The goal of this study is to discuss the principles and the guidelines that surround the urgency attention provided by SAMU (Mobile Emergency Service) during a crisis or a psichiatric emergency having as parameter the discussions that support Psychiatric Reform. It's an applied study with a qualitative approach at the configuration of a literature review that established a dialogue between the Authors to achieve the proposed goal. The guidelines that surround the urgency attention provided by SAMU contribute to an intervention in a crisis based on traditional clinical paradigm where the priorities are the containment and the transport to the psychiatric hospital. Therefore the negotiation with the Mental Health Network, effective matrix support, investiment in professional training and the real operation of Permanent Program Training of Human Resources to the Psychiatric Reform are things that can help the consolidation of a crisis intervention by a SAMU more humanized and combined with the Brazilian Psychiatric Reform.


We present a framework based on bilevel optimization for learning multilayer, deep data representations. On the one hand, the lower-level problem finds a representation by successively minimizing layer-wise objectives made of the sum of a prescribed regularizer, a fidelity term and a linear function depending on the representation found at the previous layer. On the other hand, the upper-level problem optimizes over the linear functions to yield a linearly separable final representation. We show that, by choosing the fidelity term as the quadratic distance between two successive layer-wise representations, the bilevel problem reduces to the training of a feedforward neural network. Instead, by elaborating on Bregman distances, we devise a novel neural network architecture additionally involving the inverse of the activation function reminiscent of the skip connection used in ResNets. Numerical experiments suggest that the proposed Bregman variant benefits from better learning properties and more robust prediction performance.


ExPress glaucoma filtration device (GFD) has recently become available in India as a surgical option for glaucoma patients. We retrospectively evaluated the outcome of ExPress GFD in 12 eyes with advanced glaucoma with intraocular pressures (IOPs) not controlled on maximal tolerable medical therapy. The mean preoperative IOP of 29.58 ± 7.13 mmHg decreased to 17.0 ± 2.67 and 17.40 ± 0.89 mmHg at 6 and 12 months after surgery. Absolute success (IOP ≤ 18 mmHg, with no additional glaucoma medications) was achieved in eight cases (66.7%) and qualified success (IOP ≤ 18 mmHg, with additional glaucoma medications) in two cases (16.7%) at 1-year after surgery. Early intervention was needed in 4 patients; two underwent anterior chamber reformation while the other two required needling. Two patients required resurgery. There was no significant change in the best corrected visual acuity postoperatively (P = 0.37). ExPress GFD does not seem to offer a benefit over standard trabeculectomy in patients with advanced glaucomatous disease in terms of IOP control or complication rate. However, due to the small sample size with a heterogeneous mixture of primary and secondary glaucoma's, we await further studies with a larger sample size and long-term follow-up, to see how the device performs.


Aquatic macrophyte vegetation was surveyed in the heavily man-modified watercourse of the Hurbanovsky canal (Danube lowland) in 2004. The investigation aimed to analyse the changes in species composition, diversity, and plant mass of aquatic vegetation in relation to some anthropogenic factors (land-use type, the survey units distance of the town sewage plant, and of two effluent channels from agricultural land), and abiotic parameters (water depth and width, sediments size) along the canal. The analysis of anthropogenic factors impacts was carried out using the CCA gradient analysis. Eleven truly aquatic plants, 32 helophytes, and filamentous algae were recorded in the canal. The land-use type has manifested the highest impact on the species data set variation in the canal, distinctly exhibited by the "urban fabric". Distance factors of the water effluent from the town sewage plant and agricultural run-offs have shown moderate significance.


In the automatic evaluation of generative question answering (GenQA) systems, it is difficult to assess the correctness of generated answers due to the free-form of the answer. Especially, widely used n-gram similarity metrics often fail to discriminate the incorrect answers since they equally consider all of the tokens. To alleviate this problem, we propose KPQA metric, a new metric for evaluating the correctness of GenQA. Specifically, our new metric assigns different weights to each token via keyphrase prediction, thereby judging whether a generated answer sentence captures the key meaning of the reference answer. To evaluate our metric, we create high-quality human judgments of correctness on two GenQA datasets. Using our human-evaluation datasets, we show that our proposed metric has a significantly higher correlation with human judgments than existing metrics in various datasets. Code for KPQA-metric will be available at https://github.com/hwanheelee1993/KPQA.


A major goal of fuel assembly design is a reliable prediction of the critical heat flux. Development and validation of CFD methods for predicting two-phase flows and CHF conditions is subject of ongoing research at AREVA-NP. This paper deals with numerical modeling of subcooled flow boiling of water in pipes and subchannels at flow conditions corresponding to the range of pressurized water reactor operation conditions. As simulation tool the commercial CFD software StarCD is used in conjunction with its Extended Boiling Framework (EBF), a software package providing modeling tools for two-phase flow boiling. Substantial progress towards a CFD prediction of thermal hydraulic phenomena relevant for fuel assembly design could be achieved. In the future, modelling will be needed to be complemented by experimental validation data with sufficient local resolution, to validate CFD models for high pressure thermal hydraulic operating conditions.


Septic shock is a major cause of deaths resulting from uncontrolled inflammation and circulatory failure. Recent studies suggest that the vascular isoform of ATP-sensitive K (KATP) channels is an important contributor to septic susceptibility. To understand the molecular mechanisms for channel regulation during sepsis, we performed studies in isolated endotheliumdenuded mesenteric rings. Lipopolysaccharides (LPS) induced vascular relaxation and hyporeactivity to phenylephrine. The LPS-treated aortic smooth muscle cells displayed hyperpolarization and augmentation of KATP channel activity. Both were due to an up-regulation of Kir6.1 and SUR2B surface expression. The up-regulation relied on transcriptional and translational mechanisms, in which nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) and Protein kinase A (PKA) played a critical role. Oxidative stress occurs during sepsis and may act as another regulatory mechanism affecting KATP channel activity and vascular contractility. We found that micromolar concentrations of H2O2 impaired the pinacidil-induced vasodilation. The effect attributed to the suppression of KATP channel activity, which can be fully produced by reactivity oxidants. Unlike the Kir6.1/SUR2B channel, the Kir6.2/SUR2B channel was insensitive to 1mM H2O2, indicating that the modulation sites are located in Kir6.1. Site-directed mutational analysis showed that three cysteine residues located in N-terminus and the core region of Kir6.1 were likely to mediate the redox-dependent channel modulation. Arginine vasopressin (AVP) is a vasoconstrictor that is successfully applied to manage sepsis. However, the downstream target of AVP is uncertain. Our studies show that AVPinduced vasoconstriction depended on V1a receptor, Protein kinase C (PKC) and KATP channel. Additionally, AVP decreased Kir6.1/SUR2B channel activity through V1a receptor. The inhibitory effect was caused by a suppression of the channel open state probability. The channel inhibition was mediated by phosphorylation of the channel protein by PKC. The widespread involvement of the vascular KATP channel in vascular responses to endotoxemia strongly suggests that the temporospatial control of channel activity may constitute an important intervention to vascular tone, blood pressure and organ-tissue perfusion in septic shock. Such a control appears feasible by targeting several modulatory mechanisms of intracellular signaling, Kir6.1/SUR2B expression, redox state and channel protein phosphorylation as demonstrated in this dissertation. INDEX WORDS: Kir6.1, SUR2B, ATP-sensitive K channels, Vascular tone, Sepsis, Lipopolysaccharides, Nuclear factor-kappa B, Protein kinase A, Arginine vasopressin KATP CHANNEL ACTION IN VASCULAR TONE REGULATION DURING SEPTIC SHOCK: BEYOND PHYSIOLOGY


The brittle star Ophiothrix fragilis (Abilgaard, 1789) constitutes a heterogeneous mor- phological group that can be subdivided into 4 varieties. The species is also characterized by high demographic variability. The present study explores the possibility of genetic patchiness arising due to admixture of varieties or recruitment heterogeneity. We sequenced a portion of the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit I (mtCOI) gene and genotyped 7 allozymes from 21 populations of the 2 most common varieties. While mtCOI analyses showed that all the varieties grouped together with virtually no divergence among them (<1%), a clear divergence (18.6%) was evident between the northern Atlantic populations and individuals collected in the Mediterranean and along the Galician coast. Conversely, canonical analysis indicated that classification by variety explained a substantial part of the allozyme variance. Within O. f. pentaphyllum, no clear pattern of geographic structure was observed around the British Isles, with neighbouring populations often showing more genetic differ- entiation with one another than with distant populations. This either reflects admixture of cryptic lineages/species, diversifying selection due to contrasting habitats, or spatial and/or temporal admix- ture of genetically differentiated cohorts produced from isolated populations. The latter hypothesis is reinforced by the fact that significant haplotype frequency differences were recorded between larvae, juveniles and adults within the same locality. Providing that time-isolated clades co-occur within populations, the variation in the number and intensity of recruitment events must impact local genetic structure extensively and induce chaotic genetic patchiness at a large spatial scale.


Although the employability of graduates is of concern across further and higher education it is particularly problematic in the arts disciplines, from which few students transition to a traditional, full-time position. Arts graduates shape their work to meet personal and professional needs, and the successful negotiation of this type of career requires a strong sense of identity and an awareness of diverse opportunities. The challenge for educators is how we might develop these capacities whilst being mindful of students' dreams, which are often focused on artistic excellence and recognition. This paper reports findings from a collaborative study undertaken at four Australian universities. With a focus on developing an electronic portfolio (eP), the study involved students in classical and contemporary music, music education, music technology, creative writing and professional writing. The combination of music and writing provided points of comparison to identify issues specific to music, and those that might apply more generally. This paper reports findings related to learner identity, drawing evidence from survey and interview data. The study, which was driven by the learning process rather than the technological tool, revealed that students' use of eP transitions from archive to self-portrait. Moreover, the eP emerged as a vehicle through which identity is negotiated and constructed. Indeed, the process of developing of an eP prompted students to adopt future-oriented thinking as they began to redefine their learning in relation to their future lives and careers. These findings were common to all students, regardless of discipline or technological platform.


This handbook is about the role of armed forces in the support and spread of democracy, as Blair states in the Introduction. He provides a concise overview of the topic, including a set of recommendations for officers and defense officials. In eight brisk chapters, Blair shows how established democracies can - and why they should - take full advantage of their points of contact to move dictatorships toward democracy. He explores the potential for democratic armed forces to influence change both in dictatorships like Iran and North Korea and transitioning countries such as Egypt, Kazakhstan and Burma. The second volume presents instructive case studies of democratic movements and transitions, almost all prepared by authors from the country or region understudy. They include a focus on the domestic context, followed by a review of the use of outside influence and its success. The cases include Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, Egypt, Hungary, Indonesia, Lebanon and Syria, Nigeria, the Philippines, Senegal, South Africa, Spain, Thailand, and Turkey. Augmenting the case studies are regional overview chapters on Asia, Europe, Latin America, North Africa and the Middle East, and sub-Saharan Africa.


An effective and convenient method for measuring thermal diffusivity of high-temperature melts is developed by filling a transparent quartz container with the melt. The front surface of the specimen cell is heated by a laser pulse, and the thermal radiation from the rear surface of the specimen is measured by an infrared detector. By considering the effect of the thickness of the quartz container, it is found that Parker's formula for a single-layer specimen is suitable for the present specimen cell. The thermal diffusivities of gallium, indium, and gallium antimonide have been measured and the data have been compared with published values.


Efavirenz (EFV) is principally metabolized by CYP2B6 to 8-hydroxy-efavirenz (8OH-EFV) and to a lesser extent by CYP2A6 to 7-hydroxy-efavirenz (7OH-EFV). So far, most metabolite profile analyses have been restricted to 8OH-EFV, 7OH-EFV, and EFV-N-glucuronide, even though these metabolites represent a minor percentage of EFV metabolites present in vivo. We have performed a quantitative phase I and II metabolite profile analysis by tandem mass spectrometry of plasma, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), and urine samples in 71 human immunodeficiency virus patients taking efavirenz, prior to and after enzymatic (glucuronidase and sulfatase) hydrolysis. We have shown that phase II metabolites constitute the major part of the known circulating efavirenz species in humans. The 8OH-EFV-glucuronide (gln) and 8OH-EFV-sulfate (identified for the first time) in humans were found to be 64- and 7-fold higher than the parent 8OH-EFV, respectively. In individuals (n = 67) genotyped for CYP2B6, 2A6, and CYP3A metabolic pathways, 8OH-EFV/EFV ratios in plasma were an index of CYP2B6 phenotypic activity (P < 0.0001), which was also reflected by phase II metabolites 8OH-EFV-glucuronide/EFV and 8OH-EFV-sulfate/EFV ratios. Neither EFV nor 8OH-EFV, nor any other considered metabolites in plasma were associated with an increased risk of central nervous system (CNS) toxicity. In CSF, 8OH-EFV levels were not influenced by CYP2B6 genotypes and did not predict CNS toxicity. The phase II metabolites 8OH-EFV-gln, 8OH-EFV-sulfate, and 7OH-EFV-gln were present in CSF at 2- to 9-fold higher concentrations than 8OH-EFV. The potential contribution of known and previously unreported EFV metabolites in CSF to the neuropsychological effects of efavirenz needs to be further examined in larger cohort studies.


Ruth Goodman believes in getting her hands dirty. Drawing on her own adventures living in re-created Victorian conditions, Goodman serves as our bustling and fanciful guide to nineteenth-century life. Proceeding from daybreak to bedtime, this charming, illustrative work celebrates the ordinary lives of the most perennially fascinating era of British history. From waking up to the rapping of a "knocker-upper man" on the window pane to lacing into a corset after a round of calisthenics, from slipping opium to the little ones to finally retiring to the bedroom for the ideal combination of "love, consideration, control and pleasure," the weird, wonderful, and somewhat gruesome intricacies of Victorian life are vividly rendered here. How to Be a Victorian is an enchanting manual for the insatiably curious.


With the growing interest in the development of purpose in youth, one important role that requires attention is the school teacher. The current article explores student perceptions of the role teachers can play in fostering purpose in their students in the mid- and late adolescent years, and the teacher competencies that facilitate purpose development. The present investigation posits and tests a structural model in which student perceptions of teacher support predicts youth purpose, mediated by student perceptions of teacher competencies; in turn, youth purpose predicts broader positive youth development. Two samples of demographically diverse young people ages 13–18 were surveyed in the United States (n = 381) and Finland (n = 336). Results showed support for the role of teachers in fostering purpose, and provided evidence for the hypothesized model with some cross-cultural differences. Implications of these findings for developing purpose in schools are discussed.


In the present study, aspects of the measurement of writing are disentangled in order to investigate the validity of inferences made on the basis of writing performance and to describe implications for the assessment of writing. To include genre as a facet in the measurement, we obtained writing scores of 12 texts in four different genres for each participating student. Results indicate that across raters, tasks and genres, only 10% of the variance in writing scores is related to individual writing skill. In order to draw conclusions about writing proficiency, students should therefore write at least three different texts in each of four genres rated by at least two raters. Moreover, when writing scores are obtained through highly similar tasks, generalization across genres is not warranted. Inferences based on text quality scores should, in this case, be limited to genre-specific writing. These findings replicate the large task variance in writing assessment as consistently found in earlier research and emphasize the effect of genre on the generalizability of writing scores. This research has important implications for writing research and writing education, in which writing proficiency is quite often assessed by only one task rated by one rater.


Inverse reinforcement learning attempts to reconstruct the reward function in a Markov decision problem, using observations of agent actions. As already observed in Russell [1998] the problem is ill-posed, and the reward function is not identifiable, even under the presence of perfect information about optimal behavior. We provide a resolution to this non-identifiability for problems with entropy regularization. For a given environment, we fully characterize the reward functions leading to a given policy and demonstrate that, given demonstrations of actions for the same reward under two distinct discount factors, or under sufficiently different environments, the unobserved reward can be recovered up to a constant. We also give general necessary and sufficient conditions for reconstruction of time-homogeneous rewards on finite horizons, and for action-independent rewards, generalizing recent results of Kim et al. [2021] and Fu et al. [2018].


Avian Influenza (AI) has devastated the poultry industries in Viet Nam, Thailand and parts of Indonesia in 2003 and 2004. This paper is based on discussions undertaken in October 2004 between the author and Indonesian government officials, broiler company representatives and farmers from the broiler and layer industries in Bali and Lombok on impacts of the AI outbreak. Government of Indonesia (GOI) policies and responses to the outbreak of firms in the Eastern Islands poultry industry are described. Farmer responses may be affected by five factors: (i) geographical location of the farm, (ii) time since the outbreak began, (iii) whether the farmer was a layer, broiler or kampung chicken producer, (iv) size and 'development' of the farm and (v) contractual arrangements under which production is occurring. Further research, including risk analysis, is needed to assist GOI officials in managing future outbreaks. This should include analysis of direct impacts to better understand the financial impact of AI outbreaks on industry members and analysis of indirect impacts to better understand the financial, economic and social impact of AI outbreaks on the broader Indonesian economy. A bioeconomic framework suitable for undertaking this work is developed and presented.


In an era of codification and statutory law, several states still rely on the common law to protect vital individual rights. As an example, New Jersey grounds its protection against self-incrimination in the common law, not its state constitution.In this Article, I compare two remarkably similar cases involving police deception during custodial interrogations — one before the Supreme Court of the United States and the other before the Supreme Court of New Jersey. The issue faced by each court was the admissibility of confessions obtained after police officers failed to inform a suspect that an attorney had been retained on his behalf, was present, and was seeking to advise him. The article explains the federal precedent by examining Moran v. Burbine, a 1986 Supreme Court decision. By comparing Moran with State v. Reed, a New Jersey Supreme Court decision nearing its twentieth anniversary — I explore (1) the methods used by state courts when departing from federal precedent, and (2) the efficacy of using the common law to do so. I posit that not only, was the court's decision to base Reed on the common-law right against self-incrimination rather than resorting to constitutional adjudication legitimate, but that it was the better course of action. Indeed, I believe that New Jersey can serve as a model for other states in this regard. Not only does the court's methodology conform to long-standing rules of judicial construction, it also affords a level of flexibility and reasonableness not available from broad constitutional pronouncements.


This paper takes advantage of a unique set of annual MONITREND data from the American Hospital Association (AHA) to study the effects of Medicare's Prospective Payment System (PPS) and other public/private programs on hospital productivity and intensity between 1980 and 1987. The results on over 30 cost centers show major improvements in inpatient productivity per discharge in the first two years of PPS--improvements that are largely attributable to shifts of care to the outpatient department. Inpatient intensity, which was growing 4.5% annually between 1980 and 1982, turned negative from 1983-85 due to this shifting locus of care. Productivity per intermediate service also improved but at a slower rate because of the large declines in inpatient volumes. Productivity improvements were greater in urban hospitals, resulting in slower cost inflation and a better financial position compared with rural hospitals.


Current climatic changes are a threat to effective development of forestry under the modern economic conditions, which is aggravated by increase of anthropogenic stress in the sphere of forest use. Formation of strategies of well-balanced development of forestry supposes not only analysis of popular methodological approaches but formation of organizational mechanism for managing this sphere, the realization of which is aimed at preventive elimination of emerging threats. Provision of well-balanced development of economic system is viewed from the positions of the theory of management. The authors substantiate the use of complex approach which takes into account tendencies of functioning of forest sector, as a constant process of using forest resources, their preservation and renewal. Complexity will provide the study of the managed sub-system of forest complex (forestry) as totality, consisting of separate interconnected spheres of activities which possess their own functions and goals, with ordered and interconnected activities. Preventive approach will ensure timely revelation of key problems and threats to provision of well-balanced development of forest complex. Reflection will allow choosing the most effective instrumentarium for prevention (levelling) of emerging threats on the basis of existing experience. Balance of development is viewed as a feature peculiar for all structural components of economic system. It is advisable to distinguish the following factors which influence well-balanced development of region: group of natural and ecological, socio-political, economic, and social factors. Key components of provision of well-balanced development of economic system (forestry) could be presented from the positions of study, firstly, of managing and managed sub-systems; secondly, from the position of sub-system of forecasting, monitoring, identification, and evening-out of threats to well-balanced development.


High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is a liquid alternative sweetener to sucrose that is made from corn, the "king of crops" using chemicals (caustic soda, hydrochloric acid) and enzymes (α-amylase and glucoamylase) to hydrolyze corn starch to corn syrup containing mostly glucose and a third enzyme (glucose isomerase) to isomerize glucose in corn syrup to fructose to yield HFCS products classified according to their fructose content: HFCS-90, HFCS-42, and HFCS-55. HFCS-90 is the major product of these chemical reactions and is blended with glucose syrup to obtain HFCS-42 and HFCS-55. HFCS has become a major sweetener and additive used extensively in a wide variety of processed foods and beverages ranging from soft and fruit drinks to yogurts and breads. HFCS has many advantages compared to sucrose that make it attractive to food manufacturers. These include its sweetness, solubility, acidity and its relative cheapness in the United States (US). The use of HFCS in the food and beverage industry has increased over the years in the US. The increase in its consumption in the US has coincided with the increase in incidence of obesity, diabetes, and other cardiovascular diseases and metabolic syndromes. This study examines literature on the production and properties of HFCS and the possible health concerns of HFCS consequent to its consumption in a wide variety of foods and beverages in the typical US diet.

 Key words: High fructose corn syrup, sweeteners, soft and juice drinks, baked goods, obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, mercury; honey bees, colony collapse disorder.


With the emergence of climate change, the increasing figure of energy consumption for cooling in buildings expresses an urgent need for energy conscious design of new and existing buildings, and there is a significant opportunity for implementation of natural ventilation strategies. The high-energy consumption of the Greek domestic sector, the number of existing multi-storey apartment buildings, the small rate of building retrofitting in Greece and the warm, dry climate of Greece, indicate the potential to achieve significant energy reductions for cooling via natural ventilation. The aim of this research was to evaluate the energy saving potential of natural ventilation solutions for domestic buildings in the Mediterranean climate to deliver summer comfort, and to propose a low-energy refurbishment design guide.

The natural ventilation efficiency of an urban multi-storey apartment building in Athens and the potential implementation of advanced natural ventilation strategies, were evaluated using modelling tools. This would provide the knowledge for future energy refurbishments. The building was a representative example of over 4 million buildings in Greece. Several ventilation strategies were implemented in a single apartment (51.4m2) and evaluated in order to enhance the existing single-sided ventilation strategy of the building, including: daytime and nighttime ventilation; cross ventilation strategies; use of a wind-catcher; lightweight dynamic facade with shading system; new internal openings; and passive downdraught evaporative cooling strategies.

The ventilation performance of the strategies was investigated over the full cooling period using DTM simulations. Controlled natural ventilation strategies, in response to internal and external air properties, delivered: occupants comfort; ventilation rates increase; and reductions in air temperatures and in CO2 levels. Natural day and night ventilation contributed to significant temperature reductions (up to 7oC) relative to the base-case ventilation strategy. The proposed strategies marginally reduced the hours during the cooling period for which the CO2 levels exceeded the upper acceptable limit for comfort. The strategies also achieved air change rates above the minimum acceptable values for comfort were provided; and therefore occupants comfort was achieved.

De-coupled internal-external steady state CFD airflow simulations were performed to predict wind pressures across the building openings, and to predict detailed ventilation rates for a number of climate scenarios. Using CFD it was possible to overcome the limitation of DTM and predict average pressures at the location of the openings, considering the location of the building within its surroundings (both external and internal flow simulations were performed), leading to accurate results. It was predicted that the ventilation performance of the wind catcher was significant relative to the simple single or cross-ventilation strategies. The downdraft evaporative cooling performed best at low ventilation rates providing up to 4oC further temperature reductions. Indoor comfort was provided during windless hours for specific strategies (buoyancy driven); this is significant considering that low wind speeds (below 1m/s) were predicted for 14% of the cooling period. The performance of the strategies varies considerably with regard to both wind speed and direction; these should be considered when retrofitting natural ventilation strategies in existing buildings.

The proposed strategies delivered natural cooling and adequate ventilation rates, relative the base-case strategy. The combined wind catcher and dynamic facade strategy performed the best; this combined strategy would be recommended for the Mediterranean sub-climate, and for buildings comparable to the type studied. This should be combined with evaporative cooling strategies particularly during windless hours, and mechanical cooling only when these strategies do not provide sufficient performance.

For both the CFD and DTM results, empirical relationships were established with statistical methods between indoor air properties and climate characteristics, which can be used to predict behaviours under conditions that have not been examined using simulations. This assists extrapolation of patterns in ventilation performance, to facilitate design guidance of the natural ventilation strategies for implementation in similar buildings. The established performance of the natural ventilation strategies in the case study building assisted the development of a prototype scenario for similar building designs with comparable climatic context. A low-energy refurbishment design guide for natural ventilation was proposed that provides guidelines and design recommendations. Retrofitting such natural ventilation strategies in existing apartment buildings in similar climates presents a significant opportunity to achieve significant energy consumption reductions.


News that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has cut off funding for Mark Hughes, a geneticist who pioneered a technique for screening for mutations in the DNA of a single cell, has dismayed Hughes's colleagues. NIH says Hughes used federal funds to conduct tests on eight-cell human embryos, in contravention of a congressional ban on such activities. Hughes's colleagues say the incident will drive more embryology research into private clinics, where it is unregulated.


This Thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Science in Biotechnology, 2016.


[Ten years ago Occupy Wall Street, a national mass movement against economic inequality and the influence of corporate money in politics, began in New York City and then spread across the country until it involved tens of thousands in dozens of other cities and towns. Occupy's slogan "We are the 99%"–referring to the mass of ordinary working people as opposed to the top 1% with their trillions–captivated the public imagination. The Occupy activists in the United States and then in countries around the world created encampments that served as launching pads for mass actions of all sorts. Utopian in the best sense of the world–suggesting that another different and better future was possible–Occupy profoundly changed public consciousness. The inspiring Occupy movement was crushed violently by local police forces, state troopers, and federal agencies, thousands arrested and several indicted on a variety of charges. At the time, the movement failed to create a political vehicle, but its energy later flowed into the presidential campaign of democratic socialist Bernie Sanders. The following piece originally published by Solidarity on August 9, 2012 attempted to capture the experience, to analyze it politically, and to ask how such a movement might become more effective. – Dan La Botz]


Graphene with zero-band gap can be easily saturated under strong excitation due to Pauli blocking. In this work, the graphene oxide membrane is reduced on the surface of microfiber by use of high temperature heating. Such reduced graphene oxide can interact with the strong evanescent field of the microfiber and enable saturable absorption in passively mode-locked fiber laser. The system can be effectively utilized to directly generate ultra-wide-band doublet pulses for high-capacity wireless communication applications.


A great deal of effort has been put into education reform in Latin America since the early 1990s. Extending the coverage of educational opportunities and improving the quality of the education delivered in schools are crucial for the countries of the region, where education in State schools has often been of a low standard. It is not enough just to study macro education policies as they are formulated by governments and implemented by centralized ministries of education. What is promised or envisioned on paper is often quite different from what actually happens in school establishments. It is important to understand, at the micro level, how schools are functioning in practice as they implement educational policies. Educational policies and social reality come together in school classrooms and schools can teach us a great deal about achieving quality in basic education. The focus of this article is on poor children in poor schools and the continuing challenges of educating children in poor communities. Chile's national programme to improve the quality of education and educational outcomes in 900 of its poorer primary schools, known as the P900 programme, provided an ideal framework for identifying and studying the challenges faced by schools in poor communities in trying to deliver a high-quality education to their children and for understanding how and why they are struggling to meet national standards. This study is concerned with learning from schools to achieve a better understanding of what they see, in the context of their community and the student population they serve, as the practical realities of educating poor children. At the national level, a macro research methodology was used to identify the worst-performing schools in the P900 programme on the basis of their results in standardized examinations and the trends seen in these results over the 1990s. A small purposive sample of the worst-performing schools was drawn from this group and quota sampling techniques were used to ascertain their main characteristics. A micro study of each of the schools selected was then carried out, involving school visits and interviews to understand school and pupil performance and to identify critical factors that might be amenable to change. In-depth reports were prepared on each school. This article synthesizes the lessons learned from these micro studies.


Background Use of tobacco is often implicated in the development of oral diseases. Questionable accuracy of the traditional questionnaires to assess cigarette exposure necessitates the use of biomarkers like thiocyanate which provide a definitive quantitative measure. Objective To assess the rise in the level of thiocyanate for measurement of smoking behaviour in adults. Materials and methods Serum and salivary thiocyanate levels were estimated in 20 non-smokers, 20 ex-smokers and 40 smokers. Smokers were divided into two groups based on the presence or absence of oral mucosal lesions. Results The mean serum and salivary thiocyanate levels were increased significantly in smokers when compared to non-smokers and ex-smokers. The levels were not significantly different between ex-smokers and non-smokers and between smokers with tobacco related oral mucosal lesions and those without. Statistically significant correlation was seen between the serum and salivary levels of thiocyanate. Conclusion This study highlights the high level of thiocyanate in the serum and saliva of smokers when compared to non-smokers and ex-smokers. Significant increase in thiocyanate level was also seen in saliva. Hence it can be stated that saliva can be used as a reliable, non-invasive tool to assess smoking behaviour in the population and its changes over time.


Objective: The aim of our study was to investigate the effect of decimeter waves on nerve healing in a rat peripheral nerve injury model.
Method: Twenty-four hours after the operation, the experimental group (40 rats) was treated with decimeter waves. Another 40 rats that did not undergo decimeter wave therapy were assigned as the control group. Gross and light microscopy assessments were performed on the 7th, 14th, 30th, 60th and 90th day after the operation. Electron microscopy analysis was performed on the 14th, 30th and 60th day. Axon image analysis and electrophysiological assessment of sciatic nerves were performed on the 90th day after the operation. Sciatic nerve function was evaluated using the walking track analysis on the 30th, 60th and 90th day after the operation.
Result: Histological analysis revealed that decimeter waves can increase local blood circulation, inhibit inflammation infiltration, and reduce perineural adhesions. Moreover, decimeter waves can promote axon regeneration and the remyelination of injured nerves, as well as the maturation of regenerated nerve structures. Electron microscopy, axon image, electrophysiological and walking track analyses revealed that the decimeter wave group had more myelinated nerve fiber counts, larger mean axon diameter and myelin sheath thickness, shorter latency of compound muscle action potential, faster nerve conduction velocity and higher wave amplitude, and better sciatic functional index recovery rates, when compared to the control group (all P<0.01).
Conclusion: Our findings suggest that decimeter waves can promote the regeneration of peripheral nerves and functional recovery after peripheral nerve injury. However, further studies are warranted.


Some products and services are perfect complements to technological devices, such as video games to video game consoles. We analyze how competition between two firms selling such devices is affected by the fact that they can retrieve revenue both from end-users and from firms selling complementary products. We show that non-exclusive complementary products weaken competition relative to when the products are exclusive. Furthermore, competition is less keen when the device producers have ineffi cient means for retrieving revenue from the seller side, compared to when they have effi cient means. Finally, we show that from the set of feasible strategies, the firms will always choose the socially optimal one. A novel finding is that at the consumer side there are brand specific adoption externalities also when the complementary products are non-exclusive.


Repetitive patterns are ubiquitous in natural and human-made objects, and can be created with a variety of tools and methods. Manual authoring provides unmatched degree of freedom and control, but can require significant artistic expertise and manual labor. Computational methods can automate parts of the manual creation process, but are mainly tailored for discrete pixels or elements instead of more general continuous structures. We propose an example-based method to synthesize continuous curve patterns from exemplars. Our main idea is to extend prior sample-based discrete element synthesis methods to consider not only sample positions (geometry) but also their connections (topology). Since continuous structures can exhibit higher complexity than discrete elements, we also propose robust, hierarchical synthesis to enhance output quality. Our algorithm can generate a variety of continuous curve patterns fully automatically. For further quality improvement and customization, we also present an autocomplete user interface to facilitate interactive creation and iterative editing. We evaluate our methods and interface via different patterns, ablation studies, and comparisons with alternative methods.


The pieces here span reflections on personal and collective identity, on home and family, on literature, language and politics, and on Achebe's lifelong attempt to reclaim the definition of 'Africa' for its own authorship. For the first thirty years of his life, before Nigeria's independence in 1960, Achebe was officially defined as a 'British Protected Person'. In "The Education of a British-Protected Child" he gives us a vivid, ironic and delicately nuanced portrait of growing up in colonial Nigeria and inhabiting its 'middle ground', interrogating both his happy memories of reading English adventure stories in secondary school and also the harsher truths of colonial rule.


Background The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) implemented a prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV infection programme in maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH) services in 2001 with nurses as key personnel. To date there is no information in the DRC and specifically in Kinshasa with respect to compliance with PMTCT national guidelines. Aim The study aimed at describing nurses' compliance with the PMTCT national guidelines in selected PMTCT sites of Kinshasa. Methods A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted in Kinshasa with 76 nurses in 18 selected PMTCT sites. The nurses' compliance with PMTCT national guidelines was assessed using a healthcare provider self-reporting questionnaire developed by the researchers. Results The study showed that the mean score of nurses' compliance with PMTCT national guidelines was 74% (95% CI: 69% – 78%) which progressively decreased and was significantly different across different MNCH services (p = 0.025). With respect to categories of PMTCT recommendations, nurses were compliant with those related to education in labour and delivery, and antenatal services. Sociodemographic characteristics such as training, length of service and category of nurses did not influence nurses' compliance score. Conclusion These findings showed that nurses were noncompliant with PMTCT national guidelines, with the score level being 80% or more in the three MNCH services/units. Improvement of nurses' 'compliance with the PMTCT national guidelines requires effective monitoring of full integration of PMTCT as routine activities in MNCH care.


Introduction and Objective: In Australia and overseas, use of complementary medicines (CMs) is high and there is an increasing amount of high-quality research available to support this use. Because of CM's popularity, medical practitioners are increasingly placed in a position of needing to be CM literate. Without active inquiry and involvement by medical practitioners regarding CM use, patients will continue to seek practices without appropriate medical guidance. However, despite growing expectations from patients, the level of, and need for, CM education within medical education (ME) in Australia is largely unknown. The objective of this study was to explore CM literacy education development in Australian medical curricula and generate theory about the processes involved. Methodology: This research utilised a constructivist grounded theory method. The theoretical framework, underpinned by symbolic interactionism and social constructivism, provided a rich and powerful means of understanding need for, and processes of, CM education through interpretations of core stakeholders' (medical students) curriculum experiences. Thirty medical students from metropolitan and rural campuses and clinical schools across the top 10 ranked Australian university medical schools in five states and one territory participated. Data were generated from 30 in-depth semi-structured one-on-one interviews with medical students, contemporaneous field notes and analytic theoretical memos. Data analysis was conducted concurrently and simultaneously with data generation so that theory construction was progressively guided by the data. Use of reflexive memos, theoretical sampling, the constant comparative method, data categorisation and finally, data abstraction, resulted in development of the constructivist grounded theory (CGT) for the topic of inquiry. Findings: In this study, the central problem is described as ensuring that medical students become CM literate while they undertake their ME. The basic social process (core category) constructed to deal with this problem is conceptualised as practical CM education development. Six interrelated categories represent various strategies participants identified. The first category, clarifying CM terminology ambiguity, explicates CM terminological difficulties, categorisations, and value implications intrinsic within medicine. The second category, exploring the extent of CM education, explores the scope of, and extent to which, Australian medical students are being educated about CMs in their curriculum. The third category, determining the need for CM education, highlights student-identified need for CM education in Australian medical schools. The fourth category, identifying key influences impacting on CM education, identifies key macro-level influences, including issues of socialisation and enculturation, as well as meso-level organisational factors found to impact CM teaching in medical curricula. The fifth category, identifying key facilitators enabling CM education, explicates key institutional enablers identified to facilitate CM education development in medical curricula in the Australian context. The final category, identifying baseline CM literacy educational needs, encompasses key elements of educational requirements and key strategies identified for integrating CM education in medical curricula. Conclusion: The CGT of practical CM education development offers a theoretical account of CM education development within medical curricula in Australia. The primary goal of CM education is not to create CM experts or practitioners, but rather to facilitate informed advisers. The dilemma facing many medical educators is how such information can be incorporated into an already dense curriculum. The CGT demonstrates that complex dynamics exist between socio-political expectations and ME realities that govern health care in practice. A collaborative and integrative approach to CM education is flexible, inclusive, and socially relevant, and has a substantial and far-reaching contribution to make to the quality of primary health care. The findings of the study contribute significantly towards a body of knowledge that may result in better educational reform and practice guidelines for medicine.


In a work that will significantly influence the political discussion with respect to race and class politics, one of the country's most influential sociologists focuses on the rising inequality in American society and the need for a progressive, multiracial political coalition to combat it. The culmination of decades of distinguished scholarship, "The Bridge over the Racial Divide" brilliantly demonstrates how political power is disproportionately concentrated among the most advantaged segments of society and how the monetary, trade, and tax policies of recent years have deepened this power imbalance. Developing his earlier views on race in contemporary society, William Julius Wilson gives a simple, straightforward, and crucially important diagnosis of the problem of rising social inequality in the United States and details a set of recommendations for dealing with it. Wilson argues that as long as middle- and working-class groups are fragmented along racial lines, they will fail to see how their combined efforts could change the political imbalance and thus promote policies that reflect their interests. He shows how a vision of American society that highlights racial differences rather than commonalities makes it difficult for Americans to see the need and appreciate the potential for mutual political support across racial lines. Multiracial political cooperation could be enhanced if we can persuade groups to focus more on the interests they hold in common, including overcoming stagnating and declining real incomes that relate to changes in the global economy, Wilson argues. He advocates a cross-race, class-based alliance of working-and middle-class Americans to pursue policies that will deal with the eroding strength of the nation's equalizing institutions, including public education, unions, and political structures that promote the interests of ordinary families. He also advocates a reconstructed 'affirmative opportunity' program that benefits African Americans without antagonizing whites. Using theoretical arguments and case studies, Wilson examines how a broad-based political constituency can be created, sustained, and energized. Bold, provocative, and thoughtful, "The Bridge over the Racial Divide" is an essential resource in considering some of the most pressing issues facing the American public today. This book is a copublication with the Russell Sage Foundation.


This book provides a comprehensive examination of Internet QoS theory, standards, vendor implementation and network deployment from the practitioner's point of view, including extensive discussion of related economic and regulatory issues. Written in a technology-light way so that a variety of professionals and researchers in the information and networking industries can easily grasp the material. Includes case studies based on real-world experiences from industry.

The author starts by discussing the economic, regulatory and technical challenges of the existing QoS model. Key coverage includes defining a clear business model for selling and buying QoS in relation to current and future direction of government regulation and QoS interoperability (or lack thereof) between carriers and networking devices. The author then demonstrates how to improve the current QoS model to create a clear selling point, less regulation uncertainty, and higher chance of deployment success. This includes discussion of QoS re-packaging to end-users; economic and regulatory benefits of the re-packaging; and the overall benefits of an improved technical approach. Finally, the author discusses the future evolution of QoS from an Internet philosophy perspective and lets the reader draw the conclusions.

This book is the first QoS book to provide in depth coverage on the commercial and regulatory aspects of QoS, in addition to the technical aspect. From that, readers can grasp the commercial and regulatory issues of QoS and their implications on the overall QoS business model. This book is also the first QoS book to provide case studies of real world QoS deployments, contributed by the people who did the actual deployments. From that, readers can grasp the practical issues of QoS in real world. This book is also the first QoS book to cover both wireline QoS and wireless QoS. Readers can grasp the QoS issues in the wireless world. The book was reviewed and endorsed by a long list of prominent industrial and academic figures.

* The only book to discuss QoS technology in relation to economic and regulatory issues
* Includes case studies based on real-world examples from industry practitioners.
* Provides unique insight into how to improve the current QoS model to create a clear selling point, less regulatory uncertainty, and higher chance of deployment success.


Learners' everyday ideas about energy often involve energy being "used up" or "wasted." In physics, the concept of energy degradation can connect those ideas to the principle of energy conservation. Learners' spontaneous discussions about aspects of energy degradation motivated us to introduce new learning goals into our K-12 teacher professional development courses. One of our goals is for learners to recognize that since energy degradation is associated with the movement of some quantity towards equilibrium, the identification of energy as degraded or free depends on the choice of the objects involved. Another goal is for learners to recognize that overall energy degradation occurs. We find that teachers' discussions contain productive ideas about energy degradation that demonstrate progress towards our goals. These include (1) the idea that degraded energy can be made useful and (2) the idea that making energy useful requires either effort or energy relocation.


Learning object categories from small samples is a challenging problem, where machine learning tools can in general provide very few guarantees. Exploiting prior knowledge may be useful to reproduce the human capability of recognizing objects even from only one single view. This paper presents an SVM-based model adaptation algorithm able to select and weight appropriately prior knowledge coming from different categories. The method relies on the solution of a convex optimization problem which ensures to have the minimal leave-one-out error on the training set. Experiments on a subset of the Caltech-256 database show that the proposed method produces better results than both choosing one single prior model, and transferring from all previous experience in a flat uninformative way.


Online hybrid (numerical/physical) dynamic substructuring simulations (HDS) on an as-built/isolated viaduct and on a petrochemical piping subject to non-stationary seismic loading have shown their potential for efficient realistic dynamic analysis of almost any type of structural system. Moreover, owing to ever faster and more accurate testing equipment, dynamic substructure coupling developed in mechanical engineering through a number of different offline experimental substructuring methods operating both in time, e.g. the impulse-based substructuring (IBS), and frequency domains. Numerous studies have dealt with the above-mentioned methods and with associated error/uncertainty propagations issues. Nonetheless, there is still a paucity of publications devoted to: i) the comparison of the performances of these methods from an error/uncertainty perspective; ii) the possibility of their exploitation in a complementary way to both improve and speed up the overall experiment/simulation. In this paper, we compare the performances of these methods including standard time integration schemes and the coupling algorithm of subdomains based on an advanced parallel finite element tearing interconnecting algorithm. Moreover, we include typical random uncertainties coming from devices and operators exploited in the analysed methods. linear systems point out that the HDS method exhibits better performances with respect to phase and energy errors whilst the IBS slightly prevails on coefficients of variation of coupling node displacements.


STUDY OF METHODS TO PREDICT VOLTAGE COLLAPSE by Niki Patel One of the problems that must be addressed for a secure power system operation is the voltage collapse problem. The ever increasing size and connectivity of the power grid have lead to making the problem more multifarious. Widespread blackouts, similar to the one that occurred in the northeast in August 2003, could result from failure to address the problem. This thesis presents an overview of the voltage collapse problem and reviews some existing methods to calculate voltage collapse indicators. Thevenin and Maximum Power Transfer Theorems are used to provide indicators of the proximity of the system to voltage collapse. The maximum power that could be transferred to a load node is predicted by these theorems and then the load at a load bus is gradually increased to determine the maximum constant power factor load that would result in voltage collapse. The limitations of the presented method are discussed and a framework for quantifying its effectiveness is presented. STUDY OF METHODS TO PREDICT VOLTAGE COLLAPSE


Violin vibrato is the action by which a violinist periodically changes the frequency of a sustained note by moving the finger on the string, rapidly backwards and forwards. If it is artistically applied, it adds life, character and warmth to an otherwise dull sounding note. Although it has been used since the sixteenth century, very little research has been done on the reason why humankind would experience such periodic fluctuations as an object of beauty in violin performance. In answering the question, this study explores a variety of angles of approach in order to understand the phenomenon in its full context. The history, development and geographical origin of the technique are firstly discussed in a diachronic fashion and provide the background for the subsequent synchronic research on the physical nature of violin sound and violin vibrato. The vibrato rates and widths of four virtuosi are measured and compared to highlight the differences and individuality which are argued to be a contributing factor to the perception of beauty of the technique. It is established in the final chapter that the brain is stimulated more by sounds with periodic changes than those that are presented in the steady-state which cast some light on why vibrato may be experienced as an appreciated addition to sound. The thesis aims to present a unique view on the possibilities of interdisciplinary research of the phenomenon of violin vibrato. It further aims to present the research findings in a concise, logical, and systematic manner that could be of interest to both musician and scientist.


Compared to studies evaluating the benefits from agricultural research, there are relatively few empirical studies of the net economic benefits of agricultural extension, and even fewer that consider both public and private sector extension effort. In this study we examine regional differences in the adoption of lupins in Western Australia (WA) in order to estimate the net economic benefits of public and private sector extension. Impacts of extension and other variables on adoption were analysed for 40 shires using multivariate regression analysis. The results suggest that both public and private extension activities influenced farmer uptake of lupins, particularly by bringing forward the start time of the diffusion curve. Economic benefits of extension, based on the statistical analysis, were combined with costs of extension estimated from public sector records and surveys of private sector extension agents and used to estimate the net present value of extension investments by the public and private sectors in the study area.


Rather than analysing European academic cooperation and mobility for their own sake, the following pages try to set interuniversity developments in their historical context, as higher education is but one area where political and economic change press for transformation – often in ways similar to the evolution existing in other fields of social service, be they private or public. As a powerhouse of knowledge, the university should be able to make sense of social change and scientific development. Has it managed to do so over the last fifty years, thus contributing to the cultural and economic integration of Europe? Considering the complexity of the influences that shaped university life since World War II, this paper tracks facts and trends from a personal point of view, that of an historian and 26 year administrator of the NGO set up to develop the European dimension of higher education. This NGO was known as the CRE from 1959 to 2001, and is now the European University Association.


Abstract. Wetlands are important players in the Earth climate system because of their effect on ecosystems, river discharge, water quality, and through their feedback effects on atmosphere by increasing methane emission and evapotranspiration. Many datasets have been developed for open water and wetland mapping, based on three main methods: (i) compiling national/regional wetland maps; (ii) identifying inundated areas by satellite imagery; (iii) delineating wetlands as areas with shallow water table depths. There is a massive disagreement, however, between the resulting wetland extent estimates (from 3 to 21 % of the land surface area). To reconcile these differences, we propose composite wetland (CW) maps consisting of two classes of wetlands: (1) regularly flooded wetlands (RFWs) which are obtained by overlapping selected open-water and inundation datasets, and cover 9.7 % of the land surface area; (2) scattered groundwater wetlands (SGWs), derived either from direct groundwater modelling or simplified modelling based on the topographic index (TI), using several variants. In this framework, wetlands are defined as zones that are either inundated or where the groundwater is sufficiently close to the surface to maintain near saturated soil surface. By combining RFW and different SGW maps, seven CW maps are generated, which correspond to contemporary potential wetlands, i.e. the areas that would turn into actual wetlands under the present climate assuming no human influence. They are produced at the 15 arc-sec resolution (almost 500 m at the Equator) using geographic information system (GIS) tools. Two CW maps, showing the best overall match with the available evaluation datasets, are eventually selected. Wetlands in these maps respectively cover 21.1 and 21.6 % of the global land area, which is in the high end of the literature range, along with recent estimates also recognizing the contribution of groundwater-driven wetlands. The two proposed composite maps agree massively about six major wetland hotspots, which include 75 % of the global wetlands, and concentrate in the boreal, tropical, and coastal zones. The high wetland density in the tropics is brought by the SGWs, which allows detecting wetlands under dense canopy and cloud cover. Another major feature of the two CW maps, brought by the SGWs and the high resolution of the maps, is the identification of many small and scattered wetlands, which cover less than 5 % of the land area, but are very important for hydrological and ecological functioning in temperate to arid areas. By distinguishing the RFWs and SGWs globally based on uniform principles, we eventually propose a simple wetland classification focused on hydrologic functioning, believed to be very useful for large-scale land surface modelling.


A novel lensed fiber employing a wedge-shaped graded-index fiber (GIF) is proposed. The characteristic of coupling loss as a function of the aspect ratio is numerically investigated. When the aspect ratio is seven, the coupling loss of a wedge-shaped GIF and a conventional wedge-shaped SMF are 0.22 dB and 0.60 dB, respectively, and when the aspect ratio is 13, they are 0.5 dB and 2.4 dB. The tolerance to laser diode (LD)-fiber displacement is also numerically investigated, and it is confirmed that the proposed fiber has larger tolerance than a conventional wedge-shaped single-mode fiber (SMF). The performance of the new lensed fiber is also experimentally verified.


This research investigates relationships between unoccupied classroom acoustical conditions and elementary student achievement. Acoustical measurements were gathered in all of the third and fifth-grade school classrooms (67 total) in a public school district in north-eastern Nebraska, USA. Traditional classroom acoustic parameters, including background noise level and reverberation time, have been correlated to the standardized achievement test scores from students in the surveyed classrooms. Binaural impulse response measurements were also conducted in a subset of the rooms (20 total) and correlated to the student achievement scores. Acoustical metrics calculated from the binaural impulse response measurements include speech transmission index, distortion of frequency-smoothed magnitude, interaural cross-correlations, and interaural level differences. The results from this research indicate that scores on fifth-grade student language and reading subject areas are negatively correlated to higher unoccupie...


The WorldWide Web is changing the nature of software development to a distributive plug & play process. This requires a new way of managing software by so-called intelligent software brokers. The aim of the European IBROW3 project is to develop an intelligent brokering service that enables third party knowledge-component reuse through the WorldWide Web. Suppliers provide libraries of knowledge components adhering to some standard, and customers can consult these libraries { through intelligent brokers { to conngure a knowledge system suited to their needs by selection and adaptation. IBROW3 integrates research on heterogeneous databases, interoper-ability and web technology with knowledge-system technology and ontologies. The aim is to develop a broker that can handle web requests for classes of knowledge system (e.g. diagnostic systems) by accessing libraries of reusable problem-solving methods on the Web, and selecting, adapting and connguring these methods in accordance with the domain at hand. 1 The aim of this paper is to give a general overview of the project and to presents its main ideas and approach. IBROW3 has started on January 1, 1998 and thus we can only present preliminary results.


Since the 18 C, when violin first started to be played in the Ottoman Empire, a number of changes have been made to its tuning process. This need for different tuning has been discussed both by musicologists and violinists but a general consensus explaining its reasons has not been reached. Therefore, the aim of the current article is to determine the past and present tuning practices employed in Turkish music violin playing and to reveal the positive and negative aspects of each of the types of tuning in relation to the performance of the violinists. To achieve these goals a screening model was adopted in the study. To determine the tuning processes followed in the past available relevant publications as well as existing documents (e.g., voice recordings) were scrutinised; while for the identification of the current practices a questionnaire including open ended items was e-mailed to five prominent Turkish music violinists. All of the performers filled in and sent the questionnaire including their views back. The findings of the study show that since the 18 C four different types of violin tuning have been used in the Ottoman-Turkish society. The results also reveal a number of significant reasons for the different tuning traditions in our culture.


Care drain brings the traditional problem of carers' choice between paid work and family at a new level. Taking care drain from Romania as a case study, I analyse the consequences of parents' migration within a normative framework committed to meeting the needs of vulnerable individuals. The temporary migration of parents who cannot take their children with them involves moral harm, particularly the frustration of children's developmental and emotional needs. I use recent feminist work on justice and care in the economy to address the question whose responsibility it is to fill the void of care created by temporary migration. I argue that the moral issues raised by care drain are also issues of social justice and therefore call for rectification by the states involved.


Th is article describes the systematic examination and membership con- sultation process undertaken to defi ne evaluation within the Canadian context. To that end, the article (a) presents the fi ndings from a literature scan and analysis of social media postings, (b) considers the outcomes of the audience discussion during the presentation at the 2013 Canadian Evaluation Society conference, and (c) off ers ideas for next steps. Together, the literature scan results, social media analysis, and membership discussion reveal that no single defi nition currently exists. Further, there are indications that a shared defi nition would be diffi cult to achieve within the Canadian evaluation community. Among the potential implications discussed is that a single defi nition might restrict or oversimplify the current scope of practice, given the wide range of contexts and purposes for evaluation in Canada.


The reinvention of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods and their implementation within the Bayesian framework in the early 1990s has established the Bayesian approach as one of the standard methods within the applied quantitative sciences. Their extensive use in complex real life problems has lead to the increased demand for a friendly and easily accessible software, which implements Bayesian models by exploiting the possibilities provided by MCMC algorithms. WinBUGS is the software that covers this increased need. It is the Windows version of BUGS (Bayesian inference using Gibbs sampling) package appeared in the mid‐1990s. It is a free and a relatively easy tool that estimates the posterior distribution of any parameter of interest in complicated Bayesian models. In this article, we present an overview of the basic features of WinBUGS, including information for the model and prior specification, the code and its compilation, and the analysis and the interpretation of the MCMC output. Some simple examples and the Bayesian implementation of the Lasso are illustrated in detail. WIREs Comp Stat 2011 3 385–396 DOI: 10.1002/wics.176


"Thai transcript of tape recording and English translation of Salākkaphat Ceremony at Wat Com Cāēng; lay leader 'chanting' in formalized northern Thai; monk gives sermon; Truatnām chant, Thai style; Salākkaphat Ceremony at Wat Sitthimongkhon; Khaen music; young monk gives sermon; abbot explains ceremony; blessing given. From Field notebooks, Sept. 26, 1967, regarding the Wat Com Cāēng ceremony: ""Some chanting had been going on when we arrived but I was too disoriented to get it recorded. However, once back in the center, I started recording in the midst of a layman's chant of presentation of the gifts. This was done in formalized northern Thai. This was followed by another person (monk?) whom I could not see because he was sitting behind a post. He was also chanting in formal northern Thai. During this chant a layman took a bāt or monk's alms bowl and filled it with slips on which numbers were written. These numbers corresponded to the numbers attached to each offering. The bāt was passed to each monk and novice who selected a slip (cap salāk (จบสลาก). One monk then followed around with a notebook and wrote the name of the monk, his wat, and the number he selected. After all the monks and novices had selected their numbers several lay leaders also took numbers. During the course of the ceremony firecrackers were set off. When the chanting ended, chimes were struck. Then the monks chanted their official acceptance of the offering. This chant was in the northern Thai form (suat kammuang). This was followed by a chant by the chief layman in formalized northern Thai. Then there was a short introductory suat by the chief monk and then the truat nām in Thai style chanting by all the monks."" From Sept. 30, 1967: ""When we arrived, people were bringing the salāk gifts into the wihān (this wait has no bōt). Monks were still gathering in the kuthi and children were playing around the wat grounds. In the kuthi a police Capt. Soem Waidī (นายรอยตำรวจเอกเสรมไหวด) was playing central Thai music on an instrument something like a sitar called a khīm (ขม). Mr. Soem said that the instrument was of Chinese origin and that the wood of the instrument also came from China. Below the kuthi children were playing with long drums and gongs [recorded both music, especially that of the khīm]."" ... ""During the preparations in the beginning part of the services a layman passed through the congregation making notes on who came to make merit and what the gifts were. The ceremony proper was as follows. 1. The abbot from Wat Com Cāēng led the congregation in a responsive chant. 2. The chief layman chanted the formal opening. 3. The abbot of Wat Com Cāēng led the congregation in the Namo, etc. 4. The layman then made the formal presentation of the offerings. Where as before he had been seated facing the monks, he now faced the Buddha images. He read first from a khoi manuscript and then from a sheet of paper. His presentation was done in formal northern Thai used in religious services. 5. A young monk took the sermon chair and the lay reader moved to sit in front of him. The lay reader requested a sermon. The monk gave a sermon in Central Thai. Although he held a palm-leaf manuscript, he did not read from it, but recited instead from memory. As he said during the sermon this was his first sermon. His nervousness certainly showed it. 6. The abbot of Wat Sithimongkhon took the sermon chair, but did not give a sermon (nor did he sit in the preaching position, rather he sat as a Westerner might with his feet on the ground). He gave a brief description of the ceremony and thanked people, including ourselves, for attending. 7. The monks chanted the formal gratitude. 8. The monks chanted the truatnām.
The layman began to call out the numbers of the gifts and the monks and wats to whom they should be given (the monks had chosen their salāk in the kuthi). As each offering was called out it was set in front of the monk – recipient and the donor sat in front of him to receive the blessing. As the monk gave the blessing he would pour water into a container similar in manner to the pouring of water in the truatnām. Once all the offerings had been distributed the ceremony was over.
[I recorded all of the ceremony except parts 7 and 8 which I was unable to record because the batteries had given out and had to be changed.]"""


Gamification is the new trend that has been speedily expanding over the past few years and still developing in various fields including tourism, especially in marketing. Despite that, information about the effectiveness of tourism gamification applications in motivating and engaging the customers is limited. This study provides a quantitative exploration of the consumers' perception towards using gamification applications on tourism websites. It examines its effectiveness from the customers' perspective as a marketing strategy applied by tourism websites to engage customers. Findings show that gamification cannot yet be considered an effective strategy for engaging customers with tourism websites from the customers' perspective due to the low level of participation in gamification activities on tourism websites, the big percentage of customers unaware of its existence on tourism websites and the opinion of both those who use it and those who do not concerning its efficiency in engaging customers with tourism websites.


Understanding the factors that determine the military burdens in developing economies is an important area of research. Previous research has suggested that to understand the dynamics of the relationship between military burden and economic and strategic factors requires detailed case studies. This article provides an analysis of the South African experience, a particularly valuable case study given the importance of the military sector to the apartheid system, the marked reductions in military spending that have taken place under the new government and the availability of good time-series data. A detailed analysis of the trends in military spending and the changing structure of government spending over the past 40 years is undertaken. A simple model based on a general theory of the demand for military spending provides the basis for an investigation of the relative importance of strategic and other social and economic factors, and is found to perform surprisingly well. The results of the regression analysis suggest that the trends in South Africa's military spending (for the period 1963-97) could be explained as an autoregressive process in military burden conditioned on a number of country-specific strategic factors. Imposition of the mandatory UN arms embargo in 1977 and the change in regime in 1994 had significant negative impacts, while involvement in the Angolan War and the early years of the Republic had positive impacts.


We investigate the relationship between precipitation and runoff data from a small forested catchment in the Harz mountains (Germany). For this purpose, we develop a conceptual model including memory effects to predict the runoff signal using the precipitation data as input. An enhanced variant of the model also includes air temperature as input variable. We show in terms of correlation functions that this model describes the main dynamical properties of the runoff, especially the delay between rain event and runoff response as the annual persistence in the runoff data.


Kapuas river which run in the middle of the city of Pontianak, known as the longest river in Indonesia. It has economic function significantly, and also historically site, is the origin site of Malay culture at Pontianak. However, urban development is mostly puts emphasize on economic aspect are mostly neglect cultural as well ecological aspects on that riparian. The study objectives are to develope Kapuas River Corridor as tourism area, mainly as local cultural tourism activities. Scoring and spatial methods were develop to analyzed cultural, economic and physical aspect of the sites. 133,4 Ha was deliniated as cultural tourictic area. East Pontianak, which beginning site of Malay culture in city Pontianak, has the highest cultural values and was planning the center of main cultural tourism. Interpretation cultural tourism paths was design to explain cultural message of the planned area. To conserve the local cultural touristic area, some integrated programs are developed to increase public and local goverment participation.


Given the increased penetration of smart grid technologies, distribution system operators are obliged to consider in their planning stage both the increased uncertainty introduced by non-dispatchable distributed energy resources, as well as the operational flexibility provided by new real-time control schemes. First, in this paper, a planning procedure is proposed which considers both traditional expansion measures, e.g. upgrade of transformers, cables, etc., as well as real-time schemes, such as active and reactive power control of distributed generators, use of battery energy storage systems and flexible loads. At the core of the proposed decision making process lies a tractable iterative AC optimal power flow method. Second, to avoid the need for a real-time centralised coordination scheme (and the associated communication requirements), a local control scheme for the operation of individual distributed energy resources and flexible loads is extracted from offline optimal power flow computations. The performance of the two methods is demonstrated on a radial, low-voltage grid, and compared to a standard local control scheme.


A group D MAPK suppresses herbivore oviposition-induced ethylene and nitric oxide, thereby protecting rice plants from autotoxicity but reducing resistance to herbivory. The mechanisms by which plants activate and enhance defense responses have been well studied; however, the regulatory mechanisms that allow plants to avoid excessive defense responses are poorly understood. Here, we identified a group D mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) gene from rice (Oryza sativa), OsMAPK20-5, whose expression was rapidly induced by infestation of gravid female adults of a destructive rice pest, brown planthopper (BPH, Nilaparvata lugens), but not by BPH nymphs. Expression silencing of OsMAPK20-5 (irMAPK) increased the accumulation of ethylene and nitric oxide (NO) after gravid female BPH infestation, and thereby increased rice plant resistance to BPH adults and oviposited eggs. However, when exposed to high densities of gravid BPH females, irMAPK plants wilted earlier than wild-type plants, which could be attributed to the hyperaccumulation of ethylene and NO in irMAPK plants. Interestingly, when released into the field, irMAPK plants displayed broad resistance to BPH and white-backed planthopper (Sogatella furcifera), the two most destructive pests of rice, and produced higher yield. Taken together, our study shows that although OsMAPK20-5 can reduce the resistance of rice plants to planthoppers, it also enables rice plants to control excessive defense responses and thereby prevents defense-response–related autotoxicity.


This paper presents the insights gained from the use of data mining and multivariate statistical techniques to identify important factors associated with a country's competitiveness and the development of knowledge discovery in databases (KDD) models to predict it. In addition to stepwise regression and weighted non-linear programming techniques, intelligent learning techniques (artificial neural networks), and inferential techniques (classification and regression trees), were applied to a dataset of 43 countries from the World Competitiveness Yearbook (WCY). The dataset included 55 variables on economic, internationalization, governmental, financial, infrastructure, management, science and technology, as well as demographic and cultural characteristics. Exploratory data analysis and parameter calibration of the intelligent method architectures preceded the development and evaluation of reasonably accurate models (mean absolute error <5.5%), and subsequent out-of-sample validations. The strengths and weaknesses of each of the KDD techniques were assessed, along with their relative performance and the primary input variables influencing a country's competitiveness. Our analysis reveals that the primary drivers of competitiveness are lower country risk rating and higher computer usage, in entrepreneurial urbanized societies with less male dominance and basic infrastructure, with higher gross domestic investment, savings and private consumption, more imports of goods and services than exports, increased purchase power parity GDP, larger and more productive but not less expensive labor force, and higher R&D expenditures. Without diminishing the role and importance of WCY reports, our approach can be useful to estimate the competitiveness of many countries not included in WCY, while our findings may benefit policy makers and international agencies to expand their own abilities, insights and establish priorities for improving country competitiveness. 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.


According to the methodology of the mass of research the efficiency of punishment measures was evaluated by applying the criterions of recidivism rates and economic costs, thus the aim of the article is to consider the success of such an evaluation, to point out the main difficulties and to assess the utility of such an evaluation. The analysis was conducted by using the logic systemitic, comparative historical and meta – analysis methods. The findings of this dissection allows to draw a conclusion that the evaluation by applying the criterions of recidivism rates and economic costs is not functional and for evaluation of the efficiency of punishment measures the more appropriate criterion must be determined. So by this article it was seeked to reveal a more appropriate criterion for evaluation of efficiency wherefore the possibility to evaluate the efficiency of punishment measures by using the criterion of human resources was examined. The incarceration influence inmates psychological wellbeing by causing negative outcomes and impending the rehabilitation of such persons. The mentioned results of the influence of the incarceration are undesirable by sentencing to imprisonment, therefore the state has a duty to apply different measures in order to avoid or at least to diminish such results. So one constituent of the criterion of human resources is the measurement of the impact, which incarceration causes to inmates psychological well-being and which can be changed by applying different measures. The psychological well-being of inmates compose such constituents as human privacy, safety, social motivation and so on, which can be changed by measures lessening victimization of inmates, getting more dates with family members, participating in the social reintegration programs, organizing more social activity and so on. By analyzing the results of different research, which aim was to reveal out the possibility to change the influence of incarceration to inmates psychological well-being by practising different measures, the author attempts to exemplify the possibility to evaluate the efficiency of punishment measures by using the criterion of human resources, specifically, by using the criterion of results, which punishment measure causes to a sentenced person.


Background: Health care workers are at high risk of job-related blood-borne diseases due to needlestick injuries (NSIs). Objective: To assess the risk factors associated with NSIs among health care workers in Menoufia governorate, Egypt. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 2260 health care workers of 4 randomly chosen hospitals in Menoufia governorate. Using a predesigned data collection sheet, all staff members were asked about the occurrence of NSIs in the previous 3 months. The response rate was 95.3%. Logistic regression analysis was used to assess the factors associated with NSIs. Results: The risk of NSIs significantly increased with duration of work <15 years (OR 2.19, 95% CI 1.81 to 2.66), being female (OR 1.89, 95% CI 1.56 to 2.29), working as a para-medic (OR 1.49, 95% CI 1.03 to 2.25), working in surgical ward (OR 4.11, 95% CI 1.71 to 9.88), having more than 2 night shifts/month (OR 1.75, 95% CI 1.28 to 2.39), absence of educational sessions (OR 1.99, 95% CI 1.45 to 2.73), absence of hospital policies for NSIs (OR 2.23, 95% CI 1.99 to 2.49), absence of universal precautions (OR 1.66, 95% CI 1.10 to 2.50), recapping the needle after use (OR 2.63, 95% CI 2.12 to 3.26), recapping the needle with two hands (OR 3.08, 95% CI 2.04 to 4.65), not using protective clothes (OR 1.39, 95% CI 1.04 to 1.85), and increased working hours—8–12 hours (OR 2.14, 95% CI 1.34 to 3.44) and >12 hours (OR 2.28, 95% CI 1.17 to 4.44). Conclusion: The risk of NSIs is still high among health care workers that underlines the importance of comprehensive educational sessions to decrease the risk of job-related blood-borne diseases.


Insight has been found to be an integral component that ensures success in most psychiatry treatment. It appears that, the more the client can understand the cause of the illness, the greater their chances of resolving their unpleasant experience. Insight-oriented psychotherapy is a client-centred therapy, a talk therapy that guides clients toward developing and understanding of self. It assumes that the client is healthy and their problem is a result of faulty-thinking. This study focused on testing the efficacy of insight oriented therapy in improving participants' level of illness awareness. Forty three (43) inpatients from a federal government mental health facility were purposively selected based on referrals for individualized insight oriented therapy for a 12-session program. Participants responded to Beck Cognitive Insight Scale prior and after intervention (pre-posttest).The participants were made up of 23 males and 20 females with an average age of 32.21 9.31 who entered therapy session upon referrals. The results revealed that insight oriented therapy had a significant impact on the level of the study sample's insight [ t(42)= 47.429 p<.01]. Conclusively, insight oriented therapy has been found in this study to be efficacious in the management of patient with poor insight. Authors suggested that more clinical trials should be carried out to test It's efficacy in larger samples and with control samples.


The purpose of this research is to study the role of the trade fairs in the firms' marketing communication mix at the present as well as in the future. Furthermore, the study explores the reasons trade fairs are used, how they support the companies' relationship building process and how other marketing communication tools are used to support their fair participation. First, the thesis discusses what is trade fairs role as part of the firms' marketing communication now and in the future. Second, processes that lead to successful trade fair participation are described. This is important, as none of the previous research has integrated the different processes needed in the successful trade fair participation. More specifically, this research looks for the critical processes that have input on successful trade fair participation taking into consideration the on-going and sequential nature of the processes. Data for this study was gathered from qualitative semi-structured interviews. Twenty-one firms were interviewed from top management level executives representing different fields of businesses for this study. The companies and the executives were chosen from the client base of the Finnish Fair Corporation. The data analysis followed the principles of Straussian grounded theory where analytic coding was used. The grounded theory method was suitable for getting insights into the role of fairs as part of the firms marketing communications now and in the future, and more knowledge about the overall fair participation process in order to elaborate the theory. The interviewees were given latitude to express their opinions freely and spontaneously. The theoretical framework was built from the researcher's collection and analysis of data through the researcher's perceptions and past work experiences to increase understanding of the phenomenon and give guide to action. The results indicate that trade fairs have a significant role in the firms' marketing mix. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to understand the different processes linked to the trade fair participation in order to reach the best possible results. In this study, four essential processes are identified: 1) planning and execution, 2) human resources, 3) marketing communication, and 4) evaluation and control that are interconnected and in use at different time frames such as pre-fair, at-fair and post-fair. The two most critical processes according to the research material are 'planning and execution' and 'human resources' processes. Indeed, successful exhibitors plan carefully their exhibition participation and the best exhibitors recruit the most suitable persons to take care of the whole integrated exhibition process – without forgetting the importance of marketing and evaluation. This research has provided both a new integrated conceptual framework and some useful empirical results that can help to understand, assess and improve the processes of the trade fair participation.


In a study of resistance to powdery mildew, we investigated three populations of Hordeum spontaneum using leaf segment test. For comparison of the reactions, we used 44 barley lines as differentials representing most of the resistance used in barley breeding. The H. spontaneum accessions were infected with 21 isolates selected for their reactions on the differential barleys. The results of H. spontaneum collections did not show any similarities with differential barleys used. Resistance reactions were very rare. There was no resistance to 13 out of the 21 isolates. Horizontal resistance was noticed in most of H. spontaneum lines.


LiDAR systems become more and more popular because of the potential use for obtaining the point clouds of vegetation and manmade objects on the earth surface in an accurate and quick way. Nowadays, these airborne systems have been frequently used in wide range of applications such as DEM/DSM generation, topographic mapping, object extraction, vegetation mapping, 3 dimensional (3D) modelling and simulation, change detection, engineering works, revision of maps, coastal management and bathymetry. The 3D building model generation is the one of the most prominent applications of LiDAR system, which has the major importance for urban planning, illegal construction monitoring, 3D city modelling, environmental simulation, tourism, security, telecommunication and mobile navigation etc. The manual or semi-automatic 3D building model generation is costly and very time-consuming process for these applications. Thus, an approach for automatic 3D building model generation is needed in a simple and quick way for many studies which includes building modelling. In this study, automatic 3D building models generation is aimed with airborne LiDAR data. An approach is proposed for automatic 3D building models generation including the automatic point based classification of raw LiDAR point cloud. The proposed point based classification includes the hierarchical rules, for the automatic production of 3D building models. The detailed analyses for the parameters which used in hierarchical rules have been performed to improve classification results using different test areas identified in the study area. The proposed approach have been tested in the study area which has partly open areas, forest areas and many types of the buildings, in Zekeriyakoy, Istanbul using the TerraScan module of TerraSolid. The 3D building model was generated automatically using the results of the automatic point based classification. The obtained results of this research on study area verified that automatic 3D building models can be generated successfully using raw LiDAR point cloud data. * Corresponding author


In the first half of the 1980s a succession of high profile and deeply controversial trials took place in Northern Ireland on the evidence of 'supergrasses' from loyalist and republican paramilitary organisations prepared to betray large numbers of their former alleged confederates in return for immunity from prosecution or lenient sentences and new identities outside Northern Ireland. This, the first thoroughly-researched book-length study of this process, not only carefully documents the central trials - some of which were larger than any other criminal proceedings in the UK or Ireland - but also opens a rare window on the highly secret world of the terrorist groups concerned. The origins of the supergrass system are traced through the complex web of intelligence gathering and counter-terrorist policy in Northern Ireland, and the broader criminal justice and criminological issues are fully explored. The author also compares and contrasts the failure of the supergrass experiment in Northern Ireland with its much more successful counterparts in England, the United States, Italy and Germany, and considers why France and Spain chose not to go down the supergrass path. The publication of this book could hardly be more timely. Northern Ireland is once again at the top of the political agenda in the United Kingdom and Ireland, and the recent ceasefires have ensured that the Troubles are the focus of renewed international attention. The need for strong due process rights in the criminal justice system as part of an overall settlement of the Ulster conflict is firmly underlined, and the study adds further support to the case for more effective mechanisms of public accountability over policing and intelligence-gathering in liberal democracies generally.


Objective. In this paper we explore the effects of symbolic racism on the intended vote choice of whites by examining a white-on-black statewide election. It is argued that symbolic racial attitudes will be activated in a white-on-black election simply because of the mere presence of a black candidate. Methods. The white prospective vote for a white racially conservative candidate is examined using survey data from the 1995 Louisiana gubernatorial runoff conducted by the University of New Orleans Survey Research Center. Results. Symbolic racism was a strong predictor of intended vote choice, even after controlling for partisan identification and self-identified political philosophy. Conclusions. Racial attitudes remain an important predictor of vote choice in the South, even when racial issues are not directly raised in an election campaign. More generally, our findings point to the continuing centrality of race and racial attitudes in the South, and specifically their role in the increase in Republican voting for subpresidential contests in the 1990s