Stationary solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) have been demonstrated to provide clean and reliable electricity through electro-chemical conversion of various fuel sources (CH4 and other light hydrocarbons). To become a competitive conversion technology the costs of SOFCs must be reduced to less than $400/kW. Aluminosilicate represents a potential low cost alternative to high purity alumina for SOFC refractory applications. The objectives of this investigation are to: (1) study changes of aluminosilicate chemistry and morphology under SOFC conditions, (2) identify volatile silicon species released by aluminosilicates, (3) identify the mechanisms of aluminosilicate vapor deposition on SOFC materials, and (4) determine the effects of aluminosilicate vapors on SOFC electrochemical performance. It is shown thermodynamically and empirically that low cost aluminosilicate refractory remains chemically and thermally unstable under SOFC operating conditions between 800C and 1000C. Energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) of the aluminosilicate bulk and surface identified increased concentrations of silicon at the surface after exposure to SOFC gases at 1000°C for 100 hours. The presence of water vapor accelerated surface diffusion of silicon, creating a more uniform distribution. Thermodynamic equilibrium modeling showed aluminosilicate remains stable in dry air, but the introduction of water vapor indicative of actual SOFC gas streams creates low temperature (<1000°C) silicon instability due to the release of Si(OH)4 and SiO(OH)2. Thermal gravimetric analysis and transpiration studies identified a discrete drop in the rate of silicon volatility before reaching steady state conditions after 100-200 hours. Electron microscopy observed the preferential deposition of vapors released from aluminosilicate on yttria stabilized zirconia (YSZ) over nickel. The adsorbent consisted of alumina rich clusters enclosed in an amorphous siliceous layer. Silicon penetrated the YSZ along grain boundaries, isolating grains in an insulating glassy phase. XPS did not detect spectra shifts or peak broadening associated with formation of new Si-Zr-Y-O phases. SOFC electrochemical performance testing at 8001000°C attributed rapid degradation (0.1% per hour) of cells exposed to aluminosilicate vapors in the fuel stream predominately to ohmic polarization. EDS identified silicon concentrations above impurity levels at the electrolyte/active anode interface.


Previous research has shown an association between emotions, particularly social emotions, and moral judgments. Some studies suggested an association between blunted emotion and the utilitarian moral judgments observed in patients with prefrontal lesions. In order to investigate how prefrontal brain damage affects moral judgment, we asked a sample of 29 TBI patients (12 females and 17 males) and 41 healthy participants (16 females and 25 males) to judge 22 hypothetical dilemmas split into three different categories (non-moral, impersonal and personal moral). The TBI group presented a higher proportion of affirmative (utilitarian) responses for personal moral dilemmas when compared to controls, suggesting an atypical pattern of utilitarian judgements. We also found a negative association between the performance on recognition of social emotions and the proportion of affirmative responses on personal moral dilemmas. These results suggested that the preference for utilitarian responses in this type of dilemmas is accompanied by difficulties in social emotion recognition. Overall, our findings suggest that deontological moral judgments are associated with normal social emotion processing and that frontal lobe plays an important role in both emotion and moral judgment.


The purpose of this investigation was to study the
relationship between selected pulmonary measurements,
anthropometric indices, distance run in sixteen minutes
and cardiovascular fitness potential (as measured by
maximum oxygen uptake), maximum oxygen debt and certain
factors closely associated with these measurements.
The study involved eighty-seven male subjects who
ranged between twenty and twenty-five years of age. In the
1973 study the sample involved thirty-seven participants
from the sports of rugby, hockey, cross country, and soccer.
In the 1974 study the sample involved thirty-nine soccer
players. In 1975 physiological measurements were taken
from eleven soccer players and applied to several of the
1974 regression formulae in order to predict the distance
the players could run in sixteen minutes. [Continues.]


The purpose of this study was to measure the effect of classroom practices of using communication tools, collaboration skills, digital skills, and software skills of teachers on the communication behaviors of students during mathematics instruction. A cross-sectional online survey was conducted among 466 mathematics teachers in Nepal. The primary statistical techniques applied in the data analysis were mean, standard deviation, one-sample t-test, and structural equation modeling (SEM). The results showed that the level of skill transformations of mathematics teachers in digital skills was found to be significantly low. Moreover, practices of using communication tools, collaborative skills of teachers, digital skills enhancement of teachers, and software skills enhancement of teachers were found to be significant predictors of the communication behavior of students. The results of this study suggested that teachers' technological empowerment is essential for developing digitally competent teachers who can transform the traditional mathematics classrooms into an online mode that is more constructive, collaborative, engaging, and supportive to the learners in a flexible and joyful learning environment. The study contributes to providing the knowledge of digital instructional skills of mathematics teachers to the communication behavior of the students. Moreover, the study gives an insight into using multi-group SEM in studying teachers' technological skills on students' learning of soft skills, such as communication behavior.


Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca's Relacion presents one of the earliest accounts of Spanish exploration in North America. Although it begins as a common tale of a sixteenth-century Spanish conquistador in search of gold and glory, Cabeza de Vaca's story is anything but typical. In fact, it depicts a remarkable adventure unequaled in the history of the New World. (1) Forming part of the ill-fated 1527 expedition of Panfilo de Narvaez, Cabeza de Vaca found himself shipwrecked off the coast of Florida. Struggling to survive in a hostile environment, and under conditions of desperate need, the original group of six hundred men was eventually reduced to just four. La Relacion ("The Account") narrates Cabeza de Vaca's decade-long adventure in the New World, culminating with his amazing pilgrimage westward through the wide expanses of present-day Texas to the Sea of Cortes, and then south to Mexico City. This journey made him and his three companions the first non-Indians to cross the North American continent on foot. Cabeza de Vaca survived by living among the Indians, first as slave, then as trader, and finally as "healer" an experience that deepened his Christian faith and turned him into one of the first--and most passionate--advocates for Native American rights. Upon his return to Spain in 1537, Cabeza de Vaca spent three years diligently preparing his manuscript, which was first published in Zamora in 1542 as La Relacion. (2) In 1555, a second edition was printed in Valladolid, which also contained his Comentarios, a longer work that recorded his subsequent failed exploits as governor of the provinces of Rio de la Plata, the enormous region now occupied by southern Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay. (3) This later edition, which contains only minor alterations from the first, (4) is the one most frequently cited, translated, and studied. The North American narrative soon became known as Naufragios, (5) which literally means "Shipwrecks," but which has been liberally (and arguably more poetically) translated as "Castaways." The work exemplifies a "cronica," a traditional genre in Spanish literature. The cronicas de Indias (chronicles of the Indies or New World chronicles) share a common stated objective: "to provide a direct account of the concrete facts of the discovery, exploration and conquest of the New World's lands and cultures" (Pastor 2). Scholars typically distinguish two trends among this body of work. The official accounts of the conquest were those commissioned or sanctioned by the Catholic Monarchs. (6) These historiographical chroniclers reconstructed the events based upon oral accounts and testimonies gathered from participants in the action. The second group, on the other hand, consists of narratives that reported the first-hand experiences of the direct participants themselves. These early accounts were generally not written for the benefit of posterity, but rather for purely pragmatic purposes: to persuade their audience, the sovereigns, to recognize and reward their service with wealth, land, or position (Hart 17-18). Cabeza de Vaca's Relacion falls squarely within this second category, but stands out in significant ways: first, Cabeza de Vaca is a gifted and engaging storyteller whose work "reveals a transition from historiography to literature" (Pastor 188). Second, of all the known New World chroniclers, he is the one who most fully immersed himself in the indigenous cultures; and finally, unlike the majority of early accounts of military action in the New World, which took the bias of the invading Spanish forces, Cabeza de Vaca's Relacion presents a much more complex point of view. The rather short work has inspired much critical dialogue, numerous translations, (7) several fictional works, (8) and an award-winning feature-length film. (9) La Relacion is valuable for historians, literary scholars, ethnographers, and anthropologists. It offers, for example, the first reported sightings of the buffalo, as well as the first descriptions of the Mississippi River and the southern regions of the present-day United States. …


In this paper, a motion adaptive deinterlacing algorithm is proposed. It consists of three parts: (1) modified edge-based line average, (2) pixel-based consequent five-field motion detection, and (3) block-based local characteristic for detecting true motion and calculating the motion intensity by using an improved method which is able to detect the inner part of moving objects precisely as well as to reduce the risk of false detection caused by intrinsic noises in the image. Depending on the detected motion activity level, it combines spatial and temporal methods with weighting factor. Simulations conducted on several video sequences indicate that the performance of the proposed method is superior to the conventional methods in terms of both subjective and objective video quality.


This study continued the development of performance-related specifications (PRS) for concrete pavements. Drawing upon previous work, a prototype PRS was developed that considers the expected life-cycle cost of the as-constructed pavement as the overall measure of quality. The approach calls for measurement of in situ concrete properties and explicitly considers variability and multiple quality characteristics in the determination of pay adjustments. Extensive laboratory testing was conducted to determine material relationships needed in the prototype PRS, and a detailed test plan has been developed for the evaluation of construction variables (e.g., dowel misalignment) that significantly affect concrete pavement performance, but are not currently accounted for in the specification. A computer program, PaveSpec, has been developed for use with the specification in simulation and in generating pay adjustments. This volume describes the development of the prototype PRS. Concrete strength, slab thickness, air content, and initial roughness are included in the specification as the key quality characteristics. Both cost models and distress prediction models are used to compute life-cycle costs. The difference between the life-cycle costs of the target, as-designed pavement and the actual, as-constructed pavement is used to determine the pay adjustment. Numerous examples on the use and sensitivity of the specification are presented. A summary of the laboratory testing results that were used in the specification is given, along with a test plan for the evaluation of quality characteristics not currently included in the specification.


In many economic applications, the variate of interest is non-negative and its distribution is characterized by a mass-point at zero and a long right-tail. Many regression strategies have been proposed to deal with data of this type. Although there has been a long debate in the literature on the appropriateness of different models, formal statistical tests to choose between the competing specifications, or to assess the validity of the preferred model, are not often used in practice. In this paper we propose a novel and simple regression-based specification test that can be used to test these models against each other.


A set of n players, each holding a private input bit, communicate over a noisy broadcast channel. Their mutual goal is for all players to learn all inputs. At each round one of the players broadcasts a bit to all the other players, and the bit received by each player is flipped with a fixed constant probability (independently for each recipient). How many rounds are needed? This problem was first suggested by El Gamal in 1984. In 1988, Gallager gave an elegant noise-resistant protocol requiring only O(n loglogn) rounds. The problem got resolved in 2005 by a seminal paper of Goyal, Kindler, and Saks, proving that Gallager's protocol is essentially optimal. We revisit the above noisy broadcast problem and show that O(n) rounds suffice. This is possible due to a relaxation of the model assumed by the previous works. We no longer demand that exactly one player broadcasts in every round, but rather allow any number of players to broadcast. However, if it is not the case that exactly one player chooses to broadcast, each of the other players gets an adversely chosen bit. We generalized the above result and initiate the study of interactive coding over the noisy broadcast channel. We show that any interactive protocol that works over the noiseless broadcast channel can be simulated over our restrictive noisy broadcast model with constant blowup of the communication. Our results also establish that modern techniques for interactive coding can help us make progress on the classical problems.


Muscadine wine, fresh muscadine grapes, and other derivatives have enjoyed a heritage niche for decades in the Southeast. Muscadine growers in North Carolina in the United States (US) have asked whether the purchase of muscadine wine is linked to consumption of the fruit itself or even familiarity with other muscadine-based products in terms of spillover effects. The authors explored the interdependency between the market for fresh muscadine grapes and muscadine wine purchase. Consumer panel data were obtained from a State of North Carolina agency with oversight of the grape and wine industry; the agency contracted quota sampling of online consumers from six states in the US South. A total of 543 cases were used in the present study. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS)® was employed in analysis. Results show that prior muscadine wine knowledge and knowledge of other muscadine products, e.g., jams, juices, smoothies, sauces, and health/beauty products were significant factors associated with buying muscadine wine. Beliefs about muscadine grapes as a healthy ingredient showed a slight influence, while direct experience with fresh muscadines and consumer attitudes towards buying local or US products were insignificant. Therefore, marketing efforts should focus on increasing consumer exposure to and knowledge of muscadine wine and other muscadine related products.


Background Pain is the most common symptom of musculoskeletal (MSK) conditions, affecting two thirds of adults aged ≥50 years in the UK (1). MSK pain often becomes chronic and significantly reduces people's ability to participate in daily activities, leading to disability (2). Objectives To describe the extent of pain and disability in adults with MSK conditions and explore the relationship with physical and mental health, activity limitation, personal and environmental factors. Methods Participants with Osteoarthritis (OA), Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS), Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) or Systemic Sclerosis (SS) over 18 years of age were recruited from hospitals and patient groups. They completed a postal questionnaire including demographic questions, pain, stiffness and fatigue numeric rating scales (0-10), the Evaluation of Daily Activity Questionnaire (EDAQ), and SF-36v2. Disability was measured through a single item asking "Do you consider yourself to have a disability?" (Yes/No). The prevalence of person-perceived disability was calculated overall and for age and gender for each condition using the chi-squared test. Binary logistic regression was used to estimate the association between pain and disability, before and after adjusting for covariates associated with person-perceived disability for each MSK condition. Results were summarised as odds ratios (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI). Results 683 people responded (AS n=165; OA n=184; SLE n=164; SS n=170). One in two people considered themselves to have a disability (47% in AS; 43% in OA; 50% in SLE; 53.5% in SS). Older age and female gender was associated with person-perceived disability in OA, SLE and SS, and older age and male gender was associated with disability in AS. High to severe pain when moving was strongly linked to person-perceived disability in all MSK conditions. (Age and gender adjusted Odds Ratio (OR): 6.9 with 95% Confidence Interval (CI) 3.0, 15.8 for AS; OR: 3.4; CI: 1.8, 6.2 for OA; OR: 3.7; CI: 1.7, 7.8 for SLE; OR: 2.8; CI: 1.3, 5.8 for SS). Adjusting for key variables reduced the associations between pain and disability in those with AS and OA to OR: 4.7 CI: 1.9, 11.3; OR: 2.6 CI: 1.0, 7.0 respectively, whilst strengthening in those with SLE (OR: 3.2 CI: 1.5, 7.1). In those with SS, the relationship between pain and disability was through living alone (OR: 2.3 CI: 1.0, 5.3) and fatigue (OR: 3.9 CI: 1.7, 9.1). Conclusions Half of adults with MSK conditions in this study considered themselves to have a disability. People with severe pain when moving, had higher odds of reporting person-perceived disability, with living alone and experiencing high levels of fatigue being the contributing factors. Strategies to reduce pain and fatigue, such as joint protection education, and providing help and assistance for those who live alone may help those with MSK conditions feel less disabled. References Thomas et al., 2004. Pain, vol. 110, no. 1-2. Cherubino et al., 2012. Clinical Drug Investigation, vol. 32. Disclosure of Interest None declared DOI 10.1136/annrheumdis-2014-eular.3399


Cyclin-dependent kinase 2 (CDK2), a member of Cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs), plays an important role in cell division and DNA replication. It is regarded as a desired target to treat cancer and tumor by interrupting aberrant cell proliferation. Compared to lower subtype selectivity of CDK2 ATP-competitive inhibitors, CDK2 allosteric inhibitor with higher subtype selectivity has been used to treat CDK2-related diseases. Recently, the first crystal structure of CDK2 with allosteric inhibitor has been reported, which provides new opportunities to design pure allosteric inhibitors of CDK2. The binding site of the ATP-competition inhibitors and the allosteric inhibitors are partially overlapped in space position, so the same compound might interact with the two binding sites. Thus a novel screening strategy was essential for the discovery of pure CDK2 allosteric inhibitors. In this study, pharmacophore and molecular docking were used to screen potential CDK2 allosteric inhibitors and ATP-competition inhibitors from Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). In the docking result of the allosteric site, the compounds which can act with the CDK2 ATP site were discarded, and the remaining compounds were regarded as the potential pure allosteric inhibitors. Among the results, prostaglandin E1 and nordihydroguaiaretic acid (NDGA) were available and their growth inhibitory effect on human HepG2 cell lines was determined by MTT assay. The two compounds could substantially inhibit the growth of HepG2 cell lines with an estimated IC50 of 41.223 μmol/L and 45.646 μmol/L. This study provides virtual screening strategy of allosteric compounds and a reliable method to discover potential pure CDK2 allosteric inhibitors from TCM. Prostaglandin E1 and NDGA could be regarded as promising candidates for CDK2 allosteric inhibitors.


Overall, children in Germany live in households with below average incomes; therefore social policies that address the vulnerable position of Germany's children are necessary. These policies should cover targeted financial transfers as well as improvements in day care provision for children. With respect to selected non-monetary as well as monetary indicators our empirical analyses show significant differences in current living conditions between native born German children and those born to immigrants of German descent and foreign origin persons. Education is a key indicator for future economic and social perspectives. In principle, there is no formal "discrimination" of immigrant children by the German school system. However, low educational attainment levels are still being transferred from one immigrant generation to the next. The net result is that children of immigrants are not able to close the educational gap between themselves and their native German counterparts. The probable long-term consequence will be a large number of poorly qualified persons in the work force, who are much more likely to face severe labor market problems and as such will be a problem for the German economy as a whole for many years to come.


We present a hierarchical Bayesian method for at- mospheric trace gas inversions. This method is used to esti- mate emissions of trace gases as well as "hyper-parameters" that characterize the probability density functions (PDFs) of the a priori emissions and model-measurement covariances. By exploring the space of "uncertainties in uncertainties", we show that the hierarchical method results in a more com- plete estimation of emissions and their uncertainties than tra- ditional Bayesian inversions, which rely heavily on expert judgment. We present an analysis that shows the effect of including hyper-parameters, which are themselves informed by the data, and show that this method can serve to reduce the effect of errors in assumptions made about the a priori emissions and model-measurement uncertainties. We then apply this method to the estimation of sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) emissions over 2012 for the regions surrounding four Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment (AGAGE) stations. We find that improper accounting of model repre- sentation uncertainties, in particular, can lead to the deriva- tion of emissions and associated uncertainties that are un- realistic and show that those derived using the hierarchical method are likely to be more representative of the true uncer- tainties in the system. We demonstrate through this SF6 case study that this method is less sensitive to outliers in the data and to subjective assumptions about a priori emissions and model-measurement uncertainties than traditional methods.


What keeps great companies winning, year after year, even as yesterday's most hyped businesses fall by the wayside? It's not what you think -- or what you've read. To find the real answers, strategic management expert Alfred Marcus systematically reviewed detailed performance metrics for the 1,000 largest U.S. corporations, identifying 3% who've consistently outperform their industry's averages for a full decade. Many of these firms get little publicity: firms like Amphenol, Ball, Family Dollar, Brown and Brown, Activision, Dreyer's, Forest Labs, and Fiserv. But their success is no accident: they've discovered patterns of success that have largely gone unnoticed elsewhere. Marcus also identified patterns associated with consistently inferior performance: patterns reflected in many of the world's most well-known companies. Drawing on this unprecedented research, Big Winners and Big Losers shows you what really matters most. You'll learn how consistent winners build the strategies that drive their success; how they move towards market spaces offering superior opportunity; and how they successfully manage the tensions between agility, discipline, and focus. You'll learn how to identify the right patterns of success for your company, build on the strengths you already have, realistically assess your weaknesses, and build sustainable advantage one step at a time, in a planned and logical way.


A diverse range of digital devices and software are available to women to seek and share information and personal experiences about pregnancy and parenting. This article reports findings from a focus group study involving Australian women who were pregnant or had very young children. The participants were asked to recount their experiences of using digital media for pregnancy and parenting and what media they would like to see developed that were not yet available. The findings revealed that digital media were very important to the participants. They were using mobile apps, social media, content-sharing platforms and online discussion forums to connect with each other and with family members, post images and other information about their pregnancy and children, track their pregnancy or their children's behaviours and development, and learn about pregnancy, infants and childcare. Despite their frequent use of and reliance on digital media, few participants had begun to consider the implications of sharing personal information about themselves or their children online or by using apps to record details. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the complexities of the intersections between information, emotional support, intimacy, personal data generation, sharing and privacy as they are conducted and experienced on the digital media used by women during these life stages.


This research project proposed a unique solution to make use of these base stations to keep all subscribers alerted with warning of possible disaster should that be required. As the current, network does not provide a provision for such a noble approach, a new network model has been developed and simulated to interface a sensor (weather station, WeS), with WiMAX weather station. The weather station is based on DSP processor to receive a digitised sensor values, process these values, analyse them and if they fall within the alert zones, packet them according to WiMAX protocol and send them to subscribers. The developed standard bypasses any commercial network to offer free transmission to subscribers. This setup is also able to extract information on weather condition or react on uncertainty, i.e. disaster scenarios. Tsunamis or landslide are increasing. Unfortunately they bring with them human tragedies, environment catastrophes, villages, cities and counties are subject to endless devastation during and after the destructive forces. Water, electricity and gas supply are most disrupted and difficult to restore in short time. However, communication is another item that can be affected adversely but WLAN with specific considerations, should be excluded from the effect. This project presents a solution, albeit minor relative to the maximum effect of the disaster, but will keep the telecommunication/communication in operation. Our novel technique, a " Clone Wireless Wide Area Network (CloneWAN) " is a clone wireless network to the wired Network. In the event of natural calamities, it gives continuity of network operation. It is based on WiMAX. The realization of CloneWAN has been formed and simulated to set the national network of the UAE at its correct form. CloneWAN model has been simulated with Opnet platform. All results revealed that the model is complete. The interface to Alerting System is discussed. Results show that the dynamic behavior of the parameters delay and Throughput of CloneWAN model is stable over various and different load scenarios. WiMAX is a de-facto standard in the current and future network requirement standards. Its main component is the Base Station which is normally stationed in the air, high enough to couple signals from other base stations. It is purpose is merely focused on networking signals for commercial purposes. The suggested hardware interface for the Weather Station is based on DSP SHARC processor. The model has been written in C and simulated under Opnet package. A number of …


The transformation of grape juice to wine is a complex metabolic relationship between two species, the grape plant Vitis vinifera and yeast, primarily Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The final molecular composition resulting from the grape–yeast relationship contributes to the flavor, aroma, and mouthfeel of the wine. In this study, we examined this complex relationship by determining the exo- and endo-metabolome (the collection of metabolites present extra- and intracellularly, respectively) of yeast at three time points (days 4, 9, and 15) of a Chardonnay wine fermentation. We identified and tracked 227 metabolites in the exo-metabolome and 404 metabolites in the endo-metabolome, and each metabolite was grouped into metabolic pathways or into metabolite families. Considerable metabolic variation was present at each stage of the fermentation, illuminating metabolic patterns suggesting that regulation of the yeast metabolic pathways is coupled to the fermentation progress. Analysis of the differential utilization and production of primary and secondary metabolites during a wine fermentation in this work provides a key understanding of cell-communication mechanisms relevant to metabolic engineering and industrial biotechnological processes.


Pseudomonas syringae pv. actinidiae, the causal agent of bacterial canker of kiwifruit, was detected for the first time in New Zealand in November 2010. Only in Bay of Plenty, one of the four regions where this pathogen had been detected, did symptoms evolve beyond leaf spots, resulting in cane die-back, wilting of canes, and canker, sometimes leading to death of the vine. Molecular analysis (cts haplotype and BOX-polymerase chain reaction [PCR] electrophoretic pattern) of strains isolated from different regions of New Zealand revealed that two biovars could be distinguished. They have been called biovar 3 and biovar 4 to differentiate them from strains from Japan (biovar 1) or Korea (biovar 2), which have a different cts haplotype or a different BOX-PCR pattern. Biovars 3 and 4 displayed different degrees of virulence, as measured by their ability to cause leaf spots on young, potted kiwifruit plants. Biovar 3, which has also been present in Italy since 2008 and in France, was found in the Bay of Plenty, where cane diebacks were observed. In contrast, no symptoms other than leaf spots have been observed in orchards where strains of biovar 4 have been isolated. We report the distribution and the disease progression of biovars 3 and 4 in New Zealand.


Rupture of a saccular intracranial artery aneurysm (IA) causes subarachnoid hemorrhage, a significant cause of stroke and death. The current treatment options, endovascular coiling and clipping, are invasive and somewhat risky. Since only some IAs rupture, those IAs at risk for rupture should be identified. However, to improve the imaging of rupture-prone IAs and improve IA treatment, IA wall pathobiology requires more thorough knowledge. Chronic inflammation has become understood as an important phenomenon in IA wall pathobiology, featuring inflammatory cell infiltration as well as proliferative and fibrotic remodulatory responses. We review the literature on what is known about inflammation in the IA wall and also review the probable mechanisms of how inflammation would result in the degenerative changes that ultimately lead to IA wall rupture. We also discuss current options in imaging inflammation and how knowledge of inflammation in IA walls may improve IA treatment.


In March 2012 Greece pressured its private creditors into agreeing a 53% write-off of its privately-held debt, amounting to €100 billion. Using a game theory approach, we determine whether debt reduction was optimal in reducing the probability of default. We estimate the costs associated with the reduction as well as the potential risks and costs of contagion within the eurozone, especially for large European economies such as Italy and Spain. We show evidence that the Greek sovereign debt crisis could not be handled in the same way as previous experiences. Greece's sovereign debt crisis is unique insofar as the country belongs to a monetary union that has failed to reach economic convergence among its members. This creates significant spillover risk for the other eurozone economies, especially regarding the potential costs of another credit event.


A nonstationary dividend yield, having a unit root, is seen as proof of bubbles (Craine 1993). This inference is not valid. A sufficient condition for the absence, respectively presence of bubbles is the uniform divergence, respectively uniform convergence of the dividend yield series. I use this criterion to show that a random walk dividend yield must be bubble-free if a positive deterministic trend or a large positive drift is present. I also construct an example where the equilibrium dividend yield is a random walk without a deterministic trend or drift, but bubbles are still absent.


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The City of Gold manages over 3,000km of local roads and more than 2,000km of footpaths within the City. To ensure the provision of a safe and functional environment for all road users, the Gold Coast Road Safety Plan 2015-2020 (GCRSP) was developed, as foreshadowed in the Gold Coast City Transport Strategy 2031. A collaborative approach underpinned the Plan's development in an effort to maximise partner capabilities and recognise inclusive, holistic approaches are more efficient and effective. The GCRSP was adopted by the Council of the City of Gold Coast on 2 April 2015, and seeks to achieve a 30% reduction in the number of serious injuries and fatalities associated with road trauma from 2010 to 2020. The Plan provides a local framework for the City to improve the safety of the transport system it owns and manages along with appropriate support for its road users. It takes into consideration our transport infrastructure, its users and the unique geographical and demographic features of the Gold Coast. This Plan consolidates existing action, integrates complementary use of resources and identifies innovative approaches to deliver a coordinated, collaborative road safety effort. It essentially represents a "checklist" of concepts tailored to address local road safety challenges, without the need for significant levels of investment. This paper provides a broad overview of the GCRSP, as well as outlining the evidence-based and collaborative approach to prepare the Plan, focusing on opportunities and challenges experienced throughout the Plan's development.


The goal of 'teacher quality for all' is proving difficult to achieve in many countries, especially in rural areas, yet teacher quality is a key determinant of students' participation rates and achievement levels. It also affects the attainment of social justice in terms of equity in educational quality for students. One contributor to teacher quality is professional development though limits on its availability and quality create inequity for many teachers. This paper describes how distance education and ICT improved access, equity, and quality in professional development for rural teachers in one province in western China, viewed through the lens of a 'rights-based' framework.


We present a higher-order term indexing strategy based on substitution trees for simply typed lambda-terms. There are mainly two problems in adapting first-order indexing techniques. First, many operations used in building an efficient term index and retrieving a set of candidate terms from a large collection are undecidable in general for higher-order terms. Second, the scoping of variables and binders in the higher-order case presents challenges.
 The approach taken in this article is to reduce the problem to indexing linear higher-order patterns, a decidable fragment of higher-order terms, and delay solving terms outside of this fragment. We present insertion of terms into the index based on computing the most specific linear generalization of two linear higher-order patterns, and retrieval based on matching two linear higher-order patterns. Our theoretical framework maintains that terms are in βη-normal form, thereby eliminating the need to renormalize and raise terms during insertion and retrieval. Finally, we prove correctness of our presented algorithms. This indexing structure is implemented as part of the Twelf system to speed up the execution of the tabled higher-logic programming interpreter.


We propose and experimentally demonstrate a simple scheme to generate flattened optical subcarriers at low insertion loss using only phase modulators driven by fundamental frequency sinusoidal sources. A small frequency offset is introduced in the second stage to obtain phase-insensitive, stable, and flattened subcarriers. Theoretical and numerical analysis with experimental results are carried out on this scheme. Twenty-one stable comb tones with 25 GHz frequency spacing are obtained with power difference less than 3 dB. The good bit-error-ratio performance of 160.8 Gb/s polarization-division-multiplexing quadrature-phase-shift-keying signal carried by one selected subcarrier clearly demonstrates the feasibility of this comb generation scheme.


Institutions receiving international students for postgraduate study are now committing time and energy to the development of online transition resources to enable students to prepare for the demands of a different academic culture before they arrive. Important questions underlying such initiatives are identifying what kind of digital resources will both engage international students and be of most use to them in preparing for this transition, and how to effectively reach students. Current institutional initiatives are taking several forms. A popular model is to offer browsable advice/tips or FAQs about life and study at a particular institution together with, for example, video clips of other international students describing their experiences there. These may be open and web-hosted or accessible through a password protected area on an institutional website or VLE. Less commonly found are video and other media embedded in learning resources developed in the form of 'learning objects' which have been designed to offer key information through structured interactive learning activities supported with answers and feedback. Importantly, these also offer opportunities for language improvement at the same time since they are supported by help, feedback and transcripts. This case study focuses on a project to develop and deliver a pre-arrival online course of interactive learning resources for all incoming international students to one UK institution. Building on five years of experience in delivering pre-arrival, tutored online courses to pre-sessional course international students, the project team developed institution-specific learning objects and incorporated open resources from the website, 'Prepare for Success', developed by the same institution. The project seeks to deliver a self-access online course with three strands to it to address students' concerns and needs. These are to prepare international students for the location in which they will be living and studying (the city of Southampton - its key features and amenities); to introduce them to practical aspects of British life and culture (e.g. setting up a bank account, shopping in a UK supermarket) and to familiarise them with key study skills and other aspects of UK academic culture which may present challenges for them (e.g. academic writing conventions; dealing with course reading lists). This paper will be of value to institutions embarking on similar ventures. It will describe the rationale for the online course; refer to the pedagogic approach taken; showcase course content, and report on the first phase of its delivery which begins in late spring 2011


The late Cenozoic Badwater Turtleback fault separates an upper plate of volcanic and sedimentary rocks from a lower plate of predominantly mylonitic plutonic and metamorphic rocks. The Turtleback fault, however, is not a single continuous surface, but consists of at least three generations of faults. These faults occur as discrete, crosscutting segments that progressively decrease in age and increase in dip to the west. Therefore, they probably began at moderate to steep angles but rotated to lower angles with extensional strain. If so, lower plate mylonitic rocks also restore to steeper dips and suggest that transport of the upper plate occurred on moderate to steeply dipping surfaces in the middle and upper crust. The crosscutting nature of the fault segments and their initial moderate to steep dips, plus a possible offset marker on one of the segments, are most consistent with moderate amounts of extension in the Death Valley region.


This study analyses the evolution of the output gap of Brazilian GDP and its 'Industry' and 'Services' activities for the period from 1980 to 2019. This breakdown is unprecedented and enriches analysis, enabling the formulation of economic policies focused on these specific sectors. The following methods were used: Production Function, linear, quadratic, and exponential trend extraction, moving averages of 4 to 8 quarters, and the Hodrick-Prescott (HP) filter. Use of the Production Function also enabled identification of the evolution of Total Factor Productivity (TFP) of output and the activities mentioned. Besides the results for Brazil, all calculation methodologies developed for this approach are also presented.


In 2009, the National Academy of Sciences published a report questioning the scientific validity of many forensic methods including firearm examination. Firearm examination is a forensic tool used to help the court determine whether two bullets were fired from the same gun barrel. During the firing process, rifling, manufacturing defects, and impurities in the barrel create striation marks on the bullet. Identifying these striation markings in an attempt to match two bullets is one of the primary goals of firearm examination. We propose an automated framework for the analysis of the 3D surface measurements of bullet land impressions which transcribes the individual characteristics into a set of features that quantify their similarities. This makes identification of matches easier and allows for a quantification of both matches and matchability of barrels. The automatic matching routine we propose manages to (a) correctly identify land impressions (the surface between two bullet groove impressions) with too much damage to be suitable for comparison, and (b) correctly identify all 10,384 land-to-land matches of the James Hamby study.


· In the past 50 years, labour market participation among older people has declined significantly, though the trend has reversed a little in recent years. In the EU, about 70 per cent of people aged between 60 and 64 are inactive.· In the case of the UK there has been a significant drop in the employment rate among older men. The employment rate among men aged 55-59 decreased from over 90 per cent to less than 70 per cent between 1968 and the end of the 1990s. Employment for men aged 60-64 slumped from around 80 per cent to 50 per cent and, for those aged 65-69, it halved from 30 per cent to about 15 per cent.· As with the rest of the OECD, this trend has reversed in recent years. The employment rate in 2008 was about 80 per cent for the 55-59 group, 60 per cent for the 60-64 group, and 20 per cent for the 65-69 age group.· Whilst people have been retiring earlier on average, they have also been living longer. A 61-year-old man in 1960 had the same probability of dying within a year as a 70-year-old man in 2005.· Healthy life expectancy at age 65 has also increased in the UK, although at a somewhat slower pace than regular life expectancy. This would suggest that people have the capability to work longer, though perhaps not to increase their working life on a one-for-one basis as life expectancy increases. Life expectancy at age 65 increased by 4.2 years for men between 1981 and 2006. During the same period, healthy life expectancy at age 65 increased by 2.9 years for men.· Increases in the number of healthy years of life that we can enjoy have not been reflected in longer working lives – indeed, the reverse is the case: people were working longer half a century ago.· If rising pension ages and labour force participation at older ages caused greater ill health then it would be a matter for concern. Most research on the relationship between health and working in old age has produced ambiguous results. Research in this area is inherently difficult because of the fact that, just as retirement can influence health, health can influence retirement decisions.· To date, research has not generally examined the relationship between the number of years spent in retirement and health. This issue is important. It is possible that health will initially improve when somebody retires and then, after a while, start to deteriorate due to reduced physical activity and social interaction.· New research presented in this paper indicates that being retired decreases physical, mental and self-assessed health. The adverse effects increase as the number of years spent in retirement increases.· The results vary somewhat depending on the model and research strategy employed. By way of example, the following results were obtained: Retirement decreases the likelihood of being in 'very good' or 'excellent' self-assessed health by about 40 per cent Retirement increases the probability of suffering from clinical depression by about 40 per cent Retirement increases the probability of having at least one diagnosed physical condition by about 60 per cent Retirement increases the probability of taking a drug for such a condition by about 60 per cent.· Higher state pension ages are not only possible (given longer life expectancy) and desirable (given the fiscal costs of state pensions) but later retirement should, in fact, lead to better average health in retirement. As such the government should remove impediments to later retirement that are to be found in state pension systems, disability benefit provision and employment protection legislation.


Ethnic rebellions continually disrupted the Pax Colonial, Spain's three-hundred-year rule over the Native peoples of Mexico. Although these uprisings varied considerably in cause, duration, consequences, and scale, they collectively served as a constant source of worry for the Spanish authorities. This meticulously researched volume provides both a valuable overview of Native uprisings in New Spain and a stimulating reevaluation of their significance. Running counter to the prevailing scholarly tendency to emphasize similarities among ethnic revolts, the seven contributors examine episodes of rebellion that are distinguished by their ethnic, geographical, and historical diversity, ranging culturally and geographically across colonial New Spain and spanning the last two centuries of Spanish rule. Unparalleled access to colonial archival sources also enables the writers to more fully consider indigenous perspectives on resistance and explore in greater detail than before the precipitating factors and effects of different forms of protest. A provocative concluding essay balances this line of inquiry by investigating how a shared cultural disposition toward violence in colonial New Spain contributed to the atmosphere of ethnic tension and rebellion. Susan Schroeder is a professor of history at Loyola University. She is the author of Chimalpahin and the Kingdom of Chalco and the coeditor of the forthcoming Indian Women in Early Mexico.


Over the past decade the Government has attached great importance to tackling anti-social behaviour (ASB) and has introduced a range of new measures to deal with it. For example, the Housing Act 1996 facilitated actions by social landlords against anti-social tenants, the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 introduced the Anti-Social Behaviour Order, or ASBO, and the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003 has introduced further provisions relating to, for example, parenting contracts and orders, dispersal orders, and new powers for tackling environmental problems such as noise, graffiti and waste. And in January 2004, the Home Office launched its national TOGETHER campaign, which was designed to, "ensure local agencies do more to respond to communities' concerns [about ASB], to support the decent law-abiding majority and take action against the minority of perpetrators".


A simple and rapid spectrophotometric method for the determination of ascorbic acid is described. It involves the reduction of iron(III) to iron(II) with ascorbic acid and the formation of brown coloured complex by the reaction of iron(III) with 3-hydroxy-2-aryl-4H-chromen-4-one, followed by the extraction of the complex into chloroform and measuring the absorbance at 405 nm. The Beer's law is obeyed up to 2.4 μgmL of ascorbic acid having molar absorptivity and Sandell's sensitivity of 5.897x10L molcm and 2.986x10 μg cm respectively. The interference of various substances commonly added to pharmaceuticals was studied. The procedure has been applied to the assay of pharmaceutical preparations containing vitamin C.


"Atlas: Practical Computational Literacy for Designers" is a masters thesis exploring the relationship between design learners and code. In this document, models of learning and motivation serve as a launch point for discussing goals and fears of designers as they relate to code and programming. Using interviews with design learners, design professionals, computer scientists, and developers, this document isolates three choke points for many design learners relating to code: lack of immediacy and feedback, lack of orientation, and an a priori fear of failure. It goes on to explain how how only the lack of immediacy can be fully compensated for within code-learning contexts, and suggests that the other two originate as contradictions in design learners attitudes about code's evolving relationship to design practice. The document concludes by introducing Atlas, a system to help designers model real-world computational systems and better articulate their goals and interests relating to these systems.


Background There is a controversy on exposure and adverse health effects of workers working with road asphalt paving. Furthermore, the increasing usage of crumb rubber modified (CRM) asphalt raises the concern of exposure to CRM asphalt. Objective To assess the exposure of both conventional and CRM asphalt, and to elucidate the health effects regarding airway symptoms, lung function, inflammation response and genotoxic effects on telomere length (TL) and mitochondria DNA copy number (mtDNAcn). Methods We carried out a cross-week study with 116 workers with conventional asphalt, 51 workers with CRM asphalt and 100 controls in Sweden. Personal air sampling was carried out in 60 workers in varied worksites. Symptoms during working week were investigated by standard questionnaires. Lung function test results together with urine and blood samples were collected before work on Monday morning and immediately after work on Thursday afternoon. Results The exposure level for benzothiazol was higher in CRM asphalt (2.2 ± 0.8 µg/m3) than conventional asphalt (0.7 ± 0.8 µg/m3, p < 0.001). Urinary 1-hydroxypyrene on Thursday afternoon increased 1.75-fold in conventional asphalt workers (0.04 to 0.07 μmol/mol creatinine, p < 0.001), and 2.75-fold in CRM asphalt workers (0.06 to 0.11 μmol/mol creatinine, p < 0.001) compared to Monday morning. No difference was found regarding symptoms, lung function, CRP and TL between workers and controls, but workers showed higher mtDNAcn than controls (β = 0.14, p < 0.001 for conventional asphalt workers, β = 0.074, p = 0.09 for CRM asphalt workers). Conclusion The results do not indicate that road asphalt paving in open area is an occupation with high exposure or severe health issues. Similarly, the results do not suggest that CRM asphalt is related to more adverse health effects than conventional asphalt. However, the higher concentration of benzothiazole during CRM paving may suggest that crumb rubber is a main source and that benzothiazole may be useful as an indicator of CRM fume exposure.


Keeping residual chlorine at a certain level in tap water is effective not only in improving sanitary conditions but also in suppressing the regrowth of microorganisms and preventing the formation of biofilms on the internal surface of distribution pipelines. However, in our recent survey about customer satisfaction, over 50% of the customers were not satisfied with tap water for drinking. One of the main reasons for the dissatisfaction was the odor or taste caused by the disinfection process. We therefore investigated the behavior of residual chlorine in the water distribution network by estimating the chlorine decay coefficients, and discussed measures to decrease the unpleasant odor while maintaining the effect of disinfection. The effective measures are shortening of retention time, replacement of aged pipes, corrosion control of distribution and service pipes, removal of organic substances in water, additional chlorination at water-supply stations, and improvement in water supply facilities with receiving tanks. By adopting these measures, and setting the target value of residual chlorine at representative water taps, we successfully controlled residual chlorine at the outlets of purification plants or water-supply stations by application of the decay coefficient of chlorine in each water distribution system.


This article argues that cooperation to tackle the consequences of large asylum migration inflows is possible only among fairly symmetrical countries. Highly asymmetric countries have no incentives to join and remain in a stable coalition. The distinction between cost and spillover asymmetries shows that financial transfers may release constraints on participation, and thus make asylum cooperation feasible, only if they are focused on tackling this asymmetry. This result becomes relevant when applied to the context of the enlarged European Union. I argue that there is the potential for a future cooperative burden-sharing regime for asylum, particularly if unanimity is replaced by the double majority principle in European Council votes, as suggested in the EU reform treaty.


The ADC12040 is a monolithic CMOS analog-to-digital converter capable of converting analog input signals into 12-bit digital words at 40 Megasamples per second (MSPS), minimum. This converter uses a differential, pipeline architecture with digital error correction and an on-chip sample-and-hold circuit to minimize die size and power consumption while providing excellent dynamic performance. Operating on a single 5V power supply, this device consumes just 340 mW at 40 MSPS, including the reference current. The Power Down feature reduces power consumption to 40 mW. The differential inputs provide a full scale input swing equal to VREF with the possibility of a single-ended input. Full use of the differential input is recommended for optimum performance. For ease of use, the buffered, high impedance, single-ended reference input is converted on-chip to a differential reference for use by the processing circuitry. Output data format is 12-bit offset binary. This device is available in the 32-lead LQFP package and will operate over the industrial temperature range of −40 ̊C to +85 ̊C. Features n Single supply operation n Internal sample-and-hold n Outputs 2.5V to 5V compatible n TTL/CMOS compatible input/outputs n Low power consumption n Power down mode n On-chip reference buffer


Patented modification of the surface of ordinary Portland cement with a 1.5-nanometer proprietary titanate coupling agent trade named Ken-React® KCM-3E produces a transformational Portland cement trade named Ken-Tec Portland cement allowing a 31% reduction in the water to cement ratio to equivalent flow (slump) while using significantly less time and energy to mix and providing new and novel material performance advantages important to sustainability and the infrastructure – such as: Greater compression strength; Efflorescence elimination; Faster mix cycles; Polymer compatibilization with epoxy, hydrocarbons such as oil, asphalt and plastics; 3-D Printing; Improved nano-adhesion to PE reinforcing fibers and fabric; Adhesion to graphite, aramid, and nano-reinforcements such as bauxite, clays, graphene; rCB; etc.; Allow the incorporation of spent sulfur from refineries; Prevention of rebar corrosion; Less static build due to friction while flowing down metal chutes; More uniform cell structure in cement foam; More flexible structures for improved earthquake resistance; The creation of ageless and beautiful concrete structures; etc. My Mission Statement for the last 46-years is "...To teach the more efficient use of raw materials through the use of titanates and zirconates." The PowerPoint presentation will be an up-to-date review taken from: over 450-ACS CAS abstracted "Works by S.J. Monte"; several thousand ACS CAS abstracts of work by others applying "Ti/Zr Coupling Agents" – and their resultant commercial applications; and United States Patent 8591646 entitled, "CONSTRUCTION MATERIALS AND COMPOSITIONS FROM OIL CONTAMINATED PARTICLES" by Salvatore J. Monte. Concrete and polymeric compositions are often filled or reinforced with inorganic & organic fillers, pigments, fibers – some nano-sized. It will be shown that 1.5-nanometer heteroatom titanates/zirconates form functional atomic monolayers on the interface of non-silane reactive inorganics such as CaCO3, CaSO4, ZnO, TiO2, hydroxyapatite, metal powders, carbon black, CNTs, BaSO4, Portland cement, boron nitride, etc. via proton coordination – absent the need for hydrolysis of surface hydroxyls as with silanes. Smart sensor materials such as piezoelectric ceramics, graphene and PVDF can be dispersed to complete deagglomeration and compatibilization. The author solved the challenges of the U.S. DoD Insensitive Munitions Program. Specifically, unplanned detonation of LOVA propellant for the Abrams A-1A tank rounds caused tragic explosions. A 1.5-nanometer atomic monolayer of a phosphorus heteroatom titanate on the RDX explosive allowed highly loaded CAB plasticbonded propellant to be produced that was both safer and more powerful than the prior art. The author's United States Patent 6197135 entitled "ENHANCED ENERGETIC COMPOSITES" was held under DoD Secrecy Orders for over 14-years. Since the application of 1.5-nanometer titanium chemistry must be applied uniformly in atomic monolayers on to the surface of the Portland cement, a modern cement plant is needed. And the corporation owning the plant must be willing to license the Kenrich technology and have a cement, mortar and concrete lab capability to take existing ASTM test procedures and modify them to conform to the new and novel nano-technology requiring significant change in construction industry concrete practices and culture. Due to the proprietary nature of the process and chemistry, a formal NDA and license agreement needs to be negotiated as the first step.


Different urban issues urgently request up-to-date, valid, accurate, suitable, error-free 3D data of the living environment. A dynamic, virtual copy of cities, landscape, and buildings enables to continuously monitor what is happening in reality and evaluate different scenarios through simulation. These simulations help address issues like flooding, noise pollution, air pollution, and urban heat islands. Methods are developed to reconstruct, validate, and disseminate virtual 3D models. The resulting methods are implemented in open-source software, such as PolyFit, MVStudio, 3dfier, and Val3dity. The resulting semantic rich 3D data of the living environment is structured and tailored for specific uses.


The periods of flower bud differentiation and fruit growth for Camellia oleifera overlap greatly affect the allocation of photoassimilates to flower buds and fruit, resulting in obvious alternate bearing. To export the cause and mitigate alternate bearing of Camellia oleifera, the allocation of photoassimilates to buds and fruit supplied by leaves at different node positions was studied by the addition of labeled 13CO2 during the slow fruit growth stage. The fate of 13C photoassimilated carbon was followed during four periods: slow fruit growth (4 hours and 10 days after 13C labeling); rapid growth (63 days after 13C labeling); oil conversion (129 days after 13C labeling); and maturation (159 days after 13C labeling). Photosynthetic parameters and leaf areas of the leaves shared a common pattern (fifth > third > first), and the order of photosynthetic parameters of different fruit growth stages was as follows: oil conversion > maturation > rapid growth > slow growth. The most intense competition between flower bud differentiation and fruit growth occurred during the oil conversion stage. Dry matter accumulation in different sinks occurred as follow: fruit > flower bud > leaf bud. Photoassimilates from the labeled first leaf were mainly translocated to the first flower bud, and the upper buds were always differentiated into flower buds. The photoassimilates from the labeled third leaf were distributed disproportionately to the third flower bud and fruit. They distributed more to the third flower bud, and the middle buds formed either flower or leaf buds. However, the photoassimilates from the labeled fifth leaf were primarily allocated to the fruit that bore on the first node of last year's bearing shoot, and basal buds did not form flower buds. Based on our results, the basal leaves should be retained for a high yield in the current year, and the top leaves should be retained for a high yield in the following year. Our results have important implications for understanding the management of flower and fruit in C. oleifera. The thinning of fruit during the on-crop year can promote flower bud formation and increase the yield of C. oleifera crops in the following year. During the off-year, more fruit should be retained to maintain the fruit yield. The thinning of middle-upper buds could promote more photoassimilates allocate to the fruit.


Low-power, high-speed neural networks are critical for providing deployable embedded AI applications at the edge. We describe a Xilinx FPGA implementation of Neural Engineering Framework (NEF) networks with online learning that outperforms mobile Nvidia GPU implementations by an order of magnitude or more. Specifically, we provide an embedded Python-capable PYNQ FPGA implementation supported with a Xilinx Vivado High-Level Synthesis (HLS) workflow that allows sub-millisecond implementation of adaptive neural networks with low-latency, direct I/O access to the physical world. The outcome of this work is NengoFPGA1, a seamless and user-friendly extension to the neural compiler Python package Nengo. To reduce memory requirements and improve performance we tune the precision of the different intermediate variables in the code to achieve competitive absolute accuracy against slower and larger floating-point reference designs. The online learning component of the neural network exploits immediate feedback to adjust the network weights to best support a given arithmetic precision. As the space of possible design configurations of such quantized networks is vast and is subject to a target accuracy constraint, we use the Hyperopt hyper-parameter tuning tool instead of manual search to find Pareto optimal designs. Specifically, we are able to generate the optimized designs in under 500 short iterations of Vivado HLS C synthesis before running the complete Vivado place-and-route phase on that subset, a much longer process not conducive to rapid exploration. For neural network populations of 64–4096 neurons and 1–8 representational dimensions our optimized FPGA implementation generated by Hyperopt has a speedup of 10–484× over a competing cuBLAS implementation on the Jetson TX1 GPU while using 2.4–9.5× less power. Our speedups are a result of HLS-specific reformulation (15× improvement), precision adaptation (3× improvement), and low-latency direct I/O access (1000× improvement). 1https://www.nengo.ai/nengo-fpga/


This volume presents the results of a systematic study of the ruins of the large Roman courtyard villa at Castle Copse, located near the village of Great Bedwyn, in southwest England. These efforts have shed light not only on the history of the villa itself, but also on the shifting focus of power over the course of a millennium at the sites associated with Castle Copse in the immediate region-the Iron Age hillfort of Chisbury, a post-Roman settlement, and a Saxon village destined to become an urban center. In addition to a complete survey of the site, its topography, geology, hydrology, and stratigraphy, this book includes studies of the architecture, mosaics, wall painting, and numerous artifacts and animal remains found at the site. There are also overviews of the history and geography of the region around the site, twelve technical appendixes, and hundreds of detailed illustrations.


Cellular networks are currently experiencing a tremendous growth of data traffic. To cope with this demand, a close cooperation between academic researchers and industry/standardization experts is necessary, which hardly exists in practice. In this paper, we try to bridge this gap between researchers and engineers by providing a review of current standard-related research efforts in wireless communication systems. Furthermore, we give an overview about our attempt in facilitating the exchange of information and results between researchers and engineers, via a common simulation platform for 3GPP long term evolution (LTE) and a corresponding webforum for discussion. Often, especially in signal processing, reproducing results of other researcher is a tedious task, because assumptions and parameters are not clearly specified, which hamper the consideration of the state-of-the-art research in the standardization process. Also, practical constraints, impairments imposed by technological restrictions and well-known physical phenomena, e.g., signaling overhead, synchronization issues, channel fading, are often disregarded by researchers, because of simplicity and mathematical tractability. Hence, evaluating the relevance of research results under practical conditions is often difficult. To circumvent these problems, we developed a standard-compliant opensource simulation platform for LTE that enables reproducible research in a well-defined environment. We demonstrate that innovative research under the confined framework of a real-world standard is possible, sometimes even encouraged. With examples of our research work, we investigate on the potential of several important research areas under typical practical conditions, and highlight consistencies as well as differences between theory and practice.


Previous empirical studies that have examined the links between pharmaceutical price controls, profits, cash flows, and investment in research and development (R&D) have been largely based on retrospective statistical analyses of firm- and|or industry-level data. These studies, which have contributed numerous insights and findings to the literature, relied upon ad hoc reduced-form model specifications. In the current paper we take a very different approach: a prospective micro-simulation approach. Using Monte Carlo techniques we model how future price controls in the US will impact early-stage product development decisions in the pharmaceutical industry. This is done within the context of a net present value (NPV) framework that appropriately reflects the uncertainty associated with R&D project technical success, development costs, and future revenues. Using partial-information estimators calibrated with the most contemporary clinical and economic data available, we demonstrate how pharmaceutical price controls will significantly diminish the incentives to undertake early-stage R&D investment. For example, we estimate that cutting prices by 40-50% in the US will lead to between 30 and 60% fewer R&D projects being undertaken (in early-stage development). Given the recent legislative efforts to control prescription drug prices in the US and the likelihood that price controls will prevail as a result, it is important to better understand the firm response to such a regulatory change. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


We analyze the factors and dynamics that contributed to the empowerment of women in Bangladesh. We first investigate the role of non-farm sector growth in facilitating female labor force participation and educational attainment, and then we explore how women's decision-making roles in a household have improved over the same time period. Our results indicate that the proportion of village non-farm labor force participation is positively associated with female school enrollment as well as other indicators of women empowerment. Moreover, microcredit participation is found to be associated with larger roles for females in making household decisions particularly on non-farm activities.


The crystallographic orientations of calcite in several major groups of Cretaceous heterococcoliths in chalk from Dover, England, were investigated using electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) and field-emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM) stereo-photogrammetry. The previous crystallographic classification of coccoliths according to sub-vertical and sub-radial orientations of the c -axis (V-units and R-units, respectively) were further divided into several types according to the orientations and inclination angles of c - and a i -axes. As a common property, all units were likely aligned with the calcite direction along coccolith rings. Most units of heterococcoliths developed calcite rhombohedral surface {1 0 1 4} planes, while V-units of imbricating muroliths and R-units of a placolith developed calcite {2 1 1 0} planes. The results indicate the crystallographic variability corresponding with the morphological variations during the 230 million years of heterococcolith history; however, the morphologies and crystallographic properties are constrained by the alignment of the calcite direction along the coccolith ring.


Abstract Two mixites from Boss Tweed Mine, Tintic District, Juab County, Utah and Tin Stope, Majuba Hill, Pershing County, Nevada, USA, were analysed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) with energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis and by Raman spectroscopy. The SEM images show the mixite crystals to be elongated fibres up to 200 μm long and 2 μm wide. Detailed images of the mixite crystals show the mineral to be composed of bundles of fibres. The EDX analyses depend on the crystal studied, though the Majuba mixite gave analyses which matched the formula BiCu6(AsO4)3(OH)6·3H2O. Raman bands observed in the 880-910 cm-1 and 867-870 cm-1 regions are assigned to the AsO-stretching vibrations of (HAsO4)2- and (H2AsO4)- units, whilst bands at 803 and 833 cm-1 are assigned to the stretching vibrations of uncomplexed (AsO4)3- units. Intense bands observed at 473.7 and 475.4 cm-1 are assigned to the ν4 bending mode of AsO4 units. Bands observed at 386.5, 395.3 and 423.1 cm-1 are assigned to the ν2 bending modes of the HAsO4 (434 and 400 cm-1) and the AsO4 groups (324 cm-1). Raman spectroscopy lends itself to the identification of minerals on host matrices and is especially useful for the identification of mixites.


Predicting the performance of an industrial plant using computer simulation is becoming a common practice. Confirming the effectiveness of computer packages is not so common. The Shahid Hasheminejad Gas Treating Unit (GTU) in north east Iran provided an opportunity to test two different commercially available computer program packages. The GTU, consists of an amine contactor and a stripping column. The programs use different techniques for correlating/predicting equilibrium concentrations in the acid gas ethanolamine system. Comparing the calculated temperature profiles, liquid phase acid gas loadings and sweet gas purity with operating plant data shows that the results for both simulation packages agree well with plant data. This gives the engineer confidence that the plant is operating effectively and that the computer packages can be used with confidence to predict plant performance and to size plant equipment for final plant design.


ABSTRACT There has been a recent increase in the body of knowledge related to children and disasters. These studies converge into three main fields of research: the impact of disasters on children and their psychological recovery, the integration of disaster risk reduction (DRR) into the education sectors and children's participation in DRR. This article provides a literature review of the two latter fields of research where the focus is on reducing disaster losses and building resilience prior to a disaster. Overall, 48 studies are critically reviewed and compared in relation to the strengths and weaknesses of their aims, methods, locations of research, impact, and outcomes. The review identified a number of differences between the two fields and significant opportunities for linking the two approaches, sharing lessons and knowledge. Based on the review, recommendations for further research are outlined.


We demonstrate that it is possible to predict the impact of a sodium silicate injection on oil recovery by using a coupled approach where an industry standard reservoir model, Eclipse, interacts with a simulator for species transport and reaction, IORSim, using file based communication. The main motivation for our approach is that it makes it possible to take advantage of history matched industry standard reservoir models and use these models together with new models for ion transport and geochemical reactions. In IORSim a block sorting technique is used to speed up the computation of species transport and chemical interactions. IORSim also has a thermal model which can be used if the temperature option is not used in the reservoir simulator. The validity of our approach has been checked by comparing with analytical solution and by comparing with an in-house reservoir simulator. Our in-house version solves the multiphase sodium silicate system implicitly. We demonstrate that it is possible to get the very similar results with the sequential IORSim-ECLIPSE coupling and our in-house reservoir simulator by choosing reasonable reporting steps in ECLIPSE. The numerical scheme is improved by using an adaptive implicit numerical scheme and a Cranc-Nicolson method for solving the geochemical reactions.


This classic volume outlines, for both students and professionals, the mathematical theories and equations that are necessary for evaluating a test and for quantifying its characteristics. The author utilizes formulas that evaluate both the reliability and the validity of tests. He also provides the means for evaluating the reliability and validity of total test scores and individual item analysis. The work remains one of the only books on classical test theory to discuss applications, "true score" theory, the effect of test length on reliability and validity, and the effects of univariate and multivariate selection on validity.


Eileen Joyce is Professor of Neuropsychiatry at The Institute of Neurology and Honorary Consultant Neuropsychiatrist at the The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery. Her research focuses on neurocognitive dysfunction in the early stages of schizophrenia and how this relates to brain structural changes and clinical manifestations of the disorder. Professor Joyce received a degree in psychology from the University of Cambridge where she also completed her PhD in dopamine psychopharmacology with Susan Iversen. She went on to study medicine at Cambridge and trained in psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital. She spent her higher clinical and research training in the neuropsychiatry department of Professor Alwyn Lishman which was followed by a period of time as a research associate at The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, USA. She returned to the UK in 1991 to take up a senior lectureship at Imperial College and remained there until 2005 when she moved to University College London. The recent literature in deep brain stimulation for depression and OCD will be presented and reviewed.


Crystal packing of seven derivatives of angular furanocoumarin derivatives obtained from CSD search is presented in the form of systematic analysis of interaction energies between neighbouring molecular pairs in the crystal rather than in terms of interaction between atoms in neighbouring molecules. Lattice energy of all the compounds and intermolecular energies of neighbouring molecular pairs partitioned into coulombic, polarization, dispersion and repulsion contributions are calculated by PIXEL-semiclassical density sums (SCDS) method. It has been found that aromatic ring stacking (π...π) contribute more to the cohesive energy of the crystals. Weak intermolecular C-H...O and C-H... π hydrogen bonds also make significant contributions towards the stabilization of the structure.


BACKGROUND
Detailed descriptions of long-term persistence of human papillomavirus (HPV) in the absence of cervical precancer are lacking.

METHODS
In a large, population-based natural study conducted in Guanacaste, Costa Rica, we studied a subset of 810 initially HPV-positive women with ≥ 3 years of active follow-up with ≥ 3 screening visits who had no future evidence of cervical precancer. Cervical specimens were tested for >40 HPV genotypes using a MY09/11 L1-targeted polymerase chain reaction method.

RESULTS
Seventy-two prevalently-detected HPV infections (5%) in 58 women (7%) persisted until the end of the follow-up period (median duration of follow-up, 7 years) without evidence of cervical precancer. At enrollment, women with long-term persistence were more likely to have multiple prevalently-detected HPV infections (P < .001) than were women who cleared their baseline HPV infections during follow-up. In a logistic regression model, women with long-term persistence were more likely than women who cleared infections to have another newly-detected HPV infection detectable at ≥ 3 visits (odds ratio, 2.6; 95% confidence interval, 1.2-5.6).

CONCLUSIONS
Women with long-term persistence of HPV infection appear to be generally more susceptible to other HPV infections, especially longer-lasting infections, than are women who cleared their HPV infections.


Inferences about the presence or absence of threshold type nonlinearities in TAR models are conducted within models whose lag length has been estimated in a preliminary stage. Typically the null hypothesis of linearity is then tested against a threshold alternative on which the estimated lag length is imposed on each regime. In this paper we evaluate the properties of test statistics for detecting the presence of threshold effects in autoregressive models when this model uncertainty is taken into account. We show that this approach may lead to important distortions when the underlying model has truly threshold effects by establishing the limiting properties of the estimated lag length in the mispecified linear autoregressive fit and assessing the impact of this model uncertainty on the power of the tests. We subsequently propose a full model selection based approach designed to jointly detect the presence of threshold effects and optimally specify its dynamics and compare its performance with the traditional test based approach.


As online education grows in popularity, the literature on such courses has expanded as dramatically. However, discussion of online tools specifically for composition instruction has received far less attention than general course-management systems and online discussion forums. The composition process has changed with the advent of computer processing, yet composition research rarely focuses on the advantages of the digital composition process. That process could change again with recent developments in social systems and networked, cloud-based applications. This article highlights the way online composition platforms can meet the needs of writing courses. New tools can provide new opportunities for student collaboration, teacher involvement, and writing-process research. This article uses Sally J. McMillan's model of Cyber-Interactivity and Robert R. Johnson's model of User-Centered Design as frameworks in which to view collaborative writing, arguing that students in online composition courses need collaborative tools that allow a single document to be created by a student, edited by others, and commented on by all. The ill-fated Google Wave platform is evaluated through this perspective. Practical benefits of the platform and implications for writing instruction are included. Collaborative online composition, using systems with features like Google Wave, is presented as essential in modern composition courses.


The detailed investigation of dwelling no. 14 (Precucuteni II phase) from the Isaiia site brings interesting and, in some instances, novel data concerning the building system and the internal architecture of the Early Chalcolithic housing. Also, the artefacts from inside the dwelling and from the surrounding features bear witness about prehistoric crafts like pottery manufacture, stone knapping and polishing, animal hard tissue working, about the relations with neighbouring cultural areas, and, last but not least, about the ritual behaviour of the Precucuteni communities.


There are no other two countries in the world that trade as much between themselves as do Canada and the U.S.. It should thus come as no surprise that the U.S. deviation from international obligations makes Canadian industries' competitiveness (trade) concerns become even more rigorous. Against this background, this paper aims to address competitiveness concerns brought about by the different level playing field where Canadian industries face mandatory emissions constraints but U.S. industries' emissions are uncapped. To that end, the paper has addressed: 1) ways to deal with increased emissions in Canada as a result of increasing energy exports to the U.S.; 2) treatment of Canadian subsidiaries of U.S. multinationals in initially allocating Canada's assigned amount; 3) transferring Kyoto permits to non-Annex B Parties and transferring credits generated by non-Kyoto Parties to Kyoto Parties; 4) whether the U.S. bears any economic costs even when it faces no mandatory emissions targets during the first commitment period and why does Canada like to bear additional costs, if any, relative to the U.S. and the EU.? and 5) what other measures might Canada take to further mitigate its trade concerns, in addition to taking advantage of the opportunities offered by the Kyoto flexibility mechanisms? If Canada and other like-minded countries invoke trade measures (to meet their Kyoto targets) against another WTO member but non-Kyoto Party like the U.S, would these measures be upheld if challenged by the U.S. under WTO? In so doing, attention is paid to the trade effects of the proposed measures to ensure their close consistency with the WTO rules, thus maximizing the WTO's contributions to sustainable development. It should be pointed out that although this study focuses on the U.S. and Canada, the results are of high policy relevance to Japan and the EU as well. The latter also have to address the similar issues facing Canada, although to a lesser extent.


Using selected agricultural communities in Ratchaburi Province in Thailand, this study mainly investigates the relationship between participatory development communication (PDC), on one hand, and knowledge, attitude, and practice of community-based natural resource mangement (CBNRM), on the other. Toward achieving this goal, data were collected to: (1) identify the status of CBNRM in Krabyai sub-district, Ratchaburi province; (2) determine the PDC levels of the various stakeholders; and (3) find out the level of knowledge, attitude, and practice of CBNRM. The results of the statistical analysis and the conclusions drawn from a focus group discussion provide the basis for the steps recommended to enhance PDC as applied to CBNRM efforts in other municipalities in Thailand. The study follows a one-shot survey research design whereby primary information is elicited from 43 respondents consisting of 35 farmers and 8 government officers. Data are analyzed using descriptive statistics and Spearman's rank correlation coefficient analysis. The findings highlight the need to improve and continuously find ways to properly involve and encourage participation from various stakeholders. In terms of PDC levels, data show that consultation is favored by most stakeholders. Most of the respondents have high knowledge of CBNRM. More than half of the respondents have a positive attitude toward CBNRM. As to the levels of practice of PDC in CBNRM, most stakeholders often participate in activities conducted on natural resource management. Most importantly, a significant relationship was found between the level of PDC and the knowledge, attitude and practice of stakeholders on CBNRM.


In this work, we designed and implemented schemes that defer writing of metadata in order to realize an efficient and reliable NAND flash file system. The conventional NAND flash file systems synchronously write their metadata in the NAND flash for reliability; however, the synchronous writing of metadata generates excessive garbage. We propose the scheme for merging the writing of metadata so as to reduce the garbage of the NAND flash while ensuring file system consistency. The proposed scheme uses the non-volatile memory for synchronously logging modifications of the metadata. The logging can significantly reduce excessive metadata writing of NAND flash. Also, the last modified metadata can be recovered from a crash, after scanning logs in the non-volatile memory. We implemented the scheme for the deferred writing of metadata on top of a Linux OS. The evaluation results show that the proposed scheme greatly reduced the overall application time and the number of written pages across various benchmarks, compared to the conventional flash file system.


The technological progress and the globalisation process reshape the nature of jobs inducing a substantial drop in the incidence of permanent employment occupations. This paper estimates whether employers could be less reluctant to hire workers on a permanent basis in presence of a human capital investment, which they partly finance. We find that the permanent employment rate of cohorts affected by law no. 92/2012 at the age threshold of 30 years increased by about 1% when compared to the permanent employment rate of similar untreated cohorts. This difference in discontinuity impact can be generated by the vocational apprenticeship labour contract only. After 36 months from the baseline, this positive effect persists and increases to about 5%. We interpret our results as evidence that a labour contract that invests in human capital serves as a stepping stone into permanent employment.


Cancer kills millions of people each year. From an AI perspective, finding effective treatments for cancer is a high-dimensional search problem characterized by many molecularly distinct cancer subtypes, many potential targets and drug combinations, and a dearth of high quality data to connect molecular subtypes and treatments to responses. The broadening availability of molecular diagnostics and electronic medical records, presents both opportunities and challenges to apply AI techniques to personalize and improve cancer treatment. We discuss these in the context of Cancer Commons, a "rapid learning" community where patients, physicians, and researchers collect and analyze the molecular and clinical data from every cancer patient, and use these results to individualize therapies. Research opportunities include: adaptively-planning and executing individual treatment experiments across the whole patient population, inferring the causal mechanisms of tumors, predicting drug response in individuals, and generalizing these findings to new cases. The goal is to treat each patient in accord with the best available knowledge, and to continually update that knowledge to benefit subsequent patients. Achieving this goal is a worthy grand challenge for AI.


Despite recent advances in algorithmic fairness, methodologies for achieving fairness with generalized linear models (GLMs) have yet to be explored in general, despite GLMs being widely used in practice. In this paper we introduce two fairness criteria for GLMs based on equalizing expected outcomes or log-likelihoods. We prove that for GLMs both criteria can be achieved via a convex penalty term based solely on the linear components of the GLM, thus permitting efficient optimization. We also derive theoretical properties for the resulting fair GLM estimator. To empirically demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed fair GLM, we compare it with other wellknown fair prediction methods on an extensive set of benchmark datasets for binary classification and regression. In addition, we demonstrate that the fair GLM can generate fair predictions for a range of response variables, other than binary and continuous outcomes.


Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are already operating on the streets of many countries around the globe. Contemporary concerns about AVs do not relate to the implementation of fundamental technologies, as they are already in use, but are rather increasingly centered on the way that such technologies will affect emerging transportation systems, our social environment, and the people living inside it. Many concerns also focus on whether such systems should be fully automated or still be partially controlled by humans. This work aims to address the new reality that is formed in autonomous shuttles mobility infrastructures as a result of the absence of the bus driver and the increased threat from terrorism in European cities. Typically, drivers are trained to handle incidents of passengers' abnormal behavior, incidents of petty crimes, and other abnormal events, according to standard procedures adopted by the transport operator. Surveillance using camera sensors as well as smart software in the bus will maximize the feeling and the actual level of security. In this paper, an online, end-to-end solution is introduced based on deep learning techniques for the timely, accurate, robust, and automatic detection of various petty crime types. The proposed system can identify abnormal passenger behavior such as vandalism and accidents but can also enhance passenger security via petty crimes detection such as aggression, bag-snatching, and vandalism. The solution achieves excellent results across different use cases and environmental conditions.


The Federal Reserve implements its monetary policy objectives by intervening in the interbank market for overnight loans. In particular, it aims to change the supply of reserves available to commercial banks so that the (average) interest rate in this market equals an announced target rate. A recent change in legislation will give the Federal Reserve greater flexibility in this process by allowing it to pay interest on reserve balances. Together, the change and recent events in financial markets have renewed interest in the process of monetary policy implementation. This article presents a simple analytical framework for understanding this process. We use the framework to illustrate the main factors that influence a central bank's ability to keep the market interest rate close to a target level. We also discuss how paying interest on reserves can be a useful policy tool in this regard.


Abstract The decline in tree density on sandy soils in savannas is highly correlated with declining mean annual rainfall along the North Australian Tropical Transect (NATT). We re-analyse various data on water use by individual trees and argue that a common relationship can be used to estimate annual water use by tree stands along the NATT from ca. 600 mm mean annual rainfall to at least 1600 mm. Where rainfall is less than 600 mm, trees of a given size use less water than at sites where rainfall is higher. We use these relationships to relate water use at the stand scale with mean annual rainfall along the NATT. From this we show that the empirical data imply that the minimum depth of sandy soil that needs to be exploited by trees declines with increasing aridity along the NATT from more than 5 m to less than 1 m. This finding is consistent with other observations and the pattern that with increasing aridity, an increasing proportion of rainfall coming from isolated storms rather than from periods of extended monsoon activity. Abbreviation: NATT = North Australian Tropical Transect.


This article offers an analysis of the effectiveness of Norway's readmission agreements with Iraq and Ethiopia. Through the use of readmission agreements, Norway aims to reduce irregular presence by increasing the number of both voluntary and forced returns, as well as discourage future irregular migration by sending a "clear signal" to individuals without protection needs that they will be returned when their asylum applications are rejected. The effectiveness of these agreements thus lies in the extent to which they fulfill these objectives. While Norway's agreements with Iraq and Ethiopia have been explicitly highlighted as effective by Norwegian authorities, this article argues that readmission agreements may be expected to limit, but not to eliminate, return problems. Readmission agreements, however streamlined, will have different effects on different groups. It finds that Norway's readmission agreements have been only partially successful with Iraq, and wholly unsuccessful with Ethiopia.