Due to its inherent short-term dynamic, the power grid is a critical component of the energy system. When a dangerous event occurs in a section of the grid (i.e. a power line or a plant fails), the overall system is subject to the risk of a blackout. The time available to counteract the risk is very short (only a few milliseconds) and there are no tools to ensure the power to a number of selected critical facilities. A way to tackle the blackout risk and to implement a smart management of the remaining part of the grid is a distributed control system with preemptive commands. It's based on the idea, that in case of dangerous events, there will be definetly no time to inform the control center, to make a decision and to send the commands to the active components of the power grid where, finally, they will be executed. The idea consist in the implementation of an intelligent distributed control system that continuously controls the critical components of the power grid. It monitors the operational conditions and evaluates the ability of single components to work well and their probability of an outage. In parallel, the control system continuously imparts preemptive commands to eventually counteract the outages expected on a probabilistic base. The preemptive commands can be defined taking into account the sensitivity to specific outages by different network elements and of course, on the base of a priority rule that preserve the power for the strategic sites. In case of a dangerous event, the monitoring device directly sends messages to all the actuator devices, where the action will be performed only if a preemptive command was previously delivered. This means that the latency of the traditional control chain will be reduced to the latency of communications between monitoring and actuator devices. The first consequence of this policy is that an event, which is potentially the cause for a complete blackout will affect only a limited portion of the grid. The second consequence is , that the control system will choose the network elements that will be involved in the emergency procedure, preserving the strategic plants. The third consequence is that with this kind of control, the power grid goes from a N-1 stable status to another N-1 stable status. The system loses contributions of generation and load, but it keeps its stability and its standard operations.


Visually Impaired & foreign people are those people who have vision impairment or vision loss. Problems faced by visually impaired in performing daily activities are in great number. They also face a lot of difficulties in monetary transactions. They are unable to recognize the paper currencies due to similarity of paper texture and size between different categories. This money detector app helps visually impaired patients to recognize and detect money. Using this application blind people can speak and give command to open camera of a smartphone and camera will click picture of the note and tell the user by speech how much the money note is. This Android project uses speech to text conversion to convert the command given by the blind patient. Speech Recognition is a technology that allows users to provide spoken input into the systems. This android application uses text to speech concept to read the value of note to the user and then it converts the text value into speech. For currency detection, this application uses Azure custom vision API using Machine learning classification technique to detect currency based on images or paper using mobile camera.


Most old residential and commercial buildings in China are not insulated or not to new standards. This is true even in regions with very cold winters or regions with very hot summers. The insulation in new buildings is very poor relative to North American standards. However, insulating the exterior walls, attic roofs, and foundation walls to new standards of buildings in China would reduce the need for heating and air conditioning, and thus would save roughly 200 million tons of coal each year. This in turn would lead to a reduction in CO2 emissions of about 510 million tons per year, which is equal to about 8.4% of China's total carbon emissions in 2006. The use of insulation in buildings will help homeowners save money, help China save energy and help the environment all at the same time. Insulation will provide a continued payback to the homeowner, not only in dollars and cents, but also by providing a more enjoyable and comfortable living environment for many years.


This article examines the production of iambic-shaped words by two monolingual German, two monolingual Spanish and two German-Spanish bilingual children, aiming to contribute to the understanding of stress acquisition in early childhood. Target iambic words produced at ages 1;0 to 2;6, have been auditorily and acoustically analyzed, focusing on rhyme duration. Results show that whereas German monolinguals at first often truncate the unstressed syllable, Spanish monolinguals hardly show any truncation, but at about 1;8 convert iambs to trochees. These diverging behaviors respond to different analyses, based on target language differences: Whereas German monolinguals analyze iambic words as comprising a moraic trochee preceded by an unfooted syllable, Spanish monolinguals analyze them as quantity insensitive iambs. The bilinguals show some interaction between both systems.


Annual reductions in corn (Zea mays L.) yield caused by diseases were estimated by university Extension-affiliated plant pathologists in 26 corn-producing states in the United States and in Ontario, Canada, from 2016 through 2019. Estimated loss from each disease varied greatly by state or province and year. Gray leaf spot (caused by Cercospora zeae-maydis Tehon & E.Y. Daniels) caused the greatest estimated yield loss in parts of the northern United States and Ontario in all years except 2019, and Fusarium stalk rot (caused by Fusarium spp.) also greatly reduced yield. Tar spot (caused by Phyllachora maydis Maubl.), a relatively new disease in the United States, was estimated to cause substantial yield loss in 2018 and 2019 in several northern states. Gray leaf spot and southern rust (caused by Puccinia polysora Underw.) caused the most estimated yield losses in the southern United States. Unfavorable wet and delayed harvest conditions in 2018 resulted in an estimated 2.5 billion bushels (63.5 million metric tons) of grain contaminated with mycotoxins. The estimated mean economic loss due to reduced yield caused by corn diseases in the United States and Ontario from 2016 to 2019 was US$55.90 per acre (US$138.13 per hectare). Results from this survey provide scientists, corn breeders, government agencies, and educators with data to help inform and prioritize research, policy, and educational efforts in corn pathology and disease management.


Side-channel attacks are powerful tools for breaking systems that implement cryptographic algorithms. The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is widely used to secure data, including the communication within various network protocols. Major cryptographic libraries such as OpenSSL or ARM mbed TLS include at least one implementation of the AES. In this paper, we show that most implementations of the AES present in popular open-source cryptographic libraries are vulnerable to side-channel attacks, even in a network protocol scenario when the attacker has limited control of the input. We present an algorithm for symbolic processing of the AES state for any input configuration where several input bytes are variable and known, while the rest are fixed and unknown as is the case in most secure network protocols. Then, we classify all possible inputs into 25 independent evaluation cases depending on the number of bytes controlled by attacker and the number of rounds that must be attacked to recover the master key. Finally, we describe an optimal algorithm that can be used to recover the master key using Correlation Power Analysis (CPA) attacks. Our experimental results raise awareness of the insecurity of unprotected implementations of the AES used in network protocol stacks.


Abstract. WaSiM-ETH (Gurtz et al., 2001), a widely used water balance simulation model, is tested for its suitability to serve for flow analysis in the context of rainfall runoff modelling and flood forecasting. In this paper, special focus is on the resolution of the process domain in space as well as in time. We try to couple model runs with different calculation time steps in order to reduce the effort arising from calculating the whole flow hydrograph at the hourly time step. We aim at modelling on the daily time step for water balance purposes, switching to the hourly time step whenever high-resolution information is necessary (flood forecasting). WaSiM-ETH is used at different grid resolutions, thus we try to become clear about being able to transfer the model in spatial resolution. We further use two different approaches for the overland flow time calculation within the sub-basins of the test watershed to gain insights about the process dynamics portrayed by the model. Our findings indicate that the model is very sensitive to time and space resolution and cannot be transferred across scales without recalibration.


In situ and mobile methodologies are increasingly popular within research into diverse geographies of health and wellbeing. These methodologies include data‐gathering techniques and modes of analysis carried out with research participants as they experience and move through settings with the potential to shape both momentary and longer‐term experiences of health and wellbeing. This methodological development is both a response to and reflection of wider methodological and theoretical thinking across human geography, especially in relation to mobilities, performative, co‐productive, and active ways to access and produce knowledge. In addition, the past few decades have seen increased access to geo‐spatial technologies and tools to both locate and record experiential place‐based knowledge. Such methods are capable of producing important new knowledge concerning the emergence (or foreclosing) of health and wellbeing in and through place, yet they are often perceived as "risky," drawing researchers out of their traditional researcher‐controlled environments. Based on discussions developed during and since a July 2018 in situ and mobile methods workshop, this paper discusses the benefits of negotiating the (at times) somewhat messy and unpredictable research encounters that can unfold through such methods. It incorporates examples from recent and ongoing doctoral and post‐doctoral research in health and wellbeing using out situ (in situ outdoors) methodological approaches in Britain and Ireland – including go‐along interviews, video ethnography, elicitation, and biosensing. Three core themes are presented, concerning the value of mobile and in situ methods in: (1) supporting an ethic of care; (2) attending to more‐than‐human dynamics of health and wellbeing; and (3) integrating matter and meaning in contemporary efforts to understand how health and wellbeing unfold and accrete in and through place.


Abstract Elastic information carries important data about subsurface lithology and fluid. It is highly valued by the seismic exploration industry. Compared with other methodologies (e.g., 9C VSP and 3D 3C), prestack P-wave methods are used extensively to address reservoir and fluid prediction because of their wide availability of data. However, many traditional technologies can hardly extract accurate P-wave and S-wave information from conventional prestack PP data because of lacking systematic studies on how to properly handle prestack amplitudes. A new concept, prestack elastic integration (PEI), emphasizes comprehensive interactions among rock physics, amplitude-preserved processing, and inversion algorithm. The influences of the three aspects are examined and discussed with real examples. Moreover, achievements of PEI are demonstrated through its application on a complex lithologic reservoir in eastern China, in which PEI characterizes target reservoir properties much better than traditional methods do.


To make sense of moving images viewers need to perceive the continuity across film cuts. In the early days of cinema, most films filmed in a single run (no cut) from a static camera. Shortly thereafter filmmakers combined multiple shots to create more compelling visual narratives. A suite of editing conventions that allowed viewers to effortlessly perceive continuity across film cuts emerged through trial and error. Most of these conventions were in common usage by 1918 (Bordwell, Staiger & Thompson, 1985) and they permeate much of visual media -including infant-directed ones- today. One of these conventions is the eye-line match between two juxtaposed shots, which is based on the premise that an audience will want to see what the character on-screen is seeing. A film sequence with an eye-line match begins with a character looking at something off-screen, followed by a cut of another object or person. From a developmental perspective, this refers to gaze following, which typically begins to emerge very early in infancy (D'Entremont et al. 1997; Farroni et al. 2004; Hood et al. 1998; Scaife and Bruner 1975). In an eye tracking study gaze following emerged between 2 and 4 months and stabilized between 6 and 8 months of age (Gredeback et al., 2010). A recent study (McClure, Chentsova-Dutton, Holochwost, Parrott, Barr, 2017) examining gaze following across video chat showed a similar developmental trajectory for gaze-following in video as in the real-world (McClure et. al.,2017). It is not known however if the infants would still be able to follow the gaze of the others on screen if the videos were edited. As a matter of fact, adults who have never previously encountered moving images perceive film shots as individual images (Ildirar & Schwan, 2015). In the present study, we examined the role of film editing on infants' ability of following other's gaze. Twelve-month-old Infants (N=20) and adult controls (N=20) watched videos depicting an actor turning her head toward one of two objects either in a single long shot as in traditional gaze following studies or in two multiple shots edited together, one of which shows the actor turning her head and the other shows the gazed-at object as in commercial infant-directed videos. Participant eye movements were recorded using a Tobii TX300. Each video ended with a still long shot showing the actor and the two objects, one of which had previously been gazed-at. Analysis of gaze behavior during this test shot showed clear gaze following in the adult control group (increased dwell time on the gazed-at object compared to the other object) for both edited and unedited versions. Data collection for the infant sample is on-going but preliminary results indicate that 12 month-olds can successfully followed gaze in the unedited version but are less successful across edits.


I read the gospel of Mark ' s kingdom language intertextually with Italo Calvino ' s strange novel, Invisible Cities , in which Marco Polo describes a collection of fantastic cities. This approach illuminates a different way to understand the Markan kingdom of God, for which that kingdom is neither realized nor imminent, indeed not eschatological at all. Nor is the kingdom a symbol. Instead the mysterious kingdom is comparable to (in Marco ' s words) " a crack [that] opens " and " all spaces change, all heights, distances; the city is transfigured, becomes crystalline, transparent as a dragonfly " – and yet even that, as Calvino ' s story implies, is but one of many possibilities.


This report describes the working of National Centers for Coastal Ocean Service (NCCOS) Wave Exposure Model (WEMo) capable of predicting the exposure of a site in estuarine and closed water to local wind generated waves. WEMo works in two different modes: the Representative Wave Energy (RWE) mode calculates the exposure using physical parameters like wave energy and wave height, while the Relative Exposure Index (REI) empirically calculates exposure as a unitless index. Detailed working of the model in both modes and their procedures are described along with a few sample runs. WEMo model output in RWE mode (wave height and wave energy) is compared against data collected from wave sensors near Harkers Island, North Carolina for validation purposes. Computed results agreed well with the wave sensors data indicating that WEMo can be an effective tool in predicting local wave energy in closed estuarine environments. (PDF contains 31 pages)


In a recent article in Ethics, Elijah Millgram presents a novel reconstruction of J. S. Mill's 'proof' of the principle of utility. Millgram's larger purpose is to critique instrumentalist approaches to practical reasoning. His reading of the proof makes Mill out to be an instrumentalist, and Millgram thinks that the ultimate failure of Mill's argument usefully illustrates an inconsistency inherent in instrumentalism. Yet Millgram's interpretation of the proof does not succeed. Mill is not an instrumentalist. Millgram may be right that instrumentalism is incoherent, but he has chosen the wrong figure to illustrate the point.


This article contains a study of the numerical code in the Dagestani languages in the linguistic and cultural aspect on the basis of paremiological units as a fragment of the Dagestani language picture of the world. The relevance of this kind of research is caused by the interest in the means of presenting the quantitative aspect in relation to the content. The analysis of the defined semantic category based on the Dagestani languages seems relevant regarding the cognitive approach, which makes it possible to reveal the specificity of the linguistic representation of the category of numbers in the Dagestani languages and the national cultural components of the cultural numeric code of the linguistic picture of the world. Each Dagestani language had its own system of calculation and measurement. It was actively used to calculate animals, plants, measures of length, volume, weight, area and time. The most productive and symbolic in the paremiology of the studied languages are the first ten numerals. Words with numerical symbols represent both desirable and undesirable situations in a person's life, when there is a problem of choosing and determining one's position. In linguoculturological aspect of particular interest are the landmarks of space and time associated with human life and its "existence" after death.


Globalisation is a central concept in this paper but it is important to note that 'globalisation' is a highly contested term. Strong globalisation theory argues that the global economy is dominated by uncontrollable global forces in which nation states are structurally constrained and therefore the capacity of modern states eventually declines. Unlike strong globalists, other scholars believe even though there may be similar trends and patterns in public policy and public management domain along the line of privatisation, marketisation, commodification and corporatisation, different governments may use the similar strategies to serve their own political purposes. Hence, modern states may tactically make use of the globalisation discourse to justify their own political agendas or legitimise their inaction. The present paper sets out in this wider context to reflect upon globalisation effects on national policy, with particular reference to how the selected East Asian societies such as the four Tigers, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea as well as mainland China have transformed their higher education systems. More specifically, this paper discusses the theme of 'similar trends, diverse agendas' by examining how the selected East Asian governments have reformed their higher education systems to cope with the growing impact of the global tide of marketisation and decentralisation.


This study examines the challenges of citizens' participation in poverty reduction programmes in Ebonyi State. The objectives of the study include: to find out the strategies adopted by government and its agencies in poverty reduction programmes in the rural communities, to find out if such strategies have encouraged the participation of the citizens and identify factors militating against the participation of the citizens in poverty reduction programmes using Ebonyi State Community Based Poverty Reduction Programme. The paper highlights the relevance and practical issues relating to citizens' participation in poverty reduction programmes. The work argued that participation of the citizens whose poverty levels are being reduced is critical and denying them the opportunity to participate and contribute to the process of alleviating their poverty level will hardly achieve the desired result. The research methodology adopted is the contents analysis of the existing literature on the related subject while secondary source of data were used. The paper was predicated on the Participatory theory as its framework of analysis. The findings reveal that the participatory strategy of poverty reduction programmes in the state was not properly applied while the programme was over politicised which led to very low level participation of the citizens. The paper therefore, recommended strict compliance to participatory strategies of poverty reduction programmes in the state while poverty reduction implementation agencies should be made to be independent through legislation to avoid unnecessary political interference in its activities.


In order to make known the concept of secession from the perspective of the Austrian School, this work considers the contributions of several authors that help us to better understand how this option relates with the idea of inter-territorial competition. In this sense, secession is presented together with the concept of polycentricity, which in turn, is related with the theoretical discussion about federalism. Bringing together the central ideas of the Austrian School with those Political Theory concepts, several arguments are presented in support of the decentralisation as a means of limitating power.


For identification of clinically relevant masses to predict status, grade, relapse and prognosis of colorectal cancer, we applied Matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization (MALDI) imaging mass spectrometry (IMS) to a tissue micro array containing formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded tissue samples from 349 patients. Analysis of our MALDI-IMS data revealed 27 different m/z signals associated with epithelial structures. Comparison of these signals showed significant association with status, grade and Ki-67 labeling index. Fifteen out of 27 IMS signals revealed a significant association with survival. For seven signals (m/z 654, 776, 788, 904, 944, 975 and 1013) the absence and for eight signals (m/z 643, 678, 836, 886, 898, 1095, 1459 and 1477) the presence were associated with decreased life expectancy, including five masses (m/z 788, 836, 904, 944 and 1013) that provided prognostic information independently from the established prognosticators pT and pN. Combination of these five masses resulted in a three-step classifier that provided prognostic information superior to univariate analysis. In addition, a total of 19 masses were associated with tumor stage, grade, metastasis and cell proliferation. Our data demonstrate the suitability of combining IMS and large-scale tissue micro arrays to simultaneously identify and validate clinically useful molecular marker. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


The necessity for meeting the professional renewal needs for science teachers in the US has generated abundant research on effective professional development (PD). Yet efforts in the state of Nebraska continue to demonstrate low enrollments in science teacher PD programs. Therefore, an innovation in research was needed to discover the beliefs and expectations about science teacher PD. A combination of Q methodology and focus group discussions with 29 science teachers in six geographical areas of the state identified three PD-seeking factors: the Scientists, the Veterans and the Entrepreneurs. The Scientists yearn to increase their own science knowledge and enable authentic science learning for students. Veterans seek new ideas and resources to improve science student learning and especially prefer stipend-supported PD options. Entrepreneurs desire opportunities to enhance teaching practices and exchange teaching ideas with scientists and other science teachers. Those who design PD for science teachers will benefit from understanding these three factors and the resulting research-informed suggestions for organizing appropriate PD models to satisfy the needs of each teacher factor.


In this thesis, we define a static analysis by abstract interpretation of memory manipulations. It is based on a new numerical abstract domain, which is able to infer program invariants involving the operators min and max. This domain relies on tropical polyhedra, which are the analogues of convex polyhedra in tropical algebra. Tropical algebra refers to the set IR U {-oo} endowed with max as addition and + as multiplication. This abstract domain is provided with sound abstract primitives, which allow to automatically compute over-approximations of semantics of programs by means of tropical polyhedra. Thanks to them, we develop and implement a sound static analysis inferring min- and max-invariants over the program variables, the length of the strings, and the size of the arrays in memory. In order to improve the scalability of the abstract domain, we also study the algorithmics of tropical polyhedra. In particular, a tropical polyhedron can be represented in two different ways, either internally, in terms of extreme points and rays, or externally, in terms of tropically affine inequalities. Passing from the external description of a polyhedron to its internal description, or inversely, is a fundamental computational issue, comparable to the well-known vertex/facet enumeration or convex hull problems in the classical algebra. It is also a crucial operation in our numerical abstract domain. For this reason, we develop two original algorithms allowing to pass from an external description of tropical polyhedra to an internal description, and vice versa. They are based on a tropical analogue of the double description method introduced by Motzkin et al. We show that they outperform the other existing methods, both in theory and in practice. The cornerstone of these algorithms is a new combinatorial characterization of extreme elements in tropical polyhedra defined by means of inequalities: we have proved that the extremality of an element amounts to the existence of a strongly connected component reachable from any node in a directed hypergraph. We also show that the latter property can be checked in almost linear time in the size of the hypergraph. Moreover, in order to have a better understanding of the intrinsic complexity of tropical polyhedra, we study the problem of determining the maximal number of extreme points in a tropical polyhedron. In the classical case, this problem is addressed by McMullen upper bound theorem. We prove that the maximal number of extreme points in the tropical case is bounded by a similar result. We introduce a class of tropical polyhedra appearing as natural candidates to be maximizing instances. We establish lower and upper bounds on their number of extreme points, and show that the McMullen type bound is asymptotically tight when the dimension tends to infinity and the number of inequalities defining the polyhedra is fixed. Finally, we experiment our tropical polyhedra based static analyzer on programs manipulating strings and arrays. These experimentations show that the analyzer successfully determines precise properties on memory manipulations, and that it scales up to highly disjunctive invariants which could not be computed by the existing methods. The implementation of all the algorithms and abstract domains on tropical polyhedra developed in this work is available in the Tropical Polyhedra Library (TPLib).


The historic era, which in Cumbria begins with the Roman invasion of AD 71, is a frequently neglected period in palaeoecological research, but its study can bring benefits in improving knowledge of landscape history and in understanding the significance and limitations of palaeoecological records. Pollen and geochemical data are presented for late Holocene records from Deer Dyke and Hulleter Mosses in southern Cumbria. The records show initially low levels of anthropogenic impact, followed by a phase of forest clearance and mixed agriculture from the 7th to 11th centuries AD. The timing of these clearances suggests that they were initially Anglo‐Saxon in origin, rather than Norse. Further clearances in the 16th century AD are interpreted as a response to monastic dissolution and late Tudor population pressures; the landscapes reached their contemporary form following extensive clearances in the 17th century AD. Silicon and titanium concentrations at Deer Dyke Moss were used to reconstruct past levels of atmospheric dust loading, which is broadly related to soil erosion. Geochemical influx was found to peak during periods of landscape transition rather than from established land use. This relationship with pollen data is thought to reflect the predominantly low levels of anthropogenic impact in the region, which changes as substantial woodland clearances during the 16th century AD and continuous land use pressure since then have greatly increased the supply of airborne dust. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Convolution is a critical component in modern deep neural networks, thus several algorithms for convolution have been developed. Direct convolution is simple but suffers from poor performance. As an alternative, multiple indirect methods have been proposed including im2col-based convolution, FFT-based convolution, or Winograd-based algorithm. However, all these indirect methods have high memory-overhead, which creates performance degradation and offers a poor trade-off between performance and memory consumption. In this work, we propose a memory-efficient convolution or MEC with compact lowering, which reduces memory-overhead substantially and accelerates convolution process. MEC lowers the input matrix in a simple yet efficient/compact way (i.e., much less memory-overhead), and then executes multiple small matrix multiplications in parallel to get convolution completed. Additionally, the reduced memory footprint improves memory sub-system efficiency, improving performance. Our experimental results show that MEC reduces memory consumption significantly with good speedup on both mobile and server platforms, compared with other indirect convolution algorithms.


Linear logical frameworks with subexponentials have been used for the specification of, among other systems, proof systems, concurrent programming languages and linear authorisation logics. In these frameworks, subexponentials can be configured to allow or not for the application of the contraction and weakening rules while the exchange rule can always be applied. This means that formulae in such frameworks can only be organised as sets and multisets of formulae not being possible to organise formulae as lists of formulae. This paper investigates the proof theory of linear logic proof systems in the non-commutative variant. These systems can disallow the application of exchange rule on some subexponentials. We investigate conditions for when cut elimination is admissible in the presence of non-commutative subexponentials, investigating the interaction of the exchange rule with the local and non-local contraction rules. We also obtain some new undecidability and decidability results on non-commutative linear logic with subexponentials.


Carry chains are an important consideration for most computations, including FPGA's. Current FPGA's dedicate a portion of their logic to support these demands via a simple ripple carry scheme. In this paper, we demonstrate how more advanced carry constructs can he embedded into PPGA's, providing significantly higher performance carry computations. We redesign the standard ripple carry chain to reduce the number of logic levels in each cell. We also develop entirely new carry structures based on high-performance adders such as carry select, carry lookahead, and Brent-Kung. Overall, these optimizations achieve a speedup in carry performance of 3.8 times over current architectures.


In Brazil, a large part of the Atlantic Forest was deforested in pastures, which were developed on the basis of natural fertility and organic matter content of the new deforested soil. However, as time went by the organic matter content in these areas have been decreasing causing soil degradation. The objective of this study was to evaluate the organic matter as a quality indicator of Ultisols in different levels of pasture degradation in the region of Governador Valadares-MG. Four sites of pastures were chosen at different levels of degradation, observed visually, two capoeiras in different stages of natural recovery and forest site (reference). Soil samples were collected at three depths (0.00-0.05, 0.05-0.10 and 10-0.20 m) in two seasons of the year (rainy and dry seasons) in the middle third of the landform with three replicates. The following attributes were determined: soil organic C, free light fraction, particulate organic matter, particulate organic C, mineral-associated organic C and dissolved organic matter. The experimental results showed that the soil organic matter appeared efficient in discriminating soil quality between degraded forest/pasture, as well as between degraded capoeira/pasture. But, it was not sensitive to discriminate within levels of degraded pastures. Among the organic matter pools studied, the most sensitive soil quality indicators were: particulate organic matter and dissolved organic matter, in the following degraded order verified from these indicators: forest < capoeira 1 = capoeira 2 < pastures (1, 2, 3 and 4).


Ideally, education should start from the known to the unknown. For an African child, this means that all learning areas (subjects) should build from their indigenous world life and cultural experience to the acquisition of 'new' knowledge in a methodical and correlated approach. Further, the so-called high risk learning areas, of which Accounting is one, should be introduced early in a learner's school life so that whatever home experience there is, lays the foundation for understanding 'foreign' concepts. In extolling the virtues of indigenization, this article logically adopts an ontological paradigm (life reality) as against an epistemology (theory of knowledge) and, worse still, an axiological pedestal (value-laden input). Finally a topic like this commends itself exclusively to a conversational presentation, rather than a rhetorical one best suited to philosophical treatises.


In recent years, attention in woodland conservation has increasingly focused on developing Forest Habitat Networks (FHN). This strategy aims to target new woodland development towards linking existing woodland fragments together. The principal behind this concept is the understanding that increasing connectivity between habitat fragments will benefit dispersal and the survival of species within the landscape. Although the value of creating networks by linking woodland fragments has a strong theoretical basis, little empirical evidence is available to support the application of these theories in practice. In particular, our understanding of population dynamics of many woodland taxa is severely limited and related mechanisms (e.g. dispersal ability) are poorly understood. To address these issues, research was undertaken on a woodland invertebrate, the wood cricket (Nemobius sylvestris) on the Isle of Wight, UK. This species represents the group of flightless ground-dwelling invertebrates that are strongly associated with broadleaf woodland habitat. The results of this investigation indicate that the overall success of woodland conservation for woodland invertebrates lies in adopting a multi-scale and multi-management strategic approach. Furthermore, species specific modelling approaches used in conservation planning are useful only if a high level of detailed species and landscape information is available. The current initiatives focussing on restoration and re-instatement of traditional management activities creating more open habitat within woodlands were found to be highly beneficial for wood cricket and other woodland species. Corridor features were found to facilitate movement if suitable woodland habitat conditions were provided. Creation of habitat corridors and networks might therefore be beneficial for woodland invertebrates if new plantings are given enough time to develop.


Abstract. The main objectives of this work are to analyze, firstly, the detail of the causes of a low ozone event which occurred in January 2006 and, secondly, the related effects of this anomalous episode on ultraviolet (UV) radiation measured at three locations in Extremadura (South-Western Spain). On 19 January 2006, the OMI total ozone column (TOC) was 16–20% below the January mean value of TOMS/NASA TOC (period 1996–2005). The back trajectories analysis with the HYSplit model indicates that the notable decrease of TOC could be attributed to a fast rise of the isentropic trajectories height. Concomitantly, UV erythemal radiation greatly increases (between 23% and 37%) on 19 January 2006 respect to UV erythemal radiation measured on 19 January 2005. This notable increase in winter UV solar radiation may involve harmful effects for organisms adapted to receive less radiation during that season (e.g. early developmental stages of terrestrial plants and phytoplankton).


This volume of the landmark "Diagnostic and Surgical Imaging Anatomy" series combines a rich pictorial database of high-resolution images and lavish, 3-D color illustrations to help you interpret multiplanar scans with confidence. The book brings you close up to see key structures with meticulously labeled anatomic landmarks from axial, coronal, and sagittal planes. Contents include over 150 detail-revealing 3-D color illustrations, over 950 high-resolution digital scans, and at-a-glance imaging summaries for the knee, ankle, and foot.


This article sketches some of the relationships between the technosciences (primarily biotechnology and biomedicine) and science fiction. Taken as a discursive practice, science fiction constructs futurological narratives of progress as well as conditions the very techniques and research that may have taken place. The tensions and inconsistencies within the biotech industry are considered as a zone where science fiction is put to work as negotiator and mode of legitimization. However, as cultural theorists such as Fredric Jameson and Jean Baudrillard suggest, science fiction can also fulfill a critical function, highlighting the contingencies and limitations in biotech's self-fulfilling narrative of future-medicine. A consideration of the emerging category of net.art provides one starting point for a critical science fiction practice.


The availability of increasing amounts of research has led to the development of clinical guidelines to facilitate evidence-based decisions. However, effective implementation must be evaluated. A survey was carried out to evaluate a clinical guideline for osteoporosis, endorsed by the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP). A stratified proportional sample of 588 relevant National Health Service providers was selected from Strategic Health Authorities/Health Boards throughout the UK. Random samples of 31 independent hospitals and 102 private practitioners were obtained from lists of seven UK-based service providers and the CSP website. One hundred and twenty further surveys were sent through the clinical interest group, AGILE. The survey was developed to investigate awareness and use of the clinical guideline, current implementation strategies and barriers to implementation. Of the clinical sites sampled, 25% responded, giving 243 usable surveys. While guidelines were available in 62% of responding sites, only 35% reported its use – although this was higher in services with a primary osteoporosis caseload (45%). Only 6% reported formal implementation. Barriers to guideline use frequently highlighted a lack of resources and training. Survey responses indicate a lack of guideline use; this should be facilitated through formal implementation strategies, requiring training and resources.


In a country like Bangladesh, poverty alleviation is one of the prime concerns of any development plan, where equality and considerable equity needs to be ensured. Women embrace nearly half of the population of the country, but they, especially from the poverty stricken groups, are more vulnerable in terms of denial of fundamental human rights. Microfinance, as a development program, primarily targets the poor female clients. From a development perspective, it could be expected that provision of financial resources and effective utilization of those resources can strengthen women's economic roles, shifting resources to their hand and gaining recognition for their roles. In due course, it is also anticipated that it would empower women and fade the traditional inequality. This paper attempts to assess the effectiveness of one of the special microcredit program (PRIME) in promoting women's life living in the severe poverty stricken areas of rural Bangladesh. Taking into consideration the existing complex and conflicting results from the other studies, here indicators of women empowerment has been captured very carefully. Total 52 items have been gathered to address ten indicators, which are mobility, financial security, purchasing power, involvement in decision making, control over entire process of loan use, freedom from dominance within the family, political and legal awareness, and participation in public protest. In order to generate an aggregate index for women empowerment, a popular Item Response Theory (IRT) model namely, Rasch test for dichotomous responses has been pursued, which was previously undertaken by one revealing study done by Pitt, Khandker and Cartwright (2006). Results are steady with the view that there is a significant positive association between microcredit and women empowerment.


In this chapter, we track the developmental changes of referential communication in gesture over the important time periods of the child's development and discuss their implications. Of particular interest is the changing role that gesture plays in referential communication as the child develops, and the manner in which it evolves as the child matures linguistically. Knowledge that the child possesses is often expressed first in gesture before it appears in speech. Gesture hence serves as a herald, a window into the knowledge that is possessed by the child but is not expressed verbally. Gestures made by children during these time periods may also serve to elicit environmental input when they are in a state where they are most receptive to it. Gestures hence provide a means for children to have an interactive role in shaping their own learning environment. Overall, gesture provides referential information that is often not revealed in speech. It also precedes and predicts changes in the child's language development.


We present gravitationally self-consistent predictions of sea level change that would follow the disappearance of either the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) or marine sectors of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS). Our predictions are based on a state-of-the-art pseudo-spectral sea level algorithm that incorporates deformational, gravitational and rotational effects on sea level, as well as the migration of shorelines due to both local sea-level variations and changes in the extent of marine-based ice cover. If we define the effective eustatic value (EEV) as the geographically uniform rise in sea level once all marine-based sectors have been filled with water, then we find that some locations can experience a sea level rise that is ∼40 per cent higher than the EEV. This enhancement is due to the migration of water away from the zone of melting in response to the loss of gravitational attraction towards the ice sheet (load self-attraction), the expulsion of water from marine areas as these regions rebound due to the unloading, and the feedback into sea level of a contemporaneous perturbation in Earth rotation. In the WAIS case, this peak enhancement is twice the value predicted in a previous projection that did not include expulsion of water from exposed marine-sectors of the West Antarctic or rotational feedback. The peak enhancements occur over the coasts of the United States and in the Indian Ocean in the WAIS melt scenario, and over the south Atlantic and northwest Pacific in the EAIS scenario. We conclude that accurate projections of the sea level hazard associated with ongoing global warming should be based on a theory that includes the complete suite of physical processes described above.


Conditional Cash Transfer programs are currently at a crossroads, between consolidating minimum safety nets and laying the basis for universal social policy. In assessing which direction CCTs will take, it is important to analyze their formation. What domestic actors have been influential and how have expert-driven international ideas entered the domestic policy process? Is the impact related to existing welfare regimes? In this article the authors show that in general CCTs are the product of top-down and closed policy formation by elite coalitions, in which international factors play a central role. Nevertheless, domestic factors associated with welfare regimes, in particular the difference between state and non-state, informal regimes, account for important cross-national variations. If CCTs are to become a stepping-stone to universal social policy, closed policy communities have to be opened up.


In the last week of June, the South African mining industry ended an unprecedented five month strike that has had crippling consequences. The compromise achieved between organised labour and their employers demonstrates neither a capitulation nor a spectacular victory by either party. Some say that it will take striking workers years to recoup their loss of income sustained during the strike. It is now up to the employees, their extended families and the employers to undertake the painstaking task of picking out the shrapnel from their wounds.


Peripheral arterial disease is characterised by blocking of the peripheral arteries. A
common symptom is intermittent claudication, a cramping pain felt intermittently
during activity such as walking. This is due to muscle oxygen demand surpassing the
available supply and can significantly reduce mobility and quality of life. One non
invasive treatment option is the use of footwear and orthoses to alter muscle
activity and delay the onset of calf pain. The aim of the research in this thesis was
to determine the gait characteristics of individuals with intermittent claudication
and to assess the effects of footwear and orthotic interventions on their gait. Three studies were completed. The first compared gait of individuals with
intermittent claudication to that of healthy age-matched controls. The second
assessed the effectiveness of three rocker soled shoes (with and without an ankle
foot orthosis) in altering lower limb kinetics and muscle activity. The third
investigated the effectiveness of the most effective rocker soled shoe intervention
(in study two) in increasing mobility during gait and in real world situations. People with intermittent claudication adopt a slower walking speed and shorter
step length and have reduced internal ankle moment and ankle power production
during push-off phase of gait. The peak EMG activity of their soleus muscle also
appears to be lower than healthy counterparts. A rocker soled shoe, consisting of three curves blended into one, was found to be
the most effective at decreasing the moment, power and muscle activity demand
at the ankle during the gait of individuals with intermittent claudication. The
findings indicated the potential ability of the shoe to reduce the oxygen demand of
the calf, such that it might delay onset of intermittent claudication pain. However,
when tested under real world conditions this rocker soled shoe did not significantly
delay the onset of pain in people with intermittent claudication during over ground
gait, or increase maximum walking distance. Further modifications to the rocker
soled design will be required to further reduce oxygen required by the lower limb
muscles before a clinically significant delay in intermittent claudication pain can be
achieved.


This researchc oncernss icknessa nd ill health experiencedb y the British Army during the First World War. A review of the literature has confirmed that this issue offers considerable scope for further exploration by historians, and is an issue that continues to remain in the shadow of the wounded.The focus within past research has been so successfully placed upon battle injuries, that it is difficult to uncover the situation concerning non-combat casualties.
This research aims to open up debate, establish the types and extent of illness experienced by the troops and some of the causes of sickness and disease. The thesis also explores links between the health of the troops and military effectiveness. In order to undertake this assessment in any meaningful way, indicators of military effectiveness need to be determined,
and six such indicators are defined within the thesis.
To establish a better understanding of how far the British Army was prepared for sickness by 1914, the approach taken by the army towards illness over the years leading up to the First World War is considered. The Crimean War marks the starting point of historical context setting in this case, and this research has investigated how far experiences gained in war during the latter half of the nineteenth century, shaped army planning concerning the health of the troops by 1914. Rarely used primary sources have been consulted, including regimental archives at Fulwood Barracks Preston, press reports, professional journals, government reports, and documents held at the Public Records Office, Kew, including War Diaries of active service units, Casualty Clearing Station records, Hospital records, personal diaries and individual service records. A range of secondary sources have also been explored together with autobiographical accounts and personal letters. A further historical source of value is the content of professional medical journals, and the content of a number of contemporaneous journals also underpin the thesis.
In November 1996, approximately 750,000 individual service records of men discharged by the army during the years under examination within this study were released for public scrutiny for the first time. This remarkable new archive offers to extend our knowledge regarding the health of the troops, and analysis of these records forms an important element within this study. A pilot of fifty records was undertaken which combines history with computer technology, and involved the compilation of a spreadsheet wherein discharge diagnoses, age, height, chest measurement and weight were analysed in order to arrive at a
better understanding about the health of the men. Evaluation of the pilot study was informative, and as a result it was extended to include analysis of a total of five hundred and thirty-three individual service records of rank and file men serving within over one hundred various regiments, corps, and services during the First World War.
This thesis represents worthwhile and original contribution to historical debate about sickness within the British Army during this time, by establishing the historical context of sickness, exploring the types and extent of illness, and by examining organisational problems directly and indirectly contributing towards rising sickness rates. The thesis also determines that two broad categories of illness beset the army from the start, and these were firstly preexisting illnesses from civilian life and secondly illnesses acquired as a result of service. The thesis further shows that a costly 'revolving door', of recruitment and discharge beleaguered the army from the outset of the war, and that neither refinements to the recruitment process or the implementation of conscription made very much difference to the overall health of the British force. Establishing links between sickness and military effectiveness is in itself both original and challenging, and relatively new primary sources have been consulted in order to offer a fresh perspectivein this case. Whilst the issue of sickness amongst the troops during
the First World War remains relatively unexplored, historical debate will remain wanting.


Textured surfaces can reduce friction due to decreased contact area between two surfaces, and could therefore increase the reliability of micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS). The problem with some microtextures is their inability to withstand significant amounts of wear, often deforming or breaking, thus limiting their potential uses and overall effectiveness. In this study, connected and isolated SU8 microstructures with and without diamond-like coating (DLC) were designed to investigate the effects of these microstructures on the tribological performance of a surface. Friction studies were conducted using a tribometer, while surface topography and wear were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), optical microscope, and contact profilometry. The results show that the coefficient of friction as well as overall surface wear can be significantly reduced by texturing samples with connected microstructures covered by DLC.


In this paper, we study the physical layer multicasting to multiple co-channel groups in large-scale antenna systems. The users within each group are interested in a common message and different groups have distinct messages. In particular, we aim at designing the precoding vectors solving the so-called quality of service (QoS) and weighted max-min fairness (MMF) problems, assuming that the channel state information is available at the base station (BS). To solve both problems, the baseline approach exploits the semidefinite relaxation (SDR) technique. Considering a BS with  $N$  antennas, the SDR complexity is more than  $\mathcal {O}(N^{6})$ , which prevents its application in large-scale antenna systems. To overcome this issue, we present two new classes of algorithms that, not only have significantly lower computational complexity than existing solutions, but also largely outperform the SDR-based methods. Moreover, we present a novel duality between transformed versions of the QoS and the weighted MMF problems. The duality explicitly determines the solution to the weighted MMF problem given the solution to the QoS problem, and vice versa. Numerical results are used to validate the effectiveness of the proposed solutions and to make comparisons with existing alternatives under different operating conditions.


Healthcare rationing is inevitable, never more so than during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Portugal, rationing is largely implicit and relies too much on bedside decisions, made in stressful circumstances, involving ethical dilemmas and being prone to error. This study uses a qualitative approach by exploring the public records of Portuguese courts for malpractice suits between the years of 2008 and 2019 to ascertain whether the damage suffered by patients in these cases could in any part be attributed to a lack of resources. During this research, we found that a large number of lawsuits against doctors and hospitals might have in fact been the unfortunate result of the constraints of implicit prioritization. We concluded that lawyers and judges must be made aware of the impact of implicit rationing decisions on healthcare professionals, who are judged against a professional standard and an inverse onus rule that places on them a heavy burden of proof.


It is well known that deep neural networks (DNNs) are vulnerable to adversarial attacks, which are implemented by adding crafted perturbations onto benign examples. Min-max robust optimization based adversarial training can provide a notion of security against adversarial attacks. However, adversarial robustness requires a significantly larger capacity of the network than that for the natural training with only benign examples. This paper proposes a framework of concurrent adversarial training and weight pruning that enables model compression while still preserving the adversarial robustness and essentially tackles the dilemma of adversarial training. Furthermore, this work studies two hypotheses about weight pruning in the conventional setting and finds that weight pruning is essential for reducing the network model size in the adversarial setting; training a small model from scratch even with inherited initialization from the large model cannot achieve neither adversarial robustness nor high standard accuracy. Code is available at https://github.com/yeshaokai/Robustness-Aware-Pruning-ADMM.


175 Vol 51 No 3 SA Fam Pract 2009 The CPD section of this issue of the SA Family Practice journal starts with the sixth in the series on healthy lifestyle interventions in general practice. This article focuses on "Lifestyle and metabolic syndrome" by Schwellnus MP et al. They indicate upfront that there is no clarity on the precise definition of the metabolic syndrome but there is consensus that it is a cluster of inter-related risks factors namely elevated blood pressure, elevated plasma glucose and atherogenic dyslipidemia, due to mainly abdominal obesity and insulin resistance. In the article, the authors further explain that the prevalence of metabolic syndrome is increasing globally with its prevalence in developed countries about 30% in the adult population. In the South African population, the prevalence of the syndrome is not known as national prevalence surveys have not been done. But prevalence studies on obesity point in the direction of increasing numbers of men and women who are over weight or obese. In terms of management, lifestyle intervention is consistently regarded as the first line treatment and the cornerstone of management. This includes nutritional intervention, promotion of physical activity, psychosocial care and education. The article has practical strategies on how to implement the lifestyle intervention and ends with the importance of follow up assessment to re-set goals for achievable outcomes in the patient.


In this thesis, an Inertia-Capacitance (IC) beam substructure formulation based on bond graph terminology is developed. The IC beam is formulated in the centre of mass body fixed coordinate system which allows for easy interfacing of the IC beam in a multibody system setting. This multibody floating frame approach is also computationally cheaper than nonlinear finite element methods. Elastic deformations in the IC beam are assumed to be small and described by modal superposition. The formulation couples rigid body motions and elastic deformations in a nonlinear fashion. Detailed derivations for a two-dimensional planar IC beam with bending modes are presented. Brief derivations are also presented for the two-dimensional IC beam with both bending and axial modes and for the three-dimensional IC beam with bending modes. A modal acceleration method via the decoupling of modes is developed for use in the IC beam. The Karnopp-Margolis method is used in the model set-ups to ensure complete integral causality. This results in an efficient numerical system. The large deflection cantilevered beam and the rotating beam spin-up maneuver problems are solved. Convergence studies of various model parameters are performed. The effects of axial modes in the spin-up maneuver problem are also investigated. Investigations are also made on the hinges used for the substructure interconnections. The IC beam is shown to be capable of solving these problems accurately and efficiently. Lastly, the methodology to apply the IC beam formulation to the wind turbine rotor blades is presented.


This book addresses east-west understandings of Arab women as portrayed through translated media. The vast majority of media studies on Arab women are western-based. They study the effect of western stereotypes in western media depictions of Arab women. There is a vast scholarly literature tracing western stereotypes of Arab women from medieval times to the present. From 1800, the dominant western stereotype of Arab women depicts them as passive and oppressed. Thirty years of social science media research in the west has shown that media images of Arab women reinforce this two hundred year old stereotype. Much of this research has studied silent "image bites" of Arab women, where women are pictured in veils and their own voices are replaced by western captions or voice-overs. This book sets out to answer this question. To answer it, we contracted with a global news translation service from the Middle East to collect and translate a sample of 22 months of new summaries from 103 Arab media sources belonging to 22 Arab countries. Filtering the summaries that contained one or more female keywords (e.g., woman, mother, aunt, sister, she) yielded 2, 061 summaries between September 2005 and June of 2007. Using the 2,061 summaries as input data, a coding scheme was developed for "active" and "passive" female behaviors based on verb-phrase analysis and conventions of English-language news-reporting.


Recent water-related disasters have shown that not all disrupted events are prevented with water infrastructure systems and current water systems are becoming more vulnerable to disruptions due to the high uncertainty of disrupted events. Many scholars in various fields suggest diversification in the system as a way to respond to the uncertainty. In the real world, however, it is difficult to maximize its use, especially with water infrastructure, due to high costs and incomplete assessment methods. Thus this study attempts to develop a method to quantify cost-effectiveness of diversification using a drought case study in Korea. Modern Portfolio Theory is used to find optimal combinations of water resources infrastructures in terms of diversification. First, expected return and risk of individual water resources for water supply are estimated. Then, expected return and risk of individual portfolios of the water resources are evaluated by varying their shares of 0 to 100%. Finally, non-inferior portfolios are identified and an optimal portfolio for an acceptable return or risk is selected as a solution. Consequently, a portfolio is selected as a desirable one to practically enhance diversification in water infrastructure systems against real world uncertainty in consideration of cost and budget.


We describe the application of a time domain diffuse fluorescence tomography system for whole body small animal imaging. The key features of the system are the use of point excitation in free space using ultrashort laser pulses and noncontact detection using a gated, intensified charge-coupled device (CCD) camera. Mouse shaped epoxy phantoms, with embedded fluorescent inclusions, were used to verify the performance of a recently developed asymptotic lifetime-based tomography algorithm. The asymptotic algorithm is based on a multiexponential analysis of the decay portion of the data. The multiexponential model is shown to enable the use of a global analysis approach for a robust recovery of the lifetime components present within the imaging medium. The surface boundaries of the imaging volume were acquired using a photogrammetric camera integrated with the imaging system, and implemented in a Monte-Carlo model of photon propagation in tissue. The tomography results show that the asymptotic approach is able to separate axially located fluorescent inclusions centered at depths of 4 and 10 mm from the surface of the mouse phantom. The fluorescent inclusions had distinct lifetimes of 0.5 and 0.95 ns. The inclusions were nearly overlapping along the measurement axis and shown to be not resolvable using continuous wave (CW) methods. These results suggest the practical feasibility and advantages of a time domain approach for whole body small animal fluorescence molecular imaging, particularly with the use of lifetime as a contrast mechanism.


Pastoral guidance of the adopted child with regard to the Fatherhood of God In this article the significance of the Fatherhood of God for adopted children and the way they may be guided pastorally, is researched. The ongoing debate regarding adopted children and specific issues with them, like identity, rejection and loss, will be discussed. The father-image adopted children have of the biological and the adoptive father is respectively investigated, followed by a discussion of how the adopted child's image of God may be influenced by the image of an earthly father. Guidelines for the pastoral guidance regarding the Fatherhood of God and the forming of identity, as well as dealing with rejection and loss, are given. The article ends with some conclusions.


Introduction: Microalbuminuria (MA), defined as urine albumin to urine creatinine ratio (UACR) of 30 to 300 mg/G of creatinine, is an established risk factor for cardiovascular morbidity and mortality and for endstage renal disease in individuals with an adverse cardiovascular risk profile such as those with hypertension or/and diabetes mellitus. Materials and Methods: Thirty five patients were included in the study and equal number of ageand sex-matched controls were also included. 2 ml of venous blood was collected for hs-CRP determination and early morning mid stream urine sample was collected under strict aseptic precautions. The lipid profile was estimated in cobas autoanalyzer. Results:There was significant increase in levels of Low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, microalbumin, and hs-CRP (P< 0.001) in patients with myocardial infarction compared to healthy controls. Conclusion: Therefore, MA and hsCRP evaluation may have potential role in improving cardiovascular risk prediction, when used along with traditional lipid profiles.


Berberine-containing plants are used medicinally in virtually all traditional medical systems, and have a history of usage in Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine dating back at least 3,000 years. Berberine has demonstrated significant antimicrobial activity against bacteria, fungi, protozoans, viruses, helminths and chlamydia. In addition, berberine's actions include: antagonism of the effects of cholera and E. coli heat-stable enterotoxin, inhibition of intestinal ion secretion, inhibition of smooth muscle contraction, inhibition of ventricular tachyarrhythmias, reduction of inflammation, elevation of platelet count in patients with primary and secondary thrombocytopenia, and stimulation of bile secretion and bilirubin discharge. Berberine's most common clinical uses include: bacterial diarrhea, intestinal parasites, and ocular trachoma infections. Evidence also suggests intravenous berberine administration can play a role in preventing the onset of reentrant ventricular tachyarrhythmias and sudden coronary death after myocardial ischemic damage.


Each year countries suffer great tragedy when natural disasters destroy schools and disrupt children's education. In addition to causing immediate harm to children, there is mounting evidence that the direct impact of natural disasters can translate into a series of indirect long-term effects. For some time, multilateral and bilateral development finance institutions, United Nations (UN) agencies, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have been engaged in efforts to make schools resilient to natural hazards. Despite these efforts, however, the safety of school facilities in many disaster-prone countries is unknown, and governments and donors continue to finance new school construction without taking sufficient account of safety. In 2014, the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) launched the Global Program for Safer Schools (GPSS). Through the GPSS, GFDRR support programs designed to establish safer school facilities in countries where the government has firmly committed to a reform or investment program in the education sector. GFDRR provides technical assistance to ensure that such education sector programs finance safer school facilities. The aim of the GPSS is to make school facilities, and the communities they serve, more resilient to natural hazards. This Roadmap is focused specifically on school infrastructure (which includes the school site and buildings). For investment opportunities to be effective and to have maximum impact at community and national scales, it is important that this support is coordinated with investments in school disaster management, risk reduction and resilience in education, and disaster preparedness in other sectors.


The power of courts to thwart the will of the popularly elected branches of government and to stand in direct contradistinction to the dominant political alliance has fascinated scholars of American politics since the nation's inception. Although courts have been idealized as barriers to majority tyranny because of their seeming willingness to confront legislative majorities through the power of judicial review, serious questions have been raised about the actual nature of courts' countermajoritarian function and, in particular, the conditions under which courts are willing to challenge legislative majorities. When are courts likely to take on legislatures in the game of separation of powers/checks and balances? Or, stated more broadly, to what extent are courts autonomous institutions whose functions are impervious to conditions in the external political environment? After all, the countermajoritarian function and the autonomy of courts are hampered if courts, or the individual judges casting votes in the cases, fear legislative sanctions and defer to legislative preferences to avoid them. This Article seeks to explore fundamental questions about the nature of inter-institutional conflict by examining all cases decided since Roe v. Wade(1) by state supreme courts in which direct challenges to state statutes regulating abortion services were raised. As institutions with a diversity guaranteed by jurisdiction, state supreme courts are subject to virtually every force likely to affect judicial choice.(2) Consequently, they offer an ideal laboratory for testing relevant contextual hypotheses. Similarly, the abortion issue provides a manageable, yet highly charged, specimen with which we can conduct our analysis.(3) In response to concerns about the basis of inter-institutional conflict with the courts, two different conceptualizations of courts as institutions have emerged in the scholarly literature based on studies of the United States Supreme Court.(4) First, scholars working within the framework of attitudinal theory have posited that the Supreme Court is a highly autonomous institution whose decisions essentially reflect the aggregation of preferences of its members.(5) Because various institutional arrangements (e.g., lifetime tenure) insulate the Court from sanctions, the Supreme Court lacks incentives to respond to forces in the external environment, including Congress, except on the rarest of occasions.(6) Given the highly insular nature of the Court, individual justices are free to cast votes in accordance with their preferences on issues of public policy.(7) Therefore, the Supreme Court only overturns statutes under conditions where the preferences of the Court majority and Congress merely conflict, without reference to exogenous factors.(8) Alternatively, scholars working within the rational choice framework have offered another conceptualization of the relationship between the Supreme Court and Congress that poses a serious challenge to the widely accepted principle of judicial autonomy and purely attitudinal voting.(9) Positive theorists have argued that even when preferences conflict, the Supreme Court frequently will acquiesce to the legislative majority when the Court anticipates some possible reprisal or sanction for its actions.(10) One particularly important reprisal is subsequent statutory revision. Stated differently, positive theorists model the preferences of Congress as a significant constraint on judicial choice in the nation's highest court, and the power of Congress as a limit on the autonomy of the Supreme Court.(11) While these two alternative perspectives on the status of the United States Supreme Court will continue to be debated as new evidence is brought to bear on the issue, some very recent research raises serious doubts about the utility of models derived from positive theory for explaining the Supreme Court's interaction with Congress.(12) In a highly thought-provoking paper, Jeffrey Segal presents a convincing case that assumptions about the insularity of courts are theoretically sound and empirically correct for the Supreme Court, even in matters of statutory interpretation. …


Constructed stormwater wetlands (CSWs) are commonly used in Sweden and worldwide because of their high efficiency in urban stormwater management. However, questions have been raised about the long-term performance of CSWs. This study investigated the performance of a 19-year-old constructed wetland, which was designed to treat the stormwater from a 320-ha catchment located in the city of Vaxjo, southern Sweden. The system has not been maintained since its construction in 1994. The results of the present study were compared with results obtained from a previous study conducted by Vaxjo Municipality in 1997. The results showed that the CSW significantly reduced peak flows by 72%. High concentration reductions were found for Cd, Cr, Cu, Zn, Pb, TSS and TP (90, 89, 91, 90, 96, 96 and 86%, respectively). TN concentrations were reduced by 61%. The results indicated that lack of maintenance had no effect on the performance of wetland system during this long period of operation (19 years). In contrast, especially the removal of Cu and nitrogen was enhanced compared to 1997, which may be due to maturing of the system. The results show that CSWs are resilient systems, which (provided that design is sufficient) can work efficiently for at least two decades.


It is now well established, for example by the International Council of Mining and Metals, that mine closure planning should be considered from the outset of mining planning and approval, and that this should involve relevant stakeholders to agree upon post-mining land-uses. This has been precipitated by situations where governments have been left with clean up obligations following mine closure. Recent innovations in legislation and regulations for mine closure planning in Western Australia are being evaluated for potential adaptation and application to five African countries. Western Australia has a sophisticated mining sector with respect to regulation and regulator capacity, and the purpose of this research is to showcase the Western Australian approach, and invite discussion on possible applications elsewhere. Whilst our Australian Government funded research specifically targets South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Mozambique, Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia, we are keen to explore implications for other countries where mine closure remains an abiding issue. A key observation from the cooperative governance approach employed in Western Australia between various agencies responsible for mining and environmental regulation and operators is central to the effectiveness of mine closure planning. Early consideration forces both the regulators and operators alike to justify their respective closure requirements; the details of which are reflected in approval conditions for the mining operation. This brings the mine planning phase to a head regarding the likely feasibility of planned closure and post-mining land-use activities. In this manner, the likelihood of legacy problems associated with unexpected abandonment or premature mine closure is minimised, relative to former practices where the mine planning process was essentially left unresolved. In short, the closure requirements become more realistic with this early, consultative and progressing comprehensive mine-closure planning framework in place, with potential scope for adaptive management and numerous creative options for positive post-mining legacies woven into the local socio-economic fabric.


We study low-frequency waves that propagate in a region of layered semiconvection. Layered semiconvection is predicted to be present in stellar and planetary interiors and can significantly modify the rate of thermal and compositional mixing. We derive a series of analytical dispersion relations for plane-parallel layered semiconvection in the Boussinesq approximation using a matrix transfer formalism. We find that like a continuously stratified medium, a semiconvective staircase – in which small convective regions are separated by sharp density jumps – supports internal gravity waves (g-modes). When the wavelength is much longer than the distance between semiconvective steps, these behave nearly like g-modes in a continuously stratified medium. However, the g-mode period spacing in a semiconvective region is systematically smaller than in a continuously stratified medium, and it decreases with decreasing mode frequency. When the g-mode wavelength becomes comparable to the distance between semiconvective steps, the g-mode frequencies deviate significantly from those of a continuously stratified medium (the frequencies are higher). g-modes with vertical wavelengths smaller than the distance between semiconvective steps are evanescent and do not propagate in the staircase. Thus, there is a lower cut-off frequency for a given horizontal wavenumber. We generalize our results to gravitoinertial waves relevant for rapidly rotating stars and planets. Finally, we assess the prospects for detecting layered semiconvection using astero/planetary seismology.


Abstract. The high-latitude oceans are key areas of carbon and heat exchange between
the atmosphere and the ocean. As such, they are a focus of both modern
oceanographic and palaeoclimate research. However, most palaeoclimate
proxies that could provide a long-term perspective are based on calcareous
organisms, such as foraminifera, that are scarce or entirely absent in
deep-sea sediments south of 50∘ S in the Southern Ocean and north
of 40∘ N in the North Pacific. As a result, proxies need to be
developed for the opal-based organisms (e.g. diatoms) found at these high
latitudes, which dominate the biogenic sediments recovered from these
regions. Here we present a method for the analysis of the boron (B) content
and isotopic composition (δ11B) of diatom opal. We apply it for
the first time to evaluate the relationship between seawater pH, δ11B and B concentration ([B]) in the frustules of the diatom
Thalassiosira weissflogii, cultured across a range of carbon dioxide partial pressure (pCO2) and
pH values. In agreement with existing data, we find that the [B]
of the cultured diatom frustules increases with increasing pH (Mejía et al.,
2013). δ11B shows a relatively well defined negative trend with
increasing pH, completely distinct from any other biomineral previously
measured. This relationship not only has implications for the magnitude of
the isotopic fractionation that occurs during boron incorporation into opal,
but also allows us to explore the potential of the boron-based proxies for
palaeo-pH and palaeo-CO2 reconstruction in high-latitude marine
sediments that have, up until now, eluded study due to the lack of suitable
carbonate material.


The issue of social worker burnout impacts the growth and sustainability of the social work industry. The purpose of this project was to determine if there is a connection between the amount of time as a social worker and level of burnout. Mailing addresses for 150 Minnesota social workers were randomly selected and mailed a survey. The survey included the Burnout Measurement Short (BMS) questionnaire, an established self-administered burnout assessment tool, and other pertinent burnout related questions. Data from 43 completed surveys were entered into a spreadsheet. The data was organized and analyzed using Minitab to perform ANOVA calculations. The project's findings demonstrated that no correlation was found between the length of time as a social worker and amount of burnout. Other factors such as employer and client type appeared to have correlations. The project also introduced the topic of identifying the number of social workers who left the profession due to burnout. Initial results suggest that social workers who personally knew multiple former social workers who left the profession due to burnout are themselves more burned out. These findings suggest that all social workers, regardless of the number of years of experience, should receive anti-burnout support and resources. Additional research should be conducted to accurately determine the extreme cases of burnout among social workers that result in quitting the profession. Early Onset of Burnout 3


For my Capstone Project, I created a dual exhibition centering on the theme of home, in collaboration with Elody Gyekis, a Schreyer's Honor student at Penn State University, double majoring in Painting and Ceramics. The show was entitled "Making Home: at home and abroad" and was exhibited both in State College, Pennsylvania, and in Syracuse, New York, in March 2009. The body of work was the culmination of our three-year collaboration and consisted of photographs, drawings, paintings, sculptures, ceramic, and video art. The making and installation of the pieces investigated the physical and emotional experience of making home, as both young women and as contemporary artists. Encompassing our travels between different worlds both at home and abroad, the exhibit explored relationships with people and places that formed the foundation of our sense of home, and informed our identities. Some of the pieces were created in direct collaboration, by working together with specific assignments in mind, while others were made independently and later critiqued both in person and over the Internet. Although the individual pieces that comprised the show drew upon past experiences, the installation of the works into a cohesive exhibition focused upon the present. Rather than presenting a documentation of the search or loss of home, the show centered on the actual creating, or making of our home. The physical locations that inspired the works ranged from Italy to China, but focused specifically upon the places that Elody and I actually lived, such as central Pennsylvania and Moscow. Through this collaborative conception and creation of home, we hoped to prompt the audience to explore their own personal identities and understandings of the concept of home.


Significant research and development in the area of system management has been carried out over the last number of years. This research has led to a number of proven technologies that are currently being used to manage large-scale systems. This dissertation aims to build upon this research and development to examine how a smart space management system could be created. The dissertation examines how an existing information model can be extended to adequately model the information that is required to manage a smart space. Policies, which can control the behaviour of the smart space, are also modelled using existing policy models. The information model and the policies are then mapped onto a directory service that is used as a repository. A prototype application is described which can use the directory service to control and manipulate a smart space. This prototype application is used as a platform to demonstrate the design decisions that have been taken. Conclusions will be drawn as to the potential benefits of using the Directory Enabled Networks Initiative and the Common Information model for the representation of smart space management information. The suitability of using policy based management techniques in the management of a smart space environment will also be discussed.


Book synopsis: This volume examines the nature, function, development and epistemological assumptions of the legal case in an interdisciplinary context. Using the question of 'reading' as a guiding principle, it opens up new ways of understanding case law and the doctrine of precedent by bringing the law into dialogue with the humanities. What happens when a legal case is read not only by lawyers, but by literary critics, by linguists, by philosophers, or by historians? How do film makers and writers adapt and transform legal cases in their work? How might one interpret fiction in the context of the historical development of the common law? The essays in this volume test the boundaries of the legal case as a genre by inviting perspectives from other disciplines, and in doing so also raise more fundamental questions of what constitutes law and legal thinking. This book will be of interest to anyone seeking a better understanding of the common law, the humanities, and the intersection between them.


The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) gives eligible employees the right to take job-protected, unpaid leave to bond with a new child, care for a family member or military service member, or for one's own serious illness for up to 12 weeks in a year. About 60 million private sector employees (55.9 percent) were eligible for family and medical leave under the FMLA in 2012. However, more than two-in-five private sector employees do not have access to job-protected leave because they are employed by small employers, which are exempt from the FMLA, and/or because they do not meet the tenure and hours worked requirements for eligibility. If the FMLA were amended to cover all firms and worksites regardless of size, an estimated 34.1 million private-sector employees would gain access to job-protected family and medical leave, if they otherwise meet the eligibility requirements relating to length of tenure and hours of work.


Following the decolonization movements that swept the globe after World War II, between four and six million people were 'returned' to Europe from the colonies. From an exporter of people, Europe turned to a site of immigration for the first time in the twentieth century. Until now, these migrations have been overlooked as scholars have highlighted instead the parallel migrations of former 'colonized' peoples. Europe's Invisible Migrants corrects this bias. This multidisciplinary volume presents essays by prominent sociologists, historians, and anthropologists on their research with these 'invisible' migrant communities. Their work highlights the experiences of colonists returning to France, Portugal and the Netherlands, the intersection of race, citizenship, and colonial ideologies, and the ways these migrations reflect the return of the 'colonial' to Europe. This volume offers fresh insights into immigration, racism and ethnic conflict in post-colonial Europe by presenting colonial repatriates as another 'immigrant' population.


A series of articles on suicide among the elderly in Brazil is presented, resulting from a national survey sponsored by ENSP/Fiocruz, within the InovaENSP program that fosters and supports new research themes that can contribute strategically to the advancement of public health. The project "Is it possible to prevent anticipating the end? Suicide among the elderly in Brazil and possibilities for action by the health sector," on a nationwide basis, the scope of which was to conduct in-depth study into this issue that has as yet been insufficiently addressed, and disseminate the knowledge generated among managers, professionals and researchers in the health sector and social area. The study combined the quantitative and qualitative approaches. The first charted the magnitude of the problem on a national scale through the description of mortality rates by sex, segments of the elderly and geographic location of the phenomenon; it identified the municipalities with the highest incidence of suicide; and conducted in-depth ecological analysis of those municipalities in which the problem is more prevalent. The qualitative approach was based on the use of the psychological and psychosocial autopsy technique through interviews with relatives of elderly people who committed suicide in 10 municipalities where rates are high, seeking to understand the circumstances in which the cases occurred. The choice of locations for conducting qualitative research was based on the list of 200 municipalities with the highest rates, taking into account issues of convenience for transport of the teams and distribution of the sample across the five regions of the country. The study was conducted in Manaus, Fortaleza, Teresina, Tauá, Campo Grande, Dourados, Candelária, São Lourenço, Venâncio Aires and Campos dos Goytacazes. Due to the difficulty in conducting and analyzing psychosocial autopsies, a minimum of no less than five cases was decided for each location, bringing the total to 51, in which 84 people were interviewed, almost all being family members who had accompanied the elderly. In addition to researchers from the Fundação Oswaldo Cruz which led the study, the research included doctoral, masters and undergraduate scientific initiation students and investigators from seven academic institutions (Universidade Federal de Manaus, Universidade de Fortaleza, Universidade Federal de Teresina, Universidade de Dom Bosco de Mato Grosso do Sul, Universidade Federal e Escola Estadual de Saúde Pública do Rio Grande do Sul, Universidade Veiga de Almeida do Rio de Janeiro). The study was conducted in a participatory and networking manner, disseminating decisions regarding: definition of the scope; characteristics of the epidemiological research; choice of the municipalities for the qualitative research; construction of instruments; deadlines for each stage of the project; inclusion of students; critical reflection on the study and division of tasks for the academic production, based on the data and information. The result of this work is to be found in this thematic issue: three articles of an epidemiological nature deal with the magnitude of the phenomenon across the country, by regions and municipalities, according to sex, age segment of the elderly, the means used and ecology of the phenomenon. Another set of texts discuss qualitative aspects of self-inflicted death, introducing circumstantial details of the cases; analysis of the tools used for research; description of the fieldwork; socio-anthropological aspects that involve explanations for the events; classification by gender; consequences of suicide among the family of the elderly, and, finally, the most important aspect, namely analysis of an attempt at prevention. Of all the conclusions that can be drawn from this study, one is fundamental: everything that contributes to enhancement of the quality of life of elderly individuals – respecting their personal wishes always present in the act of suicide – also contributes to them not trying to anticipate their demise.


Preface. Part I Task Allocation. The Generation of Bidding Rules for Auction-Based Robot Coordination. Craig Tovey, Michail G. Lagoudakis, Sonal fain, Sven Koenig. Issues in Multi-Robot Coalition Formation. Lovekesh Vig, Julie A. Adams. Sensor Network-Mediated Multi-Robot Task Allocation. Maxim A. Batalin and Gaurav S. Sukhatme. Part II Coordination in Dynamic Environments. Multi-Objective Cooperative Control of Dynamical Systems. Zhihua Qu, fing Wang, Richard A. Hull. Levels of Multi-Robot Coordination for Dynamic Environments. Cohn P. McMillen, Paul E. Rybski, Manuela M. Veloso. Parallel Stochastic Hill-Climbing with Small Teams. Brian P. Gerkey, Sebastian Thrun, Geoff Gordon. Toward Versatility of Multi-Robot Systems. Cohn Cherry and Hong Zhang. Part III Information/ Sensor Sharing and Fusion. Decentralized Communication Strategies. Maayan Roth, Reid Simmons, and Manuela Veloso. Improving Multirobot Multitarget Tracking. Matthew Powers, Ramp rasad Ravichandran, Frank Dehlaert, Tucker Baich. Enabling Autonomous Sensor-Sharing. Lynne E. Parker, Maureen Chandra, Fang Tang. Part IV Distributed Mapping and Coverage. Merging Partial Maps without Using Odometry. Francesco Amigoni, Simone Gasparini, Maria Gini. Distributed Coverage of Unknown/Unstructured Environments by Mobile Sensor Networks. Ioannis Rekleitis, Ai Peng New, Howie Choset. Part V Motion Planning and Control. Motion Planning with Safe Dynamics. James Bruce and Manuela Veloso. A Multi-Robot Testbed for Biologically-Inspired Cooperative Control. Rafael Fierro and Justin Clark, Dean Hougen and Sesh Commuri. Part VI Human-Robot Interaction. Task Switching and Multi-Robot Teams. Michael A. Goodrich, Morgan Quigley, Keryl Cosenzo. User Modeling for Principled Sliding Autonomy in Human-Robot Teams. Brennan Seilner, Reid Simmons, Sanjiv Singh. Part VII Applications. Multi-Robot Chemical Plume Tracing. Diana Spears, Dimitri Zarzhitsky, David Thayer. Deploying Air-Ground Multi-Robot Teamsin Urban Environments. L. Chaimowicz, A. Cowley, D. Gomez-Ibanez, B. Grochoisky, M.A. Hsieh, H. Hsu, J.F. Keller, V Kumar, R. Swaminathan, C.J. Taylor. Precision Manipulation with Cooperative Robots. Ashley Stroupe, Terry Huntsberger, Avi Okon, Hrand Aghazarian. Part VIII Poster Short Papers. A Robust Monte-Carlo Algorithm for Multi-Robot Localization. Vazha Amiranashvili, Gerhard Lakemeyer. A Dialogue-Based Approach to Multi-Robot Team Control. Nathanael Chambers, James Allen, Lucian Galescu, Hyuckchul Jung. Hybrid FSO/RF Networks for Mobile Robot Teams. Jason Derenick, Christopher Thorne, and John Spletzer. Swarming UAVS Behavior Hierarchy. Kuo-Chi Lin. The GNATs. Keith J. O'Hara, Daniel B. Walker, and Tucker R. Balch. Role Based Operations. Brian Satterfield, Heeten Choxi, and Drew Housten. Ergodic Dynamics by Design. Dylan A. Shell, Chris V. Jones, Maja J. Matarie.


The sustainability of municipal drinking water services in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria requires that its water utilities enhance their resilience to a range of risks posed by extreme weather events. Excellence in managing such risks is essential, not only to the bottom line and reputation of the utilities, but also to the wellbeing and prosperity of the people they serve and the preservation of nature in order to sustain ecosystem services. In the context of this study, organisational resilience has been defined as the adaptive deployment of the utility s assets and structures within its continua of inter-dependences to improve and sustain performance even in the face of repeated perturbations. On the other hand, vulnerability is defined as the utility s inability to withstand adverse stress based on limited or constrained capacity to adapt hence creating pathways through which risk impacts the utility. This definition of vulnerability is in tandem with those that argue that the key parameters of vulnerability are the stress to which a system is exposed, its sensitivity, and its adaptive capacity. In view of this, and also based on the findings of the study, the study notes that utility management could be a complex and challenging task, especially, in a multi-risk delta environment where extreme events are intense and frequent. Utility managers can become veterans of risks by dissipating, more than ever before technical competence, watershed/ecosystem awareness, social engagement skills and conceptual ability. The latter includes an understanding of how the complexities of the upstream and downstream environment impacts on the utility s internal environment and operations. The diffusive nature of risk makes every risk a potential high impact risk and the understanding of this, is the key to a resilient organization. Risk analysis and management in water utilities should aim to limit the diffusion of risks across streams in order to retard vulnerability. Utility resilience options will need to vary depending on climate related risks to each system, utility management goals, legislation, local and national water management strategies and finance. Utilities in the Niger delta needs to fully understand that they operate close to the edge by virtue of being below sea level and should cultivate a keen awareness of the consequences of flooding and saltwater intrusion, and the importance to manage them amongst others. The study has shown that there is need now, more than ever before for increased revenue generation, elimination of wastes/inefficiencies, financial investment and strategic management of water services operations in the study area if residents and the unborn generation are to be guaranteed of safe and adequate drinking water.