Large scale particle image velocimetry (LSPIV) is a nonintrusive methodology for continuous surface flow monitoring in natural environments. Recent experimental studies demonstrate that LSPIV is a promising technique to estimate flow discharge in riverine systems. Traditionally, LSPIV implementations are based on the use of angled cameras to capture extended fields of view; images are then orthorectified and calibrated through the acquisition of ground reference points. As widely documented in the literature, the identification of ground reference points and image orthorectification are major hurdles in LSPIV. Here we develop an experimental apparatus to address both of these issues. The proposed platform includes a laser system for remote frame calibration and a low‐cost camera that is maintained orthogonal with respect to the water surface to minimize image distortions. We study the feasibility of the apparatus on two complex natural riverine environments where the acquisition of ground reference points is prevented and illumination and seeding density conditions are challenging. While our results confirm that velocity estimations can be severely affected by inhomogeneously seeded surface tracers and adverse illumination settings, they demonstrate that LSPIV implementations can benefit from the proposed apparatus. Specifically, the presented system opens novel avenues in the development of stand‐alone platforms for remote surface flow monitoring.


EXPLODING THE MYTHS ABOUT MONEY Our money system is not what we have been led to believe. The creation of money has been "privatized," or taken over by a private money cartel. Except for coins, all of our money is now created as loans advanced by private banking institutions -- including the private Federal Reserve. Banks create the principal but not the interest to service their loans. To find the interest, new loans must continually be taken out, expanding the money supply, inflating prices -- and robbing you of the value of your money. Web of Debt unravels the deception and presents a crystal clear picture of the financial abyss towards which we are heading. Then it explores a workable alternative, one that was tested in colonial America and is grounded in the best of American economic thought, including the writings of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. If you care about financial security, your own or the nation's, you should read this book.


Enhancements to traditional catchment-scale water quality assessments can be realized by leveraging geographical information systems (GIS) for both field data collection and hydrologic and water quality (H/WQ) modeling. In this study, we describe a GIS-based data collection system for geo-referenced environmental sampling utilizing mobile, wireless and Internet technologies. Furthermore, sampled field data is combined with historical measurements within a GIS-based semi-distributed watershed model for simulating water quantity and quality in a large regional catchment. The GIS-based sampling and modeling system is intended to streamline water quality assessments as compared to current practices. We describe an application and field study in the Williams River, New South Wales, Australia designed to assess the impacts of point and non-point source pollution on water quality. Historical data were utilized for calibrating and validating the Hydrologic Simulation Program ‐ Fortran (HSPF) with the BASINS GIS interface over the 1988‐ 2000 period. Results from the study indicate that short-duration, spatially extensive field campaigns provide useful data for enhancing modeling studies based on historical measurements at sparse sites. In addition, the study suggests that the conjunctive use of data collection and modeling is a step towards real-time integration of field data in hydrologic and water quality modeling efforts.


A compelling argument is made for incorporating environmental science into the high school core curriculum to improve students' perceptions of science while preparing them both for the use of science in their lives and for postsecondary education. Introduction With the dramatic growth of environmental science as an elective in high schools over the last decade, educators have the opportunity to realistically consider the possibility of incorporating environmental science into the core high school curriculum. Environmental science has several characteristics that make it a candidate for the core curriculum. It is: important for students and society; representative of contemporary science; an opportunity for students to experience an applied science; a particularly engaging context for learning fundamental science. In this paper, I consider the possibility of a reform with the goal of achieving widespread adoption of environmental science as a required subject for high school by: arguing for the value of environmental science, examining the rationale for the status quo, exploring what a high school core curriculum that includes environmental science might look like, and considering which of the elements that would be required to implement this reform are in place. I conclude that many of the elements to support broad adoption of this reform are in place, but several are not, so additional groundwork would need to be laid before a large-scale reform effort targeted at integrating environmental science into the core high school curriculum could be successful. An Opportunity In recent years, environmental science has gained an increasingly prominent place in the high school curriculum. Data gathered by Horizon Research, Inc. as part of the National Survey in Mathematics and Science Education show that between 1993 and 2000 the percentage of high schools teaching environmental science increased from 24% to 39% (Smith et a/., 2002). In fact, as of 2000, the number of schools offering environmental science exceeded the number offering Earth science (34%). Through informal data gathering, I have begun to put together a picture of how this growth in environmental science teaching has taken place. In conversations with numerous teachers and administrators from around the U.S., I have heard a variety of stories about why and how schools have made the decision to begin offering environmental science. The most common story is that a specific teacher or teachers lobbied in favor of offering environmental science and volunteered to teach it. Teachers cite their own interest in the subject or their belief in the importance of environmental science for their students as the reasons for taking that initiative. These teachers frequently report that they are able to successfully engage students in environmental science classes that have not engaged or been successful in prior high school science courses. A second-but less common-ly told-story is of schools and districts that have introduced environmental science as a top-down initiative under the leadership of an administrator. In these cases, a commitment to the importance of environmental science on the part of the initiator is often the reason, but other reported reasons are: to serve as a ninth grade introductory science in the role that general science has often played in the past; or simply to offer an additional elective to students. On a few occasions, I have heard that unsolicited student demand played an important role in the initial decision to offer environmental science. The fact that the College Board introduced an Advanced Placement (AP®) exam for environmental science in the late 1990's also appears to have played an important role in the decision of schools to offer environmental science. Schools have introduced environmental science as an advanced placement course because they have found that there is a population of students qualified to take AP science that would prefer to take environmental science over a second year of biology, chemistry, or physics. …


Abstract This paper examines events that occur synchronously around the globe at hackerspaces: during Global Synchronous Hackathons, participants use video streams to share experiences, work and interact in real time. This paper analyses synchronous hackathons through video repositories of these events. It aims at discerning what norms are enacted in presented hacking experiences and how those norms are communicated across the video streams. Hacking in these cases should be thought of as the creative activity of using technology to build something that solves a problem or challenge. Hackerspaces are social workshops and communities renting a physical space and usually interacting in digital spaces. In these environments, individuals are involved in hacking as combined social as well as solitary activities which, to some extent, embody certain norms. Individuals also create the "technological drama"; that is they create the discourse around the objects that inform their use and embed them in cultures. These cultures and their discourses possess norms which flow through them and exist around the objects. Members of hackerspaces commonly participate in the aforementioned "Synchronous Hackathons." By comparing videos of these hackathons, I stress the relevance of norms which are not usually listed in reflections on hacker ethics such as those of Steven Levy or Pekka Himmanen: the awareness of the global other or the awareness of what might be termed "the cosmopolitical." These norms seek to care for and attend to the people who exist at a distance. This transformation of local to global "hacker ethics" demonstrates the growth of the recognition, at least internally, that hackerspaces embody more than their local concerns: they are part of global movements with global interests and globalising norms. The video analysis is used to demonstrate the globalising norms of these communities as the norms surrounding cosmopolitics become more prevalent in their discourses.


We give an overview on the applications and foundations of the K language framework, a semantic framework for programming languages and formal analysis tools. K represents a 20-year effort in pursuing the ideal language framework vision, where programming languages must have formal definitions, and tools for a given language, such as parsers, interpreters, compilers, semantic-based debuggers, state-space explorers, model checkers, deductive program verifiers, etc., can be derived from just one reference formal definition of the language, which is executable, and no other semantics for the same language should be needed. The correctness of the languages tools is guaranteed on a case-by-case basis by proof objects, which encode rigorous mathematical proofs as certificates for every individual tasks that the tools do and can be mechanically checked by third-party proof checkers.


Trance-Scripts is an analysis of the social construction of hypnosis, looking at the
way in which versions of hypnosis are constituted in various kinds of texts and talk. The
analysis is reflexive, in that it highlights its own constructed nature, including how it
textually constructs the textually constructed nature of hypnosis. Taking a relativist and
social constructionist perspective, hypnosis is revealed (or constructed) as a discursive
and social practice, in how it is realized, conducted, reported, disputed, theorized,
accounted for, debunked, and so on. The analysis examines a range of written materials
on hypnosis, including historical, clinical, and social psychology textbooks, popular
media, as well as transcriptions of hypnotic inductions.
The thesis uses alternative literary forms (ALFs) as a way of highlighting the
textual construction of its own, and others', claims to knowledge, and of creating,
caricaturing, and analysing through parody, the thesis's topics. These topics include the
connections between poetry, hypnosis, therapy and reflexivity proposed in the thesis, and
also the standard uses of ALFs in reflexive work of this kind. Reflexive analysis is
produced via a self conscious use of a metaphoric spiral, where analysis can take another
turn upon a topic and offer another perspective. Thus, in a discussion on therapy,
reflexivity becomes a therapeutic tool with which to confront and quieten the argument
that reflexive analysis will result in an infinite regress. The presence of poetry in a social
science thesis is intended to challenge conventional sociological and psychological
analysis, in which poetry features (if at all) as some kind of social phenomenon, that folk
called 'poets' produce, rather than being an appropriate and challenging analytic
language, as it is used here. This abstract, given its contents, may be taking its work as a
conventional abstract rather seriously. Time for the next turn.


The paper examines the quality of the BankScope database, by comparing results based on it to those obtained from the population-level data for India disseminated by the Reserve Bank of India. Despite good coverage and minor reporting errors in the individual reported units, strong evidence of selectivity bias in BankScope data for India is found. A major source of the selectivity bias for India is the almost total omission of Regional Rural Banks and Foreign Banks. It is shown that this selectivity bias affects estimates of all summary statistical measures and could lead users of the data to conclude that the Indian banking market is unimodal when, in reality, it is segmented and has a bimodal pattern. Kolmogorov-Smironov tests reveal that neither the distribution of the log of total assets nor that of market shares based on the BankScope data could be treated same as the corresponding population distributions for India. Despite these limitations, the paper shows that a few popularly used market concentration measures could be estimated from BankScope data accurately, provided the coverage ratio with respect to the size variable is known from alternative sources and is adequate. Coverage of about 90% with respect to the size variable is found to be sufficient for approximating population HHI. For k-bank concentration measures, accurate estimates could be obtained if, in addition, the top k banks in the population are also available in the sample. In contrast, for entropy measures, results indicate that adequate coverage with respect to both the size variable and the number of financial entities would be required.


The aim of this research was to explore and identify the underlying dynamics in women entrepreneurship in the Sydney metropolitan region in Australia. While the main focus was on constraints and barriers, women in business face in general, the paper also specifically puts forth self-reported challenges about obtaining resources in the form of skills constraint, funding and network and support services. The goal is to understand the experiences of the Australian women entrepreneurs and recognise the constraints in resource requirements at varied stages of their business and the challenging environment in which they operate. This research found that challenges that the potential and the existing women entrepreneurs face can be divided into two areas: (a) barriers affecting women considering or planning a career in small business and (b) problems experienced by women managing their own business. Both groups identified the significance of access to varied resources for the survival and success of their business and pointed out that it was difficult to get a good mix of all these resources as the resource requirement in each case were heterogeneous at the varied stages of their business. Using the resource-based theory, this study recognizes the significance of heterogeneous resources at different stages in the business owned by women in Australia. The research identifies, firm-level factors and resource requirements for the survival and performance of women owned business in Australia. This study concludes that although human, social and financial resources are vital at each stage of the women owned business, the human capital requirement are stronger at the planning stages to set their business afloat and the social capital requirements are stronger at the managing stage for the survival of their business.


Historians of Louis XIV's reign have debated evolutions in the king's administration. Such studies, despite heterogenous conclusions, better define our understanding of absolutist authority in the ancien régime as manifested through a process of so-called bureaucratic centralization. Scholars debate to what extent the monarchy achieved centralization amid the interests of individuals and corporations suspended in traditional hierarchies and socio-cultural expectations. Recently, scholars have posited that Louis's government accommodated the concerns of its ministers through gratifications and social advancement compelling obedience to the Bourbon dynastic state. This dissertation considers for the first time how a politics of accommodation characterized the Crown's rapport with a selection of diplomats in the years of Louis XIV's personal rule. Specifically, I examine five ambassadors serving Louis XIV in the Republic of Venice. Focusing on French ambassadors in Venice accomplishes three tasks. First, ambassadors' stories highlight how dynasticism perfused the personal ambitions of diplomats as much as it did those of the Crown. The dynastic imperative informed the choices of individuals within the diplomatic corps, and a desire to advance personal fortune and family honor fueled their participation in Louis's foreign ministry. Secondly, diplomats' correspondence from Venice elucidates French politics with Venice, other Italian states, and within the commercial and maritime spheres of the Mediterranean Sea. I consider how centralization facilitated or impeded Louis's hegemonic strategies in Italy and in the sea. Finally, I argue that the Venetians maintained diplomatic relevance for the French until 1702. Traditional narratives claim that Venice "declined" on the international stage by the mid-seventeenth century, but I underscore that Louis XIV viewed Venice as a robust polity critical to the success of dynastic politics throughout most of his reign. A Mediterranean Connection: French Ambassadors, the Republic of Venice, and the Construction of the Louisquatorzien State, 1662-1702 by Sherrod Brandon Marshall B.S., Harding University, 1999 M.A., University of Arkansas, 2006 M.S. Edu., Syracuse University, 2011 M.Phil., Syracuse University, 2011 Dissertation Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History Syracuse University December 2016 Copyright © Sherrod Brandon Marshall, 2016 All Rights Reserved


The HartRAO Lunar Laser Ranger (LLR) system requires a state-of-the-art software tool that enables optimal efficiency and signal path parameter estimation. The existing link budget equation estimates the number of returned photons for given conditions and LLR system parameters. This equation is one of the essential mathematical tools that can be considered when developing an integrated system and model for the LLR. The mathematical tool, still under development at HartRAO, can be used to estimate and visualize the relationship between the returned number of photons (observed and computed) and the varying link budget equation parameters. In this work, the tool is used to indicate "worse and optimal" parameter values which influence the return signal, presented as an estimate of expected number of returned photons for the HartRAO station. This is all done to achieve optimal efficiency in the LLR signal path in order to yield an improvement in the return-energy of the laser so that ranges to the lunar corner cube retroreflectors can be measured accurately. The geographic position of the HartRAO station, new state-of-the-art HartRAO LLR system under development and the expected number of returned photons will enable HartRAO to play a key role in improving the ranging accuracy to a sub-centimetre level. This will enhance the current effort to determine highly accurate Earth-Moon distances for various scientific purposes such as Lunar Ephemeris, determination of Universal Time and rate of change of the gravitational constant, G .


Plant polysaccharides are rich in physiological activities, which are beneficial for developing new drugs, nutraceuticals and functional foods. Cactus is of interest to researchers in agronomy, medicine and food chemistry because of its long history of medicinal use, its simple growing requirements and biological basis for becoming a green vegetable. This review provides the first summary and analysis of the research history of cactus polysaccharides through a bibliometric approach. Bibliometrics was used to investigate the focus of different stages of development of the topic, with contributions from different countries and institutions. In addition, keyword analysis and keyword clustering were used to understand the different research directions of this topic. The analysis showed that (1) the study of cactus plant polysaccharides is a long-established topic but did not attract much attention in its early stages. (2) In 2018, research on cactus polysaccharides has received more attention than ever before. (3) Mexican institutions and scholars have contributed the most important contributions to this topic. (4) This theme has only formed one complex network of cooperation, mainly composed of Mexican institutions and scholars. (5) Early studies on cactus polysaccharides focused on the detection, extraction and purification of polysaccharide content. (6) The biological activities of plant polysaccharides have gradually become the focus of research in recent years. (7) The biological activity of plant polysaccharides has been verified from in vitro experiments and in vivo experiments with positive results.


BACKGROUND
Congenital scoliosis is a common type of vertebral malformation. Genetic susceptibility has been implicated in congenital scoliosis.

METHODS
We evaluated 161 Han Chinese persons with sporadic congenital scoliosis, 166 Han Chinese controls, and 2 pedigrees, family members of which had a 16p11.2 deletion, using comparative genomic hybridization, quantitative polymerase-chain-reaction analysis, and DNA sequencing. We carried out tests of replication using an additional series of 76 Han Chinese persons with congenital scoliosis and a multicenter series of 42 persons with 16p11.2 deletions.

RESULTS
We identified a total of 17 heterozygous TBX6 null mutations in the 161 persons with sporadic congenital scoliosis (11%); we did not observe any null mutations in TBX6 in 166 controls (P<3.8×10(-6)). These null alleles include copy-number variants (12 instances of a 16p11.2 deletion affecting TBX6) and single-nucleotide variants (1 nonsense and 4 frame-shift mutations). However, the discordant intrafamilial phenotypes of 16p11.2 deletion carriers suggest that heterozygous TBX6 null mutation is insufficient to cause congenital scoliosis. We went on to identify a common TBX6 haplotype as the second risk allele in all 17 carriers of TBX6 null mutations (P<1.1×10(-6)). Replication studies involving additional persons with congenital scoliosis who carried a deletion affecting TBX6 confirmed this compound inheritance model. In vitro functional assays suggested that the risk haplotype is a hypomorphic allele. Hemivertebrae are characteristic of TBX6-associated congenital scoliosis.

CONCLUSIONS
Compound inheritance of a rare null mutation and a hypomorphic allele of TBX6 accounted for up to 11% of congenital scoliosis cases in the series that we analyzed. (Funded by the National Basic Research Program of China and others.).


This paper reports the results of 10 experiments conducted on sandy soils of the State of Sao Paulo to study the effect, on the cotton crop, of green manure with velvet beans (Stizoiobium sp.) and mineral nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, these treatments being used single or combined. When the velvet beans were sown, the plots without green manure were planted with cotton, these crops receiving no fertilizer. In the following year both groups of plots were splitted for the application, or not, of the mineral fertilizers. To study the residual effect of green manure, in four of the trials the plots were fertilized and planted with cotton another year. In two of the experiments, located in areas that had been under forest not long before, none of the treatments increased appreciably the yields. Averaging the results of the other trials, conducted in areas repeatedly cropped, the response to phosphorus was fair and that to potassium very poor. The utilized soils were not low in potassium and some of them had received phosphorus in the previous crops. Even in the absence of green manure, the response to mineral nitrogen was not satisfactory, apparently because in most cases it was applied too late. On the cropped soils, the average effeet of green manure corresponded, in the first year after its application, to +355 kg/ha of seedcotton in the absence and to +280 kg/ha in the presence of mineral nitrogen. In the absence of the latter and of potassium, the application of phosphorus enhanced the response to green manure, and the treatment phosphorus + green manure, which was almost as effective as others much more expensive, increased the yield 51%. The residual effect of green manure, in the average of the four trials designed to study it, corresponded to only 14% of its immediate effect.


We present a formalization of refinement calculus for reactive systems. Refinement calculus is based on monotonic predicate transformers (monotonic functions from sets of post-states to sets of pre-states), and it is a powerful formalism for reasoning about imperative programs. We model reactive systems as monotonic property transformers that transform sets of output infinite sequences into sets of input infinite sequences. Within this semantics we can model refinement of reactive systems, (unbounded) angelic and demonic nondeterminism, sequential composition, and other semantic properties. We can model systems that may fail for some inputs, and we can model compatibility of systems. We can specify systems that have liveness properties using linear temporal logic, and we can refine system specifications into systems based on symbolic transitions systems, suitable for implementations.


Financial institutions have quickly adopted robotic process automation (RPA) in recent years, owing to the plethora of manual operational processes in the industry, in order to bene¬ t from signi¬ficant opportunities for cost reduction and ef¬ficiency gains. It is quite unlikely that any executive would say no to a relatively cheap solution that enables the workforce to focus on more value adding activities and adjusts the overall cost structure. Whilst the RPA market growth rate paints a bright future, early RPA adopters have reported challenges with meeting expectations at the outset. Many tall claims have been made of reducing costs, increasing accuracy, improving compliance, and automating work at a fraction of time and cost compared to typical IT projects. However, the high expectations of RPA have created confusion amongst business stakeholders with regards to the capabilities, bene¬fits, and use cases of RPA tools. Understanding RPA suitability and quantifying the associated benefits is challenging, as many organizations view it primarily as a cost reduction tool, limiting the scope and bene¬fits that can be realized. This has further contributed to the unrealistic expectations business stakeholders have outlined for RPA to deliver and resulted in over a third of RPA projects failing to deliver those expected bene¬fits. Thus, when embarking on an RPA journey one needs to ¬ first determine which use cases are suitable for RPA within the context of the associated bene¬fits, as well as the potential drawbacks or pitfalls. In this paper, we explore how RPA has been used across various industries, the challenges faced by early adopters, and the approaches to overcoming these challenges to ensure the real potential of RPA can be unlocked by ¬ financial services organizations.


Emotional intelligence: EI is the ability to understand your own emotions and those of people around you. The concept of emotional intelligence means you must have a self-awareness that enables you to recognize feelings and manage your emotions. It has become popular after the immense success of Daniel Goleman's book in 1995, Emotional Intelligence, 'Why It Can Matter More Than IQ'. Emotions: Emotion refers to a feeling state or felt-tendency. It is similar to waves of the sea, no stop it may come again as like wave one after another, totally unpredictable of its power and strength, some time it may take you along. That come to you with rush, you wipe your tear that threatening to fall on to your cheeks in a little while. Negative emotions would affect our normal life and emotional decisions would lack fairness of judgment and affect others. Judging our own (teachers) state of Emotional Intelligence: Let us examine the following statements: Is it a sign of weakness to show emotions? Emotional health is related to physical health. The most important relationship in life is the relationship with your life partner. When you are sad, some times you feel like a child, it means you are emotionally immature, the world does not tolerate a weakling. Since you cant change the past, it is a waste to go back to childhood events and examine childhood experience. People with high self-esteem focus on their positive qualities and do not see their negative attribute. It is best to reject illogical and unpleasant feelings. Emotional Intelligence (Emotional Health) of Teachers: It is useful to look at Goleman's five major factors of emotional intelligence. He summarizes emotional intelligence into the following components: Emotional self-awareness, managing one's own emotions, using emotions to maximize intellectual processing and decision-making, including self-motivation and developing empathy (the art of social relationships and managing emotions in others). Why EI (Emotional Health) is important for teachers? It influences what we do: A sad designer can't design beautiful portrait. It affects who we meet: An angry nurse can't show his/ her empathy to ailing patient. It determines how we look: Unpleasing facial gesture of teacher demotivates students. It express how we feel: Just seeing our face students can understand how we feel. It decides our course of life: Happiness is voyage (road) it is not destiny, job satisfaction of teachers depends on their attitude. It helps to express emotions appropriately instead ignore them. Escape from one problem is not solution for that problem, instead react naturally and try to find the root cause of that problem. A person start using drugs just to hide his disappointment, this would add more pain to his life, better he has to get conviction to overcome it. The Four Branch Model of Emotional Intelligence: The four branch model of emotional intelligence describes four areas of capacities or skills that collectively describe many of areas of emotional intelligence (Mayer & Salovey, 1997). Emotional Intelligence and Quality Assurance in Higher Education Quality is the catchy word today. Is quality is important for customer or client satisfaction: Is educational services different from other services? Emotional health of staff working in educational institution is key for its quality delivery. Positive Emotions of teacher would leave positive impact on students. What Islam says about Emotions/ Anger Management? It is a handy work of shaithan to make the human being a loser. It eats your good deeds of faithful. Sabaar (patience) and salath (prayer) will be rewarded abundantly. Person who shows his muscle power is not stronger, rather one who control his anger. It is against sunnah (tradition) of prophet (pbuh), who always restraint from anger. Smiling at others face is considered as sadakha (charity), husband smiling at his wife is considered as ibadhah (prayers). Before take any crucial decision pray two rakaths of salath'e isthi-hara, it helps a person to take decisions with peace instead of acting emotionally. How to measure EI: A look at what the "E.Q.-I" measures contributes to an understanding of the components of emotional intelligence. Empirical Data from Action Research conducted among students and teachers: A detailed version is given in the paper.


The dynamics of latent HIV is linked to infection and clearance of resting memory CD4+ T cells. Infection also resides within activated, non-dividing memory cells and can be impacted by antigen-driven and homeostatic proliferation despite suppressive antiretroviral therapy (ART). We investigated whether plasma viral level (pVL) and HIV DNA dynamics could be explained by HIV's impact on memory CD4+ T cell homeostasis. Median total, 2-LTR and integrated HIV DNA levels per μL of peripheral blood, for 8 primary (PHI) and 8 chronic HIV infected (CHI) individuals enrolled on a raltegravir (RAL) based regimen, exhibited greatest changes over the 1st year of ART. Dynamics slowed over the following 2 years so that total HIV DNA levels were equivalent to reported values for individuals after 10 years of ART. The mathematical model reproduced the multiphasic dynamics of pVL, and levels of total, 2-LTR and integrated HIV DNA in both PHI and CHI over 3 years of ART. Under these simulations, residual viremia originated from reactivated latently infected cells where most of these cells arose from clonal expansion within the resting phenotype. Since virion production from clonally expanded cells will not be affected by antiretroviral drugs, simulations of ART intensification had little impact on pVL. HIV DNA decay over the first year of ART followed the loss of activated memory cells (120 day half-life) while the 5.9 year half-life of total HIV DNA after this point mirrored the slower decay of resting memory cells. Simulations had difficulty reproducing the fast early HIV DNA dynamics, including 2-LTR levels peaking at week 12, and the later slow loss of total and 2-LTR HIV DNA, suggesting some ongoing infection. In summary, our modelling indicates that much of the dynamical behavior of HIV can be explained by its impact on memory CD4+ T cell homeostasis.


In this paper, we report the vertical profiles of CO2 and CH4 measured with a cavity ring-down spectrometer (CRDS) on a research aircraft from near-ground level to 8 km above mean sea level. The airborne platform employed in this paper is an Alpha Jet aircraft operated from NASA's Ames Research Center. Flights were undertaken to Railroad Valley, NV, USA, to coincide with overpasses of the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT). Ground-based CO2 and CH4 were simultaneously measured using CRDS, at the time and location of the airborne and satellite measurements. Results of three GOSAT coordinated aircraft profiles and ground-based measurements in June 2011 are presented and discussed in this paper. The accuracy of the CO2 and CH4 measurements has been determined based upon laboratory calibrations (World Meteorological Organisation traceable standard) and pressure/temperature flight simulations in a test chamber. The overall uncertainty for the airborne measurements ranged from 0.31 to 0.39 ppm for CO2 and from 3.5 to 5.6 ppb for CH4. Our column-averaged CO2 and CH4 measurements, which include about 61% of the total atmospheric mass, are extrapolated, using different techniques, to include the remainder of the tropospheric and stratospheric CO2 and CH4. The CO2 data are then analyzed using the Atmospheric CO2 Observations from Space 2.9 and 3.3 algorithms. For methane data, the RemoTeC v2.1 algorithm was used in its full physics setup. Column-averaged CO2 and XCO2, measured by GOSAT and analyzed from our data, ranged from 388.1 to 396.4 ppm, and XCH4 ranged from 1.743 to 1.822 ppm. The agreement of the satellite and aircraft CO2 mixing ratios, as well as ground measurements, falls within the uncertainties of the methods employed to acquire these numbers.


Purpose
Free-riding behaviour may threaten the success of teamwork, when one or more group members receive the benefits of other members' achievements with little effort or cost of their own. The purpose of this paper is to investigate students' collaborative behaviour to address the problem of free riders (FRs) in university settings.

Design/methodology/approach
The research is an 11-week field study of three senior finance classes and incorporates mobile learning employing Quip and Google Docs applications to facilitate group work. A comprehensive set of quantitative and qualitative methods analysing students' perceptions, instructors' reflections, peer reflections and mobile learning methods are used to answer questions pertaining to group work, the work experience, FRs and ways to minimise the last.

Findings
In this paper, the author shows that students at the university level have positive views of group work despite the presence of FRs. Students like to form their own groups; consequently, peer evaluation appears to be unreliable. The study points to free riding as a serious threat to academic productivity and calls for actions and strategies from institutions and instructors to eradicate this behaviour. Mobile applications enable instructors to track FRs and to some extent discourage their behaviour.

Originality/value
There are limited studies that focus on FRs in higher education and, to the researcher's knowledge, no such investigation has been applied in the Middle East and North Africa. Likewise, there is little research available on incorporating mobile learning to assess group work in higher education. This study aims at exploring the existence and associated experiences of free riding, along with methods to curtail the problem. The findings of this study provide a good platform for inquiry into the FR phenomenon in higher education and its impact on student learning, as well as the possible roles of instructors and mobile applications. The findings of this study could be developed further through more research with a view to providing a broader perspective of the situation in Middle Eastern and North African cultures.


Quality-control efforts in the field of applied developmental psychology are
just beginning. In this paper I set these efforts in a larger context to frame their
significance and guide their direction. I argue that the challenges arising in the current
post-national constellation are best understood as educational crises. The task demands of
the global problem space increasingly outstrip available human capabilities. This
situation is leading to a scramble for usable knowledge about education—defined broadly
as any process intentionally undertaken to promote human development. There is a
growing demand for techniques and technologies that catalyze the transformation of
human capabilities; and this demand exceeds available supplies. Education becomes a
growth market as specific types of human capabilities come to be recognized as scarce
but valuable resources. This pressing global demand for innovative educational solutions
and approaches has the potential to systematically distort the production of relevant
usable knowledge. I present a set of general quality-control challenges that face the field
of applied developmental psychology as it strives to meet the demands of a globalized
crisis-ridden educational marketplace. I argue that the field should overcome temptations
to circumvent peer review processes by going directly to consumers. I suggest adopting a
general stance of epistemic humility so that research and collaboration are promoted and
argumentative strategies that insulate approaches from criticism are avoided. Finally, I
argue that more careful attention should be paid to the normative dimensions of
educational enterprises, as they involve the creation of new values and raise ethical
questions about the shape of what life ought to be like.


Relatively few X-ray sources are known that have low-mass galaxies as hosts. This is an important restriction on studies of active galactic nuclei (AGNs), hence black holes, and of X-ray binaries (XRBs) in low-mass galaxies; addressing it requires very large samples of both galaxies and X-ray sources. Here, we have matched the X-ray point sources found in the XXL-N field of the XXL survey (with an X-ray flux limit of ∼6 × 10−15 erg s−1 cm−2 in the [0.5–2] keV band) to galaxies with redshifts from the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) G02 survey field (down to a magnitude limit r = 19.8) in order to search for AGNs and XRBs in GAMA galaxies, particularly those of low optical luminosity or stellar mass (fainter than Mr = −19 or $M_* \lesssim 10^{9.5}\, \mathrm{M}_{\odot }$). Out of a total of 1200 low-mass galaxies in the overlap region, we find a total of 28 potential X-ray source hosts, though this includes possible background contaminants. From a combination of photometry (optical and infrared colours), positional information, and optical spectra, we deduce that most of the ≃20 X-ray sources genuinely in low-mass galaxies are high-mass X-ray binaries in star-forming galaxies. None of the matched sources in a low-mass galaxy has a BPT classification as an AGN, and even ignoring this requirement, none passes both criteria of close match between the X-ray source position and optical galaxy centre (separation ≤3 arcsec) and high [O iii] line luminosity (above 1040.3 erg s−1).


In this article, the design and implementation of a HUmanoid Robotic Leg (HURL) is presented. The motion of the HURL is achieved via pneumatic muscle actuators, a pneumatic form of actuation possessing crucial attributes for the implementation of a biomimetic design that mimics the motion characteristics of a human ankle. The HURL's properties are described in detail, while its 2-DoF motion capabilities (dorsiflexion - plantar flexion, eversion - inversion) are experimentally evaluated via an advanced nonlinear PID-based control algorithm.


The evolution of postmenopausal longevity in human females has been the subject of debate. Specifically, there is disagreement about whether the evolution of the trait should be understood as an adaptive or a neutral process, and if the former, what the selective mechanism is. There are two main adaptive proposals to explain the evolution of postreproductive longevity: the grandmother and the mother hypotheses. The grandmother hypothesis proposes that postreproductive longevity evolved because it is selectively advantageous for females to stop reproducing and to help raise their grandchildren. The mother hypothesis states that postmenopausal longevity evolved because it is advantageous for women to cease reproduction and concentrate their resources and energy in raising the children already produced. In this article, we test the mother and the grandmother hypotheses with a historical data set from which we bootstrapped random samples of women from different families who lived from the 1500s to the 1900s in the central valley of Costa Rica. We also compute the heritability of longevity, which allows us to determine if genes involved in longevity are nearly fixed in this population. Here we show that although longevity positively affects a woman's fertility, it negatively affects her daughter's fertility; for this reason, the heritability of longevity is unexpectedly high. Our data provide strong grounds for questioning the universality of the grandmother hypothesis and for supporting the mother hypothesis as a likely explanation for the evolution of human postreproductive longevity.


Thin imprinted shells over functionalized magnetic nanoparticles is an effective solution to weaken mass transfer resistance, achieve high binding capacity, and attain rapid separation. In this work, a simple, green, and effective approach was developed to imprint bovine serum albumin (BSA) on the surface of amino-modified Fe3O4 nanoparticles (Fe3O4@NH2) using dopamine as monomer through a two-step immobilized template strategy. The results of X-ray diffraction and vibrating sample magnetometry indicated that the as-synthesized nanomaterials exhibited high crystallinity and satisfactory superparamagnetic properties. Transmission electron microscopy and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy of the products showed that polydopamine shells successfully attached onto Fe3O4@NH2. The polydopamine shells with a thickness of about 10 nm enable the template recognition sites to be accessed easily, and exhibit fast kinetics and high adsorption capacity in aqueous solution. Meanwhile, an excellent selectivity towards BSA has been presented when bovine hemoglobin (BHb), transferrin, and immunoglobulin G (IgG) were employed as competitive proteins. Good recovery after a reasonably mild elution and successful capture of the target protein from a real sample of bovine blood suggests its potential value in practical applications. In addition, the resultant polymers were stable and had no obvious deterioration after six adsorption–regeneration cycles. The versatility of the proposed method has also been verified by choosing four other proteins with different isoelectric points as the templates.


This paper exploits a unique dataset on corruption and informal sector employment in 476 Brazilian municipalities to estimate whether corruption impacts GDP or income levels once variation in informal economic activity is taken into account. Overall, I find that higher levels of corruption and a larger informal economy are generally associated with poor economic outcomes. However, only the size of the informal economy has a statistically significant effect. This effect is robust to the inclusion of a variety of controls and fixed effects, as well as an instrumental variable analysis. Further, these effects are large in magnitude. For example, a one standard deviation increase in the share of total employees that are informally employed explains a decrease in GDP per-capita of about 18 percent.


We examine how information dissemination via mobile device applications (apps) affects nonprofessional investors' judgments. In response to the prevalence of mobile device use, the media ungroups content into smaller pieces to accommodate users, and apps use push notifications to highlight this content. These changes increase users' ability to access investment information in real time, leaving some investors feeling as if they are missing out if they are not continuously connected. We validate a scale to capture investors' fear of missing out on investment information (I-FoMO) and document that I-FoMO is distinct from traditional FoMO that occurs in social settings. Then, using an experiment, we find that receiving ungrouped content via a mobile device has a greater effect on investment allocations in the presence, rather than absence, of push notifications. Further, we find that these results hold for higher, but not for lower, I-FoMO investors.


When ice sheets decay and retreat across continental shelves during regional deglaciation, the glacial landforms preserved on the seafloor provide evidence of the nature and rate of change. The presence of streamlined sedimentary landforms implies that fast-flowing ice streams drained a full-glacial ice sheet that extended across the continental shelf (e.g. Ottesen et al. 2005). By contrast, observations of sedimentary depocentres such as grounding-zone wedges (GZWs; Dowdeswell & Fugelli 2012; Batchelor & Dowdeswell 2015) in cross-shelf troughs are a clear indicator that halts in ice-sheet retreat, perhaps lasting centuries during which ice remained active delivering sediment to the grounding zone, took place between episodic phases of more rapid terminus retreat.

The continental shelf west of Svalbard contains a number of sedimentary depocentres or wedges that are orientated across troughs, transverse to the direction of former ice flow (Fig. 1) (e.g. Ottesen et al. 2007; Forwick & Vorren 2010). Multibeam images of three sedimentary wedges are shown in Figure 1a–c. The wedges extend c. 5–20 km across the two fjords. Each …


Running a Small Beef Herd provides an introduction to beef production for those about to enter the industry and is an ongoing reference for anyone managing a small herd of beef cattle on their property. Fundamental considerations such as the economics of beef production, the selection of a suitable beef enterprise to match a particular property and level of experience are covered. It considers various systems suitable for a small beef operation: steer fattening, cow and calf systems, foster calves and multiple suckling, and lot feeding.

Running a Small Beef Herd offers practical advice on buying cattle, marketing methods for particular types of cattle and specifications for markets. Cattle handling, necessary husbandry practices such as castration and vaccination, herd health, reproductive management, nutrition and carrying capacity are also explored.

This updated edition expands on the systems of beef production, breeds, breed management, supplementary feeding, drought management, ear tagging requirements and soil health and fertility.


Excerpt] It's said that money is the mother's milk of politics. But cash isn't all there is to it. By 1992, my local had achieved the lofty status as the No. 2 local union in raising dollars for the Active Ballot Club (ABC), the United Food and Commercial Workers' equivalent of the AFL-CIO's Committee on Political Education (COPE). Most of the money we raised for our candidates was spent on television ads and other slick media. Because we had never conducted a grassroots voter registration education get-out-the-vote campaign before, I question whether dollars spent on media actually motivated our members to go to the polls.


The paper examines current experiences with the use of participatory methodologies in low-income urban communities. It outlines the nature and development of participatory approaches and describes experiences, prospects and problems related to their use in an urban context. Three case examples from the UK, Sri Lanka, and India and South Africa demonstrate how innovative approaches are being used by different agencies to strengthen and support the activities of community based organizations. Finally, the paper concludes with a number of broad questions about the future application of participatory approaches in low-income urban communities.


The study analyzes the consumer price behavior by employing the micro-level price data for Pakistan. Substantial heterogeneity in the price setting behavior is observed across various products. The study finds that on an average, 15.8 per cent of prices change every week, with mean (median) duration of 5.8 (4) weeks of price spell. For most commodities, price increase is found more often than the price decrease. On an average, prices are increased by 8.1 per cent and reduced by 7.2 per cent. It reveals a broad spectrum of synchronization across cities ranging from partial staggered to perfect synchronized pricing behavior. The sticky nature of regulated commodities in case of Pakistan is confirmed in the study. Highly significant estimates in the regression analysis proves the existence of elements of both, the state dependent as well as the time dependent factors in determining frequency of the price change in Pakistan.


Study Design. The use of the da Vinci Surgical System to perform an anterior lumbar interbody fusion in a swine model to identify the technical properties, processes, merits, demerits, and limitations of a video-assisted robotic surgical system. Objective. This study was designed to demonstrate the feasibility of using a robotic surgical system to perform spinal surgery. Summary of Background Data. Video-assisted laparoscopic anterior fusion was first reported in 1995 and afterward was spotlighted for several years. However, this technique has not become popular because of technical difficulties and complications associated with video-assisted procedures on the spine. As such, there is a demand for investigations to improve this technology. The da Vinci Surgical System provides 3-dimensional visualization as well as uniquely dexterous instruments that are remarkably similar to human hands. Video-assisted surgery with the da Vinci Surgical System robot has already provided great value to the fields of urology, cardiology, gynecology, and general surgery over the last decade. Preclinical studies for application of this system in spinal surgery have recently been conducted. Methods. A pig underwent anterior lumbar interbody fusion using da Vinci Surgical System assistance, with Tyche expandable cages used for preparation of endplates and cage placement. The setup time, operation time, amount of bleeding, and the number of complications associated with robotic manipulation were recorded. Before euthanasia, the animal underwent radiologic examination to confirm proper placement of cages. Results. The total duration of the procedure took 6 hours, with some complications related to frozen armsand robotic arm collision. Even so, there was neither any significant nerve or vessel injury nor peritoneal organ damage. Furthermore, radiologic assessment confirmed proper position of the cage in the center of the disc space. Conclusion. Use of the da Vinci Surgical System to perform an anterior spinal procedure was shown to be safe and effective in a swine animal model. The utilization of this advanced technology shows promise to reduce the incidence of complications compared with other approaches. It requires further testing in animal models and cadavers, along with serial comparisons to current procedures.


A study of the complex permittivity in bismuth titanate was conducted to reveal the nature of an anomaly in the real part of the permittivity, which occurs below the Curie temperature. This anomaly is frequency dependent and is caused by a combination of two relaxation phenomena that appear in the imaginary part of the permittivity. One of the relaxations showed classic characteristics of an ion-jump process. Niobium doping suppressed this relaxation and eliminated the nonferroelectric anomaly in permittivity. Niobium is proposed to affect the ion-jump relaxation through a decrease in the concentration and possibly the mobility of oxygen vacancies.


Cancers comprise of a complex class of diseases triggered by structural and expression abnormalities of both coding and non-coding genes. The functions,purposes and mutations in many of these molecular targets are yet to be discovered. Apparently the problem has an added level of complexity with the arising issues of resistance to anti-neoplastic drugs and other targeted therapy. An increasing number of cases exhibit both; lack of efficacy to cancer drugs from the start of therapy (primary resistance) as well as acquired resistance during the course of treatment (secondary resistance). Research teams at Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), Qatar and the Institute for Cancer Research and Treatment (IRCC), Italy, are joining forces to tackle this big issue of resistance to antineoplastic drugs, with special focus on targeted treatment and their possible cooperation with chemotherapeutic drugs. The study proposes a large-scale integrated functional genomics approach to identifying novel diagnostic markers and molecular therapeutic targets in Colon, Breast & Non-Small Cell Lung Cancers. It involves expression libraries (cDNA, shRNA, miRNA) based screenings to identify molecular transcripts that drive neoplastic transformation or modulate cancer cells response to targeted treatments. The study is thus set to unveil valuable sets of bio-markers and potential therapeutic targets to enable early cancer detection and foster personalized treatment. Apparently it holds a promising future potential to open new lines into the establishment of a centralized, standard platform for functional genomics screenings also stretching to other (cardiovascular, immunological, neurological and metabolic) diseases apart from cancer within the State of Qatar.


Each year, the United States ("U.S.") spends billions to house the country's massive prison population. The need to board over 2.3 million incarcerated human beings has U.S. correctional departments looking for ways to increase revenues and offset costs. According to these correctional agencies, one major expense is prison visitation. In order to reduce spending and alleviate safety concerns, U.S. federal, state, and private correctional facilities have turned to video visitation as an alternative to in-person visits.The use of prison video visitation systems started in 1995. Since then, many private telecommunications companies have professed to have the solution to correctional visitation problems. These companies promote video visitation as a cheap, safe, and easy alternative to in-person visits, as well as a profitable means of generating revenues. Government and private correctional institutions, buying into these endorsements, have reduced or completely eliminated face-to-face visits and installed video visitation systems within their walls. Under this structure, inmates use video stations in their cellblock to visit family and friends at corresponding video kiosks within the institution; or inmates visit loved-ones who are at home or elsewhere outside prison walls via computer Internet video visitation.In order to sell this method of visitation to the public, U.S. correctional agencies contend that video visitation helps to keep families together by allowing inmates greater contact opportunities with loved ones. In some regards, it may be argued that video visitation does assist in the preservation of family units. Inmates are often forced to serve time in prisons miles away from their homes, so outside visits are far and few between. Yet, through the use of in-home video visitation configurations, inmates are able to connect with relatives who reside hours away.At first glance, this visitation scheme may seem beneficial, but this Article argues that prison video visitation is a double edge sword. First, prison video visitation may help preserve family units while people are incarcerated, but the elimination of face-to-face visits robs inmates of much needed human contact with their children, spouses, and other family members. Second, almost all in-home prison video visitation systems exploit the relatives and friends of inmates because they charge excessive fees to visit. Third, the economic success of prison video visitation systems is contingent on the number of incarcerated humans. So, like other profiteering schemes of the Prison Industrial Complex ("PIC"), prison video visitation incentivizes incarceration: A decrease in the prison population has a corollary effect on million dollar revenues and corporate profits, hence compelling the need to detain more U.S. inhabitants.Consequently, this Article argues that face-to-face visitation should be the primary means of contact for families that visit at prison facilities. In order to accomplish this goal, inmates must be assigned to correctional facilities close to their homes if space is available and there is no proven risk to security. Additionally, if prison video visitation is utilized, any fees associated with its use must be regulated to insure that the financial expense is not exorbitant.


Preventing impairment of waterbodies requires control, reduction and interception of contaminant losses at the field and subwatershed level. Three specific research objectives were accomplished in this study: 1) compare the HSPF-predicted flow, sediment, total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) loads resulting from simulation of spatially distributed site-specific and county-level disaggregated land use data at subwatershed and watershed levels, 2) evaluate the effects of site-specific and county-level disaggregated BMP data on modeled BMP responses in HSPF-predicted flow, sediment, TN and TP loads at the watershed level, and 3) analyze the long-term effects of the two spatial BMP datasets on achieving the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) goals for sediment, TN and TP. Site-specific data are derived from the local watershed inventory while disaggregated data are based on county-level aggregated data that are distributed to portions of river segments that intersect each county. The study site was the Upper Opequon Watershed in northern Virginia. Results for each research objective are as follows: (1) HSPF-predicted flow, sediment, TN and TP were higher using disaggregated land use data in subwatersheds at monthly and annual time-steps. (2) Predicted load reductions were higher with site-specific BMP data than with disaggregated data for the study watershed. (3) Current levels of cost-shared BMP implementation in the Upper Opequon Watershed using either site-specific or county-level disaggregated BMP datasets do not meet the Chesapeake Bay TMDL goals. Increasing BMP implementation level to 100% of the available land also failed to meet TMDL target goals. Generally, use of disaggregated land use data does not accurately represent the existing watershed conditions. Further, for the study watershed, use of disaggregated county-level BMP data poorly represented actual watershed conditions, which resulted in higher pollutant yields and higher levels of BMPs needed to meet water quality goals. The study suggests that site-specific land use and BMP data must be used during TMDL implementation planning to maintain credibility with local stakeholders and improve the accuracy of the developed implementation plans.


The annual Climate Change Conferences (Conferences of the Parties, COPs) held under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change are global staged political media events that regularly provide occasions for contesting the framing of global warming in media coverage around the globe. This study assesses which professional group involved in communicating the COPs—journalists, government spokespeople, and representatives from non-governmental organizations (NGOs)—is most successful in seeing their visual framing conceptions represented in mainstream print media coverage. Our analysis combines data from 44 semi-structured interviews with actors from these groups conducted on-site at the COPs in Doha, Qatar (2012) and Warsaw, Poland (2013) with a content analysis of climate change news published in newspapers from five democratic countries around the world. Results show a relative prevalence of NGO-preferred visual framing in COP coverage. Through providing powerful pictures of symbolic actions, civil society actors can prevail in the visual framing contest under certain conditions, but it is much harder for them to circumvent the usually strong statist orientation of mainstream news media in sourcing textual messages.


Because the existing applications of Technology Opportunity Analysis (TOA) text data mining framework developed by Alan Porter and other researchers used small datasets, previous research never pushed the limits of the methodology and failed to identify areas for future research associated with using larger datasets. This research developed extensions to the TOA framework to improve its performance and scalability and proved that the Technology Opportunity Analysis text data mining framework could be successfully scaled to analyze large datasets. The work included the development of a comprehensive set of new or significantly improved data extraction filters and data cleaning thesauruses, a data model and architecture based on relational database and online analytical processing technologies that provides an open platform provides easy, standards-compliant access to browsing, reporting, and data mining software that support either SQL or MDX queries, and a report distribution framework that does not require the end-users of the output of Technology Opportunity Analysis to use any specialized or prohibitively expensive client applications beyond the standard Microsoft Office applications and Adobe Acrobat Reader. In addition, it demonstrated that the time necessary to complete the data acquisition, cleaning, and transformation tasks can be reduced by at least 75% by creating libraries of import filters for commonly used data sources, eliminating unnecessary steps, using 64-bit native databases and extraction filters, improving the data model and architecture, and using significantly better data cleaning thesauruses. This work is significant because it enables a variety of research paths applying alternative statistical or data mining algorithms that previously would have been impossible to undertake. Thesauruses and fuzzy logic routines to clean and group the data are presented and their accuracy is tested on gene expression, energy storage, photovoltaics, smart materials, bioinformatics, quantum computing, wind turbine, nanotube, global warming, and data fusion data sets and benchmarked against existing thesauruses and fuzzy logic routines. A database on photovoltaic solar cell research that integrates data from 116,240 records from thirteen bibliographic, patent, and funding abstract databases was used to illustrate the concepts developed and tested in this dissertation.*
*This dissertation is a compound document (contains both a paper copy and a CD as part of the dissertation). The CD requires the following system requirements: Microsoft SQL Server 2005.


Higher-lying excited electronic states of model, photoactivated molecules are studied using nonlinear excitation to explore the electronic spectroscopy, excited-state dynamics, and reaction quantum yields. The photoactivated molecules studied in this dissertation include two photochromic molecules, stilbene and 1,2-bis(2,4-dimethyl-5-phenyl-3-thienyl)perfluoro-cyclopentene, that reversibly convert between different isomers following irradiation, as well as a photoactivated protecting group, para-hydroxyphenacyl, that photochemically releases a bound substrate. Studying higher-lying excited states above S1 following nonlinear excitation provides information about the initially excited state, the subsequent excited-state dynamics, and the reaction quantum efficiency. Much less is known about the higher-lying excited states as compared to the well-studied ground and lowest-lying excited states, which motivates the work in this dissertation to investigate the higher-lying excited states of photoactivated molecules following nonlinear excitation. The measurements of the higher-lying excited states reported here include a broadband pump-probe technique that is used to measure the two-photon absorption spectroscopy, as well as the excited-state dynamics following linear and nonlinear excitation of the studied photoactivated molecules. The broadband two-photon absorption spectroscopy measurements reveal the two-photon accessible states and their absolute two-photon absorption cross sections. Separate measurements of the excited-state dynamics and of the reaction quantum yields following nonlinear excitation collectively provide information about the behavior of the higher-lying excited-states, and how the identity of the excited states affect the outcome of the photochemical reactions. Probing the spectroscopy, dynamics, and quantum yields of the studied photoactivated molecules is important to develop a fundamental understanding of photochemical reactions from higher-lying excited states. The spectroscopy, dynamics, and quantum yield measurements in this dissertation can also serve as new benchmarks for computational studies of these model molecules.


This article covers our findings on information behavior and dissemination of parliamentary decision-makers in terms of using Social Networking Sites like Facebook. The article investigates why politicians use those technologies and integrate them more and more in their everyday workflow. In addition to the purpose of social network usage, the focus of our paper is also on best practices and how to deal with challenges like authenticity of politicians' online profiles. The results presented within the remit of this paper are the outcome of 16 semi-structured interviews that took place as part of an evaluation effort within the EU research project WeGov [1]. The overall aim of the project is to develop a toolbox that enriches the dialogue between citizens and politicians on the web.


Noise functions are an essential building block for writing procedural shaders in 3D computer graphics. The original noise function introduced by Ken Perlin is still the most popular because it is simple and fast, and many spectacular images have been made with it. Nevertheless, it is prone to problems with aliasing and detail loss. In this paper we analyze these problems and show that they are particularly severe when 3D noise is used to texture a 2D surface. We use the theory of wavelets to create a new class of simple and fast noise functions that avoid these problems.


Why are women's murders (femicide) more common in some localities than in others? This paper addresses this question in the context of Turkey, a country with a high and rising number of women's murders. It uses province-level data between 2010-2017 and the Negative-Binomial estimator to explore the importance of several socio-economic, cultural, and political factors. It finds that a province's ethnic composition, divorce rate, gender equality in education, and level of economic development are significant predictors of women's murders. The main result is that whether economic development reduces femicide depends on other factors: in poorer provinces, there is a strong positive correlation between women's murders and equality in education and divorce rates, but in richer provinces, these associations are significantly weaker. These results are consistent with the idea that economic development may not reduce women's murders by itself, but it can mitigate the effects of male backlash against women who challenge the status quo. The main policy implication of this study is that pro-development policies may save more lives if they target those poorer provinces that also carry these additional risk factors.


Whether pro-social preferences identified in economic laboratories survive in natural market contexts is an important and contested issue. We investigate how fairness in a laboratory experiment framed explicitly as a market exchange relates to preferences for fair trade products before and after the market experiment. We find that the willingness to buy at a higher price when higher wages are paid to the worker correlates both with the choice for a fair trade product before the laboratory experiment and with whether the participants are willing to pay a positive fair trade premium, elicited at the end of the experiment. These results support the notion that fairness preferences as assessed in laboratory experiments capture preferences for fair behavior in comparable situations outside the laboratory.


This report presents the first part of a two part study made under this title. In this part the symmetrical inviscid flow about an empirical strut of high service merit is found by both the Rankine and the Joukowsky methods. The results can be made to agree as closely as wished. Theoretical stream surfaces as well as surfaces of constant speed and pressure in the fluid about the strut are found. The surface pressure computed from the two theories agrees well with the measured pressure on the fore part of the model but not so well on the after part. From the theoretical flow speed the surface friction is computed by an empirical formula. The drag integrated from the friction and measured pressure closely equals the whole measured drag. As the pressure drag and the whole drag are accurately determined, the friction formula also appears trustworthy for such fair shapes. (author).


Using stomach lavage samples from macaroni penguins Eudyptes chrysolophus Brandt breeding at Bird Island, South Georgia and concurrent net samples caught within the penguin foraging range, we examined the potential selection of different length and maturity stages of Antarctic krill Euphausia superba Dana. Using Monte Carlo randomised simulation techniques, we also determined the probability of obtaining length-frequency distributions of krill different from that obtained in the net samples. The krill taken by the macaroni penguins differed significantly from those caught in the nets. Small krill (28 to 38 mm) were absent from the stomach samples, whereas large krill (58 to 62 mm) were more abundant. Random sampling using Monte Carlo simulation techniques produced length-frequency distributions that were statistically different from the original distribution of krill caught in nets on 76 out of 100 trials. Nevertheless, these differences were smaller than those found between the penguin samples and net samples. Comparison of krill maturity stages showed that krill taken by macaroni penguins contained 3 times as many female as male krill, whereas krill caught in nets contained nearly equal proportions. The differences in size and maturity of krill taken by penguins are discussed in terms of aggregated random sampling, prey selection by predators, and evasion by krill of predators and nets. We conclude that the differences are unlikely to be accounted for simply by sampling anomalies; the differences are more likely to relate to penguins selecting larger, nutritionally superior krill, but might also reflect differential escape responses of particular classes of krill when evading penguins or nets.


Landraces of common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) pertaining to the Andean gene pool are remarkably diverse in plant and grain morphology and agroecological adaptation. The objectives of this study were to determine the genetic structure of a large sample of Andean landraces, and to establish a correspondence between Andean landraces and wild bean populations that might have served as the source of domesticated bean. A total of 182 landraces representing the three recognized races of Andean bean and including many popping bean types were analyzed using amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) technology with multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) and unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean (UPGMA). Twenty-nine wild bean accessions representing the diversity of wild bean in South America and Middle America were also included. Two sets of primers were used to generate 189 polymorphic AFLP. The graph of the results of MCA indicated that most landrace accessions formed a single undifferentiated group, and analysis by UPGMA combined with bootstrapping confirmed this. A small number of outliers presented bands that suggested introgression from Mesoamerican beans. Among wild bean populations from South America, those from Bolivia graphed in closest proximity to the cultivated bean, suggesting that Bolivia might have been an important primary domestication site. The narrow genetic base of Andean beans emphasizes the need to broaden the genetic base of the Andean gene pool.


Incumbent carriers often vilify the regulatory process as a drain on efficiency and an unnecessary burden in light of robust marketplace competition. Some claim that regulation creates disincentives for investing in expensive next generation networks ("NGNs"), and even accepting subsidies for broadband development if the carrier must provide access to competitors. Without fully assessing the necessity to do so legislators, regulators and judges have accepted the premise that government must create incentives for NGN investment. Incumbent carriers in particular have seized upon the concept of uncertainty as a justification for refraining from making necessary infrastructure investments, despite the onset of declining revenues and market shares in core services. In the worst case scenario, incumbent carriers secure unwarranted and premature deregulation, despite an ongoing need for governments to guard against anti-competitive practices and to promote sustainable competition. Governments also risk providing direct financial subsidies, or creating a regulatory mechanism for indirect subsidies, to stimulate infrastructure investment when no such catalyst is necessary in light of competitive necessity. Once a subsidy mechanism is in place, government may not easily "wean" carriers off such artificial compensation. In rare instances government may find some key carriers unwilling to accept subsidies and in turn disinclined to pursue expedited NGN development, as is currently occurring in the U.S., because incumbent carriers do not want to provide interconnection and access to competitors, a legal duty these carriers must bear when operating as common carrier providers of telecommunications networks, but which does not apply when these carriers offer information services which include broadband.This paper will examine how incumbent carriers in the United States have gamed the incentive creation process for maximum market distortion and competitive advantage. The paper suggests that the U.S. government has rewarded incumbents with artificially lower risk, insulation from competition, and partial underwriting of technology projects that these carriers would have to undertake unilaterally. The paper also examines the FCC's recently released National Broadband Plan with an eye toward assessing whether the Commission has properly balanced incentive creation with competitive necessity. The paper provides recommendations on how governments can calibrate the incentive creation process for maximum consumer benefit instead of individual carrier gain.


ABSTRACT Vibrio cholerae identification based on molecular sequence data has been hampered by a lack of sequence variation from the closely related Vibrio mimicus. The two species share many genes coding for proteins, such as ctxAB, and show almost identical 16S DNA coding for rRNA (rDNA) sequences. Primers targeting conserved sequences flanking the 3′ end of the 16S and the 5′ end of the 23S rDNAs were used to amplify the 16S-23S rRNA intergenic spacer regions of V. cholerae and V. mimicus. Two major (ca. 580 and 500 bp) and one minor (ca. 750 bp) amplicons were consistently generated for both species, and their sequences were determined. The largest fragment contains three tRNA genes (tDNAs) coding for tRNAGlu, tRNALys, and tRNAVal, which has not previously been found in bacteria examined to date. The 580-bp amplicon contained tDNAIle and tDNAAla, whereas the 500-bp fragment had single tDNA coding either tRNAGlu or tRNAAla. Little variation, i.e., 0 to 0.4%, was found among V. cholerae O1 classical, O1 El Tor, and O139 epidemic strains. Slightly more variation was found against the non-O1/non-O139 serotypes (ca. 1% difference) and V. mimicus (2 to 3% difference). A pair of oligonucleotide primers were designed, based on the region differentiating all of V. cholerae strains from V. mimicus. The PCR system developed was subsequently evaluated by using representatives of V. cholerae from environmental and clinical sources, and of other taxa, including V. mimicus. This study provides the first molecular tool for identifying the species V. cholerae.


In this paper, we describe the four-legged soccer team Uppsala Underdogs developed by a group of 4th year computer science students at Uppsala University during the fall of 2004. The project is based on the experience from two similar previous projects. This year the emphasis of the project has been on distribution of data and on support for evaluation and reconfiguration of strategies. To support data distribution, a middleware has been developed, which implements a replication algorithm and provides a clean interface for the other software modules (or behaviors). To enable easy reconfiguration of strategies, an automata-based graphical description language has been developed, which can be compiled into code that uses the database and the lower level modules, such as tactics and positioning, to make decisions and control the robot. In addition, a graphical simulator has been developed in which the strategies can be evaluated.


Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the affective premises and economics of the influence of search engines on knowing and informing in the contemporary society.

Design/methodology/approach

A conceptual discussion of the affective premises and framings of the capitalist economics of knowing is presented.

Findings

The main proposition of this text is that the exploitation of affects is entwined in the competing market and emancipatory discourses and counter-discourses both as intentional interventions, and perhaps even more significantly, as unintentional influences that shape the ways of knowing in the peripheries of the regime that shape cultural constellations of their own. Affective capitalism bounds and frames our ways of knowing in ways that are difficult to anticipate and read even from the context of the regime itself.

Originality/value

In the relatively extensive discussion on the role of affects in the contemporary capitalism, influence of affects on knowing and their relation to search engine use has received little explicit attention so far.


A CMOS RF digitally programmable gain amplifier (RF PGA), covering various terrestrial mobile digital TV standards (DMB, ISDB-T, and DVB-H) is implemented as a part of a low-IF tuner IC using 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS technology. An improvement of 13-dB IIP3 is attained without significant degradation of other performance criteria like gain, noise figure, common-mode rejection ratio, etc., at similar power consumption. This is achieved by applying a newly proposed differential circuit gm" (the second derivatives of transconductance) cancellation technique, called the differential multiple gated transistor (DMGTR). In the DMGTR amplifier, the negative value of gm" in the fully differential amplifier can be compensated by the positive value of gm" in the pseudo differential amplifier which is properly sized and biased. By adopting the DMGTR, a low-power highly linear RF PGA is implemented. Also, in order to have wide gain range with fine step resolution, a new RF PGA architecture is proposed. The measurement results of the proposed RF PGA exhibit 50-dB gain range with 0.25-dB resolution, 4.5-dB noise figure, a -4-dBm IIP3 (maximum 30 dBm) and 25-dB gain at 16-mW power consumption.


This paper discusses different algorithms to create directional antenna patterns in OPNET Modeler. We describe algorithms to create conical and pencil beam antenna patterns. We also present a version of this algorithm that creates antenna patterns whose gain follows a cosine squared curve. We have also implemented tracking in OPNET to utilize these directional antenna patterns. These algorithms can be used to create antenna patterns for any wireless technology in OPNET such as WiFi and WiMAX. This paper also discusses an integer linear programming (ILP) formulation for a resource allocation problem. This is a centralized optimization algorithm where the base station decides which subscriber station will be assigned to which relay station in the network such that the throughput of the entire network is maximized. We present some simulation results showing 10Mbps improved throughput using directional antennas with the assignment strategy. This is a centralized algorithm and can be used in any technology that has a centralized resource allocation scheme such as WiMAX.


This contribution is a further partial anticipation of the critical edition of the mythological faules by Joan Roís de Corella(15th century) for Editorial Barcino, following a previous one also appeared in Magnificat CLM (3, 2016). It focuses onone of Corella's most mature and significant faules, as well as one of the most prestigious testimonies both of the presence of the myth of Hero and Leander in the Iberian 15th century, and of the peninsular reception of the Heroides. The paper has two parts. The first part, Introduction, summarizes the current situation of the studies related to the Istòria. Next, an analysis of the literary memory that supports the faula's discursive construction is provided, aiming to demonstrate how it actualizes a game of mirroring, projections, refractions, intertextual references, and symbolic-allusive evocations that make res and characters the revival of a plurality of classical and medieval models. Such a revival becomes loaded of a new pathetic energy. Our analysis is based on certain thematic words and specific topical-rhetorical matrixes, reused either a lo profano or a lo divino, always within the idea of "dying together" and of love beyond death. It focuses on the communication strategies through which this ficció sentimental's text (a point of convergence for thematic, metaphorical and figural weaving, anchored to the Tristanian, lyrical-amorous, ausiasmarquiana, cancioneril and Passionist imagery of planctus virginis) transforms memory and reuses it into an invention. The second part of the paper is the critical edition of the text. Anticipated by the Criteria of Edition, it contains the Text, with footnotes concerning the constitutio textus, and the Critical Apparatus.


Some primary physical relationships related to the surface climate and atmospheric
boundary layer were examined over East Antarctica and evaluated in the regional
climate model HIRHAM for 2005–2008. For stable conditions, the observation-derived
relationship between wind-scaled sensible heat flux and air-surface temperature difference
distinctively differs between different surface flux parameterizations. Some of them
decrease the heat transfer coefficient CH for strongly stable conditions, while others,
such as the Louis scheme, do not. However, HIRHAM's application of the Louis
parameterization produces small CH for strongly stable conditions similar to observations
and other schemes, likely because a surface roughness much larger than observed is used
and the bulk Richardson number differs. For Zhongshan, the observed radiation-cloud,
temperature-cloud, and temperature-wind relationships are reproduced in the model,
though quantitative differences are evident. An observed longwave warming effect of
clouds is larger in the model, while the reduction of downwelling shortwave radiation
by clouds is twice as large in the model. The model partially reproduces an observed weak
wind regime associated with atmospheric decoupling, but fails to reproduce increasing
temperatures with increasing winds. The quantitative differences in the radiation-cloud
relationship suggest that errors in cloud characteristics produce a significant deficiency
in downwelling net radiation for clear and cloudy conditions. This deficiency is the likely
cause of HIRHAM's strong cold bias in the surface temperature and positive bias
in near-surface stability. The sensible heat flux analyses and a sensitivity test suggest
that errors in the sensible heat flux relationship are not the primary cause.


BACKGROUND
Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) use is increasingly recognized as a major factor associated with peptic ulcer disease and complications. We undertook a multicenter, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial to evaluate efficacy and safety of nizatidine in preventing ulcer formation in patients with osteoarthritis who were taking NSAIDs.

METHODS
After endoscopy to rule out the presence of an acute ulcer, 496 patients were randomized to receive nizatidine, 150 mg twice daily (248 patients) or placebo (248 patients) for 3 months. Repeated endoscopies were performed monthly. We defined failure as development of a peptic ulcer (> or = 0.3 cm in diameter).

RESULTS
Baseline characteristics tested were comparable for the two groups with regard to age, sex, ulcer history, and Helicobacter pylori status. Overall ulcer occurrence in the nizatidine group (9.7%) was not significantly different from that in the placebo group (13.7%; P = .163). High-risk subgroups (patients with ulcer history and patients > or = 65 years of age), however, revealed statistically fewer ulcers for patients receiving nizatidine (P = .035 and P = .042, respectively). Analysis of antacid use showed significantly less use in nizatidine recipients, although there were similar percentages of patients showing improvement in dyspeptic symptoms in each treatment group. We failed to observe a conclusive correlation between H pylori status at baseline, as measured by serum immunoglobulin antibody, and development of an ulcer.

CONCLUSIONS
This study showed that nizatidine, 150 mg, twice daily, significantly reduces the incidence of ulcer formation in high-risk patients taking long-term NSAID therapy. It also relieves NSAID-associated dyspeptic symptoms in some patients.


Evelyn Hinde spent her teaching career in secondary modern schools in London and Kent. She trained to teach at Stockwell Training College in 1955 where she recalls an inspiring and lively lecturer. She taught first in a girls' school in Deptford, where the four-year curriculum ranged from the Stone Age to the present day. Most students left at 15 without taking exams. Although 'chalk and talk' predominated, Evelyn collected postcards and illustrations to accompany the most dramatic historical stories and organised visits to historical sites. In the sixties, she taught in Kent schools, saw the rise of CSEs and 'integrated humanities' and the impact of TV. From 1976-96, Evelyn Hinde was a headteacher, although she continued teaching some history. Interviewed by Nicola Sheldon.


This paper quantifies labor law violations and how the enforcement efforts impact on the compliance level by considering the possibility of different labor regulations being violated simultaneously. The findings for the Peruvian labor markets over the period 2004-2013 indicate that: (i) multiple violations of labor regulations are an important feature of Peruvian labor markets; (ii) young workers, workers with low level of education, indigenous workers, workers in micro firms and workers employed in the agricultural sector have higher chances of being deprived of several labor benefits simultaneously; (iii) the enforcement of labor regulations, captured through the number of labor inspections at the region level, is effective in detecting and penalizing extreme situations of multiple violations of the labor law, but the evidence also suggests that firms adjust only partially as an attempt to reduce the amount of a potential fine if discovered, and that laid off workers during the adjustment process moved to the informal sector where firms are not inspected. These findings are useful from a policy perspective indicating that there is space to improve firms' incentives when facing an increase in the enforcement effort.


Abstract A new variational variance reduction (VVR) technique is developed for improving the efficiency of Monte Carlo multigroup nuclear reactor eigenvalue and eigenfunction calculations. The VVR method employs a variational functional, which requires detailed estimates of both the forward and adjoint fluxes. The direct functional, employed in standard Monte Carlo calculations, requires only limited information concerning the forward flux. The variational functional requires global information about the forward and adjoint fluxes and hence is more expensive to evaluate but is more accurate than the direct functional. In calculations, this increased accuracy outweighs the extra expense, resulting in a more efficient Monte Carlo simulation. In our work, we evaluate the variational functional using Monte Carlo-calculated forward flux estimates and deterministically calculated adjoint flux estimates. Also, we represent the adjoint flux as a low-order polynomial in space and angle, which is accurate for diffusive systems. (In such systems, which are common in reactor analysis problems, the angular flux is locally nearly linear in space and angle.) Using this adjoint representation, we develop specific VVR methods for eigenvalue problems, in which an estimate of the eigenvalue k in a criticality calculation is desired, and eigenfunction problems, in which an estimate of a detector response due to a fission neutron source during a criticality calculation is desired. The resulting VVR method is very efficient for the problems of interest. With a set of example problems, we demonstrate the increased efficiency of the VVR method over standard Monte Carlo.


Today's manufacturing and building operations are faced with the need to reduce cost and be more competitive with the fewest of resources. Connectivity to different infrastructures for data gathering and the need to analyze and visualize data in real time is ever more important in today's economic environment. Recently, visualization systems have taken a giant step forward incorporating advanced hardware accelerated 3D graphics into standard off-the shelf commercial products. As a result, providing compelling 3D graphics applications and having access to plant data is the key to having a competitive advantage. This paper presents an overview of a powerful approach to visualization of manufacturing that greatly reduces the learning curve for developing Human Machine Interface (HMI) applications.


Background: Because of the recently published results of the MAGIC study there is confusion as to whether administration of granulocyte-colony stimulating factor (G-CSF) after acute myocardial infarction (MI) should be regarded as a potentially harmful treatment. This meta-analysis of appropriate clinical studies is intended to show the impact of G-CSF given after MI on aggravated incidence of coronary re-stenosis or progression of coronary lesions. Methods: We used a fixed effects model based on the Mantel-Haenszel method to combine results from the different trials. These studies provided the basis for the current analysis comprising 106 patients of whom 62 were subjected to G-CSF treatment. Results: Minimum lumen diameter (MLD) measured immediately after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) was similar in both groups with a diameter stenosis of 12.3% (SD 9.5%) in the G-CSF group and 10.3% (8.5%) in the control group (p = 0.32). At follow-up, both MLD and percentage stenosis were not different between G-CSF-treated and control patients. Subsequently, averaged late lumen loss revealed similar results and no differences between groups (p = 0.11), and neither stent thrombosis nor re-infarction in either group. Conclusions: The current meta-analysis of clinical reports fails to justify an elevated risk for coronary re-stenosis after PCI in acute MI or adverse events following G-CSF in the setting of MI when used after state of the art treatment in carefully conducted clinical protocols.


The Very Small Home is an inspiring new book that surveys the creative design innovations of small houses in Japan. Eighteen recently built and unusual houses, from ultramodern to Japanese rustic, are presented in depth. Particular emphasis is given to what the author calls the "big idea" for each house-the thing that does the most to make the home feel more spacious than it actually is. Big ideas include ingenious sources of natural light, well thought-out loft spaces, snug but functional kitchens, unobtrusive partitions, and unobstructed circulation paths. An introduction puts the houses in the context of lifestyle trends and highlights their shared characteristics. The Houses section details each project the intentions of the designers and occupants are explained. The result is a very human sensibility that runs through the book, a glimpse of the dreams and aspirations that these unique homes represent and that belies their apparent modesty. The second half of the book is devoted to illustrating the special features in the homes, from storage and kitchen designs to revolutionary skylights and partitions. Building small can be a sign of higher ambitions, and those who read this book will undoubtedly grow to appreciate that building a small home can be an amazingly positive and creative act, one which can enhance one's life in surprising ways. In The Very Small Home, Brown has given home owners, designers, and architects a fascinating new collection of ideas.


This paper examines differences in China's ethnic majority and minority patterns of labor force participation and decomposes these differences into treatment and endowment effects using the technique developed by Borooah and Iyer (2005). Population census data are used to estimate gender-separated urban labor force participation rates (lfpr) using logit regressions which control for educational attainment, marital status, pre-school and school-age children, household size, age, and measures of local economic conditions. We focus on six minority groups (Hui, Koreans, Manchu, Mongolians, Uygurs, and Zhuang) and the majority Han. We find sizable differences between the lfpr of urban women of particular ethnic groups and the majority Han. Men's lfpr are very high and exhibit little difference between Han and ethnic minorities. For almost all pair-wise comparisons between Han and minority women, we find that differences in coefficients account for more than 100% of the Han-ethnic difference in labor force participation. Differences in endowments often have substantial effects in reducing this positive Han margin in labor force participation. Roughly speaking, treatment of women's characteristics, whether in the market or socially, tend to increase the Han advantage in labor force participation. The levels of these characteristics on average tend to reduce this Han advantage.


"Getting information off the internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant." (Mitchell Kapor, n.d.). Medical concepts and terminology can be very confusing for the uninitiated interpreter or translator. This book will allow interpreters and translators to quickly read up on healthcare settings, familiarizing themselves with anatomy, physiology, medical terminology and frequently encountered conditions, investigations and treatment options. Health translators working on medical reports will be able to find commonly used abbreviations. Those who have been asked to translate health information material into community languages will be able to gain a good basic overview of related background information and crosscultural issues. Those who teach health interpreters or translators will find this book helpful for structuring their curriculum. Information is presented in a consistent, logical and informative manner, intended to support, rather than overwhelm.