The problem of bursts and leakages in water distribution systems has received significantly increased attention over the past two decades. As they represent both an environmental and an economical issue, how to reduce water loss through bursts and leakages is a challenging task for water utilities. Consequently, various techniques have been developed to detect the location and size of leakages. The methods for bursts (or leaks) detection and location can be broadly divided into two main categories, one based on hardware and the other based on software. Hardware-based methods include (i) acoustic detection methods such as listening rods, leak correlators, leak noise loggers and (ii) non-acoustic detection methods such as gas injection, ground penetrating radar technology and infrared photography. Software-based methods make use of the data collected by real-time pressure and/or flow sensors and several artificial intelligence techniques and statistical data analysis tools, including (i) methods based on numerical modeling methods, such as inverse transient analysis, time domain analysis and frequency domain analysis, and (ii) some non-numerical modeling methods, such as artificial neural networks, Bayesian inference systems, the Golden section method, and Kalman filtering. In this article, the authors describe the methods for pipe network burst location and detection, summarize the features of each method, and propose a suggestion for future work.


Based on data coming from media and parliamentary settings, the purpose of this study is to examine instances of humour in the discourse of politicians during a period of social turmoil in Greece. The analysis confirms the impact of humorous contributions, as well as other forms of linguistic creativity, in constructing, and resisting the construction of, damaging political identities in the discourse of political opponents. It also confirms the symbiotic relations among politics and media, via the formation of dialogical networks, which are shown to contribute to the blurring of ideological boundaries and identities in politics.


Abstract The deuteration technique was used to assign unknown infrared (IR) bands of Ge- bearing talcs. Procedures to achieve partial or complete H/D replacement in synthetic Ge-bearing (Mg, Ni and Co)-talcs have been investigated. From the spectral shift of IR absorption bands in the 4000-300 cm-1 region resulting from the H-D substitution, the IR bands of vibrations of Ge-bearing talcs could be identified and synthetic Ge-bearing talcs showed significantly different IR spectra from those for Si-talcs. After deuteration of synthetic Ge-bearing talcs, the unknown bands were attributed either to hydroxyl groups or to Ge-O vibrations of the clay skeleton, and the spectra were interpreted fully.


Degenerate shoulder tendons display evidence of hypoxia. However tendons are relatively avascular and not considered to have high oxygen requirements and the vulnerability of tendon cells to hypoxia is unclear. Cultured human tenocytes were exposed to hypoxia and the cellular response detected using QPCR, Western blotting, viability, and ELISA assays. We find that tenocytes respond to hypoxia in vitro by activating classical HIF-1α-driven pathways. Total hypoxia caused significant tenocyte apoptosis. Transcription factors typically involved in hypoxic response, HIF-1α and FOXO3A, were upregulated. Hypoxia caused sustained upregulation of several proapoptotic proteins known to mediate hypoxia-induced apoptosis, such as Bnip3 and Nix, but others were unchanged although they were reportedly hypoxia-sensitive in other cell types. Antiapoptotic proteins Bcl2 and Bcl-xL were unchanged by hypoxia. Normal human tenocytes expressed all isoforms of the hypoxia-induced vascular growth factor VEGF except VEGF-D. Hypoxia markedly upregulated VEGF-A mRNA, followed by increased VEGF protein secretion. However treatment with VEGF did not improve tenocyte survival. As a protective strategy for tenocytes at risk of hypoxic death we added prosurvival growth factors insulin or platelet rich plasma (PRP). Both agents strongly protected tenocytes from hypoxia-induced death over 48 h, suggesting possible efficacy in the acute postrupture tendon or integrating graft.


This paper presents a geomechanical model that was developed to investigate the behaviour of a natural slope located on the bank of the Rhine between the towns of Stein and Mumpf in Switzerland. The slope, affected by a large landslide, constitutes a relevant case study since three strategic infrastructure assets are located at its toe (a railway, a highway and a cantonal road connecting Zurich and Basel). An intense measurement campaign has been conducted during the last 13 years, collecting information on pore water pressures and displacements within the slope. These measurements made it possible to identify pore water pressure evolution as the main cause for movement accelerations and to detect the presence of a multiple slip surface system. Thanks to advanced finite element hydrogeological and geomechanical modelling, it has been possible to analyse the landslide behaviour. A coupled hydro-mechanical formulation has been used, taking into account the transition of the soil from a partially saturated to a fully saturated state. A modified Cam- Clay constitutive model was adopted for the slip surfaces. Relevant material parameters were obtained by combining the available laboratory tests and the back analysis of the crises in the years 2000 and 2001. After being calibrated and validated, the model was applied to improve the understanding of the physical processes involved, to predict the landslide behaviour under different rainfall patterns and to test a possible stabilization strategy.


The effect of hemicellulose extraction of pine wood chips by water prehydrolysis on subsequent kraft cooking and paper properties was studied. Prehydrolysis reduced the required cooking time by approximately 40% and increased kappa number reduction in oxygen delignification. Prehydrolysis decreased the overall brownstock pulp yield on wood by 7.2 percentage units. Consequently, valuable products would need to be produced from the prehydrolyzate to compensate for the resulting increase in wood consumption. In DED-bleaching, lower bleaching chemical dosages were needed with prehydrolyzed than with unhydrolyzed pulps to obtain similar final brightness. As expected, removal of hemicelluloses led to a decrease in the tensile index and increase in the tear index. At a given density, the strength potential of prehydrolyzed pulps was higher than that of unhydrolyzed pulps. There was an up to more than fivefold increase in beating revolutions in a PFI-mill needed to obtain comparable tensile indices. This significant reduction in beating response might pose problems in the commercialization of prehydrolyzed pulps. In general, differences between the paper properties of prehydrolyzed pulps and unhydrolyzed pulps are attributed to decreased inter-fiber bonding in prehydrolyzed pulps.


Visual translation of speech as an aid for the deaf has long been a subject of electronic research and development. This thesis is concerned with a technique of sound visualisation based upon the theory of the primacy of dynamic, rather than static, information in the perception of speech sounds. The goal is design and evaluation of a system to display the perceptually important features of an input sound in a dynamic format as similar as possible to the auditory representation of that sound. The human auditory system, as the most effective system of sound representation, is first studied. Then, based on the latest theories of hearing and techniques of auditory modelling, a simplified model of the human ear is developed. In this model, the outer and middle ears together are simulated by a high-pass filter, and the inner ear is modelled by a bank of band-pass filters the outputs of which, after rectification and compression, are applied to a visualiser block. To design an appropriate visualiser block, theories of sound and speech perception are reviewed. Then the perceptually important properties of sound, and their relations to the physical attributes of the sound pressure wave, are considered to map the outputs from the auditory model onto an informative and recognisable running image-like the one known as cochleagram. This conveyor-like image is then sampled by a window of 20 milliseconds duration at a rate of 50 samples per second, so that a sequence of phase-locked, rectangular images is produced. Animation of these images results in a novel method of spectrography displaying both the time-varying and the time-independent information of the underlying sound with a high resolution in real time. The resulting system translates a spoken word into a visual gesture, and displays a still picture when the input is a steady state sound. Finally the implementation of this visualiser system is evaluated through several experiments undertaken by normal-hearing subjects. In these experiments, recognition of the gestures of a number of spoken words, is examined through a set of two-word and multi-word forced-choice tests. The results of these preliminary experiments show a high recognition score (40-90 percent, where zero represents chance expectation) after only 10 learning trials. General conclusions from the results suggest: a potential quick learning of the gestures, language independence of the system, fidelity of the system in translating the auditory information, and persistence of the learned gestures in the long-term memory. The results are very promising and motivate further investigations.


Several of OPC paste and concrete specimens, with different mix proportions, were cast against CPF and impermeable formwork (IF) and the profiles of pore structure, microhardness and scratch hardness of the cover zone were established. The chloride ingress and the depth of carbonation of the surface zone of concrete cast against CPF and IF were investigated. The main mechanisms controlling the ECR processes and the factors affecting such treatment were critically reviewed. Subsequently, as a means of restoring passivation of steel embedded in carbonated concrete, such HCP specimens were subjected to ECR. The influence of ECR on the chemistry of the pore solution and the microstructure of the surface and the steel/cement past interface zones were also studied. The main findings of this investigation were as follows: (a) The thickness of the microstructure gradient of cover concrete is significantly decreased with increasing period of water curing but is relatively unaffected by curing temperature, w/e ratio and the use of cement replacement materials. (b) The scratch hardness technique was shown to be potentially useful for characterising the microstructure and microhardness gradients of the surface zone. (c) A relationship between the microstructure gradient and mass transport properties of the surface zone was established. (d) The use of CPF resulted in a significant reduction in porosity of both the cement paste matrix and the aggregate/cement paste transition zone, and a marked improvement in the resistance of the surface zone to carbonation and the ingress of chloride ions. (e) The ECR treatment resulted in a marked densification of the pore structure and in changes to the pore solution chemistry and the cement phases of near-surface and steel/cement paste transition zones. This effect was more pronounced with current density, period of treatment and particularly with the use of sodium phosphate as an electrolyte.


The mineral zircon is extremely variable both in terms of external morphology and internal textures. These features reflect the geologic history of the mineral, especially the relevant episode(s) of magmatic or metamorphic crystallization (and recrystallization), strain imposed both by external forces and by internal volume expansion caused by metamictization, and chemical alteration. The paper presents a selection of both the most typical, but also of the less common, features seen in zircon, categorized according to the different geological processes responsible for their formation. The atlas is intended as a general guide for the interpretation of zircon characteristics, and of related isotopic data.

Zircon has become one of the most widely used minerals for the extraction of information on the prehistory and genesis of magmatic, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks. Much of the geological usefulness of zircon stems from its suitability as a geochronometer based on the decay of U (and Th) to Pb, but in addition it is also the major host of the radiogenic isotopic tracer Hf, and it is used to determine oxygen isotopic compositions and REE and other trace element abundances, all of which yield useful clues concerning the history of the host rock, and in some case, the parent rock in which the precursor zircon crystallized.

One of the major advantages of zircon is its ability to survive magmatic, metamorphic and erosional processes that destroy most other common minerals. Zircon-forming events tend to be preserved as distinct structural entities on a pre-existing zircon grain. Because of this ability, quite commonly zircon consists of distinct segments, each preserving a particular period of zircon-formation (or consumption). A long experience and modern instrumentation and techniques have provided the "zircon community" the means to image and interpret preserved textures, and hence to decipher the history and evolution of a rock. One …


Nowadays, open-source large language models like LLaMA have emerged. Recent developments have incorporated supervised fine-tuning (SFT) and reinforcement learning fine-tuning (RLFT) to align these models with human goals. However, SFT methods treat all training data with mixed quality equally, while RLFT methods require high-quality pairwise or ranking-based preference data. In this study, we present a novel framework, named OpenChat, to advance open-source language models with mixed-quality data. Specifically, we consider the general SFT training data, consisting of a small amount of expert data mixed with a large proportion of sub-optimal data, without any preference labels. We propose the C(onditioned)-RLFT, which regards different data sources as coarse-grained reward labels and learns a class-conditioned policy to leverage complementary data quality information. Interestingly, the optimal policy in C-RLFT can be easily solved through single-stage, RL-free supervised learning, which is lightweight and avoids costly human preference labeling. Through extensive experiments on three standard benchmarks, our openchat-13b fine-tuned with C-RLFT achieves the highest average performance among all 13b open-source language models. Moreover, we use AGIEval to validate the model generalization performance, in which only openchat-13b surpasses the base model. Finally, we conduct a series of analyses to shed light on the effectiveness and robustness of OpenChat. Our code, data, and models are publicly available at https://github.com/imoneoi/openchat.


In this paper, the importance of maintenance of marine propulsion is discussed with specific focus on the use of condition monitoring to inform maintenance schedules. The design requirements of DNV GL for shafts expected to operate in ice infested waters is adapted and a method is proposed to calculate the short-term fatigue damage during ice impacts. This method uses the Palmgren-Miner rule to calculate fatigue damage based on a transient, lumped-mass model simulation of the shaft with ice loads calculated from shaft measurements using inverse methods. Relevant sources of uncertainty in this assessment method are identified and quantified in order to express the short-term fatigue damage in a stochastic form. Sources of uncertainty include uncertainty in the calculation of ice loads, uncertainty of the transient analysis and uncertainty regarding the actual failure of the shaft as predicted by the S-N material curve and the Palmgren-Miner method. Uncertainties that influence the stress history are found to be the greatest contributor to fatigue damage uncertainty. A method is discussed that calculates the remaining useful life of the shaft as a function of short-term fatigue damage and the identified sources of uncertainty. The S.A. Agulhas is used as a case study to quantify the fatigue damage.


Heme oxygenase (HO), the heme-degrading enzyme, plays an important role in heme catabolism. Among three isozymes, HO-1 is an inducible form expressed mainly in macrophages. In rat ontogeny, HO-1 immunoreactivity was detected in mononuclear cells in the yolk sac at 10 days of gestation. HO-1-expressing cells were then detected in the fetal liver and their numbers increased during the gestational period. The numbers of HO-1-positive cells and HO-1 mRNA levels in the liver peaked at 18 days of gestation. Most of the macrophages expressed both HO-1 and a macrophage scavenger receptor. Macrophages in the fetal liver showed marked hemophagocytosis. Macrophages in the lung, spleen, bone marrow, and other tissues also expressed HO-1. HO-1 immunoreactivity was also observed in syncytial cells of the chorionic villi, the endodermal layer of the yolk sac, and renal tubules of the fetus. Intestinal mucosal epithelial cells expressed HO-1 after birth. These findings imply that HO-1 is crucial for macrophages in heme catabolism from an early stage of ontogeny. HO-1 expression in non-macrophagic cells may be required for other purposes such as protection from oxidative stress and various stimuli.


– Aim: To examine body composition of Chilean powerlifters according to body mass and sex. Methods: Fifty-six male and female powerlifters were recruited from one national competition. Aside from the official weight categories, males were classified as the lightweight, middleweight, and heavyweight classes. Similarly, females were classified as lightweight and middle-heavyweight classes. Nineteen anthropometric measures were assessed, with lean mass as the main outcome. A one-way ANOVA was used to compare groups. Results: Male lightweight class lifted less (p<0.01) total load (417±30.9 kg) compared to heavier male classes (524±66.7 kg, middleweight; 581±131 kg, heavyweight), and female classes lifted less (p<0.01) total load (221±33.8 kg, lightweight; 254±48.3 kg, middleweight-heavyweight) compared to all male classes. Regarding lean-mass in trunk, arms and legs, total body protein, water, and mineral mass, all male groups had greater (p<0.01) values than the groups of females, while lightweight males had lower (p<0.01) values than the rest of male groups, and heavyweight males had greater (p<0.01) values than the total sample of males (except for legs lean mass, and total bone mineral content). In females, no significant differences were observed between classes, or in total load lifted or in body composition. Conclusion: Heavier male lifters had significantly greater lean mass than lighter athletes. Therefore, powerlifting performance was affected by anthropometric measures, as corroborated by 1-RM scores. However, there was a general lack of differences in body composition between female weight classes, and, as a result, a lack of differences in 1RM performance.


This paper introduces a computational model of online collaborative learning system and investigates how the heterogeneity of opportunity cost among users initiates a vicious cycle of accumulation of unnecessary duplicate postings and eventually the system shuts down. Further examination explores how deterring newcomers improves collaborative learning system efficiency by reducing unnecessary duplicate postings resulting from opportunistic behavior and explains why extrinsic rewards may fail to improve use of a collaborative learning system due to an unfavorable alignment between opportunity cost and cognitive structure of knowledge. This paper suggests a new approach for explaining the relationship between opportunity cost and collaborative learning system success as well as for identifying and aligning the opportunity cost of using the system, which is suggested as a critical factor to system success.


The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) is a globally applied river basin ecohydrological model used in a wide spectrum of studies, ranging from land use change and climate change impacts studies to research for the development of the best water management practices. However, SWAT has limitations in simulating the seasonal growth cycles for trees and perennial vegetation in the tropics, where rainfall rather than temperature is the dominant plant growth controlling factor. Our goal is to improve the vegetation growth module of SWAT for simulating the vegetation variables – such as the leaf area index (LAI) – for tropical ecosystems. Therefore, we present a modified SWAT version for the tropics (SWAT-T) that uses a straightforward but robust soil moisture index (SMI) – a quotient of rainfall ( P ) and reference evapotranspiration (ET r ) – to dynamically initiate a new growth cycle within a predefined period. Our results for the Mara Basin (Kenya/Tanzania) show that the SWAT-T-simulated LAI corresponds well with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) LAI for evergreen forest, savanna grassland and shrubland. This indicates that the SMI is reliable for triggering a new annual growth cycle. The water balance components (evapotranspiration and streamflow) simulated by the SWAT-T exhibit a good agreement with remote-sensing-based evapotranspiration (ET-RS) and observed streamflow. The SWAT-T model, with the proposed vegetation growth module for tropical ecosystems, can be a robust tool for simulating the vegetation growth dynamics in hydrologic models in tropical regions.


BACKGROUND
It is estimated that 40% to 60% of patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) continue to experience symptoms despite adequate medical management. For this population of treatment-refractory patients, promising results have been reported with the use of deep brain stimulation (DBS).

OBJECTIVE
To conduct a systematic review of the literature and develop evidence-based guidelines on DBS for OCD.

METHODS
A systematic literature search was undertaken using the PubMed database for articles published between 1966 and October 2012 combining the following words: "deep brain stimulation and obsessive-compulsive disorder" or "electrical stimulation and obsessive-compulsive disorder." Of 353 articles, 7 were retrieved for full-text review and analysis. The quality of the articles was assigned to each study and the strength of recommendation graded according to the guidelines development methodology of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons/Congress of Neurological Surgeons Joint Guidelines Committee.

RESULTS
Of the 7 studies, 1 class I and 2 class II double-blind, randomized, controlled trials reported that bilateral DBS is more effective in improving OCD symptoms than sham treatment.

CONCLUSION
Based on the data published in the literature, the following recommendations can be made: (1) There is Level I evidence, based on a single class I study, for the use of bilateral subthalamic nucleus DBS for the treatment of medically refractory OCD. (2) There is Level II evidence, based on a single class II study, for the use of bilateral nucleus accumbens DBS for the treatment of medically refractory OCD. (3) There is insufficient evidence to make a recommendation for the use of unilateral DBS for the treatment of medically refractory OCD.


Tribal area Developmental planning implies prudent use of all the natural resources to ensure optimum and sustained productivity. In this approach the basic unit of development is a watershed, which is a manageable hydrological unit and the development is not just confined to agricultural lands alone, but covers the area, starting from the highest point of the area to the outlet of the natural stream. This calls for maintaining the fragile balance between productivity functions and conservation practices through monitoring and identification of problem areas and implementation of location specific development plans. Reliability of the data bases, both the spatial and nonspatial, is therefore crucial to the success of the developmental planning. Equally important is the timely inflow of information to serve planning needs. Satellite based remote sensing has emerged as a powerful tool for planning watershed developmental programmes. Further, Geographic Information System (GIS) is required for integration of different thematic resources. Geographic Information System is an analytical tool capable to perform storing, spatial operations, spatial queries, data linkages, data matching and output generation. Thus, in the present study, the latest technologies such as remote sensing and GIS are employed for generation of tribal area development planning of chintapalli block of Visakhapatnam district, Andhra Pradesh State.


Bacteria capable of anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) enable autotrophic nitrogen removal. Organic carbon in wastewater can instead be utilized for energy production. However, anammox-based processes are not yet used at any extent for treatment of the main stream at wastewater treatment plants. One of the reasons for this is the challenge for the slow growing autotrophic bacteria to work at low temperatures. Here we investigate one-stage nitritation-anammox at temperatures of 13-16°C in a pilot moving bed biofilm reactor (MBBR) receiving reject water from anaerobic sludge digestion. At a target nitrogen loading rate of 1 g NH4+-N m-2 d-1 the average nitrogen removal rate was 0.81 g NH4+-N m-2 d-1 and 0.55 g NH4+-N m-2 d-1 at 16°C and 13°C respectively. At low temperatures oxygen control is important to avoid oxygen penetration to the deeper parts of the biofilm, which causes inhibition of the anammox bacteria and as a result nitrite accumulation. Hence, the process was operated at conditions to limit the activity of the aerobic ammonium oxidizing bacteria (AOB) by oxygen availability. The biofilm biomass was dominated by anammox bacteria, with 1.0 × 1014 copies m-2 (16S rRNA), with considerably fewer AOB of 2.1 × 1012 copies m-2 (amoA), as measured by quantitative PCR. Cell specific conversion rates of anammox bacteria and AOB were estimated at 0.3-0.5 fmol N cell-1 d-1 and 7-9 fmol N cell-1 d-1, respectively. The study shows the applicability of one-stage nitritation-anammox in MBBRs at low temperatures and highlights the importance of quantification of AOB and anammox bacteria for understanding process performance.


The primary goal of the research reported in this thesis is to identify what criteria are responsible for the good performance of a heuristic rule evaluation function in a greedy top-down covering algorithm both in classification and regression. We first argue that search heuristics for inductive rule learning algorithms typically trade off consistency and coverage, and we investigate this trade-off by determining optimal parameter settings for five different parametrized heuristics for classification. In order to avoid biasing our study by known functional families, we also investigate the potential of using metalearning for obtaining alternative rule learning heuristics. The key results of this experimental study are not only practical default values for commonly used heuristics and a broad comparative evaluation of known and novel rule learning heuristics, but we also gain theoretical insights into factors that are responsible for a good performance. Additionally, we evaluate the spectrum of different search strategies to see whether separate-and-conquer rule learning algorithms are able to gain performance in terms of predictive accuracy or theory size by using more powerful search strategies like beam search or exhaustive search. Unlike previous results that demonstrated that rule learning algorithms suffer from oversearching, our work pays particular attention to the interaction between the search heuristic and the search strategy. Our results show that exhaustive search has primarily the effect of finding longer, but nevertheless more general rules than hill-climbing search. A second objective is the design of a regression rule learning algorithm. To do so, a novel parametrized regression heuristic is introduced and its parameter is tuned in the same way as before. A new splitpoint generation method is introduced for the efficient handling of numerical attributes. We show that this metric-based algorithm performs comparable to several other regression algorithms. Furthermore, we propose a novel approach for learning regression rules by transforming the regression problem into a classification problem. The key idea is to dynamically define a region around the target value predicted by the rule, and considering all examples within that region as positive and all examples outside that region as negative. In this way, conventional rule learning heuristics may be used for inducing regression rules. Our results show that our heuristic algorithm outperforms approaches that use a static discretization of the target variable, and performs en par with other comparable rule-based approaches, albeit without reaching the performance of statistical approaches. In the end, two case studies on real world problems are presented. The first one deals with the problem of predicting skin cancer and the second one is about decid-


SUMMARY Allelochemicals are compounds released by one plant or plant residues that may have a negative or positive effect on other plant. The importance of allelopathy was extensively explored during the past three decades, with the work concentrating in the extraction and identification of the chemicals, and demonstration of activity in petry dish experiments. These compounds interact in the soil environment similarly as herbicides and are subject to processes of degradation such as microbial degradation, oxidation, and photolysis, and processes of removal or transfer, such as volatilization and adsorption. The objective of this review was to access the fate of allelochemicals in the soil environment to help to find strategies to increase its activity. The activity of allelochemical is limited in time (because of slow release from the donor material) and in space (because of the interaction with the environment). Demonstration of allelopathy should include the fate of the proposed chemical in the soil environment, presenting studies of degradation and removal processes.


In a recent demonstration project, Florida Medicaid enrollees were required to pick a managed care plan that was either a Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) or a Provider Service Network (PSN). PSNs are a form of managed care very similar to Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) that provides health care services directly through a provider or network of organizations to a defined population without a "middle man" such as a third party insurance company and health plan. There are two types of PSNs: Physician-based PSNs and Healthcare system-based PSNs. Physician-based PSNs are created and controlled by physicians groups. Healthcare system-based PSNs are based on safety net hospitals and their outpatient clinics. Health system-based PSNs are integrated delivery systems, which are organizations that combine healthcare providers into one organization and may provide more efficient care with lower cost of care due to economies of scale. The objective of this study was to examine the differences in healthcare expenditures by enrollees in physician-based and health system-based PSNs. Using a difference in difference approach our study found that compared to enrollees in physician-based PSNs, enrollees in health system-based PSNs lowered expenditures to a greater extent over time compared to physician-based PSNs. Findings from this study provide important information to states considering implementing alternative delivery models to control Medicaid costs.


Following Basu (1997), the difference between the sensitivity of accounting earnings to negative equity return (proxy for bad news) and its sensitivity to positive equity return (proxy for good news) is interpreted as an indicator of conditional accounting conservatism. However, there is concern that the earnings-sensitivity difference (ESD) may be affected by factors other than conditional conservatism, and that this may impair its reliability as an indicator of conditional conservatism. Motivated by such concerns and by recognition that financial distress could contribute to an ESD through a conditional-conservatism route and/or through a non-conditional-conservatism route, we examine the association between financial distress and the ESD for U.S. non-financial firms. By decomposing the association into an element arising from accruals, which can reflect conditional conservatism, and an element arising from cash flow from operating activities (CFO), which cannot directly reflect conditional conservatism, we seek evidence as to whether such association arises through a conditional-conservatism route or through a non-conditional-conservatism route. We find that positive association between financial distress and the ESD arises predominantly through the accruals component of earnings rather than the CFO component, consistent with it arising primarily because of a higher degree of conditional conservatism in relatively financially distressed firms. The inference that there is a positive association between financial distress and conditional conservatism is supported by other non-equity-return-based measures of conditional conservatism. The evidence in this paper suggests that the effect of financial distress does not significantly impair the reliability of the ESD as an indicator of conditional conservatism.


Ever since the rise of fuel costs, the diesel engine manufacturers throughout the world, for the past few years, have been allocating a great deal of research for the improvement of the engine thermal efficiency. Number of methods are being suggested by various experts and researchers. Among them, the Low Heat Rejection (LHR) Engine concept is at the forefront. From the day of invention of the LHR Engine, maximum thermal efficiency improvement obtained so far is very less. A solemn attempt is made in this research is to develop an Efficient LHR (E-LHR) engine to achieve higher thermal efficiency. Different levels of insulations with special lubricants are tried on the C.I. Engine to achieve the best one in terms of performance, emissions and other combustion parameters. The E-LHR Engine suggested in this work has been tested with different vegetable oils for their suitability. Theoretical investigations are also carried out to verify at which injection pressure and compression ratio, the C.I. Engine has better performance characteristics when Jatropha is used as fuel. All these investigations are useful to lead to a substantial contribution to the development of E-LHR engine.


Approximating distributions over strings is a hard learning problem. Typical GI techniques involve using nite state machines as models and attempting to learn both the structure and the weights, simultaneously. The PAutomaC competition is the rst challenge to allow comparison between methods and algorithms and builds a rst state of the art for these techniques. Both articial data and real data were proposed and contestants were to try to estimate the probabilities of test strings. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the implementation details of PAutomaC and to report the nal results of the competition.


This study describes how the air quality in a displacement ventilated classroom can be influenced by the position of a contaminating person, and by the activity of a person who walks around in the room. Tracer gas measurements have been performed in a full scale mwk-up of a classroom, with person simulators at the student's desks. The spreading of contaminants from a person seems to be strongly dependent on the position of the person. The closer the contaminating person sits to the outlet krminal(s), the less of hishers contaminants are spread in the room. Paradoxically, people sitting furthest away from the air supply were found to be provided with the least contaminated air. Physical activity. produced by a walking person, tends to increase the concentration of contaminants emitted from people in the room, whereas the air exchange efficiency actually can benefit from it. A1 all levels of activity tested in this study the displacement ventilation system provided significantly better air quality than a mixing system would.


The existence of hydrodynamically developed, laminar
Viscoelastic Secondary Flows (VSFs) of non-Newtonian fluids in
straight ducts of non-circular cross-section was proposed in the
1950's. VSFs have since been observed sporadically, and only once
with a velocimetric technique. Using axial and transverse full
flow-field velocity-position raster maps made with Rheological
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (Rheo-NMR), Newtonian and non-Newtonian
fluid flows were quantified in Hagen-Poiseuille and Power Law
contexts, over more than two orders of magnitude of flow rate, in
ducts of circle, square, triangle, and pentagon cross-section. VSF
was reliably and repeatedly observed to occur at between one part
in 130 and one part in 600 of the primary axial flow velocity.
Velocity measurements ranged from <10 µm/s to approximately 30
cm/s, suggesting a velocity dynamic range >3E4 without
optimization. To obtain VSF flow direction information, a novel
flow directional phantom was developed and characterized. Aqueous
solutions of Polyethylene Oxide (PEO), Viscarin GP-109NF, Viscarin
GP-209NF (V209), Hyaluronan (HA) in a Phosphate-Buffered
Saline-like solvent, and an aqueous Polyethylene Glycol/PEO-based
Boger fluid were investigated. Axial data was corroborated with
related data gathered by an independent method. Basic simulations
corroborated the VSF observations. Duct hydraulic diameters (>=
1.6 mm) approached the micro-channel regime. VSF detections in HA
 – synovial fluid's principal component  – and V209 were novel,
as were observations of some artifacts which were subsequently
characterized and corrected. The detection of VSF in HA represents
the first experimental evidence suggesting that its second normal
stress (N_2) is comparable to that of better-characterized fluids.
In the first application of a new VSF-based method, a particular
Boger fluid's constant viscosity and, in the square duct, its lack
of VSF were used with established criteria to suggest that the
fluid's N_2 approached zero. The development of a rudimentary, but
versatile and inexpensive home-built velocimetric spectrometer is
detailed, as are several new components. An exhaustive VSF
literature review is included. The remarkable transverse
velocimetric ability of Rheo-NMR in both optically opaque and
transparent system is highlighted, suggesting that perhaps the
technique might represent, in both micro-channels and conventional
ducts, the gold-standard in flow velocimetry.


Essential SQLAlchemy introduces a high-level open-source code library that makes it easier for Python programmers to access relational databases such as Oracle, DB2, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite. SQLAlchemy has become increasingly popular since its release, but it still lacks good offline documentation. This practical book fills the gap, and because a developer wrote it, you get an objective look at SQLAlchemy's tools rather than an advocate's description of all the "cool" features. SQLAlchemy includes both a database server-independent SQL expression language and an object-relational mapper (ORM) that lets you map "plain old Python objects" (POPOs) to database tables without substantially changing your existing Python code. Essential SQLAlchemy demonstrates how to use the library to create a simple database application, walks you through simple queries, and explains how to use SQLAlchemy to connect to multiple databases simultaneously with the same Metadata. You also learn how to: Create custom types to be used in your schema, and when it's useful to use custom rather than built-in typesRun queries, updates, and deletes with SQLAlchemy's SQL expression languageBuild an object mapper with SQLAlchemy, and understand the differences between this and active record patterns used in other ORMsCreate objects, save them to a session, and flush them to the databaseUse SQLAlchemy to model object oriented inheritanceProvide a declarative, active record pattern for use with SQLAlchemy using the Elixir extensionUse the SQLSoup extension to provide an automatic metadata and object model based on database reflection In addition, you'll learn how and when to use other extensions to SQLAlchemy, including AssociationProxy, OrderingList, and more. Essential SQLAlchemy is the much-needed guide for every Python developer using this code library. Instead of a feature-by-feature documentation, this book takes an "essentials" approach that gives you exactly what you need to become productive with SQLAlchemy right away.


Little is known about biophysical controls on soil respiration in California's Sierra Nevada old- growth, mixed-conifer forests. Using portable and automated soil respiration sampling units, we measured soil respiration rate (SRR) in three dominant patch types: closed canopy (CC), ceanothus-dominated patches (CECO), and open canopy (OC). SRR varied significantly among the patch types, ranging from 2.0 to 4.5 mol m 2 s 1 and from 0.9 to 2.9 mol m 2 s 1 during the 1999 and 2000 measuring periods, respectively, with the maximum in CECO and the minimum in OC. Multiple peaks of seasonal SRR were functions of soil temperature and moisture dynamics. The relationship between SRR and soil temperature switched from a positive to a negative correlation when soil moisture dropped from saturation to drought. Time lag, as a function of soil moisture, was included in an exponential model to assess the effects of soil moisture on SRR in this seasonal water-stressed ecosystem. The total soil C flux summed by an area-weighted average across all three patch types was 660 163 g C m 2 from May to Oct. 2000. These results may be applicable to other water-stressed forests in the Mediterranean climate zone, and have implications for the conservation of soil carbon. FOR .S CI. 51(3):221-232.


Objectives Internet-based STI testing programmes may overcome barriers posed by in-clinic testing, though uptake could reflect social gradients. The role these services play in comparison to clinical testing services is unknown. We compared experiences of testing barriers between STI clinic clients to clients of GetCheckedOnline.com (GCO; where clients take a printed lab form to a lab). Methods Our 10-month cross-sectional study was conducted after GCO was promoted to STI clinic clients and men who have sex with men (MSM). Clinic and GCO clients completed an online survey assessing testing barriers and facilitators; responses were compared using bivariate analysis (level of significance P<0.01; significant results below). Results Compared with 321 clinic clients, the 73 GCO clients were more likely to be older (median 35 vs 30 years), MSM (45% vs 16%), be testing routinely (67% vs 39%), have delayed testing for any reason (76% vs 54%) and due to clinic distance (28% vs 9%), report delays due to wait times (50% vs 17%), embarrassment with testing (16% vs 6%), discomfort discussing sexual health where they usually go for testing (39% vs 22%), as well as discomfort discussing sexual history with (19% vs 5%) and fearing judgement from (30% vs 15%) any healthcare provider. GCO clients were less likely to have found clinic hours convenient (59% vs 77%) and clinic appointments easy to make (49% vs 66%), and more likely to report long wait times (50% vs 17%). We found no differences in technology skills/use. Conclusions In this urban setting, an internet-based testing service effectively engaged individuals experiencing testing barriers, with few social gradients in uptake. While some testing barriers could be addressed through increasing access to clinical services, others require social and structural changes, highlighting the importance of internet-based STI testing services to increasing test uptake.


A novel optical fiber is proposed that supports the lowest-order soliton despite the presence of optical loss. Groupvelocity dispersion of this fiber decreases with distance, in accord with soliton attenuation that is due to the inherent optical loss of the fiber.


In this chapter we look at exit as a multidimensional and multidisciplinary phenomenon that may involve processes and outcomes operating at multiple levels of analysis. We do so because entrepreneurship research is often considered a phenomenon-driven academic field (Shane, 2003; Sorenson and Stuart, 2008) and entrepreneurship is in itself a multidimensional concept: its definition depends on the focus of the research undertaken (Davidsson, Low, & Wright, 2001). In this field, it is surprising that exit has received much less attention than the phenomenon of entry, growth, or innovation among new firms; however, there has been renewed interest in this topic and this research crosses many disciplines and multiple theoretical perspectives. In this chapter, we provide an in-depth review of that research which is applicable to small business. We review disciplinary approaches to research on exit, and then present a literature review of 28 empirical studies of entrepreneurial exit during the last 29 years. We summarize these studies under a number of topical areas and discuss the potential for further development in these areas. In doing so, we provide a framework and opportunities for future research.


This paper presents the design of a low RCS reflectarray at 8.52 GHz by replacing the solid metal sheet behind the antenna with a band stop frequency selective surface. A 50 element linear array of omni-directional elements was used to simulate the far field pattern of a reflectarray with f/D=0.325 in the plane of the elements to assess the effect of an imperfect aperture distribution on the gain and sidelobe levels. It is found that the reflection loss variation across the aperture does not have a significant effect on the radiation pattern of the antenna, because for the layout that was studied, only a few of resonant loops were predicted to give a significantly different loss than the others in the array. Simulated and measured results show that the 'in-band' reflection phase response of the structure with metal ground plane and with a periodic FSS ground plane is very similar, however the periodic ground plane reduces the 'out of band' reflectivity by more than 4 dB, thereby decreasing its RCS profile to these signals.


One hundred and fifteen sperm whales (97 female, 15 male, 3 unknown gender) were
involved in three mass stranding events during the month of February 1998 along the
west and north-west coastlines of Tasmania, Australia. Sixty six of these whales stranded
at Ocean Beach, Strahan, 35 at Greens Beach, Marrawah and 11 at Black River Beach,
Stanley. The remaining three whales stranded singly along the coastline. Three mass
strandings of this species in such close temporal proximity have not been reported in this
area before, and this is the first time that samples have been systematically collected from
complete or near-complete groups of sperm whales from Tasmanian waters. The broad
aim of this project was to examine the life history of complete or near complete female
groups of sperm whales in an effort to contribute to the paucity of knowledge on two key
areas of research identified for sperm whales in the Australian Government's Action Plan
on Australian Cetaceans: the basic biology of this species and pollutant impacts on this
species.
This study is made up of three components: (i) by developing modifications to current
methods of age determination, an assessment of the demographics and growth of the
female component of these groups was undertaken; (ii) by collecting stomach contents
and blubber samples, an investigation into energy acquisition and storage was undertaken
and (iii) concentrations of organochlorines were determined from blubber samples and
concentrations and interpreted in light of ecological factors such as diet and demography.
The three stranding groups were composed primarily of adult females. Total lengths of
all animals ranged from 417-1200 cm and ages ranged from 0.75-64 years. Female sperm
whales, unlike many other mammals, demonstrate high, relatively stable survival
throughout their entire life span. Overall, growth is prolonged in female sperm whales,
not reaching asymptotic length until around 20 years. The longevity, low fecundity, slow
growth, delayed sexual maturation and high input of resources into young over a
protracted period define sperm whales as extreme K-selected animals. Survival in mature
female sperm whales in this study was higher than those observed in mature females from
Japanese waters and similar to that observed in female sperm whales deriven from
Western Australian whaling operations. This suggests survival in female sperm whales
from Australian waters may have undertaken little change post whaling. However, there
appear to have been some changes in the age structure of female sperm whale groups and
additionally increases in the total lengths of individuals, which indicate some postwhaling
demographic changes. The diet of southern Australian sperm whales in late summer was dominated by oceanic
cephalopods. Cephalopod beaks from stomach contents represented 48 species from 14
families of Teuthids, two species from two families of Octopods and the single
Vampyromorph species. Subtropical and muscular species of cephalopods dominated the
diet of southern Australian sperm whales, but a high level of both inter- and intra-group
variability in the diet was apparent. Common cephalopod prey species were similar to
that of sperm whales elsewhere in the Southern Hemisphere and included members of the
Histioteuthidae, Onychoteuthidae, Ommastrephidae, Architeuthidae, Cranchiidae and
Pholidoteuthidae families. While smaller species (<300 mm dorsal mantle length) were
numerically abundant, larger species (>1,000 gm) were clearly important to sperm whales
(comprising 78.6 % of the total estimated wet mass) and are likely to provide an efficient
means of acquiring energy for this species. Differences in diet composition and prey size
between sperm whales reflect individual variability in foraging success and perhaps also
foraging groups related to the social structure of this species.
Individual variability in foraging success and therefore, in the acquisition of energy will
be reflected in an individuals energy stores. High individual variability characterised
both blubber thickness and blubber lipid content in the sperm whales in this study, which
suggests both deposition (acquisition) and mobilisation (utilization) of energy stores
differed between individuals. The social structure and foraging ecology of this species
may serve to minimize the need to rely on stored energy reserves to meet reproductive
energy requirements. Continual foraging of lactating mothers facilitated by communal
care of young by other members of a pod would aid in facilitating flexibility in the
acquisition of energy in an effort to meet energetic costs associated with reproduction,
minimising the need to draw on energy reserves to meet those demands. Additionally,
the broader role of blubber for structural, buoyancy and insulative functions coupled with
high individual variability may cause a lack of obvious relationships between these
variables and body size, age, sex and reproductive state in this species. Organochlorines were present in the blubber of all sperm whales sampled in this study.
The relationships between organochlorines, sexes, age and reproductive groups were
marked by high individual variability and highlight the complexity of organochlorine
accumulation in this species. Differences in organochlorine concentrations were
observed between two stranding groups and are likely to be the result of differences in the
dietary composition and foraging areas of the groups. As a result of this smaller
geographic scale of variation, it is therefore difficult to determine temporal changes in organochlorine concentrations positively in highly mobile species across large regions.
Organochlorine concentrations were on the whole lower than those observed to be linked
with deleterious effects in cetacean species elsewhere. However, it is difficult to draw
clear conclusions from this due to species-specific intake, differences in metabolism and
differences in physiological reactions to pollutant concentrations.
A life history involving low fecundity, high longevity, slow growth rates and delayed ,
attainment of sexual maturity, a high input of resources into young, and high sociality
involving communal care of young and communal defense all under-pin the aspects of the
life history sperm whales observed in this study. Yet despite the high dependence on life
as a social "unit" this study highlighted the influence of individuality on the life history of
female sperm whales. The sociality of female sperm whale groups allows for flexibility
in life history traits providing these animals with individual means to sustain their fitness
in an aquatic environment and allows them to ride out temporal and geographical
fluctuations in the environment. The identification of present day threats and their
impacts on sperm whale populations (e.g. chemical and noise pollution, competition with
fisheries), moreover establishing the identity and interactions between sperm whale
populations in the Australian region, are essential for determining current pressures on
populations and should be a high priority for environmental managers in ensuring the
conservation of this species.


As nationalism spread across nineteenth-century Europe, Russia's national identity remained murky: there was no clear distinction between the Russian nation and the expanding multiethnic empire that called itself "Russian." When Tsar Alexander II's Great Reforms (1855-1870s) allowed some freedom for public debate, Russian nationalist intellectuals embarked on a major project--which they undertook in daily press, popular historiography, and works of fiction--of finding the Russian nation within the empire and rendering the empire in nationalistic terms. From the Shadow of Empire traces how these nationalist writers refashioned key historical myths--the legend of the nation's spiritual birth, the tale of the founding of Russia, stories of Cossack independence--to portray the Russian people as the ruling nationality, whose character would define the empire. In an effort to press the government to alter its traditional imperial policies, writers from across the political spectrum made the cult of military victories into the dominant form of national myth-making: in the absence of popular political participation, wars allowed for the people's involvement in public affairs and conjured an image of unity between ruler and nation. With their increasing reliance on the war metaphor, Reform-era thinkers prepared the ground for the brutal Russification policies of the late nineteenth century and contributed to the aggressive character of twentieth-century Russian nationalism.


The process of firm-level adaptation and survival have historically been of great interest to researchers of firms. However, these researchers have previously been denied an ecological framework within which to study the processes through which individual firms respond to and indeed, modify their individual environments. This book remedies this situation, providing the first comprehensive introduction to organisational autecology, or, the study of individual firms and the environments they interact with and typically modify to ensure their survival. In addition to establishing the theoretical and philosophical foundations of organisational autecology, the empirical application of this new approach is demonstrated and its future application to the domain of organisational studies is contemplated.


In this paper, we present two algorithms, are based on fuzzy logic, Conventional algorithm and Proposed algorithms. Both handoff algorithms are used average handoff factor to decide when to handoff and when not in case of high speed mobile terminals. Conventional algorithm is of two types, one is Conventional I and other is conventional II. Also Proposed algorithm is of two types, one is proposed I and other is proposed II. The difference among these algorithms is its hysteresis margin. Proposed algorithms are used under the scenario of high speed trains. Proposed algorithm can make handoff efficient at speed of 270-350km/hr. also the probability of unnecessary handoff is reduced.


After World War I, which resulted in Hungary surrendering approximately two-thirds of its territory, strong support was given to "Hungarian Studies" aimed at strengthening Hungarian identity and justifying revisionary attempts. This paper investigates how geography in general, and statistical and mapping methods in human geography in particular, contributed to the revisionist project in interwar Hungary. To put the story in its disciplinary context, the paper begins by presenting the links between power, territorial politics, and geography that have existed in Europe since geography was institutionalized as academic discipline. Second, the paper investigates how geography and political power became intertwined in Hungary in the decades between 1867 and the end of the peace negotiations after World War I. Third, the main section of the paper employs some case studies to explain how human geographers in Hungary deployed some of their central arguments during the interwar period to delegitimize the post-WWI European order and to substantiate the righteousness of Hungarian revisionist goals.


Acute caffeine intake can attenuate homeostatic sleep pressure and worsen sleep quality. Besides, caffeine intake – particularly in high doses and close to bedtime – may also affect circadian-regulated REM sleep promotion, an important determinant of subjective sleep quality. However, it is not known whether such changes persist under chronic caffeine consumption during daytime. Twenty male caffeine consumers (26.4 ± 4 years old, habitual caffeine intake 478.1 ± 102.8 mg/day) participated in a double-blind crossover study. Each volunteer completed a caffeine (3 × 150 mg caffeine daily), a withdrawal (3 × 150 mg caffeine for eight days then placebo), and a placebo condition. After ten days of controlled intake and a fixed sleep-wake cycle, we recorded 8 h of electroencephalography starting 5 h after habitual bedtime (i.e., start on average at 04:22 am which is around the peak of circadian REM sleep promotion). A 60 min evening nap preceded each sleep episode and reduced high sleep pressure levels. While total sleep time and sleep architecture did not significantly differ between the three conditions, REM latency was longer after daily caffeine intake compared to both placebo and withdrawal. Moreover, the accumulation of REM sleep proportion was slower, and volunteers reported more difficulties at awakening after sleep and feeling more tired upon wake-up in the caffeine condition compared to placebo. Our data indicate that besides acute also regular daytime caffeine intake affects REM sleep regulation in men. We have evidence that regular caffeine intake during daytime weakens circadian sleep promotion when compared to placebo. Moreover, the observed caffeine-induced deterioration in the quality of awakening may suggest a potential motive to reinstate caffeine intake after sleep.


The SR 24 multistar system hosts both circumprimary and circumsecondary disks, which are strongly misaligned with each other. The circumsecondary disk is circumbinary in nature. Interestingly, both disks are interacting, and they possibly rotate in opposite directions. To investigate the nature of this unique twin disk system, we present 0.″1 resolution near-infrared polarized intensity images of the circumstellar structures around SR 24, obtained with HiCIAO mounted on the Subaru 8.2 m telescope. Both the circumprimary disk and the circumsecondary disk are resolved and have elongated features. While the position angle of the major axis and radius of the near-IR (NIR) polarization disk around SR 24S are 55° and 137 au, respectively, those around SR 24N are 110° and 34 au, respectively. With regard to overall morphology, the circumprimary disk around SR 24S shows strong asymmetry, whereas the circumsecondary disk around SR 24N shows relatively strong symmetry. Our NIR observations confirm the previous claim that the circumprimary and circumsecondary disks are misaligned from each other. Both the circumprimary and circumsecondary disks show similar structures in 12CO observations in terms of its size and elongation direction. This consistency is because both NIR and 12CO are tracing surface layers of the flared disks. As the radius of the polarization disk around SR 24N is roughly consistent with the size of the outer Roche lobe, it is natural to interpret the polarization disk around SR 24N as a circumbinary disk surrounding the SR 24Nb–Nc system.


Halogens are highly efficient at destroying ozone in the stratosphere, and rising concentrations from human activities has led to depletion of global stratospheric ozone over the last three decades, and formation of the Antarctic "ozone hole". It is also known that ozone depleting substances (ODSs) enter the stratosphere principally in the tropics, where ascending warm air carries them aloft. The EU-project SHIVA (Stratospheric Ozone: Halogen Impacts in a Varying Atmosphere) aims to reduce uncertainties in the amount of halogen-containing ODSs reaching the stratosphere, and the resulting ozone depletion, in a climate that is changing now, and which will change in the future.
During the SHIVA field campaign on board RV Sonne in the South China Sea and Sulu Sea in November 2011, we investigated the potential of phytoplankton being a source for halocarbons emissions in detail by comparing collocated field samples. Phytoplankton parameters such as pigment concentration, functional group type, and PSII efficiency were undergoing a detailed analysis to investigate the relationship between phytoplankton and different halocarbon species. Significant (p < 0.05) relationships were observed between the cyanobacterial marker pigment zeaxanthin, the group of cyanobacteria without Prochlorococcus and methyl iodide (CH3I). In the vertical profiles, high concentration of bromoform was found to correspond to maximum chl a concentration (indicator of total phytoplankton biomass) and maximum 19-hexanoyl-fucoxanthin (the marker pigments for haptophytes) layers observed in depth between 20 to 60 m. These findings are based on statistical analysis based on Kendall's rank correlations which examine the relationship between halocarbons, phytoplankton groups' marker pigments and total chl a concentration. Also the relationship of phytoplankton groups and pigments to water temperature, salinity and surface winds only showed for salinity an inverse correlation to total chl-a and especially to cyanobacteria, but a bit weaker also to the other phytoplankton groups.


Despite extensive study of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, relatively little is known about the repertories of specific churches of the time, and about how their music was acquired and used. One institution about which valuable information has emerged in recent years is the Lutheran Church of St. Anna in Augsburg. In particular, understanding of the church's musical life was augmented with my discovery of some printed music editions purchased in June 1618 by Adam Gumpelzhaimer (1559-1625), the music director of St. Anna's church and school for forty-four years. (1) Gumpelzhaimer purchased the materials for St. Anna and itemized them, together with their prices, in Augsburg, Staatsund Stadtbibliothek, Autogr. 54. In view of limited information about the day-to-day planning of St. Anna's collection, the 1618 document provided new evidence about how Gumpelzhaimer organized its purchases. Additional insight was gained into his management and use of the collection as well as his musical interests as a res ult of uncovering most of the actual printed editions. Further information about these matters can now be reported in view of my discovery of an inventory with a larger number of early music printed editions than those cited in the 1618 document. Rather then being located in Augsburg, the new inventory is found in the Musikabteilung mit Mendelssohn-Archiv of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin PreuBischer Kulturbesitz. This new document, which is the focus of the present article, adds substantially to our knowledge of Gumpelzhaimer's collecting activities for St. Anna and his contribution to its musical life. Before studying the document and its music, it may be useful to place the inventory into perspective by reviewing salient details about Gumpelzhaimer and other major collectors in Augsburg. In recognition of his birth in Trostberg in Upper Bavaria, Gumpelzhaimer stylized his name as "Adamus Gumpelzhaimerus Trostbergensis [or 'Trosberga'] Boius [or 'Bavarus']." His musical training was undertaken at the Benedictine Abbey of St. Ulrich and St. Afra in Augsburg, where one of his teachers was Jodocus Entzenmuller. In 1581 Gumpelzhaimer was appointed cantor and preceptor at the Lutheran Church and School of St. Anna, Augsburg, positions he held until his death in 1625. He collected a large quantity of music by his contemporaries, for both himself and St. Anna, as well as copying a considerable number of their works, something that is well illustrated in his score-books located in Berlin and Cracow. (2) Toward the end of his life he sold many of his music manuscripts and printed editions to St. Anna, and documented them in a catalog of its music holdings; (3) sadly, many items from his library are now lost. (4) Perhaps Gumpelzhaimer's most famous publication was his Compendium musicae... (Augsburg: Valentin Schonig, 1591; RISM A/I, G 5116), (5) which deals with the rudiments of music and reflects the methods he used in the instruction of students at St. Anna. The book, which underwent thirteen editions between 1591 and 1681, provides both German and Latin versions of its text as well as including many music examples by various composers, himself included. He was a major contributor to Augsburg's musical life and published a large quantity of sacred vocal music. (6) Apart from its churches, Augsburg's most prominent music collectors during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were a group of successful entrepreneurs. These included Hans Heinrich Herwart (1520-1583), most of whose collection was purchased in 1585 and 1594 by Duke Wilhelm V of Bavaria and is now found in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich; (7) Johann Jakob Fugger (1516-1575), whose collection passed into the hands of his patron, Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria, and is now located in the same library; (8) three other members of the Fugger family, Raimund (1528-1569), his brother Georg (1518-1569), and the latter's son, Philipp Eduard (1546-1618), whose collections eventually came to reside in the Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna; (9) and Marcus Welser the younger (1558-1614), whose music collection is now found in libraries in Augsburg and Regensburg. …


Love and loyalty, hatred and revenge, fear, deprivation, and political ambition: these are the motives which thrust the characters portrayed in these three Sophoclean masterpieces on to their collision course with catastrophe. Recognized in his own day as perhaps the greatest of the Greek tragedians, Sophocles' reputation has remained undimmed for two and a half thousand years. His greatest innovation in the tragic medium was his development of a central tragic figure, faced with a test of will and character, risking obloquy and death rather than compromise his or her principles: it is striking that Antigone and Electra both have a woman as their intransigent 'hero'. Antigone dies rather neglect her duty to her family, Oedipus' determination to save his city results in the horrific discovery that he has committed both incest and parricide, and Electra's unremitting anger at her mother and her lover keeps her in servitude and despair. These vivid translations combine elegance and modernity, and are remarkable for their lucidity and accuracy. Their sonorous diction, economy, and sensitivity to the varied metres and modes of the original musical delivery make them equally suitable for reading or theatrical peformance. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.


Background: Acknowledging that reflecting on experience is a necessary, but potentially difficult process for the neophyte professional, due to the need to disclose potentially complex issues and concerns, the reflection literatures argue that this process requires the trainee to reflect within a supportive environment. This study considerst his under-researchedc ondition of reflection within counsellor/therapist supervision. Utilising the model of reflectivity in supervision produced by Neufeldt, Kamo and Nelson (1996) and the wider reflection literature, the main aim of this study was to consider the impact of the perception of a supportive supervisory environment on the willingness to disclose issues and concerns in order to initiate the reflective process.

Method/Analysis: Employing a mixed methodology, in Part 1 of the study 15 participants (consisting of counselling psychology trainees, newly qualified counselling psychologists and supervisors) were interviewed to ascertain the types of issues and concerns disclosed in supervision in order to begin the reflective process. These semi-structured interviews were transcribed and analysed using a content analysis methodology. Results of the coding exercise were subject to inter-rater reliability testing using Cohen's kappa. The themes validated in the study provided the basis for the development of the Disclosure in Supervision Questionnaire (DISQ). In Part 2 of the study, a cross-section of 123 counselling psychology trainees from seven counselling psychology programmes were asked to complete the Revised Relationship Inventory (Schacht, Howe and Berman, 1988), the Role Conflict and Role Ambiguity Inventory (Olk and Friedlander, 1992), the DISQ and a short demographics information sheet. In terms of the statistical analysis, the data was explored and transformed to provide normal or near-normal distributions. The validity and reliability of all the measures were tested using principal components analyses, Cronbach alphas and split-half reliabilities. Once validity and reliability had been ascertained, the study's hypotheses were tested using Pearson correlation coefficients, ANOVA and a series of standard multiple regressions.

Results/Conclusion: The findings suggest that the perception of a supportive supervisory environment as defmed in the study does impact on the initiation of the reflective process. More specifically, a significant positive relationship was found between the perception of the supervisor demonstrating the facilitative conditions and a willingness to disclose and a significant negative relationship was found between this willingness to begin the reflective process and a perceived ambiguity and/or conflict involving the roles and expectations of supervision. The experience of the trainee had a negligible impact on these findings. In terms of the predictive nature of the different aspects of a supportive supervisory environment, the facilitative conditions provided the strongest predictor. However, it is evident that although a supportive supervisory environment is important, other elements of the supervisory environment may also impact on the reflective process. These elements and suggestions for further research are discussed.


This paper presents a new approach in application of distance relay in distribution system. During the heavy load conditions, the load encroachment of impedance into the distance relay protection zones is a well-known reason for distance relay mal-operation. Therefore, all the modern digital distance relays are equipped with the load encroachment scheme. This paper proposes the idea of using the load encroachment scheme of distance relay for monitoring purpose in presence of RES integration. The OpenDSS and Matlab software are used to test the effectiveness of the method with the IEEE 8500 node test feeder. The proposed method is tested with the unbalanced distribution system feeder loading and distributed model of solar generations.


BACKGROUND: Papillary thyroid microcarcinoma has extensively been proved to have an excellent prognosis. The results of autopsy series and mass-screening studies suggest that a significant percentage of population have this disease, but its behaviour is mostly indolent. However, when an incidental microcarcinoma is diagnosed, aggressive surgical treatment is the current recommendation. Two hospitals in Japan started treating these patients with active surveillance, following them with periodic control visits and only recommending surgery after demonstrated disease progression. Even though the results with this conservative strategy are promising, there is no study that specifically compares both managements.
OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study is to determine whether active surveillance is an appropriate alternative to initial surgery in the management of patients with papillary microcarcinoma of the thyroid with good prognostic factors.
METHODS: This will be a longitudinal, prospective, non-randomized, controlled trial. It will be set in the CeCAT consortium hospitals, with the Hospital Universitari Josep Trueta as the reference center. The participants will be 191 patients diagnosed with papillary thyroid microcarcinoma in the CeCAT centers, using a consecutive non-probabilistic sequential sampling. The patients will be separated in 2 groups, according to the treatment decision, in "active surveillance group" and "initial surgery group", and then followed with periodic control visits during 10 years. Progression of the disease will be the dependent variable, and will be measured using ultrasonographic criteria. Progression will be defined either by the appearance of cervical lymph nodes, the enlargement of the primary microcarcinoma or the reappearance of lesions in the thyroid bed. Percentages, means +/- standard deviation, χ² test and logistic regression will be performed to analyze and describe the results of the study


Color is the main essence of most artworks: paintings, stained-glass windows, miniatures, statues, monuments, historical textile. Because some constituents of artwork materials are sensitive to UV light the color change will be occurs. Consequently, it directly affects the appearances of the art objects. The changes in art objects color caused by ageing of artwork materials are major problems encountered by artists, conservators and museum curators. Thus, for conservation and restoration purposes it is important to monitor color changes induced by the natural ageing and cleaning procedures using UV radiation. Thus, the goal of our study was to evaluate the effects of direct UV exposure of certain artwork materials using color spectroscopy. The samples were artificially aged under the UV light (254 nm) under constant environmental and room conditions (temperature -22qC and relative humidity -55% RH). Prior and after artificial UV ageing, the reflectance spectra of all samples were acquired using a JASCO V-550 spectrophotometer. To quantify the color changes that may occur because of UV exposure the colorimetric parameters were determined using the CIE L*a*b* procedure. Thus, it has been shown that accelerated and artificial UV ageing with 254 nm lamp yields to different (photochemical) effects show by color appearance changes such as strong discoloration of the organic artwork materials comparing with those of the UV laser irradiation used in the cleaning procedure.


The determinants of barley grain yield in drought-prone Mediterranean environments have been studied in the Nure x Tremois (NT) population. A large set of yield and other morpho-physiological data were recorded in 118 doubled-haploid lines of the population, in multi-environment field trials (18 site-year combination). Agrometeorological variables have been recorded and calculated at each site too. Four main periods of barley development were considered, vegetative, reproductive early and late grain filling phases, to dissect the effect on yield traits of the growth phases. Relationships between agrometeorological variables, grain yield (GY) and its main components (GN and GW) were also investigated by correlation. Results firstly gave a clear indication of the involvement of water consumption in determining GY and GW ( r 2 =0.616, P=0.007 and r 2 =0.703, P=0.005, respectively) calculated from sowing to the early grain filling period, while GN showed its highest correlation with the total photothermal quotient (PQ) calculated for the same period ( r 2 =0.646, P=0.013). With the only exception of total PQ calculated during the vegetative period, all significant correlations with GY were associated to water-dependent agrometeorological parameters. As a second result, the NT segregating population allowed us to weight the amount of interaction due to genotypes over environments or to environments in relation to genotypes by a GGE analysis; 47.67% of G+GE sum of squares was explained by the first two principal components. Then, the introduction of genomic information at major barley genes regulating the length of growth cycle allowed us to explain patterns of adaptation of different groups of NT lines according to the variants (alleles) harbored at venalization ( Vrn-H1 ) in combination with earliness ( Eam6 ) genes. The superiority of the lines carrying the Nure allele at Eam6 was confirmed by factorial ANOVA testing the four possible haplotypes obtained combining alternative alleles at Eam6 and Vrn-H1 . Maximum yield potential and differentials among the NT genotypes was finally explored through Finlay-Wilkinson model to interpret grain yield of NT genotypes together with yield adaptability (Ya), as the regression coefficient b i ; Ya ranged from 0.71 for NT77 to 1.20 for NT19. Lines simply harboring the Nure variants at the two genes behaved as highest yielding (3.04 t ha -1 ), and showed the highest yield adaptability ( b i =1.05). The present study constitutes a starting point towards the introduction of genomic variables in agronomic models for barley grain yield in Mediterranean environments.


We report on an exact analytic method to evaluate the optical eye diagram due to polarization-mode dispersion (PMD), polarization-dependent loss (PDL), and chromatic dispersion (CD) in dynamic fiber links for any given optical pulse sequence. With this method we consider all orders of PMD and PDL, and we obtain the time-dependent average output light intensity as well as its corresponding variations. With this method we can obtain accurate impairment evaluations for communication systems due to given PMD, PDL, and CD. Time jitter caused by the PMD and PDL polarization direction correlation is also discussed.


Adolescents, who make up about 25 percent of the population of Bangladesh, have limited access to reproductive health (RH) information and services. With age at marriage increasing, young people are vulnerable to a variety of RH risks, including unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs). In 1999, FRONTIERS tested the feasibility, impact, and cost of several interventions to improve the RH of adolescents. The intervention took place in two experimental urban sites, while a third control site received prevailing services. Both sites received the community intervention, which involved sensitization and outreach to community stakeholders to encourage local support. Out-of-school adolescents were offered a 20-session "life skills" curriculum that included RH, and peer educators organized community events with RH themes. The experimental sites also received a clinical component, in which providers offered a variety of affordable, adolescent-friendly services. One site also received a school-based intervention, in which trained teachers provided the life-skills curriculum to eighth- and ninth-level students. As noted in this brief, school and community education schemes increased young people's understanding of RH, and the establishment of links between schools and adolescent-friendly clinics increased the use of RH services.


In neural networks, it is often desirable to work with various representations of the same space. For example, 3D rotations can be represented with quaternions or Euler angles. In this paper, we advance a definition of a continuous representation, which can be helpful for training deep neural networks. We relate this to topological concepts such as homeomorphism and embedding. We then investigate what are continuous and discontinuous representations for 2D, 3D, and n-dimensional rotations. We demonstrate that for 3D rotations, all representations are discontinuous in the real Euclidean spaces of four or fewer dimensions. Thus, widely used representations such as quaternions and Euler angles are discontinuous and difficult for neural networks to learn. We show that the 3D rotations have continuous representations in 5D and 6D, which are more suitable for learning. We also present continuous representations for the general case of the n-dimensional rotation group SO(n). While our main focus is on rotations, we also show that our constructions apply to other groups such as the orthogonal group and similarity transforms. We finally present empirical results, which show that our continuous rotation representations outperform discontinuous ones for several practical problems in graphics and vision, including a simple autoencoder sanity test, a rotation estimator for 3D point clouds, and an inverse kinematics solver for 3D human poses.


Statistical Process Control (SPC) based on the well known Shewhart control charts, is widely used in contemporary manufacturing industry, including many foundries. However, the classic SPC methods require that the measured quantities, e.g. process or product parameters, are not auto-correlated, i.e. their current values do not depend on the preceding ones. For the processes which do not obey this assumption the Special Cause Control (SCC) charts were proposed, utilizing the residual data obtained from the time-series analysis. In the present paper the results of application of SCC charts to a green sand processing system are presented. The tests, made on real industrial data collected in a big iron foundry, were aimed at the comparison of occurrences of out-of-control signals detected in the original data with those appeared in the residual data. It was found that application of the SCC charts reduces numbers of the signals in almost all cases It is concluded that it can be helpful in avoiding false signals, i.e. resulting from predictable factors.


A field experiment using Indigofera sp. was conducted at the Farm Research Station of Faculty of Animal Science, Bogor Agricultural University, Darmaga Campus, during 2008-2009. The objectives of this study were to identify the effect of defoliation time on herbage dry-matter production, protein, fiber contents, and in vitro digestibility of different vegetative parts of Indigofera sp.  Block randomized design comprising three levels of defoliation time at first regrowth after pruning (38, 68, and 88 days) with 3 replications were used in this experiment. Pruning was done 3 months after transplanted into the experimental plots. First defoliation was conducted after the plant had been pruned. Herbage was derived from different vegetative parts, i.e: leaves of branch base and all parts of shoot tips. The results revealed significant effect of defoliation time on dry matter (DM) production of both branch base and shoot tip herbages. Crude fiber (CF), neutral detergent fiber (NDF), acid detergent fiber (ADF) and in vitro organic matter digestibility (IVOMD) of branch base were influenced significantly by defoliation time, except crude protein (CP) and in vitro dry matter digestibility (IVDMD). Defoliation time significantly affected CP, CF, NDF, ADF, IVDMD and IVOMD of herbage derived from shoot tips. Key words: Indigofera, defoliation time, herbage quality, herbage yield


Nearly half of the freshwater discharge into the Gulf of Alaska originates from landscapes draining glacier runoff, but the influence of the influx of riverine organic matter on the trophodynamics of coastal marine food webs is not well understood. We quantified the ecological impact of riverine organic matter subsidies to glacier‐marine habitats by developing a multi‐trophic level Bayesian three‐isotope mixing model. We utilized large gradients in stable (δ13C, δ15N, δ2H) and radiogenic (Δ14C) isotopes that trace riverine and marine organic matter sources as they are passed from lower to higher trophic levels in glacial‐marine habitats. We also compared isotope ratios between glacial‐marine and more oceanic habitats. Based on isotopic measurements of potential baseline sources, ambient water and tissues of marine consumers, estimates of the riverine organic matter source contribution to upper trophic‐level species including fish and seabirds ranged from 12% to 44%. Variability in resource use among similar taxa corresponded to variation in species distribution and life histories. For example, riverine organic matter assimilation by the glacier‐nesting seabirds Kittlitz's murrelet (Brachyramphus brevirostris) was greater than that of the forest‐nesting marbled murrelet (B. marmoratus). The particulate and dissolved organic carbon in glacial runoff and near surface coastal waters was aged (12100–1500 years BP 14C‐age) but dissolved inorganic carbon and biota in coastal waters were young (530 years BP 14C‐age to modern). Thus terrestrial‐derived subsidies in marine food webs were primarily composed of young organic matter sources released from glacier ecosystems and their surrounding watersheds. Stable isotope compositions also revealed a divergence in food web structure between glacial‐marine and oceanic sites. This work demonstrates linkages between terrestrial and marine ecosystems, and facilitates a greater understanding of how climate‐driven changes in freshwater runoff have the potential to alter food web dynamics within coastal marine ecosystems in Alaska.


Energy and the natural environment are central concerns among stakeholders across the globe. Decisions on this scale often require interaction among a myriad of institutions and individuals who navigate a complex variety of challenges. In Denton, Texas in 2014, voters were asked to make such a decision when tasked with a referendum to determine whether the city would continue to allow hydraulic fracturing activity within its borders. For social scientists, this situation requires further analysis in an effort to better understand how and why individuals make the decisions they do. One possible approach for exploring this process is a method of poststructuralist critical rhetorical analysis, which is concerned with how individuals' identities change through interaction with institutions. This study reflects upon the texts themselves through a poststructuralist critical rhetorical analysis of images employed by those in favor of and those against Denton's ban on hydraulic fracturing in an attempt to identify images that alter the grid of intelligibility for the audience. The paper includes deliberation about the relative merits, subsequent disadvantages, and possible questions for further study as they relate to the theoretical implications of critical rhetorical analysis as information science. Ultimately, the study identifies poststructuralist critical rhetorical analysis as a method for solving information science problems in a way that considers closely the way identity is shaped through engagement with institutions.


In this work, we studied the Nickel electrodeposition to determine its potential of reduction. Then. We studied the complexation of this compound dithiolic selected with Nickel in a mixed medium (DMF/H2O) by an electrochemical method. We have noticed that the addition of an increasing quantity of Nickel ions involves the modification of the intensity of the cathodic current of this compound without modifying its potential of reduction. In addition, there is a displacement of the potential of oxidation, which involves an electrochemical signature, which proves the complexation.


Multiple classes of pharmacologic agents have the potential to induce the expression and release of proinflammatory factors from dying tumor cells. As a result, these cells can in theory elicit an immune response through various defined mechanisms to permanently eradicate disseminated cancer. However, the impact of chemotherapy on the tumor-specific immune response in the context of the tumor microenvironment is largely unknown. Within the tumor microenvironment, the immune response promoted by chemotherapy is antagonized by an immune-suppressive milieu, and the balance of these opposing forces dictates the clinical course of disease. Here, we report that high antigen exposure within the tumor microenvironment following chemotherapy is sufficient to skew this balance in favor of a productive immune response. In elevating antigen exposure, chemotherapy can achieve long-term control of tumor progression without the need of an additional adjuvant. We found that chemotherapy initiated this phenomenon in the tumor microenvironment through an accumulation of dendritic cells, which stimulated CD8(+) T cells and the type I IFN pathway. From this conceptual base, we developed a simple approach to cancer therapy combining chemotherapy and vaccination that may be widely applicable.


In The End of Japanese Cinema Alexander Zahlten moves film theory beyond the confines of film itself, attending to the emergence of new kinds of aesthetics, politics, temporalities, and understandings of film and media. He traces the evolution of a new media ecology through deep historical analyses of the Japanese film industry from the 1960s to the 2000s. Zahlten focuses on three popular industrial genres: Pink Film (independently distributed softcore pornographic films), Kadokawa (big-budget productions as part of a transmedia strategy), and V-Cinema (direct-to-video films). He examines the conditions of these films' production to demonstrate how the media industry itself becomes part of the politics of the media text and to highlight the complex negotiation between media and politics, culture, and identity in Japan. Zahlten points to a different history of film, one in which a once-powerful film industry transformed into becoming only one component within a complex media-mix ecology. In so doing, Zahlten opens new paths for uncovering similar broad processes in other large media societies.

A Study of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University


This thesis introduces a flexible visual data exploration framework which combines advanced projection algorithms from the machine learning domain with visual representation techniques developed in the information visualisation domain to help a user to explore and understand effectively large multi-dimensional datasets. The advantage of such a framework to other techniques currently available to the domain experts is that the user is directly involved in the data mining process and advanced machine learning algorithms are employed for better projection. A hierarchical visualisation model guided by a domain expert allows them to obtain an informed segmentation of the input space. Two other components of this thesis exploit properties of these principled probabilistic projection algorithms to develop a guided mixture of local experts algorithm which provides robust prediction and a model to estimate feature saliency simultaneously with the training of a projection algorithm.Local models are useful since a single global model cannot capture the full variability of a heterogeneous data space such as the chemical space. Probabilistic hierarchical visualisation techniques provide an effective soft segmentation of an input space by a visualisation hierarchy whose leaf nodes represent different regions of the input space. We use this soft segmentation to develop a guided mixture of local experts (GME) algorithm which is appropriate for the heterogeneous datasets found in chemoinformatics problems. Moreover, in this approach the domain experts are more involved in the model development process which is suitable for an intuition and domain knowledge driven task such as drug discovery. We also derive a generative topographic mapping (GTM) based data visualisation approach which estimates feature saliency simultaneously with the training of a visualisation model.


This thesis analyses several factors affecting the control of triatomines in Guatemala. There are three synantropic triatomines in Guatemala, i.e., Rhodnius prolixus, Triatoma dimidiata and T. nitida. Their distibution is mainly at an altitude between 800 and 1500 m a.s.l. R. prolixus and T. nitida have localized but scaterred distibution while T. dimidiata is present in 21 of the 22 departments in the country. Several investigations have shown that R. prolixus could be relatively easily eradicated while T. dimidiata may be more difficult to control, since it is present in domestic, peridomestic and sylvatic environments showing high diversity and a variety of epidemiological characteristics. Based on the incidence of Trypanosma cruzi infection in humans in the distributional areas of the triatomines, R. prolixus appear to be a more competent vector than T. dimidiata. This is despite the fact that these vectors have similar infection rates. Inside houses, R. prolixus and T. dimidiata and in artificial environments, T. ryckmani and T. dimidiata, preferred the northern side of the walls. Therefore, selective application of insecticides should focus on walls and furniture located in the northern part of the house. House improvements reduced the infestation of triatomines, and could be used as a complement to insecticidal spraying. Although T. dimidiata is not an efficient vector its wide distribution, versatility in occupying different habitats and capacity to disperse render this species difficult to control in Central America. Thus, only few months after insecticidal spraying T. dimidiata had reinfested the domestic environments. Morphometic methodology and genetic markers have been developed to differentiate within-species populations of T. dimidiata and T. nitida. Studies on the migration patterns of sylvatic T. dimidiata and T. ryckmani have been performed in order to clarify the colonization patterns. The adults migrate, in particular, in the dry part of the year. This finding may be of help in attempts to control T. dimidiata.


The seminal ideas of de Gennes and Doi and Edwards have provided the theoretical framework for much of the recent effort to model the rheological behavior of entangled polymer melts and solutions. Recent theoretical work has incorporated a number of important additions to the basic Doi-Edwards theory, including an explicit description of chain stretch and additional relaxation mechanisms such as contour length fluctuations (CLF) and convective constraint release (CCR). However, very little quantitative data has been published on the rheological behavior of entangled systems in strong flows. Hence, a comprehensive examination of the theoretical developments has not been possible. The experiments described in this paper use the filament stretching rheometer to obtain transient extensional stress growth data and steady state uniaxial extensional viscosity data for a number of entangled, narrow molecular weight distribution polystyrene solutions in the strain-rate regime characterized by a significant degree of both chain alignment and stretch. These results are then compared with theoretical predictions for a number of the current generation of reptation-based models, including mechanisms for chain stretching, contour length fluctuations, and convective constraint release. These comparisons demonstrate that when the model parameters are properly obtained from linear viscoelastic measurements, the recent model due to Mead, Larson, and Doi (Macromolecules 1998, 31, 7895) provides quantitative predictions for this class of flows for solutions spanning the complete range from very lightly to highly entangled solutions.


This paper examines the effect of target Federal funds rate changes on major five foreign exchange markets: Canada, Australia, Euro, Japan and the UK during the period from 2000 to 2007. Two different approaches of Rai, Seth and Mohanty (2007) and the event study of Brown and Warner (1980, 1985) are used in our paper. The results show that event-study method yields a stronger relationship between the U.S. Federal funds rate and exchange rates. On average, evidences are consistent with our expectations: federal funds rate increases (decreases) are associated with the U.S. dollar appreciation (depreciation). For cross-sectional analysis of individual exchange rates, cumulated abnormal returns suggest that yen is the only currency strongly affected by target Federal funds rate changes.


Some research has argued that effective teachers significantly influence students' performance. However, becoming effective teachers are not easy because they have to apply some strategies of effective teaching. For that reason, this paper intends to investigate whether  teachers from three Islamic Senior High Schools in South Jakarta practice effective teaching strategies. These schools have been considered good due to  the high mean score of English subject in Ujian Nasional. The framework of effective teaching follows the model developed by Creemers and Kyriakides, which relate teacher behavior in the classroom and student achievement . The framework consists of orientation, structuring, questioning, teaching modeling, applications, teacher role in making classroom a learning environment, management of time, and classroom assessment.