Conserving the world's wildlife and wildlands is often seen as an aesthetic investment rather than an economic or social one. Because our dependence on natural resources for sustained economic well-being is not broadly recognized a fundamental rift has developed between resource managers who wish to use all that is available and protectionists who advocate preservation regardless of the short-term economic costs. Increasingly, wildlife and wildlands are being asked to pay their way in order to continue to receive special protected status. The purpose of this book is to provide a theoretical and practical basis for understanding the value of wild resources as well as the strategies for conserving them. In addition, it is intended to help bridge the gap between development and protectionist philosophies by placing wildlife, wildlands, and their diversity in the proper economic context. The first four chapters explore the questions involved - the complexity and global nature of the issues, the application of economics to the wilds, and the resulting policies for conservation and sustainable management. The next five chapters examine specific uses, both sustainable and unsustainable, of wild species and habitats. Topics include community-based development, tourism, rainforest products, poaching, and the impact of conservation on wildlife use. The conclusion argues that comprehensive management of wild resources is needed to ensure both their continued existence and the continuing flow of benefits from them.


The Common Router Network (CRN) concept is a key enabler for a robust, scalable, and efficient wide area network infrastructure applicable for maritime or land tactical and strategic environments. Based on the open standards of Internet Protocol (IP) it provides a secure and flexible means of exchanging a wide variety of information well beyond the capability of restrictive stovepipe data links. It is fundamentally aligned with the Protected Core Network (PCN) concept initiated from a research program undertaken by the NATO C3 Agency. It defines a flexible transport infrastructure supporting military operations based on Network Centric Warfare (NCW) principles. The CRN creates a loose coupling between the information domain and transport infrastructure, focusing on providing high service availability in high-threat environments while managing the available bandwidth. This paper discusses the fundamentals of the CRN, its application in the tactical maritime, land, and strategic environments and provides examples of its use for WAN connectivity of local area networks, maritime combat system training, and at-sea collaboration supporting anti-submarine warfare.


OBJECTIVE
To assess the prevalence of malocclusion in 12-15 -year-olds in Moshi, Tanzania.

DESIGN
Cross-sectional study.

SETTING
Moshi Municipality, Kilimanjaro region, Tanzania.

SUBJECTS
Two hundred and eighty nine randomly selected primary school children (153 males and 136 females) had a clinical examination for malocclusion traits done.

RESULTS
The overall prevalence of malocclusion was 97.6%. Angle's Class II and III malocclusion occurred in 6.9% and 11% of the sample respectively. Crowding was encountered very frequently in both jaws, especially in the lower anterior segments. Anterior open bite occurred in 6.2% and the deep bite in 10.7% of the sample. There was no significant gender difference in either the overall prevalence of malocclusion or in the occurrence of the different occlusal traits.

CONCLUSION
It was noteworthy that some of the malocclusion traits recorded were relatively minor deviations from the normal occlusion. Hence the high prevalence of malocclusion did not necessarily imply a heavy burden of need and demand for orthodontic treatment.


This paper examined how a female offender's race/ethnicity influenced how she was portrayed by the media. Existing literature on gender stereotypes, racial and ethnic stereotypes, and media depictions of offenders provided the basis for this study. Few have focused solely on the media's treatment of offenders, in general, and fewer have looked closely at how the media depict female offenders, in particular. This study, therefore, filled a void. We predicted that minority women would be portrayed less favorably than white women, and conducted a content analysis of front-page newspaper articles that featured female offenders to test our expectation. The articles were gathered from two different U.S. newspapers for the 2006 calendar year—the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. We found that stories about white female offenders were more likely to contain excuses for their alleged or actual offenses and were, therefore, more likely to take on an overall favorable tone than stories about minority female offenders.


This paper presents a preliminary analysis of verbal abuse in spontaneous human-chatterbot conversations. An ethnographic study suggested that abuse is pervasive and may reflect an asymmetrical power distribution, where the user is the master, and the chatterbot the slave. We propose that verbal aggression in this setting may be a social norm applied by users to differentiate themselves from the machine in what can be regarded as a form of interspecies conflict. The findings stress the importance of naturalistic, ethnographic studies to uncover social dynamics of virtual relationships.


Today, 318 million people in 15 countries use the Euro, which now rivals the importance of the US Dollar in the world economy. This is an outcome that few would have predicted with confidence when the Euro was launched. How can we explain this success and what are the prospects for the future? There is nobody better placed to answer these questions than Otmar Issing, who as a founding member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank (1998–2006), was one of the Euro's principal architects. His story is a unique insider account, combining personal memoir with reference to the academic and policy literature. Free of jargon, this is a very human reflection on a unique historical experiment and a key reference for all academics, policy makers, and 'Eurowatchers' seeking to understand how the Euro has got to where it is today and what challenges lie ahead.


Individual project is a major component of MSc degrees in the UK in terms of allocated marks and overall weight. An MSc project typically lasts for up to 14-16 weeks, which makes it challenging to carry out elaborate research works. In this paper we highlight our experience in setting up one such project, which addresses the design and implementation of a bio-inspired adaptive learning system using cerebellar model articulation controller (CMAC) principles. To systematically execute the project, initially a guided and comprehensive literature survey was carried out to analyze in detail the CMAC design tradeoffs. Underpinning this analysis an adaptive design methodology was developed, leading to the implementation on a field programmble gate array (FPGA). The implementation was then validated using a real-time audio compression application. The validations demonstrated the advantages of adaptive learning systems in terms of reduced energy consumption with improved throughput and convergence. Moreover, it underlined the importance of a good plan and systematic delivery for a successful short-term research project.


Abstract There is now growing interest in organizing and querying large bodies of video data. In this paper, we will develop a simple SQL-like video language which can be used not only to identify videos in the library that are of interest to the user, but which can also be used to extract, from such a video in a video library, the relevant segments of the video that satisfy the specified query condition. We investigate various types of user requests and show how they are expressed using our query language. We also develop polynomial-time algorithms to process such queries. Furthermore, we show how video presentations may be synthesized in response to a user query. We show how a standard relational database system can be extended in order to handle queries such as those expressed in our language. Based on these principles, we have built a prototype video retrieval system called VIQS. We describe the design and implementation of VIQS and show some sample interactions with VIQS.


We document trends in affective polarization during the coronavirus pandemic. In our main measure, affective polarization is relatively flat between July 2019 and February 2020, then falls significantly around the onset of the pandemic. Three of five other data sources display a similar downward trend, with two of five data sources showing no significant change. A survey experiment shows that priming respondents to think about the coronavirus pandemic significantly reduces affective polarization.


In the late 19th century, virgin southern pine forests in the West Gulf Coast Region remained virtually untouched. After the Civil War, this land was made available by the government for homesteading and sale. Pine timberland was offered for sale at $1.25 per acre. Primarily northern lumbermen and land speculators purchased the land. Lumbering then became the economic driver for the recovery of the region. By the end of the first quarter of the 20th century, only isolated pockets of the old-growth forests remained. Landscapes once covered with majestic stands of virgin longleaf pines had become vast "stumpscapes" void of any prospect of forest regeneration. Then a small group began the effort to restore these forests. The effort was led by Henry E. Hardtner of the Urania Lumber Company, William H. Sullivan of the Great Southern Lumber Company, and Philip C. Wakeley of the Forest Service, Southern Forest Experiment Station. This is the story of that restoration effort.


MODELS OF CONVERSION IN AMERICAN EVANGELICALISM: JONATHAN EDWARDS, CHARLES HODGE AND OLD PRINCETON, AND CHARLES FINNEY Mark B. Chapman, B.A., M.Div., M.Th. Marquette University, 2015 The most commonly referenced definition of evangelicalism, David Bebbington's 'quadrilateral,' includes conversionism as one of four key definitive features, and most other definitions also reference conversion as characteristic of evangelicalism. This dissertation examines the adequacy of the use of conversion in such a defining role through a careful consideration of a variety of dimensions of conversion among three key representatives of evangelicalism: Jonathan Edwards, Charles Finney, and Old Princeton Seminary (as represented by its first professor, Archibald Alexander, and especially by his protégé Charles Hodge). One cannot talk about conversion as a key to evangelicalism without understanding what is meant by conversion, and what has been meant by it historically. How one views conversion both reflects and affects significant features of one's theology and assumptions. If conversion is indeed linked in vital ways to so many other central theological concerns, would not divergent views of conversion indicate fundamental divergences in any resulting forms of Christian belief that would make such a union of divergent figures or movements under the one banner of evangelicalism untenable? How can conversion be used to define evangelicalism if conceptions of conversion have varied considerably over evangelicalism's history? The primary work of this dissertation is the identification and analysis of models of conversion among these representatives. What key elements are involved in these various perspectives on conversion and how might they give insight into assorted theological perspectives and alignments within evangelicalism? This study concludes that the use of conversion to define evangelicalism is overly simplistic and inaccurate. Not only does conversion fail to define evangelicalism, at times it even appears to divide it. When one reflects theologically and historically on the notion of conversion, one realizes that the answers one gives to the meaning of conversion represent varying interpretations of the gospel message itself. Thus the variations among the figures of this study, all of whom are commonly placed within the bounds of what is termed evangelicalism, reveal a classification that is in many respects incoherent as a theological classification, and thus reveal the inadequacies of conversion in defining evangelicalism.


In the first Lincoln-Douglas debate, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed that "public sentiment is everything," a necessary and sufficient condition of political persuasion. He used this principle both to discredit Stephen Douglas and to elicit support for his own program. He charged that Douglas's statement that he "don't care" whether slavery was voted down or voted up, was the means by which he would tranquilize the public to regard slavery as a matter of indifference, whereupon the Supreme Court would issue another Dred Scott decision, this one nationalizing slavery. Meanwhile, he insisted that if public opinion believed that slavery was on the way to ultimate extinction, it eventually would die out. Lincoln's proclamation also was an ambryonic theory of public opinion, emphasizing the role of political advocates in "coaching" public sentiment. He held to an older concept that "public sentiment" was a normative property of a collective, not just an aggregate of individual opinions.


Background and Study Aim: The part of specialists think that the accumulated wide scientific knowledge of judo has not become the object of profound scientific analysis. Growth of judo popularity in the world (mainly in sport dimension) inclines scientists to constantly seek new, effective and scientifically grounded means and methods of sportsmen's training for competition functioning. One of the main barriers to the promotion of a global scale modern scientific knowledge about the judo are published important works on natural languages difficult due to the spelling (in Japanese, Russian, etc.). The aim of this article are the preferences topics of doctoral and postdoctoral theses on judo defended in Russian Federation universities in the period 2000-2016. Material and Methods: We analysed 67 dissertations (58 doctoral and 9 postdoctoral) of Russian scientists for period from 2000 to 2016, which had been devoted to different topics of judo training and competition functioning. The systemic structural analysis of dissertations based on sport sciences and sciences of martial arts experts opinion. Results: Out of 6 important topics dominates "T1" sportsmen's tactic skilfulness, formation of high sport motivation, raising judo athletes' general workability during trainings and competitions (32 dissertations) and "T2" sportsmen's morphological functional and psycho-physiological characteristics, professional personality's progress of judo athletes, increase of young people's physical potential and defensive abilities (16 dissertations). (only 3) The least work (after 3) concerns: "T5" the problems of educations of coaches' and referees' and "T6" adolescents' suitability for judo on the base of their morphological functional indicators and physical condition. Conclusions: Comparative analysis of Russian dissertations devoted to different aspects of sport judo will significantly enrich modern sport science and can become a starting point for further scientific researches in the field of science of martial arts.


The functional and geometrical requirements to electronic, optoelectronic and mechatronic devices have significantly increased during the last years. Within the scope of the development and the fabrication of such components a very important aspect is the fast and flexible generation of conductive circuits respectively structures on work-pieces of various dimensions and materials. The presented work gives an overview about three promising laser-based approaches to generate microscopic and macroscopic circuits as well as conductive layers with a thickness in the order of a few hundred nanometers. In addition to processes for the fabrication of conductive structures laser-based soldering of piezo-composites is investigated.


Smith (2012) has provided pertinent observations on our recently published meta-analytic review (Szalma & Hancock, 2011) of the effects of acoustic noise on performance. His main points are as follows: (a) our review excluded some areas of research; (b) there were conceptual problems with our moderator analyses; and (c) limitations to meta-analysis, in general, constrain the conclusions that can be drawn from our findings. In this response, we address these issues and, in so doing, account for Smith's concerns and consequently identify useful avenues for future work. Thus, we argue that (a) most of the areas of research described by Smith were outside the explicitly specified and so-stated limits of our meta-analysis; (b) the conceptual problems in our meta-analysis are common to all research on stress and performance; and (c) the cited limitations of meta-analysis have been well established previously. We therefore remain unchanged in our opinion that meta-analysis is a powerful tool for quantifying the effects of variables on outcome measures across collective studies. Although acknowledging certain inherent procedural limitations, we nevertheless agree that a full comprehension of noise effects on performance has yet to be exhaustively articulated.


With the rapid development of China's economic construction, road traffic is playing an increasingly important role in national economic construction. The ensuing road pavement maintenance and management problems highlight increasingly, among them the damage detection of road pavement become one of the priorities of relevant road maintenance department. In addition, a number of early-constructed high-grade highways along enter long or overhaul period, in order to improve the service life of the road, obtain pavement damage data has become the important topic of pavement maintenance management department. At present, the way of road pavement detection still is mainly artificial detection, but the artificial detection method is of low detection efficiency, timeconsuming and affects the normal traffic. Therefore, the study of pavement damage detection system has certain practical significance. This paper mainly expounds the research of pavement crack detection based on image processing technology. This paper first expounds the relevant pavement damage detection system. In this paper, the digital image processing methods are studied, including image enhancement processing, image edge detection and image segmentation technology. Digital image processing is the research emphasis of this article, and at the same time, it is also the core content of pavement crack detection technology. Finally, the road pavement crack image classification recognition is studied and several common methods of pattern recognition are introduced.


In this paper, company investment value evaluation models are established based on comprehensive company information. After data mining and extracting a set of 436 feature parameters, an optimal subset of features is obtained by dimension reduction through tree-based feature selection, followed by the 5-fold cross-validation using XGBoost and LightGBM models. The results show that the Root-Mean-Square Error (RMSE) reached 3.098 and 3.059, respectively. In order to further improve the stability and generalization capability, Bayesian Ridge Regression has been used to train a stacking model based on the XGBoost and LightGBM models. The corresponding RMSE is up to 3.047. Finally, the importance of different features to the LightGBM model is analysed.


Males and females share many traits that have a common genetic basis, however selection on these traits often differs between the sexes leading to sexual conflict1,2. Under such sexual antagonism, theory predicts the evolution of genetic architectures that resolve this sexual conflict2-6. Yet, despite intense theoretical and empirical interest, the specific genetic loci behind sexually antagonistic phenotypes have rarely been identified, limiting our understanding of how sexual conflict impacts genome evolution4,7,8 and the maintenance of genetic diversity8,9. Here, we identify a large effect locus controlling age at maturity in 57 salmon populations, an important fitness trait in which selection favours earlier maturation in males than females10, and show it is a clear example of sex dependent dominance reducing intralocus sexual conflict and maintaining adaptive variation in wild populations. Using high density SNP data and whole genome re-sequencing, we found that vestigial-like family member 3 (VGLL3) exhibits sex-dependent dominance in salmon, promoting earlier and later maturation in males and females, respectively. VGLL3, an adiposity regulator associated with size and age at maturity in humans, explained 39.4% of phenotypic variation, an unexpectedly high effect size for what is usually considered a highly polygenic trait. Such large effects are predicted under balancing selection from either sexually antagonistic or spatially varying selection11-13. Our results provide the first empirical example of dominance reversal permitting greater optimisation of phenotypes within each sex, contributing to the resolution of sexual conflict in a major and widespread evolutionary trade-off between age and size at maturity. They also provide key empirical evidence for how variation in reproductive strategies can be maintained over large geographical scales. We further anticipate these findings will have a substantial impact on population management in a range of harvested species where trends towards earlier maturation have been observed.


We propose a scalable Gromov-Wasserstein learning (S-GWL) method and establish a novel and theoretically-supported paradigm for large-scale graph analysis. The proposed method is based on the fact that Gromov-Wasserstein discrepancy is a pseudometric on graphs. Given two graphs, the optimal transport associated with their Gromov-Wasserstein discrepancy provides the correspondence between their nodes and achieves graph matching. When one of the graphs has isolated but self-connected nodes ($i.e.$, a disconnected graph), the optimal transport indicates the clustering structure of the other graph and achieves graph partitioning. Using this concept, we extend our method to multi-graph partitioning and matching by learning a Gromov-Wasserstein barycenter graph for multiple observed graphs; the barycenter graph plays the role of the disconnected graph, and since it is learned, so is the clustering. Our method combines a recursive $K$-partition mechanism with a regularized proximal gradient algorithm, whose time complexity is $\mathcal{O}(K(E+V)\log_K V)$ for graphs with $V$ nodes and $E$ edges. To our knowledge, our method is the first attempt to make Gromov-Wasserstein discrepancy applicable to large-scale graph analysis and unify graph partitioning and matching into the same framework. It outperforms state-of-the-art graph partitioning and matching methods, achieving a trade-off between accuracy and efficiency.


BACKGROUND Leprosy is a chronic infectious disease caused by the obligate intracellular bacillus Mycobacterium leprae. Because leprosy diagnosis is complex and requires professional expertise, new tools and methodologies are needed to detect cases in early stages and prevent transmission. The M. leprae genome contains mce1A, which encodes a putative mammalian cell entry protein (Mce1A). We hypothesised that the presence of Mce1A on the cell surface could be detected by the host's immune system. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to evaluate antibody responses against the Mce1A protein in leprosy patients, household contacts of patients, and the general population to present an addition tool for leprosy diagnosis. METHODS A cross-sectional study involving 89 volunteers [55 leprosy cases, 12 household contacts (HHC) and 22 endemic controls (EC)] was conducted at Couto Maia Hospital, in Salvador, Bahia (BA), Brazil. RESULTS The median anti-Mce1A IgA was significantly higher in multibacillary (MB) and paucibacillary (PB) cases than in EC (p < 0.0001). A similar trend was observed in IgM levels, which were significantly higher in both MB (p < 0.0001) and PB (p = 0.0006) groups compared to in EC individuals. The greatest differences were observed for IgG class-specific antibodies against Mce1A. The median levels of MB and PB were significantly higher compared to both controls HHC and EC (MB or PB vs EC, MB vs HHC p < 0.0001; PB vs HHC, p = 0.0013). Among leprosy cases, IgG enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay sensitivity and specificity were 92.7% and 97.1%, respectively. IgG positivity was confirmed in 92.1% and 94.1% of MB and PB patients, respectively. CONCLUSION This novel diagnostic approach presents an easy, non-invasive, and inexpensive method for leprosy screening, which may be applicable in endemic areas.


This study examines the ways that part-time Ph.D. students develop community within the academic department and how a sense of community is related to persistence. This study included 12 participants (ten students and two program chairs) in two academic departments at one urban research institution. This qualitative study followed a descriptive case study design and provided three levels of data: the institution is the bounded system; the academic departments are the cases; and the participants are embedded cases. Positive relationships with peers and faculty served as a source of encouragement and supported persistence, particularly during challenging semesters and later phases of the doctoral program. However, it was often difficult for the participants to develop and/or maintain relationships, due to limited proximity, limited access to faculty, and changing cohorts. Participants did not consider full-time doctoral students to be part of their community, due to perceived differences between part-time and full-time students. The participants also perceived that faculty catered to full-time students and preferred to conduct research with them rather than part-time students.


In this work available methods for soil food web analysis were studied and new methods were evaluated. Soil biota consist of more species than the biota of any other environment on earth, however, despite their importance they are the least understood. Indirect methods are needed to get insight into soil food webs, because of the cryptic habitat and the small size of soil animals. A common used method is the analysis of the variation of natural occurring stable isotopes, mainly 15N/14N and 13C/12C. Nitrogen isotopes can be used to obtain trophic level information and carbon is used to determine food sources. Commonly the shift per trophic level is considered to be about 3.4permill for 15N/14N and 1permill for 13C/12C. But in this study delta15N varied from 2.4 to 6.3permill and delta13C from -1.0 to -3.3permill due to fungal food quality, starvation or age of soil animals (Collembola). This proves the impact of physiological status and food quality on stable isotope fractionation which should be considered when analysing food webs. Since the stable isotope method has its drawbacks, fatty acid (FA) analysis as alternative method for analysing soil food webs was investigated. FA analysis is a relatively new approach for investigating soil food webs. The FA pattern or specific biomarker FAs in consumers allow to infer food sources. To successfully apply this method, the influence of physiological and of environmental effects had to be tested. The FA pattern of Collembola was not significantly influenced by starvation, but food quality, life stage and temperature had an impact. Nevertheless, the specific marker FA (linoleic acid) for fungal food source made up over 20% of all FAs at all tested conditions compared to Collembola reared on other diets (2 - 14%). Other studies proved specific FA markers for leaves, nematodes and fungi; the present work revealed specific marker FAs for bacterial diet. Methyl branched FAs (i14:0, i15:0, a15:0 and i17:0) characterized Collembola reared on gram-positive bacteria, and a cyclic form (cy17:0) and 16:1omega5 were characteristic for gram-negative bacteria. A sophistication of FA analysis is the compound-specific $^{13}$C fatty acid analysis. The advantage of this method is that it delivers the 13C/12C ratio of specific dietary marker FAs. A similar 13C/12C ratio in the same FA in consumer and potential diet indicates trophic transfer and routing of the FA into the tissue of the consumer. The applicability of this analysis for soil food web investigations was tested in a field experiment including major functional groups, i.e. microorganisms as primary decomposers, euedaphic and epedaphic Collembola as secondary decomposers and cursorial and web-building spiders as top predators. Results of this study demonstrate that 13C/12C ratios of individual FAs in potential prey (diet) and consumers allow to identify carbon fluxes and trophic links. This work contributed to the establishment of tools to unravel the "enigma" of soil animal diversity and of the structure of soil food webs.


The discovery of a giant natural gas field within a mature petroleum province is a significant event. Understanding the factors that control such an accumulation is important if the oil and gas industry is to continue to develop natural gas resources. Jonah field, in the Greater Green River basin of southwest Wyoming, is the largest natural gas discovery in the onshore United States in the last 10-15 years with recoverable reserves ranging from 8 to 15 tcf natural gas. Since beginning widespread field development in August 1992, Jonah has produced approximately 1 tcf gas, 10.3 million barrels of oil, and 3.7 million barrels of water. Field production is still increasing with daily production presently at 666 MMCFGPD, 5800 BOPD, and 4000 BWPD from approximately 600 wells. Active drilling continues within the field as operators consider widespread downspacing. By virtue of being a tight-gas field, Jonah is, in many respects, nontraditional. Recent assessments of natural gas potential, for both the U.S. and the world, strongly suggest that most future gas resources will come from low-permeability sandstones in the deeper portions of sedimentary basins, and from fields that will undoubtedly share characteristics with Jonah. The subtle structure, the low-permeability nature of the reservoir, the challenging petrophysics, and the environmental sensitivity surrounding Jonah may foreshadow what explorationists have to look forward to as the demand for natural gas increases, not only in the United States, but throughout the world. This volume brings together previously unpublished material on Jonah field and attempts to integrate all aspects including geology, geophysics, reservoir engineering, drilling and completion, and regulatory affairs. As such, this is a definitive collection that provides a truly integrated perspective of this giant field.


This paper considers the crisis of the identification process from the social-historical standpoint, for it cannot be understood when divorced from the social totality. Attempts to explain the current crisis in terms of particular institutions such as changes in habitat, a crisis in the family, etc. fail to account for it, since it also manifests itself in milieux and individuals not experiencing these changes directly. The crisis the identification process is undergoing must be seen as a crisis of the central imaginary significations that in the past have held society together. The crisis consists in the fact that contemporary society no longer produces the types that had made it viable as a society wanting itself. The author concludes that there cannot not be a crisis of the identification process, since there is no longer a cathected self-representation of society as the seat of meaning and of value and of a significant past and of a time to come.


ABSTRACT Shale samples ranging in depth from 305 m to 3658 m (Miocene to Late Cretaceous) from a single well in DeWitt County, Texas were examined by x-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning-transmission electron microscopy (STEM), and analytical electron microscopy (AEM) techniques to detail the mineralogical, textural, and chemical changes during diagenesis. XRD data suggest that from the surface down to 2134 m, illite/smectite (I/S) is < 50% illite. AEM data show that this smectite-rich I/S contains more K than Na or Ca, suggesting that at least some K exchange with pore fluids occurred well before the transition to illite-rich I/S, and implying a lesser role for detrital K-feldspar and mica in the transition. In addition, direct STEM/AEM observations of separates show that these smectite-rich amples contain equidimensional, euhedral, authigenic illite-rich I/S crystallites at depths as shallow as 610 m; electron-diffraction yields single-crystal patterns. However, such crystallites are rare compared with common anhedral flakes; electron-diffraction patterns for anhedral masses show powder rings, indicating random orientation of layers. Al/Si ratios for anhedral material imply a smectite-like high Si content for tetrahedral sites; Al/Si ratios for the euhedral crystallites suggest an illite-like lower Si content for tetrahedral sites. Between 2134 m and 2438 m (83° to 88°C), the smectite to illite (S-I) transition abruptly occurs, such that at 2438 m and deeper the I/S content remains constant at 75-90% illite. Direct STEM/AEM observations of separates of these illite- ich samples show abundant, equidimensional, euhedral, authigenic, illite-rich I/S crystals; electron-diffraction shows single-crystal patterns. XRD data show that mixed-layer I/S is dominantly R1 ordered. We interpret these data to suggest that, initially, anhedral smectite-rich material is dominant with significant K in exchangeable cation positions; rare illite-rich I/S crystals form in the early stages of diagenesis in Gulf Coast pelitic rocks. During the abrupt S-I transition, the original random orientation of smectite layers is lost and a coherent arrangement of illite packets is formed. The S-I transition proceeds by dissolution of smectite-rich material and utilization, at least in part, of exchangeable K to develop abundant, euhedral, dominantly R1-ordered, illite-rich I/S crystals. The development of illite-rich I/S crystals proceeds via an Ostwald-step-rule process: dissolution of metastable smectite-rich I/S and growth of abundant, euhedral, R1-ordered, metastable illite-ri h I/S crystals.


Background
Metagenomics has the potential to revolutionise infectious diseases diagnostics, from rapid species and antimicrobial resistance prediction, to finding unrecognised and sometimes untreated infections. Our aim was to summarise all literature on culture-independent metagenomic sequencing to describe the accuracy of species and antimicrobial resistance prediction and, describe the challenges and progress in the field.
 Methods
We conducted a systematic review with meta-analysis from eligible studies retrieved from PubMed, Google Scholar and bioRxiv and, assessed risk of bias and quality using the QUADAS-2 tool. This study is registered with PROSPERO, number CRD42020163777.
 Findings
We identified 36 studies, 22 of which used a species-agnostic approach to identify all possible pathogens. In these studies, the overall sensitivity and specificity of pathogen species detection were 88% (95%CI 81-92%) and 86% (95%CI 70-94%) respectively. Antimicrobial resistance prediction and comparison to phenotypic results was undertaken in six studies. Categorical agreement was 83% (95%CI 68-92%), very major (prediction sensitive, phenotype resistant) and major error (prediction resistant, phenotype sensitive) rates were 9% (95%CI 2-27%) and 1% (95%CI 0-20%) respectively. We report limited use of negative controls in studies 61% (22/36) which contribute to a major challenge of discriminating true pathogens from contamination, where there is no convergence on methodology. More efficient human DNA depletion methods are required as a median of 79% (IQR 62-96) [Range 7-98] of sequences were classified as human despite laboratory depletion techniques. The median time from sample to result was 23.5 hours (7-31) [4-144], with sequencing time accounting 10 hours (4.8-16) [1-16]. The average reported consumables cost per sample ranged from $128 to $685.
 Interpretation
The science and regulatory environment are rapidly developing, and its role as a routine test or test of last resort still needs to be determined, however it is likely that clinical metagenomics will be an increasing part of the clinician′s armamentarium to diagnose infectious diseases in the near future.


Fieldwork has historically played an important role within teacher education. Most often these experiences in schools are depicted as sites for developing teachers to gain insight into the practice of teaching. Research into fieldwork as a context for teacher learning, however, has traditionally focused on the learned outcomes, and less on how teachers have experienced and self-described these places of study (Zeichner, 2010, 2012; Cochran-Smith & Zeichner, 2005; Ball & Forzani, 2009). This year-long study explored how students in a literacy education program conceptualized the space of fieldwork as part of their teacher education program. Specifically, the study explored how students made sense of individually and collectively within an inquiry community -field experiences in relation to coursework, to their own ongoing inquiries, and to their developing identities as teachers. I approached this work from a conceptual framework grounded within three strands: literacy as sociocultural practice; narrative inquiry; and critical feminisms. Data sources included fieldnotes, analytic memos, interview transcripts, and artifact analysis. The research provides insights into how fieldwork is conceptualized as a space of learning within teacher education. During their participation in an inquiry group, and in individual interviews, participants routinely described their goals for fieldwork, their impressions for what was expected of them, and how classroom experiences influenced their perspectives on literacy education, urban education, and teaching more broadly. In particular I analyzed how fieldwork functioned as a space that was both integrated and separated from other spaces of learning in the teacher education program. I critically examined how these narratives were embedded within larger discourses around schooling, teacher education, and school-university partnerships; these stories offer new insights into how fieldwork experiences are integrated into teacher learning, and present a far more complicated image of fieldwork learning than is often reflected in the literature. Furthermore, the collaborative learning within the inquiry group demonstrates the importance of creating spaces for sustained, critical dialogue in connection to field experiences. The study offers new ways of conceptualizing fieldwork that takes into account the inherently relational work of these spaces, highlighting the importance of how fieldwork is integrated and framed within teacher education. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Education First Advisor Vivian L. Gadsden This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1318


There is limited engagement with research based evidence among senior managers within the NHS, and a failure to consistently integrate research findings into the decision making process. While much is known about the decision making and information behaviour of clinical staff and policy makers, there is little knowledge of this for senior non-clinical managers within the NHS. There is also a lack of clarity on how best to facilitate and integrate research evidence into the decision making process and a lack of research regarding the context of non-clinical healthcare managers working in the NHS. This study addresses these shortcomings through in-depth analysis in a case study approach. Data was collected through semi-structured interview, questionnaire and observed scenario work. This data was analysed to increase knowledge and understanding of the current information behaviour and decision making practices of non-medical senior management staff working within the NHS in England. Several key barriers to research utilisation were identified in the analysis of the data. These barriers included insufficient information literacy skills in the cohort, shortcomings with the published research papers, a culture which was focused on achieving politically set targets, and a lack of defined processes to decision making. To address these barriers an embedded librarian and a SharePoint based knowledge management system were implemented and evaluated. Evaluation of these interventions concluded that an embedded librarian was effective in increasing and supporting evidence informed decision making. This provides a practical example of an effective service development which should be considered for implementation across the NHS and wider healthcare community. The study also recommends that, to increase use of their output, researchers need to include more explicit information on the implementation and financial elements of their findings rather than a narrow focus on the intervention outcome. In addition, findings showed the target driven culture of the NHS create an environment that stifles evidence informed decision making. To address this barrier the study recommends that the NHS adopts methods of quality assurance and metrics which place an emphasis on measures of process. This study contributes to theory by exploring the information behaviour of a specific group which have been overlooked in previous research, and contributes new understanding of mechanisms for knowledge translation and interactions between the research based evidence and decision making processes in the context of NHS non-clinical management.


Measurement uncertainty is an indication of the quality of a given measurement and ultimately translates into the confidence with which a decision can be made. In the context of PV, measurement uncertainties propagate into energy yield uncertainty, which in turn culminates into financial risk associated with an investment. This risk increases the cost of a PV installation.
The aim of this thesis is to contribute towards the reduction of PV related measurement uncertainties. This is done in two ways. One is via developing and utilising more comprehensive methodologies for uncertainty propagation of complex measurands. The other is via more detailed estimates of the uncertainty contributors. In particular, the areas addressed in this thesis are the uncertainty estimation of the temperature coefficient measurements of modules; the uncertainty estimation of energy rating and module performance ratio measurements; and the uncertainties due to spectral effects on measurements performed with a flash solar simulator.
The reported deviation in measurements of the temperature coefficients of P_MAX of modules is in the order of ±10% to ±15%. This is larger than the difference in the temperature coefficients of modules of the same type. The first step to improving the deviation between measurements is to estimate the uncertainty in a robust way. It was identified that there was no accepted approach of doing this. These measurements are strongly correlated, which complicates the uncertainty estimates. For the sake of simplicity, previously correlations have been avoided and conservative estimates used instead. In this work, uncertainties in both temperature and power and their correlations are estimated and propagated into the overall temperature coefficient uncertainty. Furthermore, temperature coefficients were calculated via weighing the measurements with their associated uncertainties. This was done for five different measurement setups that represent the majority of setups used worldwide. The approach was validated with measurement intercomparison of two modules measured on all systems. The approach reduced the overall uncertainty by half compared to the previous conservative estimates. It was demonstrated that uncertainties as low as 3% are achievable. The improved uncertainty estimates enabled the identification of a systematic effect due to a class B spectrum. This work culminated in the lowest reported measurement deviation of ±3.2% for module P_MAXtemperature coefficient measurements that was within the stated measurement uncertainties.
The clear benefit of accounting for correlations was extended to measurements at different irradiance conditions and into the calculation of module performance ratio and energy rating. This was done via defining all the correlations between measurements and then propagating them with Monte Carlo simulations. The simulations are done with samples of a multivariate normal distribution with a variance-covariance matrix that corresponds to the estimated measurement correlations. It is demonstrated that both the energy rating and module performance ratio uncertainties strongly depend on the correlation estimates and that they cannot be conservatively overestimated. The module performance ratio uncertainty can be significantly lower than the measurement uncertainty at STC. This is because of the additional knowledge encoded into the selection of the underlying model used for calculating the energy rating. Therefore, the significance of the choice of model in the upcoming standard has been highlighted. It was confirmed that both bilinear interpolation and the proposed climatic datasets could be used for energy rating, but there are some areas that may need further investigation.
An alternative way of improving uncertainty estimates and in turn reducing the associated uncertainty is via a more detailed characterisation of the uncertainty sources. A key uncertainty source is due to spectral effects in flash solar simulators. To better quantify this source, a complementary device was built to monitor the spectrum. The device is based on a matrix of photodiodes with commercially available interference filters situated on top and custom designed data acquisition electronics. This device is used in conjunction with the spectroradiometer to estimate the effects of flash-variation on the spectrum, the spectral temporal stability of the flash and spectral uniformity of the simulator and the attenuation masks used for altering the irradiance levels. It was demonstrated that the spectrum changes significantly during the flash and between flashes. While this effect is partially corrected for via the monitoring cell, it introduces additional uncertainty for non c-Si modules. This uncertainty is minimised by changes in the operational procedures. The spectral non-uniformity of the attenuation masks was shown to be significant, i.e. as large as 4%, in the NIR, prompting further investigation of the additional uncertainty for non c-Si modules.
In this work, the methodology of estimating and propagating correlations in PV related measurements and the benefits of doing so are demonstrated. It is also highlighted that the uncertainty due to spectral effects goes beyond the uncertainty of spectroradiometer measurements. Finally, it is shown how they can be estimated with a complementary spectral monitor.


The field of Information and Communication Technology for Development includes participatory and action research pilots with a research and change agenda. Such ICT4D research does not fit traditional models for evaluating community risk and benefit. Looking at the history of informed consent and international development, uses of informed consent in development scenarios, and at efforts specific to ICTD research, we present how informed consent is currently addressed, as well as the inadequacy of adapting present academic informed consent models to development. Informed consent in ICT4D research provides academic rigor to the field, helps establish a fair, moral and candid relationship with the community to set expectations, and standards for other intervention-based research efforts. We suggest practical recommendations for models that contribute to community involvement and trust, while offering the target community an opportunity to negotiate their level of participation.


The Ontario Green Energy and Green Economy Act (herein the GEA) was passed in May 2009 with the purpose of addressing environmental concerns and promoting economic growth in Ontario. Its centerpiece is a schedule of subsidized electricity purchase contracts called Feed-in-Tariffs (FITs) that provide long-term guarantees of above-market rates for power generated by wind turbine farms, solar panel installations, bio-energy plants and small hydroelectric generators. Development of these power sources was motivated in part by a stated goal of closing the Lambton and Nanticoke coal-fired power plants.This report investigates the effect of the GEA on economic competitiveness in Ontario. It focuses on three questions: (1) Will the GEA materially improve environmental quality in Ontario? (2) Is it a cost-effective plan for accomplishing its goals? (3) Are the economic effects on households and leading economic sectors likely to be positive? The answer to each question is unambiguously negative.It is unlikely the Green Energy Act will yield any environmental improvements other than those that would have happened anyway under policy and technology trends established since the 1970s. Indeed, it is plausible that adding more wind power to the grid will end up increasing overall air emissions from the power generation sector.


The first major twenty-first-century history of four hundred years of black writing, The Cambridge History of African American Literature presents a comprehensive overview of the literary traditions, oral and print, of African-descended peoples in the United States. Expert contributors, drawn from the United States and beyond, emphasize the dual nature of each text discussed as a work of art created by an individual and as a response to unfolding events in American cultural, political, and social history. Unprecedented in scope, sophistication, and accessibility, the volume draws together current scholarship in the field. It also looks ahead to suggest new approaches, new areas of study, and as yet undervalued writers and works. The Cambridge History of African American Literature is a major achievement both as a work of reference and as a compelling narrative and will remain essential reading for scholars and students in years to come.


Since 2007, US coal-fired electricity generation has declined by a stunning 25 percent. Detailed daily unit-level data is used to examine the joint impact of natural gas prices and wind generation on coal-fired generation and emissions, with a focus on the interaction between gas prices and wind. This interaction is found to be significant. Marginal responses of coal-fired generation to natural gas prices (wind) in 2013 were larger, sometimes much larger, than the counterfactual with 2008 wind generation (gas prices). Additionally, these factors jointly account for the vast majority of the observed decline in generation and emissions.


A test facility for closed-loop shallow ground heat exchangers has been implemented in Orleans (France) in 2008. Different configurations have been tested and evaluated, beginning with the traditional horizontal and vertical ground heat exchangers. For five years, a special attention has been given to this test facility to innovative ground heat exchangers with a focus on " compact coil ground heat exchangers " (CGHE). CGHE are ground heat exchangers with a coil spring shape which are installed at a depth between 2 and 10 m. These systems represent an alternative solution to borehole heat exchangers, installed at about 100 m and requiring a drilling machine, and horizontal ground heat exchangers, installed at about 1 m depth and requiring a sufficient land area. The CGHE are installed with a simple backhoe and require less land area than horizontal ground heat exchangers. In order to improve the design and thermal performances of these CGHE, research works have been carried out in the four following axis:-First, different types of CGHE have been tested in order to compare their performances and to propose improvements to the CGHE design.-Second, coupled heat and mass transfers in the vicinity of the heat exchanger pipe have been investigated in a laboratory experiment to better understand soil temperature and moisture content evolution as a function of heat-carrier fluid temperature.-Third, the soil – atmosphere interaction has been characterized by means of a detailed instrumentation in the subsurface soil (temperature and humidity probes) and in the atmosphere (weather data station). Finally, two same geometries of CGHE have been installed in different environmental conditions to improve the installation process by changing the properties of the filling material. This study aims at showing these experiments and results obtained through a pluri-annual research program on these CGHE using a scale 1 test facility. In conclusion, some recommendations will be proposed to better install these particular types of ground heat exchangers.


Behavioral interventions including exercise, stress management, patient education, psychotherapy and multidisciplinary neurorehabilitation in general are receiving increasing recognition in multiple sclerosis (MS) clinical practice and research. Most scientific evaluations of these approaches have focused on psychosocial outcome measures such as quality of life, fatigue or depression. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that neuropsychiatric symptoms of MS are at least partially mediated by biological processes such as inflammation, neuroendocrine dysfunction or regional brain damage. Thus, successful treatment of these symptoms with behavioral approaches could potentially also affect the underlying biology. Rigidly designed scientific studies are needed to explore the potential of such interventions to affect MS pathology and biological pathways linked to psychological and neuropsychiatric symptoms of MS. Such studies need to carefully select outcome measures on the behavioral level that are likely to be influenced by the specific intervention strategy and should include biomarkers with evidence for an association with the outcome parameter in question. In this overview, we illustrate how biological and psychological outcome parameters can be combined to evaluate behavioral interventions. We focus on two areas of interest as potential targets for behavioral interventions: depression and fatigue.


The subject of my paper is one that cannot fail to prove of
interest to this Society, seeing the great importance the goldmining
industry is assuming, and has already assumed, in the
colony of Tasmania.
The advantages to be gained by fostering this industry in the
colony need scarcely be dilated upon by me, as they are so patent
to any one who will take the trouble to examine into the causes
of the vast progress the Eastern colonies of Australia have
made during the past quarter century. The numerous large
towns and villages that dot this portion of the continent
—the majority of them founded upon, or connected in some way
with, the discovery of gold in their immediate neighbourhood—
speak for themselves; and the immense impetus to
trade, commerce, and immigration which it brings about
shows what mining will do for a country, hitherto in a state
of almost primeval solitude. But for this source of wealth,
the major portion of these colonies would still have remained
in a "state of nature"—one huge sheep run, with but a
sparse population and scattered country villages.


This article rethinks capitalism in the context of capitalist globalisation and the consequent scholarly misrepresentation of the essential features of this economic category. By means of an in depth reflection on the specificity of capitalism, the article argues that capitalism means more than the facile definition of it as market economy. It is a mode of production with contradictory dynamics which define its essentiality. The article concludes that beyond a prejudiced interpretation of economic reality by neoliberal thinkers, science can further humanity's appreciation of reality in ways that are redemptive.


Measles is the leading cause of vaccine-preventable deaths among children under 5 years globally, despite the availability of measles vaccines. Despite national and international efforts in the coverage of measles vaccination in Kenya, the cases of measles continue to rise in recent years. Measles vaccination coverage was about 86% as reported in 2010, in Kenya following the 2009 Supplementary Immunization Activities (SIAs). In Nairobi, as of 2012 the measles vaccination coverage was over 100%. Yet in 2012, the number of measles cases was 2462 up to the 5 of November, with 767 cases reported from September to the 3 of October 2012, an indication that the disease infects even the measles vaccinated children. The aim of this study was to evaluate the level of measlesspecific maternal antibodies (mIgG) prior to vaccination in children, at age nine months; immunity induced by measles vaccine in children after initial vaccination; and the immune status of children aged 5 years who had been vaccinated at age 9 months in Nairobi. The study also investigated factors that lead to measles outbreaks in Nairobi. 2ml of blood was collected from 66 children scheduled for vaccination before and two weeks after vaccination. Another 2ml of blood was obtained from 62 children aged 5 years, who visited the child welfare clinic at the Mama Lucy Kibaki Hospital (MLKH) from August to November 2013. Each mother of the enrolled children was asked to voluntarily fill out a structured questionnaire. The blood samples were analyzed for the levels of measles specific IgM and IgG using ELISA. The results showed that 97.0% of the children had lost maternal IgG to measles before vaccination at the age of 9 months. The results also revealed that 77.5% of the children sampled for post-vaccination analysis had measles-specific IgM levels greater than 15 IU/ml, which is considered positive. 88.7% of the children aged 5 years had IgG levels greater than 200 mIU/ml, which is conventionally considered to be immune. This study concluded that maternal measles antibodies are lost before 9 months in most children in Nairobi, Kenya. It is also concluded that the measles vaccine (Schwarz strain) that is administered at 9 months is immunogenic and that the antibodies (IgG) produced by measles vaccination persist up to 5 years after vaccination. It was also noted that mothers who had secondary level education and above, had a better understanding of measles and the importance of vaccination; therefore they were most likely to have their children vaccinated. The age of the mothers had no significance to the vaccination of the children. It is suggested that initial vaccination be given earlier than age nine months. In addition children could be given a booster vaccination at age 12 months in order to cater for the small fraction (3%) whose maternal IgG were detected at 9 months old. Since the present study was conducted in a relatively small population, a further study is recommended in a larger population.


Many have argued that technologies used to protect copyrighted works usually go beyond the letter of the law and subsequently impinge on interests relating to freedom of information and expression, privacy and free choice. Classic examples are technologies that prevent CDs or DVDs from being accessed or copied under certain conditions, or that block or filter-out copyright-protected materials. This article assesses digital text-watermarking, which does not restrict users' access to or use of works, but individualises every user's copy by changing the formatting or words in a text (e.g. "not visible" for "invisible"). Every purchaser/user receives a unique version of the work, meaning that, if there is any illegal upload or usage, it is possible to determine which user the copy came from. The technology thereby allows legal (and illegal) use to be undertaken, but serves as a tool for enforcement when there is illegal use. This article assesses digital text-watermarking from a comparative law perspective, particularly the Civil Law and the Common Law traditions.


We describe 27Al NMR experiments on Ba8AlxGe46-x type-I clathrates coupled with ab initio computational studies. For x=16, calculated spectra determined by the ab initio results gave good agreement with the measurements, with best-fitting configurations also corresponding to the computed lowest-energy atomic arrangements. Analysis of the NMR results showed that a distribution of Knight shifts dominates the central portion of the line. Computational results demonstrate that this stems from the large variation of carrier density on different sites. Al-deficient samples with x=12 and 13 exhibited a split central NMR peak, signaling two main local environments for Al ions, which we connected to the presence of vacancies. Modeling of the wide-line spectrum for x=12 indicates a configuration with more Al on the 24k site than for x=16. The results indicate the importance of nonbonding hybrids adjacent to the vacancies in the electronic structure near EF. We also address the static distortions from Pm-3n symmetry in these structures.


The use of in-source collision-induced dissociation (CID) was evaluated to generate structural information on peptide aldehydes, which represent an important class of compounds as inhibitors for serine and cysteine proteases and as key intermediates for protein engineering. By studying five peptide aldehydes of different lengths, and their peptide acetal counterparts, mass to charge (m/z) dependency of in-source fragmentation was established for peptides that differ only by their C-terminal functionalization. In-source fragmentation of peptide aldehydes and acetals leads to the same final ion, probably via a similar mechanism. Moreover, the gas-phase information obtained here reflects the equilibrium occurring in solution between the peptide aldehyde and its hydrated form, which was retained during the ionization process. The equilibrium constant was determined to be close to unity. Disturbance of this equilibrium should enable the stability of covalent hydration of a given series of aldehydes to be compared.


We argue that the biggest problem with the current Internet architecture is not a particular functional deficiency, but its inability to accommodate innovation. To address this problem we propose a minimal architectural "framework" in which comprehensive architectures can reside. The proposed Framework for Internet Innovation (FII) --- which is derived from the simple observation that network interfaces should be extensible and abstract --- allows for a diversity of architectures to coexist, communicate, and evolve. We demonstrate FII's ability to accommodate diversity and evolution with a detailed examination of how information flows through the architecture and with a skeleton implementation of the relevant interfaces.


A new index is presented that measures the effort levels of national programmes to reduce maternal and neonatal mortality. These indices come from a questionnaire instrument composed of 14 major headings and 81 items. Forty‐nine countries including most of the population in each geographical region are covered. Data were collected from 10 to 25 raters in each country, who rated the 81 items for both the current year and 3 years ago, using a 0–5 scale running from no adequacy to full adequacy. The raters were drawn from a variety of positions and backgrounds, and were identified by a consultant retained in each country for that purpose. On average, country programmes score at about half of the maximum score, but this varies considerably across the 14 components of effort, from very low scores for access to treatment by rural women, to high scores for neonatal care. Regional averages are not far apart for the overall score, although South Asia scores are especially low and East Asia's are especially high. To a considerable extent regions agree in the relative stress they give to each of the 14 components. Over the 3‐year period, average scores rose by about 10%. When countries are divided into three groups by their maternal mortality levels, most of the 14 components distinguish the high from the medium mortality countries; and about half of the components distinguish the medium from the low mortality countries. This new Maternal and Neonatal Programme Effort Index (MNPI) appears to yield useful measures for various dimensions of programme effort, and it relates sensibly to the output measure of maternal mortality, at least as it is currently measured.


This thesis presents the design and realization of two generations of robot elements that can be assembled together to construct amphibious mobile robots. These elements, designed to be individually waterproof and having their own battery, motor controller, and motor, have been used to actually construct a snake, a boxfish and a salamander robot. Central pattern generator (CPG) models inspired from those found in vertebrates have been used for online trajectory generation on these robots and implemented on their onboard locomotion controllers. CPGs proved to be an interesting way of controlling complex robots, providing a simple interface which hides the complexity of the robot to the end user. Online learning algorithms that can be used to dynamically adapt the locomotion parameters to the environment have been implemented. Finally, this work also shows how robotics can be a useful tool to verify biological hypotheses. For instance, the salamander robot has been used to test a model of CPG for salamander locomotion.


Since 1945, violent conflict has occurred primarily within sovereign states rather than among them. These internal conflicts have far surpassed international conflicts in lethality, economic destruction, and social upheaval. This phenomenon is diverse: no region has avoided civil wars, while the stated aims of rebel groups have ranged widely. Prominent examples include anti-colonial nationalists in Algeria, Mozambique, and Kenya; ethnic separatists in Eritrea and Bosnia; leftists in Latin America and Southeastern Asia; Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria; and income seeking warlords in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Internal conflicts have emerged in rich European countries such as the United Kingdom and Spain, and in the context of state collapse and extreme poverty in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia. Some civil wars have lasted only weeks, while the longest-- in Sudan-- lasted over 40 years.Intense violent conflicts often leave core state institutions debilitated, fragmented, or, in some cases, totally destroyed. For these societies, the central tasks for ending conflict and beginning post-war recovery involve reinvigorating or reestablishing legitimate state authority. These post-war states must both win the acquiescence of the governed and develop the infrastructural power to implement state policy. The risks of conflict relapse are significant: since 1970, 44 of 111 post-war cases (40 percent) relapse into a full-fledged civil war, while 68 of 111 (61 percent) experience at least a low-level conflict. The time for policymakers to mitigate this risk is short: of post-war countries that fall back into civil war, the median time to relapse is just 35.5 months. The immediate post-war environment is therefore particularly critical for determining the political, economic, and social trajectories of conflict-affected countries. The right combination of policies can help determine whether a country recovers quickly and secures any available peace dividend, or whether it relapses and slides into a conflict trap. This dissertation explains how societies that have managed to end their civil wars are able or unable to rebuild political order in the their post-war period.This dissertation focuses on one key policy arena-- perhaps the most critical policy arena-- for post-war societies to address: the security sector. It may sound simplistic or even tautological to claim that the organization, disposition, control, and reform of armed groups are the most important task for a post-war society to undertake. It may seem obvious to stress the importance of the size, competencies, oversight, social embeddedness, and other qualities of the military, the police, the intelligence services, and any remaining armed non-state actors. But such qualities resist easy quantification, and most scholars and practitioners over the past decade have focused on economic performance, political democratization, communal reconciliation, post-conflict justice, and other "soft-power" variables to explain patterns of post-war successes and failures. The following chapters attempt to shift the conversation back to the formation and reformation of security sector actors in war-affected countries.


We build up from the plant level an "aggregate(d)" Solow residual by estimating every U.S. manufacturing plant's contribution to the change in aggregate final demand between 1976 and 1996. Our framework uses the Petrin and Levinsohn (2010) definition of aggregate productivity growth, which aggregates plant-level changes to changes in aggregate final demand in the presence of imperfect competition and other distortions/frictions. We decompose these contributions into plant-level resource reallocations and plant-level technical efficiency changes while allowing in the estimation for 459 different production technologies, one for each 4-digit SIC code. On average we find positive aggregate productivity growth of 2.2% in this sector during this period of declining share in U.S. GDP. We find that aggregate reallocation made a larger contribution to growth than aggregate technical efficiency. Our estimates of the contribution of reallocation range from 1.7% to 2.1% per year, while our estimates of the average contribution of aggregate technical efficiency growth range from 0.2% to 0.6% per year. In terms of cyclicality, the aggregate technical efficiency component has a standard deviation that is roughly 50% to 100% larger than that of aggregate total reallocation, pointing to an important role for technical efficiency in macroeconomic fluctuations. Aggregate reallocation is negative in only 3 of the 20 years of our sample, suggesting that the movement of inputs to more highly valued activities on average plays a stabilizing role in manufacturing growth. Our results have implications for both the theoretical literature on growth and alternative indexes of aggregate productivity growth based only on technical efficiency.


A non-rigid registration algorithm for application to whole-body emission images of the same patient is presented. Rigid registration is generally insufficient to properly register whole-body images, a certain amount of deformation needs to be applied to obtain a good correspondence. This deformation should not change the size or shape of lesions, bones and the general anatomy. In our approach, non-rigid registration is accomplished by a discrete numerical approach based on the maximisation of mutual information, and regularised by a weighted least squares deformation constraint. Maximisation of mutual information I is accomplished by a preconditioned iterative gradient ascend algorithm using an analytically exact expression for the gradient of I with respect to individual pixel displacements. Anatomy is taken in account by parameterising the constraint according to a simple thresholding segmentation so as to allow large deformations in air, small in soft tissue and no deformation in bone or lesion tissue. A pyramidal multi-resolution approach is used to speed up the registration process. The performance of the method was evaluated by registering deformed phantom images, initial tests on 2D whole-body clinical images also show promising results.


Background: Recently, there has been a global demand toward finding new treatments to control the new pandemic of coronavirus (COVID-19). The aim of this systematic review was to study the effects of ozone therapy on COVID-19 patients, as well as reviewing the available supporting evidence. Methods: Electronic databases including MEDLINE (via PubMed), EMBASE, Cochrane Library (CENTRAL), and TRIP, as well as clinical trial registries and preprint sources were searched for published evidence-based articles. In addition, a hand searching was conducted regarding the attained articles published until 6 April 2020 using MeSH and free text keywords with no language limitation. Articles were screened, categorized and extracted for the relative data, which are reported in a descriptive manner. Results: Among 234 articles, 9 were selected to be reviewed for the inclusion criteria. No previously published original articles were found on the efficacy of ozone therapy on COVID-19. Five review studies on the potential role of systemic ozone therapy were found, in which it was concluded that ozone therapy is effective in controlling COVID-19 due to its antiviral, oxygenating, anti-inflammatory, oxidation balancing and immunomodulation effects. Three ongoing clinical trials were registered in China. Moreover, a preliminary report of an ongoing study in Italy on 46 patients (11 intubated and 35 non-intubated) indicated that 39 patients (84%) showed an improvement for the symptoms of the disease. Conclusion: Despite the promising hypothetical background, opinions of the expert arguing about the benefits of this method, and a preliminary report indicating the effectiveness of ozone therapy as a novel treatment option for COVID-19, there is still not enough evidence to prove it.


This paper presents the results of a choice experiment study undertaken to value electricity service attributes in Madhya Pradesh, India. Primary data was collected from 2,083 households using stratified random sampling method. Results show that existing service is very poor and consumers have substantial willingness to pay (WTP) for changing the status quo. Amongs the studied service attributes, hours of supply captures the highest WTP and WTP declines significantly with reduced hours of supply. However, quality, customer service, and accuracy of billing together accounts for 56% of the total WTP. Assessment of WTP with different service attribute combinations show that value of other service attributes become relatively more important when supply is less than 24 hours. Simulations show that uptake rates increase substantially when improved hours of supply is supplemented with other service attributes. Development impact of $1.2 billion worth physical infrastructure investments on Madhya Pradesh power distribution network for 24-hour supply can be significantly enhanced if quality, customer service, transparency, and accuracy of billing are also improved simultaneously.


Migrants from rural Mexico usually move abroad with the idea to return once they have improved their economic situation. Although they do not always go back, Mexican migrants often plan their return before leaving. In any case, the imagined return persists for a long time in their minds. This paper analyzes the ways in which rural migrants from southern Veracruz and western Mexico imagine a better future, a future only made possible by migration. Therefore, these powerful images of a more prosperous tomorrow inspire migrants to move abroad. As an alternative to different perspectives that treat migration basically or exclusively as a demographic or economic phenomenon, I suggest that massive migration is motivated essentially by hope. And it always involves optimistic ideas about the future. From this perspective migrants are conceived with a more human face. Hope and imagination are rooted in migrants' hometowns.


In principle, neither the global environment nor personal health should come down to gambling. In practice, however, both the law of global biodiversity protection and the constitutional debate on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) rest on astoundingly risk-seeking assumptions. Charged with conserving the global biospheric commons, the international community seems eager to place deep, out-of-the-money bets on bioprospecting of rare and endangered species for pharmaceutical gain. The truly desperate state of biodiversity and climate change law has apparently prompted some very rich countries (especially the United States) to behave as if these sources of truly irreparable environmental harm defy meaningful precautions.Within America's own borders, the constitutional law of public health strikes a comparably risk-seeking pose. Although National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius upheld the PPACA as an exercise of the federal government's taxing authority, it reasoned that a directive aimed at uninsured individuals to buy health insurance lay beyond the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce. If Congress may not compel people to buy health insurance, precisely because those individuals believe that they are better off bearing the relatively modest risk of catastrophic illness or injury, Congress may not have constitutional power to compel wage-earners to accept annuities or annuity-like income streams.International environmental law and American health law act perversely precisely because they force life-and-death choices at the very points where emotion overrides reason. These otherwise baffling phenomena manifest different facets of prospect theory, the leading behavioral account of risk aversion and risk-seeking. These two bodies of law provide enough material to cover the entire pinwheel-shaped "fourfold pattern" that defines prospect theory. So spins the law's pinwheel of fortune.


We present an intelligent tutoring framework designed to help students acquire problem-solving skills from pedagogical activities involving worked-out example solutions. Because of individual differences in their meta-cognitive skills, there is great variance in how students learn from examples. Our framework takes into account these individual differences and provides tailored support for the application of two key meta-cognitive skills: self-explanation (i.e., generating explanations to oneself to clarify studied material) and min-analogy (i.e., not relying too heavily on examples during problem solving). We describe the framework's two components. One component explicitly scaffolds self-explanation during example studying with menu-based tools and direct tailored tutorial interventions, including the automatic generation of example solutions at varying degrees of detail. The other component supports both self-explanation and min-analogy during analogical problem solving by relying on subtler scaffolding, including a highly innovative example selection mechanism. We conclude by reporting results from an empirical evaluation of the former component, showing that it facilitates cognitive skill acquisition when students access it at the appropriate learning stage.


The Genocide Convention, drafted by the United Nations soon after the Nuremberg trials, represented a significant step toward the establishment of a regime of individual accountability for violations of international law. The Convention compels its signatories to prevent and punish certain enumerated acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, religious, or racial group. Even though the Khmer Rouge era is widely considered a paradigmatic case of genocide, this article takes as its premise that much of the violence in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge era (1975-78), in which almost a fifth of the population was executed or killed by being worked or starved to death, may not constitute genocide according to the strict definition of the offence contained in the Convention. This is because the Genocide Convention, unlike other international legal instruments, limits the protected classes to national, ethnic, racial, and religious groups. As such, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) may rule that the definition of genocide does not cover a significant portion of the deaths in Cambodia. This example illustrates a critical shortfall of the Genocide Convention.After protracted debate, the drafters of the Genocide Convention expressly excluded "political groups" from Article II. An examination of the travaux preparatoires of the Convention reveals the compromises - born of politics and the desire to insulate political leaders from scrutiny and liability - that can occur when political bodies attempt to reduce customary law principles to positivistic expression. The exclusion of political groups from the Genocide Convention represents one such compromise. This Article argues that no legal principle can justify this blind spot. The Article also suggests that the Genocide Convention may not be the sole authority on the crime of genocide. Rather, a higher law exists: The prohibition of genocide represents the paradigmatic jus cogens norm, a customary and peremptory norm of international law from which no derogation is permitted. The jus cogens prohibition of genocide, as expressed in a variety of sources, may be broader than the Convention's prohibition, as has been demonstrated with respect to the jurisdictional principles applied to acts of genocide. Notwithstanding that the framers of the Genocide Convention attempted to limit the prohibition of genocide by deliberately excluding political groups from Article II, this provision is without legal force to the extent that it is inconsistent with the jus cogens prohibition of genocide. Therefore, when faced with mass killings evidencing the intent to eradicate political groups in whole or in part, domestic and international adjudicatory bodies should apply the jus cogens prohibition of genocide and invoke the Genocide Convention vis-a-vis signatories only insofar as it provides practical procedures for enforcement and ratification. As an overarching theme, this Article discusses the multiplicity of sources in international law and they way in which treaty and customary law rules diverge and interact over time.


Orgaran (danaparoid sodium injection) is a novel antithrombotic agent. Early studies suggest that this compound may be beneficial in preventing deep vein thrombosis in predisposed patients. This multicenter, randomized, assessor blinded, clinical trial compared subcutaneous danaparoid with warfarin for the prevention of deep vein thrombosis in patients undergoing hip replacement surgery. Bilateral venography was used to detect thrombi. Patients also underwent follow-up examinations 1, 2, and 3 months after discontinuation of the study to determine the after effects of treatment. Nearly 27% of patients who received warfarin and 14.6% of patients who received danaparoid developed deep vein thrombosis, a risk reduction of 46%. The absolute difference in the incidence of deep vein thrombosis was 12.3% in favor of danaparoid. The incidence of venographically documented proximal deep vein thrombosis was 1.5% for danaparoid and 4.1% for warfarin. These results demonstrate that danaparoid is more effective than warfarin in preventing deep vein thrombosis following hip replacement surgery. The preoperative administration of danaparoid does not increase surgical blood loss compared with warfarin.


Fossiliferous strata in the Meade Basin (southwest Kansas) preserve numerous superposed mammalian faunas and calcareous paleosols that range in age from the Clarendonian North American Land Mammal Age (NALMA; 12.0–9.0 Ma, early late Miocene) to the early Irvingtonian NALMA (ca. 2.5–ca. 1.0 Ma, early Pleistocene). Faunas from these sections document the evolution of the small mammal community of the modern grassland ecosystem of the region, and the stable isotope composition of paleosol carbonates provides a means by which the environmental context of the evolution of the modern ecosystem may be documented. We used the stable carbon isotope composition (δ 13 C relative to Vienna Peedee belemnite [VPDB]) of 194 pedogenic carbonates from 19 measured sections to reconstruct the history of C 4 grass abundance in the Meade Basin. Paleosol carbonate δ 13 C values reflect the proportion of C 3 (trees, shrubs, cool-climate grasses) and C 4 (warm-climate grasses) plants that grew in an ancient soil and provide a means with which to reconstruct past mammalian habitats. Paleosol carbonate δ 13 C values record a three-phase increase in the abundance of C 4 biomass during the Neogene in the Meade Basin. Late Miocene sections have mean δ 13 C values of −7.6‰ ± 0.90‰ (Clarendonian) and −6.5‰ ± 0.31‰ (Hemphillian NALMA, 9.0–4.9 Ma), consistent with 17% and 26% C 4 biomass, respectively. Miocene δ 13 C values from Meade are statistically identical to published δ 13 C values for Miocene paleosol carbonates elsewhere in the southern Great Plains, supporting the widespread presence of ∼20% C 4 biomass on average in the region throughout the Miocene. The abundance of C 4 biomass increased between the end of the Hemphillian section and the beginning of the early Blancan NALMA (5.0–3.0 Ma). Early and middle Blancan (3.0–2.5 Ma) carbonates have statistically identical δ 13 C values (−4.9‰ ± 0.90‰ and −5.0‰ ± 1.10‰, respectively), suggesting a stable ecosystem during the early Pliocene, although high δ 13 C variability in densely sampled intervals suggests a high degree of landscape-scale variation in C 4 abundance. The final phase, geochronologically controlled by two well-characterized ashes (Huckleberry Ridge, 2.10 Ma; Cerro Toledo B, 1.47–1.23 Ma) and magnetostratigraphy, is a trend to higher δ 13 C values from the late Blancan to early Irvingtonian (ca. 2.5–ca 1.0 Ma) from −4‰ at the base of the section to ∼1‰ at the top, corresponding to an increase from almost 50% to 65% C 4 biomass. The abundance of C 4 biomass first reaches modern levels for the region (78% ± 10.9%) around the level of the Cerro Toledo B ash, indicating that a modern-like grassland ecosystem first appeared in the region ca. 1.3 Ma, although δ 13 C values do not remain consistently high through the rest of the section.


The life cycle The biopsychosocial model. Pregnancy and childbirth. Reproductive issues. Development in early infancy. Childhood and child health. Adolescence. Adulthood and middle age. Social aspects of ageing. Bereavement. Development of the person Personality and health. Understanding learning. Perception. Emotions. Memory problems. How does sexuality develop? Intelligence. Development of thinking. Society and health Understanding groups. Concepts of health, illness and disease. Measuring health and illness. Changing patterns of health and illness. Social class and health. Gender and health. Ethnicity and health. Quality of life. Media and health. Housing, homelessness and health. Work and health. Unemployment and health. Labelling and stigma. Preventing illness and promoting health Perceptions of risk and risk-taking behaviours. What is prevention? What are the objectives of health promotion? Health screening. The social implications of the new genetics. Health beliefs, motivation and behaviour. Changing cognitions and behaviour. Helping people act on their intentions. The social context of behavioural change. Illegal drug use. Alcohol use. Smoking, tobacco control and doctors. Eating, body shape and health. Illness behaviour and the doctor-patient encounter Deciding to consult. Seeing the doctor. Placebo and nocebo effects. Patient adherence. Communication skills. Breaking bad news. Self-care and the popular sector. The experience of hospitals. Psychological preparation for surgery. Illness and disability Heart disease. HIV/AIDS. Cancer. Anxiety. Depression. Inflammatory bowel disease. Physical disability. Learning disability. Post-traumatic stress disorder. Diabetes mellitus. Stress and health. Asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Death and dying. Coping with illness and disability What counselling is. How counselling works. Adaptation, coping and control. Cognitive-behavioural therapy. Role of carers. Self-help groups. Palliative care. Complementary therapies. The Management of pain. How do health services work? Organizing and funding health care. Assessing needs. Setting priorities and rationing. Community care. Health: a global perspective. Health: a rural perspective. How do you fit into all this Medical students' experience. Life as a trainee doctor. The profession of medicine.


One of antiquity's greatest poets, Euripides has been prized in every age for the pathos, terror and intellectual probing of his dramatic creations. This volume completes the new six-volume Loeb Classical Library edition of his plays. In "Bacchae", a masterpiece of tragic drama, Euripides tells the story of king Pentheus' resistance to the worship of Dionysus and his horrific punishment. "Iphigenia at Aulis" recounts the sacrifice of Agamemnon's daughter to Artemis, the price exacted by the goddess for favourable sailing winds. "Rhesus" (probably not by Euripides) dramatizes a pivotal incident in the Trojan War. David Kovacs presents a faithful and skilfully worded translation of the three plays, facing a freshly edited Greek text.


In this profile of Rasmea Odeh, JPS examines the case of a Palestinian woman who has been incarcerated in both Israel and the United States. After a decade of confinement in Israel, Odeh was freed in a prisoner exchange in 1979. Following deportation from the occupied Palestinian territories, she became a noted social justice and women9s rights organizer, first in Lebanon and Jordan, and later in the U.S., where she built the now over 800-strong Arab Women9s Committee of Chicago. In April 2017, Odeh accepted a plea bargain that would lead to her deportation from the United States after a years-long legal battle to overturn a devastating conviction on charges of immigration fraud. Observers, legal experts, and supporters consider the case to "reek of political payback," in the words of longtime Palestine solidarity activist, author, and academic Angela Davis. Odeh9s generosity of spirit, biting wit, and easy smile did not desert her throughout the years that she fought her case. To know Odeh is to be reminded that the work of organizing for social justice is about the collective rather than the individual, and that engagement, relationship building, and trust are the foundations of such work.


Multilingualism or using multiple languages by either an individual or a speech community is a unique and commonplace achievement for most of the world's population. The role of L1 on the acquisition of L2 has a long well-documented history. In addition, research from L3 acquisition critically informs current debates concerning the need to investigate the true architecture of multilingualism. The main question is posed as if after a certain level of proficiency is achieved does L1 maintain its privileged role on the acquisition of the subsequent languages or is it possible that language learning is a cumulative process? Several hypotheses are, so far, proposed to account for the role of transfer during multilingual development. The scholars, pondering on what constitute the nature of multilingualism, have approached the acquisition of L3 form the linguistic trend of transfer; however, their proposals are contrasting and seemingly incompatible. This study was an attempt to give a less contaminated picture of the various perspectives towards the interplay amongst the languages during multilingual acquisition, views on the notion of transfer, L3 acquisition hypotheses and synthesis and analysis of studies by erudite researchers in the field. To achieve this, 23 research articles conducted on the effects of bilingualism on L3 acquisition from the perspective of cross-linguistic influence were reviewed meticulously. The end result is a holistic picture of multilingualism. It means to be practical aims at those who are involved in the field of additional language acquisition and has pedagogical implications as far as language learners and practitioners are concerned.


How do ethnicity and notions of a traditional homeland interact in shaping a community's values and images? As Alexander C. Diener shows in One Homeland or Two?, the answer, even in a diaspora, is far from a simple harking back to the "old country." Diener's research focuses on the complex case of the Kazakhs of Mongolia. Pushed out of the Soviet Union, then courted by the leaders of a new post-Soviet nation-the first-ever country named after them-and facing a newly urbanized, somewhat Russianized, and culturally Sovietized homeland, Mongolia's Kazakhs have had to figure out whether they can be better Kazakhs in Kazakhstan or in Mongolia, and then how much they identify as Kazakhstanis and how much as Mongolians. Diener brings a battery of social science methodology to bear on this, especially intensive fieldwork in both Kazakhstan and Mongolia. In the end, he illustrates the complexity and dynamism of this multigenerational, diasporic community, while demonstrating that the link between identity and place, despite the effects of globalization, is far from eroding.


This study explores a new nanocomposite to produce a cotton fabric with superior self-cleaning and antibacterialproperties. The platinum loaded nano titanium dioxide (nanocomposite) has been synthesized through wet impregnationusing Pt precursor. The nanocomposite has been applied on cotton fabric and the fabric characteristics such as self-cleaningperformance, antibacterial and UV blocking activities are examined. Field emission scanning electron microscopy, energydispersiveX-ray spectroscopy and X-ray mapping are utilized to characterize the surface morphology and elementalanalysis of the treated cotton fabrics. The chemical composition of the nanocomposite has been investigated using X-rayphotoelectron spectroscopy and crystallinity of coatings by X-ray diffraction spectroscopy. Whiteness index, tensilestrength, flexibility and wettability of treated fabrics are also assessed. Results show that the photocatalytic self-cleaningperformance of the cotton treated with TiO2/Pt nanocomposite is superior to the cotton treated with nano-titanium dioxidealone. Also, adding platinum to nano-TiO2 shows the most promising antibacterial activities against both Staphylococcusaureus and Escherichia coli bacteria.


Objective: Immunoglobulin (Ig) A deficiency is a common immune system disorder which causes morbidity especially in preschool children. The aim of this study is to evaluate atopy and allergic diseases of cases with IgA deficiency, determinate clinical results before and after four years of age. Materials and Methods: The data records of 295 children with IgA deficiency (272 partial, 23 selective IgA deficiency) between November 2001 and 2007 were examined retrospectively. Results: The mean age at the diagnosis was 64.3 ± 43 (4-204) months, the mean age at the beginning of infection was 29.5 ± 36 (1-168) months. There were 121 patients under the age of four years at the diagnosis time. The clinical presentations were recurrent bronchitis (40%), tonsillitis/ pharyngitis (33%), sinusitis (6%), pneumonia (4%), acute otitis media (2%), acute gastroenteritis (0.3%) and neck abscess (0.3%), respectively. Eosinophilia was present in 25% of patients, increased IgE levels was present in 38% of patients, and they were correlated with each other. Atopy was detected in 31% of patients by spesific IgE and/or skin prick test positivity. Allergic disease prevalance was found as %78 (60% asthma, 15% allergic rhinitis, 8% atopic dermatitis, 6% urticaria, 0.7% allergic conjunctivitis). During the clinical followup IgA levels reached to normal levels at 17 ± 14 months ranged between 3 and 60 months. Three patients with selective IgA deficiency had bronchiectasia. Conclusion: We found that allergic diseases were increased in these patients. Serum IgA level should be tested not only for recurrent infections but also for patients with allergic symptoms.