Flood frequency analyses are usually based on the assumption of stationarity, which might be unrealistic if changes in climate, land uses or urbanisation impact the study catchment. Moreover, most non-stationarity studies only focus on peak flows, ignoring other flood characteristics. In this study, the potential effect of increasing urbanisation on the bivariate relationship of peak flows and volumes is investigated in a case study in the northwest of England, consisting of an increasingly urbanised catchment and a nearby hydrologically and climatologically similar unchanged rural (control) catchment. The study is performed via Kendall's tau and copulas. Temporal trends are studied visually and by formal tests, considering variables individually and jointly. Bivariate joint return period curves associated with consecutive time periods are compared to understand the joint implications of such bivariate trends. Although no significant bivariate trends were detected, hydrologically relevant trends were found in the urbanised catchment.


ATP-sensitive potassium (K(ATP)) channel openers, exerting a potent vasodilatory action, are useful in the treatment of cardiovascular disorders; e.g., hypertension and angina pectoris. This study was designed to evaluate the effect of MJ-355 (6-cyano-3,4-trans-3,4-dihydro-2,2-dimethyl-2H-3-hydroxy-4-[2-oxo-5S-(1- ethoxyethoxymethyl)-1-pyrrolidinyl]-1-benzopyran), a newly synthesized K(ATP) channel opener, on hemodynamics in spontaneously hypertensive rats and on myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury in a rat model of 45 min left coronary artery occlusion followed by 1-h reperfusion. Intravascular injection of MJ-355 (0.005, 0.05 and 0.1 mg/kg) produced a dose-related reduction in mean arterial blood pressure. The depressor effect started 10-15 min after the administration and persisted for more than 3 h and was not accompanied by a reflex tachycardia. In myocardial ischemia, pretreatment of MJ-355 (0.02 mg/kg) significantly reduced the total number of ventricular premature contractions and ventricular tachycardia, total duration of ventricular fibrillation and the mortality. Additionally, a significant reduction in infarct size was noted in all of the MJ-355-treated groups. The hemodynamic and cardioprotective effects of MJ-355 were virtually abolished by pretreating the rats with glibenclamide (4 mg/kg, i.v. bolus), a selective K(ATP) channel blocker. In conclusion, MJ-355, through the activation of K(ATP) channels, exhibited antihypertensive and cardioprotective effects. It is suggested that MJ-355 should be useful in the treatment of hypertension and/or acute myocardial infarction.


The perception-action model proposes that vision for perception and vision for action are subserved by two separate cortical systems, the ventral and dorsal streams respectively (Milner & Goodale, 1995, 2006). It is argued that the dorsal stream codes spatial information egocentrically, that is, relative to the observer, and that these representations are highly transient. The purpose of this thesis was to investigate whether short-term spatial memory can use egocentric information. This was achieved by using spatial priming in visual search. Spatial priming manifests itself in speeded detection times for a target when that target appears in the same location that it previously appeared in (Shore & Klein, 2001). Target locations can be defined in either egocentric (i.e. relative to the body or a specific part of the body) or allocentric (i.e. relative to other items in the display) frames of reference. However, it is unclear which of these are used in spatial priming. It was found that both allocentric and egocentric cues were used, and that egocentric cues were the most effective for short-term priming (Study A). In exploring the nature of the egocentric frame of reference further, it was found that target location was not coded using an eye-centred frame of reference but rather it was coded relative to the observer's body (Study B). Moreover, when participants moved to a new location and the relationship with the target was maintained, priming effects were still observed (Study C). The availability of egocentric information was tested further, and the priming effects were still observed after a minimum delay of eight seconds between the first and second presentations of a target location (Study D). Finally, it was found that the application of transcranial magnetic stimulation to the posterior parietal cortex did not modulate either allocentric or egocentric spatial priming effects (Study E). While the perception-action model predicts that egocentric information is short lived, the findings from the experiments presented in this thesis suggest that egocentric information can persist for several seconds.


Massification of higher education is inevitable in the development process of Uganda where the country's Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) is at 6.8%. Massification in Uganda was introduced with an aim of higher education becoming accessible to all. This paper analyzes the multifaceted debates regarding higher education and development in Uganda. These debates include; (a) massification of higher education leads to development, and (b) training quality graduates leads to development. Against the two debates the government of Uganda has failed to take an appropriate position on whether it is for massification or producing quality of graduates. This literature review answers three broad questions; (i) Does massification of higher education lead to development in Uganda? (ii) Does training of a few quality graduates lead to development in Uganda? And, (iii) what is the best model for higher education in Uganda? With the increasing numbers of students enrolled in higher education institutions higher education has been faced with enormous challenges such as inadequate funding and staffing, deteriorating standards, low quality graduates, high student-staff ratio, poor physical facilities, and insufficient equipment. This paper makes suggestions on how massification in higher education can create a critical mass of human resources that can lead to economic development in Uganda.


The study examined the extent of penetration of Computer and Internet as Information Communication Technology (ICT) tools and their potential positive impact   on educational institutions, individuals and societies at large. The study employed a mixed methods approach involving quantitative and qualitative approaches using secondary and primary data sources. The study was premised on the social cultural theory propounded by Vygotsky in the early 20 th century which emphasizes the role of the society and interaction in learning and development process. This study focused on lessons of experience regarding the extent ICT has transformed education in Ghana, Kenya and Rwanda. The study largely relied on secondary data available mainly in official websites, published documents like articles in journals and unpublished documents as well as primary data from interviews with leading educationists, researchers and policy makers in the Eastern  African Region. The findings in the three countries show the existence of political awareness and will to make ICT a transformative and economic tool.  Practically on the ground, educational institutions and their stakeholders have already embraced ICT and their actions are portrayed in the progressive efforts to avail required basic ICT infrastructure and future roadmaps of the targets to hit. It was also noted that Rwanda is taking the lead in the achievements in ICT. It was also evident that the three countries were experiencing nearly identical challenges ranging from inadequate funding to put in place appropriate tools and infrastructure   and low level of ownership and sustainability of ICT projects. The study recommended the punctual monitoring and evaluation of ICT projects; follow up and enforcement of policies and resolutions, synergize  all educational stakeholders' efforts and expertise together as some of the  coping strategies with the highlighted barriers. Invariably,   countries should learn from one another in terms of achievement made and challenges to be overcome.[[293 words] Key words : Information Communication Technology (ICT), ICT penetration, ICT in education, ICT impact, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda


The paper proposes a specific algorithm for the pre-estimation filtering of bad data (BD) in PMU-based power systems linear State Estimators (SEs). The approach is framed in the context of the so-called real-time SEs that take advantage of the high measurement frame rate made available by PMUs (i.e., 50-60 frames per second). In particular, the proposed algorithm examines PMU measurement innovations for each new received set of data in order to locate anomalies and apply countermeasures. The detection and identification scheme is based on: (i) the forecasted state of the network obtained by means of a linear Kalman filter, (ii) the current network topology, (iii) the accuracy of the measurement devices and (iv) their location. The incoming measurement from each PMU is considered reliable, or not, according to a dynamic threshold defined as a function of the confidence of the predicted state estimated by using an AutoRegressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) process. The performances of the proposed algorithm are validated with respect to single and multiple bad data of different nature and magnitudes. Furthermore, the algorithm is also tested against faults occurring in the power system to show its robustness during these unexpected operating conditions.


This case history takes place in a packaging Facility in Virginia. The packer on module E5 was checked for vibration integrity during A pre-machine care evaluation. A problem was detected in the folding arm gearbox. The frequency characteristics indicated a bearing was deteriorating. This seems very straight forward but let s put the reality of the situation into the problem detected. The gearbox is located in a section of the packer that is not easily accessible. To do the necessary repairs it will require separating the two sections of the machine. When the packer is split it will take an additional two days of work before the unit can be restored to service. The maintenance leader is not a believer In the ability of the technician to make a vibration call correctly. He has vowed to bring the technician and the technician s boss under the scrutiny of the organizations leadership for poor performance if the call is wrong. The product this packer is packing is in a sold out position.


As a result of the exponential growth of international commerce and academic exchange between Mainland China and the United States, this thesis examines the present-day validity of those Chinese and American cultural characteristics, such as practices and values, historically understood as defining cultural differences. Using Babiker's Cultural Distance Index (Babiker, Cox, & Miller, 1980) questionnaire (an institutionally established instrument since 1980), 45 Mainland Chinese student-sojourners conveyed their perceptions of cultural differences found in daily living. Chinese participants identified many cultural attributes that still affect the migrant's perceptions of difference. These attributes are language, food, education costs, and leisure activities. Participants found the CDI attributes, climate, modernity, elder esteem, and social dating conventions, of no definable difference between cultures. Participants also identified new cultural attributes pertinent to present-day comparisons of China and the United States. These are lifestyle, the significance of education, transportation, sexuality, and politics. The outcome of a follow-up, open-ended questionnaire elaborated these findings. The thesis discusses returnees' perceptions and attitudes of cultural differences as established in the Cultural Distance Index and how present-day changes in cultural relations require a modified instrument for measuring distance. Also addressed are other issues related to the difficulty of measuring cultural distance today such as changes in migrant student's perception and identification of its own culture after studying abroad—understood as transculturation. The study concludes with suggested areas of focus for future development in intercultural competency within the context of Sino-American student REASSESSING CULTURAL DISTANCE v


It is generally believed that isolation has played an important part in evolution. If an organism is to evolve so as to adapt itself to a special type of environment, e.g. a cave or a desert, it must not be swamped in each generation by migrants from the original habitat.


Political frameworks and policies have a strong influence on the institutional ecosystem and on governance patterns, which in turn shape the operational space of civil society initiatives. This article aims to explore the social and institutional conditions and policy initiatives that foster or hinder social innovation and the pathways leading from social innovation to institutional change through to actual impacts on policies and political frameworks, in order to understand how policymakers can encourage and enable social innovation. The article builds on an extensive empirical background to develop a heuristic model to facilitate decision making for a policy environment propitious for the emergence of social innovation. The resulting model sets up a triadic configuration of (i) a committed core of key actors, (ii) the benevolent shadow of hierarchy represented by public actors, and (iii) multifunctional and malleable intermediary support structures for a successful development of social innovation initiatives. The model is discussed and validated by reference to three in-depth case studies from differing institutional settings. We conclude that policy should recognize that social innovation will achieve most when the triadic relationships between the state, intermediary organizations, and local actors are working together synergistically.


A total of 105 male Japanese quails (153.2 ± 10.21 g) ( Cortunix cortunix japonica ) were reared in an environmentally controlled house to investigate the effect of inclusion of Lippia javanica leaf meal on growth performance, haematological and serum biochemical parameters, and carcass and meat quality characteristics. The quails were randomly allocated to 15 pens, with each pen holding 7 quails. Pens were then randomly allocated to the following experimental diets: 1) commercial grower diet without antibiotics [NegCon]; 2) commercial grower diet with antibiotics, coxistac and olaquindox [PosCon]; and 3) commercial grower diet without antibiotics in which L. javanica was included at the rate of 25 g/kg [Ljav25]. Experimental diets and fresh water were offered ad libitum . Weekly feed intake and body weights were recorded to calculate feed conversion efficiency (FCE). At 9 weeks of age, quails were slaughtered at a local poultry abattoir for assessment of blood parameters, carcass and meat quality characteristics. Repeated measures analysis showed no significant week × diet interaction effect on average weekly feed intake (AWFI), average weekly weight gain (AWG) and FCE. Diet had no significant influence on AWFI, AWG, FCE, and haematological parameters. There was no dietary effect on overall FI, overall WG and overall FCE. Alanine transaminase (ALT) was the only serum biochemical parameter influenced by diet. Quails offered Ljav25 had higher ALT content (56.83 u/L) than those offered PosCon (18.0 u/L). Diets had no significant impact on carcass characteristics and internal organs, except for gizzard weights. Immediately after slaughter, diets caused no effect on meat quality parameters, except meat lightness (L*), whereas at 24 h post slaughter, diets had significant impact on meat yellowness (b*). No dietary variation was observed for peak positive force (PPF) values of quail meat. NegCon diet promoted the least cooking losses (16.51%) when compared to PosCon and Ljav25 diets, which significantly did not differ. It was concluded that inclusion of L. javanica in quail diets at 25 g/kg feed promoted similar growth performance, health status, and carcass and meat quality traits as the commercial grower diet containing antibiotics. Lippia javanica leaf meal, therefore, has potential as an alternative to antibiotic growth promoters in Japanese quails. Keywords : Antibiotics, health, Lippia javanica, physiological response, quails


In Makueni County, Kenya, an area experiencing intensifying migration flows, we investigate the aspired futures of rural men and women using a novel methodology combining a narrative-based survey tool, focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews. Our findings indicate that, in the absence of men and presence of norms restricting women's movement out of rural life, women are becoming increasingly engaged in farm management. Women's aspirational narratives focused on commercialising farm activities, likely reflecting their changing agricultural opportunity space and new realities as farm managers. We highlight that only considering aspirations at the household level overlooks differing individual contributions, agency over various household income streams and individuals' changing roles throughout life. Based on our findings, we make recommendations for further aspirations research including explicit consideration of intrahousehold heterogeneity and how individual strategies and aspirations interrelate and are negotiated at the household level to build an overall livelihood strategy.


PowerPoint slides from a presentation given at the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education Conference in Denver, Co.
Summer 2008. The Sustainability Committee of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, decided to host a traditional one-day, drive-in conference focusing on some of the best sustainable practices being developed by the sixteen institutions that make up the University of North Carolina system. The Conference, UNC Focus Forward, was going to be the first organized attempt to bring together the "movers and shakers" on each campus to share their successes (and failures) in building a more sustainable campus. But on the way to implementing the conference, the economy collapsed, travel was frozen, and hosting a traditional conference in the spring of 2009 was dead. End of story? Flash forward to spring 2010 when the UNCG Sustainability Committee "virtually" hosts UNC Focus Forward, an online conference focusing on some of the best sustainable practices in the 16 campus UNC system schools. The conference had both in-person and virtual presenters who presented to a virtual audience from across the state. This presentation will provide a "behind the scenes" look at the process used to surmount the obstacles inherent to a traditional conference and highlight the benefits of presenting a sustainable event. In bringing together students, staff and faculty from various institutions to learn about best practices regarding sustainability, UNC Focus Forward provided a sustainable collaboration that not only is impervious to budgetary "hiccups, " but also models sustainable practices. WARNING: This is not a technical "how to" presentation but one where technophobes will feel right at home.


The story of filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki's life and work, including his significant impact on Japan and the world A thirtieth-century toxic jungle, a bathhouse for tired gods, a red-haired fish girl, and a furry woodland spirit-what do these have in common? They all spring from the mind of Hayao Miyazaki, one of the greatest living animators, known worldwide for films such as My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, and The Wind Rises. Japanese culture and animation scholar Susan Napier explores the life and art of this extraordinary Japanese filmmaker to provide a definitive account of his oeuvre. Napier insightfully illuminates the multiple themes crisscrossing his work, from empowered women to environmental nightmares to utopian dreams, creating an unforgettable portrait of a man whose art challenged Hollywood dominance and ushered in a new chapter of global popular culture.


This paper explores a cultural factor that contributes to the usage pattern of e-business in different forms of society.A Hofstede's theory is adopted as part of a guideline in determining the underlying factor towards this technology
usage partly in Malaysia.A comparison is made between private and public organizations in US, Australia and Malaysia to identify the clues whether culture has an impact towards the e-business adoption trend.The findings in this study were compared with those from previous studies using similar models and it was found that cultural issues are important in determining the acceptance usage of the technology among the Malaysia travel industry.


This book establishes the foundations of non-equilibrium quantum statistical mechanics in order to support students and academics in developing and building their understanding. The formal theory and key equations are derived from first principles by mathematical analysis, with concrete physical interpretations and worked examples throughout.


The recent accounting scandals have highlighted the critical role that investor confidence in the accuracy and lack of distortion of accounting data plays in the health of capital markets and, indeed, the whole economy. The legal and moral culpability of top-level company managers (as well as auditors) is an issue that will be addressed by the nation in the coming months. Whether or not legal sanctions are imposed on managers, it would be well to examine some of the reasons managers may feel compelled to distort accounting numbers as well as engage in other actions that damage the interests of company stakeholders, such as stockholders, employees, and the community. Tom Morris, in his poignant book If Aristotle Ran General Motors, makes a compelling case that creating an ethical climate in the workplace is about more than promulgating clear guidelines for ethical behavior and developing codes of conduct. He argues persuasively that creating an ethical climate must transcend a compliance approach to ethics and focus instead on fostering socially harmonious relationships. (1) While Morris does an outstanding job of defining and illustrating these socially harmonious relationships that not only lead to more productive effort but ultimately to a more ethical climate, we believe most organizations may fail to see how current management policies and practices, in fact, may defeat or inhibit development of the kind of climate Morris is advocating. Consequently, we explore here those policies and managerial practices that militate against a culture of socially harmonious relationships in the workplace. MANAGING BY OBJECTIVES AND RESULTS Managing by Objectives and Results (MBO and MBR) is the prevailing style of management in most organizations. This approach entails giving employees goals/ targets, measuring their performance against these targets, and then ranking them against their peers or some other performance appraisal system. Usually, employees are rewarded or sanctioned based upon the outcome of this process. It has been enlightening to note that while most of our graduate students report that the above process is fairly typical in their organizations, most also indicate that their organizations are attempting to foster a climate of teamwork, cooperation, and employee empowerment, which are all important factors in creating a climate of socially harmonious relationships. It is apparent to us that most organizations have not considered the disconnect between MBO/MBR and attempts to create a culture that fosters teamwork, cooperation, and harmony--all ingredients necessary for creating socially harmonious relationships. THE FATAL FLAW IN MBO/MBR Organizations develop systems of interdependent processes to accomplish some aim or purpose (for our purposes we will be using the terms process and system interchangeably). What is crucial in understanding this process/system view of an organization is to recognize two very important features common to all systems. First, all processes/systems demonstrate significant interdependencies. The individual processes have a significant influence/effect on each other and the total system's output. Consequently, the whole (the system effect) is not equal to the sum of the parts (the contribution of each individual process). Rather, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts due to the interdependent effects. MBO/MBR, with its emphasis upon component unit (i.e., individual, department, profit center, division) goal/target attainment, may hinder this system view of an organization. The second crucial issue in understanding the process/system view of an organization is that all processes have a given capability that can be measured. Just as important, all processes exhibit variation. The variation that can occur may be the result of how the process was designed. This inherent or common cause of variation occurs randomly. Another type of variation, special cause variation, results from forces/events outside the system. …


Obesity is among the leading global health problems in children under five years of age. Obesity, which is caused by genetic factors, inactive lifestyle, negative eating behaviors, endocrine disorders and malnutrition, has become a health problem with the growing risk given the conditions in the pandemic process. As a result of protective restrictions, such as mandatory shut down schools and lockdowns during the pandemic, children's time spent at home has increased, leading to a decrease in physical activity and changes in diet and sleep patterns. All these factors increase the risk of obesity in children. In addition, this situation has highlighted potential health problems for obese children. Childhood obesity is an important problem that needs to be addressed in the pandemic process, and appropriate approaches need to be developed and awareness of both parents and children need to be raised about this issue. During the pandemic process, some technological methods have been used for disease management in individuals with chronic diseases. One of the technological methods, the "Telehealth Solution", is one of the methods recommended for weight management of voluntarily children with obesity. In this article, obesity risks of children during the pandemic period were presented together with some appropriate solutions.


Neural models have become ubiquitous in automatic speech recognition systems. While neural networks are typically used as acoustic models in more complex systems, recent studies have explored end-to-end speech recognition systems based on neural networks, which can be trained to directly predict text from input acoustic features. Although such systems are conceptually elegant and simpler than traditional systems, it is less obvious how to interpret the trained models. In this work, we analyze the speech representations learned by a deep end-to-end model that is based on convolutional and recurrent layers, and trained with a connectionist temporal classification (CTC) loss. We use a pre-trained model to generate frame-level features which are given to a classifier that is trained on frame classification into phones. We evaluate representations from different layers of the deep model and compare their quality for predicting phone labels. Our experiments shed light on important aspects of the end-to-end model such as layer depth, model complexity, and other design choices.


This paper provides a rationale for developing countries to announce future credible commitments to reduce GHG emissions even if these are not to materialize in the short run, and for domestic reasons only. A simple framework is presented in which it is shown that it may be costly for an economy to transition from high to low emissions; and that, if climate policy eventually will be enacted, then it may be better for countries to commit earlier and therefore eliminate the uncertainty for the private sector to invest appropriately in clean technologies. In particular, conditions are shown under which the private investor prefers a pre-announced climate policy, and how this policy affects investment decisions and the deployment of clean technologies.


This article provides a selective review on the recent literature on econometric models of network formation. The survey starts with a brief exposition on basic concepts and tools for the statistical description of networks. I then offer a review of dyadic models, focussing on statistical models on pairs of nodes and describe several developments of interest to the econometrics literature. The article also presents a discussion of non- dyadic models where link formation might be influenced by the presence or absence of additional links, which themselves are subject to similar influences. This is related to the statistical literature on conditionally specified models and the econometrics of game theoretical models. I close with a (non-exhaustive) discussion of potential areas for further development.


Clostridium difficile is a spore-forming, gram positive bacteria responsible for causing Clostridium difficile infection (CDI), the main symptom of which is diarrhoea. It can also cause serious symptoms, for example, pseudomembranous colitis, toxic megacolon and death. CDI spreads through the ingestion of C. difficile spores, which are very resistant to cleaning products and can survive on surfaces for many months. Little is known about the germination of C. difficile spores; taurocholic acid, a bile acid found naturally in the gut is one of the known germinants, but the exact mechanism of germination is unknown. Other bile acids, such as cholic acid have shown germinating ability, but to a lesser extent. The aim of this PhD was to create a polymer surface that forced the germination of the C. difficile spores upon contact, then to kill the resulting more susceptible vegetative cell. A known germinant of C. difficile spores, cholic acid, was derivatised at the carboxyl group in a flexible synthesis to give a range of carboxamide analogues terminating in a quaternised amino function, with or without a polymerisable function. The attachment of polymerisable groups at the hydroxyl functions was also explored. The cholic acid monomers proved to be resistant to polymerisation. Of the monomeric compounds, however, nine exhibited C. difficile spore-germinating activity, two had either sporicidal or germinating and antimicrobial abilities and two other compounds had germinating and sporicidal and/or antimicrobial activity. The results for this series of compounds indicate that germination of C. difficile spores is favoured by the presence of a quaternary ammonium function and a two- to four-carbon chain between the cholamide carbonyl and the quaternary centre. Overall, eleven new compounds exhibited activity against C. difficile spores. The incorporation of these compounds into a polymer surface or disinfectant spray has the potential to reduce the risk of infection of CDI by eliminating C. difficile from surfaces, in both healthcare and community based settings.


A method of measuring the refractive indexes of liquids in the infrared is described. A Perkin-Elmer spectrometer is adapted for this purpose without interfering with its normal operation as a routine instrument. Although use is made of a Fabry-Perot etalon, the method is not interferometric in the accepted sense. The accuracy that has been obtained is 0.002 at a wavelength of 1μ, but in principle the possible accuracy of the method may be equal to that of the best goniometer.


An 8-point Fourier-cosine transform chip designed for a data rate of 100 Mbits/s is described. The top-down design is presented step by step, including algorithm modification for VLSI suitability, architectural choices, testing overhead, internal precision assignments, mask generation, and finally, verification of the layout. A high-level language (C) design tool was developed concurrently with the layout. This tool allows mimicking exactly the different representations of the algorithm: software, mask, and chip. This provides an automatic cross-checking at all design stages. The VLSI environment created by this tool, as well as existing powerful CAD tools, made a fast design-time possible.


In prostate cancer prevention the American College of Physicians has endorsed a clinical practice guideline: it is recommended that physicians share the decision with the patient. There is no information about its adaptation to actual circumstances and particularly in our country. This presentation has the aim of analyzing the evidence and introduces a local perspective. There is no demonstration of survival or life quality improvement in preventing prostate cancer. Therapeutic interventions have a high rate of associated morbidity and mortality. Although desirable, sharing decisions has not yet proved its validity. In our country, due to the fragile equilibrium between risks and benefits, it seems advisable to wait for stronger scientific evidence. It is recommended to the clinician to: abstain from offering early diagnosis in the healthy adult, be reluctant when asked, share decisions when it seems advisable based on patient's characteristics and inform about the probability of prostate cancer in high risk groups.


The Wikipedia is a web-based encyclopedia, written and edited collaboratively by Internet users. Over the past decade, the Wikipedia has experienced a dramatic growth in popularity and is considered by many the primary source of information on the Internet. The Wikipedia has an extremely open editorial policy that allows anybody, to create or modify articles. This has resulted in a broad and detailed coverage of subjects, but it has also caused problems relating to the quality of articles. The Wikipedia Recommender System (WRS) was developed to help human users determine the credibility of an article based on feedback from other Wikipedia users. The WRS calculates a personalised rating for any Wikipedia article based on feedback (recommendations) provided by other Wikipedia users. As part of this process, WRS users are expected to provide their own feedback about the quality of Wikipedia articles that they have read. This makes the WRS a rating-based collaborative filtering system, which implements trust metrics to determine the weight of feedback from different recommenders. In this paper the authors describe the WRS outlining some of the requirements and constraints that shaped the design of the system. The authors also provide a brief overview of the implementation of the WRS prototype. The WRS addresses the general problem of establishing trust in a collaboratively generated resource in a distributed multi-agent system, so the authors believe that the general architecture that underlies the WRS applies to many other applications in such systems.


Data from two mud volcanoes discovered on the eastern Mediterranean Ridge are presented, showing that these features have erupted episodically within historical time. Both volcanoes mark the site of active gas and fluid venting from deep within the sedimentary pile. Large volumes of mud breccia have been extruded onto the volcano slopes. For the first time, clasts up to c. 1 m in size have been recovered from sea-floor mud volcanoes. The submarine clasts show lithologies ranging from shallow water bioclastic sandstones to marls and limestones, dated using microfauna as Oligocene, Miocene and perhaps Cretaceous in age. Deep-towed video footage of one of the volcanoes shows clasts up to several metres across within the crater area. Deep-towed, high resolution side-scan sonar data and core data are presented to compare the two examples. The paper documents the discovery of the two volcanoes: the Dublin mud volcano and the Stoke-on-Trent mud volcano, the clasts that have been recovered from them, the intermittence of the eruptions as interpreted from gravity-core data, and how the volcanoes contrast with other mud volcanoes further to the west.


Loneliness is framed as an enduring problem for carers of all ages, including older carers; however, there is little examination of older men's experiences of caring, loneliness and social isolation. Based on interviews with 25 men (aged 68‐92 years), we discuss findings
 from a study of older male carers' experiences of loneliness in England. Within their accounts, loneliness is framed as a future, rather than present, problem as caring provides a time-limited buffer to loneliness while concurrently increasing social isolation. Further, the findings
 shed light on how male carers seek and benefit from carers' support groups while also maintaining autonomy.


While many areas of machine learning have benefited from the increasing availability of large and varied datasets, the benefit to causal inference has been limited given the strong assumptions needed to ensure identifiability of causal effects; these are often not satisfied in real-world datasets. For example, many large observational datasets (e.g., case-control studies in epidemiology, click-through data in recommender systems) suffer from selection bias on the outcome, which makes the average treatment effect (ATE) unidentifiable. We propose a general algorithm to estimate causal effects from \emph{multiple} data sources, where the ATE may be identifiable only in some datasets but not others. The key idea is to construct control variates using the datasets in which the ATE is not identifiable. We show theoretically that this reduces the variance of the ATE estimate. We apply this framework to inference from observational data under outcome selection bias, assuming access to an auxiliary small dataset from which we can obtain a consistent estimate of the ATE. We construct a control variate by taking the difference of the odds ratio estimates from the two datasets. Across simulations and two case studies with real data, we show that this control variate can significantly reduce the variance of the ATE estimate.


Eighty spent chickens were employed in this study to assay the effect of combination of vitamin D3 and papaya leaf on antioxidant activity of meat in spent layer hens. Diets were a corn-soybean meal based diet for finisher layer with and without vitamin D3 which was supplemented with different levels of 0, 0.5, 1 and 2% for papaya leaf meal. Experiment lasted for 21 days. At day 0, 7, 14 and 21, the birds were scarified and breast muscle was obtained to determine antioxidant activity. Antioxidant activity was measured using 1, 1-Diphenyl-2-Picrylhydrazyl (DPPH). Result obtained from this study demonstrated that antioxidant activity of meat showed remarkable improvement between dietary treatments fed mix of vitamin D3 and papaya leaf and control group. In conclusion, vitamin D3 and papaya leaf when combined indicated an improvement in antioxidant activity of the spent meat.


This paper provides evidence of the long-term relationship between male-to-female spousal violence and the Oportunidades conditional cash transfer program. It uses data from three nationally representative surveys that include detailed information on the prevalence of spousal abuse and threats of violence against women. Constructing comparable groups of beneficiary and nonbeneficiary households within each village to minimize potential selection biases, the present study finds that, in contrast to the short-run estimates, physical and emotional abuse rates over the long term do not differ significantly between existing beneficiary and nonbeneficiary couples. The paper examines possible causes for the difference, most importantly, the role that marital selection and the diffusion of norms rejecting intimate partner violence may play in explaining these effects.


A proposed lightweight pressure vessel would be made of a composite of high-tenacity continuous fibers and a flexible matrix material. The flexibility of this pressure vessel would render it (1) compactly stowable for transport and (2) more able to withstand impacts, relative to lightweight pressure vessels made of rigid composite materials. The vessel would be designed as a structural shell wherein the fibers would be predominantly bias-oriented, the orientations being optimized to make the fibers bear the tensile loads in the structure. Such efficient use of tension-bearing fibers would minimize or eliminate the need for stitching and fill (weft) fibers for strength. The vessel could be fabricated by techniques adapted from filament winding of prior composite-material vessels, perhaps in conjunction with the use of dry film adhesives. In addition to the high-bias main-body substructure described above, the vessel would include a low-bias end substructure to complete coverage and react peak loads. Axial elements would be overlaid to contain damage and to control fiber orientation around side openings. Fiber ring structures would be used as interfaces for connection to ancillary hardware.


Anthropology as Cultural Critique helped redefine cultural anthropology in the 1980s. Now, with Emergent Forms of Life and the Anthropological Voice, pathbreaking scholar Michael M. J. Fischer moves the discussion to a consideration of the groundwork laid in the 1990s for engagements with the fast-changing worlds of technoscience, telemedia saturation, and the reconstruction of societies after massive trauma. Fischer argues that new methodologies and conceptual tools are necessitated by the fact that cultures of every kind are becoming more complex and differentiated at the same time that globalization and modernization are bringing them into exponentially increased interaction. Anthropology, Fischer explains, now operates in a series of third spaces well beyond the nineteenth- and twentieth-century dualisms of us/them, primitive/civilized, East/West, or North/South. He contends that more useful paradigms—such as informatics, multidimensional scaling, autoimmunity, and visual literacy beyond the frame—derive from the contemporary sciences and media technologies.

A vigorous advocate of the anthropological voice and method, Fischer emphasizes the ethical dimension of cultural anthropology. Ethnography, he suggests, is uniquely situated to gather and convey observations fundamental to the creation of new social institutions for an evolving civil society. In Emergent Forms of Life and the Anthropological Voice Fischer considers a dazzling array of subjects—among them Iranian and Polish cinema, cyberspace, autobiographical and fictional narrative, and genomic biotechnologies—and, in the process, demonstrates a cultural anthropology for a highly networked world. He lays the groundwork for a renewed and powerful twenty-first-century anthropology characterized by a continued insistence on empirical fieldwork, engagements with other disciplines, and dialogue with interlocutors around the globe.


Since the very early days of quantum theory there have been numerous attempts to interpret quantum mechanics as a statistical theory. This is equivalent to describing quantum states and ensembles together with their dynamics entirely in terms of phase-space distributions. Finite dimensional systems have historically been an issue. In recent works [Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 180401 (2016) and Phys. Rev. A 96, 022117 (2017)] we presented a framework for representing any quantum state as a complete continuous Wigner function. Here we extend this work to its partner function—the Weyl function. In doing so we complete the phase-space formulation of quantum mechanics—extending work by Wigner, Weyl, Moyal, and others to any quantum system. This work is structured in three parts. First we provide a brief modernized discussion of the general framework of phase-space quantum mechanics. We extend previous work and show how this leads to a framework that can describe any system in phase space—putting it for the first time on a truly equal footing to Schrodinger's and Heisenberg's formulation of quantum mechanics. Importantly, we do this in a way that respects the unifying principles of "parity" and "displacement" in a natural broadening of previously developed phase-space concepts and methods. Secondly we consider how this framework is realized for different quantum systems; in particular we consider the proper construction of Weyl functions for some example finite dimensional systems. Finally we relate the Wigner and Weyl distributions to statistical properties of any quantum system or set of systems.


Over the last decade, Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs have become one of the most widely adopted anti-poverty initiatives in the developing world. Inspired particularly by Mexico's successful program, CCTs are viewed as an effective way to provide basic income support while building children's human capital. These programs have had a remarkable global expansion, from a handful programs in the late 1990s to programs in close to 30 countries today, including a demonstration program in the United States. In contrast to many other safety net programs in developing countries, CCTs have been closely studied and well evaluated, creating both a strong evidence base from which to inform policy decisions and an active global community of practice. This paper first reviews the emergence of CCTs in the context of a key theme in welfare reform, notably using incentives to promote human capital development, going beyond the traditional focus on income support. The paper then examines what has been learned to date from the experience with CCTs in the South and raises a series of questions concerning the relevance and replicability of these lessons in other contexts. The paper concludes with a call for further knowledge sharing in two areas: between the North and South as the experience with welfare reform and CCTs in particular expands, and between behavioral science and welfare policy.


There is a striking difference between the large number of theoretical
papers on firm organization and the lack of quantitative empirical
evidence. If on the one side economists are increasingly concerned
with organization of firms, on the other side organization still remains
an ambiguous concept, hardly analyzed empirically.
In this thesis I develop a new empirical methodology based upon
business history (see Chapter 1) and previous theoretical work which
allows me to describe (some aspects of) the organization of firms in
quantitative terms. This approach is instrumental to analyzing the
hierarchical structure and the allocation of decision-making activities
in a sample composed of 438 Italian metalworking plants. I also
study the dynamics of firm organization in the 1980s and 1990s. The
results of Chapter 2 show that the (static) choice of the organizational
form crucially relies upon the "loss of control phenomenon". They
also illustrate that the dynamics of hierarchical structure follows an
inertial process, characterized by incremental adjustments. Lastly,
both the organization and, more interestingly, its evolution differ from
one category of plant to another depending crucially on plant size.
Moreover, I test (some of) the predictions of economic theory on the
size of the management hierarchy (Chapter 3), the allocation of real
and formal authority (Chapter 4), and structural inertia (Chapter 6)
through the estimates of econometric models (i. e., multinomial logit, ordered logit, and survival). The findings of Chapter 3 show that the
plant size, the characteristics (i. e., vintage and extent of use) of the
production and communication technology in use, the plant's
ownership status (i. e., State versus private ownership, and
differences in the nationality of firms to which plants belong) are key
in explaining the complexity of a plant's management hierarchy.
In addition, in accordance with theoretical work, the findings of
Chapter 4 show that the size of a plant's organization, the
characteristics of the production and communication technologies in
use, the urgency of decisions, and the presence of monetary incentive
schemes aligning plant manager's objectives with those of the firm as
a whole figure prominently in explaining whether authority is
delegated to the plant manager or not. The structural and
organizational characteristics of a plant's parent firm do also play a
role, with the likelihood of decentralization of decision-making
increasing with parent firm's size and decreasing with the adoption
by the parent firm of a M-form type of organization. Lastly, the nature
of the decision turns out to affect the allocation of formal authority,
with decisions concerning the labor force being more frequently
delegated to plant managers than those related to investments in
capital equipment. On the contrary, it does not influence the
allocation of real authority when the formal right to decide remains
with the corporate superior. Finally in Chapter 61 find that both influence activities and
technology adoptions are key in explaining the evolution of business
organizations. Influence activities tend to inhibit organizational
change causing structural inertia, whilst the technology adoptions
increase the likelihood of changing the structure of the management
hierarchy.


Importance Gamification, the application of game design elements such as points and levels in nongame contexts, is often used in digital health interventions, but evidence on its effectiveness is limited. Objective To test the effectiveness of a gamification intervention designed using insights from behavioral economics to enhance social incentives within families to increase physical activity. Design, Setting, and Participants The Behavioral Economics Framingham Incentive Trial (BE FIT) was a randomized clinical trial with a 12-week intervention period and a 12-week follow-up period. The investigation was a community-based study between December 7, 2015, and August 14, 2016. Participants in the modified intent-to-treat analysis were adults enrolled in the Framingham Heart Study, a long-standing cohort of families. Interventions All participants tracked daily step counts using a wearable device or a smartphone, established a baseline, selected a step goal increase, and received daily individual feedback on goal performance by text message or email for 24 weeks. Families in the gamification arm could earn points and progress through levels based on physical activity goal achievement during the 12-week intervention. The game design was meant to enhance collaboration, accountability, and peer support. Main Outcomes and Measures The primary outcome was the proportion of participant-days that step goals were achieved during the intervention period. Secondary outcomes included the proportion of participant-days that step goals were achieved during the follow-up period and the change in the mean daily steps during the intervention and follow-up periods. Results Among 200 adults comprising 94 families, the mean age was 55.4 years, and 56.0% (n = 112) were female. During the intervention period, participants in the gamification arm achieved step goals on a significantly greater proportion of participant-days (0.53 vs 0.32; adjusted difference, 0.27; 95% CI, 0.20-0.33; P < .001) and had a significantly greater increase in the mean daily steps compared with baseline (1661 vs 636; adjusted difference, 953; 95% CI, 505-1401; P < .001) than the control arm. During the follow-up period, physical activity in the gamification arm declined but remained significantly greater than that in the control arm for the proportion of participant-days achieving step goals (0.44 vs 0.33; adjusted difference, 0.12; 95% CI, 0.05-0.19; P < .001) and the mean daily steps compared with baseline (1385 vs 798; adjusted difference, 494; 95% CI, 170-818; P < .01). Conclusions and Relevance Gamification designed to leverage insights from behavioral economics to enhance social incentives significantly increased physical activity among families in the community. Trial Registration clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT02531763


Minimalism of design is a concept often found in Human-computer interaction (HCI). It is a concept that emphasizes the presentation of as little information as possible to reduce the perceptual strain and visual search of the subject. However, in a manufacturing context, such as in manual assembly, state of the art information presentation is rarely minimalistic. Rather, organizations tend to push out as much information as possible without necessarily concerning themselves with how this information is presented to, or perceived by, the worker. This leads to a situation that is far from ideal from an HCI perspective, likely to reduce human performance and wellbeing, in turn negatively affecting overall production system performance. Obviously, there are several potential ways of addressing this issue. Perhaps the most evident way is to simply reduce the amount of information that is presented and only present the essentials. This paper will investigate and discuss how information presentation can be minimized without reducing the information content through information syntax and layout.


Descriptions in this case study of child-centered play therapy (CCPT) for a boy referred for highly disruptive behavior include observations of his process through stages of CCPT, teacher and parent ratings on the Child Behavior Checklist (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2001), and explanations of how CCPT worked for him. Children with highly disruptive behavior present problems for their peers and are often a heavy burden to the schools, teachers, counselors, and other adults who care for them. Without successful intervention, such children certainly face lives of high risk, emotional pain, and ever-increasing difficulty; from a humanistic perspective, such an outcome would represent the loss of personal, social, and academic potential. Aggressive disruptive behavior of children is the most common presenting problem area for psychotherapists, including play therapists (Kazdin, Siegal, & Bass, 1990). Impairments in behavioral control were found to be among the top reasons for referral to school and clinical psychologists (DuPaul & Stoner, 2003), as well as the most commonly stated reason for referral from elementary school teachers for psychoeducational assessment of children (Abidin & Robinson, 2002). In addition to prompting referrals, Cornett-Ruiz and Hendricks (1993) found that the frequent disruptive behaviors commonly associated with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) negatively influenced the perceptions of both peers and teachers. Furthermore, Greene, Beszterczey, Katzenstein, Park, and Goring (2002) reported that students with behaviors such as inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity were found to cause higher levels of stress in teachers than did students without these difficulties. Aggressive behaviors have been found to be stable across time without effective intervention (e.g., Cummings, Ianotti, & Zahn-Waxler, 1989; Olweus, 1979), and longitudinal studies have indicated that young children with high levels of externalizing behaviors are at high risk for future social and emotional problems (Olson, Bates, Sandy, & Lantheir, 2000; Patterson, DeBaryshe, & Ramsey, 1989). Patterson et al. (1989) described a pattern in which childhood conduct disordered behaviors led to academic failure and peer rejection, which in turn led to increased risk for depressed mood and involvement in deviant peer groups, thereby further increasing the probability of delinquent behavior. Early aggressive behavior problems are highly predictive of later antisocial behaviors that increase in severity and become emotionally and materially costly to society in numerous ways (see Caspi, Elder, & Bem, 1987; Coie & Dodge, 1998; Patterson, Reid, & Dishion, 1992). Play therapy, especially child-centered play therapy (CCPT), has demonstrated effectiveness across a wide range of children's mental health and behavioral problems, from developing self-efficacy (Fall, 1999) to recovering from trauma and major clinical concerns (e.g., see Demanchick, Cochran, & Cochran, 2003; Guerney, 1983, 2001; Landreth, 2002; Ray, Bratton, Rhine, & Jones, 2001). We conceptualized CCPT as a particularly effective approach for children with highly disruptive behavior. Cochran and Cochran (1999) found that conduct disorder behaviors were based in core mistaken beliefs that stem from the expectation of failure in relationships. Therapeutic relationships, as defined by Cochran and Cochran (2006), include deep empathy and unconditional positive regard to facilitate clients' "rethinking" mistaken beliefs and patterns in relating to others. Likewise, CCPT emphasizes deep empathy and unconditional positive regard to facilitate a child's self-expression within necessary limits, and opportunities for the child to "think through" inter- and intrapersonal conflicts through the use of play as a therapeutic medium (Axline, 1969; Guerney, 1983, 2001; Landreth, 2002). Beyond the general effectiveness evidenced by play therapy, there are a number of studies indicating the effectiveness of CCPT for children who are similar to the child described in the case study presented here. …


Voronoi diagrams appear in many areas in science and technology and have diverse applications. Roughly speaking, they are a certain decomposition of a given space into cells, induced by a distance function and by a tuple of subsets called the generators or the sites. Voronoi diagrams have been the subject of extensive research during the last 35 years, and many algorithms for computing them have been published. However, these algorithms are for specific cases. They impose restrictions on either the space (often $R^2$ or $R^3$), the generators (distinct points, special shapes), the distance function (Euclidean or variations thereof) and more. Moreover, their implementation is not always simple and their success is not always guaranteed. We present an efficient and simple algorithm for computing Voronoi diagrams in general normed spaces, possibly infinite dimensional. We allow infinitely many generators of a general form. The algorithm computes each of the Voronoi cells independently of the others, and to any required precision. It can be generalized to other settings, such as manifolds, graphs and convex distance functions.


In this second edition of a landmark book, author Robin Kundis Craig explores the structural implications for water quality regulation when the primary federal statute for regulating water quality--the Clean Water Act--operates in a context complicated by a variety of constitutional requirements and dictates. After examining the Supremacy Clause, constitutional interstate common law, federal sovereign immunity, the Commerce Clause, the Fifth Amendment's "taking" clause, the Eleventh Amendment, and the separation of powers principles, Craig concludes that constitutional law has had a more significant effect on the Act's intent to involve citizens in public interest enforcement than on the Act's basic structure of "cooperative federalism." This second edition thoroughly updates the first edition, particularly in areas where the Supreme Court has issued significant new decisions. For example, it includes discussions of the Court's 2006 decision in Rapanos v. United States plus the important recent developments in Commerce Clause jurisprudence. Other noteworthy additions include Clean Water Act takings jurisprudence, new discussions of "increased risk" as a basis for citizen suit standing, and the issue of state citizen suit standing after Massachusetts v. EPA. As Craig reveals, more kinds of constitutional issues have been litigated more often around the Clean Water Act than around any other federal environmental law. Craig argues that environmental constitutional jurisprudence may have progressed to the point where the structure of the Constitution impedes necessary solutions to pressing environmental issues. She concludes by proposing a structural amendment to the Constitution that would restore Congress's vision of citizen participation in environmental law.


Previous neuroimaging studies on empathy have not clearly identified neural systems that support the three components of empathy: affective congruence, perspective-taking, and prosocial motivation. These limitations stem from a focus on a single emotion per study, minimal variation in amount of social context provided, and lack of prosocial motivation assessment. In the current investigation, 32 participants completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging session assessing empathic responses to individuals experiencing painful, anxious, and happy events that varied in valence and amount of social context provided. They also completed a 14-day experience sampling survey that assessed real-world helping behaviors. The results demonstrate that empathy for positive and negative emotions selectively activates regions associated with positive and negative affect, respectively. In addition, the mirror system was more active during empathy for context-independent events (pain), whereas the mentalizing system was more active during empathy for context-dependent events (anxiety, happiness). Finally, the septal area, previously linked to prosocial motivation, was the only region that was commonly activated across empathy for pain, anxiety, and happiness. Septal activity during each of these empathic experiences was predictive of daily helping. These findings suggest that empathy has multiple input pathways, produces affect-congruent activations, and results in septally mediated prosocial motivation.


Change is the subject matter for this thesis which reports on a research programme that has investigated the issue of effective and sustainable organisational change. Organisational change possesses an almost obsessive interest for many organisational and behavioural scholars. Nevertheless, it has been observed that a majority of organisational change initiatives fail, or fail to realise the promise intended by the managers who institute such programmes. This research programme, and the associated thesis, has recognised that organisational change is both enigmatic and paradoxical as it is a 'constant' feature of organisational life. The research has been directed towards understanding the paradoxical and enigmatic nature of organisational change by developing a Systemic Theory of Organisational Change (STOC) that is, itself, grounded in Critical Systems Thinking (CST). This STOC will provide a sound theoretical underpinning as a necessary feature of organisational learning that, in turn, will create the sufficient conditions for effective and sustainable organisational change. The research work has created an ontological and epistemological framework through which to understand the complex nature of organisational change. Additionally, the programme has attempted to explicitly incorporate the dynamic of time associated with change initiatives. Traditional approaches to managing organisational change have treated change in single event mode. This research has deliberately shown that change is a continuous process and must be dealt with as such if the output of a change programme is to be effective and sustainable. The thesis has explored the phenomena of change in some depth. It has been shown that change is complex in terms of the'ordee of change. Indeed, it has been argued, and demonstrated during the research, that, as a phenomena it comprises first, second, and third order change. First order change is associated with internal system change; second order change is associated with radical total system change; and third order change is destructive in nature. Having developed a systemic understanding of change, the thesis shows how this can be understood in terms of forms and paths of change using critical pluralist approaches. This led to the development of a Critical Pluralist Intervention Methodology (CPIM), grounded in the STOC, as meta-methodology designed to bring about first or second order change in organisational situations. Both the STOC and the CPIM were developed and tested in action research mode in five interventions in complex organisational change situations over a period of several years. This thesis claims to make contribution to the subject fields of organisational analysis and systems thinking.


e18096 Background: Real world evidence is a valuable resource to help guide clinical care beyond evidence generated from clinical trials, for example safety and effectiveness of novel treatments in special populations. Administrative databases often lack sufficient clinical detail to address gaps in the improvement of patient management and quality of care. Detailed clinical data collection and curation are resource intensive, limiting the ability to generate and maintain large informative cancer databases. Darwen, novel technology developed by Pentavere, enables the automation of data abstraction from unstructured hospital electronic medical records and may eliminate the need for manual chart review. Methods: Health records were identified through an institutional cancer registry from patients with stage IIIB/IV lung cancer (NSCLC or SCLC) diagnosed and treated at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre between 01/01/2015 and 31/12/2017. Cases underwent automated data extraction including demographics, comorbidities, treatment, concurrent medications and outcomes until 30/06/2018. Agreement with data fields extracted using manual data collection in an external validation set of patients is planned. Results: Of 1210 patients identified, 538 were eligible for analysis. From automated data abstraction, 9.9% were reported to have SCLC, 67.5% adenocarcinoma, 11.2% squamous carcinoma, 28% EGFR mutations, 5.8% ALK fusions and 9.3% tumour PDL1 > = 50%. Of the 304 (56.5%) that received systemic therapy, initial treatment was chemotherapy for 55.6%, targeted therapy in 34.2% and immunotherapy in 10.2%. Additional outcome data and agreement with manually curated data fields will be presented. Conclusions: Automated software to extract clinical data is a powerful new tool to generate and maintain databases that yield high quality real world clinical evidence. This is a critical next step to improve clinical decision making, inform evidence-based practice and improve quality of cancer care.


Surveying the field of the economics of the household, the second edition of this text reviews the theory of the consumer at the intermediate undergraduate level. It then applies and extends it to consumer demand and expenditures, consumption and saving, time allocation among market work, home work, and leisure, human capital emphasizing investment in education, children and health, fertility, marriage, and divorce. Influenced by Gary Becker and his associates, the models developed are used to help explain modern U.S. trends in family behavior. Topics are discussed with the aid of geometry and a little algebra. For those with calculus, mathematical endnotes provide the models on which the text discussions are based and interesting applications beyond the scope of the text.


Recovering 3D shape from shading is an ill-posed problem that the visual system can solve only by making use of additional information such as the position of the light source. Previous research has shown that people tend to assume light is above and slightly to the left of the object [Sun and Perona 1998]. We present a study to investigate whether the visual system also assumes the angle between the light direction and the viewing direction. We conducted a shape perception experiment in which subjects estimated surface orientation on smooth, virtual 3D shapes displayed monocularly using local Lambertian shading without cast shadows. We varied the angle between the viewing direction and the light direction within a range +/- 66 deg (above/below), and subjects indicated local surface orientation by rotating a gauge figure to appear normal to the surface [Koenderink et al. 1992]. Observer settings were more accurate and precise when the light was positioned above rather than below the viewpoint. Additionally, errors were minimized when the angle between the light direction and the viewing direction was 20--30 deg. Measurements of surface slant and tilt error support this result. These findings confirm the light-from-above prior and provide evidence that the angle between the viewing direction and the light direction is assumed to be 20--30 deg above the viewpoint.


As in an earlier paper we start from the hypothesis that physics on the Planck scale should be described by means of concepts taken from ``discrete mathematics''. This goal is realized by developing a scheme being based on the dynamical evolution of a particular class of ``cellular networks'' being capable of performing an ``unfolding phase transition'' from a (presumed) chaotic initial phase towards a new phase which acts as an ``attractor'' in total phase space and which carries a fine or super structure which is identified as the discrete substratum underlying ordinary continuous space-time (or rather, the physical vacuum). Among other things we analyze the internal structure of certain particular subclusters of nodes/bonds (maximal connected subsimplices, $mss$) which are the fundamental building blocks of this new phase and which are conjectured to correspond to the ``physical points'' of ordinary space-time. Their mutual entanglement generates a certain near- and far-order, viz. a causal structure within the network which is again set into relation with the topological/metrical and causal/geometrical structure of continuous space-time. The mathematical techniques to be employed consist mainly of a blend of a fair amount of ``stochastic mathematics'' with several relatively advanced topics of discrete mathematics like the ``theory of random graphs'' or ``combinatorial graph theory''. Our working philosophy is it to create a scenario in which it becomes possible to identify both gravity and quantum theory as the two dominant but derived(!) aspects of an underlying discrete and more primordial theory (dynamical cellular network) on a much coarser level of resolution, viz. continuous space-time.


We report measurements of ambient atmospheric mixing ratios for methyl chavicol and determine its biogenic emission rate. Methyl chavicol, a biogenic oxygenated aro- matic compound, is abundant within and above Blodgett For- est, a ponderosa pine forest in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. Methyl chavicol was detected simultaneously by three in-situ instruments - a gas chromatograph with mass spectrometer detector (GC-MS), a proton transfer reac- tion mass spectrometer (PTR-MS), and a thermal desorption aerosol GC-MS (TAG) - and found to be abundant within and above Blodgett Forest. Methyl chavicol atmospheric mixing ratios are strongly correlated with 2-methyl-3-buten- 2-ol (MBO), a light- and temperature-dependent biogenic emission from the ponderosa pine trees at Blodgett Forest. Scaling from this correlation, methyl chavicol emissions ac- count for 4-68% of the carbon mass emitted as MBO in the daytime, depending on the season. From this relation- ship, we estimate a daytime basal emission rate of 0.72- 10.2µgCg 1 h 1 , depending on needle age and seasonality. We also present the first observations of its oxidation prod- ucts (4-methoxybenzaldehyde and 4-methyoxy benzene ac- etaldehyde) in the ambient atmosphere. Methyl chavicol is a major essential oil component of many plant species. This work suggests that methyl chavicol plays a significant role in the atmospheric chemistry of Blodgett Forest, and potentially other sites, and should be included explicitly in both biogenic volatile organic carbon emission and atmospheric chemistry models.


In Part I, the author presents a mathematical framework based on a self-exciting point process aimed at analyzing temporal patterns in the series of interaction events between agents in a social network. We develop a reconstruction model formulated as a constraint optimization problem that allows one to predict the unknown participants in a portion of those events. The results are used to predict the perpetrators of the unsolved crimes in the Los Angeles gang network.
Part II discusses the work undertaken by the author in deformable solid body simulation. We first focus on purely elastic solids and develop a method for extending an arbitrary isotropic hyperelastic energy density function to inverted configurations. This energy based extension is designed to improve robustness of elasticity simulations with extremely large deformations typical in graphics applications and demonstrates significant improvements over similar stress based techniques presented in. Moreover, it yields continuous stress and unambiguous stress derivatives in all inverted configurations. We also introduce a novel concept of a hyper-elastic model's primary contour which can be used to predict its robustness and stability. We demonstrate that our invertible energy-density-based approach outperforms the popular hyperelastic corotated model and show how to use the primary contour methodology to improve the robustness of this model to large deformations.
We further develop a novel snow simulation method utilizing a user-controllable constitutive model defined by an elasto-plastic energy density function integrated with a hybrid Eulerian/Lagrangian Material Point Method (MPM). The method is continuum based and its hybrid nature allows us to use a regular Cartesian grid to automate treatment of self-collision and fracture. It also naturally allows us to derive a grid-based implicit integration scheme that has conditioning independent of the number of Lagrangian particles. We demonstrate the power of our method with a variety of snow phenomena.


[Drought indicators are proliferating, but with little consideration of which are most meaningful for describing drought impacts. A number of recent reviews compare different drought indicators, but none assess which indicators are actually used in the many operational drought monitoring and early warning efforts, why they were selected, or whether they have been 'ground-truthed', i.e., compared with information representing local drought conditions and/or impacts. Also lacking is a comprehensive assessment of the state of monitoring of drought impacts. To help fill this gap, we combine a review of drought indicators and impacts with a survey of 33 providers of operational drought monitoring and early warning systems from global to regional scales. Despite considerable variety in the indicators used operationally, certain patterns emerge. Both the literature review and the survey reveal that impact monitoring does exist but has rarely been systematized. Efforts to test drought indicators have mostly focused on agricultural drought. Our review points to a current trend towards the design and use of composite indicators, but with limited evaluation of the links between indicators and drought impacts. Overall, we find that much progress has been made both in research and practice on drought indicators, but monitoring and early warning systems are not yet strongly linked with the assessment of wider impacts on the environment and society. To understand drought impacts fully requires a better framing of drought as a coupled dynamic between the environment and society.]


Cognitive radio is a growing field in communications which allows a radio to automatically configure its transmission or reception properties in order to reduce interference, provide better quality of service, or allow for more users in a given spectrum. Such processes require several complex features that are currently being utilized in cognitive radio. Two such features, spectrum sensing and identification, have been implemented in numerous ways, however, they generally suffer from high computational complexity. Additionally, Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) are a widely used mathematical modeling tool used in various fields of engineering and sciences. In electrical and computer engineering, it is used in several areas, including speech recognition, handwriting recognition, artificial intelligence, queuing theory, and are used to model fading in communication channels. The research presented in this thesis proposes a new approach to spectrum identification using a parallel implementation of Hidden Markov Models. Algorithms involving HMMs are usually implemented in the traditional serial manner, which have prohibitively long runtimes. In this work, we study their use in parallel implementations and compare our approach to traditional serial implementations. Timing and power measurements are taken and used to show that the parallel implementation can achieve well over 100× speedup in certain situations. To demonstrate the utility of this new parallel algorithm using graphics processing units (GPUs), a new method for signal identification is proposed for both serial and parallel implementations using HMMs. The method achieved high recognition at -10 dB Eb/N0. HMMs can benefit from parallel implementation in certain circumstances, specifically, in models that have many states or when multiple models are used in conjunction.


Objectives The primary objective of this study was to collect baseline data on the number of children living in residential care institutions in Cambodia. The secondary objective was to describe the characteristics of the children (eg, age, sex, duration of stay, education and health). The data were intended to guide recent efforts by the Government of Cambodia to reduce the number of children living in residential care institutions and increase the number of children growing up in supportive family environments. Setting Data were collected in Cambodia across 24 sites at the commune level. Communes—administrative divisions roughly equivalent to counties—were selected by the National Institute of Statistics using a two-stage sampling method. Design Government lists and key informant interviews were used to construct a complete roster of institutions across the 24 communes. All identified institutions were visited to count the number of children and gather data on their basic characteristics. The rate of children in residential care in the selected communes was calculated as a percentage of total population using a Poisson model. This rate was applied to all districts in Cambodia with at least one reported residential care institution. Participants A total of 3588 children were counted across 122 institutions. A child living in a residential care institution was defined as anyone under the age of 18 years who was sleeping in the institution for at least four nights per week during the data collection period. Results There are an estimated 48 775 children living in residential care institutions in Cambodia. The vast majority of children have a living parent and are school-aged. More than half are between 13 and 17 years of age. Conclusions Nearly 1 of every 100 children in Cambodia is living in residential care. This raises substantial concerns for child health, protection and national development.


The global financial crisis has challenged local governments (LGs) as they are specific targets for restoring public finances in many countries. The shock has been more or less intense depending on the national context and policies, and on individual situations and strategies. Our research aims at better understanding how perceived national, local and internal factors of vulnerability have influenced the reaction of LGs to the global financial crisis. We found that (a) municipalities react to national economic trends depending on the municipality austerity policies imposed by the central state, (b) local factors seem not always significant, as they might influence long-term instead of short-term financial policies, and (c) there are similar reactions across countries on revenues and expenditures to grants variation, short-term financial distress and budget rigidity.


The teacher profession has certain conditions when it comes to time use. On the one hand, teaching is normally strictly scheduled during the day and week. Increasingly, at least in the Swedish context, also other duties are scheduled, like formal meetings and planning with colleagues. On the other hand, there is still a high degree of freedom when it comes to teachers' use – in time and space – of the rest of the working hours. What is teachers' everyday life like in a week perspective?In this paper we analyse and visualize the activity rhythm of teachers in compulsory school and non-formal adult education in the folk high school. The analysis is based on two data sets with similarities and differences. 3626 compulsory-school teachers filled in a one-day time diary each, on one of the weekdays Monday–Friday. 94 folk high school teachers filled in seven time diaries each, during a week Monday-Sunday. As data on compulsory-school teachers' weekends are lacking, the focus will be activity patterns during weekdays, Monday–Friday.We use the data for an analysis based on basic time-geographic concepts (activities, projects and constraints) and methods (visualizations). We also discuss weaknesses and strengths of the whole week data collection and the one-day diaries, and the consequences of these different approaches for the analysis. E.g., the work rhythm of the week, in this paper focussing on the weekdays, can be identified on an individual level for the folk high school teachers, and the interweaving of work and private activities can be revealed in a week perspective. For the compulsory-school teachers, the data based on one-day diaries from different individuals mean that the rhythm of the week can be identified at aggregated level and day by day only, while the important day-to-day sequential flow of activities is lost.The results will show similarities and differences between teachers work in compulsory school and folk high school when it comes to the interweaving of teaching, planning, and administrative work-activities, and of work and private life. The influence of the schedule will also be identified in relation to time for breaks and recovery during the day.


Abstract An assemblage of the burrowing ghost shrimp, Protocallianassa faujasi, is described, providing the first evidence of this decapod species from Sweden. The fossils occur in successions of the informal earliest late Campanian Belemnellocamax balsvikensis zone at Åsen and the latest early Campanian B. mammillatus zone at Ivö Klack, both in the Kristianstad Basin of NE Skåne. Numerous, heavily calcified chelipeds were found within a restricted bed at Åsen that was rich in carbonate-cemented nodules. Based on the burrowing lifestyle of modern mud shrimps, we interpret these nodules as infilled burrow chambers. The low abundance of molluscs within the Protocallianassa beds is also consistent with analogous extant communities, indicating that a similar ecologically exclusive relationship ruled within the Late Cretaceous shallow-marine ecosystems.


As the cultural and A linguistic diversity of U.S. schoolchildren grows and as federal legislation mandates greater accountability in school districts, states are feeling a sense of urgency to support successful outcomes for English learners. Over 5 million students are learning English in America's public schools, accounting for more than 10% of the K-12 population. That's an increase of over 50% in the last decade alone. This demographic change has been matched by changes in national policy. Before No Child Left Behind, states set their own accountability policies. Now, they must demonstrate that English learners are making progress in English and achieving challenging academic content standards. When the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) is reauthorized, it will likely continue the trend of establishing and meeting explicit expectations for this growing population. Assuring that English learners succeed has proven to be much more challenging than most educators assumed. The challenge appears to be rooted in what it means to "learn English" in school. Academically successful English learners do not simply learn to manage their everyday lives in English-speaking contexts; rather, they learn to negotiate multiple academic environments, make sense of complex content, articulate their understanding of that content in academic forms, and assess their own growing understanding. That is, they learn to use "academic languages." Education research describes the language demands English learners face in American schools in terms of the linguistic and literacy skills associated with core academic subject areas (Anstrom et al., 2010). These skills involve more than specialized, content-specific vocabulary. Proficient use of English in science class, for example, involves the ability to communicate scientifically. That is, English used in science classrooms draws on vocabulary, grammar, and discourse unique to science. For example, scientists seek to be objective. They often use the passive voice in their writing and speaking. For example, rather than stating what a plant root or leaf does (active voice), a biology teacher is more likely to describe a general process through which water and nutrients are absorbed by root systems and are transported to leaves where carbohydrates and sugars are produced (passive voice). Why? Because the passive voice suggests distance or objectivity. Similarly, each academic discipline uses specialized vocabulary, grammatical structures, and discourse features. All students must learn to speak, write, and think in these specialized ways, but the journey for English learners is longer and more difficult. In this article, we share findings about the journey to English proficiency for English learners and offer insights on how to establish clear expectations for English learners and their schools. We address the relationship between academic language and academic content proficiency, the rate at which English learners acquire academic English, and the time needed for English learners to become English proficient. Specifically, we focus on two questions: * What does it mean to be "English proficient?" * How long does it take English learners to reach this status? There isn't enough good research in this area to give clear answers to those who teach English learners, but some studies provide valuable insights. Also helpful are discoveries from the World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment Consortium (WIDA), a 27-state alliance that shares English language proficiency standards and assessments, and engages in research and professional development. Federal policy The English that teachers speak with students in the classroom is different from the English spoken on the playground, in the mall, or at home. English used in informal settings has less complex grammatical forms, few uses of technical vocabulary, frequent use of slang and idioms, frequent cultural and contextual references, and a much more personal sense. …


We study rare events data, binary dependent variables with dozens to thousands of times fewer ones (events, such as wars, vetoes, cases of political activism, or epidemiological infections) than zeros ("nonevents"). In many literatures, these variables have proven difficult to explain and predict, a problem that seems to have at least two sources. First, popular statistical procedures, such as logistic regression, can shar ply underestimate the probability of rare events. We recommend corrections that outperform existing methods and change the estimates of absolute and relative risks by as much as some estimated effects repor ted in the literature. Second, commonly used data collection strategies are grossly inefficient for rare events data. The fear of collecting data with too few events has led to data collections with huge numbers of obser vations but relatively few, and poorly measured, explanator y variables, such as in international conflict data with more than a quarter-million dyads, only a few of which are at war. As it turns out, more efficient sampling designs exist for making valid inferences, such as sampling all available events (e.g., wars) and a tiny fraction of nonevents (peace). This enables scholars to save as much as 99% of their (nonfixed) data collection costs or to collect much more meaningful explanator y variables. We provide methods that link these two results, enabling both types of corrections to work simultaneously, and software that implements the methods developed.


Prediction suffix trees (PST) provide an effective tool for sequence modelling and prediction. Current prediction techniques for PSTs rely on exact matching between the suffix of the current sequence and the previously observed sequence. We present a provably correct algorithm for learning a PST with approximate suffix matching by relaxing the exact matching condition. We then present a self-bounded enhancement of our algorithm where the depth of suffix tree grows automatically in response to the model performance on a training sequence. Through experiments on synthetic datasets as well as three real-world datasets, we show that the approximate matching PST results in better predictive performance than the other variants of PST.


The full benefit of prefabricated timber systems in the construction of multi-story buildings depends on integration and efficiency in the upstream logistics and supply chain. The purpose of this research is therefore to determine the potential value that the use of Radio-Frequency Identification technology (RFID) can contribute to the prefabricated construction of timber, and to undertake the basic development of a RFID tracking model for this purpose. The methods used in this study not only build on the knowledge gained from previous literature, but also include interviews with industry experts, field trial design and field trials. The research showed that the RFID tracking system's value proposition tends to be strongest where there are large scale and vertically integrated supply chains, logistics complexity between a limited number of discrete but partnered supply chain links and/or internal logistical complexity problems. Therefore, five distinct added value stages of RFID applications have been found in incoming delivery logistics, factory panel production, outgoing delivery logistics, on-site installation and third parties who can inspect the finished construction work. Application of RFID technology in prefabrication factory environments, where fixed readers can be used in predefined processes, was found promising. However, due to the temporary nature of the sites and the associated investment, the capacity for high automation levels is thought to be more limited on site.


This Companion contains 31 essays by leading international scholars to provide an overview of the key debates on eighteenth-century Europe.

 Examines the social, intellectual, economic, cultural, and political changes that took place throughout eighteenth-century Europe

 Focuses on Europe while placing it within its international context

 Considers not just major western European states, but also the often neglected countries of eastern and northern Europe


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We present a method to experimentally measure the complex reflection and transmission coefficients of optical waves at metamaterials under normal incidence. This allows us to determine their pertinent dispersion relation without resorting to numerical simulations. For this purpose we employ a spectrometer and a white light interferometer for amplitude and phase measurements, respectively. To demonstrate the reliability of the method, it is applied to two referential metamaterial geometries, namely, the fishnet and the double-element structure. Involved aspects of the phase measurements as well as the accuracy of the method are discussed.


Knowledge about students' programming errors is a valuable source to get insights into students deficiencies and misconceptions. In this paper, we use data from an introductory C programming course to identify which errors are often made by students. Previous studies often focused only on syntactic and semantic errors as they can be easily identified by compilers. Studies focusing on logic errors were often restricted to a limited set of concepts or performed for a small set of data. We manually inspect 12371 submission by 280 students and have no restrictions regarding the error types we are looking for. We classify our found errors into six categories: syntactic, conceptual, strategic, sloppiness, misinterpretation, and domain knowledge. Our results show that a big portion of errors made by students is simply caused by sloppiness. But putting sloppiness aside, students seem to have most problems with strategic knowledge, i.e., the problem solving ability. We compare our results to previous studies and provide some implications of our results for future teaching practice.


Field measurements of the suspended sediment load of rivers draining five large catchments ranging from the driest to the wettest parts of the country have enabled a reservoir siltation formula to be developed for Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. A few below-average annual runoff events and several above average events were sampled, including a 40-year return period runoff for one catchment. Almost every significant discharge during a three-year period was measured on the rivers concerned. The laboratory analysis was facilitated by use of a turbidity meter for measuring suspended sediment - a method particularly suited to rivers carrying large proportions of clay and silt. Data for bed load transport were obtained by bed material sampling and survey of channel dimensions, carried out during the dry season, followed by the use of Einstein's calculation. The transport of dissolved solids was measured so that total losses from catchments could be compared with soil loss and soil production data.
An order of magnitude amount of 40 t / km2 / year is suggested as an upper bracket sediment transport value for design purposes, provided the catchment concerned is not undergoing larger than average soil erosion. This figure is shown to be in agreement with previously published data, based on reservoir siltation rates, for parts of the Limpopo catchment, but several times smaller than data for small catchments under heavy human occupation in Tanzania. A reservoir siltation formula allowing for the low trap efficiencies of small reservoirs is suggested.


Based on a biorobotic approach developed in our laboratory over the past 25 years, we have
built several terrestrial and aerial vehicles controlled on the basis of Optic Flow (OF) cues [Rev.
Franceschini, 2009, Acta Futura, 3, 15-34]. The LORA III robot is a miniature hovercraft that
perceives the environment by means of neuromimetic OF sensors. To understand how honeybees may
follow a wall [Serres et al., 2008, Naturwissenschaften, 95(10), 1181-1187], center along a corridor
and adjust their speed to the corridor width [Srinivasan et al., 1996, J. Exp. Biol., 199, 237-244], we
developed a vision-based autopilot, which consists of a dual OF regulator controlling the hovercraft's
translations [Serres et al., 2008, Autom. Rob., 25(1-2), 103-122]. Yaw disturbances introduce adverse
rotational OF component, which do not depend on the distance to obstacles. The robot's gaze
therefore requires to be stabilized in yaw to make sure the robot will measure only the translational
OF component, as suggested by several insects [Wagner, 1986, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B, 337, 527-
551] [Boeddeker & Hemmi, 2010, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B, 277(1685), 1209-1217] [Zeil et al.,
2008, Current Biol., 18(8), 320-323]. Our biorobotic approach allowed us to better appreciate the
fundamental role of gaze locking in flying animals.


Colección Nacional de Mamíferos (CNMA) is an important Mexican mammalian collection that meets international standards of curatorial procedures and follows domestic and international regulations. It holds the largest number of museum mammalian specimens from México of any Mexican biological collection, and keeps representatives of nearly 90% of Mexican taxa. Skins, skulls, skeletons, fluid-preserved specimens, and frozen tissues are the main preservation types. Most taxonomic representatives are small mammals such as mice, bats, shrews, and lagomorphs from almost every major political division of México, and ecosystems of temperate and tropical affinity. CNMA holdings contain important voucher specimens such as extinct taxa, endemic species, and unique specimens. Taxonomic and geographic data for most specimens are available online and also in digital file format including images. CNMA specimens actively contribute to environmental education and teaching through routine activities of its faculty, staff, and students. CNMA is successfully contributing to the inventory of mammals from México.


The practical use of the vitamin B12 uptake pathway to orally deliver peptides and proteins is much debated. To understand the full potential of the pathway however, a deeper understanding of the impact B12 conjugation has on peptides and proteins is needed. We previously reported an orally active B12 based insulin conjugate attached at LysB29 with hypoglycemic properties in STZ diabetic rats. We are exploring an alternative attachment for B12 on insulin in an attempt to determine the effect B12 has on the protein biological activity. We describe herein the synthesis, characterization, and purification of a new B12–insulin conjugate, which is attached between the B12 ribose hydroxyl group and insulin PheB1. The hypoglycemic properties resulting from oral administration (gavage) of such a conjugate in STZ diabetic rats was similar to that noted in a conjugate covalently linked at insulin LysB29, demonstrating the availability of both positions on insulin for B12 attachment. A possible rationale for this result is put forward from MD simulations. We also conclude that there is a dose dependent response that can be observed for B12–insulin conjugates, with doses of conjugate greater than 10−9 M necessary to observe even low levels of glucose drop.