In this paper, we introduce an open vocabulary model for image hashtag prediction - the task of mapping an image to its accompanying hashtags. Recent work shows that to build an accurate hashtag prediction model, it is necessary to model the user because of the self-expression problem, in which similar image content may be labeled with different tags. To take into account the user behaviour, we propose a new model that extracts a representation of a user based on his/her image history. Our model allows to improve a user representation with new images or add a new user without retraining the model. Because new hashtags appear all the time on social networks, we design an open vocabulary model which can deal with new hashtags without retraining the model. Our model learns a cross-modal embedding between user conditional visual representations and hashtag word representations. Experiments on a subset of the YFCC100M dataset demonstrate the efficacy of our user representation in user conditional hashtag prediction and user retrieval. We further validate the open vocabulary prediction ability of our model.


FSRUs are a game changer providing a lower cost, fast track and flexible alternative to traditional onshore terminals. The first unit entered service in 2005 and today there are 23 FSRU terminals in operation. FSRUs are normally leased and can be viewed as a flexible pipeline supplying gas quickly, cheaply, and on a short term gas contract basis to developing markets. This was recently demonstrated in Egypt with delivery of gas in just 5 months from issue of the tender documents – very different from an onshore terminal which is a sunk cost and typically takes 4-5 years to construct. Many of the current, and planned, FSRU terminals are for the rapidly increasing gas-to-power market where there is no access to existing gas infrastructure. Forecasts indicate that up to 50 floating terminals could be in operation by 2025. This confidence is demonstrated by the owners ordering new vessels at a cost of $250m each on a speculative basis.


This paper analyses the effects of disease and war on the accumulation of human and physical capital. We employ an overlapping-generations frame-work in which young adults, confronted with such hazards and motivated by old-age provision and altruism, make decisions about investments in schooling and reproducible capital. A poverty trap exists for a wide range of stationary war losses and premature adult mortality. If parents are altruistic and their sub-utility function for own consumption is more concave than that for the children's human capital, the only possible steady-state growth path involves full education. Otherwise, steady-state paths with incompletely educated children may exist, some of them stationary ones. We also examine, analytically and with numerical examples, a growing economy's robustness in a stochastic environment. The initial boundary conditions have a strong influence on outcomes in response to a limited sequence of destructive shocks.


The work presented here addresses an important topic in thermal radiation detection when gold-black is used as an absorber. Sought is a model to simulate the absorption of thermal radiation by gold-black. Fractal geometry is created to simulate the topology of gold-black. Then electrical circuits based on the topology are identified that capture the physics of the interaction between the gold-black material and incident electro-magnetic radiation. Parameters of the model are then adjusted so results obtained are comparable to absorption data from the literature. Potential next-generation radiometric instruments will likely involve thermal radiation detectors using gold-black as an absorbing medium. A model that accurately simulates goldblack absorption will be an important tool in their design.


Phelps Dodge Corporation has shaped the landscape of America from the industrial revolution to the information technology revolution. A name synonymous with copper, Phelps Dodge has grown from a cotton and metal trading firm founded in 1834 to its present position as the world's largest publicly traded copper company. Carlos Schwantes has written a sweeping corporate history of Phelps Dodge. Using landscape as an organizing concept to underscore the company's impact and accomplishments, he offers a close look at this corporate giant within the context of American technological and social history. In tracing the progress of Phelps Dodge through its 165-year history, Schwantes takes readers from the streets of Bisbee, Arizona, to the boardrooms of New York and Phoenix in order to examine the impact the company has had on the many landscapes in which it figures so prominently. Considering factors ranging from the environment to labor, he examines how Phelps Dodge has influenced, and has been influenced by, such forces as the global economy, technological innovation, urban growth, and social change. Exhaustively researched and profusely illustrated with over 200 photographs, Vision and Enterprise makes a unique contribution to the history of the United States and the evolution of industry by considering the changing face of labor, the environment, and technology from one dynamic company's point of view.


How do you get a licence if you want to keep a monkey? What can you do if your wife has a lover? How can you see into the future? Where can you go for an exciting but cheap holiday somewhere hot and far away? How can you persuade your girlfriend or boyfriend to marry you? The characters in these six original short plays are looking for answers to these questions. While trying to solve their problems, people get into some very funny situations. Each play gives an amusing view of life today, and there is often an unexpected ending.


The loss of 400,00 lives annually due to preventable, adverse outcomes is believed to be the third leading cause of death in the United States, after heart disease and cancer 1, 2 . The leadership of the University of South Florida, Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation (CAMLS) has heard this concern and developed a national model for improving medical education and patient safety, as well as aggressive and needed healthcare solutions through the use of cutting edge technology, innovation, and simulation. CAMLS' goal is to use technology, simulated environments, and team training to transition medical education from an apprenticeship model to an evidence-based competency model that improves patient outcomes and reduces medical errors. The processes used at CAMLS are reflective of the instructional design process and team training approach used successfully in aviation and the military.


"Two industrial designers, Philippe Carreau and Hubert Pelletier, parented the theory, the despecialization of objects. The despecialization of objects addresses the trivializing and undervaluing of objects (poor human-object relationships) caused by post-industrial overabundance and over-consumption. Despecialization is the process to revert an object's function to a more generic state so that it no longer answers an ultra-specific need, but instead satisfies a broader spectrum of needs. It was revealed that Carreau and Pelletier's approach lacked a definitive generative design process. The thesis redevelops the theoretical framework of the despecialization of objects, tests the process oriented approach through an extensively recorded trial and error design investigation, and produces a final prototype. Due to the narrow focus of the exploration, insufficient data was collected to support that despecialized objects could or could not curb over-consumption, but a noteworthy generative creative process, titled the serendipitous generative approach was developed."--Abstract from author supplied metadata.


Abstract Radial profiles of the space potential are measured at the n/m = 1/1 magnetic island produced by external perturbation coils in the Large Helical Device (LHD). Both the temperature and space potential are flat inside the magnetic island, and the large radial electric field shear appears at the boundary of the magnetic island because the radial electric field is zero inside the magnetic island. However, when the width of the magnetic island becomes large, the space potential profile becomes peaked because of the convective flow along the magnetic flux surface inside the magnetic island around the O point. The appearance of the convective flow suggests that the perpendicular viscosity is significantly reduced inside the magnetic island. The perturbation transport study using the cold-pulse propagation is a useful tool to study the transport inside the magnetic island, where the temperature gradient is zero in the steady state. Inside the magnetic island, the cold-pulse propagates slowly from the boundary toward the center, and radial profiles of the delay time are peaked at the magnetic island. The large delay time (slow pulse propagation) indicates that the thermal diffusivity is even small inside the magnetic island. These experimental results indicate that the heat and momentum transport are significantly improved inside the magnetic island although the temperature and flow gradients are zero due to the lack of heat and momentum fluxes.


A scalable communication architecture enables asynchronous readout of thousands of tactile sensors through a single conductor. The human sense of touch is essential for dexterous tool usage, spatial awareness, and social communication. Equipping intelligent human-like androids and prosthetics with electronic skins—a large array of sensors spatially distributed and capable of rapid somatosensory perception—will enable them to work collaboratively and naturally with humans to manipulate objects in unstructured living environments. Previously reported tactile-sensitive electronic skins largely transmit the tactile information from sensors serially, resulting in readout latency bottlenecks and complex wiring as the number of sensors increases. Here, we introduce the Asynchronously Coded Electronic Skin (ACES)—a neuromimetic architecture that enables simultaneous transmission of thermotactile information while maintaining exceptionally low readout latencies, even with array sizes beyond 10,000 sensors. We demonstrate prototype arrays of up to 240 artificial mechanoreceptors that transmitted events asynchronously at a constant latency of 1 ms while maintaining an ultra-high temporal precision of <60 ns, thus resolving fine spatiotemporal features necessary for rapid tactile perception. Our platform requires only a single electrical conductor for signal propagation, realizing sensor arrays that are dynamically reconfigurable and robust to damage. We anticipate that the ACES platform can be integrated with a wide range of skin-like sensors for artificial intelligence (AI)–enhanced autonomous robots, neuroprosthetics, and neuromorphic computing hardware for dexterous object manipulation and somatosensory perception.


This study aimed to show, based on the literature on the subject, the potential for dispersal and establishment of the chikungunya virus in Brazil. The chikungunya virus, a Togaviridae member of the genus Alphavirus, reached the Americas in 2013 and, the following year, more than a million cases were reported. In Brazil, indigenous transmission was registered in Amapa and Bahia States, even during the period of low rainfall, exposing the whole country to the risk of virus spreading. Brazil is historically infested by Ae. aegypti and Ae. albopictus, also dengue vectors. Chikungunya may spread, and it is important to take measures to prevent the virus from becoming endemic in the country. Adequate care for patients with chikungunya fever requires training general practitioners, rheumatologists, nurses, and experts in laboratory diagnosis. Up to November 2014, more than 1,000 cases of the virus were reported in Brazil. There is a need for experimental studies in animal models to understand the dynamics of infection and the pathogenesis as well as to identify pathophysiological mechanisms that may contribute to identifying effective drugs against the virus. Clinical trials are needed to identify the causal relationship between the virus and serious injuries observed in different organs and joints. In the absence of vaccines or effective drugs against the virus, currently the only way to prevent the disease is vector control, which will also reduce the number of cases of dengue fever.


"A chameleon so tiny it can fit on your thumbnail? A spider named after David Bowie? A fungus that turns ants into zombies? What on Earth? " "What on Earth?" is a compendium of the 100 coolest, weirdest, and most intriguing new species of this century as determined by the International Institute for Species Exploration. From animals to plants, fossils to bacteria, "What on Earth?" is an accessible, informative, and offbeat look at the creatures that also call our planet home, including: - A dangerous cobra that can spit its venom almost ten feet - A miniscule orchid that is less than a half-inch wide - A rainforest mushroom named after the cartoon character Spongebob Squarepants - A beautiful seahorse that changes colors to protect itself from predators - A stick insect that is as long as a man's arm Featuring visually striking images alongside surprising facts about each new species, "What on Earth? "is a testament to the incredible and ever-evolving diversity of our planet.


In February 2020, when many parts of world were taking unprecedented
measures to try to control the spread of the SARS CoV-2 coronavirus,
INGSA turned to its global community for help to understand the evolving
 situation. As always, INGSA is especially interested in the evidence
that lies behind the various policy decisions, and the pathways from
evidence-to-policy.
Together with academic partners at the University of Auckland and the University of Sheffield, in collaboration with our IDRC-funded regional chapters, and with seed funding by the Fonds to de Recherche du Quebec and the World Universities Network, the INGSA executive and secretariat devised a mixed methods research project to examine the formulation of policy responses to the pandemic.
Phase 1 of this project comprised 'citizen'-social-science that
harness the enthusiasm, expertise and local knowledge of over 100
volunteer rapporteurs from across the INGSA network globally. With their
 help and commitment, we launched the INGSA Evidence-to-Policy Tracker. Volunteers used an online data-entry form to log information about the
evidence and decision-making dynamics behind their countries' key Covid
policy responses.
The aim of this study is not to compare and assess the success of
these interventions, but rather to compare the various ways in which
evidence has been marshalled and applied. While there are now many
useful trackers, INGSA uniquely complements these Covid policy trackers by
 seeking to unpack the formulation of evidence rather than to take it
for granted, and to examine the evidence-to-policy pathways through this
 kind of tool.


The crustal architecture of the Western Iberian Margin is investigated so that the relationship between synrift intra-plate segmentation, magmatic events and subsequent margin convergence can be discussed in the context of the evolution of the Central–North Atlantic Ocean. The evidence in this paper indicates distinct crustal architectures for NW Iberia (lower-plate) and SW Iberia (upper-plate), as shown by (1) the different geometries of the rotated tilt-blocks across thinned continental crust, (2) the distinct dips of deep crustal detachments and (3) the presence of first-order strike-slip zones bounding different crustal segments. We demonstrate that a switch in the dip direction of the crustal detachment is accomplished by accommodating persistent transcurrent deformation along first-order transfer zones and associated uplifted hinges, both of which accommodated synrift displacement and post-rift margin inversion. This alternating architecture explains why recurrent magmatism is conspicuously located on the upper-plate margin, which we consider to have favoured, in discrete pulses, the emplacement of magma. Finally, the crustal detachment underlying the upper-plate is interpreted to have been reactivated since the Eocene as the weak zone accommodating ocean–continent convergence and the putative onset of margin subduction. Supplementary material: Summary of the three main magmatic events on the onshore and offshore West Iberia and their associated occurrences, location and magmatism type, in relation with the syn- to post-rift evolution of the margin are available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.3591209


We propose a model-based lifelong reinforcement-learning approach that estimates a hierarchical Bayesian posterior distilling the common structure shared across different tasks. The learned posterior combined with a sample-based Bayesian exploration procedure increases the sample efficiency of learning across a family of related tasks. We first derive an analysis of the relationship between the sample complexity and the initialization quality of the posterior in the finite MDP setting. We next scale the approach to continuous-state domains by introducing a Variational Bayesian Lifelong Reinforcement Learning algorithm that can be combined with recent model-based deep RL methods, and that exhibits backward transfer. Experimental results on several challenging domains show that our algorithms achieve both better forward and backward transfer performance than state-of-the-art lifelong RL methods.


In this paper, I test the effects of religious norms on the provision of public goods. My evidence is drawn from public goods experiments that I ran with regional bureaucrats in Tomsk and Novosibirsk, Russia. I introduce three treatments, which I define as degrees of Eastern Orthodox collectivist enforcement: 1. Solidarity, 2. Obedience, and 3. Universal discipline. I argue for the existence of an Eastern Orthodox hierarchy in the Russian bureaucracy that facilitates the delivery of public goods under conditions of universal discipline and the principal´s overfulfillment. Eastern Orthodox hierarchy is enforced through universal disciplinary monitoring, which induces collective punishment when the public good is not delivered. Contrary to conventional wisdom about freeriding in administrative institutions, higher ranks in Russian bureaucracies are associated with less freeriding.


The methods for quantitatively estimating ground-water discharge to the Baltic Sea and the possibilities of applying these methods to investigations of the role of ground water in the water and salt balances of the Baltic Sea are discussed. The combined hydrological and hydrogeological method, the hydrodynamic method, and the method of the average long-term water balance of recharge areas are recommended for general quantitative estimation of ground-water discharge to the sea. Data on the ground-water discharge to the Baltic Sea from the zone of intensive circulation (relatively shallow aquifers) within the U.S.S.R. are presented. Certain conclusions are drawn, and objectives of future investigations are mentioned.


Specific forms for both the Gibb's and the complementary dissipation potentials were chosen such that a complete potential based multiaxial, isothermal, viscoplastic model was obtained. This model, in general, possesses three internal state variables (two scalars associated with dislocation density and one tensor associated with dislocation motion) both thermal and dynamic recovery mechanisms, and nonlinear kinematic hardening. This general model, although possessing associated flow and evolutionary laws, is shown to emulate three distinct classes of theories found in the literature, by modification of the driving threshold function F. A parametric study was performed on a specialized nondimensional multiaxial form containing only a single tensorial internal state variable (i.e., internal stress). The study was conducted with the idea of examining the impact of including a strain-induced recovery mechanism and the compliance operator, derived from the Gibb's potential, on the uniaxial and multiaxial response. One important finding was that inclusion of strain-induced recovery provided the needed flexibility in modeling stress-strain and creep response of metals at low homologous temperatures, without adversely affecting the high temperature response. Furthermore, for nonproportional loading paths, the inclusion of the compliance operator had a significant influence on the multiaxial response, but had no influence on either uniaxial or proportional load histories.


This thesis presents techniques for the modelling of musical signals, with particular regard to monophonic and polyphonic pitch estimation. Musical signals are modelled as a set of notes, each comprising of a set of harmonically-related sinusoids. An hierarchical model is presented that is very general and applicable to any signal that can be decomposed as the sum of basis functions. Parameter estimation is posed within a Bayesian framework, allowing for the incorporation of prior information about model parameters. The resulting posterior distribution is of variable dimension and so reversible jump MCMC simulation techniques are employed for the parameter estimation task. The extension of the model to time-varying signals with high posterior correlations between model parameters is described. The parameters and hyperparameters of several frames of data are estimated jointly to achieve a more robust detection. A general model for the description of time-varying homogeneous and heterogeneous multiple component signals is developed, and then applied to the analysis of musical signals. The importance of high level musical and perceptual psychological knowledge in the formulation of the model is highlighted, and attention is drawn to the limitation of pure signal processing techniques for dealing with musical signals. Gestalt psychological grouping principles motivate the hierarchical signal model, and component identifiability is considered in terms of perceptual streaming where each component establishes its own context. A major emphasis of this thesis is the practical application of MCMC techniques, which are generally deemed to be too slow for many applications. Through the design of efficient transition kernels highly optimised for harmonic models, and by careful choice of assumptions and approximations, implementations approaching the order of realtime are viable.


The new novel from the author of The Glass Palace, the widely-acclaimed bestseller. The Hungry Tide is a rich, exotic saga set in Calcutta and in the vast archipelago of islands in the Bay of Bengal. An Indian myth says that when the river Ganges first descended from the heavens, the force of the cascade was so great that the earth would have been destroyed if it had not been for the god Shiva, who tamed the torrent by catching it in his dreadlocks. It is only when the Ganges approaches the Bay of Bengal that it frees itself and separates into thousands of wandering strands. The result is the Sundarbans, an immense stretch of mangrove forest, a half-drowned land where the waters of the Himalayas merge with the incoming tides of the sea. It is this vast archipelago of islands that provides the setting for Amitav Ghosh's new novel. In the Sundarbans the tides reach more than 100 miles inland and every day thousands of hectares of forest disappear only to re-emerge hours later. Dense as the mangrove forests are, from a human point of view it is only a little less barren than a desert. There is a terrible, vengeful beauty here, a place teeming with crocodiles, snakes, sharks and man-eating tigers. This is the only place on earth where man is more often prey than predator. And it is into this terrain that an eccentric, wealthy Scotsman named Daniel Hamilton tried to create a utopian society, of all races and religions, and conquer the might of the Sundarbans. In January 2001, a small ship arrives to conduct an ecological survey of this vast but little-known environment, and the scientists on board begin to trace the journeys of the descendants of this society.


Assuring the safety of cosmetics and personal care products without testing in animals has long been the goal of many international companies. This concern has become even more important with the requirement of the Seventh Amendment to the Cosmetics Directive that after 2009 animal testing cannot be used to assess the eye or skin irritation potential of either cosmetics formulations or ingredients. To address this problem, the Alberto-Culver Company has developed a program to support the ocular safety evaluation of certain hair conditioners. This program relies on the results of a topical application of formulations to the surface of a three-dimensional, human cell-derived model of the corneal epithelium (EpiOcular, MatTek Corp., Ashland, MA, USA) and monitoring time to toxicity (ET50; MTT activity reduced to 50% of the control condition). Twenty-eight different formulations primarily based on either single or dual quaternary ammonium compound (quats) systems utilizing various combinations of seven different quats have been evaluated in the model. Potential safety of the materials was assessed by comparison to a benchmark material having a well established safety profile in commerce. Twenty-seven of the materials, including the benchmark, had ET50 values of 24 hours or greater, indicating that they were quite mild. The effectiveness of the system has been assessed by comparing the in vitro results with consumer experience information.


The well-known Phillips curve describes inflation as a persistent process that depends on public expectations of future inflation and economic slack, a measure of how stretched the economy?s resources are. The role of each component has changed over time. In particular, maintaining the public?s expectations that the Federal Reserve is committed to an inflation target of 2% has grown in importance over the slack component, in part because realigning expectations is costly to undo. Such considerations are important as the Federal Reserve evaluates its future policy options.


This research presents a virtual reality simulator for total hip replacement surgery. The simulator supports a library of 3D hip stem models for different sizes and manufacturers. The 3D hip stems can be adjusted in size and shape by parametric software and sent for 3D printing. Biocompatible materials such as titanium enable the 3D printed stems to be directly implanted on patients.Currently surgical simulation for orthopaedic procedures is not as advanced as other surgical disciplines. As a result there are only limited training simulators available for orthopaedic surgery such as total hip replacement, hip resurfacing or knee replacement. This is demanding since 66,000 hip replacements are performed annually in the UK.One area which is neglected in VR orthopaedic simulation is the digital library generation of implants. Currently orthopaedic surgeons have limited choice in terms of an exact identification of implant specific to patient requirements. We conducted a literature review of orthopaedic training simulators which found no simulators catering for this [9].Orthopaedic surgeons generally have a positive opinion for the use of virtual reality (VR) training systems. A survey amongst all orthopaedic surgeons in New Zealand found that 77% of qualified surgeons believe simulation is effective for practicing and learning surgical procedures [1]. A separate review from the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) showed that over 80% agreed that surgical skills simulations should become a required part of orthopaedic training, based on views from 185 program directors and 4549 residents. There was a strong agreement that simulation technology should be a required component of orthopaedic resident training [2].The hip replacement procedure has been considered as the most successful and influential orthopaedic surgery of the twentieth century. Currently over 66,000 total hip replacements (THR) are performed each year in England and Wales by the National Health Service (NHS) and around 75,000 hip fractures are treated each year in the UK. Knee arthroscopy has increased 49% from 1996–2006 and now over 1 million are performed each year [3].Each year there are an increasing number of orthopaedic procedures due to the aging population. Currently 247,000 hip fractures occur yearly in the United States, with the majority occurring in the population over 45 years old [4]. The incidence of hip fracture is also on the rise, partly due to the aging population, with over half a million hip fractures annually expected by 2040. The cost of these fractures is also expected to rise from $7 billion per year [4], to nearly $16 billion per year by 2040 [5]. Each hip fracture is estimated at costing between $39,555 and $40,600 in the first year after surgery [6]. Hip fractures have the highest cost of any orthopaedic procedure after surgery, and also incur $11,241 each year following surgery in extra health costs. Due to increased life expectancy, worldwide by 2050, it is projected that 6.26 million hip fractures will occur annually [7].A paradigm shift is underway toward use of surgical training simulations [8]. The conventional master-apprentice learning model for surgical training of 'see one, do one, teach one' has recently been seen as inefficient. Due to orthopaedics being heavily dependent on technical skill, orthopaedic VR simulation holds potential to have great impact for improving surgical skill. The transition to VR simulation is relatively new compared to cadaver training which has been the gold standard for several centuries.Copyright © 2017 by ASME


Introduction The Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice (CRPP) is housed within the National Institute of Education in Singapore. The Centre brings together researchers, educators and administrators for research and development of new and innovative ways of teaching and learning. The Centre's key research goal is to redesign pedagogy in order to enhance instructional practices which in turn will help students face the challenges of the global economies. With these objectives in mind, the Centre provides evidence as the basis for future educational policy and decision making in Singapore. As part of its efforts to provide reports, the centre launched its web-based knowledge portal in August 2003, called the CRPP knowledge portal. This portal was designed to create and share research based information amongst its distributed teams of academics, researchers and school collaborators. It is based upon a business model concept--a website serving as the gateway access point to data and applications. An elemental goal of the portal development was to create a central repository that could capture, store, and disseminate the empirical findings and intellectual input of its various stakeholders. The conceptual design of the portal was done by an instructional design team, supported in its efforts by the management staff of the Centre. The portal was developed by a third party vendor. The conceptual design of the portal was based upon the heuristics of a functional framework that intended to: a) Capture and document the knowledge generated from the Centre's more than 60 research projects. b) Systematically organize and make accessible the different projects' proposals, its cases for support, research designs, findings and pedagogical implications. c) Share and dispense other relevant information that is collectively for and by the teams. Building upon this foundational knowledge management structure, the portal also has an open discussion forum where both CRPP's working staff and invited members of the public could participate in contributing ideas of mutual concern that have an impact upon the educational fraternity. Each research project has its own private collaborative work space with controlled access where team members could upload working documents, share content within these documents with fellow team members, solicit constructive feedback in improving content and ultimately have the documents assessed by project investigators or managers to ascertain if the documents can be published in the public domain for public consumption. Within each of these project workspaces, discussions forums were embedded to engender a communicative milieu, one that promotes dialogue on project updates and progress between team members who due to their busy schedules might otherwise not have sufficient time for face-to-face interactions. An additional service provided in the portal was a listing of the profiles, biographies, publications and contact details of CRPP's working staff. Yet another section in the portal disseminates information on upcoming events such as workshops and conferences hosted by CRPP. This information is vital for the general teaching community in keeping abreast of recent research developments in the education field. There is also a section that advertises career opportunities within CRPP and this can be viewed by the general public as well. The large database of information hosted by the portal is searchable using a basic search function that allows users to easily retrieve required information. While the portal was designed so that key stakeholders could put their reports and public information directly on the publicly accessed website, the concern for data security resulted in the individual decision making facility was turned off and only the IT administrative staff could post to the public site. As a result of the overarching concern for maintaining the accuracy and appropriateness of content posted on the public CRPP portal, the initial design was modified and the portal's locus of control became largely concentrated in the hands of the small administrative IT team. …


This book examines questions such as: does economic growth contribute to wellbeing? How different is income to wellbeing? How do we measure societal wellbeing and take its distribution into account? Summary Australia continues to be at the forefront of international work on measuring and promoting wellbeing, Ian Castles being a significant contributor over the last forty years as an official and academic. This book combines a selection of Castles' important work with contemporary research from a range of contributors. The material is in four parts: 1. The role of economics in defining and promoting wellbeing 2. Measuring real income and wellbeing 3. Measuring inequality 4. Climate change and the limits to growth. The issues canvassed are both long-standing and current. Does economic growth contribute to wellbeing? How different is income to wellbeing? How do we measure societal wellbeing and take its distribution into account? The book will be of value to all those looking to informed debate on global challenges such as reducing poverty, sustaining the environment and advancing the quality of life, including politicians, commentators, officials and academics.


Purpose

Drawing on qualitative fieldwork on a remote outer island in Fiji, this paper aims to address a shortcoming in the literature on climate adaptation in the Pacific. Internationally community-based adaptation (CBA) is recognised as a promising approach to help vulnerable populations adjust to climate change. However, with pilot projects in their infancy documented experience for Pacific Islands remains scarce. This limits the ability of the region – faced with persisting development challenges and predicted significant climate impacts – to learn from and build on previous experiences and develop robust responses to climate change.

Design/methodology/approach

By using a community-based initiative in response to environmental challenges and unsustainable development as a proxy, the paper interrogates the potential usefulness of the CBA framework for the Pacific and identifies potential strengths and weaknesses. Sketching out the process and its outcomes, it shows how the initiative has resulted in a diversity of strategies, ranging from pollution control measures, to improved governance of resources and community participation in decision making, to livelihood and income diversification.

Findings

Findings indicate that CBA could have a lot of potential for building more resilient communities in the face of climate change and other pressures associated with modernising Pacific societies. However, to be effective, interventions should pay attention to people's development aspirations; immediate economic, social and environmental benefits; dynamics of village governance, social rules and protocols; and traditional forms of knowledge that can inform sustainable solutions.

Originality/value

The conclusions provide a reflection on the CBA framework in general and make concrete suggestions for practitioners on how the framework could be usefully implemented in the Pacific context.


The islands of the Pacific region hold three of the 35 global biodiversity hotspots with large numbers of endemic species. Global climate change will exacerbate the challenges faced by the biodiversity of this region. In this review, we identify trends in characteristics for 305 terrestrial species threatened by climate change and severe weather according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN). We then review the literature on observed and potential impacts of climate change on terrestrial biodiversity, focusing on the species' characteristics that were identified. High-elevation ecosystems such as cloud montane forests are projected to disappear entirely by the year 2100, with corresponding global losses of their endemic biodiversity. Sea level rise threatens restricted range species on small low-lying atolls. Shifts in distribution may be possible for generalist species, but range shifts will be difficult for species with small distributions, specialized habitat requirements, slow dispersal rates, and species at high elevations. Accurate assessments of climate change impacts on biodiversity of the region are difficult because of confusion about nomenclature, the many species unknown to science, the lack of baseline data on species' ecology and distributions, and lack of fine resolution elevation data for very small islands. Furthermore, synergistic interactions of climate change with other threats like habitat loss and invasive species have not been comprehensively assessed. Addressing these knowledge gaps will be difficult for Pacific island nations due to limited financial resources and expertise.


Industrial control systems have been globally connected to the open computer networks for decentralized management and control purposes. Most of these networked control systems that are not designed with security protection can be vulnerable to network attacks nowadays, so there is a growing demand of efficient and scalable intrusion detection systems (IDS) in the network infrastructure of industrial plants. In this paper, we present a multi-agent IDS architecture that is designed for decentralized intrusion detection and prevention control in large switched networks. An efficient and biologically inspired learning model is proposed for anomaly intrusion detection in the multi-agent IDS. The proposed model called ant colony clustering model (ACCM) improves the existing ant-based clustering approach in searching for near-optimal clustering heuristically, in which meta-heuristics engages the optimization principles in swarm intelligence. In order to alleviate the curse of dimensionality, four unsupervised feature extraction algorithms are applied and evaluated on their effectiveness to enhance the clustering solution. The experimental results on KDD-Cup99 IDS benchmark data demonstrate that applying ACCM with one of the feature extraction algorithms is effective to detect known or unseen intrusion attacks with high detection rate and recognize normal network traffic with low false positive rate


As the state-of-the-art machine learning methods in many fields rely on larger datasets, storing datasets and training models on them become significantly more expensive. This paper proposes a training set synthesis technique for data-efficient learning, called Dataset Condensation, that learns to condense large dataset into a small set of informative synthetic samples for training deep neural networks from scratch. We formulate this goal as a gradient matching problem between the gradients of deep neural network weights that are trained on the original and our synthetic data. We rigorously evaluate its performance in several computer vision benchmarks and demonstrate that it significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art methods1. Finally we explore the use of our method in continual learning and neural architecture search and report promising gains when limited memory and computations are available.


The talk will address several implications resulting from the paradigm of putting the humans in the center of robot design. First, assistance robots are supposed to closely interact with their human user. Therefore they need to be compatible to humans in terms of size and weight, but also regarding velocity and power. They need to be safe and compliant, able to perceive human motions and fast changing environments in real time and to also plan and execute their reactions at human compatible time scales. This poses substantial challenges in terms of hardware and algorithms design, as well as in term of system integration. I will present here the evolvement of DLR robot design and control from compliantly controlled robots with joint torque sensing to intrinsically compliant systems with variable compliance actuation.
Second, putting the human in the center of robot development also means to use robotics research in order to better understand human motion and intelligence in a synthetizing way by using the analytic tools of robotics. I will particularly highlight in this respect the interplay of biomechanics and neuro-control with robot design and advanced robotics control. Humans can also directly benefit from this research through the development of better human-machine interfaces, robotized medical procedures, and prosthetic and rehabilitation devices which will even more reduce the barrier between humans and robots in the future.


Background: Discovering biomarkers is a fundamental step to understand and deal with genetic diseases. Methods using classic Computer Science algorithms have been adapted in order to support processing large biological data sets, aiming to find useful information to understand causing conditions of diseases such as cancer. Results: This paper describes some promising biomarker discovery methods based on several grid architectures. Each technique has some features that make it more suitable for a particular grid architecture. This matching depends on the parallelizing capabilities of the method and the resource availability in each processing/storage node. Conclusion: The study described in this paper analyzed the performance of biomarker discovery methods in different grid architectures. We find that some methods are more suited for certain grid architectures, resulting in significant performance improvement and producing more accurate results.


In his introduction to the The Best American Noir of the Century, James Ellroy writes, "noir is the most scrutinised offshoot of the hard-boiled school of fiction. It's the long drop off the short pier and the wrong man and the wrong woman in perfect misalliance. It's the nightmare of flawed souls with big dreams and the precise how and why of the all-time sure thing that goes bad." Offering the best examples of literary sure things gone bad, this collection ensures that nowhere else can readers find a darker, more thorough distillation of American noir fiction. James Ellroy and Otto Penzler, series editor of the annual The Best American Mystery Stories, mined one hundred years of writing - 1910-2010 - to find this treasure trove of thirty-nine stories. From noir's twenties-era infancy come gems like James M. Cain's "Pastorale," and its post-war heyday boasts giants like Mickey Spillane and Evan Hunter. Packing an undeniable punch, diverse contemporary incarnations include Elmore Leonard, Dennis Lehane, Patricia Highsmith and William Gay, with many page-turners appearing in the last decade.


Curriculum alternatives have been of interest to educators for years. For example, Kilpatrick (1918) contended that students should be actively involved and interested in their own education. One way to increase involvement is through projects. A project should be directed by the teacher in such a manner as to connect it to traditional subject areas (Stockton, 1920). Project-based curricula also should be thoroughly planned so that the curriculum provides a comprehensive education (Stevenson, 1921). It is important that the projects help students interpret knowledge, possibly by exposing them to background information prior to the beginning of a project (McMurry, 1921). Katz and Chard (2000) agreed that a component of a project is to involve children actively seeking information in order to answer questions the children have formulated either alone, or in collaboration with a teacher. Project-based learning should be integrated with systematic instruction (Katz, 1994; Katz & Chard, 2000). Integration of systematic instruction with project-based learning gives children ample opportunity to acquire and apply knowledge and skills (Katz & Chard, 2000). Advocates of the project approach to education suggest that project-based learning has the potential to build intrinsic motivation and provide opportunities to apply skills. Project-based learning can also increase self-esteem, enhance social skills and provide an environment for all children to experience success at some level (Katz, 1994; Wolk, 1994). Direct benefits of children working on projects include increased problem-solving ability as well as, research, communication, and resource-management skills (International Society for Technology in Education, 1997). Student autonomy and interaction in a project-based classroom can lead to increased usage of problem solving skills (Fry & Addington, 1984). One of the key findings of testimonial research about the project approach is that children show a preference for this method of instruction (Liu & Chien, 1998; Wolk, 1994). Interviews with teachers have shown that they too prefer the project approach to traditional methods and observe improvements in motivation and enthusiasm among their students (Beneke, 2000; Liu & Chien, 1998). A study involving project learning in a high school showed an increase in interpreting and critically analyzing information based on subsequent interviews with the students (Peck, Peck, Sentz, & Zasa, 1998). The current study evaluated the effectiveness of a project-based curriculum in a single elementary school. The Ecological, Futures, and Global (EFG) curriculum is a comprehensive project-based approach to instruction (Barnes, 1998). The EFG curriculum attempts to take advantage of the key components of project work that have been suggested by nearly a century of research on this method of teaching (Branom, 1919; Katz, 1994; Katz & Chard, 2000; Kilpatrick, 1918; McMurry, 1921; Stevenson, 1921; Stockton, 1920). In the present study, the EFG curriculum was compared to the traditional curriculum currently used at the elementary school. This school followed the Tennessee curriculum model (Tennessee Department of Education). Teachers using the traditional curriculum also utilize project instruction at times but in a less structured and involved manner. The EFG curriculum is structured in a manner to stress the same core skills and knowledge learned through a traditional curriculum. This structure allows for the utilization of standardized achievement tests to measure progress (Barnes, 1998). Although the outcomes of project-based learning may well exceed what is measured with standardized tests, the structured design of the EFG curriculum allows for a comparison with groups taught using a traditional curriculum. Therefore, this study compared the scores of Terra Nova standardized achievement tests (Fisher, 1996) for the students of the EFG curriculum with scores from the traditional method of instruction. …


Governments are increasingly adopting online platforms to engage the public and allow a broad and diverse group of citizens to participate in the planning of government policies. To understand the role of crowds in the online public policy process, we analyse participant contributions over time in two crowd-based policy processes, the Future Melbourne wiki and the Open Government Dialogue. Although past evaluations have shown the significance of public consultations by expanding the engaged population within a short period of time, our empirical case studies suggest that a small number of participants contribute a disproportionate share of ideas and opinions. We discuss the implications of our initial examination for the future design of engagement platforms.


The course of the desulfurization reaction of 4-nitro-N,2-diphenyl-3-(phenylamino)isothiazol-5(2H)-imine (3) is investigated and the formation of the unstable 3-imino-2-nitroprop-2-enamidine (A) as intermediate is discussed. Addition of amines and thiophenol to the reaction mixture yielded the amidine derivatives 5 and the thioimidate 6, respectively, via nucleophilic addition of the respective reagent to A (Scheme 2). Benzoic acid and thiobenzoic acid afforded the amide 7 and the thioamide 8, respectively, as secondary products of the expected adducts 7a and 8a (Schemes 3 and 4). The presence of (benzylidene)(methyl)amine in the reaction mixture of the desulfurization of 3 led to the 1,2,4-oxadiazole derivative 10, together with the quinoxaline N-oxide 4 as a minor product. Reaction mechanisms involving an intermediate ketene imine and participation of the NO2 group in the reaction leading to 1,2,4-oxadiazole 10 are proposed. Ab initio calculations of model structures for the nitroketene imine were performed and the results correlated with the experimental results. The structures of 8 and 10 were established by X-ray crystal-structure analysis.


Microbial fuel cells (MiFCs) have been suggested as a means to harness energy that is otherwise unutilized during the wastewater treatment process. MiFCs have the unique ability to treat influent waste streams while simultaneously generating power which can offset energy associated with the biological treatment of wastewater. During the oxidation of organic and inorganic wastes, microorganisms known as exoelectrogens have the ability to move electrons extracellularly. MiFCs generate electricity by facilitating the microbial transfer of these electrons from soluble electron donors in feedstocks to a solid-state anode. While MiFCs are a promising renewable energy technology, current systems suffer from low power densities which hinder their practical applicability. In this study, a novel anode design using flame-deposited carbon nanostructures (CNSs) on stainless steel mesh is developed to improve the electron transfer efficiency of electrons from microorganisms to the anode and thus the power densities achievable by MiFCs. These new anodes appear to allow for increased biomass accumulation on the anode and may aid in the direct transfer of electrons to the anode in mediatorless MiFC systems. Experiments were conducted using anaerobic biomass in singlechamber MiFCs with CNS-enhanced and untreated stainless steel anodes. Fuel cells utilizing CNS-enhanced anodes generated currents up to two orders of magnitude greater than cells with untreated metal anodes, with the highest power density achieved being 510 mW m -2 .


Solar-assisted distillation is considered promising to solve the freshwater supply for off-grid communities. In this work, a passive and flexible multistage membrane distillation (F-MSMD) device is devised to produce freshwater via solar distillation with the latent heat of vapor condensation being recycled to enhance its energy efficiency. By designing a siphon effect, source water is continuously wicked into the evaporation layer and the concentrated brine flows out of the device before reaching saturation, which successfully solves the otherwise challenge of salt accumulation inside the device. To achieve such siphon flow, the recycled paper is prepared from spent copy paper and used as the evaporation layer for efficient water delivery owing to its large pore size and high hydrophilicity. An eight-stage F-MSMD device exhibits a stable clean water production rate at 3.61 kg m-2 h-1 in the newly designed siphon-flow mode. This work provides a green route for designing a solar-assisted distillation device.


Green infrastructure (GI) is often considered a cost-effective approach to urban stormwater management. Though various models have been created to simulate the Life Cycle Cost (LCC) and Present Value (PV) of GI investments, decision-support tools are still few. This paper introduces a probabilistic GI cost estimation algorithm built into the Low Impact Development Rapid Assessment (LIDRA) model. This algorithm tracks annual and cumulative costs associated with the construction, operation and maintenance (O&M), and ultimate replacement of GI systems. In addition, the algorithm accounts for uncertainties in cost drivers, such as a GI9s useful life (until replacement), capital and annual O&M costs, inflation, and interest rates. Net Present Value (NPV) is used to normalize future money flows and cumulative costs of different GI investment scenarios into a comparable current year cost equivalent. Demonstrated at the block scale, the results of the LIDRA algorithm are compared to an MS excel-based computation of average costs. Variations of uncertainties are then integrated and further explored using an alternative implementation rate. This algorithm is a way to evaluate GI costs considering physical, socioeconomic and life cycle dimensions.


Simulations of overshooting, tropical deep convection using a Cloud Resolving Model with bulk microphysics are presented in order to examine the effect on the water content of the TTL (Tropical Tropopause Layer) and lower stratosphere. This case study is a subproject of the HIBISCUS (Impact of tropical convection on the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere at global scale) campaign, which took place in Bauru, Brazil (22° S, 49° W), from the end of January to early March 2004. Comparisons between 2-D and 3-D simulations suggest that the use of 3-D dynamics is vital in order to capture the mixing between the overshoot and the stratospheric air, which caused evaporation of ice and resulted in an overall moistening of the lower stratosphere. In contrast, a dehydrating effect was predicted by the 2-D simulation due to the extra time, allowed by the lack of mixing, for the ice transported to the region to precipitate out of the overshoot air. Three different strengths of convection are simulated in 3-D by applying successively lower heating rates (used to initiate the convection) in the boundary layer. Moistening is produced in all cases, indicating that convective vigour is not a factor in whether moistening or dehydration is produced by clouds that penetrate the tropopause, since the weakest case only just did so. An estimate of the moistening effect of these clouds on an air parcel traversing a convective region is made based on the domain mean simulated moistening and the frequency of convective events observed by the IPMet (Instituto de Pesquisas Meteorologicas, Universidade Estadual Paulista) radar (S-band type at 2.8 Ghz) to have the same 10 dBZ echo top height as those simulated. These suggest a fairly significant mean moistening of 0.26, 0.13 and 0.05 ppmv in the strongest, medium and weakest cases, respectively, for heights between 16 and 17 km. Since the cold point and WMO (World Meteorological Organization) tropopause in this region lies at ~15.9 km, this is likely to represent direct stratospheric moistening. Much more moistening is predicted for the 15–16 km height range with increases of 0.85–2.8 ppmv predicted. However, it would be required that this air is lofted through the tropopause via the Brewer Dobson circulation in order for it to have a stratospheric effect. Whether this is likely is uncertain and, in addition, the dehydration of air as it passes through the cold trap and the number of times that trajectories sample convective regions needs to be taken into account to gauge the overall stratospheric effect. Nevertheless, the results suggest a potentially significant role for convection in determining the stratospheric water content. Sensitivity tests exploring the impact of increased aerosol numbers in the boundary layer suggest that a corresponding rise in cloud droplet numbers at cloud base would increase the number concentrations of the ice crystals transported to the TTL, which had the effect of reducing the fall speeds of the ice and causing a ~13% rise in the mean vapour increase in both the 15–16 and 16–17 km height ranges, respectively, when compared to the control case. Increases in the total water were much larger, being 34% and 132% higher for the same height ranges, but it is unclear whether the extra ice will be able to evaporate before precipitating from the region. These results suggest a possible impact of natural and anthropogenic aerosols on how convective clouds affect stratospheric moisture levels.


This paper argues that in contemporary legal thinking, the concept of the rule of law has become inseparable from the idea that legal decision-makers should give reasons to justify their decisions. Yet, how far can the concept of the rule the law be understood as establishing a rule of reasons? I examine whether reason giving is necessarily connected with the rule of law in the sense that a legal system would not conform to the rule of law if its decisions were not supported by publicly articulated reasons. I proceed by arguing that the focus on reason giving vindicates both procedural and substantive conceptions of the rule of law. In my view, reason giving is an essential component of the procedural conception because all the procedural account seems to require is that the state does whatever it does in a predictable and consistent way and justify it by reasons. Likewise, reason giving can serve to characterize the core of the substantive proposal. Substantive conceptions of the rule of law claim that the rule of law's central purpose is to ensure certain just outcomes. In that perspective, requiring that legal decision-makers give reasons is more apt to protect us against abuse than other forms of decision-making. In line with this reframing, I conclude that theoretical reflections on the rule of law should pay more attention to the legal duty to give reasons than has been done in the past, thereby leading to a context-sensitive assessment of the rule of law and its virtue(s).


Since his death in 1950, George Orwell has been canonised as England's foremost political writer, and the standard-bearer of honesty and decency for the honourable 'Left'. In this controversial polemic, Scott Lucas argues that the exaltation of Orwell, far from upholding dissent against the State, has sought to quash such opposition. Indeed, Orwell has become the icon of those who, in the pose of the contrarian, try to silence public opposition to US and U K foreign policy in the 'War on Terror'. Lucas's lively and readable critique of public intellectuals including Christopher Hitchens, Michael Walzer, David Aaronovitch, and Johann Hari -- who have all invoked Orwellian honesty and decency to shut down dissent -- will appeal to anyone disillusioned with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Lucas contends that these leading journalists and commentators have used Orwell to justify their own political transition from radicals to upholders of the establishment. All of them play influential roles in supporting the UK and US governments' charge that opponents of war -- and those who question the motives behind American foreign policy and its implementation -- should be condemned as 'appeasers of mass murder'. This controversial book shows how Orwell has been used since 9/11 to justify, in the guise of independent thought, the suppression of dissent. We must rescue ourselves from Orwell and from those who take on his guise so, as Lucas puts it, our 'silencing is! vital to a "manufacture of consent" for the wars which are supposedly being fought in our name and for our good'.


: With the emergence of autonomous vehicles, a transportation revolution is underway. Despite the potential benefits brought by self-driving cars, autonomous driving systems are still a maturing technology and face two unresolved problems. First, autonomous vehicles are vulnerable to malicious attacks and hardware faults that may compromise the safety and reliability of the system, so making these systems robust against adverse events is a high priority. Second, with the growing computation demands of machine learning models, execution latency has become a critical constraint on resource-limited vehicles. To address these challenges, this thesis proposes a set of compiler methods that can not only enhance the robustness of the self-driving system through efficient code generation techniques, but also improve its execution efficiency by optimizing machine learning models. First, I present a lightweight and effective method to detect when illegal control flow occurs during runtime as a result of hardware faults. Different checking methods are explored to detect both short-distance and long-distance control flow errors. Further, a low-cost inter-procedural control flow protection scheme is investigated. The combination of proposed checking methods, PaSS, only incurs 19.1% performance overhead while providing 99.0% fault coverage. Second, I propose a centralized communication scheme which increases the safety of the execution environment by validating messages sent between different software modules. To enable the validation functionality of the central control module, we add program analysis algorithms to provide this module with system-level information and develop a domain specific language to describe the safety policies that it must enforce. This centralized framework, AVMaestro, can accurately detect sensor attacks and system anomalies while only incurring 5% end-to-end delay. In the last part of this thesis, I focus on optimizing inference performance of machine learning models. A novel graph substitution algorithm is developed to efficiently fuse parallel nodes in the computation graph of a machine learning model when doing so improves performance. Similarly, a set of node fission transformations is also developed to split one node into multiple nodes that can be executed in parallel. The proposed technique, GraphMorph, improves inference performance by up to 10.5% compared to state-of-the-art optimization


ABSTRACT The Charles Bridge is the oldest, still-standing gothic bridge that crosses the Vltava River in Prague and up to now has belonged among the most sought-after historical monuments in the Czech Republic. The bridge has been repeatedly damaged due to floods and has been repaired several times. In the reconstructions, damaged sandstone blocks were substituted in facing. This experimental study focused on nonlinear ultrasonic spectroscopy for testing stone blocks that were extracted from the historical bridge structure. The objective of these experiments was verifying whether the methods can be applied to evaluating the internal structure of blocks, which are built-in in the structure in situ. Intact-structure blocks, blocks that had been repaired in the past, and damaged-structure blocks were measured. Two methods of nonlinear ultrasonic spectroscopy were applied—the method with single harmonic ultrasonic signal and with two harmonic ultrasonic signals. Measurement results of both applied methods proved resulting parameters correlation with block structure integrity quality.


Study of the petrology of Hawaiian volcanoes, in particular the historically active volcanoes on the Island of Hawai'i, has long been of worldwide scientific interest. When Dr. Thomas A. Jaggar, Jr., established the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) in 1912, detailed observations on basaltic activity at Kīlauea and Mauna Loa volcanoes increased dramatically. The period from 1912 to 1958 saw a gradual increase in the collection and analysis of samples from the historical eruptions of Kīlauea and Mauna Loa and development of the concepts needed to evaluate them. In a classic 1955 paper, Howard Powers introduced the concepts of magnesia variation diagrams, to display basaltic compositions, and olivine-control lines, to distinguish between possibly comagmatic and clearly distinct basaltic lineages. In particular, he and others recognized that Kīlauea and Mauna Loa basalts must have different sources. Subsequent years saw a great increase in petrologic data, as the development of the electron microprobe made it possible to routinely monitor glass and mineral compositions, in addition to bulk rock compositions. We now have 100 years' worth of glass compositions for Kīlauea summit eruptions, which, together with expanding databases on prehistoric tephras, provide important constraints on the nature of Kīlauea's summit reservoir. A series of chemically distinctive eruptions in the 1950s and 1960s facilitated evaluation of magma mixing and transport processes at Kīlauea. At Mauna Loa, lava compositions are distinctive only at the trace element level, suggesting that its summit reservoir is better mixed than Kīlauea's. Most summit lavas at both volcanoes, however, lie on olivine control lines having the same olivine composition (Fo86–87). Study of the ongoing East Rift Zone eruption at Kīlauea has further illuminated the complexity of magma storage, resupply, and mixing along this very active rift zone. Studies of active and closed-system lava lakes have been part of HVO's efforts since Jaggar's unique descriptions of the Halema'uma'u lava lake that existed before 1924. Detailed study of closed-system bodies, including the 1959 Kīlauea Iki, 1963 'Alae, and 1965 and prehistoric Makaopuhi lava lakes and the Uēkahuna laccolith, have allowed recognition and quantification of processes of basalt differentiation. Specific topics reviewed herein include the occurrence of segregation veins and related structures, overall cooling history, and patterns of crystallization and reequilibration of olivine in various lava lakes. In recent decades, study of the submarine slopes of the Island of Hawai'i and of Lō'ihi Seamount has revolutionized our understanding of the early history of Hawaiian volcanoes. Observations of Lō'ihi lavas first established the existence of an early alkalic stage in the evolution of Hawaiian volcanoes. Stages of volcanic development from inception to tholeiitic shield building can be observed in Kīlauea's submarine and subaerial sections. One distinctive feature of submarine volcanics at Kīlauea, Mauna Loa, and Hualālai is that picritic lavas are more abundant than in subaerial eruptions. Also, olivine compositions of submarine lavas are more magnesian, ranging from Fo88 at Kīlauea to Fo89 at Hualālai. The most magnesian glasses known from Kīlauea (MgO=14.7–15.0 weight percent) were found along the submarine part of Kīlauea's East Rift Zone. Contributions to our knowledge of the nature of the mantle source(s) of Hawaiian basalts are reviewed briefly, although this is a topic where debate is ongoing. Finally, our accumulated petrologic observations impose constraints on the nature of the summit reservoirs at Kīlauea and Mauna Loa, specifically whether the summit chamber has been continuous or segmented during past decades.


The aim of this cross-sectional study was to measure the prevalence, severity and type of wife abuse experienced by ever-married women attending primary health centres in Medina, Saudi Arabia. Women were interviewed in private at health centres using a questionnaire which included items from the Modified Conflict Tactic Scale, Kansas Marital Scale and the lie scale of the Minnesota Multiphase Personality Inventory. Of 689 eligible women, 25.7% reported physical abuse and 32.8% emotional abuse without physical violence. Of those physically abused, 36.7% suffered minor and 63.3% severe incidents. The lifetime prevalence of abuse among the women was 57.7%. Only 36.7% of 109 abused women had informed and discussed the issue with their primary care physician.


Abstract:In 2011, Oliver Hermanus's Skoonheid / Beauty became the first Afrikaans film to screen at Cannes. Depicting a white Afrikaner patriarch whose life is thrown into disorder when he becomes infatuated with the son of an old friend from the army, the film links the racial and cultural essentialism that informs some versions of South African whiteness with coercive heteronormativity and homophobia. My analysis begins with a scene in which the protagonist rejects a "colored" man on the grounds that he is gay; I argue that this rejection stems from a desire to evade and exclude the black, colored, and queer identity formations that trouble his self-definition with their heterogeneity and their claims to shared concerns and a shared history. Beauty challenges and deconstructs the linked racial and sexual identities that are the legacy of apartheid, but also affirms the authority of colored people to speak to the social and political significance of public queer life in South Africa. I locate the film's critique of homophobic ethno-nationalism in relation to three themes: the ideological construction of "colored-ness" in relation to whiteness and Afrikaans-ness; intergenerational conflict around the expression of cultural and sexual freedoms; and the racially divided history of the struggle for LGBTQI rights in South Africa. I argue that Hermanus reads whiteness back to itself, but also empowers his characters of color to "animate the equality provisions" of South Africa's constitution, drawing attention to the "cultural labor" of LGBTQI communities of color during and after apartheid.


The increased adoption of social media has presented security and law enforcement authorities with significant new challenges. For example, the Swedish Security Service SAPO asserts that a large proportion of radicalization takes place in open fora online. Still, approaches to contain social media-driven challenges to security, particularly in democratic societies, remain little explored. Nonetheless, this type of knowledge may become relevant in European countries in the near future: Amongst other factors, the challenging economic situation has resulted in increased public discontent leading to emergence or manifestation of groups that seek to challenge the existing policies by almost any means. Use of social media multiplies the number of vectors that need law enforcement attention. First, a high level of social media adaption allows groups to reach and attract a wider audience. Unlike previously, many groups today consist of a large but very loosely connected network. This lack of cohesion can present a challenge for authorities, to identify emerging key actors and assess threat levels. Second, a high level of mobile web penetration has allowed groups to ad-hoc organize, amend plans and redirect physical activities. Third, the tool social media is as not exclusive to potential perpetrators of unlawful action, but is as well available to law enforcement authorities. Yet, efficient utilization of social media requires a deep understanding of its nature and a well-crafted, comprehensive approach. Acknowledging the broad functionality of social media, as well as its current status in the society, this article describes a model process for security authorities and law enforcement work with social media in general and security services work in particular. The process is cyclic and largely modular. It provides a set of goals and tasks for each stage of a potential event, rather than fixed activities. This allows authorities to adapt the process to individual legal frameworks and organization setups. The approach behind the process is holistic where social media is regarded as both source and destination of information. Ultimately, the process aims at efficiently and effectively mitigating the risk of virtual and physical violence.


This paper aims to present the application of a new method for metaphor identification in discourse, the Pragglejaz Metaphor Identification Procedure, in two corpus-linguistic projects. It provides background information to the method and then demonstrates its basic workings by means of three examples. Then some major issues with the method are discussed in more detail: the nature of units of metaphor analysis, the identification of contextual and basic meanings of words in lexical units in discourse, the role of etymology in determining basic meanings, and the role of distinctness as well as similarity required for metaphorical word meaning.


The `New Negro' Legacy of Will Marion CookAfrican Americans in the Nineteen Twenties created art, literature, and music in a climate of aesthetic expression which has come to be known as the Harlem Renaissance. Many social and cultural factors helped to foster the environment for this phenomenon. Blacks were changing from rural to city life, and migrating from the South to the North. The Urban League, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and their respective journals, Opportunity and Crisis, boldly articulated their opposition to acts of racial discrimination, while at the same time they encouraged superior artistic creations from the Black Talented Tenth. There was an increased interest in black history which led to the formulation of black historical societies and journals. Positive identification with Africa as the ancestral homeland intensified as Marcus Garvey and his "Back-to-Africa" movement gained momentum. Likewise, Africans began to bond with others of African descent from around the world, creating a climate for Pan-African platforms to address mutual concerns. Moreover, in a society merely two generations from slavery, African Americans were coming of age, exerting positive self-images and revealing themselves more realistically as the New Negroes.There is no exact year or decade that forms a line of divide distinguishing the Old from the New Negro. Characteristics which seemed to mature in the 1920s actually can be found earlier. For example, during W. E. B. DuBois's undergraduate years at Fisk University from 1885 to 1888, he wrote an article entitled "The New Negro" and submitted it to the Century Magazine for publication. Their response was: "We shall be glad to print `The New Negro' if we may take our time and we are afraid we shall have to take a great deal."(2) They did, and it hasn't been published yet!"The New Negro" phrase did appear, however, on June 28, 1895 in an article in The Cleveland Gazette which described a class of colored people who had advanced since the Civil War, "with education, refinement and money."(3) This group had been successful in their efforts to secure a New York Civil Rights Law. They aspired to dismantle the Uncle Tom and Mammy-like images, in lieu of ones that were self-assured, racially proud, and demanding of full citizenship. The Old Negro of the southern plantation had begun to move to the northern urban centers, and was being transformed into the New Negro during the process.Harlem, for example, represented not merely the largest black community in the world, but the first historical concentration of so many diverse elements of people of color. It attracted the African, the West Indian, and the African American. It brought together black Americans from the North with those from the South; those from the city with those from the town and village; it brought together the peasant, the student, and the business man, with the artist, the poet, and the musician.One such musician who ventured to New York in the 1890s was Will Marion Cook. During the summer of 1898, he and Paul Laurence Dunbar signaled the golden age of black musicals on Broadway with their production of Clorindy, the Origin of the Cakewalk. At the turn of the century, Cook was considered to be "the most original genius" of his contemporaries.(4) Respected for his pioneering achievements in popular songwriting, black musical comedies, and syncopated orchestral music, he dramatically transformed these genres during his musical career.(5)His life and music exemplified a prototype of the "New Negro," a generation before Alain Locke's edited anthology appeared on that subject in 1925. Cook's black middle-class background, his international exposure, and his musical education in the European and African-American idioms, well prepared him for the role of elevating the Negro's life and music from the old to the new. The means he used included identification with Africa through imagination and Africanisms; a utilization of more realistic and positive images of blacks in song lyrics; and an exertion of a persona of aggression, assertiveness and agitation for the sake of racial equality. …


In 2015, in United States ex rel. Gadbois v. PharMerica Corp., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit held that a qui tam relator could use supplementation to cure a jurisdictional first-to-file defect in a False Claims Act ("FCA") action. In contrast, in 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in United States ex rel. Chovanec v. Apria Healthcare Group, Inc. held that relators barred by first-to-file must face dismissal without prejudice and then refile if they are to proceed. Separately, in 2015, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in United States ex rel. Heath v. AT & T, Inc. held the first-to-file rule nonjurisdictional. This Comment argues that the Seventh and D.C. Circuits were correct. An approach that is inconsistent with either holding would contravene the plain language of the first-to-file rule and the FCA's structure. A refiling requirement also effectuates the FCA's purpose because it promotes the prompt resolution of cases that are most likely to yield government recoveries. Adopting this requirement is critical to reining in an expansive qui tam regime.


Contrast susceptibility is defined as the difference in visual acuity recorded for high and low contrast optotypes. Other researchers refer to this parameter as "normalised low contrast acuity". Pilot surveys have revealed that contrast susceptibility deficits are more strongly related to driving accident involvement than are deficits in high contrast visual acuity. It has been hypothesised that driving situation avoidance is purely based upon high contrast visual acuity. Hence, the relationship between high contrast visual acuity and accidents is masked by situation avoidance whilst drivers with contrast susceptibility deficits remain prone to accidents in poor visibility conditions. A national survey carried out to test this hypothesis provided no support for either the link between contrast susceptibility deficits and accidents involvement or the proposed hypothesis. Further, systematically worse contrast susceptibility scores emerged from vision screeners compared to wall mounted test charts. This discrepancy was not due to variations in test luminance or instrument myopia. Instead, optical imperfections inherent in vision screeners were considered to be responsible. Although contrast susceptibility is unlikely to provide a useful means of screening drivers' vision, previous research does provide support for its ability to detect visual deficits that may influence everyday tasks. In this respect, individual contrast susceptibility variations were found to reflect variations in the contrast sensitivity function - a parameter that provides a global estimate of human contrast sensitivity.


In a study that spanned more than four months from April through August of 2016, the Virginia Impact Investing Forum surveyed nearly 200 stakeholders and held dozens of personal interviews and focus groups with thought leaders across the state. The goal was to map Virginia's Impact Investing and Social Enterprise ecosystem and to determine the next steps necessary to the continued growth and prosperity of this emerging field. Results show that there is strong interest in seeing Impact Investing and Social Enterprise development flourish throughout Virginia, as evidenced by concerted efforts from across all three sectors to promote this ecosystem, including bi-partisan government actors, private equity firms, foundations, and entrepreneurs. One general theme that has emerged in conversations and survey responses around Impact Investing is the tension that often exists between prospective Impact Investors and Social Entrepreneurs, and while this research does not seek to solidify answers to some of the most pressing questions that create these tensions, it does make a key point: Impact Investing has the potential to be something entirely different from philanthropy and investing, something that has the power to reshape longstanding economic barriers between one's wallet and one's heart, by fueling the creative fire behind social innovation and breaking down the walls between the traditional public, nonprofit, and private sectors And that is something worth celebrating, and worth continuing to fight for.


Staphylococcus epidermidis biofilm-related infections are a current concern within the medical community due to their high incidence and prevalence, particularly in patients with indwelling medical devices. Biofilm gene expression analysis by quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) has been increasingly used to understand the role of biofilm formation in the pathogenesis of S. epidermidis infections. However, depending on the RNA extraction procedure, and cDNA synthesis and qPCR master mixes used, gene expression quantification can be suboptimal. We recently showed that some RNA extraction kits are not suitable for S. epidermidis biofilms, due to sample composition, in particular the presence of the extracellular matrix. In this work, we describe a custom RNA extraction assay followed by the evaluation of gene expression using different commercial reverse transcriptase kits and qPCR master mixes. Our custom RNA extraction assay was able to produce good quality RNA with reproducible gene expression quantification, reducing the time and the costs associated. We also tested the effect of reducing cDNA and qPCR reaction volumes and, in most of the cases tested, no significant differences were found. Finally, we titered the SYBR Green I concentrations in standard PCR master mixes and compared the normalized expression of the genes icaA, bhp, aap, psmβ1 and agrB using 4 distinct biofilm forming S. epidermidis strains to the results obtained with commercially available kits. The overall results demonstrated that despite some statistically, but not biologically significant differences observed, the customized qPCR protocol resulted in the same gene expression trend presented by the commercially available kits used.


Rats produce ultrasonic vocalizations that can be categorized into two types of ultrasonic calls based on their sonographic structure. One group contains 22-kHz ultrasonic vocalization (USVs), characterized by relatively constant (flat) frequency with peak frequency ranging from 19 to 28-kHz, and a call duration ranging between 100 – 3000 ms. These vocalization can be induced by cholinomimetic agents injected into the ascending mesolimbic cholinergic system that terminates in the anterior hypothalamic-preoptic area (AH-MPO) and lateral septum (LS). The other group of USVs contains 50-kHz USVs, characterized by high peak frequency, ranging from 39 to 90-kHz, short duration ranging from 10-90 ms, and varying frequency and complex sonographic morphology. These vocalizations can be induced by dopaminergic agents injected into the nucleus accumbens, the target area for the mesolimbic dopaminergic system. 22-kHz USVs are emitted in situations that are highly aversive, such as proximity of a predator or anticipation of a foot shock, while 50 kHz USVs are emitted in rewarding and appetitive situations, such as juvenile play behaviour or anticipation of rewarding electrical brain stimulation. The activities of these two mesolimbic systems were postulated to be antagonistic to each other. The current thesis is focused on the interaction of these systems indexed by emission of relevant USVs. It was hypothesized that emission of 22 kHz USVs will be antagonized by prior activation of the dopaminergic system while emission of 50 kHz will be antagonized by prior activation of the cholinergic system. It was found that injection of apomorphine into the shell of the nucleus accumbens significantly decreased the number of carbachol-induced 22 kHz USVs from both AH-MPO and LS. Injection of carbachol into the LS significantly decreased the number of apomorphine-induced 50 kHz USVs from the shell of the nucleus accumbens. The results of the study supported the main hypotheses that the mesolimbic dopaminergic and cholinergic systems function in antagonism to each other.


Development of existing and new batteries is a research thrust to meet the challenge of the global increasing demand of storage energy at lower price. The route to this development is through a better understanding of materials and electrochemistry of the existing batteries, so that new high energetic electrode materials are developed to enhance the performance of the batteries in use and to innovate new classes of energy storage systems. The present papers discuss the fundamental electrochemistry of battery design, working principles and materials of existing primary and rechargeable batteries with emphasis on new nano materials electrodes


Abstract This paper aims to overview the current processes and challenges that relate to how media developments infl uence – and are influenced by – the ways in which personal and collective identities are formed in contemporary societies. First, it discusses ways to approach and define the concept of identity from a media perspective. A discussion of how identity formation issues links to the concept of new media literacies forms a transition to three sections that in turn analyse the social trends, the policy trends and the scientific trends that may be discerned in this area. The final section first summarises key research questions and then offers some more concrete ingredients for identifying possible instruments of a new research agenda.


Introduction: Vascular access is considering to the patient undergoing hemodialysis (HD) as his/her soul which indicating patient survival, moreover, vascular access can controlling, directing the dialysis regimen effectiveness. Cannulation techniques are crucial skills for nurses to minimize arteriovenous fistula (AVF) or graft (AVG) complications. Methods: A cross-sectional study was applied to assess vascular complications and related factors. The participants were 65 patients on maintenance HD therapy enrolled at the dialysis unit, central Ehnasa' government hospital, Beni Suef City. Data were collected using developed questionnaires regard patients' demographic data, clinical, and HD session characteristics, designed Nursing Practice guidelines for needling of AVF/AVG booklet. Results: Statistically, the results show the most common cannulation technique which was demonstrated is an area method (65%) and needle direction is retrograde with bevel up (66.2%). whereas, the significant positive correlation shows between the cannulation techniques and vascular access complication, duration of dialysis and complication during the dialysis session. Furthermore, the most common complication related to needling practice is aneurysm (44.6%). Conclusion: Following cannulation, technique guidelines will prevent potential complications, increase vascular access durability, and improve patients' quality of life.


Background Screening for viral hepatitis is not routinely recommended in patients diagnosed with tuberculosis (TB). However there are significant similarities in the global distribution of TB and hepatitis B (HBV) and C (HCV). It remains unclear whether co-infection with HBV or HCV is a risk factor for hepatotoxicity in patients receiving anti-tuberculous therapy and significant morbidity and mortality is associated with a late diagnosis. Objectives To determine the prevalence of HBV and HCV infection among new cases of active TB across treatment centres in East London and to assess the adverse drug reactions to anti-tuberculous treatment experienced by this population. Methods We conducted a retrospective study including all patients diagnosed with active TB during 2013 at two TB clinics in London. Data on demographic characteristics, HBV surface antigen (HBsAg), HCV antibody, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and adverse drug reactions were retrospectively analysed. Results In total, 472 cases of active TB were notified during 2013. The mean age was 37.7 (+/- 15.3) years (range: 5–92). Males accounted for 62.3% of our cohort. 84.7% of patients were born outside of the UK with the majority of patients being born in either Bangladesh (16.5%), India (27.8%) or Pakistan (15.9%). Overall, 304 patients were screened for HBV, 302 for HCV, and 447 for HIV. Of those screened, HBsAg was detected in 3.3%, HCV antibody in 2.0% and HIV in 3.4%. All patients infected with HBV or HCV were foreign born. Hepatotoxicity was defined as an ALT greater than 5 times the upper limit of normal or requiring a change in treatment. There was no significant difference in rates of hepatotoxicity in either in HepBsAg status (p = 0.371), HCV status (p = 0.597) or HIV status (p = 0.413) but numbers of HBV and HCV infection were small. Conclusions The prevalence of HBV and HCV was significantly higher in our cohort of TB patients than the background UK prevalence, which is 0.4% for HCV, 0.3% for HBV and 0.15% for HIV. Routine screening for HBV and HCV on an opt-out basis would be justified in our setting given the high proportion of foreign-born patients. Further research into the magnitude of HBV/HCV co-infection with active or latent TB, any increased risk in drug-induced hepatotoxicity and the cost-effectiveness of routine screening is needed.


Abstract Since 2008, automatic, multiple assessment options have been utilised in selected undergraduate meteorology courses at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Motivated by a desire to reduce stress among students, the assessment methodology includes examination-heavy and homework-heavy alternatives, differing by an adjustable 15% of the overall course grade. Students do not need to commit a priori to one particular assessment option, as the more beneficial of two alternative assessment schemes is automatically chosen at the end of the semester. An analysis of assessment score differences reveals that end-of-semester assessments increased by more than 1% for 48% of the students enrolled, a consequential increase which can improve a student's assessment by a fractional grade. Score differences among the two assessment alternatives tend to be smaller for higher achieving students, and larger for the middle- and lower achieving students. Score differences larger than 3% were rare. Limited survey results indicate that students understand and appreciate the assessment scheme, and feel that it reduces stress and may improve their academic performance. The automatic, multiple assessment methodology presents no risk to either student or instructor, as students can only benefit and virtually no effort is required of the instructor.


The requests of efficient solutions for automated distribution of digital content are constantly increasing especially from business users. The solution proposed allows setting up scalable, fault tolerant and fast distribution architectures of cross media content through the use of P2P networks. The solution is based on an evolution of the BitTorrent protocol and architecture, to make it suitable for content distribution among Business actors and for business to consumer distribution. This solution improves the BitTorrent technology and integrates it with that of the AXMEDIS infrastructure GRID, obtaining a solution that can be used to implement a large set of different strategies about content distribution, seeding, publishing, promoting, etc. The work has been developed for the AXMEDIS Integrated Project 1ST FP6 (Automating Production of Cross Media Content for Multi-channel Distribution) partially funded by the European Commission, and thus for setting up the related P2P network.


The nineteenth-century photographer William Henry Jackson once complained of the skepticism with which early descriptions of Yellowstone were met: the place was too wondrous to be believed. The public demanded proof, and a host of artists and writers obliged. These early explorers possessed a vigorous devotion to the young nation's wilderness - the naturalist John Muir famously toured the land from Wisconsin to Florida on foot - and through their work established aesthetic categories that exist to this day. In Lines on the Land, Scott Herring contends that these writers and artists were canon makers, recognizing the national parks as naturally occurring works of art and conferring upon them a cultural prestige: the parks were the splendid focal points of the American landscape. These early, canonizing works are homages to a vast, untouched wilderness. This praise would gradually give way, however, to a distinctly American anger - what Herring calls "outraged idealism." Later generations were faced with a changing culture that had imperfectly absorbed, and even misrepresented, the national-park aesthetic. The postwar park was overrun by cars and tourists who could not possibly match the pioneering naturalists' profound commitment to and appreclation for their surroundings. The collective tone of the parks' chroniclers, as a result, evolved from celebration of awesome beauty to indignation over the perceived corruption of the parks, both as an ideal and as actual physical settings. Herring traces this shift through the work of a wide spectrum of creative minds, from early figures such as Muir and Thomas Moran to later observers of the parks such as Ansel Adams, Sylvia Plath, Edward Abbey, and Rick Bass. The text is punctuated by autobiographical "interchapters" in which Herring relates the book's chief themes to his own experiences in Yellowstone National Park.


Plate tectonic models indicate subduction of the Kula-Farallon spreading ridge, and thus imply formation of the Kula-Farallon slab window, beneath western North America from Late Cretaceous to middle Eocene time. Seafloor magnetic anomalies, however, pro- vide few constraints on the configuration of the subducted ridge and the location of the slab window. We use geochemical data from Eocene igneous rocks to provide an estimate of the slab window's position at 50 Ma. Contouring of the trace element ratios K 2O/SiO2, Rb/Zr, and Ta/Ce for lavas of the Eocene Challis-Kamloops volcanic belt demonstrates a southward trend toward enriched geochemical character. This trend is consistent with a Pacific Northwest position for the slab window; this is supported by the presence of adak- ites (slab melts) near the Canada-United States border, and by ca. 51 Ma forearc intru- sions and volcanic rocks on Vancouver Island that are regarded as products of ridge subduction. A new reconstruction of the slab window's geometry over time indicates that its chemically defined position is kinematically viable.


Tedera (Bituminaria bituminosa (L.) C.H. Stirton var. albomarginata) has been successfully established across the mixed-farming (wheat-sheep) region of Western Australia because this species has remarkable drought tolerance and can survive the dry-summer period with strong retention of green leaf. A leaf spot symptom involving pale brown lesions with distinct dark brown margins had been observed in genetic evaluation plots of tedera at Medina and Mount Barker, Western Australia, and a Phoma sp. was isolated. Single-spore isolations of a typical Phoma sp. isolate were made onto potato dextrose agar and maintained at 20°C, and a representative culture has been lodged in the Western Australian Culture Collection Herbarium maintained at the Department of Agriculture and Food Western Australia (Accession No. WAC13435). Amplification of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) 1 and ITS2 regions flanking the 5.8S rRNA gene were carried out with universal primers ITS1 and ITS4 according to published protocol (3). The DNA PCR products were sequenced and BLAST analyses was used to compare sequences with those in GenBank. The sequence had 99% nucleotide identity with the corresponding sequence in GenBank for Phoma herbarum. Isolates also showed morphological (e.g., 1) and molecular (e.g., 2) similarities with P. herbarum as described in other reports. The relevant sequence information for a representative isolate has been lodged in GenBank (Accession No. JQ282910). A conidial suspension of 107 conidia ml-1 from a single-spore culture was spray inoculated onto foliage of 6-week-old tedera plants maintained under >90% relative humidity conditions for 72-h postinoculation. Symptoms evident by 10 days postinoculation consisted of pale brown lesions, mostly 1.5 to 4 mm in diameter, which developed a distinct, dark brown margin. Occasional lesions also showed a distinct chlorotic halo extending 1 to 1.5 mm outside the boundary of the lesion. Infection studies were successfully repeated twice and P. herbarum was readily reisolated from infected foliage. No disease was observed on and no P. herbarum were isolated from water-inoculated control plants. Except for a recent published report of P. herbarum on field pea (Pisum sativum L.) (2), this pathogen has only been noted in the Australian Plant Pest Database as occurring on lucerne (Medicago sativa L.) and soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr.) in Western Australia in 1985 and on a Protea sp. in 1991. To our knowledge, this is the first published report of P. herbarum as a pathogen on tedera in Australia or elsewhere. That P. herbarum occurs on other hosts in Australia and has a wide host range elsewhere together suggest its potential to be a pathogen on a wider range of host genera and species. References: (1) G. L. Kinsey. No. 1501 in: IMI Descriptions of Fungi and Bacteria. 2002. (2) Y. P. Li et al. Plant Dis. 95:1590, 2011. (3) T. J. White et al. Page 315 in: PCR Protocols: A Guide to Methods and Applications. Academic Press, San Diego, CA, 1990.