The formula is derived for the electric force inside a uniformly charged spherical body, as well as for the Coulomb force between the charged bodies from the standpoint of the model of the vacuum field with charged particles. The parameters of the fluxes of charged particles are estimated, including the energy density, energy flux and cross section of interaction with the charged matter. The energy density of gravitons in the Le Sage's gravitation model is expressed in terms of the strong gravitational constant. The charge to mass ratio is determined for the charged particles that make up photons and the charged component of the gravitational field. These particles are identified as praons, while the praon level of matter is considered a lower level relative to the nucleon level of matter. The analysis of the main problems of the Le Sage's model shows that these problems can be eliminated in the modernized model.


Software security and privacy issues regularly grab headlines amid fears of identity theft, data breaches, and threats to security. Policymakers have responded with a variety of approaches to combat such risk. Suggested measures include promulgation of strict rules, enactment of open-ended standards, and, at times, abstention in favor of allowing market forces to intervene. This Note lays out the basis for understanding how both policymakers and engineers should proceed in an increasingly software-dependent society. After explaining what distinguishes software-based systems from other objects of regulation, this Note argues that policymakers should pursue standards-based approaches to regulating software security and privacy. Although engineers may be more comfortable dealing with strict rules, this Note explains why both policymakers and engineers benefit from pursuing standards over rules. The nature of software development prevents engineers from ever guaranteeing security and privacy, but with an effective regulatory standards framework complemented by engineers' technical expertise, heightened security, and privacy protections can benefit society.


The adsorption energies of small molecules in nanoporous materials are often determined by isotherm measurements. The nature of the interaction and the response of the host material, however, can best be studied by spectroscopic methods. We show here that infrared absorption and Raman spectroscopy measurements together with density functional theory calculations, utilizing the novel van der Waals density functional vdW-DF, constitute a powerful approach to studying the weak van der Waals interactions associated with the incorporation of small molecules in these materials. In particular, we show how vdW-DF assists the interpretation of the vibrational spectroscopy data to uncover the binding sites and energies of these molecules, including the subtle dependence on loading of the IR asymmetric stretch mode of CO2 when adsorbed in MOF-74–Mg. To gain a better understanding of the adsorption mechanism of CO2 in MOF-74–Mg, the results are compared with CO within MOF-74–Mg.


Tony Richardson"s 1963 film Tom Jones contains an image not explicitly authorized by Fielding"s novel: Tom, with a noose around his neck, being hanged. Fortuitously, he is rescued by Squire Western before gravity takes its toll. Although consistent with other dark film comedies of the 1960s, this image also has considerable basis in the text. Fielding begins the seventeenth book of Tom Jones by putting a hypothetical noose on his hero. With Tom imprisoned, charged with murder, and Sophia Western recaptured by her father, Fielding contemplates an ending for the novel:


The early years of childhood are critical for optimal development of a variety of skills. The accurate and efficient identification of potential delays in, or issues with child development, is essential in identifying those children most in need of early intervention services. Screening procedures are designed to identify children who appear at risk for these delays or issues, with the children then more completely and comprehensively evaluated. Unfortunately, screening procedures during the preschool years remain nonsystematic, inefficient, and/or prohibitively expensive. This is especially unfortunate in that the data clearly suggest that children with developmental issues or delays who are identified early and begin receiving appropriate intervention services demonstrate a number of gains and advantages over their peers who do not participate in such programs. Specific barriers to more widespread and systematic screening procedures include the nation's increasing cultural and linguistic diversity, increasing socio-economic status diversity, limited access to such systematic sources of screening such as medical services and child care centers, and high costs of screening procedures administered by professionals. A promising alternative to professional screening is the use of parent-completed screening questionnaires.


Objective: To investigate the nature and importance of blood glucose abnormalities in an unselected heart failure (HF) population. Design: Cohort study. Setting: Urban University hospital. Patients: All index emergency HF admissions to one University hospital during the year 2000 were studied. Results: 454 consecutive index admissions had blood chemistry, diabetic status and follow-up information recorded. 390 (86%) patients had an echocardiogram, of whom 117 (30%) had preserved left ventricular systolic function and 110 (24%) had diabetes. Sixty (13%) patients had abnormal glucose tolerance (8.0–10.99 mmol/l), and 284 (63%) patients had a normal admission blood glucose (<8 mmol/l). 51 (11.2%) patients died in hospital. After adjustment for other prognostic attributes, abnormal glucose tolerance (Cox hazard ratio HR, 95% CI: 5.920, 1.03 to 34.00; p = 0.046) but not diabetes (HR 3.46, 0.75 to 16.02; p = 0.112) predicted in-hospital mortality. During follow-up (median 812 (range 632–978) days), 104 (36.6%), 30 (50.0%) and 55 (50%) patients with a normal admission blood glucose concentration, abnormal glucose tolerance and diabetes, respectively, died (log rank test p = 0.0037, adjusted p = 0.075). Compared with patients with normal admission blood glucose, abnormal glucose tolerance (adjusted HR: 1.41 (0.92 to 2.16); p = 0.12) and diabetes (adjusted HR: 2.02 (1.41 to 2.88); p = 0.0001) predicted mortality. Considering glucose on admission as a continuous covariate, a 2 mmol/l increase was associated with a HR of 1.08 (1.03 to 1.13), p = 0.0010, which after adjustment for the above covariates became 1.08 (1.03 to 1.13), p = 0.0023. Conclusions: Admission blood glucose concentration and diabetes are prognostically important in HF and could help target some patients for more intensive therapy.


 Abstract —In recent years, interest in parent-guided English education for young children has been steadily rising in South Korea. The use of various types of media as a tool for English education at home has also been attracting increased notice. Based on past research findings regarding the impact of socioeconomic variables on the overall attainment of English education, the present study examined the use of English educational media at home by family capital in South Korea. A total of 1,802 cases from the third wave data of the Panel Study on Korean Children (PSKC) were used for analysis. The average age of the children was 26.25 months. Descriptive statistical analysis and logistic regression analysis were conducted. For financial capital, monthly income level did not have a significant effect on the use of English educational media at home. For human capital, mother's education level and age significantly affected the use of English educational media such as books and audio & CDs; father's education level and age had an effect on the use of video & DVDs for English education. For social capital, the rate of using English books and audio & CDs at home was higher in suburban regions than in urban regions. This study is meaningful in that it examines the use of English educational media at home among young children, which has been rarely


Introduction: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the primary cause of morbidity and premature mortality in chronic kidney disease (CKD). The transcription factor 7-like 2 (TCF7L2) gene product TCF4 is a transcription factor that acts as a downstream effector in the canonical Wnt signaling pathway and may be important in the development of both type 2 diabetes and renal development and disease. It is, therefore, plausible that mutations in this gene could manifest themselves in reduced kidney function or kidney disease through their effects on hyperglycemia as well as independent of this mechanism. The ATP2B1 gene encodes the plasma membrane calcium ATPase isoform 1, which removes bivalent calcium ions from eukaryotic cells against very large concentration gradients and is responsible for controlling the contraction and dilation of vascular smooth muscles. Aim and Objectives: The aims of this study are (1) to evaluate single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of TCF7L2 gene as cardiovascular risk predictors in CKD and (2) to evaluate SNPs of ATP2B1 gene as cardiovascular risk predictors in CKD. Subjects and Methods: Fifty clinically diagnosed CKD patients in the age group between 20 and 60 years of both genders were selected as cases and fifty healthy participants from the master health checkup department were selected as controls. Genomic DNA was extracted based on the spin column kit method. The DNA samples were stored at −20°C until analysis. Genotyping for TCF7L2 gene rs7903146 (C/T) and ATP2B1 gene rs11105354 (A/G) was carried out through polymerase chain reaction. Results: T allele frequency was observed in 12 controls and 23 cases (odds ratio [OR] = 2.2, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.0–4.7). CC genotype was observed in 38 controls and 27 cases and CT genotype in 22 cases and 12 controls. A allele was found in 38 cases and 23 controls (OR = 2, 95% CI: 1.1–3.8). The mean values of cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein, triglycerides, glucose, insulin, urea, and creatinine were high in cases when compared to controls. Conclusion: T allele of TCF7L2 gene rs7903146 (C/T) and A allele of ATP2B1 (A/G) gene rs11105354 (A/G) are associated with CVD in CKD patients.


Author(s): Westerdal, Mike | Abstract: Official Website: Click Here Back Pain Breakthrough is a 6-series video masterclass and written guide to eliminating back pain permanently and in as little as 30 days – and only seven days to start experience relief in general! It's a revolutionary system that allows you to get the relief you're so desperately needing, without expensive therapy, medication or the need for costly equipment. All you need is your body and the techniques taught to you in Back Pain Breakthrough. But don't be mistaken, you're about to get a lot more than just pain relief. This system gives you your life back! WHAT IS THE BACK PAIN BREAKTHROUGH ABOUT? Forget the ancient voodoo practices and yoga stretches, expensive therapy and equipment, and costly medications. While these options can help you feel better, many of them do not correct the main issue which, unfortunately, only masks the pain for a short period of time.Back Pain Breakthrough is an online program that teaches you specific movements that realign your spine to ultimately, eliminate back pain completely. It's been such a great success that many prestigious doctors and establishments, such as Washington University School of Medicine are taking it to treat their own patients.But what is it based on, you ask?Back Pain Breakthrough was created after finding a link between Leonardo da Vinci's journal and back pain. The journal entry is so secret but due to the expertise of the creator this program (he has a Ph.D. in the science of joint pain) of, he was able to read in between the lines to find solutions to all kinds of back pain. All of this is explained in more detail throughout the program and I will elaborate on what the specific techniques and sections of the program are about in just a moment as well. For now, here is a sneak peek at what you receive when you get started: 6-Part Video MasterclassTarget Spinal Release ManualAccelerated Healing Techniques eBook Everything is online which means that you can start correcting your back problems right away. Hallelujah! You just download the content onto your desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone and start working your way through the information. The videos can be watched right online, so if you don't want to take up a lot of space on your devices, this is a great alternative. Though, I do recommend at least bookmarking the customer portal and downloading the eBooks. This allows you to have the techniques with you at all times.Now, if you have tried everything under the sun to heal your back pain and have lost all hope, I get it. I've been there, but don't give up just yet. Back Pain Breakthrough comes with a 60 Day Money Back Guarantee which gives you two months to try the techniques out. Add in the fact that you should begin to experience pain relief in as little as a week, this is ample time to see if this is the solution you've been looking for. WHO IS THE CREATOR OF BACK PAIN BACKTHROUGH? Back Pain Breakthrough was created by Steve Young, who has a Ph.D. in the science of joint pain. He runs his own private practice and is so highly sought after that many major media outlets, such as Fox News, have brought him on to talk about his expertise. Steve is also the author of several articles in Medical Research Journals due to his unique yet effective discoveries about joint pain, such as the one in this program. QUICK SUMMARY OF THE BACK PAIN BREAKTHROUGH PROGRAM It would be an understatement if I were to say that Back Pain Breakthrough is just a program that teaches you techniques that realign your spine and eliminate your back pain. Instead, it's more like a healthy-back-healthy-life regime, complete with all the natural techniques, tips, and action plans needed to start living a pain-free life again.To give you an idea of what the program consists of, here's a look at some of the things you'll find in each section: 6-VIDEO SERIES MASTERCLASS The Real Cause of Your Back PainThe Target Spinal ReliefHow to Fix the Pain InstantlyThe Warrior MethodLifehacks for a Pain Free LifeMuscular Imbalances, Easy Solutions+ Your Action Steps for Success TARGETED SPINAL RELEASE How to Use This ManualThe Secret Cause of your Back PainThe 30 Day Action PlanMy 30 Day Back Pain Breakthrough CalendarMovement 1: The Peaceful WarriorMovement 2: Awakened WarriorMovement 3: Strong Warrior ADVANCED HEALING TECHNIQUES How to Sit for a Strong Healthy BackHow to Fix Your Computer SetupLiftingGolfers TiltLungesTypes of Back Pain and ImbalancesHow to Know If You Have a Disc BulgingHow to Treat StenosisFixing Muscular ImbalancesImbalanced Piriformis and How to Stretch ItAcute or Chronic Pain and How to Relief ItNatural Anti-Inflammatory Daily Drink As an extra bonus, you also receive a "5 Minutes to Look Younger" DVD which was created by Dr. Kareem Samhouri. It teaches you some simple anti-aging movements to complete to look and feel 5 to 10 years younger, and all you need is 5 minutes a day. THE VERDICT Back Pain Breakthrough is an excellent program that provides you with all the knowledge, natural solutions, techniques, and steps needed to start eliminating your back pain for good. You even receive a 30-Day Action Plan. So, if you're unsure you have what it takes to flow through the program as designed (you do – it's easy!), you can stick with the plan already created for you.Plus, you get a 60 Day Money Back Guarantee which allows you to try the entire program out for two months. If you decide that you'd rather fork over a fortune for expensive therapy or potentially dangerous medications, that option is there for you. However, you should start to experience pain relief in as little as 7 days so chances are, you won't want to give that up.Just think – seven days and you can be feeling better…. 30 days and you can be completely pain-free.


Continuing the work of the 'Vienna Circle', philosopher Carl Hempel created explanatory models to ground scientific inquiry in logic and empirical truth. Beginning with the physical sciences, he explored the application of these models to the social sciences as well. Terrestrial archaeologists incorporated Hempelian concepts by calling for global changes in archaeological methodology. These changes, explicitly designed to maximize data collection (a necessary first step to develop archaeological general laws crucial to Hempelian explanation and confirmation), were developed using particular idiosyncratic geographical cues that would undermine archaeology if implemented in other contexts. In this article, I argue that similarly unconscious artifacts of particular archaeologists' goals and locations have also governed underwater archaeology's growth as a discipline, much to its detriment. It is my hope that understanding the philosophical and archaeological issues that have led archaeology to this point will help to move archaeology (both land and sea) forward.


This paper discusses Iran's oil and gas sector since the revolution. For a country with 5 percent of the world's oil and 14 percent of the natural gas reserves, Iran is not likely to run out of hydrocarbons any time soon. But at present Iran has to make do with only about one-tenth of oil revenues per capita in real terms compared to the boom years of the 1970's. While the country's dependence on oil exports has by no means diminished since the revolution, the government is not in a position to reverse the downward trend in revenues per person. The aging oil fields and rising domestic consumption are serious internal constraints to raising exports. In addition, there are some external constraints that did not exist before the revolution: OPEC quotas, a more competitive oil market in which OPEC has much less influence, and an unfavorable international political climate. Together, these prevent Iran from expanding exports or raising the price of oil.
The government has worked hard to reverse the decline in production capacity during the 1980's. About $10 billion was spent during the First Five Year Plan (1989-93) and capacity was raised to about 4.2 million barrels per day. Much of this gain in capacity is in danger of being swallowed up by domestic consumption that, thanks to extremely low refined-products prices, has been increasing at 6% per year, twice the rate of the increase in population.
The natural gas sector did not play much of a role in Iran's economy before the revolution, but it is now the linchpin of the nation's energy future. The expansion of the pipeline network in the country has increased access to natural gas for domestic consumers. While so far it has only slowed down the growth of refined products, it has the potential of allowing Iran's oil exports to go up by one third. Furthermore, maintaining oil production capacity at its current level, requires reinjection of gas into the oil fields.
The government also faces political and financial barriers to the implementation of its hydrocarbon programs. Development of Iran's giant gas fields in the Persian Gulf requires both financial and technical participation of multinational oil companies. While Iran appears to have solved certain domestic objections--constitutional and otherwise--to such participation, the international climate remains unfavorable.


In this work, joint decompression and decoding is studied for the uplink of multi-antenna cloud radio access networks. In this system, a set of multi-antenna mobile stations (MSs) wish to communicate with a "cloud" decoder through a set of multi-antenna base stations (BSs), which are connected to the cloud decoder through digital backhaul links of limited capacity. The BSs compress the received signal and send it to the cloud decoder, which performs joint decoding of the signals from all MSs. While the conventional solution prescribes that the cloud decoder performs first decompression and then decoding, recent work has shown that potentially larger rates can be achieved with joint decompression and decoding (JDD) at the cloud decoder. The sum-rate maximization problem with JDD, under the assumption of Gaussian test channels, is shown here to be an instance of a class of non-convex problems known as Difference of Convex (DC) problems. Based on this observation, an iterative algorithm based on the Majorization Minimization (MM) approach is proposed that guarantees convergence to a stationary point of the sum-rate maximization problem. Numerical results demonstrate the advantage of the proposed algorithm compared to the conventional approach based on separate decompression and decoding.


Formulaicity is one of the characteristic features of legal discourse, which manifests itself not only at the level of wording, "but also in the content, structure and layout" of legal texts (Ruusila & Londroos 2016, 123). Formulaic language, which includes phrasal and prepositional verbs, idioms, collocations, lexico-grammatical associations, lexical bundles, etc., are building blocks of legal discourse shaping legal text meanings. However, up to now, far too little attention has been paid to the nature of frequently occurring "sequences of three or more words that show a statistical tendency to co-occur" (Biber & Conrad 1999, 183), i.e. lexical bundles, in different genres of legal texts. Most studies in the field of lexical bundles in legal texts have only been based on one language (e.g. Jablonkai 2009; Goźdź-Roszkowski 2011; Breeze 2013), whereas translation-oriented contrastive studies on lexical bundles are lacking. In respect of the aforementioned gaps, the aim of this pilot study is to analyse structural types of lexical bundles in court judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union in English and to examine the way these structures are rendered into Lithuanian. To gain insights into the frequency and structure of lexical bundles, the present study uses the methodological guidelines of corpus linguistics. The classification of lexical bundles into structural types is based on the framework suggested by Biber et al. (1999, 2004). For the purpose of this study, a parallel corpus of court judgments was compiled comprising approximately 1 million words of original court judgments in the English language and about 8 hundred thousand words of court judgments translated into Lithuanian. Lexical bundles in this research were identified using the corpus analysis toolkit AntConc 3.4.4 (Anthony 2015). A concordance program AntPConc 1.2.0 (Anthony 2017) was employed to find Lithuanian equivalents of the most frequent lexical bundles identified in the English court judgments. The evidence from this study suggests that different structural types of lexical bundles have more or less regular equivalents in Lithuanian; however, in most cases, these equivalents tend to be shorter.


he present study,
 deals with the isolation, screening and selection of Aspergillus
 oryzae for the alpha amylase production. Seventy eight isolates of
 A. oryzae were isolated from different soil samples. The strains
 were initially selected qualitatively on starch agar medium and
 screened quantitatively for enzyme production in shake flasks and a
 strain producing 130 ±0.1U/ml of enzyme was selected which was
 assigned the code IIB-30. The selected strain was subjected to
 physical and chemical mutagenic treatments in order to improve its
 amylolytic potential. During the treatments, isolates were
 qualitatively and quantitatively screened. Among these, EMS-18
 exhibited the highest enzyme activity (347±1.2 U/ml). This mutant
 showed 2.6 fold increased activity over the parental strain in terms
 of enzyme production. The cultural conditions and nutritional
 requirements of the selected strains (both wild and mutant) were
 optimized in 250 ml Erlenmeyer flasks prior to scale up studies in a fermenter.
 Six different fermentation media were evaluated for the alpha
 amylase production by both wild and mutant strains of A. oryzae in
 shake flasks fermentation. Of all the media, M4 containing (g/l);
 starch 20, yeast extract 8.5, NH4Cl 1.3, MgSO4.7H2O 0.12, CaCl2 0.06
 gave maximal enzyme production i.e., 168±2 (wild) and 385±2 (mutant)
 which was highly significant (p≤0.05). The effect of incubation
 temperature, initial pH, volume of media and inoculum size was
 investigated on the enzyme production. The optimal enzyme production
 was obtained at 30°C, pH 5, volume, 10 % and inoculum size 4 %, by
 both wild and mutant strains. The rate of fermentation was also
 studied and the highest yield of enzyme was obtained 72 h after
 inoculation.
 Corn starch (2 %) and lactose (1.5 %) as carbon sources while,
 ammonium sulfate (0.3 %) and peptone (0.2 %) as nitrogen sources
 were also optimized. Different surfactants were added to the
 fermentation media and Tween 80 at the level of 0.1% was found to be
 the best for enzyme production.
 The scale up studies for alpha amylase production was carried out in
 a 7.5 L stirred fermenter. The rate of fermentation for enzyme
 production by both wild and mutant strains was investigated.) It was
 found that the enzyme production increased gradually and reached
 maximum (335 U/ml and 608 U/ml) after 64 h (wild) and 48 h (mutant).
 The kinetic depiction of results showed optimal fermentation period
 for enzyme production to be 64 h and 48 h, respectively. The other
 cultural conditions such as initial pH (5), aeration level (1.5 vvm),
 dissolved oxygen (15 %), inoculum size (10 %) and agitation
 intensity (200 rpm) were optimized for enzyme production.
 The fermented broth was subjected to ammonium sulfate precipitation
 at different saturation levels (20-90 %). The optimum level of
 ammonium sulfate saturation was found to be 70 % that gave 1.3 fold
 purification. By using Sephadex- DEAE column, the active fractions
 were eluted using 0.05 M Tris-HCl buffer containing 0.30 M NaCl at
 pH 7.5. The molecular weight of alpha amylase was found to be 48 kDa
 on SDS-PAGE after gel filtration. A total of 9.5 fold enzyme
 purification was accomplished. The effect of time, temperature, pH
 and metal ions on purified enzyme was also investigated and maximum
 activity was achieved after 30 min at 40oC and pH 5 in the presence
 of Ca+2 ion.


Although the Risk–Needs–Responsivity framework has become the dominant paradigm in criminal and juvenile justice, little empirical attention has been given to the reassessment component of the model. Here, we examine dynamic risk and promotive factor trajectories of 6,442 residential commitment placements to assess differences in progression with respect to risk reduction and promotive enhancement through a buffer score rubric (buffer = promotive − risk). Results indicate that youth progress along different buffer trajectories throughout residential placement. Multinomial models also demonstrate that dynamic, changeable factors are more essential in distinguishing trajectory group membership than demographic or criminal history indicators. Finally, there were significant differences in recidivism rates across trajectories postcompletion, suggesting that improvement in (the rate of change in) buffer scores may account for some of the variation in offending behavior postrelease. Programmatic and policy implications are discussed.


We consider a power utility maximization problem with additive habits in a framework of discrete-time markets and random endowments. For certain classes of incomplete markets, we establish estimates for the optimal consumption stream in terms of the aggregate state price density, investigate the asymptotic behaviour of the propensity to consume (ratio of the consumption to the wealth), as the initial endowment tends to infinity, and show that the limit is the corresponding quantity in an artificial market. For complete markets, we concentrate on proving the existence of an Arrow-Debreu equilibrium in an economy inhabited by heterogeneous individuals who differ with respect to their risk-aversion coefficient, impatience rate and endowments stream, but possess the same degree of habit-formation. Finally, in a representative agent equilibrium, we compute explicitly the price of a zero coupon bond and the Lucas tree equity, and study its dependence on the habit-formation parameter.


The Information Systems literature has substantially advanced understanding of online review helpfulness in both its antecedents and consequences. Despite the rich understanding, existing studies predominately focused on the impact of coarser-grained characteristics on consumer ' s helpfulness perception. The possibility of evaluating review's helpfulness based on both fine -grained textual information along with multiple general factors of reviewer and products challenged existing understanding. While textual features such as latent topics and semantic traits of a review have been considered as effective predictors for identifying helpful reviews, the causal effects of these predictors on review ' s perceived helpfulness still remain largely unclear. Drawing on the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), this proposal focuses on understanding how coarse-grained general characteristics and fine-grained textual characteristics jointly affect the perceived helpfulness of online review. In particular, following the spirit of ELM, we propose a model to disentangle the types of online review characteristics through a dual information processing perspective, and investigate how consumer ' s motivation moderates effect of the two information processing routes. The proposed research model shall be operationalized by employing a panel data analysis.


Iridescence! An ever-changing, shimmering play of color, a dancing rainbow of light this is the essence, and indeed, the art of Carnival Glass. This beautiful book begins at the very heart of Carnival, with a comprehensive analysis, full of fascinating insights, into how the glass was made, colored, iridized, and decorated. The language of Carnival is fully documented through definitions of shapes and edge treatments plus straightforward explanations of a multitude of Carnival Glass terms. But the core of this encyclopedic volume is the detailed coveragesimply set out and easy to followon Carnival Glass shapes: bowls, plates, vases, drinking vessels, tableware, lighting, tobacciana and more. All are adorned with peacocks, flowers, butterflies, fruits, dragons, and other fanciful treatmentsin vibrant, shimmering iridescence. The book is gorgeously illustrated with almost 700 full color photographs that feature a wealth of classic as well as contemporary United States Carnival, and new discoveries from Europe, South America, and India. Each photograph is captioned with complete information including color, pattern, manufacturer and current values. The Art of Carnival Glass is an essential reference tool for all Carnival collectors.


Remote sensing is one of the tool which is very important for the production of Land use and land cover maps through a process called image classification. For the image classification process to be successfully, several factors should be considered including availability of quality Landsat imagery and secondary data, a precise classification process and user's experiences and expertise of the procedures. The objective of this research was to classify and map land-use/land-cover of the study area using remote sensing and Geospatial Information System (GIS) techniques. This research includes two sections (1) Landuse/Landcover (LULC) classification and (2) accuracy assessment. In this study supervised classification was performed using Non Parametric Rule. The major LULC classified were agriculture (65.0%), water body (4.0%), and built up areas (18.3%), mixed forest (5.2%), shrubs (7.0%), and Barren/bare land (0.5%). The study had an overall classification accuracy of 81.7% and kappa coefficient (K) of 0.722. The kappa coefficient is rated as substantial and hence the classified image found to be fit for further research. This study present essential source of information whereby planners and decision makers can use to sustainably plan the environment.


Jagjivan Ram (1908–1986) was, for more than four decades, the leading figure from India's Dalit communities in the Indian National Congress party. In this paper, I argue that the relationship between religion and politics in Jagjivan Ram's career needs to be reassessed. This is because the common perception of him as a secular politician has overlooked the role that his religious beliefs played in forming his political views. Instead, I argue that his faith in a Dalit Hindu poet-saint called Ravidās was fundamental to his political career. Acknowledging the role that religion played in Jagjivan Ram's life also allows us to situate discussions of his life in the context of contemporary debates about religion and politics. Jeffrey Haynes has suggested that these often now focus on whether religion is a cause of conflict or a path to the peaceful resolution of conflict. In this paper, I examine Jagjivan Ram's political life and his belief in the Ravidāsī religious tradition. Through this, I argue that Jagjivan Ram's career shows how political and religious beliefs led to him favoring a non-confrontational approach to conflict resolution in order to promote Dalit rights.


The paper compares three methods for computer simulation of transients on transmission lines with losses and nonlinear behavior, namely distributed LC model, FDTD (Finite-Difference Time-Domain) method, and a new and very effective Method of Slices. The losses are responsible for attenuation and shape changes of the waves as function of time and distance from the source. Special behavior of the line due to voltage-dependent ca- pacitance of the line is considered in detail. The non-linear nature of the line causes that the higher is the voltage the higher is the velocity of propagation. Then, the waves tend to tilt over so that their top moves faster than their base. As a result "tsunami waves" are created on the line. Funda- mental algorithms are presented in Matlab language. Several typical situations are solved as an illustration of individual methods.


Mind and Supermind offers a new perspective on the nature of belief and the structure of the human mind. Keith Frankish argues that the folk-psychological term 'belief' refers to two distinct types of mental state, which have different properties and support different kinds of mental explanation. Building on this claim, he develops a picture of the human mind as a two-level structure, consisting of a basic mind and a supermind, and shows how the resulting account sheds light on a number of puzzling phenomena and helps to vindicate folk psychology. Topics discussed include the function of conscious thought, the cognitive role of natural language, the relation between partial and flat-out belief, the possibility of active belief formation, and the nature of akrasia, self-deception, and first-person authority. This book will be valuable for philosophers, psychologists, and cognitive scientists.


The effect of silicon-oxide interface roughness on the weak-localization magnetoconductance of a silicon MOSFET in a magnetic field, tilted with respect to the interface, is studied. It is shown that an electron picks up a random Berry's phase as it traverses a closed orbit. Effectively, due to roughness, the electron sees an uniform field parallel to the interface as a random perpendicular field. At zero parallel field the dependence of the conductance on the perpendicular field has a well known form, the weak-localization lineshape. Here the effect of applying a fixed parallel field on the lineshape is analyzed. Many types of behavior are found including homogeneous broadening, inhomogeneous broadening and a remarkable regime in which the change in lineshape depends only on the magnetic field, the two length scales that characterize the interface roughness and fundamental constants. Good agreement is obtained with experiments that are in the homogeneous broadening limit. The implications for using weak-localization magnetoconductance as a probe of interface roughness, as proposed by Wheeler and coworkers, are discussed.


The expected value of the squared linkage disequilibrium is derived for a neutral locus associated with a chromosomal arrangement that is maintained in the population by strong balancing selection. For a given value of recombination, the expected squared linkage disequilibrium is shown to decrease as the intensity of selection maintaining the arrangement increases. The transient behavior of the expected square linkage disequilibrium is also derived. This theory applies to loci that are closely linked to inversions in Drosophila species and to loci closely linked to the differential segments of the translocation complexes in ring-forming species of Oenothera. In both cases the strong linkage disequilibria that have been observed in natural populations can be explained by random drift.


Examination of a connecting-rod shell bearing from a six-cylinder gasoline engine was done after it was returned to the factory. Copper-lead alloy SAE 485 bonded to a low-carbon steel backing was used to make the bearing and the oil used in the engine was the recommended one. Measurable material loss was visible over most of the bearing halves particularly in a wide region at the centerline. A brittle waxlike substance identified to be a mixture of copper and lead sulfides covered the visible shallow pits and the darkened region. Change of oil with greater frequency to prevent the buildup of sulfur compounds or bearing halves that have corrosion-resistant overlay materials were recommended as best solutions.


First composed in Anglo-Norman French around the end of the thirteenth century, the anonymous prose 'Brut' chronicle became the most popular secular vernacular work, and the most widespread Arthurian work, of the later middle ages in England: repeatedly expanded, revised, and translated, it remained influential for centuries. Yet it has been little studied, in part because of the lack of any full modern edition. This edition of the Oldest Version of the prose 'Brut', running from the fall of Troy to the death of Henry III in 1272, provides the Anglo-Norman text with facing-page translation and textual apparatus, a comprehensive introduction, and extensive explanatory notes. It makes new contributions, on, for example, the identification and classification of the manuscripts, the identification and analysis of the sources [far more varied and numerous than had been previously recognised], and the probable circumstances of the chronicle's composition. It will enable scholars to make full use of this remarkable resource for the study of Arthurian tradition, contemporary visions of British history, popular thought about society and government in late-medieval England, and the history of reading itself. Professor JULIA MARVIN teaches at the University of Notre Dame.


Extensive spectroscopic, diffraction and theoretical work in the last ten years has shown that short-range order (SRO) of both cations and anions is a common feature of amphiboles (Hawthorne et al. 2005). From an experimental perspective, the problem is that SRO does not obey the translational symmetry of the structure in which it occurs, and hence SRO is difficult to detect and decipher directly by standard diffraction methods. There is information on SRO resident in diffuse scattering from a crystal, but this information is quite difficult to extract, particularly when the SRO is complicated, and this approach has only been used for simpler materials. SRO can be detected by several spectroscopic techniques [e.g., infrared spectroscopy, magic-angle-spinning nuclear magnetic resonance (MAS NMR) spectroscopy], but the problem is that only part of the local arrangement is derived, and the complete picture of SRO is often not clear. Here, we examine SRO of cations and anions in monoclinic amphiboles, and show that detailed information on SRO can be derived by a combination of infrared spectroscopy and local bond-valence theory, augmented by results from Rietveld and single-crystal diffraction.

Let us first examine the issue of LRO for a simple (two-dimensional) crystal of general composition M 2SiO4 where M = Mg, Fe2+, and consider the composition Mg0.8 Fe2+1.2 SiO4 for the case where there are two distinct sites, M (1) and M (2), in the unit cell (Fig. 1⇓). Maximum order involves complete occupancy of one site by Fe2+ and occupancy of the other site by a mixture of Mg and Fe2+. Either M (1) or M (2) can be fully occupied by Fe2+, leading to the two long-range ordered arrangements indicated in Figure 1⇓. Long-range disorder occurs when …


When a signal is recorded that has been physi- cally generated by some scattering process (the interaction of electromagnetic, acoustic or elastic waves with inhomogeneous materials, for example), the 'standard model' for the signal (i.e. information content convolved with a characteristic Impulse Response Function) is usually based on a single scattering approximation. An additive noise term is introduced into the model to take into account a range of non-deterministic factors including multiple scattering that, along with electronic noise and other background noise sources, is assumed to be relatively weak. Thus, the standard model is based on a 'weak field condition' and the inverse scattering problem is often reduced to the deconvolution of a signal in the presence of additive noise. Attempts at solving the exact inverse scattering problem for equations such as the inhomogeneous Schr¨ odinger equation in quantum mechanics and the inhomogeneous Helmholtz equation in electromagnetism often prove to be intractable, particularly with regard to the goal of implementing algorithms that are computationally stable and/or compatible with standard signal analysis methods and Digital Signal Processing 'toolkits'. This paper provides an approach to solving the multiple scattering problem for narrow side-band systems (typically, electromagnetic signal processing systems) that is compounded in the introduction of a single extra term to the standard model. The approach is based on applying certain conditions to an exact solution of the inverse scattering problem rather than applying conditions to the forward scattering problem and then inverting the (conditional) result.


Large-scale convolutional neural networks (CNNs) suffer from very long training times, spanning from hours to weeks, limiting the productivity and experimentation of deep learning practitioners. As networks grow in size and complexity, training time can be reduced through low-precision data representations and computations. However, in doing so the final accuracy suffers due to the problem of vanishing gradients. Existing state-of-the-art methods combat this issue by means of a mixed-precision approach utilising two different precision levels, FP32 (32-bit floating-point) and FP16/FP8 (16-/8-bit floating-point), leveraging the hardware support of recent GPU architectures for FP16 operations to obtain performance gains. This work pushes the boundary of quantised training by employing a multilevel optimisation approach that utilises multiple precisions including low-precision fixed-point representations. The novel training strategy, MuPPET, combines the use of multiple number representation regimes together with a precision-switching mechanism that decides at run time the transition point between precision regimes. Overall, the proposed strategy tailors the training process to the hardware-level capabilities of the target hardware architecture and yields improvements in training time and energy efficiency compared to state-of-the-art approaches. Applying MuPPET on the training of AlexNet, ResNet18 and GoogLeNet on ImageNet (ILSVRC12) and targeting an NVIDIA Turing GPU, MuPPET achieves the same accuracy as standard full-precision training with training-time speedup of up to 1.84$\times$ and an average speedup of 1.58$\times$ across the networks.


Several myths about the Persian Gulf War still linger years after its conclusion. One is that the ground war was a relatively simple, high-tech campaign; another is that the air campaign essentially destroyed the Iraqi Army; and the third and most important is that the Iraqi Army did not fight, but simply surrendered at the approach of the Allied Coalition's forces. This paper argues that the Iraqi Army, and especially the Republican Guard, fought bravely but ineptly against the overwhelming combat power of a better trained and equipped US Army. This article attempts to dispel a number of myths about the way the Iraqi Republican Guard fought during the Gulf War of 1991. The Republican Guard has been President Saddam Husayn's premier striking force and one of the pillars upon which the continuation of his regime has depended. It was formed in the 1970s as a small force to defend the capital and the president. At that time, only men from Saddam Husayn's hometown of Takrit were eligible for membership. During the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, the regime opened the Guard to college students from throughout Iraq. Most of these recruits, who had enjoyed college deferments, had never been part of the grueling defensive warfare on the Iranian front. Trained only in offensive warfare, their high motivation was obvious in the decisive victory over Iran on the Faw Peninsula. During the war the Iraqi High Command retrained, re-equipped and enlarged the Republican Guard so that by 1990 it had grown to three armored-mechanized divisions and five infantry divisions. The three armored mechanized divisions included the Tawakalna Division, which fought against the entire US 7th Corps as described in this article; the Medina Armored Division, which battled the 1st US Armored Division on the afternoon of 27 February 1991 west of the Al-Ruqta oil field; and the Hammurabi Armored Division, which fought against the 24th US Mechanized Division at Al-Tawr al-Hammar, on 2 March 1991, after the cease-fire. BACKGROUND TO THE US-REPUBLICAN GUARD BATTLE Allied Coalition air forces began the war against Iraq on 17 January 1991. Using every variety of aircraft, from the French Mirage to the US B52, they subjected Iraqi military and civilian targets to one of the most intense air operations since World War II. By 24 February, in spite of the damage that air power had inflicted on the Iraqi Army, Saddam Husayn had not ordered his army out of Kuwait. Air operations then took on a new character. In addition to continuing their raids deep into Iraq, Coalition pilots began to provide close air support to the Coalition's attacking ground troops. Using primarily A-10 Thunderbolt aircraft, these pilots joined with US Army attack helicopters and long-range field artillery in attacking Iraqi Army units beyond the range of front-line ground troops.' After six weeks of air bombardment, the ground war between the Iraqi and the Coalition forces began on 24 February 1991 with an attack by the Coalition forces across the Saudi Arabian border into Kuwait and Iraq. By 26 February, the front extended over 350 miles from the Euphrates River in the north, south to the Iraq-Saudi Arabian border and east to Kuwait City. During the ground offensive against Iraq, the Coalition was divided into two army-sized commands. In the east, in a sector that extended from the western Kuwait border to Kuwait City, was the Joint Forces Command (JFC) under HRH General Khalid bin-Sultan. This command consisted of three corps-sized commands: Joint Forces Command-North, US Marine Corps-Central Command, and Joint Forces Command-East. In addition, the JFC contained soldiers from Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and other Muslim forces from around the world. The army command in the western portion of the sector was the US 3rd Army under Lieutenant General John J. Yeosock. It consisted of two corps, the 7th and the 18th. The 7th Corps under Lieutenant General Frederick M. Franks, Jr. …


A tree-ring chronology network recently developed from the subantarctic forests provides an opportunity to study long-term climatic variability at higher latitudes in the South American sector of the Southern Ocean. Based on the longest pressure records available in the South American-Antarctic Peninsula (SAAP) sector of the Southern Oceans, zonal and meridional indices have been developed for the region. Temperature records in southern South America and the Antarctic Peninsula are strongly affected by the strength of the meridional flow, whereas precipitation variations along the Pacific coast in southern South America are more related to changes in the zonal circulation at higher latitudes. We employed dendroclimatic techniques for reconstructing both the zonal (ZSAAP) and the meridional (MSAAP) circulation indices over the past four centuries. The ZSAAP reconstruction shows dominant modes of variation at around 4.4 and 5 years, which may be associated with the proposed Antarctic Circumpolar Wave in the Southern Oceans. Contrasting patterns in meridionality during the past two centuries are observed in the MSAAP reconstruction. Since the mid 1950s the northerly flow has steady increased, reaching unprecedented levels during the 1980s in the context of the past 400 years. Corresponding author address: Ricardo Villalba, Departamento de Dendrocronologia e Historia Ambiental, IANIGLA – CONICET, C.C. 330, (5500) Mendoza, Argentina. Email: firstname.lastname@example.com Visiting Resource Professor Papers LLILAS, The University of Texas at Austin http://www.utexas.edu/cola/insts/llilas/


ABSTRACT Health inequalities continue to exist in advanced capitalist economies and so-called lifestyle behaviours (e.g. smoking, alcohol consumption, diet and physical (in)activity) play a role in their persistence. Interventionist responses to health inequalities are often posed in terms of either individual agency or social structure – the former being criticised for its shaming/responsibilising effects and the latter for inadequately conceptualising behavioural differences within socio-economic groups. In this paper, we attempt to reconcile these two positions by drawing on Bourdieu's concept of habitus, arguing that health enhancing behaviours are better understood as practices constrained and enabled within social class contexts. As many interventionist health policies target young people in schools, we take the example of physical education and youth sport to illustrate how young people's dispositions towards health practices are part of an emerging class habitus. We draw on data from a sociological study of young people's physical activity and health in which twenty-nine participants (aged 13–14) from four socio-economically diverse school settings took part. The data presented here are selected from 60 focus group transcripts, ethnographic fieldnotes from 6 months of school visits and visual data from participants. Our data indicate that class differences exist in both the kinds of activities practiced by pupils and ways in which they are practiced. We argue that class-based differences are, at least partially, matters of embodied inclinations and dispositions that are already evident at the age of 13/14. Consequently, we demonstrate how school-focused health promotion through physical education and youth sport may contribute to health inequalities as a result of being more or less accessible and appealing to pupils with a different classed-habitus within different educational fields. This paper questions the on-going interventionist policies that position schools as sites for health promotion without adequately accounting for the influence of class cultures.


This paper reports on the recent developments in spectroimagers for sprite campaigns in Taiwan. We first introduce two types of spectroimagers, the slit and slitless types, and discuss their advantages and shortcomings. Next we explore the instrument development and procedures undertaken for this study. In 2006, a slit spectroimager was installed for a sprite campaign and on 15 August of that year, two sprite spectra were recorded using the slit spectroimager along with seven sprites, one halo, one ELVES emission and two jets. By the end of 2015, a slitless spectroimager had been successfully constructed and was ready to conduct additional investigations. On 7 May 2016, a sprite spectrum was recorded using the slitless spectroimager. Following an examination of the calibrations (comprising detection region field of view, wavelength calibration, and response curve), data analysis, and additional calibrations (comprising elevation and azimuthal angles, atmospheric transmittance, and theoretical wavelength calculations) performed in this study, we present the results from our observed sprite spectra using the slit and slitless spectroimagers. Article history: Received 15 February 2016 Revised 20 August 2016 Accepted 26 August 2016


Specific surface area (SSA) results are used to discuss results of salt weathering tests on two grainstones and a travertine. SSA was found to be especially useful in the understanding of the travertine's heterogeneous behaviour (with higher SSA in the more clay-rich zones) and the conclusions can be considered transferable to travertines in general. The transferability of conclusions applies insofar as in these continental limestones the terrigenous clay-rich zones, whose composition was verified by their infrared spectra, would promote mesoporous portions that favour the migration of solutions and that are, hence, more susceptible to salt weathering. SSA did not distinguish the grainstone types (Semi-rijo and Moca Creme), which show different weight loss in the salt weathering tests (higher in Moca Creme), a result explained by the predominant macroporous (as defined by IUPAC) character of these rocks. These results suggest that petrographic studies can be employed in the definition of groups of rocks for which SSA could be used as estimator of mass loss under salt weathering conditions. Other aspects of the stone cycle are also considered for the travertine, related to the presence of a certain amount of pores of nanometre scale in this rock and the possible higher specific values of presumably more clay-rich residues from its cutting.


Railway ballast provides both the foundation and drainage for railway track. It can become heavily contaminated with diesel fuel due to leakage and spillage. Typical analytical methods for soils may not be applicable to the assessment of ballast. The efficiency of different commonly available solvents as ballast extractants was investigated. Ethyl acetate performed best, yielding 3870, 6065 and 8990 mg kg^(-1) more contaminant the dichloromethane, hexane and methanol, respectively. Mechanical shaking and sonication were compared for different sample weights, solvent volume ratios and extraction times. Using ethyl acetate, efficient practical assessment of contaminated ballast is achieved using a ratio of at least 100 ml of solvent to 120 g of ballast.


In this paper we examine the use of "mini" transactions. An implementation of mini-transactions supports small sequences of memory accesses as atomic transactions (perhaps 1–4 accesses). When building a shared memory data structure using mini transactions, the programmer must either stay within the limits of a single mini transaction, or split the operation across a series of mini transactions. Mini transactions therefore provide a greater degree of atomicity than single-word compare and swap (CAS), but they do not provide the full features of a general-purpose transactional memory (TM). We illustrate how hashtables and skip lists can be built over the SpecTM API for mini transactions. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the SpecTM API over a general-purpose TM. To address some of these limitations, we discuss techniques for integrating SpecTM with a generalpurpose STM.


Building a successful practice ultimately comes down to one thing...patient visits. If you are not seeing patients, you are not making money. And, if you are not seeing enough patients each day, you will never be able to grow your practice. In this guide, you will find three key ways today's medical practice can increase the number of patient visits and the revenue that comes with them.


This paper reviews the growing literature on initial coin offerings (ICOs) and provides original evidence of the investor protection on ICOs from 37 countries. We show that the anti-director rights and anti-self-dealing index are positively associated with the country-level raised fund of ICOs after controlling for economic and culture factors. The disclosure quality and investor rights as specified in the Whitepapers are generally poor and they are found to be important to raise more funds in ICOs. We argue that the lack of (self-) discipline poses a threat to investor protections. Around 60% Whitepaper do not disclose information on the use of proceeds or management team. Around 80% ICOs do not entitle investors the rights for dividend or vote. Our findings suggest the needs of regulating ICOs to protect investors.


In this paper I examine the role of authenticity within contemporary debates about gender identity with an eye to exploring the structure of sex and gender-based oppressions - with particular consideration with the marginalisation of trans subjects. I begin with a return to Butler's Gender Trouble to critically examine her ontology of gender and the suggestion that gender cannot be a matter of authenticity. Though this disagrees with the common schematic of trans identity mobilised within contemporary identity politics, this paper seeks to use this critique to provide a deeper explanation of trans oppression within the context of Butler's heterosexual matrix. The aim of this move is to situate trans struggles as central within philosophical feminist theory - whilst breaking from several of the shortcomings of contemporary identity ontology. These considerations will then be explored alongside Butler's work in Precarious Life, wherein the oppression of trans people will be explored in how these subjects bear a greater burden of authenticity - wherein trans genders are automatically regarded as authentic whereas cis genders remain unquestioned. This contextualises the rhetorical and ontological move adopted by many trans activists whereby they present gender as a matter of absolute and inviolable fact - which is incompatible with Butler's ontology of gender. Using bother of Butler's texts, we can regard this move as the pursuit of an impossible security, a move that serves to obscure the inauthenticity of gender overall. Instead, we are encouraged to embrace in inauthenticity of gender and to refuse to allow ourselves to sink into an economy of authenticity that marginalises trans subjects.


The impeachment of President Clinton was more a circus than a serious effort to remove the President of the United States. The reason is simple: Few people -- in the Congress or the country -- wanted to remove him or believed the impeachment effort would actually result in his removal. Instead, it was a partisan political effort to embarrass Clinton and "send a message" of disapproval. Congress was attaching a "scarlet letter." But this was an indulgence that posed considerable danger that few in Congress considered. In particular, few tried to assess the potential impact this use of the process would have on the President's ability to govern and be Commander in Chief. This article will argue that such a frivolous use of the impeachment process is inappropriate and dangerous, especially in a post 9/11 world. The framers of the Constitution had it right; impeachment is a drastic remedy to be invoked only as last resort. This article will compare the Clinton impeachment with the two prior efforts to impeach a president: Andrew Johnson in the 1860's and Richard Nixon in the 1970's. In that comparison, it will note that, unlike the Clinton impeachment, those were serious efforts to remove a president from office, not merely attach a "scarlet letter." Finally, it will assess what factors allowed this misuse of the impeachment process and how we can avoid it in the future. It will suggest that the exuberance of the 1990s, the apparent absence of outside enemies at the time, and the security of seats in the House of Representatives (so-called "safe legislative seats") contributed to this nonchalant -- and dangerous -- attitude toward impeachment. September 11, 2001 changed some of those factors, but not all.


MySQL is one of the most popular database management systems available, powering everything from Internet powerhouses to individual corporate databases to simple end-user applications, and everything in between. And this book will teach you all you need to know to be immediately productive with MySQL. By working through 30 highly focused hands-on lessons, your MySQL Crash Course will be both easier and more effective than you'd have thought possible. Learn how to: Retrieve and sort data Filter data using comparisons, regular expressions, full text search, and much more Join relational data Create and alter tables Insert, update, and delete data Leverage the power of stored procedures and triggers Use views and Cursors Manage transactional processing Create user accounts and manage security via access controlBen Forta is Macromedia's Senior Technical Evangelist, and has almost 20 years of experience in the computer industry in product development, support, training, and product marketing. Ben is the author of the best-selling Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes (now in its third edition, and translated into over a dozen languages), ColdFusion Web Application Construction Kit, and Advanced ColdFusion Development (both published by Que Publishing), Sams Teach Yourself Regular Expressions in 10 Minutes, as well as books on SQL, Flash, JSP, HomeSite, WAP, Windows 2000, and other subjects.


Synthetic modeling of human bodies and the simulation of motion is a long-standing problem in animation and much work is involved before a near-realistic performance can be achieved. At present, it takes an experienced designer a very long time to build a complete and realistic model that closely resembles a specific person. Our ultimate goal is to automate the process and to produce realistic animation models given a set of video sequences. In this paper we show that, given video sequences of a person moving in front of the camera, we can recover shape information and joint locations. Both of which are essential to instantiate a complete and realistic model that closely resembles a specific person and without knowledge about the position of the articulations a character cannot be animated. This is achieved with minimal human intervention. The recovered shape and motion parameters can be used to reconstruct the original movement or to allow other animation models to mimic the subject's actions.


The study investigated the challenges o f strategy implementation in Ecobank Kenya Ltd. The research design employed was case study employing open ended questionnaires that captured indepth responses. The data was collected from the top and middle management. The collected data was summarized according to the concepts and themes to allow for content analyses of the data through collation and thematic analysis. Despite the availability of well crafted strategies at Ecobank Ltd, the level of implementation is still lower and thus far off achieving the intended targets amidst the fluid business environment that has been extremely turbulent and competitive. Strategy implementation has been impeded by the ownership structure that has made decision making a complex bureaucratic process, challenges in government policy in terms of local share capitalization, problems of harmonizing multinational policies with domestic regulations and longer communication channels. The study established that successful implementation requires that the strategy, the organization, the people and their relationships, the systems and the measures all must be aligned and made to work towards a common goal. Effective leadership is required at all levels of the implementation process for decision-making, guidance, support and motivation of people involved in implementation. Ecobank Kenya needs to assess the factors which contribute towards effective leadership in implementation process. Employees' commitment has been rated as a very important factor in effective strategy implementation by managers. The strategic factors reflecting employees' commitment and their importance have been portrayed. However, each factor identified in this study needs further detailed examination for exploring various dimensions of its relationship with the implementation process. Strategy implementation assumes great significance and therefore should command an increased amount of attention of researchers in the banking field.


Fiber amplifiers play an important part in optical transmission systems to overcome the impact of attenuation. Together with the transmitter and receiver the positions of amplifiers on the optical path as well as the design of the amplifiers itself determine the bit error probability of the digital communication link. We present a simple method how to derive the optimum configuration for an optical transmission link with cascaded fiber amplifiers for an attenuation limited system. The bit error probability is calculated in dependence of the positions of the line amplifiers and the lengths of the doped fibers for systems with and without booster and optical preamplifier. In a first step we search the optimum configuration by numerical minimization of the bit error probability for a given transmission length, transmitter power and optical receiver. We have found a very simple rule how to determine the lengths of the transmission fibers and the doped fibers of the amplifiers for the minimum bit error probability when the length of the first transmission fiber is given. Therefore, the search for the optimum configuration reduces to the search of the appropriate length of the first transmission fiber which results in an enormous reduction of computing effort. We have investigated the effect on the bit error probability when one deviates from the optimum configuration. For the case, when the transmission length is reduced me have found that the bit error probability decreases always, when the lengths of the single transmission fibers are cut.


On 22 July, 2010 the International Court of Justice delivered an advisory opinion in regard to the question of the accordance with the International Law of the unilateral declaration of Kosovo's independence. The Court ruled in the advisory opinion that Kosovo's Unilateral Declaration of Independence from Serbia on 17 February, 2008, did not violate any applicable rule of International Law. The adoption of the declaration did not violate general International Law, the Security Council Resolution 1244 (1999) and the Constitutional Framework for Provisional Self-Government. This article discusses the arguments of the Court regarding the aspects of Kosovo's Unilateral Declaration of Independence. The author presents the critical analysis of some arguments of the Court. At the outset, the author analyses the Court's approach regarding the question posed to it by the General Assembly of the United Nations. The Court made a premise that the General Assembly's request for an advisory opinion on the "Accordance with International Law of the Declaration of Independence" means "non-prohibition by international law." This premise shaped the subsequent reasoning of the Court. The Court took the view that it needed to decide whether or not the Declaration of Independence was adopted in violation of International Law and is not required by the question to take the position on whether International Law conferred a positive entitlement on Kosovo to declare its independence or on whether International Law generally confers an entitlement on entities situated within a state unilaterally to break away from it. Furthermore, the article presents the arguments of the Court related to the legality of the Declaration on Kosovo's Independence. The author analyses the arguments and tries to reveal general rules applicable not only to Kosovo's case. According to the opinion, the principle of territorial integrity applies horizontally but not vertically and cannot be balanced with the principle of self-determination. Territorial integrity remains the law governing the relations between states. For the Court, territorial integrity is a rule, the meaning of which is precisely determined. In contrast, the Court left room for the development of the principle of self-determination in a non-colonial context.


Asset booms and sectoral changes can distort traditional estimates of structural fiscal revenue, and could lead to serious fiscal policy errors. This paper extends the estimation of structural revenues to take account of asset prices and sectoral changes, and applies this to the case of Ireland, where a property bust has revealed a large hole in the public finances. It is shown that excluding these factors led to a substantial bias in the estimation of structural revenues, and the structural balance prior to the crisis was much larger than earlier estimated.


Urban youth marginalisation became a key consideration in scholarly and policy literature in the 1990s. This entailed a shift from an emphasis on youth in relation to activism in the struggle to overcome colonial racism – popularly known as 'the struggle against apartheid' – to an emphasis on youth as the object of social inquiry and social welfare programmes. Irrespective of how we valuate this shift, the question in this article is how urban faith communities and youth ministry research are to respond to the agency of youth as dialogue partners – with a focus on social cohesion. This article explores this shift in scholarship on urban youth movements, especially for the period since 1994. It draws from the perspectives of my recent doctoral studies (Nel 2013) in constructing a creative dialogue with youth movements. The ultimate aim of this article is to provide a grounded basis for constructing a methodology for a postcolonial urban theology. In addition, it aims to inform the ongoing Youth at the Margins (YOMA) comparative study on the contribution of faith-based organisations to social cohesion in South Africa and Nordic Europe, with the Riverlea community, in Johannesburg, as one of the case studies.


Abstract—Korean traditional residences have been built with deep design issues for various values such as social, cultural, and environmental influences to be started from a few thousand years ago, but its meaning is being vanished due to the different lifestyles these days. It is necessary, therefore, to grasp the meaning of the Korea traditional building called Hanok and to get Korean people understand its real advantages. The purpose of this study is to propose a standardization methodology for evaluating comfort features towards Korean traditional houses. This paper is also trying to build an official standard evaluation system and to integrate aesthetic and psychological values induced from Hanok. Its comfort performance values could be divided into two large categories that are physical and psychological, and fourteen methods have been defined as the Korean Standards (KS). For this research, field survey data from representative Hanok types were collected for each method. This study also contains a qualitative in-depth analysis of the Hanok comfort index by the professions using AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process) and has examined the effect of the methods. As a result, this paper could define what methods can provide trustful outcomes and how to evaluate the own strengths in aspects of spatial comfort of Hanok using suggested procedures towards the spatial configuration of the traditional dwellings. This study has finally proposed an integrated development of a standardization methodology assessing the comfort performance for Korean traditional residences, and it is expected that they could evaluate inhabitants of the residents and interior environmental conditions especially structured by wood materials like Hanok.


There is empirical evidence, that the internal quality of software has an important impact on the external, i.e., user perceptible software quality. Our Evaluation Method for Internal Software Quality (EMISQ) - based on the ISO 14598 standard for the evaluation of software products - provides the methodological framework for an expert centred assessment of internal software quality, which is supported by metric values and other findings provided by off-the-shelf static code analysis tools. To perform code quality assessments in a timely and efficient manner, it is inevitable to have tool support tailored to the needs of the evaluators. For that purpose we developed the Eclipsed based tool Software Product Quality Reporter (SPQR) that supports the EMISQ method to a large extent - from the formulation of project-specific quality models up to the generation of preliminary code quality reports. The application of SPQR already proved its usefulness in the execution of EMISQ projects.


Contrary to the gun battles we are accustomed to, we now have cyber-warfares fought from one's comfort zone, be it bedroom, office, swimming pool, etc., but with deadly effects. --Dr. Olivier Muchena, Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, Secretary for Science and Technology (1) The Maxim gun and the Martini-Henry rifle ushered anglophone Africa into 20th century colonialism. The Cold War, in turn, presented a moment for black political elites to acquire weapons (the AK-47 in particular) with which to define and present themselves as African nationalists fighting--with all the material ramifications of this word--to end colonial rule. Could information technology--specifically radio, the Internet and cell phones--be the Martini-Henry, Maxim and AK-47 of the 21st century? Zimbabwe offers an example of the way ordinary citizens in Africa are using these information technologies to express and demand genuine individual freedoms. Words and information are a kinetic process. To control words is to control mobility; when mobility is frozen, so too is information. This essay examines the technologies that enable and transform the mobility of words into weapons of resistance--by the state against its own citizens and by citizens against the state. Using the lens of mobility of words (specifically those that contest state versions of truth and falsehood), this essay traverses the last ten years of newspaper, radio, computer, Internet, telephone and cellular technology in Zimbabwe. These technologies have enabled people to fortify their right to freedom of expression, to both minimize and maximize the value of their movements in search of better politics and to assemble resources and personnel to challenge the state. The state has responded with control mechanisms like surveillance, interception, physical violence and propaganda. Twenty-first century information technology has enabled individual citizens to become cyber-guerrillas, using their smart phones, laptops, and desktops to perforate the fortress of a ruler still caught up in the 20th century from their own homes, vehicles, rural villages, in the country or in the Zimbabwean diaspora. Zimbabwean users have designed a new use for technologies of communication: to address the question of liberation and the tension between national freedom and personal freedom. The Internet, e-mail and radio waves have become instruments to challenge the late 20th century metanarrative of the so-called father figure who built the nation--that big man of courage who liberated his people--that anchors the dominant state-centric idea of Africa. (2) This status entitles him to rule the people permanently and rapaciously, whether they want him to or not--hence Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's proprietary (as opposed to patriotic) declaration that "Zimbabwe is mine.'" (3) It gives the fullest meaning to his rebuff to then British Prime Minister Tony Blair: "Keep your England and let me keep my Zimbabwe." (4) According to Giorgio Agamben, the "fighting" and "loss of blood," the stuff that "liberating" is made of, was supposed to be a process of profanation--sacrificing or spilling blood to cleanse the country of the demon of white privilege so that the ordinary black person could decide on his of her government. Guns were supposed to clear the path to allow the pen of ballot to govern. Instead, the opposite happened in many African countries, including Zimbabwe. Many leaders of liberation struggles, once in power, used the sacrifice of spilled blood to elevate themselves to the status of gods. (5) The media--television, radio and newspapers--was used as a personal, party and state instrument for this transformation. In many states, a strict censorship system was installed to barricade any counternarrative--to filter what was heard, silence what might be said, and if necessary, shut the ears of those who might hear. Interestingly, the pervasive power of the Internet and its use as an instrument of profanation--as an instrument to challenge the metanarrative of leaders who sacrifice their citizens and exploit the history of liberation for self-deification-mimics the dual capacity of the AK-47 to both install and challenge power. …


In Ethics as First Philosophy, Adrian P. Peperzak brings together a wide range of essays by leading international scholars to discuss the work of the 20th century French philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas. The first book of its kind, this collection explores the significance of Levinas' texts for the study of philosophy, psychology and religion. Offering a complete account of the most recent research on Levinas, Ethics as First Philosophy is an extraordinary overview of the various approaches which have been adopted in interpreting the work of a revolutionary but difficult contemporary thinker.


Two primary groups G and H are quasi-isomorphic if there exist subgroups G* and H* of G and H such that G* and if* are isomorphic and such that G/G* and H/H* are bounded. The paper is concerned with properties, of primary groups, that are invariant under the relation of quasi-isomorphism. In the final section, a condition is given which is necessary and sufficient in order that the primary groups G and H be quasi-isomorphic in case G and H are both direct sums of closed groups. The main result of the paper is that quasi-isomorphism commutes with direct decomposition for the class of primary groups whose first Ulm factors are direct sums of countable groups.


The repeated activation of physiological stress systems in response to the chronic stress associated with poverty in early childhood signals environmental instability, leading to changes in patterns of physiological response that appear to prepare children for future stress. Consistent with an ecological model, poverty creates environmental instability across children's developmental contexts. Families differ in their psychological distress in response to poverty related stressors. Such differences in response (reflective of parental psychological wellbeing) may intensify or buffer the child's perception of environmental instability. This dissertation study tested the hypothesis that children show distinct profiles of physiological response (Sympathetic Nervous System and Hypothalamic Pituitary Adrenal axis activity) when challenged with a socially evaluative stressor using a sample of 156 children attending a Head Start preschool program. Latent profile analysis results confirmed the existence of 4 distinct profiles: Multisystem Responder, Low sAA Activity, Heightened sAA Responder, and Moderate sAA Responder. Multinomial regression analyses suggested family level stressors (parenting stress, poverty-related stressors, and their interaction) predicted profile group membership, in addition to caregiver employment status and gender. Results and implications for research and intervention are further discussed.


This Article posits that the Supreme Court's decision in Ricci v. DeStefano does not evaluate all claims of discrimination on a level playing field but rather "whitens" discrimination and "races" test fairness. The authors explicate how Ricci whitens discrimination by reframing antidiscrimination law's presumptions and burdens to focus on disparate treatment of whites as the paradigmatic and ultimately preferred claim; Ricci races test fairness by finding that efforts to use of job-related assessment tools that correct racial imbalance and better measure merit constitute racially disparate treatment of whites. Under Ricci all forms of racial attentivenes - like attending to the racial impact of promotional exams - become racial discrimination. This conflation derives in part from the application of the colorblindness/race-consciousness dyad, which obscures the more finely grained distinctions between racial attentiveness and inattentiveness that better parse the question of whether, in a given circumstance, taking account of race constitutes race discrimination. Contrary to Ricci's presumptions, not all racially attentive conduct is discriminatory; nor is all racially inattentive conduct nondiscriminatory. Secondly, while Ricci was framed as a reverse discrimination case, the authors evaluate it as a disparate impact claim using empirical analysis to examine the promotional lists at the heart of the Ricci lawsuit and to assess the effect of the City's failure to comply with accepted professional standards for proper test design and test use on Black and Latino firefighters and white firefighters who were not part of the Ricci plaintiff class. From this vantage point, New Haven's exams did not identify the most qualified candidates but instead unfairly and unncessarily reproduced the fire department's racially skewed status quo. Nevertheless, in Ricci, the City's efforts to ameliorate this racial imbalance were themselves treated as attempts to racially rig results, exemplifying how the pursuit of fair testing was raced. The Article concludes by evaluating proposals geared towards rectifying Ricci's dilution of Title VII disparate impact law, situating these alternatives in the broader context of the agenda to prevent the conversion of antidiscrimination law into discrimination itself.


In this paper we provide a finite-sample and an infinite-sample representer theorem for the concatenation of (linear combinations of) kernel functions of reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces. These results serve as mathematical foundation for the analysis of machine learning algorithms based on compositions of functions. As a direct consequence in the finitesample case, the corresponding infinite-dimensional minimization problems can be recast into (nonlinear) finite-dimensional minimization problems, which can be tackled with nonlinear optimization algorithms. Moreover, we show how concatenated machine learning problems can be reformulated as neural networks and how our representer theorem applies to a broad class of state-of-the-art deep learning methods.


Objective: The objective of this study is to evaluate the association between lifetime experience of intimate partner violence (IPV) and breastfeeding in India, Nepal and Timor-Leste. Methods: Women respondents, between the ages of 15 and 49 years, whose last child was under or equal to 2 years of age and a singleton birth and who were applied the domestic violence module, were included in the final study sample for each country. Logistic regression analyses were used to investigate any unadjusted associations between any lifetime IPV, any physical IPV, any sexual IPV or both and the following breastfeeding outcomes: early breastfeeding initiation (within 1 hour after birth), any breastfeeding and administration of prelacteal feeds. Multivariate logistic regression models with backwards elimination procedures were constructed for each infant feeding outcome with significant covariates selected based on bivariate analyses as well as a conceptual framework. Results: About one-third of women reported experiencing some form of lifetime IPV (38.4% in India, 30.5% in Nepal and 35.0% in Timor-Leste). The prevalence of any breastfeeding, as reported by current status, was almost universal at 85.6% for India, 93.5% for Nepal and 70.0% for Timor-Leste. Experience of both physical and sexual IPV was found to decrease the likelihood of initiating breastfeeding within 1 hour after birth among women in India (ORadj: 0.72, 95% CI: 0.56-0.94). With respect to prelacteal feeds, women in India (ORadj: 1.15, 95% CI: 1.05-1.25) who experienced any lifetime IPV were more likely to give prelacteal feeds within the first three days after birth. Mothers who experienced any lifetime physical IPV in India (ORadj: 1.16, 95% CI: 1.06-1.28) were also more likely to give prelacteal feeds. For any breastfeeding, women in Nepal who experienced any lifetime IPV were 68% less likely to practice breastfeeding at the time of the survey compared to women who did not experience any lifetime IPV (ORadj: 0.32, 95% CI: 0.14-0.76). In addition, mothers in Nepal who reported only physical IPV were 79% less likely to practice any breastfeeding (ORadj: 0.21, 95% CI: 0.08-0.57). Conclusions: Experience of both physical and sexual IPV during a respondent's lifetime is associated with decreased likelihood of initiating breastfeeding within 1 hour after birth; furthermore, reports of any lifetime IPV or of physical IPV decrease the odds that a mother will practice any breastfeeding. Experience of any lifetime IPV or of physical IPV only is also linked with increased odds of giving prelacteal feeds. These data can be used to help clarify the association between IPV and breastfeeding and to provide additional information for clinicians to help target screening and intervention programs to women who are pregnant or who have children and are at increased risk for experiencing IPV.


Network file systems offer a powerful, transparent interface for accessing remote data. Unfortunately, in current network file systems like NFS, clients fetch data from a central file server, inherently limiting the system's ability to scale to many clients. While recent distributed (peer-to-peer) systems have managed to eliminate this scalability bottleneck, they are often exceedingly complex and provide non-standard models for administration and accountability. We present Shark, a novel system that retains the best of both worlds--the scalability of distributed systems with the simplicity of central servers.
 Shark is a distributed file system designed for large-scale, wide-area deployment, while also providing a drop-in replacement for local-area file systems. Shark introduces a novel cooperative-caching mechanism, in which mutually-distrustful clients can exploit each others' file caches to reduce load on an origin file server. Using a distributed index, Shark clients find nearby copies of data, even when files originate from different servers. Performance results show that Shark can greatly reduce server load and improve client latency for read-heavy workloads both in the wide and local areas, while still remaining competitive for single clients in the local area. Thus, Shark enables modestly-provisioned file servers to scale to hundreds of read-mostly clients while retaining traditional usability, consistency, security, and accountability.


It is important to estimate crop production for various policy decisions relating to storage, distribution, pricing, marketing, import-export, etc. The estimation of major crops was issued by Directorate of Economics and Statistics. However, these advance estimates are only gustimates and not the objective estimates. Researchers have concentrated on estimating lots of subjective assessment based on several qualitative factors. Thus there is a need to develop statistical model to forecasts crop acreage and production. In this paper authors have developed integrated crop model for selected cash crops (Rice, Groundnut, Soyabin, Ragi) from the sample data collected from twelve talukas of Kolhapur district, Maharashtra state. Analysis and estimation of yield was done using data mining tool constructed by Matlab. One can use this model for estimating yield of any crop. The advances in computing and information storage have provided major factors for calculating and assessing the results. The challenge has been to extract knowledge from this raw data; this has lead to new methods and techniques such as data mining that can bridge the knowledge of the data to the crop yield estimation. This research aimed to assess these new data mining techniques and apply them to the various variables consisting in the database to establish if meaningful relationships can be found.


Nicotine, a major component of tobacco, is partly responsible for the development of atherosclerosis. It has been suggested that antioxidant nutrients are protective against degenerative diseases. So we have studied the antioxidant effect of oils isolated from onion and garlic on nicotine-induced lipid peroxidation in rat tissues. The lipid peroxidation products and scavenging enzymes were assessed in liver, lungs, heart and kidney. The rats were treated with 0.6 mg nicotine/kg bw and simultaneously given 100 mg garlic or onion oils/kg bw for 21 d. Thiobarbituric acid reactive substances, conjugated dienes and hydroperoxides concentrations were significantly increased in the tissues of nicotine-treated rats. Both the garlic oil and onion oil supplementation to nicotine-treated rats increased resistance to lipid peroxidation. The activities of catalase, superoxide dismutase and glutathione peroxidase decreased in nicotine-treated rats, but there was a trend to increased glutathione content. With garlic oil or onion oil supplementation, nicotine-treated rats had increased activities of antioxidant enzymes and increased concentrations of glutathione. These results indicate that oils of garlic and onion are effective antioxidants against the oxidative damage caused by nicotine.


ABSTRACT Romania faced one of the most dramatic transitions from authoritarian communism to become a democracy and a member of the North-Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU). The backbone of building a democratic society has been civilian control of the military. This article briefly describes the norms and institutions of democratic control of the intelligence services in Romania and assesses how the mechanisms of democratic control have worked in practice after almost three decades of reform. We argue that many of the post-1989 reforms have been only superficial implemented and monitored, particularly after Romania joined NATO and the EU. The article concludes that the democratic control of intelligence in Romania is an unfinished business. There are structural shortcomings embedded in the process of democracy consolidation that need to be addressed.


Edward Bever's book The Realities of Witchcraft addresses a fundamental historiographical issue, namely the extent to which early modern magical practices really functioned. Most scholars dismiss the idea that magical rites have real efficacy, or argue that the only reality that should be considered is contingent on historical cultural structures. Bever asserts that magic, and particularly harmful witchcraft, really worked, sometimes by physical means, but often by influencing neurobiology. In this forum section, five scholars respond to and critique Bever's arguments, and Bever responds.