. All three factors are important and only the "inefficiency" difference between ETF price and NAV (net asset value) does not cumulate over longer holding periods.


Robots are becoming increasingly more common in the industry. In order to expand the use of robotic manipulators to complex tasks, a higher degree of tailoring of robots may be required. Tailoring of the mechanical design of a robot manipulator can be formulated as an optimization problem and we propose to use Genetic Algorithms (GA) to optimize link lengths, link diameters, and link thickness in order to determine the robot design for a given fitness function. As a case, the optimization of a robot manipulator for automated cleaning of fish processing plants is presented. For this application, the kinematic layout and joint configuration are decided beforehand. The dynamics of the robotic manipulator are presented along with the optimization algorithm and implemented in Java. Results show that the GA is well suited for the optimization of the design.


In young adults information designated for future enactment is more readily accessible from memory than information not intended for enactment (e.g. Goschke & Kuhl, 1993). We examined whether this advantage for to-be-enacted material is reduced in older adults and thus whether attenuated action accessibility could underlie age-associated declines in prospective remembering. Young and older adults showed an equivalent increase in accessibility (faster recognition latencies) for to-be-enacted items over items intended for verbal report. Both age groups also showed increased accessibility for actions performed at encoding compared with verbally encoded items. Moreover, these effects were non-additive, suggesting similarities in the representation of completed and to-be-completed actions.


This publication contains current research and analysis on a broad range of issues topical to Australia's social policy and its administration.


Normative and doctrinal analysis shows that schools do not possess jurisdiction over offensive online student speech, at least when it does not cause a substantial disruption of the school environment. This article is a timely analysis on the limits of school jurisdiction over offensive online student speech. On February 4, 2010, two different Third Circuit panels issued opinions reaching opposite conclusions on whether schools may punish students based on online speech created by students when they are off-campus. The Third Circuit vacated both decisions and is considering these cases in a consolidated en banc appeal. Another case addressing the same issue is currently pending before the Second Circuit. This article provides in-depth analysis on all three cases as well as associated case law. Specifically, the article focuses on one of the four Supreme Court student speech rulings, Bethel School District No. 403 v. Fraser, 478 U.S. 675 (1986). In Fraser, the court held that a school may discipline a student for giving a lewd and indecent speech at a mandatory school assembly. Fraser created an exception to the Court's seminal student speech case, Tinker v. Des Moines Area School District, 393 U.S. 503 (1969). Tinker required a substantial disruption of the school environment before a school could punish student speech. Fraser did not require a substantial disruption because the student gave a speech filled sexual innuendo before a captive school audience. Lower courts struggle with whether Fraser applies to offensive online speech. On February 4, 2010, one Third Circuit panel affirmed the district court by holding that Fraser does not apply to online speech. On the same day, a different Third Circuit panel declined to analyze Fraser, even though the district court upheld a school's decision to discipline a student under Fraser. Instead, that Third Circuit panel upheld the punishment under Tinker. While not creating an express intra-circuit split, these decisions do not resolve the uncertainty as to whether Fraser applies to online student speech. The case pending before the Second Circuit will address Fraser because the certified question is whether "a school may discipline a student for inappropriate comments made off campus on a blog." The rule articulated in this article is that Fraser does not apply to offensive online student speech, regardless of whether it is created or accessed on or off-campus. This rule is supported by doctrinal analysis of Fraser and its progeny. Normative analysis under self-realization theory also supports the rule in this article. Self-realization theory is influential in our Supreme Court's First Amendment jurisprudence and was most recently invoked in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 130 S. Ct. 876, 972 (Jan. 21, 2010) (Stevens, J., dissenting). Because of conflicting lower court decisions, the issue of online student speech rights will likely reach the United States Supreme Court. Through normative and doctrinal analysis, this article illustrates the importance of limiting school jurisdiction over online student speech to protect First Amendment rights of minors and others.


Every year, approximately 62 000 people with stroke and transient ischemic attack are treated in Canadian hospitals, and the evidence suggests one-third or more will experience vascular-cognitive impairment, and/or intractable fatigue, either alone or in combination. The 2015 update of the Canadian Stroke Best Practice Recommendations: Mood, Cognition and Fatigue Module guideline is a comprehensive summary of current evidence-based recommendations for clinicians in a range of settings, who provide care to patients following stroke. The three consequences of stroke that are the focus of the this guideline (poststroke depression, vascular cognitive impairment, and fatigue) have high incidence rates and significant impact on the lives of people who have had a stroke, impede recovery, and result in worse long-term outcomes. Significant practice variations and gaps in the research evidence have been reported for initial screening and in-depth assessment of stroke patients for these conditions. Also of concern, an increased number of family members and informal caregivers may also experience depressive symptoms in the poststroke recovery phase which further impact patient recovery. These factors emphasize the need for a system of care that ensures screening occurs as a standard and consistent component of clinical practice across settings as stroke patients transition from acute care to active rehabilitation and reintegration into their community. Additionally, building system capacity to ensure access to appropriate specialists for treatment and ongoing management of stroke survivors with these conditions is another great challenge.


Entrepreneurship is an interdisciplinary process regarded to have the potential to create wide
ranging socio-economic impact, however the fuller understanding of entrepreneurs operating
within emerging markets or developing economies remains somewhat ambiguous. As such,
this study examined entrepreneurship through the interdependence of the individual and
context, examining the unique notion of co-evolution and reflexivity to and from
entrepreneurial action and institutional elements within a specific context. Creating a more
comprehensive understanding of the duality of the entrepreneur and operational context
within an emerging market, this study addressed three main objectives, investigating: the
individual internal characteristics, or drivers, of the entrepreneur; the influences from
external dynamics and institutions, or determinants, on entrepreneurial outlook and action;
and finally, if and how entrepreneurial action can be reflexive to and from existing
institutions as both co-evolve within operational structures.
The conceptual framework developed for this research was informed by Structuration
Theory, which interprets entrepreneurship as a co-evolving construction of structure, agent
and social system, providing a theoretical outline for the empirical analysis of
entrepreneurship as a reflexive interdependent duality. Research used the coffee sectors of
Ethiopia and Rwanda to structure the investigation of entrepreneurs given the similarly linear
formations of each marketplace. Use of the respective coffee markets provided a framework
for detailed analysis of entrepreneurship occurring across a range of entrepreneurial
classifications and different business models across the coffee industries, comprising
Smallholder Producers, Processors and Exporters. This comparative analysis further
examined the entrepreneurial phenomenon within opposing economic systems of market
liberalization and political embrace, using participatory qualitative and quantitative methods
to collect and analyse data, and interpret results.
Empirical analysis between the internal construct of Entrepreneurs and Non-Entrepreneurs
revealed inherent differences as well as varying strengths and weaknesses of the tested
drivers across the different business types. Comparative analyses of operational contexts
found multiple elements to influence entrepreneurship and revealed situations of
entrepreneurial constriction and entrepreneurial dynamism. Examination of entrepreneurship
as an interdependent whole demonstrated the reflexive nature of entrepreneurial action on
systems and structures, revealing both positive and negative outcomes of reflexivity and
additionality.
This thesis identified, demonstrated and explored entrepreneurship as a multifaceted,
composition of the interdependence of the entrepreneur and operational context; with
entrepreneurship found to have the potential for introducing change, only if embraced
through the appropriate systems.


Background: The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of a hospital-based cardiac rehabilitation program on heart rate recovery (HRR) in patients who received percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) or coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). Methods: Two hundred forty patients, who completed 24 sessions of a cardiac rehabilitation program (phase 2) after PCI (n=62) or CABG (n=178) at the rehabilitation department of Tehran Heart Center were included in the present study. Demographic and clinical characteristics and exercise capacity at baseline and at follow-up were compared between the two groups. The main outcome measurements were: Resting heart rate, peak heart rate, and HRR. Results: All the patients showed significant improvements in heart rate parameters from the baseline to the last sessions. The profile of atherosclerotic risk factors (except for diabetes mellitus) was similar between the PCI and CABG subjects. After eight weeks of cardiac rehabilitation, HRR increased averagely about 17 and 21 bpm among the CABG and PCI patients, respectively (p=0.019). Conclusion: The results of the present study were indicative of an increase in HRR over 1 minute in patients irrespective of their initial revascularization modality (i.e. PCI or CABG) after the completion of cardiac rehabilitation. Be that as it may, the PCI patients achieved greater improvement in HRR by comparison with the CABG patients.


Billions of people everyday use Social Media (SM), such as Facebook and Twitter, to express their opinions and experiences with brands. Companies are highly interested in understanding such SM brand-related content. Consequently, many studies have been conducted and many applications have been developed to analyse this content. For analysis purposes, the main SM metrics used include volume and sentiment. Interestingly, however, brand equity theory proposes different metrics for assessing brand reputation. These include brand image, brand satisfaction and purchase intention (henceforth referred to as marketing metrics). The objective of this paper is to explore the feasibility of applying marketing metrics in Twitter brand-related content. For this purpose, we collect, study and analyse tweets that mention two brands, namely IKEA and Gatorade. The manual analysis suggests that a significant amount of brand tweets is related to brand image, brand satisfaction and purchase intention. We thereafter design an algorithm that classifies tweets into relevant categories to enable automatic marketing metrics computation. We implement the algorithm using statistical learning approaches and prove that its classification accuracy is good. We anticipate that this article will motivate other studies as well as applications' designers in adopting marketing theories when evaluating brand reputation through SM content.


The recent growth of anonymous social network services -- such as 4chan, Whisper, and Yik Yak -- has brought online anonymity into the spotlight. For these services to function properly, the integrity of user anonymity must be preserved. If an attacker can determine the physical location from where an anonymous message was sent, then the attacker can potentially use side information (for example, knowledge of who lives at the location) to de-anonymize the sender of the message. In this paper, we investigate whether the popular anonymous social media application Yik Yak is susceptible to localization attacks, thereby putting user anonymity at risk. The problem is challenging because Yik Yak application does not provide information about distances between user and message origins or any other message location information. We provide a comprehensive data collection and supervised machine learning methodology that does not require any reverse engineering of the Yik Yak protocol, is fully automated, and can be remotely run from anywhere. We show that we can accurately predict the locations of messages up to a small average error of 106 meters. We also devise an experiment where each message emanates from one of nine dorm colleges on the University of California Santa Cruz campus. We are able to determine the correct dorm college that generated each message 100\% of the time.


My paper juxtaposes Laurent Cantet's films The Class (2008) and The Workshop (2017) to explore how they are infused with concerns about radical Islam and the place of Muslim immigrants in the West. Both films center on "angry young men" facing class-based marginalization, who are prone to anti-social behavior. In The Workshop, however, a great effort is made to reveal the intellectual potential and moral complexity of the young white French-born Antoine, whose alienation is defined by his attraction to the xenophobic and Islamophobic rhetoric of the Far Right, whereas viewers of The Class are kept at arm's length from Souleymane, a Malian immigrant teenager whose nature as a recalcitrant student prone to violent outbursts is interwoven with signifiers emphasizing his Muslim identity. In contrasting these antiheros, I highlight the way Cantet, despite his politically progressive veneer, perpetuates dominant narratives of Muslim immigrants as intractably foreign, which are rooted in colonialism but have experienced a resurgence since 9/11. The cumulative effect of the divergences in these characters' fates is to depict an angry young Muslim man as innately threatening and "different," unable to assimilate into European culture and drawn inexorably to a tragic end, while an angry young white man embodies great promise, distorted and nearly thwarted by external socioeconomic and cultural factors. Taken together, these films play out western tendencies to marginalize Muslims or reinforce stereotypes of them as inscrutable and alien, while centering, humanizing and valorizing white men.


In mammals, the selective transformation of transient experience into stored memory occurs in the hippocampus, which develops representations of specific events in the context in which they occur. In this review, we focus on the development of hippocampal circuits and the self-organized dynamics embedded within them since the latter critically support the role of the hippocampus in learning and memory. We first discuss evidence that adult hippocampal cells and circuits are sculpted by development as early as during embryonic neurogenesis. We argue that these primary developmental programs provide a scaffold onto which later experience of the external world can be grafted. Next, we review the different sequences in the development of hippocampal cells and circuits at anatomical and functional levels. We cover a period extending from neurogenesis and migration to the appearance of phenotypic diversity within hippocampal cells, and their wiring into functional networks. We describe the progressive emergence of network dynamics in the hippocampus, from sensorimotor-driven early sharp waves to sequences of place cells tracking relational information. We outline the critical turn points and discontinuities in that developmental journey, and close by formulating open questions. We propose that rewinding the process of hippocampal development helps understand the main organization principles of memory circuits.


The discontinuous Galerkin time-domain method (DGTD) is an emerging technique for the numerical simulation of time-dependent electromagnetic phenomena. For many applications it is necessary to model the infinite space which surrounds scatterers and sources. As a result, absorbing boundaries which mimic its properties play a key role in making DGTD a versatile tool for various kinds of systems. Popular techniques include the Silver-Mϋller boundary condition and uniaxial perfectly matched layers (UPMLs). We provide novel instructions for the implementation of stretched-coordinate perfectly matched layers in a discontinuous Galerkin framework and compare the performance of the three absorbers for a three-dimensional test system.


The publication of The Garden of Eden in 1986 is now regarded as a major event in Hemingway studies, one that arguably reversed Hemingway's waning status within the academy. Despite significant critical attention to the novel on topics ranging from the ethics and politics of posthumous publication to Hemingway's "above the surface" treatment of gender and sexuality, there has been a dearth of essays about teaching The Garden of Eden. This special section about teaching The Garden of Eden includes an introduction by Suzanne Del Gizzo and five brief essays (by Linda Patterson Miller, Carl Eby, Jacqueline Vaught Brogan, Meryl Altman, and Debra Moddelmog respectively) offering glimpses of the diverse ways these scholars are using Garden in their classrooms.


Since the introduction of embolic coils in the early 1990s, endovascular treatment has gained much traction for use when treating ruptured and unruptured intracranial aneurysms. Three prospective studies have been conducted comparing endovascular coil embolization versus clipping for ruptured intracranial aneurysms. The first study took place in Finland and was the first head-to-head look at treating ruptured aneurysms by either endovascular coiling or surgical clipping. Results from this study suggested better functional outcome after endovascular treatment than surgery at the expenses of higher rates of incomplete aneurysm occlusion. The second largest and only multicenter study was the International Subarachnoid Aneurysm Trial (ISAT). The ISAT took place across Europe and was the first large-scale comparison between endovascular and surgical treatments. The results from this study caused a major opinion shift across the world in regards to optimal treatment of ruptured aneurysms. Additionally, the quantity of data from this study allowed for many subgroup analyses to be made. However, to assess the generalizability of the ISAT study, the Barrow Neurological Institute investigators conducted a single-center study. The intent of this latter study was to remove any potential bias and preselection by enrolling every consenting patient that presented with the designated pathology without any exclusion. However, this enrollment strategy resulted in a high percentage of patients with aneurysms not suitable for endovascular therapy being assigned to the coil group which in turn resulted in a high rate of turn over from the endovascular to the surgical arm of the study. Despite, these limitations, this latter trial presented similar results as the Kuopio and ISAT. Although each of these trials was not methodologically flawless, the combined results from all three suggest that endovascular treatment of ruptured aneurysms suitable for this treatment strategy results in quicker recovery and better functional outcomes at one year at the expenses of lower rates of complete aneurysm obliteration frequently requiring retreatment.


Ocean acidification poses a threat to marine organisms. While the physiological and behavioural effects of ocean acidification have received much attention, the effects of acidification on the susceptibility of farmed shellfish to parasitic infections are poorly understood. Here we describe the effects of moderate (pH 7.5) and extreme (pH 7.0) ocean acidification on the susceptibility of Crassostrea virginica shells to infection by a parasitic polydorid, Polydora websteri. Under laboratory conditions, shells were exposed to three pH treatments (7.0, 7.5 and 8.0) for 3- and 5-week periods. Treated shells were subsequently transferred to an oyster aquaculture site (which had recently reported an outbreak of P. websteri) for 50 days to test for effects of pH and exposure time on P. websteri recruitment to oyster shells. Results indicated that pH and exposure time did not affect the length, width or weight of the shells. Interestingly, P. websteri counts were significantly lower under extreme (pH 7.0; ~50% reduction), but not moderate (pH 7.5; ~20% reduction) acidification levels; exposure time had no effect. This study suggests that extreme levels - but not current and projected near-future levels - of acidification (∆pH ~1 unit) can reduce the susceptibility of eastern oyster shells to P. websteri infections.


Magnetic flux instability limits potential applications of superconductors such as MgB2 in practical devices. Previous studies in MgB2 films exposed to magnetic fields revealed the occurrence of dendritic flux avalanches at temperatures below T ∼ 10 K. In the present work it is shown that films of MgB2 exposed to a fast-ramped magnetic field display a dendritic flux instability at elevated temperatures, up to 23 K. Such instability can therefore cause malfunctioning of practical devices based on MgB2 films even when operating at liquid hydrogen temperature.


This thesis presents the multi-chip design of an architecture which directly implements the
language Pascal. The design uses custom VLSl rather than standard chips in order to
increase speed and reduce the number of chips needed. The integrated circuits comprising the architecture are designed using Bristle Blocks, a chip
design tool developed at Caltech by Dave Johannsen (6). Bristle Blocks is called a silicon
compiler because it will put together an entire integrated circuit from a high level description
of its function. Bristle Blocks can be used to design datapath processor chips, where
external microcode is used to control operations on data busses inside the chip. The Pascal machine architecture presented here is based on the EM-1 instruction set
designed by Andrew Tannenbaum (11,13). The EM-1 instruction set is intended to allow
efficient compilation of stack-based, high level languages. Tannenbaum supplies static
frequency data which is used heavily in making design decisions in the Pascal machine
architecture. VLSl design has several important differences from design using standard components. A
large amount of function can be placed on a single chip, e.g., approximately 30,000
transistors on the Intel 8086, but only a small number of pins are available for off-chip
communication (typically 64 or less). This requires designs to be highly modular. In the
NMOS technology used at Caltech, driving signals off-chip takes up to ten times the time and
energy of on-chip communication. This requires inter-chip communication to be limited as
much as possible. Finally, the large amount of computing power available in VLSl
encourages the use of concurrency to gain execution speed. This thesis is structured as follows. The thesis begins with a section defining the principles
to be followed in designing the Pascal system architecture. Following that are sections
describing Bristle Blocks and the EM-1 architecture. Next, the overall architecture of the
Pascal machine is described, followed by sections detailing the system data busses, the
common elements in the processors which make up the system, and the processors
themselves. A conclusion section summarizes the work, provides a brief critique of Bristle
Blocks, and includes recommendations for further work. Finally, the appendices document
the Bristle Blocks datapath elements and the EM-1 instruction set.


Liberal democracy has struggled to respond to so-called fake news. The term is used to describe content and discredit the media, and it is increasingly seen as the tool of illiberal actors. This research examines how fake news targets human rights through a critical discourse analysis of demonstrably false headlines in four environments: the United States, Italy, Greece and Ukraine. This research defines fake news as disinformation or disingenuous content that is disseminated to persuade as an agenda. It then examines relevant social theories, enabling features and motivated actors to suggest that disinformation functions through repetition and peripheral processing that exploit existing scepticism and social tensions in the neo-liberal system. This study collects headlines and headline-adjacent content from factchecking sites in four countries, codes them according to sociological implications and analyses them through social discourse theory. It finds that disinformation targets social movements and multi-culturalism by discrediting actors and presenting the human rights regime as disingenuous and oppressive. Disinformation frames illiberal behaviour as positive transformative action and co-opts the rhetoric of the human rights regime to further arguments rooted in new racism.


D-tagatose is a functional sweetener present in medicine, food, and dairy products and with broad market prospects, and L-arabinose isomerase gene (araA) can mediate the bioconversion of D-galactose into D-tagatose. In this study, a Lactococcus lactis NZ9000 strain harboring exogenous L-arabinose isomerase was constructed to produce D-tagatose. Lactobacillus plantarum CGMCC 8198 exhibits L-arabinose isomerase activity and its genome has been sequenced. The araA gene of Lactobacillus plantarum CGMCC 8198 encoding L-arabinose isomerase was identified by sequence analysis and was successfully cloned and expressed in Lactococcus lactis NZ9000. The D-tagatose production by the whole cell of the recombinant strain was optimized. The optimal condition for conversion reaction was at 50°C, pH 7.0 and with 300 mmol/L Mn2+ and 60 g/L galactose added. The D-tagatose yield and conversion rate at the optimal condition was determined and reached 40.2 g/L and 67%, respectively.


This Essay is based on a panel discussion at Asset Protection and Trust Innovations: South Dakota's Role in Paving the Way for Innovations Nationwide, organized by University of South Dakota School of Law. The largest transfer of wealth in U.S. history will occur over the next thirty years, as the aging baby boomers prepare to transfer an estimated $30 trillion. A desire to balance privilege and personal responsibility is reflected in this generation's aversion to "trustafarians" and the seeming popularity of incentive trust provisions. Incentive trusts incorporate financial incentives and disincentives designed to encourage the positive behavior of a beneficiary.The purpose of this discussion is to explore the idea of incorporating learning outcomes into the drafting of incentive trusts, when the incentive provision requires that the beneficiary develop a skillset as opposed to merely complete a binary task. In the context of legal education, law schools are moving away from focusing on the ability of the student to complete a particular course, and are focusing instead on the broader outcome: a graduate's ability to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the law such that the graduate can deliver legal services of a high quality. By incorporating a clearly articulated objective in an incentive trust when the grantor wishes for the beneficiary to develop a skillset, the beneficiary may be moved towards an intentional paradigm of learning. By way of example, the proposed approach will be framed within the context of a laudable proposed goal: creditworthiness of the beneficiary.


A new analysis of data from trials of oseltamivir (Tamiflu) has reopened the debate over whether the drug reduces deaths from H1N1 influenza.

Conducted by the Cochrane Tamiflu team, the study found no effect on mortality,1 in contrast with a 2014 meta-analysis conducted by the PRIDE consortium at the University of Nottingham, which concluded that the drug did save lives.2

The two groups have already crossed swords when the PRIDE study was published and was immediately criticised by the statistician Mark Jones, who is the lead author of the relevant chapter in the new Cochrane analysis. Those who have closely followed the controversy may not, therefore, be surprised at the Cochrane findings.

The difference between the two teams hangs on the methods they used to analyse the data and, in particular, …


Kreul oboes were the most significant oboes made in Germany during the second half of the twentieth century. In the 1990s the Kreul company, after mergers with Marigaux and Uebel, became the largest producer of oboes in the world. During fifty years of manufacturing, Kreul oboes reached nearly all corners of the world. The purpose of this study is to help preserve the legacy of the Kreul oboe, its makers, and their contribution to the field of oboe. A thorough survey of existing literature has been conducted. This study combines existing information into one document for the first time. At the heart is an interview with Joachim Kreul, conducted by the author in 2007. The transcription of this interview is included in the appendices, along with documents provided by Joachim and Helga Kreul, such as technical drawings, advertisements from various catalogues, and newspaper articles about the company. This study presents a biographical overview of the Kreul family, an historic account of the Kreul family business, and a discussion of the Kreul oboe. The story of the Kreul oboe involves several generations of Kreul family members: Hans I, Hans II, and [Hans] Joachim Kreul are the principal characters, each taking over the business from the previous generation. The following are discussed in context: Musikwinkel, Puchner, Stowasser, Ben Storch, Mirafone, Arthur Jensen, Boehm system oboe, Kreul & Moosmann bassoons, Oboe-Fagott, acquisitions of Marigaux and F. Arthur Uebel, and Joachim Kreul Holzblasinstrumente. It is the focus of this study to enhance and further the knowledge of oboists and to serve as a historical reference for future generations, by documenting this important period in oboe history.


The widespread deployment of millions of current and emerging software applications has placed software economic studies among the most critical of any form of business analysis. Unfortunately, a lack of an integrated suite of metrics makes software economic analysis extremely difficult. The International Function Point Users Group (IFPUG), a nonprofit and member-governed organization, has become the recognized leader in promoting the effective management of application software development and maintenance activities. The IFPUG Guide to IT and Software Measurement brings together 52 leading software measurement experts from 13 different countries who share their insights and expertise. Covering measurement programs, function points in measurement, new technologies, and metrics analysis, this volume: Illustrates software measurement's role in new and emerging technologies Addresses the impact of agile development on software measurement Presents measurement as a powerful tool for auditing and accountability Includes metrics for the CIO Edited by IFPUG's Management and Reporting Committee, the text is useful for IT project managers, process improvement specialists, measurement professionals, and business professionals who need to interact with IT professionals and participate in IT decision-making. It includes coverage of cloud computing, agile development, quantitative project management, process improvement, measurement as a tool in accountability, project ROI measurement, metrics for the CIO, value stream mapping, and benchmarking.


The choropleth map is an essential tool for spatial data analysis. However, the underlying attribute values of a spatial unit greatly influence the statistical analyses and map classification procedures when generating a choropleth map. If the attribute values incorporate a range of uncertainty, a critical task is determining how much the uncertainty impacts both the map visualization and the statistical analysis. In this paper, we present a visual analytics system that enhances our understanding of the impact of attribute uncertainty on data visualization and statistical analyses of these data. Our system consists of a parallel coordinates-based uncertainty specification view, an impact river and impact matrix visualization for region-based and simulation-based analysis, and a dual-choropleth map and t-SNE plot for visualizing the changes in classification and spatial autocorrelation over the range of uncertainty in the attribute values. We demonstrate our system through three use cases illustrating the impact of attribute uncertainty in geographic analysis.