Despite the centrality of coach developers to formal coach education settings, only a handful of studies have begun to touch upon the role they play in mediating quality learning, while links between different layers of learning and impact on coach learners remains underexplored. This research explored English coach developers' understanding of learning, and the learning frameworks taught to them, through unstructured interviews and participant observation of a generic coach developer training course. Three coach developers were observed delivering formal coach education, to elucidate how understanding was applied in practice. Supporting interviews with 16 coaches attending the course gave an indication of reactions to developers' practice. Combined layers of data were analysed using a three-phase integrated analytic process. In the absence of pertinent evidence-informed coach developer training course design and delivery, implicit 'practice-theories', based on participants' experiences as coaches and coach developers, appeared to inform understanding and practices. Despite acknowledging 'learner centred' learning principles, coach developers experienced challenges implementing these in practice and coach learners perceived confusion and contradictions. Findings are discussed in relation to contemporary ideas around coaches' and coach developers' learning, to highlight potential ways that coach developers could be more effectively prepared and supported.


The Electric Field Approach, EFA, is a heuristic for behavior selection for autonomous robot control. This thesis deals with the problem of using the EFA as a heuristics for the perceptive behaviors. The integration is done by extending the EFA with having three electric fields and each having its own probes and charges. The extended EFA was tested in the RoboCup domain.


Random population studies are very important to estimate the environmental factors in nutritional, physiological and breeding experiments. Studying the quantitative traits, consisting of genetic, environmental factors and interaction between them is very important as well. In a random population study, the genetic variation for 50 chicken individuals (Mandarah strain) of three successive generations was examined using differential display technique. The difference between the generations was measured by the change of DNA frequencies for the random population. Age at sexual maturity was changed during the three generations, but these differences were not significant. The body weight at sexual maturity (BWSM) of the 2nd and the 3rd generations was decreased significantly compared with the 1st generation. Whenever this decrease was not frequent, although, the egg number (EN), egg mass (EM) and rate of laying (RL) were not constant over generations, differences between the generations were highly significant for EN and EM only. In addition, comparative analysis based on the molecular levels and genotype stability clarified the genetic variations between the examined groups (females or males). Eleven bands with different molecular weights were observed in case of females in comparison to only 9 bands in case of the males. Phylogenetic studies revealed that, there was a genetic variability between females of the 1st generation. Furthermore, low level of similarity was observed between the 2nd generation in respect to the 1st and 3rd generations. Genetic similarity between females and males of the 2nd and the 3rd generations was 55%. It could be concluded that the differences in egg production trait, which was found among generations, may be due to indirect or natural selection.


Pre-employment drug testing in the workplace has often been adopted by hospitality organizations both nationally and internationally due to the acceptance of conventional wisdom that drug-using workers have substantially lower productivity rates. While research consistently finds hospitality employees display higher rates of substance use, limited hospitality research has been conducted on the topic of pre-employment drug testing in this industry, and applicant and employee responses to this practice have yet to be investigated. Emerging themes based on employee comments are explored, including perceptions of fairness, necessity, and value. Suggestions for future theoretical-based research are offered, and implications for hospitality industry decision makers are discussed.


Organic production (including agriculture, wild culture, forestry and aquaculture) is a worldwide phenomenon that is practiced in at least 172 countries. The Organics Olympiad presents 14 indices of global organics leadership, each at three levels (Gold, Silver and Bronze). The Organics Olympiad of 2016 yields 29 countries as global organics leaders, and confirms that organics leadership is diversely distributed across countries, large and small, rich and poor, developed and less so, and cuts across linguistic, ethnic and cultural boundaries. Australia continues to lead the world in organic agriculture hectares. Australia also leads in the increase of organic hectares over the past four years (since the Organics Olympiad 2012) and in the number of WWOOF (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) hosts. Finlandleads in organic wild culture hectares. Vietnam leads in organic aquaculture hectares, and Tunisia leads in organic forest hectares. Germany leads in biodynamic hectares, as well as with the number of members of IFOAM-Organics International. India leads for the number of organic producers. The Falkland Islands (Malvinas) leads in terms of the percentage agricultural land dedicated as organic. Switzerland leads with the value of organics consumption per capita. USA leads in the value of the organics market. Denmark leads in the publishing of organics research papers over the past four years. Namibia leads in the percentage increase in organic hectares over the past four years. The overall global organics leaders, on the basis of aggregated scores, are Australia, Germany, and Switzerland, in positions one, two and three, respectively. This study demonstrates the successful global diffusion of organics, and identifies that leadership lessons can be available from a broad diversity of countries. Key implications are identified.


Settlement is more likely if parties are free to set its terms, including a promise that these terms will remain secret between them. State sunshine-in-litigation laws work to defeat this incentive for confidentiality in order to protect third parties from otherwise unknown hazards. The intuition is that a wrongdoer should not be able to pay one plaintiff for silence at the expense of other victims. This Article begins by showing that the intuition is often wrong or overstated. A plaintiff who can assess defendant's vulnerability to future claims can extract a large enough settlement to provide substantial deterrence, and at much lower cost to the legal system. The argument does not transfer well to most criminal cases, where the defendant might pay not to avoid other claims but to avoid incarceration, which offers no direct benefit to the settling victim. It is further complicated in sexual assault cases, where the plaintiff might settle too quickly in order to protect her privacy. The discussion works toward the idea that in some settings semi-confidentiality – the disclosure of the substance of settlement but not the magnitude of monetary payments – is superior to both secrecy and transparency. The right amount of confidentiality is a function of the parties' interest in privacy, the likelihood that the wrongdoing is part of a pattern unknown to the settling plaintiff, and the accuracy of the litigation process that settlement seeks to bypass. We are able to identify cases where law ought to allow (even) criminal cases to be settled privately and confidentially, and also cases where even sexual assault victims should be steered away from confidential settlement and toward translucency.


Big earthquake and subsequent gigantic tsunami killed more than 20,000 peoples in Tohoku area of Japan on March 11, 2011. Neurological patients were one such victim because they are usually very vulnerable to such a huge tragedy due to their physical disability including artificial ventilator-support. On occasion of the last tsunami, most cases showed "all or nothing" to lose life or to survive, and there were only a little cases who needed emergency surgical treatment. In the very early period, some neurological patients required electric power to keep their life-supportive ventilator at evacuation house or even at home. In a week to a couple of months, many neurological patients needed continuous supply of their daily drugs which are essential to keep themselves in steady physical conditions and even for keeping their life. Based on such a background, Japanese Neurological Society (JNS) began to establish an emergent assistant network system from January 2012 in an attempt of supplying materials, drugs and energy power to neurological patients who require both under a very early period after any natural or political disaster and a later period. For example, JNS is going to apply IT system to connect distant but safer hospitals which accept emergent patients from the center of disastrous place. JNS may also send emergency medical team to the disastrous place to save neurological patients by passing necessary medicine and materials or moving patients to safer hospitals. JNS will make such a tentative program public on our website to collect many other constructive opinions from general member of the society and neurological patients. After getting those opinions, JNS will work to make the exact team for this purpose after general meeting of JNS on this May 2012.


In the world of High Performance Computing (newly renamed "High Productivity Computing"), where the race for performance is on, where the hunt for the last Flop rages and where the developers swear by the Cult of Power, the different applications have different needs. Some of them are single threaded, others are parallel, some are memory bandwidth, others processor speed dominated. Some are embarrassingly parallel, point-to-point or multicast dominated, all depending on the algorithms and numerical methods they implement. Computing resources are also different, some are low-cost clusters of PlayStations 3, clusters with more or less efficient networks, others are expensive vector supercomputers. To express that diversity, a parameterization of the applications and the resources is proposed. Based on this parameterization, it is possible to quantify the needs of the different types of applications in terms of memory, processor and network requirements. On the other hand, the parameterization of the resources quantifies what a resource "offers" in term of memory, processor or network performance. Comparing the needs of the application and the offers of the resources, we present a model that predicts the computation and the communication times, and consequently the execution times of an application on different resources. We define a cost model that finds the best matches between an application and the available resources in an HPC Grid. It takes into account the cost of execution time of the application (based on the prediction previously mentioned), the waiting time cost (based on the information given by the local resource management systems), the cost of the licenses of the different software the application may use, the cost of the data transfer, and the ecological cost. The choice is made on a QOS (Quality of Service) given by the user, such as minimum turnaround time or minimum cost. Computing these different costs requires a fine knowledge of the behavior of the application on the resource. Thus we present a detailed application-oriented monitoring that consists in mapping information from the hardware monitoring and the different middleware the application (or the resource) uses, such as MPI detailed information, the hardware counters or the information of the execution on a local resource management system. The monitored data is stored in an archive system. The archived monitoring data concerning the behavior of the applications on the different resources, can then be used to help deciders purchasing new best suited resources for the current (and future) applications. In the second part of this work, we go further in matching the applications and resources: if it is possible to predict the behavior of an application on a given resource, it is also possible to fit the resource to the needs of the application. Knowing the processor performance needs of the application during its execution, it is possible to adjust its frequency through the frequency stepping mechanism that authorizes an operating system kernel or a program to modify on the fly the frequency (and the voltage) of the present days processors. Hence the resource exactly fits the needs of the application and the energy consumption of the processor is reduced. Finally, we propose a methodology to determine poorly implemented applications and thus giving users and developers hints and advice to detect flaws in an automatic manner. We present a real-life example, a spectral element code in CFD, for which the complexity changed when more than 1024 processors were used.


One of the more disturbing pieces of news that came out during the Iraq war was
 the large number of Americans who believed that Saddam Hussein was involved with the
 September 11 terrorists. There has never been any evidence for such a link. You can pass
 off this widespread belief as simple confusion, or the result of misleading statements by
 those with a vested interest in pursuing the Iraq war, but it's nothing to be shrugged
 away. In a democracy, public misperceptions carry an enormous cost.


The obsessive concern in Russian literary criticism with the national qualities of Russian literature in the second third of the nineteenth century has been traced in Russian literary historiography back into the 1820s and the debates over romanticism and narodnost ' (national originality). But the subject was broached publicly in the 1810s in debates that concerned translations as original and markedly Russian works of literature. While translation came to be seen as inimical to narodnost ' in the 1820s and 30s, it would return in a new form as a part of a generalized assimilative cultural project in the 1840s in Nikolai Gogol's formulation of the nature and mission of the Russian nation. This paradoxical role played by translation, its function in the creation of original literature is, in both periods, linked to the work of Vasilii Zhukovskii. This article demonstrates how Zhukovskii's practice as a translator, formed in the Friendly Literary Society of his youth and modeled after that of his friend Andrei Turgenev, evoked a critical response that engaged the newest concerns of Russia's literary elite and generated new critical language and ideas through a productive mixing of classicist and romantic discourse on translations. Zhukovskii as an author-translator thus offers a rich case study to those interested in the creative aspect of translation.


I. INTRODUCTION The softwood lumber dispute is a good illustration of the operation of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (FTA)(1) dispute settlement mechanism in antidumping and countervailing duty cases. It is the longest-running trade dispute between the United States and Canada, having lasted eleven years and gone through three distinct stages. Canada's experience with U.S. trade laws during the dispute had a profound effect on the negotiation of the FTA, resulting in the adoption of an original system of dispute settlement. The recent Softwood Lumber III extraordinary challenge committee (ECC) report,(2) which reviewed the U.S. Department of Commerce International Trade Agency's finding of subsidy, provides an opportunity to analyze the performance of the binational panel system, particularly the extraordinary challenge committee procedure. This is the third extraordinary challenge committee that has been convened,(3) but Softwood Lumber III is the first dispute in which both the binational panel and the extraordinary challenge committee divided along national lines. It is also the first in which serious allegations of an appearance of bias were levied against two of the Canadian members of the binational panel. The first two extraordinary challenge committees and the Canadian majority in Softwood Lumher III defined a narrow role for the ECC based upon a standard of review that limited the ECC to determining whether the binational "panel conscientiously attempted to apply the appropriate law as they understood it."(4) The ECC was not required to determine whether the panel applied the relevant law correctly.(5) The issue expressly left open by the first two challenges was whether an error of law alone is sufficient to constitute a material threat to the integrity of the binational panel process as required by the standard of review provision of the Free Trade Agreement.(6) The Softwood Lumher III challenge raised the same issue, as the United States Trade Representative (USTR) and the Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports (Coalition) asserted that the binational panel so misconstrued U.S. law that the integrity of the process was threatened. The Canadian majority on the committee held that the narrow threshold had not been met.(7) The U.S. dissent by Judge Malcolm Wilkey, a former Chief judge of the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, contains a strongly worded condemnation of the Softwood Lumber III binational panel and extraordinary challenge committee majority determinations, as well as the entire binational panel mechanism. I submit that the well intentioned system of Extraordinary Challenge Committees, as a substitute for the standard appellate review under United States law, has failed. It has failed both at the Panel and the Committee levels to apply United States law, substantively, and most clearly in regard to the United States standard of review of administrative agency actions. The system runs the risk, not only of producing egregiously erroneous results as in the instant three to two panel decision, but also of creating a body of law--even though formally without precedential value--which will be divergent from United States law applied to countries not members of NAFTA.(8) Judge Wilkey's dissenting opinion raises a number of issues, the most important of which is the degree of deference that should be paid by the reviewing panel to the administrative agencies. He argues that virtually absolute deference must be given, unless there has been a "totally irrational" exercise of discretion. If Judge Wilkey is correct, this raises the question of whether there is any need for a binational panel mechanism. In the chapter of the Free Trade Agreement that addresses binational panel dispute settlement in antidumping and countervailing duty cases, the standard of review to be applied to U. …


Language teachers often resort to video to familiarise their students with contextualised linguistic and cultural aspects of communication. Since they tend to consider learning-by-doing more effective than learning-by-viewing, they try to further exploit this valuable asset through active tasks, such as taking notes or answering comprehension questions, silent viewing and predicting, ordering sentences, role-playing, analysing, summarising and describing ( Zabalbeascoa et al. 2015 ). Advances in ICT have enabled more interactive options, with a view to expanding the range of available activities to include audiovisual translation (AVT) activities, such as subtitling and dubbing. This is the focus of ClipFlair, a project which developed a platform for creating and hosting such activities and a pedagogical proposal based on the idea that language learning can be enhanced with the use of activities asking learners to work from a video by inserting their own writing (captioning) or speech (revoicing). Based on this framework, a whole range of possible activities are open to teachers, beyond standard subtitling and dubbing. This paper starts out by briefly describing previous work done in the area and goes on to illustrate the ClipFlair conceptual framework including the educational specifications for the web platform, after the description of which concrete examples are provided in order to expand on the possible audiovisual activities that can be used in a language classroom and beyond. Finally, the paper gives an account of the learner survey carried out during the pilot phase of the project, which included feedback provided by more than a thousand learners and teachers.


By means of one- and two-dimensional transient infrared spectroscopy and femtosecond stimulated Raman spectroscopy, we investigated the excited state dynamics of peridinin, a carbonyl carotenoid occurring in natural light harvesting complexes. The presence of singly and doubly excited states, as well as of an intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) state, makes the behavior of carbonyl carotenoids in the excited state very complex. In this work, we investigated by time resolved spectroscopy the relaxation of photo-excited peridinin in solvents of different polarities and as a function of the excitation wavelength. Our experimental results show that a characteristic pattern of one- and two-dimensional infrared bands in the C=C stretching region allows monitoring the relaxation pathway. In polar solvents, moderate distortions of the molecular geometry cause a variation of the single/double carbon bond character, so that the partially ionic ICT state is largely stabilized by the solvent reorganization. After vertical photoexcitation at 400 nm of the S2 state, the off-equilibrium population moves to the S1 state with ca. 175 fs time constant; from there, in less than 5 ps, the non-Franck Condon ICT state is reached, and finally, the ground state is recovered in 70 ps. That the relevant excited state dynamics takes place far from the Franck Condon region is demonstrated by its noticeable dependence on the excitation wavelength.


Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) has evolved a lot during the last years and reached a mature stage offering plenty of operators to solve complex data analysis tasks. However, the user support for building workflows has not progressed accordingly. The large number of operators currently available in KDD systems makes it difficult for users to successfully analyze data. In addition, the correctness of workflows is not checked before execution.

This demo presents our tools, eProPlan and eIDA, which solve the above problems by supporting the whole cycle of (semi-) automatic workflow generation. Our modeling tool eProPlan, allows to describe operators and build a task/method decomposition grammar to specify the desired workflows. Additionally, our Intelligent Discovery Assistant, eIDA, allows to place workflows into data mining (DM) suites or workflow engines for execution.


John R. Commons is one of the most significant figures in the development of American economics. One of the founders of the Institutional school, Commons developed theories of the evolution of capitalism and of institutional change which continue to influence modern economics. These volumes collect, for the first time, his major essays and articles.


Revised! Circular 1139, a multi-part handbook by Michael T. Olexa and Ian Goldfarb, helps Floridians recognize which agricultural and household activities may involve solid and hazardous wastes. It also provides an introduction to the agencies and statutes that govern solid and hazardous waste disposal. Published by the UF Department of Food and Resource Economics, November 2008.
Ask IFAS: Florida Agricultural Handbook of Solid and Hazardous Waste (2008) (ufl.edu)


Behavioral and physiological studies show that processing of odor information involves neuronal interactions among the glomeruli in the insect antennal lobe (AL). These interactions are mediated by a complex network of inhibitory and excitatory local interneurons (LNs), that structures the olfactory representation and ultimately determines the tuning profile of projection neurons. LNs have distinct morphological and intrinsic electrophysiological properties and in addi- tion to GABA and acetylcholine LNs may contain and release various peptides, that can potentially act as neurotransmitters or neuromodulators. In Periplan- eta americana two main LN types are known: 1) Spiking type I LNs (LN I), that generate Na+ driven action potentials upon odor stimulation and exhibit GABA- like immunoreactivity (GABA-LIR) and 2) nonspiking type II LNs, subdivided into type IIa and type IIb, with unknown transmitter, that do not generate Na+ driven action potentials. This LN diversity implies that these neurons serve dis- tinct functions in the olfactory system. Currently, the morphologically and phys- iologically distinct LN subtypes are not very well matched with the variety of neurotransmitters and -modulators. This, however, is an important prerequisite for a detailed understanding of the role of LNs in the olfactory circuit. While previous studies have investigated the neurochemical organization of the AL in various insect species, I unequivocally assigned the inventory of potentially neu- roactive substances to the functionally distinct LN types.
For this purpose, I used a combination of whole-cell patch-clamp recording, sin- gle cell labeling and immunocytochemical methods, to analyze the inventory of neuroactive substances in the AL of P. americana. Using an antibody against the biosynthetic enzyme choline acetyltransferase (ChAT), a marker for cholinergic neurons, a subset of the nonspiking LN IIa with distinct physiological and morphological properties was identified as cholinergic. In these type IIa1 LNs (LN IIa1), odor stimulation evoked depolarizations that generated Ca2+ driven 'spikelets', but not Na+ driven action potentials.
In an effort to form a complete messenger profiling of identified LN types, the neuropeptide allatotropin (AT) was assigned to spiking LN I and tachykinin- related peptides (TKRPs) were assigned to both LN I and nonspiking LN IIa1. This suggests, that AT is coreleased with GABA in LN I, while TKRPs are core- leased with GABA in LN I as well as with acetylcholine in LN IIa1.
Finally, a method is introduced, that offers the possibility to perform mass spec- trometry in electrophysiologically and morphologically identified interneurons, which allows a comprehensive data set of individual neurons to be built up.


Summary: Dog-ear collection, Z-plasty, and W-plasty are often performed for excision of dumbbell-shaped keloids; however, these procedures require additional incisions or excision of normal skin. Thus, an S-shaped wound closure technique was performed. The keloid lesions were extralesionally excised above the deep fascia, and the wound edges were shifted in opposite directions along the major axis to form an S-shape. The incision was closed by applying deep fascial sutures, subcutaneous sutures, and superficial sutures. Postoperative external beam radiation therapy was started within 6 hours after surgery at a dose of 20 Gy applied in 4 fractions. All wounds were covered with silicone-gel sheeting and fixed with tape after suture removal. No intralesional corticosteroid injection or oral tranilast was administered. Corticosteroid tape was applied in cases with suspected postoperative recurrence. Scoring was performed using the Manchester Scar Scale. A total of 8 lesions were treated. Temporary erythema and scar elevation were observed in 2 chest lesions; however, both were flattened and turned white using corticosteroid tape. Other than these 2 lesions, there was no recurrence or complication. The mean score improved from 15.8 to 7.2. The S-shaped wound closure technique has 3 advantages. First, no additional incision or excision is required, and additional scarring and keloid recurrence can be avoided. Second, aesthetic results are good, and noticeably long and zigzag-shaped scars can be avoided. Third, dispersion of tension on the scar can be expected. Although the S-shaped wound closure technique has limited application, it is a useful option for keloid treatment.


The growing consensus that language is distributed into large-scale cortical and subcortical networks has brought with it an increasing focus on the connectional anatomy of language, or how particular fibre pathways connect regions within the language network. Understanding connectivity of the language network could provide critical insights into function, but recent investigations using a variety of methodologies in both humans and non-human primates have provided conflicting accounts of pathways central to language. Some of the pathways classically considered language pathways, such as the arcuate fasciculus, are now argued to be domain-general rather than specialized, which represents a radical shift in perspective. Other pathways described in the non-human primate remain to be verified in humans. In this review, we examine the consensus and controversy in the study of fibre pathway connectivity for language. We focus on seven fibre pathways-the superior longitudinal fasciculus and arcuate fasciculus, the uncinate fasciculus, extreme capsule, middle longitudinal fasciculus, inferior longitudinal fasciculus and inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus-that have been proposed to support language in the human. We examine the methods in humans and non-human primate used to investigate the connectivity of these pathways, the historical context leading to the most current understanding of their anatomy, and the functional and clinical correlates of each pathway with reference to language. We conclude with a challenge for researchers and clinicians to establish a coherent framework within which fibre pathway connectivity can be systematically incorporated to the study of language.


This paper investigates the impact of capital controls on business cycle fluctuations and welfare. To perform this analysis, we deploy an asymmetric two country model that is subject to negative foreign interest rate shocks. The results show that both an inflow and outflow capital control are able to attenuate capital flow dynamics, but each control bears different implications for macroeconomic outcomes. Whilst the outflow capital control is associated with shock attenuation benefits, the inflow capital control is shown to amplify the impact of shocks. Easier capital control regimes enhance the attenuation and amplification properties associated with each capital control, whilst strict regimes do the opposite. Lastly, the analysis shows that the welfare effects of capital controls are agent dependent, and that society prefers the outflow capital control to the inflow capital control. Taken together, these results are indicative of the comparative desirability of capital controls imposed on the financial sector (outflows) as compared to the real sector (inflows).


The rind penetrometer is an effective tool for measuring stalk strength in an effort to improve maize (Zea mays L.) germplasm for stalk lodging resistance. However, previous studies have indicated a significant negative correlation between rind penetrometer resistance (RPR) and ear height (EH). The correlation between RPR and EH is of interest in understanding response to selection for RPR. Has selection for high RPR resulted primarily in increased stalk strength per se and coincidentally lower ear heights, or has selection for high RPR resulted in lower ear heights and subsequently higher stalk strength? The objective of this study was to determine the genetic relationship between RPR and the correlated trait EH. To accomplish this goal, three F 2:3 populations were used to characterize and compare quantitative trait loci (QTL) for RPR, EH, and RPR adjusted for EH (RadjE). The original QTL analysis of RPR detected a total of 26 QTL across populations. Adjusting RPR for EH caused 11 of the original RPR QTL to lose their significance. However, the majority, 15 of 26, of the original RPR QTL remained significant as QTL for RadjE. Because EH clearly had an effect on RPR, adjusting RPR for EH likely resulted in more accurate descriptions of QTL for stalk strength per se. We have demonstrated that QTL analysis can be used to separate the effects of correlated traits from the genetic effects of the trait of interest, and recommend determining which correlated traits may influence measurement of the main trait before initiating a QTL experiment.


This paper demonstrates, through content analysis, how online audiences can enforce gender based violence (GBV) as a real threat in the online space through verbally aggressive speech acts that function as symbolic violence. I examine cases emerging out of the context of Trinidad and Tobago, to articulate, how, for example, prejudicial chastising of women is used as a discourse to not only shame and blame but construct femininity-as-fail, however that femininity is embodied. This symbolic violence I read as a spectre, a force that enforces, both in the offline and online, the reassertion of strict respectability and responsibility as standard. This is done through victim blaming and policing, especially of women's bodies, voice and agency. I assert that such talk constitutes an online environment that serves as fertile ground for the reconstitution of traditional and limiting notions of femininity. Such an environment also facilitates constant backlash against feminist discourses and feminist activism to attain gender justice in the Caribbean region. The online environment is a force that breaches offline boundaries across the globe, thus its effect must be accounted for as we attempt to build the resilience of feminist consciousness and gender justice.


On August 2, 2005, President Bush signed into law the bill to implement the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement, or DR-CAFTA (P.L. 109-53, H.R. 3045). In DR-CAFTA, the United States and six countries will completely phase out tariffs and quotas — the primary means of border protection — on all but four agricultural commodities traded between them in stages up to 20 years. The four exempted products are as follows: for the United States, sugar; for Costa Rica, fresh onions and fresh potatoes; and for the four other Central American countries, white corn. DR-CAFTA's provisions, once fully implemented, are expected to result in trade gains, though small, for the U.S. agricultural sector. This report describes this agreement in detail, as well as the stances of both supporters and detractors.


Whereas coaching is very popular as a management tool, research on coaching effectiveness is lagging behind. Moreover, the studies on coaching that are currently available have focused on a large variety of processes and outcome measures and generally lack a firm theoretical foundation. With the meta-analysis presented in this article, we aim to shed light on the effectiveness of coaching within an organizational context. We address the question whether coaching has an effect on five both theoretically and practically relevant individual-level outcome categories: performance/skills, well-being, coping, work attitudes, and goal-directed self-regulation. The results show that coaching has significant positive effects on all outcomes with effect sizes ranging from g = 0.43 (coping) to g = 0.74 (goal-directed self-regulation). These findings indicate that coaching is, overall, an effective intervention in organizations.


This book looks at both the potential and limits of policies to promote entrepreneurship as an important vehicle for social mobility in Latin America and the Caribbean. Who are the region's entrepreneurs? They tend to be middle-aged males with secondary and, often, tertiary education who represent only a small segment of the economically active population in the six countries considered in this book. They come from families in which a parent is, or was, an entrepreneur. In fact, a parent's occupation is more important in the decision to become an entrepreneur than a parent's wealth, income or education. Middle class entrepreneurship tends to dominate the sample in part since this is the majority class in society. However, as a percentage of each social class, entrepreneurship tends to be higher in the upper class, followed by the middle and lower class. Entrepreneurs concentrate in micro enterprises with fewer than five employees. They enjoy greater social mobility than employees and the self-employed, but this mobility is not always in the upward direction. Entrepreneurs face multiple obstacles including stifling bureaucracy, burdensome tax procedures, and lack of financing, human capital, technological skills, and supportive networks. The support of family and friends and a modicum of social capital help cope with these obstacles to entrepreneurship.


Presented here is a novel application of Leaky Waveguide Devices to electrophoretic separations with Fourier Transform detection. The Leaky Waveguide Device couples light into and out of a microflow channel, providing an increase in the detection pathlength relative to traditional fixed-point illumination methods. This increased path length results in an increase in the analytical sensitivity, and could also allow real-time kinetic analysis of electrophoretic analytical separations. The Leaky Waveguide Device is constructed from injection moulded polystyrene, which not only reduces the production costs per single unit, but also allows application in areas where contamination must be avoided and one-shot devices are desirable.


Autonomous platoon control is a promising auto drive technology. It frees drivers from stressful driving task and offers comfortable car trip experience. It is also expected to contribute to energy savings. In platooning control systems, beacon messages have an important role. Each member vehicle controls its acceleration according to the information of the position, speed, and acceleration included in the beacons from 1) the leader vehicle and 2) its preceding vehicle. Since the position, speed, and acceleration of a vehicle can be observed by its direct follower vehicle using on-board sensors, the beacon for preceding vehicle is not so critical. In contrast, the beacon transmitted from the leader vehicle to the member vehicles cannot be replaced by on-board sensors and is the key factor that requires high reliability. However, radio communication from the leader to the member vehicles is vulnerable to radio jamming attacks. This paper proposes a radio and visible light communication (VLC) hybrid protocol to tackle RF jamming attacks. Simulation results show that the proposed hybrid protocol can avoid long end-to-end delay and achieve high message delivery ratio even under RF jamming attacks.


Blackout: The Untold Story of Jackie Robinson's First Spring Training. Chris Lamb. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2004. 233 pp. $24.95 pbk. Jackie Robinson's epitaph, "A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives," represents the selfless and laudable mission of a sports pioneer and American hero. While scholars have described Robinson's plight as the integrator of organized professional baseball in the twentieth century and his unwavering commitment to social change, Chris Lamb's Blackout: The Untold Story of Jackie Robinson's First Spring Training captures the long-term significance of Robinson on baseball and society from another perspective. Lamb adds to the body of work by setting a foundation for understanding the mainstream, black, and Communist press treatments of Robinson in the United States prior to Brown v. Board of Education, the Montgomery bus boycott, the Voting Rights Act, the March on Washington, and the ensuing Civil Rights movement. Lamb elucidates the role of the press in shaping perceptions of "integration, segregation, and civil rights" in a society where individuals were often judged not for depth of character, skills, or achievements, but rather by skin color. Lamb, an associate professor of media studies at the College of Charleston, writes passionately about his subject, and the strength of his work lies in his keen attention to detail and facts. Lamb began his research in 1993 when he was a columnist for the Oaytona Beach News-Journal. He integrates numerous primary sources, from mainstream and alternative newspapers to books, magazines, journals, interviews, and Smith's personal papers. Lamb bolsters arguments with quotations, yet still exposes the human side of Robinson's struggles. He intersperses experiences and anecdotes shared with wife Rachel, the Pittsburgh Courier's Wendell Smith and Billy Rowe, Dodgers' president Branch Rickey, and Royals' pitcher Johnny Wright, the second black player signed by Rickey. Lamb personalizes events, offering a gut-wrenching vista of this epoch and especially the Jim Crow South, where lynching remained commonplace. The only omission is an overview of Robinson's younger years and formative relationships with mother Mallie and Rev. Karl Downs. Blackout's most significant contribution is its illustration of the interplay among journalists, media content, and culture. The mainstream press, overall, failed to explicate the importance of Robinson's start of spring training, thereby precluding readers from fully understanding race relations. Mainstream writers perpetuated the myth that anyone could succeed in America's sport with skills and perseverance. What they failed to mention, however, was the "gentlemen's agreement" barring black athletes from baseball since the mid-1880s after Moses Fleetwood Walker and brother Welday played for the Toledo Blue Stockings. …


Chondrites are fragments of unmelted asteroids that formed due to gravitational instabilities in turbulent regions of the Solar protoplanetary disk. Hydrated chondrites are common among meteorites, indicating that a substantial fraction of the rocky bodies that formed early in the solar system accreted water ice grains that subsequently melted due to heat released by the radioactive decay of 26Al. However, the thermal histories of asteroids are still largely unknown; increased knowledge would provide fundamental information on their timing of accretion and their physical characteristics. Here we show that hydrated meteorites (CM chondrites) contain previously uncharacterized calcium carbonates with peculiar oxygen isotopic compositions (Δ17O ≈ −2.5‰), which artificially produce the mass-independent trend previously reported for carbonates. Based on these isotopic data, we propose a new model to quantitatively estimate the precipitation temperatures of secondary phases (carbonates and serpentine). It reveals that chondritic secondary phases recorded a gradual increase in temperature during the extent of aqueous alteration, from −10°C to a maximum of 250°C. We also show that the thermal path of C-type asteroids is independent of the initial oxygen isotopic composition of the primordial water ice grains that they accreted. Our estimated temperatures for hydrated asteroids remain lower than those experienced by other carbonaceous chondrites, providing strong constraints for modeling the formation conditions and size distribution of water-rich asteroids, especially in anticipation of the return of samples of water-rich asteroids to Earth by the OSIRIS-REx and Hayabusa2 missions.


In Drosophila each neural precursor is chosen from a group of cells through cell interactions mediated by Notch and Delta which may function as receptor and ligand (signal), respectively, in a lateral signalling pathway. The cells of a group are equipotential and express both Notch and Delta. Hyperactive mutant Notch molecules, (Abruptex), probably have an enhanced affinity for the ligand. When adjacent to wild-type cells, cells bearing the Abruptex proteins are unable to produce the signal. It is suggested that in addition to the binding of Notch molecules on one cell to the Delta molecules of opposing cells, the Notch and Delta proteins on the surface of the same cell may interact. Binding between a cell's own Notch and Delta molecules would alter the availability of these proteins to interact with their counterparts on adjacent cells.


Big data generated by crowds provides a myriad of opportunities for monitoring and modeling people's intentions, preferences, and opinions. A crucial step in analyzing such big data is selecting the relevant part of the data that should be provided as input to the modeling process. In this paper, we offer a novel, structured, crowd-based method to address the data selection problem in a widely used and challenging context: selecting search trend data. We label the method "crowd-squared," as it leverages crowds to identify the most relevant terms in search volume data that were generated by a larger crowd. We empirically test this method in two domains and find that our method yields predictions that are equivalent or superior to those obtained in previous studies (using alternative data selection methods) and to predictions obtained using various benchmark data selection methods. These results emphasize the importance of a structured data selection method in the prediction process, and demonstrate the utility of the crowd-squared approach for addressing this problem in the context of prediction using search trend data.


The paper treats important problems of administrative reform in Estonia in 1989-2016, such as the possibility of and need for the administrative-territorial reform, including the merging of municipalities and definition of the administrative reform. Guided by the general concept of the IME project and the Principles of Economic Autonomy for Estonia Act, the Estonian SSR Supreme Council passed the resolution of 8 August 1989 concerning administrative reform in the Estonian SSR. The resolution prescribed the administrative reform for the republic during 1990-1994 including the decentralisation of power in the republic to the levels of local government, and a clear distinction between the functions of state and local government. After this reform the discussions on the theme of local government reform have been acute for a long time in Estonia, but no systemic, comprehensive and holistic reform of public administration has been done there up to now (Linnas: 2011). The Administrative Reform Law, initiated by the government in 2016, includes the principles and procedures for carrying out the administrative reform, determines the minimum size of a local government unit and the relevant exceptions, and the rightsand obligations deriving from the merging of local governments. The Law sets a 5,000 minimum limit to the population of a local government.


I. BACKGROUND MATERIAL. Safety in the Chemical Laboratory. Laboratory Notebooks. Laboratory Glass and Laboratory Glassblowing. Heating and Cooling. Handling Air and Moisture Sensitive Compounds. Chromatography. Thermal Analysis. Infrared Spectroscopy. Magnetic Susceptibility. Mass Spectrometry. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. X-Ray Diffraction. Electron Paramagnetic Resonance. Computational Chemistry. Structural Inorganic Chemistry. II. LABORATORY EXERCISES. Crystal Growth in Gels. Structural Inorganic Chemistry via Models - Session I. Structural Inorganic Chemistry via Models - Session II. Sodium Peroxoborate. Measurement of High Temperatures. Preparation of Phosphors. Copper(II) Oxide. Structural Inorganic Chemistry via Models - Session III. Brucite and Magnesia. Strontium Zincate(II). Cadmium(II) Iodide. Manganese(IV) Oxide. Pillared Clays. Potassium Nitrilosulfonate. Tin(IV) Chloride. Surface Conductive Glass. Copper(I) Chloride. Mercury(II) Tetrathiocyanatocobaltate. Synthesis of a Superconductor. 12-Tungstophosphoric Acid. Copper Compounds. Potassium Trifluoronickelate(II). Potassium Trifluoromagnesate. Potassium Iodate and Clock Reaction. Ethylenediamine Complexes of Cobalt and Nickel. Ethylenediamine Complexes of Chromium. Hexaamine Cobalt(III) Chloride. Chloropentaamminecobalt(III) Chloride/Nitropentaamminecobalt(III) Chloride. Ferrocene. Phase Diagram of an Alloy. Metal Complex Used for DNA Cleavage. Synthesis of Heterogenous Catalyst Supports. Preparation of a Zeolite, B/A1 ZSM-11. Molecular Modeling Computational Laboratory. III. CHARACTERIZATION TECHNIQUES. Conductivity of Ionic Solutions. Measurements of Magnetic Susceptibility. Absorption Spectra of Transition Metal Complexes. X-Ray Powder Diffraction of Pillared Clays. Luminescence Spectroscopy. X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy. Calibration of Vacuum Line Components. Characterization of Gaseous Unknown.


Purpose – Since the decline of export agriculture and the loss of trade preferences, most Caribbean countries have shifted their economies towards the provision of tourism services. Barbados, for example, receives more than two‐thirds of its foreign exchange earnings from tourism. The sustainability of tourism in the Caribbean can potentially be affected by climate change. This paper aims to address this issue.Design/methodology/approach – This paper provides an assessment of the likely effects of climate change in the small state of Barbados and suggests some recommended adaptations. Climate change is expected to impact on temperature, rainfall and severe weather, sea levels and sea surface temperatures, biodiversity loss, and lead to erosion and seasonal shifts on the island.Findings – The paper finds that, in relation to tourism demand, as travellers from source markets become more conscious of their carbon footprint and the implementation of green taxes, there might be some alteration in demand for lo...


The present work deals with the field of biosensors for the detection of tumor markers.
Most of the conventional methods for cancer diagnosis in humans are imaging techniques. As with the methods only relatively large tumors can be reliably determined, it is desirable to develop methods that are able to detect cancer at an earlier stage of growth to offer efficient therapy. This is facilitated by the detection of the so-called tumor markers in body fluids such as blood, urine and saliva. Since the existing laboratory analysis is very complex and time-consuming, new detection methods are being
investigated to provide an inexpensive, fast and easy to handle alternative.
The biosensor principle developed in the present work is based on the analysis of a capacitive effect.
The sensor consists of a readout circuit and an electrode with an attached tethered bilayer lipid membrane, which has the ability to absorb Valinomycin peptides. Valinomycin is an ion carrier, which transports ions across the membrane. Through the increase of the ion concentration in the region
between membrane and electrode, the so-called spacer region, the capacitance increases due to an increase of the permittivity. This effect has not been used for biosensor applications, yet.
To further examine the application of this effect in biosensors the relation between the Spacer capacitance and the Valinomycin concentration has been first investigated with electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. A "switched-capacitor circuit" has been developed to implement a readout
circuitry in CMOS. The function of the sensor chip after fabrication has been checked with a test circuit that mimics the membrane. It shows a good consistence between simulation and measurement within the measurement accuracy. Thus it is confirmed that the chip can read out the expected
capacitance changes. Further a change in concentration of 100 nM Valinomycin has been detected with the CMOS readout circuit. A rough estimation gives a detection limit for the Valinomycin concentration of about 10 pM.
The novel biosensor principle is marker-free and allows a quantitative interpretation of the concentration of the analytes in the sample. This is an advantage compared to optical methods, such as fluorescence spectroscopy. Moreover, the measurement result can be read out directly. There is no need for further extraction of the measured data from a theoretical fitting, such as in the
electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. Fast measurements are achieved by running the CMOS chip in the kilohertz range.
Based on the results of the present study the field of biosensors is extended by a novel biosensor principle, which in combination with artificially modified ion channels is a promising tool for cancer diagnosis.


The developments in Libya is in need to be closely watched to explain the oil problem  especially the reasons for the developments in this geography for contemporary Africa  and Middle East conjuncture. The revolution that resulted in the overthrow of the  Muammar Gaddafi regime has filled the 6th anniversary on February 17, 2017, which  emerged from Tunisia starting in December 2010 and in 2011, we saw consequences in  Egypt and later in Libya. Despite the fact that six years have passed since the revolution  in Libya, the causes of devolution aren't remedied and the aims of the revolution aren't  realized. In order for the construction of the state and the security of the society to be  achieved, it is necessary for all parties affected by this revolution to be reconciled. In this study, the process of revolution will be examined by way of political and social  elements of Libya. Also the energy sources of Libya will be mentioned and the cause  of revolution will be stated. In addition, this study will be dwell on relations between  Turkey and Libya, and between Libya and External Powers.


The biomedical research oversight system in the United States delegates most responsibilities to local review entities known as institutional review boards (IRBs). The IRBs are charged with responsibility for safeguarding the welfare of research participants and ensuring that clinical studies involving human subjects comply with federal regulations. During the past three decades, the United States has experienced a dramatic proliferation of biomedical research studies. Contemporary critics often voice serious concerns about the adequacy of the regulations as a mechanism to insure the safety of study participants. Several lawsuits in recent years have named IRBs and IRB members as defendants, and these may portend a future fraught with litigation against IRBs. Such litigation poses new challenges for the IRB oversight system, including difficulty in recruiting IRB members, increased research costs, and potential over-deterrence that may adversely affect IRB deliberations and decision-making. Frequent litigation, therefore, could have profound implications for the research community that should be considered and addressed proactively. This article argues that retroactive review can be a useful adjunct to prospective oversight, but that it should be limited in scope. First, we recommend that all claims against IRBs be brought before the FDA or HHS for mandatory administrative review prior to the commencement of litigation. Such review would serve a useful gate-keeping role by filtering out or deterring frivolous actions and resolving some claims quickly, privately, and efficiently. Second, for cases that advance to the courthouse, we recommend that IRB members be given qualified immunity similar to that available for peer reviewers under The Health Care Quality Improvement Act of 1986 (HCQIA). IRB members should be immune from liability for civil damages so long as they had a good faith belief that the challenged decision protected the welfare of human subjects and so long as they complied with all federal regulatory requirements concerning protocol review. These safeguards should promote both the welfare of human subjects and the integrity of the oversight system.


Objective: The purpose of the present study was to compare the efficacy of metacognitive therapy with cognitive therapy on reducing test anxiety and meta-worry among students. Methods: The present study is a quasi-experimental research with pre- and post-test design with a control group. Study population comprised all female students of Tarbiat-Modares University of Tehran and sample included 15 students who selected by available sampling method and then randomly assigned in 3 groups. Test Anxiety Inventory and the Anxious Thoughts Inventory were given to 3 groups. For analyzing the data, analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) and repeated measure method were used. Students in 3 groups were matched with regard to age and marital status. Results: The results of co-variance test showed that there are differences between 3 groups in test anxiety. Metacognitive and cognitive therapy had same efficacy in reducing test anxiety, while the metacognitive therapy had more efficacy than cognitive therapy in reducing metaworry. Conclusion: Considering the effectiveness of two treatments on test anxiety, results of the present study can be useful for specialists. Also, results of metacognitive therapy can be helpful in reduction of meta-worry. A B S T R A C T


The high-frequency resistance of tin in the superconducting state was measured at a wave-length of 20.5 cm. by a calorimetric method based on the principle of eddy-current heating. It was found that the resistance decreases gradually when the temperature falls below the transition point in contrast to the sudden drop in resistance peculiar to direct currents. An explanation of such a behaviour is given based on the assumption of the simultaneous presence of normal and superconducting electrons. Good agreement between theory and experiment was found. Absolute measurements of the conductivity in the normal state at low temperatures with both high and low frequencies were carried out, and it was found that at the temperature of liquid helium the conductivity for high frequency is considerably lower than for low frequency. This behaviour is possibly due to the fact that the mean free path of the electrons becomes larger than the penetration depth due to skin effect under the conditions of high conductivity and high frequency.


During the summer of 2002 the Center of Excellence in Remote Sensing Education and Research (CERSER) was established on the campus of Elizabeth City State University. It is the intent of CERSER to develop innovative and relevant research collaboration focused on coastal, ocean, and marine research. The project represents a joint effort by the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the MU-SPIN Office of Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and SeaSpace. In addition to providing remotely sensed Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) and Sea Wide Field-of-View Sensor (SeaWiFS) data for research projects during the summer and academic year, CERSER maintains a website which displays and archives data that has been captured and processed. Since the establishment of the CERSER lab, data has been processed, annotated and converted into tiff files manually by using a series of TeraScan and LINIX commands. This process is time consuming and requires a person to physically be at the TeraScan Machine. The objective of this project was to automate the process of creating NOAA AVHRR products. The TeraScan Product Generation System was utilized to create a visible and sea surface temperature image. This was accomplished by first creating a 'master' of North Carolina and Virginia. A 'master' is a TeraScan dataset that delimits a geographical area of the earth and specifies a map projection and a pixel resolution to the area. The 'master' was used for the sea surface temperature product. Visible images were processed from the complete raw AVHRR data. A script was also created which would process raw AVHRR data from the passdisk. A script is a sequence of commands linked together to automatically run when initiated. A script can be initiated by running it from the command line or by linking the processing to TeraCapCon (TeraScan Capture Control). Once passes are captured on the passdisk the script processes the image and generates a picture product. Each image, overlaid with a coastal boundary, gridlines, a wedge and a legend, is converted into a tagged image file format (tiff) file and automatically distributed to the server using file transfer protocol (ftp). Automating the image process eliminates the need for an individual to manually process images, and insures that the CERSER webpage is current.


Counterfactual emotions including regret and disappointment play a crucial role in how people make decisions. For example, people often behave such that their decisions minimize potential regret or disappointment and therefore maximize subjective pleasure. Importantly, functional accounts of emotion suggest that the experience and future expectation of counterfactual emotions should promote goal-oriented behavioral change. Although many studies find empirical support for such functional theories, the cognitive-emotional mechanisms through which counterfactual thinking facilitates changes in behavior remain unclear. Here, we leverage computational models of risky decision-making that extend regret and disappointment theory to experience-based tasks, which we use to determine how people learn counterfactual representations of their decisions across time. Further, we use computer-vision to detect positive and negative affect (valence) intensity from participants' faces in response to feedback, which we use to determine how experienced emotion may influence cognitive mechanisms of learning, reward sensitivity, or exploration/exploitation—any of which could result in functional changes in behavior. Using hierarchical Bayesian modeling and Bayesian model comparison methods, we found that: (1) people learn to explicitly represent and subjectively weight counterfactual outcomes with increasing experience, and (2) people update their counterfactual expectations more rapidly as they experience increasingly intense negative affect. Our findings support functional accounts of regret and disappointment and demonstrate the potential for computational modeling and model-based facial expression analysis to enhance our understanding of cognition-emotion interactions.


The implementation of collapsed Gibbs samplers for non-parametric Bayesian models is non-trivial, requiring considerable book-keeping. Goldwater et al. (2006a) presented an approximation which significantly reduces the storage and computation overhead, but we show here that their formulation was incorrect and, even after correction, is grossly inaccurate. We present an alternative formulation which is exact and can be computed easily. However this approach does not work for hierarchical models, for which case we present an efficient data structure which has a better space complexity than the naive approach.


Southwestern Madagascar is not only one of the "hottest biodiversity hotspots" globally, but also a food insecurity hotspot with severe levels of poverty and undernourishment. Large parts of the regional forest have been lost in past decades, and many of the endemic species are at the verge of extinction. At the same time, the research region is among the most underdeveloped parts of Madagascar, which is itself one of the poorest countries globally. Thus, there is the dual challenge of safeguarding the livelihoods of one of the poorest rural communities while preserving the unique biodiversity. Acknowledgment of this dual challenge gave rise to the SuLaMa project (Sustainable Land Management in southwestern Madagascar) the present dissertation is a part of. Within southwestern Madagascar, the SuLaMa project region is confined to the Mahafaly Plateau, consisting of the coastal littoral in the west and a limestone upland in the east.

Three chapters comprise the core of this dissertation. The first chapter investigates the insurance function of livestock to cover food expenses during a drought year with failing annual crops. In rural Madagascar, zebu cattle are the most prominent herded animal, livestock numbers are high, and the heads of cattle a household owns is a strong indicator of both prestige and social status. Given the high sociocultural value of zebu cattle in Malagasy culture, many authors and development actors question the economic rationale of zebu herding. Empirical micro-level data on the actual role of livestock herding in terms of household economics is missing, though. We intend to narrow this knowledge gap by analysing the economic importance of zebu herding in the Mahafaly region. The analysis takes into account (i) the general role of animal husbandry and (ii) non-cattle related livelihood strategies that can buffer smallholder households against the effects of severe droughts and associated crop failures. To do this, we conducted a longitudinal survey as well as a recall survey covering the "lean" or "hunger" season (12/2013-05/2014). The results show that households generated less then 5% of total cash income from food crop sales, and spent on average >50% of their total cash income on food purchases. Proceeds from the sale of livestock accounted for >45% of cash food expenditures on average. In sum, we documented a substantial insurance function for zebu herding, but – even more importantly for the poorest households – also for small ruminants, i.e. goats.

The second chapter investigates causal links between regional hunger, poverty and environmental degradation, including feedback loops, among these factors. Despite a large number of regional rural development programmes in the research region, little effective progress in terms of agricultural income or well-being among farming households was observed. Anecdotally, the research region is being called a "project cemetery". At the same time, environmental degradation and the loss of biodiversity are frequently cited as problems of the region. Why is southwestern Madagascar apparently locked in such a catastrophic socioeconomic and ecological state?
The second chapter presents a causal analysis of the above-mentioned situation from a social-ecological systems perspective, including an analysis of potential social-ecological traps.
Specifically, we have analysed interactions between seasonal rainfall, agricultural production, household income, and strategies to cope with widespread hunger. The study is based on high-resolution survey data and longitudinal interview data covering all of 2014. In addition to our primary data sources, we incorporated results from previously published studies on the Mahafaly area focussing on current data from the SuLaMa project. The causal analysis makes use of the tools of systems analysis, particularly using causal loop diagrams to assess crucial social-ecological interactions. We found a complex interplay of pronounced seasonality in income generation, recurrent droughts and crop failures, high agricultural investment risks, and governance failures on several levels. This interplay results in a gradual depletion of environmental assets, livelihood impoverishment, and hinders capital accumulation, as well as sustainable agricultural intensification. Several social-ecological traps and their interactions entrench the Mahafalian smallholder population in deep poverty while the productivity of the environment gradually declines. The study provides new insights into the causes of persistent poverty and continuing loss of environmental assets on the landscape level. Finally, we propose key leverage points to unlock current traps and facilitate more sustainable development in southwestern Madagascar. Among these leverage points are, in particular, income sources that are not based on arable agriculture.

The first and the second chapters suggest that alternative income sources beyond arable agriculture are crucial for a regional sustainable development. The third chapter builds on this conclusion and analyses the potential of plant oil produced from the seeds of the cactus pear (Opuntia spp.) as an alternative income source. Cacti of the genus Opuntia are highly abundant in the region, particularly as living fences on private farmland in the littoral of the Mahafaly area. Highly priced seed oil can be extracted from the seeds of its fruit. To investigate the economic potential of seed oil production – and/or the local commercialisation of Opuntia seeds for seed oil production, we inventoried Opuntiae in field hedges through GIS analyses, and estimated the amount of seed oil that can be produced per household based on in situ sampling and laboratory analysis. To assess the socioeconomic impact of a potential large-scale project of regional Opuntia seed oil production, we conducted interviews with 51 farming households as to preferences for the utilisation of Opuntiae and Opuntiae products, including human consumption and utilization as animal fodder.
We found five different Opuntia varieties belonging to at least three different species. Two of the Opuntiae are highly important today socioeconomically, as they contribute >50% to total food intake during annual periods of food shortage. Conversely, three Opuntia varieties are not eaten by local residents. These varieties are more spiny, and respondents mentioned higher seed content in the fruit that would lead to digestive problems and constipation. However, the Opuntia varieties with inedible fruit were more abundant in the field hedges. The combination of low local nutritional use but high abundance and high seed content offers promising potential for regional Opuntia seed oil production. As Opuntia seed oil demands a high price on international markets, we conclude that the production of Opuntia seed oil from the project area and the sale of Opuntia seeds may bring livelihood improvements to some of the poorest rural communities in Madagascar.


Physicists regularly invoke universal laws, such as those of motion and electromagnetism, to explain events. Biological and medical scientists have no such laws. How then do they acquire a reliable body of knowledge about biological organisms and human disease? One way is by repeatedly returning to, manipulating, observing, interpreting, and reinterpreting certain subjects—such as flies, mice, worms, or microbes—or, as they are known in biology, "model systems." Across the natural and social sciences, other disciplinary fields have developed canonical examples that have played a role comparable to that of biology's model systems, serving not only as points of reference and illustrations of general principles or values but also as sites of continued investigation and reinterpretation. The essays in this collection assess the scope and function of model objects in domains as diverse as biology, geology, and history, attending to differences between fields as well as to epistemological commonalities.

Contributors examine the role of the fruit fly Drosophila and nematode worms in biology, troops of baboons in primatology, box and digital simulations of the movement of the earth's crust in geology, and meteorological models in climatology. They analyze the intensive study of the prisoner's dilemma in game theory, ritual in anthropology, the individual case in psychoanalytic research, and Athenian democracy in political theory. The contributors illuminate the processes through which particular organisms, cases, materials, or narratives become foundational to their fields, and they examine how these foundational exemplars—from the fruit fly to Freud's Dora—shape the knowledge produced within their disciplines.

Contributors

Rachel A. Ankeny

Angela N. H. Creager

Amy Dahan Dalmedico

John Forrester

Clifford Geertz

Carlo Ginzburg

E. Jane Albert Hubbard

Elizabeth Lunbeck

Mary S. Morgan

Josiah Ober

Naomi Oreskes

Susan Sperling

Marcel Weber

M. Norton Wise


Significance Genome-wide association study (GWAS) discoveries about educational attainment have raised questions about the meaning of the genetics of success. These discoveries could offer clues about biological mechanisms or, because children inherit genetics and social class from parents, education-linked genetics could be spurious correlates of socially transmitted advantages. To distinguish between these hypotheses, we studied social mobility in five cohorts from three countries. We found that people with more education-linked genetics were more successful compared with parents and siblings. We also found mothers' education-linked genetics predicted their children's attainment over and above the children's own genetics, indicating an environmentally mediated genetic effect. Findings reject pure social-transmission explanations of education GWAS discoveries. Instead, genetics influences attainment directly through social mobility and indirectly through family environments. A summary genetic measure, called a "polygenic score," derived from a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of education can modestly predict a person's educational and economic success. This prediction could signal a biological mechanism: Education-linked genetics could encode characteristics that help people get ahead in life. Alternatively, prediction could reflect social history: People from well-off families might stay well-off for social reasons, and these families might also look alike genetically. A key test to distinguish biological mechanism from social history is if people with higher education polygenic scores tend to climb the social ladder beyond their parents' position. Upward mobility would indicate education-linked genetics encodes characteristics that foster success. We tested if education-linked polygenic scores predicted social mobility in >20,000 individuals in five longitudinal studies in the United States, Britain, and New Zealand. Participants with higher polygenic scores achieved more education and career success and accumulated more wealth. However, they also tended to come from better-off families. In the key test, participants with higher polygenic scores tended to be upwardly mobile compared with their parents. Moreover, in sibling-difference analysis, the sibling with the higher polygenic score was more upwardly mobile. Thus, education GWAS discoveries are not mere correlates of privilege; they influence social mobility within a life. Additional analyses revealed that a mother's polygenic score predicted her child's attainment over and above the child's own polygenic score, suggesting parents' genetics can also affect their children's attainment through environmental pathways. Education GWAS discoveries affect socioeconomic attainment through influence on individuals' family-of-origin environments and their social mobility.


Trade liberalization and globalization have resulted in the free flow of goods, services, capital and people. In this regard ports playa vital role in linking supply chains, as goods flow from the point of inception through the chain up to the customer at the end. This research was conducted to determine and evaluate the role of logistics in the value chain of steel products that pass through Durban Port. The impact oflogistics measured in terms of costreduction, shorter lead times and better customer service that would contribute to the competitive advantage of businesses was evaluated. Other countries like China and India are also manufacturers of steel products, and it is therefore important for South Africa not to lose international markets due to prices and products that are not internationally competitive. In essence, this paper unpacks the debates surrounding the high prices of steel products from South Africa, and suggests how these prices can be reduced. In this regard the investigation into steel products provided an excellent case study, as steel contributes significantly to the GDP of the country. The study analyses all logistics activities like transportation, warehousing, handling, quality control of goods and a just-in-time management approach. Informal interviews and a case study based on Durban Port highlight the role that logistics activities play in adding value to goods that pass through Durban Port. The implications of the findings are discussed and proposals for redefining the role of logistics in an organization are offered.


Abstract Persona is a common human-computer interaction technique for increasing stakeholders' understanding of audiences, customers, or users. Applied in many domains, such as e-commerce, health, marketing, software development, and system design, personas have remained relatively unchanged for several decades. However, with the increasing popularity of digital user data and data science algorithms, there are new opportunities to progressively shift personas from general representations of user segments to precise interactive tools for decision-making. In this vision, the persona profile functions as an interface to a fully functional analytics system. With this research, we conceptually investigate how data-driven personas can be leveraged as analytics tools for understanding users. We present a conceptual framework consisting of (a) persona benefits, (b) analytics benefits, and (c) decision-making outcomes. We apply this framework for an analysis of digital marketing use cases to demonstrate how data-driven personas can be leveraged in practical situations. We then present a functional overview of an actual data-driven persona system that relies on the concept of data aggregation in which the fundamental question defines the unit of analysis for decision-making. The system provides several functionalities for stakeholders within organizations to address this question.


Soil water status is one of the most important environmental factors that control microbial activity and rate of soil organic matter (SOM) decomposition. Its effect can be partitioned into effect of 10 water energy status (water potential) on cellular activity, effect of water volume on cellular motility and aqueous diffusion of substrate and nutrients, as well as effect of air content and gas-diffusion pathways on concentration of dissolved oxygen. However, moisture functions widely used in SOM decomposition models are often based on empirical functions rather than robust physical foundations that account for these disparate impacts of soil water. The contributions of soil water content and water potential vary from soil 15 to soil according to the soil water characteristic (SWC), which in turn is strongly dependent on soil texture and structure. The overall goal of this study is to introduce a physically based modelling framework of aerobic microbial respiration that incorporates the role of SWC under arbitrary soil moisture status. The model was tested by comparing it with published datasets of SOM decomposition under laboratory conditions. 20


ABSTRACT 'Brexit' was a watershed moment. It has made visible the major faultlines and fissures that underlie the so-called 'United Kingdom' (UK) and our increasingly globalized world. But the precise nature of those faultlines and fissures requires multiple strands of critical analysis and interpretation. To date, most analyses have highlighted the socio-economic class and immigration or rather race/empire reasons for the Brexit vote neglecting their gendered dimensions. Building on the framework developed in Scandalous Economics we show how gendered analysis both illuminates and complicates dominant explanations of the Brexit vote. We interrogate the agents of Brexit – highlighting the paradox of men's dominance of the Brexit campaign and women's rise in the political crisis that ensued after the referendum vote. We also examine the intersectional inequalities that have made Brexit conceivable from a gender perspective, and its likely impact given the austerity policies and global chains of migrant labour upon which the UK economy depends. We conclude that critical feminist political economy broadens as well as globalizes our analysis of international political economy. Moreover, this analysis of Brexit is a lens which can be used to interrogate the spread of populism aka 'Trumpism' elsewhere.


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Metal catalyzed reactions for the formation of C–O bonds have had a dramatic impact in natural product synthesis over the past few decades. Various metals have been reported to efficiently catalyze cross-coupling reactions for the formation of various C(sp2)–O bonds from aryl/alkenyl halides or synthetic equivalents and phenols, aliphatic alcohols and water. The implementation of such reactions in natural product synthesis enabled the emergence of new bond disconnections, which notably resulted in remarkably efficient and short synthetic pathways. The use of these reactions for the formation of C–O bonds in natural product synthesis is overviewed in this critical review, with an emphasis on copper and palladium catalysts which are the most efficient ones to date.


Productivity of a mechanized P. patula cut-to-length harvesting operation was estimated and modelled using two methods of data collection: manual time study and follow-up study using StanForD stem files. The objective of the study was to compare the productivity models derived using these two methods to test for equivalence. Manual time studies were completed on four different machines and their operators. Two Ponsse Bear harvesters fitted with H8 heads, and two Ponsse  Beaver harvesters, fitted with  H6 heads, were included. All machines were equipped with Ponsse Opti2 information system. All four operators had approximately 1 year of experience working with their respective machines. The four machines worked in separate four-tree-wide harvesting corridors, and they each harvested 200 trees.  Individual tree diameter at breast height (DBH), and height measurements were made manually. Subsequently, data on the trees in each study were extracted from the StanForD stem reports from each of the harvesters. Cycle times in the stem reports were determined based on the difference between consecutive harvest timestamps. The two methods were compared in terms of their abilities to estimate equivalent measures for tree DBH, volume, and productivity. In all four cases, significant differences were found between the DBH and volume measures derived using the two methods. Subsequently, the volume measures from the manual methods were used as the basis for productivity calculations. Results of the productivity comparisons found no significant differences between the models developed from the two methods. These results suggest that equivalent productivity models can be developed in terms of time using either method, however volume discrepancies indicate a need to reconcile bark and volume functions with the high variability experienced in the country.


MINI: The neurological complication (NC) rate in surgery for ASD was 10% of 285 multi-centered cases. NC patients exhibited worse clinical outcomes, partly because many required physical assistance. Preoperative decline in activities of daily living (ADL) was a risk factor for motor deficit. ASD surgery should be considered before ADL decline.

STUDY DESIGN
Multicenter retrospective case series.

OBJECTIVE
To report the risks, recovery, and clinical impact of neurological complications (NCs) in adult spinal deformity (ASD) surgery.

SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA
Although recent studies have reported the incidence of NCs in ASD surgery, few have addressed the recovery from and clinical impacts of NC.

METHODS
We reviewed records from a multicenter database for 285 consecutive surgically treated ASD patients who had reached a 2-year follow-up. NCs were categorized as sensory only or motor deficit (MD). Recovery was noted as none, partial, or complete, during hospitalization and at every post-operation visit. Uni- and multivariate risk analyses were performed to identify risk factors for MD.

RESULTS
NC developed in 29 (10%) patients within 30 days of surgery, of which 11 were permanent deficits (7 no recovery, and 4 partial recovery). MD developed in 14 (5%) patients, including 1 spinal cord injury. Seven MD patients required physical assistance at the latest follow-up. While NC patients experienced significant improvements in health-related quality of life (HRQoL) at the 2-year follow-up, the HRQoL was significantly worse for the NC vs. no-NC group at this time point. Univariate analyses revealed that Schwab-SRS types N and L, pelvic tilt, modified frailty index (mFI) physical function, and an inferior SRS22 function domain at baseline were risk factors for MD. Among them, mFI physical function, which represented a preoperative decline in activities of daily living (ADL), was identified as an independent risk factor for MD (OR: 4.0, 95% CI: 1.2-13.5, p = .03).

CONCLUSIONS
NC developed in 10% of ASD surgery patients, with permanent deficits occurring in 4%. Half of the patients who developed MD required physical assistance, which contributed to the inferior clinical outcomes. Surgical intervention should be considered before severe ADL decline to prevent NCs.

LEVEL OF EVIDENCE
4.


Deep learning models achieve high predictive accuracy across a broad spectrum of tasks, but rigorously quantifying their predictive uncertainty remains challenging. Usable estimates of predictive uncertainty should (1) cover the true prediction targets with high probability, and (2) discriminate between high- and low-confidence prediction instances. Existing methods for uncertainty quantification are based predominantly on Bayesian neural networks; these may fall short of (1) and (2) -- i.e., Bayesian credible intervals do not guarantee frequentist coverage, and approximate posterior inference undermines discriminative accuracy. In this paper, we develop the discriminative jackknife (DJ), a frequentist procedure that utilizes influence functions of a model's loss functional to construct a jackknife (or leave-one-out) estimator of predictive confidence intervals. The DJ satisfies (1) and (2), is applicable to a wide range of deep learning models, is easy to implement, and can be applied in a post-hoc fashion without interfering with model training or compromising its accuracy. Experiments demonstrate that DJ performs competitively compared to existing Bayesian and non-Bayesian regression baselines.


Matrix Metalloproteinases (MMPs) play an important role in gastric cancer (GC). Accumulated evidence suggests that functional MMP-1 and MMP-7 gene polymorphisms are associated with several tumors. The aim of this study was to investigate two single nucleotide polymorphisms, MMP-1 -1607 1G/2G and MMP-7 -181 A/G, and their potential relationship with GC. We examined 246 GC patients and 252 age-and sex-matched controls from Sichuan province in China. Genotypes were determined using a polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism strategy and DNA sequencing. We also performed a meta-analysis of relevant studies, involving 1084 cases and 1721 controls, to place our findings in a broader context. No significant relationship was observed between the MMP-1 -1607 1G/2G alleles and genotypes and the risk of GC. There were significant differences in the genotypes and allele distributions of the -181 A/G polymorphism of the MMP-7 gene between cases and controls. The -181 A allele carriers had a significantly increased risk of GC compared with -181 G allele carriers (OR=3.051, 95% CI, 1.475-6.310, P=0.002), and the AA genotype of -181 A/G was associated with an increased risk of GC compared with the AG genotype (OR=3.189, 95% CI, 1.523-6.676, P=0.001). A meta-analysis of six studies also showed a significant risk of GC associated with MMP-7 polymorphism.


Neurites of superior cervical ganglion neurons from embryonic, perinatal, and adult rats extended at different rates when placed in tissue culture on similar collagen substrata. Using high resolution cinematography and a time-lapse video recording system, we concluded that these differences arise from variations in individual growth cone behavior. Growth cones of embryonic and perinatal neuronal origin exhibited high peak rates of advance and filopodial and lamellipodial excresences. Perinatal cones differed from embryonic ones in that they were somewhat larger, advanced in straighter paths, and retracted less, consequently translocating at 14 to 29 microns/hr compared with 8 to 22 microns/hr for embryonic cones (ranges of 4-hr means). The growth cones of neurons obtained from adult rats had scant cytoplasm and short branched filopodia, lacked definitive lamellipodia, and traversed the terrain at 4 to 13 microns/hr due to lack of high peak rates of advance and more time spent in stationary or minimal advance phases. Periodic pauses lasting 10 to 20 min, occurring every 20 to 90 min, interrupted the forward advance of growth cones of all ages. During pauses or slow forward movement, the growth cone displayed numerous filopodia whereas, during brief episodes when embryonic and perinatal growth cones moved at peak rates of 200 microns/hr or more, the cone periphery was predominantly lamellipodial. We conclude that the predominance of a lamellipodial or filopodial conformation correlates with the rate of growth cone advance and that age-dependent variations in neurite extension rates are related to differences in growth cone form and pattern of translocation. This is the first documentation of differing behavior of single growth cones of neurons of varying developmental ages in culture.


This work analyzes the partial legalization of abortion in Colombia, from the perspective of the relationship between techno-scientific and legal expertise, in institutional fields like the Constitutional Court. For this aim, has been made a discursive and rhetoric analysis of related technical literature, in particular the Act C 355 of 2006 from the Constitutional Court. This dissertation presents the several kinds of interaction between science and law, as well as, the technical and textual devices that mediate in such interactions. Moreover, it examines the risk forms that are constructed by this kind of literature in the case of congenital malformations and sexual abuse.


In Northern Ireland the Irish language has the power to enrage and enthral. For some, Irish is the expression of a cherished culture, but its close association with nationalism and republicanism means that Protestants and unionists rarely see it in a positive light. History reveals that this was not always the case. For centuries, Protestants engaged with Irish on their own terms, sometimes for academic reasons but often because it was their everyday language and an integral part of their lives. "Towards Inclusion" considers these fascinating historical perspectives, as well as covering the role of the Irish language in Northern Ireland's more recent past. But the main body of the book is based on Malcolm's extensive and detailed research into the attitudes of young Protestants towards the Irish language, carried out through questionnaires and focus groups. Some of the students had attended a Gael-Linn language enrichment course, but the rest had little or no exposure to Irish. The results of this research are both striking and surprising, and will provoke fresh debate on the role of the Irish language in Northern Ireland today. In the twenty-first century can Irish become the intellectual property of all, regardless of political stance or religion?


The chem. of S leaching from pyrite (FeS) was studied using various litho-trophic Fe(II) oxidizing bacteria. The bacterial strains were Thiobacillus ferrooxidans, Leptospirillum ferrooxidans, and an archae bacterium of the genus Sulfolobus/Acidianus. The formation of S compds. were measured by HPLC and diode array detection. The degrdn. of FeS proceeded via polythionates in a novel cyclic pathway, and elemental S was only a side-product. At neutral pH, polythionates accumulated in high amts. At acidic pH mainly sulfate along with some elemental S and polythionates were formed. To test the validity of the cyclic pyrite degrdn. mechanism for metal sulfides besides pyrite, the chem. oxidn. of hauerite (MnS2), sphalerite (ZnS), and galena (PbS) by Fe(III) ions in acidic soln. was studied. Degrdn. of ZnS and PbS did not proceed via polythionates, but high amts. of elemental S accumulated at acidic pH, which indicated a different mechanism. This can be explained by the different crystal structure and soly. of the metal sulfides.


The Last Sultan is the definitive biography of a man who changed popular culture throughout the world. As the founder and head of Atlantic Records, Ahmet Ertegun signed and/or recorded many of the greatest musical artists of all time, among them Ruth Brown; Big Joe Turner; Ray Charles; Bobby Darin; Sonny and Cher; Eric Clapton; Buffalo Springfield; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; Led Zeppelin; the Rolling Stones; Bette Midler; and Kid Rock. Working alongside his older brother, Nesuhi, one of the preeminent jazz producers of all time, and the legendary Jerry Wexler, who produced great soul artists like Wilson Pickett, Solomon Burke, and Aretha Franklin, Ertegun transformed Atlantic Records from a small independent record label into a hugely profitable multinational corporation. In successive generations, he also served as a mentor to record-business tyros like Phil Spector, David Geffen, and Lyor Cohen. Brilliant, cultured, and irreverent, Ertegun was as renowned for his incredible sense of personal style and nonstop A-list social life as his work in the studio. Born into great privilege as the son of a high-ranking Turkish diplomat during the last days of the Ottoman Empire, Ertegun spent his life bringing the black-roots music he loved to the world. A larger-than-life figure, always hip, Ertegun lived in the grand manner but was never happier than when he found himself in some down-and-out joint listening to music late at night. Blessed with impeccable taste and brilliant business acumen, he brought rock 'n' roll into the mainstream while creating the music that became the sound track for the lives of multiple generations. With supporting characters like Steve Ross, Henry Kissinger, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Jann Wenner, and a host of others, The Last Sultan is the fascinating story of a man who always lived by his own rules.


This book provides comprehensive methodology, enabling the staff charged with an IT security audit to create a sound framework, allowing them to meet the challenges of compliance in a way that aligns with both business and technical needs. This "roadmap" provides a way of interpreting complex, often confusing, compliance requirements within the larger scope of an organization's overall needs.

Key Features:

* The ulitmate guide to making an effective security policy and controls that enable monitoring and testing against them
* The most comprehensive IT compliance template available, giving detailed information on testing all your IT security, policy and governance requirements
* A guide to meeting the minimum standard, whether you are planning to meet ISO 27001, PCI-DSS, HIPPA, FISCAM, COBIT or any other IT compliance requirement
* Both technical staff responsible for securing and auditing information systems and auditors who desire to demonstrate their technical expertise will gain the knowledge, skills and abilities to apply basic risk analysis techniques and to conduct a technical audit of essential information systems from this book
* This technically based, practical guide to information systems audit and assessment will show how the process can be used to meet myriad compliance issues


Governments and other policy makers use long-term planning models to support workforce planning decisions for regulating care markets and to ensure accurate balancing between care supply and demand. Our aim is to understand long-term effects of workforce planning decisions on care markets, in order to enhance health care policy making. We identify 25 key factors that influence care demand and supply based on literature analysis and analysis of a planning model for long term care development currently used in the Netherlands. We depict a model that relates these key factors together, and, ultimately construct a system dynamics model to predict long-term development of specialist care supply and demand. We conclude that long-term developments of care markets are not only determined by these 25 factors but also by dynamic interactions among three markets: (1) the specialist care markets, (2) the personnel markets in hospitals and specialist groups, and (3) the specialist training markets. Planning models must include such interactions to ensure valid long-term predictions of markets and workforce needs.