The disparity between norms and their enforcement is a recurrent theme in international law. An examination of theory and practice undertaken in the first part of the research reviews national, internationalised/hybrid and international judicial processes. This identifies both normative and structural weakness in the existent system for the enforcement of international criminal law. The second half of the study compares the relationship that is established between the International Criminal Court and national authorities with previous models to determine whether the Rome Statute promises heightened prospects for actual enforcement. The study suggests that the reliance of the ICC on the support of national authorities will result in a persistence of enforcement gaps in the compliance levels of States with their pre-existing duty to prosecute crimes; in the ability of the Court to secure enforcement of its requests and orders; and in the own Court's operational capacity. Evidence suggests, nonetheless, that the ICC is also helping to close enforcement gaps. At the national level, in particular, because of the Court's jurisdictional and admissibility regime, the ICC is altering incentive structures for national authorities and profoundly altering State behaviour. This has been driven primarily by the desire of States to limit admissibility challenges to domestic jurisdiction based on legislative inconsistencies or domestic inaction. The research shows that the successful closing of enforcement gaps will require the close and effective interaction of national and international jurisdictions. For the treaty signed in Rome is not just about a Court, it is about a system; a global system based on national States. Without national authorities, the ICC will be unable to act. But also conversely, without the catalytic presence of the ICC, it is unlikely that national authorities would be willing to act. As such, the ICC Statute acts as both a standard setting instrument and a compliance-inducing mechanism.


Today, half of the world's population lives in cities, which could reach 75% by 2050. Expanding urban areas will increasingly impact the already strained natural habitats, thus, economically and ecologically advantageous housing solutions are needed. This paper presents the research on a sustainable urban residential building concept that addresses this need. To ensure affordability, prefabrication and mass production were adopted, resulting in a unique, non-monotonous structural concept that is adaptable to different living unit sizes and layouts. A modular system was developed consisting of a basic living unit, which defines interior spaces, furniture, and structures. The modules can be placed next to each other to satisfy the needs of people for various living spaces. by carefully choosing a module size, enough combinations can be created, and individual solutions can be prefabricated. This system can also be produced in a large-scale that too in an eco-friendly way by utilizing novel building materials. Cross-laminated timber and timber-concrete composites were found to be the ideal choices for the walls and the slabs, respectively, as both are easily prefabricated, thereby decreasing the ecological footprint of the project. In addition, the building's vertical size is efficiently maximized to seven living levels, while still keeping it human-scale in an urban setting. This new modularity, as described, provides a sustainable answer to the challenge of expanding urban living.


Title of Document: ELECTRICAL MEASUREMENTS AT THE MICRO SCALE: AIR BREAKDOWN AND Si COULOMB BLOCKADE DEVICES Emmanouel Spyros Hourdakis, Doctor of Philosophy, 2007 Directed By: Associate Professor, Michael S. Fuhrer, Department of Physics In this thesis I describe the work performed in two different areas of research, electrical breakdown of air for small electrode separations and measurements of silicon (Si)-based tunable-barrier single electron transistors (SETs). In this work, I describe a new method for measuring the breakdown of air for the range of electrode separation of interest. This method has several advantages compared to ones found in the literature, namely it allows for a measurement of electrode separation before each breakdown measurement; it has a parallel plate geometry and the surface roughness of the electrodes used is very small. Using the results obtained with this method I have made a quantitative comparison between the predictions of the standard theory of the field (field emission of electrons) and our data, something that has not been done before. In this thesis I describe analytically both the theory and the analysis of our data. I conclude that the standard theory used in this field fails for the range of electrode separations of interest (400 nm to 45 μm). Also, I describe electrical measurements performed on a Si-based tunable-barrier device fabricated in the group of Neil Zimmerman at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) using the fabrication facilities of Cornell University. I demonstrate that this device can be operated as an SET. I continue by describing measurements of the charge offset drift (Q0(t)) for this device and show that it is almost 3 orders of magnitude smaller than in metal devices, and comparable to previously measured Si devices of this type. All of the previously measured devices originated from the same fabrication source, NTT, Japan. Our ability to demonstrate the same low drift in devices fabricated at Cornell, USA, indicates that the small values of Q0(t) is a robust property of Si-based devices, and not sensitive to the details of fabrication. ELECTRICAL MEASUREMENTS AT THE MICROSCALE: AIR BREAKDOWN AND Si COULOMB BLOCKADE DEVICES


We have recently reported that an immunotoxin targeting mesothelin produced durable major tumor regressions in patients with extensive treatment-refractory mesothelioma. These unprecedented tumor responses have prompted us to review how mesothelin was discovered and the advances that led to these tumor responses. This review is not comprehensive but focuses on major developments over the past 20 years since mesothelin was first identified in our laboratory. Mesothelin is a cell-surface glycoprotein whose expression in normal human tissues is restricted to mesothelial cells. Because it is highly expressed by many solid tumors, it is an attractive immunotherapy target. Antibody-based therapies currently in clinical trials include an immunotoxin, a chimeric monoclonal antibody, and an antibody drug conjugate. In addition, a mesothelin tumor vaccine and a mesothelin- chimeric antigen receptor are being evaluated in the clinic. SS1P, an anti-mesothelin immunotoxin, was the first mesothelin-directed therapy to enter the clinic, and its use showed that mesothelin-targeted therapy was safe in patients. More importantly, our recent work has shown that SS1P in combination with pentostatin and cyclophosphamide can result in durable tumor regression in patients with advanced mesothelioma and opens up the possibility that such an approach can benefit patients with many common cancers.


Reader response criticism and reception theory approach texts through their readers by examining the historical (and theoretical) interpretations of real and implied readers. In Life in Search of Readers: Reading (in) Chicano/a Literature (2003), Manuel M. Martin-Rodriguez analyzes the implied readers of Chicano/a literature, the historical reception of key texts, and how readers are portrayed in Chicano/a literature through metaliterary discourse. My project uses this framework as a starting point to reexamine the little-recognized significance of U.S. novelist John Rechy, documenting how his work spans literary traditions and readerships that are seldom considered in relation to each other: U.S. and international LGBTQ literature, Chicana/o literature, and Anglo-American literature. Organized in three chapters, this study situates Rechy's work within diverse literary traditions and examines how the act of reading (in) Rechy's work is mediated by ethnicity, class, nationality, gender and sexual orientation. By analyzing one author as a case study, my study delves deeply into his work while also studying his connections to transnational texts and readerships, by examining the intertextual references within his texts as well as references to his work by other authors. My study contributes to reader response and reception studies by demonstrating the benefits of using a reader response theory approach in an analysis of texts with multiple audiences, because it opens texts to multiple interpretations. Finally, the results of my analysis of the responses of everyday readers to Rechy's work suggest that for widely read texts, this is an effective way to qualitatively measure the social impact of a text, while my documentation of intertextual references to Rechy's work combined with archival research illustrates the literary impact of an author's work. These methods are particularly well suited for texts that have mixed critical reviews, or that have been understudied, and they provide a historically situated and more egalitarian framework for measuring the social and literary value and impact of a text.


This paper analyses the association between health outcomes of newborn children and mother?s poverty status during pregnancy.We use a new questionnaire accompanying the GSOEP which collects abundant information on health outcomes. The findings indicate that there is generally no effect from poverty to health, except on the probability of preterm birth. Furthermore,we find some indication of intergenerational transmission of health status.


The State of Texas is home to nearly 2 million men, women and children with diabetes, over half a million of which reside in the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) region. Recognizing the rising need to identify the disparities in implementing the diabetes prevention and management efforts and adopting the healthy life style in high diabetes prevalence areas in Dallas County, we explored the potential of Geographic Information System (GIS) methodology to analyze the data at zip code level from Dallas-Fort Worth Hospital Council (DFWHC) Research Foundation's data registry. The objectives of this research were to identify the zip codes with the highest prevalence of diabetes in Dallas County and to analyze the disparities that may relate to the higher diabetes prevalence. The process revealed the zip codes with the highest prevalence of diabetes and the disparities possibly influencing the higher prevalence. The results showed that the zip codes with the highest prevalence of diabetes had very few fresh food and supermarkets, food banks, parks, sidewalks and hospitals and clustered medical clinics, indicating that addressing these disparities may be a promising strategy for decreasing the prevalence of diabetes in these diabetes clusters in Dallas County. The strength of this research is DFWHC research Foundation's comprehensive data registry which allowed us to analyze the patient data up to the zip code level to identify the high diabetes prevalence areas. Our results have significance in the realm of public health and health care. With the identification of the contributing disparities in the high diabetes prevalence in Dallas County, public health efforts and resources can be more efficiently targeted and focused for prevention and management. Also in the future, we support improvements in health care data-sharing in order to improve coordinate care between different health care providers to prevent diabetes at an early stage and provide coordinated care at treatment and management stage. 152 Enviromental Disparities Present a Challenge for Diabetes Prevention and Management Efforts in Dallas County Theresa Mendoza et al Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice, Volume 7, Issue 5 2014


The acute onset of stridor in a young child usually represents viral croup, particularly during the fall and early winter. If the clinical picture is entirely consistent with this diagnosis and gas exchange is maintained, management with cool mist at home is appropriate. Rapid deterioration is unusual in viral croup; however, if obstruction is prolonged or becomes unusually severe, racemic epinephrine aerosols, hospitalization for careful observation, a brief course of corticosteroid therapy, and, rarely, endotracheal intubation may be required. Many of the other causes of acute stridor in childhood represent true pediatric emergencies: epiglottitis, foreign body aspiration, bacterial tracheitis, allergic airway edema, and retropharyngeal abscess, all requiring management with a consultant. Chronic stridor in infancy most often represents laryngomalacia, a developmental abnormality of the laryngeal cartilage which usually resolves by the second year of life and rarely requires specific treatment. Other causes of chronic stridor in childhood include subglottic hemangioma, vocal cord paralysis, and a long list of abnormalities. In the older child with chronic stridor or in the infant whose clinical picture is unusual for laryngomalacia, airway roentgenograms, barium studies, or laryngoscopy/bronchoscopy should be obtained to establish the definitive diagnosis.


Weakly-supervised table question-answering (TableQA) models have achieved state-of-art performance by using pre-trained BERT transformer to jointly encoding a question and a table to produce structured query for the question. However, in practical settings TableQA systems are deployed over table corpora having topic and word distributions quite distinct from BERT's pretraining corpus. In this work we simulate the practical topic shift scenario by designing novel challenge benchmarks WikiSQL-TS and WikiTable-TS, consisting of train-dev-test splits in five distinct topic groups, based on the popular WikiSQL and WikiTable-Questions datasets. We empirically show that, despite pre-training on large open-domain text, performance of models degrades significantly when they are evaluated on unseen topics. In response, we propose T3QA (Topic Transferable Table Question Answering) a pragmatic adaptation framework for TableQA comprising of: (1) topic-specific vocabulary injection into BERT, (2) a novel text-to-text transformer generator (such as T5, GPT2) based natural language question generation pipeline focused on generating topic-specific training data, and (3) a logical form re-ranker. We show that T3QA provides a reasonably good baseline for our topic shift benchmarks. We believe our topic split benchmarks will lead to robust TableQA solutions that are better suited for practical deployment


In 2008, with Baze v. Rees, the Supreme Court broke decades of silence regarding state execution methods to declare Kentucky's lethal injection protocol constitutional, yet the opinion itself did not offer much guidance. In the six years after Baze, legal challenges to lethal injection soared as states scrambled to quell litigation by modifying their lethal injection protocols. My unprecedented study of over 300 cases citing Baze reveals that such modifications have occurred with alarming frequency. Moreover, even as states purportedly rely on the Baze opinion, they have changed their lethal injection protocols in inconsistent ways that bear little resemblance to the original protocol evaluated in Baze and even differ from one execution to the next within the same state. States' continuous tinkering often affects already-troubled aspects of their lethal injection procedures. The compendium of these deficiencies has led to some of the most glaring failures in lethal injection history. An even more disturbing revelation relates to the lethal injection drugs used in these rapidly changing protocols. Recent drug shortages threaten many states' abilities to carry out executions, and this Article presents evidence of the unfettered substitutions states have made in their desperate attempts to adhere to their execution schedules. These attempts include frequent drug switches that take place quickly, without oversight, and based purely on convenience and availability. The resulting unreliability and randomness heighten the risk that the execution process will violate the Eighth Amendment's Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause. As that risk increases, so does the tendency for states to retreat into secrecy regarding their lethal injection protocols. For a growing number of states, alternative protocols also incorporate the use of compounding pharmacies to produce lethal injection drugs. Traditionally, compounding pharmacies are non-FDA regulated, small-scale pharmacies that make customized drugs on an as-needed basis in response to individualized prescriptions. This trend toward using compounding pharmacies is highly problematic. For example, state regulations are paltry. They also tend to differ from one state to the next, making it difficult to ensure that compounded drugs are held to consistently high standards of quality, safety, and effectiveness. Evidence shows, however, that proposed and newly adopted federal legislation regulating these pharmacies may create major obstacles for the use of compounded drugs in executions, leaving states without even this risky recourse. Death-penalty opponents and medical professionals have long objected to lethal injection on the basis that the use of drugs to carry out executions links death to the practice of medicine. Ironically, that reliance on drugs may end up accomplishing what countless legal challenges could not: drug shortages have devastated this country's execution process to an unparalleled degree. Rather than masking the "machinery of death," the mimicry of medicine may end up dismantling it.


The main circadian clock in mammals is located in the brain, but the cells of many peripheral tissues also contain clocks. Yagita et al. report that the molecular components that make up these peripheral clocks, at least those in fibroblasts, are the same as those that form the brain's master clock in the mouse. Transcriptional and translation feedback loops consisting of Per2, Bmal1, Clock, and Cry1, and their respective proteins, interact to produce a circa 24-hour rhythm in cultured fibroblasts. The oscillations and period length are dependent on the presence of Cry1, as in the brain. Thus, the causes of the distinctive features of peripheral oscillators--a tendency to exhibit dampening and insensitivity to light--must be sought elsewhere. K. Yagita, F. Tamanini, G. T. J. van der Horst, H. Okamura, Molecular mechanisms of the biological clock in cultured fibroblasts. Science 292, 278-281 (2001). [Abstract] [Full Text]


The
 pattern
 of
 recurrence
 after
 neoadjuvant
 chemoradiotherapy
 followed
 by transhiatal
 esophagectomy
 with
 limited
 mediastinal
 lymphadenectomy
 among
 73 patients
 with
 carcinoma
 of
 the
 distal
 esophagus,
 gastroesophageal
 junction
 (GEJ) and/or
 gastric
 cardia,
 was
 investigated
 in
 this
 retrospective
 study.
 Results
 indicate that
 among
 the
 30
 patients
 with
 recurrence,
 distant
 sites
 (n
 =
 24)
 were
 more common
 than
 local
 sites
 (n
 =
 6)
 and
 this
 difference
 was
 statistically
 significant
 (P
 = 0.001).
 Lungs
 and
 liver
 were
 the
 most
 common
 sites
 of
 first
 recurrence,
 51%,
 while mediastinal
 nodes
 were
 the
 sites
 of
 first
 recurrence
 in
 6%
 of
 cases.
 Twenty
 patients (27.4%)
 had
 pathologic
 complete
 response,
 20
 patients
 (27.4%)
 had
 disease downstaging,
 17
 patients
 (23.3%)
 had
 no
 response,
 and
 12
 (16.4%)
 had
 disease progression.
 Time
 to
 first
 recurrence
 was
 significantly
 reduced
 in
 patients
 with pathologic
 stage
 III
 disease
 (P
 =
 0.044).
 Patients
 receiving
 50
 Gy
 of
 neoadjuvant radiotherapy
 had
 lower
 rates
 of
 recurrence
 than
 patients
 receiving
 45
 Gy
 (P
 = 0.025).
 Five-‐year
 disease-‐free
 survival
 and
 overall
 survival
 were
 61.6%
 and
 60.3%, respectively.
 Since
 mediastinal
 failure
 rates
 were
 significantly
 lower
 than
 distant failure
 rates
 in
 this
 study,
 it
 appears
 that
 aggressive
 mediastinal
 control
 at
 the
 time of
 esophagectomy
 in
 patients
 with
 carcinoma
 of
 the
 distal
 esophagus,
 GEJ
 and/or gastric
 cardia,
 who
 have
 received
 neoadjuvant
 chemoradiotherapy,
 is
 unnecessary. Furthermore,
 since
 pathologic
 stage
 of
 disease
 is
 significantly
 associated
 with disease
 recurrence,
 more
 efforts
 should
 be
 made
 to
 improve
 systemic
 therapy
 prior to
 and/or
 after
 resection.


Reflection is an important method of self-improvement, Akbari et al. established a systematic reflection model in 2010 that composed reflection scale, and was firstly applied in foreign language teaching. Reflection scale designs teachers' behaviors six aspects, teachers reflect on self-teaching from different perspectives to propel to and promote teachers' professional level and promote teachers growth. Reflection scale specifies teachers' reflection contents and methods; it can form into powerful selfreflection consciousness on teachers. The paper carries on researches and analysis on reflection scale application and English teachers growth relationship by fuzzy mathematical methods, and makes objective evaluations on application of reflection scale to universities English teachers growth influences.


The Liang dynasty (502-557) is one of the most brilliant and creative periods in Chinese history and one of the most underestimated and misunderstood. Under the Liang, literary activities, such as writing, editing, anthologizing, and cataloguing, were pursued on an unprecedented scale, yet the works of this era are often dismissed as "decadent" and no more than a shallow prelude to the glories of the Tang.This book is devoted to contextualizing the literary culture of this era - not only the literary works themselves but also the physical process of literary production such as the copying and transmitting of texts; activities such as book collecting, anthologizing, cataloguing, and various forms of literary scholarship; and the intricate interaction of religion, particularly Buddhism, and literature. Its aim is to explore the impact of social and political structure on the literary world.


Charities provide many vital services for New Zealand society; however, charities are in constant need of donations from the public in order to provide these services. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between situational optimism/pessimism and donating intentions. Two hundred and fifty three people from the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand took part in experiment. Participants were randomly assigned to one of five conditions in which they viewed an optimistic, pessimistic or neutral (control) image and were asked to rate their intention to donate to a disaster relief charity. When covariates were controlled for, the results revealed that people who saw the pessimistic image were more likely to intend to donate than participants who looked at optimistic image. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.


With the popularity of mobile devices and the quick growth of the mobile Web, users can now browse news wherever they want; so, their news preferences are usually related to their geographical contexts. Consequently, many research efforts have been put on location-aware news recommendation, which recommends to users news happening nearest to them. Nevertheless, in a real-world context, users' news preferences are not only related to their locations, but also strongly related to their personal interests. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a hybrid method called location-aware personalized news recommendation with explicit semantic analysis (LP-ESA), which recommends news using both the users' personal interests and their geographical contexts. However, the Wikipedia-based topic space in LP-ESA suffers from the problems of high dimensionality, sparsity, and redundancy, which greatly degrade the performance of LP-ESA. To address these problems, we further propose a novel method called LP-DSA to exploit recommendation-oriented deep neural networks to extract dense, abstract, low dimensional, and effective feature representations for users, news, and locations. Experimental results show that LP-ESA and LP-DSA both significantly outperform the state-of-the-art baselines. In addition, LP-DSA offers more effective (19.8%–179.6% better) online news recommendation with much lower time cost (25 times quicker) than LP-ESA.


Traditionally, governments have established licensing requirements for the issuance of important classes of monetary instruments — namely, deposit obligations and bank notes. Their issuance has been a legal privilege. This article proposes a similar legal regime for other short-term IOUs, which present similar problems. The approach would be functional rather than formalistic. The article sketches a prototype of such a regulatory system. In addition, the article offers a critical analysis of current reform initiatives pertaining to the short-term funding markets. It finds reasons to doubt that they will be effective. It proposes an alternative, coordinated regulatory approach that could be implemented under current U.S. law.


Magnetically induced current densities and current pathways have been calculated for six tautomers of substituted and nonsubstituted core-modified porphyrinoids with one of the pyrrole rings replaced by a thienopyrrole moiety. The calculations show that the aromatic properties of the porpyrinoid macrocycle are strongly influenced by the ethyl-formate substituent at the pyrrole ring of the thienopyrrole moiety, whereas the alkyl substituents at the β positions of the ordinary pyrrole rings have a much smaller effect on the ring-current strength. The ethyl-formate substitution decreases the strength of the paratropic ring current of the macrocycle rendering the energetically lowest tautomer nonaromatic. The substituted tautomers with both porphyrinoid hydrogens inside the macroring are antiaromatic according to the ring current criterion, whereas the three tautomers with one hydrogen at the outer nitrogen of the thienopyrrole moiety are nonaromatic. Current calculations on the nonsubstituted core-modified porphyrinoids show that they are all antiaromatic. The antiaromatic thienopyrrole-modified porphyrinoids are dominated by paratropic ring currents inside the macroring and a weaker diatropic current along the periphery of the macroring. The nonaromatic porphyrinoid tautomers sustain significant ring currents around the thienopyrrole moiety, whereas the other pyrrole rings are practically nonaromatic.


We investigated an outbreak of Coxsackie B4 arthritis in a neonatal unit involving 20 neonates and 12 staff members, over an eight-month period. Laboratory investigations, serology tests, indicate that the outbreak was caused by Coxsackie B4 virus. Contamination of one of the overhead water reservoirs, supplying the nursery, was responsible. After the water tanks were cleaned out, no new cases were reported over five years.


Abstract The Mesozoic–Cenozoic transition is generally seen as a pivotal time in the evolution of benthic marine assemblages but the details of the timing and drivers of these changes are poorly known. The Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plains of the United States contain assemblages preserved as original aragonitic and calcitic material in unconsolidated sediments. This makes coastal plain assemblages ideally suited to paleoecological analyses. Data derived from bulk samples of the Coffee Formation (lower/middle Campanian: Mississippi) as well as published faunal lists from comparable samples of the Severn (Maastrichtian: Maryland), Providence (Maastrichtian: Georgia and Alabama), Stone City (Eocene: Texas), and Gosport (Eocene: Alabama) Formations are used to assess changes in taxonomic diversity and ecomorphological group (life habit and trophic group) composition through this time interval. These analyses find a significant decrease in rarefied-sample species richness from the Campanian through the Eocene, but no change in evenness. With the notable exception of the Stone City Formation, increases in carnivore (neogastropod) richness and abundance occur before the Campanian. Epifaunal suspension-feeding species are a smaller proportion of the sample richness in Eocene samples than in Cretaceous samples. Decreased relative epifaunal suspension-feeder biomass but unchanged relative numbers of epifaunal suspension-feeder individuals suggests a relative decrease in epifaunal suspension-feeder size. Infaunal suspension feeders increase in richness and abundance through the interval. The proportion of drilled bivalves and gastropods does not change through the interval. Changes found in the structure of local shallow-shelf benthic assemblages from the Campanian through the Eocene are generally small relative to the variability between samples. Formation-level variation between assemblages is high relative to the magnitude of the temporal signal, emphasizing the need for investigators to include multiple formations per interval in tests of temporal trends.


In his great poem, Parmenides uses an argument by elimination to select the correct "way of inquiry" from a pool of two, the ways of is and of is not, joined later by a third, "mixed" way of is and is not. Parmenides' first two ways are soon given modal upgrades – is becomes cannot not be, and is not becomes necessarily is not (B2, 3-6) – and these are no longer contradictories of one another. And is the common view right, that Parmenides rejects the "mixed" way because it is a contradiction? I argue that the modal upgrades are the product of an illicit modal shift. This same shift, built into two Exclusion Arguments, gives Parmenides a novel argument to show that the "mixed" way fails. Given the independent failure of the way of is not, Parmenides' argument by elimination is complete.


This paper outlines the results obtained from monitoring the Beach Nourishment Project at Jupiter Island, Florida. Jupiter Island is a 16 mile long barrier island on the east coast of Florida. Five miles of the beach were nourished in two stages in 1973 and 1974. A total of 3.4 million cubic yards of sand were dredged from an offshore borrow area and placed on the beach. The monitoring program included: seasonal hydrographic surveys of beach and offshore profile to 3000 feet offshore; climatological monitoring of wind, waves, tides and currents over a oneyear period; tracer and dye studies; and sand sampling and coring at selected beach and offshore locations. The results indicate that beach restoration has a groin effect in the sense of producing favorable changes in littoral drift due to shore alignment changes. A net accretion updrift of the restored area occurs. The results demonstrate the importance of the offshore profile in accounting for the total sedimentary balance. Shoreline recession coupled by a build up in the offshore profile may reflect accretion rather than erosion. Finally, the results show that the littoral drift formula using the wave climate as input provides inadequate prediction estimates for erosion or deposition following construction of a beach restoration project.


In this paper, we rewrite the minimal-connected-component (MCC) model in 2-D meshes in a fully-distributed manner without using global information so that not only can the existence of a Manhattan-distance-path be ensured at the source, but also such a path can be formed by routing-decisions made at intermediate nodes along the path. We propose the MCC model in 3-D meshes, and extend the corresponding routing in 2-D meshes to 3-D meshes. We consider the positions of source & destination when the new faulty components are constructed. Specifically, all faulty nodes will be contained in some disjoint fault-components, and a healthy node will be included in a faulty component only if using it in the routing will definitely cause a non-minimal routing-path. A distributed process is provided to collect & distribute MCC information to a limited number of nodes along so-called boundaries. Moreover, a sufficient & necessary condition is provided for the existence of a Manhattan-distance-path in the presence of our faulty components. As a result, only the routing having a Manhattan-distance-path will be activated at the source, and its success can be guaranteed by using the information of boundary in routing-decisions at the intermediate nodes. The results of our Monte-Carlo-estimate show substantial improvement of the new fault-information model in the percentage of successful Manhattan-routing conducted in 3-D meshes.


The way in which quality is modelled within an organisation has typically followed either a fixed-model or a tailorable approach. Fixed-model techniques suffer the disadvantage of inflexibility to local environments, since, the parameters of these models cannot be changed by users or designers to reflect their own views. The tailorable approaches tend to preclude cross-project comparisons. In addition, both techniques lack comprehensive guidelines for building quality into a software product, and lack the ability to resolve conflicts where individuals disagree about the model parameters. In this work, the construction of a new approach is described which overcomes these deficiencies. Since metrics and metric measurement is an important component of quality models, common metrics and measurement techniques are identified, before the construction and evaluation of the new quality modelling approach is presented.
A common metric is software size, measurement of which can be performed by use of the Function Point Analysis (FPA) technique. The weighting and adjustment factors of the traditional FPA approach are simplified here, to produce a new estimation technique which can be used at early stages in the development lifecycle. The new model is validated against two project datasets, and the results show a good degree of accuracy when estimating the FPA count, although a lower performance is achieved when estimating actual effort.
The major component of this thesis is the construction of the new quality modelling approach, that enables local requirements tailoring whilst providing the ability to perform cross-project comparisons. Unlike existing techniques, comprehensive conflict resolution mechanisms are incorporated, and it is shown that the approach can be used to measure different software entities, allowing direct comparisons between measurements and thus producing more consistent results. The implementation consists of the construction of a software tool supporting the new methodology, and use of both this tool and the technique on real projects at a large financial organisation. The validation of the approach is performed against a list of requirements for a good quality model, and from feedback both from use on the projects and from a questionnaire survey.


People with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) should be offered psychological treatment rather than drug treatment or the widely used practice of debriefing. This is the recommendation of a guideline for the NHS in England and Wales published this week.

The guideline, from the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, says that up to 30% of people who experience an exceptionally threatening or catastrophic event may develop the disorder. The most characteristic symptom is reliving aspects of the traumatic event in a vivid and distressing way, including flashbacks, nightmares, and repetitive and distressing intrusive images or other sensory impressions from the event.

After reviewing …


Reinforcement learning (RL) agents can reduce learning time dramatically by planning with learned predictive models. Such planning agents learn to improve their actions using planning trajectories, sequences of imagined interactions with the environment. However, planning agents are not intrinsically driven to improve their predictive models, which is a necessity in complex environments. This problem can be solved by adding a curiosity drive that rewards agents for experiencing novel states. Curiosity acts as a higher form of exploration than simple random action selection schemes because it encourages targeted investigation of interesting situations. In a task with multiple external rewards, we show that RL agents using uncertainty-limited planning trajectories and intrinsic curiosity rewards outperform non-curious planning agents. The results show that curiosity helps drive planning agents to improve their predictive models by exploring uncertain territory. To the author's knowledge, no previous work has tested the benefits of curiosity with planning trajectories.


This report summarizes Type I edge localized mode (ELM) dynamics measurements from a number of tokamaks, including ASDEX-Upgrade, DIII-D, JET, JT-60U and MAST, with the goal of providing guidance and insight for the development of ELM simulation and modelling. Several transport mechanisms are conjectured to be responsible for ELM transport, including convective transport due to filamentary structures ejected from the pedestal, parallel transport due to edge ergodization or magnetic reconnection and turbulent transport driven by the high edge gradients when the radial electric field shear is suppressed. The experimental observations are assessed for their validation, or conflict, with these ELM transport conjectures.


Abstract The theory of electromagnetic waves in a homogeneous plasma is reviewed. The linear response of the plasma to the waves is obtained in the form of the dielectric tensor. Waves ranging from the low frequency Alfvén to the high frequency electron cyclotron waves are discussed in the limit of the cold plasma approximation. Bernstein waves are briefly treated as an example of waves in finite temperature plasmas.


This paper explores the acceptance of a "silent period" as a stage in second language development for children acquiring English as an Additional Language in Early Years settings.  Current views suggest that it is normal for children to very quickly stop using their mother tongue and enter a period of silence. A positive perspective on this is that children may be using this time to observe and grow in understanding of the second language. However, there may also be negative effects, as children may become withdrawn and miss out on opportunities to develop relationships and language.  It is the argument of this paper that if this silent period is normalised, there is potential for ambivalence around the well-being of the child which may run counter to best Early Years practice. This study consisted of a qualitative content analysis which drew on twenty case studies collected by Early Years Educators documenting children's progress over the initial weeks and months in Early Years settings. The main findings were that some children did indeed enter a silent period and shyness was a risk factor for this being prolonged.  Non-verbal communication was used positively by some children to develop relationships with other children, but negatively by others, in the form of aggression and frustration, until they developed enough language to communicate. The children who did best continued to use their home language and non-verbal communication which enabled them to form relationships. Over time this became a bridge into the second language. Strategies used by educators included supporting children in small groups and bringing the home language into the setting in keeping with recommendations of policy documents in Ireland.  Ultimately, this paper argues that the normalisation of a silent period may infringe on children's rights to be active participants in their own learning. Moreover, it may limit the extent to which they are meaningfully valued, respected, empowered, cared for and included in Early Years settings.


Dynamic light scattering (DLS) techniques can provide information about the quantity, size, and motion of light scatterers within a volume based on temporal fluctuations in its light scattering profile. In DLS, autocorrelation functions (ACFs) are computed from light intensity vs time signals acquired from optical imaging setups. A parameter known as the decorrelation time is computed from each ACF and is inversely related to the average motion speed of scatterers within the imaging volume. Optical coherence tomography is an imaging modality that generates 2D cross-sectional images based on light backscattered from a sample, and the combination of DLS with OCT is known as dynamic light scattering optical coherence tomography (DLS-OCT).
Previously, DLS-OCT has been used to detect apoptosis, a form of programmed cell death, in non-adherent leukemia cells. Cells undergoing apoptosis experience predictable morphological changes that results in an increase in intracellular motion, and therefore a decrease in decorrelation time. We applied DLS-OCT methods to quantify the decorrelation times in adherent breast cancer cell pellets that were either untreated, treated with 20 ng/mL paclitaxel for 24 or 48 hours, or deprived of media for 24 or 48 hours. The mean decorrelation times in the paclitaxel-treated and nutrient deprived groups were significantly lower than in the untreated cells (p<0.05), suggestive of increased intracellular motion due to morphological cellular changes associated with cell death.
We also investigated a new model to fit to ACFs generated by DLS-OCT of cell pellets. Typically, ACFs are fit to single exponential decay curves. We developed a model that expresses the ACFs from in vitro experiments as a sum of multiple exponential decay curves using an algorithm known as CONTIN. The curves produced by CONTIN fitted the experimental data much better than the single exponential decay fits. We speculate that the CONTIN fits, each of which resembled a superposition of three exponential decay functions, may result from light scattered from three different types of scatterers within cells, such as lysosomes, mitochondria, and nuclei.


Recent evidence has changed traditional approaches to low back pain, suggesting minimal bed rest, highly selective imaging, and early return to normal activities. However, there are wide geographical variations in care, and substantial gaps between practice and evidence.This project sought to merge scientific evidence about back pain and knowledge about behavior change to help organizations improve care for back pain. Participating insurance plans, HMOs, and group practices focused on problems they themselves identified. The year-long program included quarterly meetings, coaching for rapid cycles of change, a menu of potential interventions, and recommendations for monitoring outcomes. Participants interacted through meetings, e-mail, and conference calls.Of the 22 participating organizations, 6 (27%) made major progress. Typical changes were reduced imaging, bed rest, and work loss, and increased patient education and satisfaction. Specific examples were a 30% decrease in plain x-rays, a 100% increase in use of patient education materials, and an 81% drop in prescribed bed rest.Despite the complexity of care for back pain, rapid improvements appear feasible. Several organizations had major improvements, and most experienced at least modest improvements. Key elements of successful programs included focus on a small number of clinical goals, frequent measurement of outcomes among small samples of patients, vigilance in maintaining gains; involvement of office staffs as well as physicians, and changes in standard protocols for imaging, physical therapy, and referral.


Sequential growth of multifunctional telechelic polymer chains was used here to produce three, four or seven HO-functionalities equally spaced along the polymer backbone. The telechelic building block consisted of a halide group on one end and both a hydroxyl and alkyne group on the other end. The key was to maintain the halide end-group on the telechelic polymer chain during the CuAAC coupling reaction after each sequential growth. This was accomplished by using the combination of the PMDETA ligand and toluene as a solvent to produce significantly faster rates of CuAAC coupling reaction over halide abstraction. The HO-functionalities were then converted to azide groups allowing further CuAAC reactions with either alkyne polymeric dendrons or cyclics to produce equally spaced grafts along the backbone. The relative hydrodynamic volume ratios of these grafted structures to their corresponding linear analogues were lower but similar to that found from the graft (i.e. dendron or cyclic) itself. Moreover, the same relative change in the hydrodynamic volume was independent of the number of grafts, suggesting that by combining many dendrons or cyclics on a polymer backbone, the effect on the coil conformation was minimal. Our methodology could be extended to produce an asymmetric block copolymer consisting of one block with two dendron grafts and the other block with two cyclic grafts. The work presented here will further extend the utility of both 'living' radical polymerization and 'click' reactions to produce complex polymer architectures.


[1] The CALIOP (Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization) layer product is used for a multimodel evaluation of the vertical distribution of aerosols. Annual and seasonal aerosol extinction profiles are analyzed over 13 sub-continental regions representative of industrial, dust, and biomass burning pollution, from CALIOP 2007–2009 observations and from AeroCom (Aerosol Comparisons between Observations and Models) 2000 simulations. An extinction mean height diagnostic (Za) is defined to quantitatively assess the models' performance. It is calculated over the 0–6 km and 0–10 km altitude ranges by weighting the altitude of each 100 m altitude layer by its aerosol extinction coefficient. The mean extinction profiles derived from CALIOP layer products provide consistent regional and seasonal specificities and a low inter-annual variability. While the outputs from most models are significantly correlated with the observed Za climatologies, some do better than others, and 2 of the 12 models perform particularly well in all seasons. Over industrial and maritime regions, most models show higher Za than observed by CALIOP, whereas over the African and Chinese dust source regions, Za is underestimated during Northern Hemisphere Spring and Summer. The positive model bias in Za is mainly due to an overestimate of the extinction above 6 km. Potential CALIOP and model limitations, and methodological factors that might contribute to the differences are discussed.


A knowledge representation language with subdefinite data types and constraints is considered. An important feature of this language is the possibility of operating with objects that may have slots (attributes) with imprecisely defined (subdefinite) values. Another important feature of the language is that it allows one to bind any object or relation to a set of constraints defined on the values of the object slots. The constraints defined on the slots with subdefinite values allow one to automatically refine such values. Since the constraints are encapsulated in the objects and relations of the semantic network, they can be added to or deleted from the current set of constraints during the process of computation as a consequence of creation or deletion of these objects or relations. A production rule technique is used to specify the process of inference and to manage the set of constraints, as well as to control a search for precise values (solutions).


Existing approaches for modular manufacturing test of core-based system-on-a-chip (SOC) devices do not provide any explicit mechanism for delivering two-pattern tests in the broadside mode, which is necessary to achieve reliable coverage of delay and stuck-open faults. Although wrapper input cells can be enhanced with two memory elements to address this problem, this incur a large test area overhead. This paper proposes a novel architecture for broadside two-pattern test of core-based SOCs without any loss in fault coverage and without increasing the size of the wrapper input cells. The proposed solution combines the dedicated bus-based test access mechanism and functional interconnects for test data transfer in order to provide full controllability of the wrapper input cells in the two consecutive clock cycles required by two-pattern testing. New algorithms for test access mechanism design and test scheduling are proposed and design trade-offs between test area and testing time are discussed using experimental results.


Unlike images which are represented in regular dense grids, 3D point clouds are irregular and unordered, hence applying convolution on them can be difficult. In this paper, we extend the dynamic filter to a new convolution operation, named PointConv. PointConv can be applied on point clouds to build deep convolutional networks. We treat convolution kernels as nonlinear functions of the local coordinates of 3D points comprised of weight and density functions. With respect to a given point, the weight functions are learned with multi-layer perceptron networks and the density functions through kernel density estimation. A novel reformulation is proposed for efficiently computing the weight functions, which allowed us to dramatically scale up the network and significantly improve its performance. The learned convolution kernel can be used to compute translation-invariant and permutation-invariant convolution on any point set in the 3D space. Besides, PointConv can also be used as deconvolution operators to propagate features from a subsampled point cloud back to its original resolution. Experiments on ModelNet40, ShapeNet, and ScanNet show that deep convolutional neural networks built on PointConv are able to achieve state-ofthe-art on challenging semantic segmentation benchmarks on 3D point clouds. Besides, our experiments converting CIFAR-10 into a point cloud showed that networks built on PointConv can match the performance of convolutional networks in 2D images of a similar structure.


Abstract. The coupling of models is a commonly used approach when addressing the complex interactions between different components of earth systems. We demonstrate that this approach can result in a reduction of errors in wave forecasting, especially in dynamically complicated coastal ocean areas, such as the southern part of the North Sea – the German Bight. Here, we study the effects of coupling of an atmospheric model (COSMO) and a wind wave model (WAM), which is enabled by implementing wave-induced drag in the atmospheric model. The numerical simulations use a regional North Sea coupled wave–atmosphere model as well as a nested-grid high-resolution German Bight wave model. Using one atmospheric and two wind wave models simultaneously allows for study of the individual and combined effects of two-way coupling and grid resolution. This approach proved to be particularly important under severe storm conditions as the German Bight is a very shallow and dynamically complex coastal area exposed to storm floods. The two-way coupling leads to a reduction of both surface wind speeds and simulated wave heights. In this study, the sensitivity of atmospheric parameters, such as wind speed and atmospheric pressure, to the wave-induced drag, in particular under storm conditions, and the impact of two-way coupling on the wave model performance, is quantified. Comparisons between data from in situ and satellite altimeter observations indicate that two-way coupling improves the simulation of wind and wave parameters of the model and justify its implementation for both operational and climate simulations.


Aims. A model of heliosheath density and energy spectra of alpha-particles and He+ ions carried by the solar wind is developed. Neutralization of heliosheath He+ ions, mainly by charge exchange (CX) with neutral interstellar H and He atoms, gives rise to ~0.2 - ~100 keV fluxes of energetic neutral He atoms (He ENA). Such fluxes, if observed, would give information about plasmas in the heliosheath and heliospheric tail. Methods. Helium ions crossing the termination shock (TS) constitute suprathermal (test) particles convected by (locally also diffusing through) hydrodynamically calculated background plasma flows (three versions of flows are employed). The He ions proceed from the TS towards heliopause (HP) and finally to the heliospheric tail (HT). Calculations of the evolution of alpha- and He+ particle densities and energy spectra include binary interactions with background plasma and interstellar atoms, adiabatic heating (cooling) resulting from flow compression (rarefaction), and Coulomb scattering on background plasma. Results. Neutralization of suprathermal He ions leads to the emergence of He ENA fluxes with energy spectra modified by the Compton-Getting effect at emission and ENA loss during flight to the Sun. Energy-integrated He ENA intensities are in the range ~0.05 - ~50 cm^-2 s^-1 sr^-1 depending on spectra at the TS (assumed kappa-distributions), background plasma model, and look direction. The tail/apex intensity ratio varies between ~1.8 and ~800 depending on model assumptions. Energy spectra are broad with maxima in the ~0.2 - ~3 keV range depending on the look direction and model. Conclusions. Expected heliosheath He ENA fluxes may be measurable based on the capabilities of the IBEX spacecraft. Data could offer insight into the heliosheath structure and improve understanding of the post-TS solar wind plasmas. HT direction and extent could be assessed.


This thesis examines how Junot Díaz creates and constructs his literary alter-ego and narrator, Yunior de las Casas, and examines the social and cultural aspects, such as race, ethnicity, and gender, that condition or influence Yunior's construction. I argue that Díaz uses the short story as a subversive genre and modernist narrative techniques, such as shifts in spacetime and focalization, to reflect Yunior's diasporic, fragmented subjectivity. My analysis includes narratological and generic readings of Drown and This Is How You Lose Her, with a brief look at The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, paying particular attention to Yunior as narrator. Finally, this thesis traces Yunior's construction and development through Junot Díaz's narratives, and this mapping of Yunior's identity explores race, ethnicity, masculinity, and gender as it relates to heteronormative dominicanidad.


Power consumption, heat dissipation and other physical limitations are pushing
the microprocessor industry towards multicore design patterns. Most of the
processor manufacturers, such as Intel and AMD, are following more conventional
approaches, which consist of homogeneous, symmetric multicores where
execution units are replicated on the same dime; multiple execution units share
some cache level (generally L2 and L3) and the bus to memory. Other manufacturers
proposed still homogeneous approaches but with a stronger emphasis on
parallelism and hyperthreading. This is, for example, the case of Sun with the
UltraSPARC T1 (known as "Niagara"). The UltraSPARC T1 [25,24] can have
up to eight homogeneous cores each of which is four-way hyperthreaded which
delivers a maximum parallelism degree of thirty-two. The Niagara processor is
mostly developed for web servers and database applications since it provides
high computational power for integer operations, which are used considerably in
pointer arithmetics and string processing. Yet other chip manufacturers started
exploring heterogeneous designs where cores have different architectural features.
One such example is the Cell Broadband Engine [22,17,19,18] developed by STI,
a consortium formed by Sony, Toshiba and IBM. The Cell BE has outstanding
floating-point computational power, which makes it a considerable candidate for
high performance computing systems. IBM shipped the first Cell-based system,
the BladeCenter QS20, on September 12th 2006. This blade is equipped with
two Cell processors with a 512 MB memory each and connected in a NUMA
configuration; the external connectivity is achieved through a Gigabit and an
Infiniband network interface. The BladeCenter QS20 has impressive computational
power that, coupled with its high speed network interfaces, makes it a good
candidate for high performance cluster computing. At almost the same period
(November 11th), Sony released the PlayStation 3 (PS3) gaming console. Even
if this console is not meant for high performance computing, it is still equipped
with a (stripped down) Cell processor and its price ( $600) definitely makes
it an attractive solution for building a Cell-based cluster. This document aims
at evaluating the performance and the limitations of the PS3 platform for high
performance cluster computing.


This article analyses different factors that influence the purchasing behaviour of online supermarket customers. These factors are related to both the appearance of the website as well as the processes that take place when making the purchase. Based on these analyses, the various groups of consumers with homogenous behaviour are studied. The analysis also allows the quality of the service offered by this kind of establishment to be defined, as well as the main dimensions in which it develops. In the conclusions, factors which should influence the manager of an online supermarket to improve the quality of its service are given.


Aim: Free radicals are an important factor in the etiopathogenesis of colitis and may increase oxidative damage. The antioxidant vitamin C efficiently scavenges free oxygen radicals. The present study aimed to investigate the probable protective effects of vitamin C on oxidative injury in rats in which colitis was experimentally induced with acetic acid. Materials and methods: This study was conducted with rats for a period of 7 days. Group 1 intrarectally received a placebo (0.9% NaCl) and group 2 intrarectally received 2 mL of 5% acetic acid (AA) and the placebo. Group 3 intrarectally received 2 mL of 5% AA and vitamin C (100 mg/kg of body weight) via gastric gavage. Myeloperoxidase (MPO), catalase (CAT), prolidase (PRS), and arylesterase (ARE) activity, and total thiol (T-SH), total antioxidant capacity (TAC), total oxidant status (TOS), lipid hydroperoxide (LOOH), and oxidative stress index (OSI) values were analyzed in blood and intestinal samples. Results: While CAT and PRS activity, and plasma TOS, LOOH, and OSI increased following the administration of AA, TAC decreased. TAC increased, whereas LOOH and OSI decreased in response to vitamin C treatment. While MPO and CAT activity, and TOS, LOOH, and OSI values in the colon increased in response to AA treatment, PRS, ARE, TSH, and TAC decreased. TAC increased in response to vitamin C, whereas MPO, PRS and ARE activity, and TOS, LOOH, and OSI values decreased. While histopathologic colonic injury scores increased (P < 0.001) in response to AA, they decreased in response to vitamin C. Conclusion: Histopathological damage scores, MPO, TOS, LOOH, and OSI decreased significantly in response to vitamin C treatment, whereas TAC increased. Based on these results, we think that vitamin C might play an important role in preventing oxidative stress and colonic tissue injury produced by acetic acid.


This book explores a world where the boundaries between reality and representation have become blurred, a world where LA Law is used to train lawyers. Drawing on examples from around the globe, Nick Perry presents a fascinating and entertaining analysis of both familiar objects and situations as well as the more unusual and absurd. Meals served in British pubs, motor-cycle gangs in downtown Tokyo, Australian movies, are just some examples used by the author in his engaging exploration of modern sense of the 'unreal'. Hyperrealities also engages with well known theorists of contemporary culture, from Baudrillard and Umberto Eco to Jameson and Sartre.


The growing demand for alternative energy has led those who are interested in producing sustainable energy from renewable timber to devise new concepts to satisfy those demands. The concept of timber processing depots, where whole stem trees will be delivered for future processing into wood products and high quality energy fuel, has led to the re-evaluation of our current timber transportation method and whether it can viably transport unprocessed trees in an efficient, legal and safe manner. Modifications for log trailers will be developed to accommodate tree length, unprocessed southern yellow pine. Consideration of criteria such as modification weight, load force analysis, ease of attachment and detachment, and overall feasibility will determine which of the two trailer modification designs will be chosen for payload capacity utilization testing. The first design is a swinging guide design and the second is an extendable bolster design. These designs ensure that tree crowns are contained within the trailer to prevent contact with and damage to other vehicles while in transport. Furthermore, three different loading arrangements will be tested on the modified trailer to determine which configuration maximizes the payload while remaining legal to transport timber according to the laws and regulations of 11 states in the southeastern United States. These payload capacity utilization rates will be compared to the rate of an unmodified log trailer loaded with tree length, unprocessed southern yellow pine. We hypothesize that the modified trailer with a standard loading configuration will optimize and increase the payload over the unmodified trailer.


Ocelot is a dynamic compilation framework designed to map the explicitly parallel PTX execution model used by NVIDIA CUDA applications onto diverse many-core architectures. Ocelot includes a dynamic binary translator from PTX to many-core processors that leverages the LLVM code generator to target x86. The binary translator is able to execute CUDA applications without recompilation and Ocelot can in fact dynamically switch between execution on an NVIDIA GPU and a many-core CPU. It has been validated against over 100 applications taken from the CUDA SDK [1], the UIUC Parboil benchmarks [2], the Virginia Rodinia benchmarks [3], the GPUVSIPL signal and image processing library [4], and several domain specific applications. This paper presents a detailed description of the implementation of our binary translator highlighting design decisions and trade-offs, and showcasing their effect on application performance. We explore several code transformations that are applicable only when translating explicitly parallel applications and suggest additional optimization passes that may be useful to this class of applications. We expect this study to inform the design of compilation tools for explicitly parallel programming models (such as OpenCL) as well as future CPU and GPU architectures.


This article provides experimental support for the hypothesis that insurance can be a motive for religious donations. We randomize enrollment of members of a Pentecostal church in Ghana into a commercial funeral insurance policy. Then church members allocate money between themselves and a set of religious goods in a series of dictator games with significant stakes. Members enrolled in insurance give significantly less money to their own church compared with members who only receive information about the insurance. Enrollment also reduces giving toward other spiritual goods. We set up a model exploring different channels of religiously based insurance. The implications of the model and the results from the dictator games suggest that adherents perceive the church as a source of insurance and that this insurance is derived from beliefs in an interventionist God. Survey results suggest that material insurance from the church community is also important and we hypothesize that these two insurance channels exist in parallel.


Monosomic plants from an Australian variety (Oxley) having low stomatal resistance (SR), low leaf relative water content (LRWC), and high carbon isotope discrimination (Δ) were crossed with variety Falchetto having opposite characters in order to produce F2 backcross reciprocal monosomic families. The families were assessed under pre-anthesis water-stress conditions in a controlled growth chamber. F2 backcross reciprocal monosomic analysis suggested possible allelic variations between chromosomes 1A, 3A, 6A, 7A, 7B, 1D, and 4D of Falchetto and their homologues in Oxley for LRWC. This analysis also suggested possible allelic variation between chromosomes 5A, 1A, and 3A of Falchetto and their homologues in Oxley for SR. Extending the analysis to the F3 disomic generation and the assessment of LRWC at this generation confirmed that reciprocals for chromosomes 3A and 6A showed significant differences. F2 backcross reciprocal monosomic analysis for Δ suggested allelic variations on chromosomes 1D, 4D, and 5D. However, chromosome 1D from Falchetto had the highest difference from its homologue in Oxley. Assessing the reciprocals of this chromosome for vegetative evapotranspiration efficiency (ETEveg) at the F3 disomic generation indicated that the observed variation for Δ was translated into differences for ETEveg. These results indicate that chromosome 1D of Falchetto is promising in reducing Δ and that the improvement of wheat varieties for ETEveg can be done by selection for Δ. Finally, plieotropic effects of some chromosomes were observed for the characters under study. This suggests the existence of genetic factors on these chromosomes affecting more than one character. However, some pleiotropic effects could also be due to non-genetic developmental interactions.


Most vegetable farmers are using agricultural chemicals on their farms. Many of these chemicals are used to control pests and are known as pesticides. Pesticides can be considered according to their chemical basis. Most of the more toxic pesticides fall into chemical groups of organophosphates, carbamates and bipyridyls. Approach: The general objective to study the level of liver enzymes as a result of being exposed to pesticides among the farmers in Muar, Johor. The specific objectives of the study are to identified relationship between pesticides exposure durations with the liver enzyme level, frequency handling the pesticides and using PPE when application the pesticides, compare the liver enzyme level between exposure group and comparative group and finally identified the factor which can influence the liver enzyme lever at farmer who exposed to pesticides. The cross sectional study on the effect of pesticides to the liver enzymes among farmer at Muar Johor was conducted by using the liver enzymes such as Alanine Aminotransferase (ALAT) and g-Glutamyltranspeptidase (GGT) as indicators. 92 workers were selected as respondents, where 47 respondents are in the exposed group and the other 45 respondents in the comparative group. Respondents had been selected from farmers in Muar as the exposed group and respondents who from Terengganu Health District Office as the comparative group. The selection of the respondents was made through purposive sampling from list provided. The liver enzymes level was measured by taking blood from respondent. The Automatic Analyzer Hitachi 902 was used in the blood analysis. Two types of the liver enzymes (ALAT and GGT) were analyzed. Results: Mean GGT for exposed group was 63.5 Units/L and ALAT was 61.9 Units/L, significantly higher compare to comparative group while the mean of GGT was 20.7 Units/L and ALAT was 23 Units/L. Non-parametric difference MannWhitney U test showed there was significant different between exposed and comparative group on GGT (Z = -6.535; p£0.001) and ALAT level (Z = -5.315; p£0.001). Five occupational factors have been measured in this study which is years of working, number of pesticide used per day, frequency of handling pesticide per day, pesticide spraying durations and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) scores. Result showed both GGT and ALAT enzymes level has significant correlations with pesticide spraying durations (r = 412; p = 0.004 and r = 0.445; p = 0.002) and Personal Protective Equipment(PPE) scores (r = -0.397; p = 0.006 and r = -0.478; p = 0.001). Pesticides spraying durations was the occupational exposure factoring which most influence GGT (b = 0.710; p<0.001) and ALAT (b = 0.574; p<0.001) enzymes level among exposed group after adjustments for all confounders in this study. Conclusion: After adjustments of the confounding factors, result shows that frequency of handling pesticide per day and pesticide spraying duration (hours) influence the enzyme GGT level among exposed workers, meanwhile years of working and pesticide spraying duration (hours) influence the enzyme ALAT level among exposed workers.


Work system theory (WST) provides a bridge between managerial and technical perspectives on BPM that often seem distant from each other. In combination, the work system framework, underlying work system metamodel, and the work system life cycle model provide a number of bridges between those perspectives. In relation to managerial BPM, the work system framework treats "business process" as one of nine elements in a basic understanding of a work system. The others are participants, information, technology, products/services, customers, environment, infrastructure, and strategies. The underlying metamodel outlines a precise structure for analysis and design of work systems and for links to technical aspects of BPM. It provides details that are omitted from the work system framework, which has proven useful for initial high level summaries but is not granular enough to support detailed design and documentation. The work system life cycle model combines planned and unplanned (emergent) change through which work systems evolve. This paper explains where WST fits in the general realm of BPM-related topics and how WST might help in developing BPM further. It also identifies challenges and next steps related to using WST to expand the scope of BPM.


Abstract : This effort constitutes a systems engineering approach in which the materials science, ultrasound structural health monitoring, flight and maintenance operations, and relevant aeronautical policies and programs are involved to explore the evolution and characterization of structural cracks in aircraft fuselage structures in which the loads are varying. During flight, an aircraft fuselage skin and structure are subjected to varied cyclic loads, which can cause embedded cracks and other damage features to change their characteristics due to loading effects. The current research is based in the application of finite element modeling techniques using COMSOL and PZFLEX software to characterize the behavior of a crack under static loads as well as experimental techniques to observe the behavior of cracks under different static loads, with the goal of understanding the interaction of ultrasonic energy with opening-closing crack features. Specimen testing under tensile loads were considered, where crack detection and crack characterization were studied for bonded piezoelectric sensing and guided ultrasonic waves useful in structural health monitoring applications. The results suggest that crack detection and crack sizing accuracy can be impacted by load-induced, crack opening-closure effects, where linear elastic loading of the structure resulted in linear changes in the ultrasonic signal response.


Housekeeping standard practices are vital to the hospitality industry because they guide the performance of the room attendants. This study assessed the satisfaction of the guests on housekeeping standard practices of the room attendants. Fifty guests took part in this study. The instruments made up of three parts. Part 1 pertains to the respondents' profile, part 2 contains items on determining the level of satisfaction of the guests, and part 3 pertains to the common problems encountered by the guests. The gathered data were treated statistically using frequency, simple percentage, weighted mean, and Spearman's rho. Guests had expressed their satisfaction with the overall service they received. However, resort guests also encountered some problems while staying in the resort. The information on service quality gaps could help resort managers to diagnose where performance improvement can best be targeted. Establishments need a relatively stable labor force to allow internalization of service standards.


Owing to global warming, the strength of recent tropical cyclones (e.g., hurricanes, typhoons, etc.) has been gradually increasing, along with a rise in seawater temperature and heat capacity in tropical regions. In particular, hurricanes affecting the Korean peninsula are becoming stronger, along with a rapid increase in seawater temperatures around the Korean peninsula and in the west Pacific. In the last 10 years (2007-2016), approximately 35% of all damage due to natural disasters in Korea was caused by hurricanes, indicating the significant impact hurricanes have. Most damage due to hurricanes was caused either by severe rain storms or strong winds. Many studies have been conducted on damage due to severe rain storms from hurricanes, but very few have been done to estimate the associated strong winds and related damage. This study focuses on the year 2015, when four hurricanes hit the Korean peninsula and approximately 40% of total damage due to natural disasters was caused by hurricanes. The highest possible wind velocity during a hurricane on the Korean peninsula is examined, as calculated through WRF and RAM numerical modeling using RDAPS data. A wind velocity of 700 hPa was determined as the result of numerical modeling. RSMC Tokyo Typhoon Center Best Track data was also used for this study. In the distribution of highest hurricane wind velocities on the Korean peninsula in 2015, the 30-40 m/s wind velocity range comprised approximately 52%. This research was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea(NRF) funded by


With an adjusted model, we reconsider simple 1,2-dyotropic reactions with the introduction of a concept based on the intramolecular dynamics of a tetrahedron (van 't Hoff modeling). In fact the dyotropic reactions are strongly related to conversions originated from neighbouring group participation or anchimeric assistance, defined as the interaction of a center with a lone pair of electrons in an atom and the electrons present in aδor π bond. The researchful 1,2-dyotropic reactions, based on the 1,2-interchange of halogens, methyl and hydrogen taking place in a concerted fashion, are in competition with the two-step reaction in which the neighbouring group participation or anchimeric assistance comes to full expression by ionic dissociation of the other exchangeable (halogen) atom. As to be expected there is an essential difference between halogen or methyl exchange regarding the number of electrons participating in the transition state. This aspect becomes evident in the geometries of the corresponding transition state geometries. In this paper we refer to ab initio MO calculations and VB considerations. We consider the 1,2-halogen exchange as a combination of two SN2 reactions each containing four electrons. The van 't Hoff dynamics appears a useful model in order to illustrate the computations in a straightforward manner.


The Competency Framework of the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA) details specific competencies, but also places emphasis on the pervasive skills that need to be attained by candidates in order to qualify as South African chartered accountants (CAs (SA)). This article presents the results of a literature review and empirical work that provides conflicting results as to whether the education, the training or a combination of the programmes are responsible for ensuring that aspirant CAs (SA) are equipped with pervasive skills. This study returned significant findings, indicating that SAICA-accredited academics are not aware of their responsibility to ensure that aspirant CAs (SA) have achieved all the competencies as set out in SAICA's Competency Framework. While this apparent shortcoming may exist, it is the responsibility of the Heads of Academic Departments and SAICA alike to further inform academics that the onus to transfer both competencies (specific and pervasive) rests predominantly with them.


Magnetic field lines in astrophysical plasmas are expected to be frozen-in at scales larger than the ion gyroradius. The rapid reconnection of magnetic-flux structures with dimensions vastly larger than the gyroradius requires a breakdown in the standard Alfvén flux-freezing law. We attribute this breakdown to ubiquitous MHD plasma turbulence with power-law scaling ranges of velocity and magnetic energy spectra. Lagrangian particle trajectories in such environments become "spontaneously stochastic," so that infinitely many magnetic field lines are advected to each point and must be averaged to obtain the resultant magnetic field. The relative distance between initial magnetic field lines which arrive at the same final point depends upon the properties of two-particle turbulent dispersion. We develop predictions based on the phenomenological Goldreich & Sridhar theory of strong MHD turbulence and on weak MHD turbulence theory. We recover the predictions of the Lazarian & Vishniac theory for the reconnection rate of large-scale magnetic structures. Lazarian & Vishniac also invoked "spontaneous stochasticity," but of the field lines rather than of the Lagrangian trajectories. More recent theories of fast magnetic reconnection appeal to microscopic plasma processes that lead to additional terms in the generalized Ohm's law, such as the collisionless Hall term. We estimate quantitatively the effect of such processes on the inertial-range turbulence dynamics and find them to be negligible in most astrophysical environments. For example, the predictions of the Lazarian & Vishniac theory are unchanged in Hall MHD turbulence with an extended inertial range, whenever the ion skin depth δi is much smaller than the turbulent integral length or injection-scale Li.


The dynamics of urban systems can be understood from an evolutionary perspective, in some sense extending biological and cultural evolution. Models for systems of cities implementing elementary evolutionary processes remain however to be investigated. We propose here such a model for urban dynamics at the macroscopic scale, in which the diffusion of innovations between cities captures transformation processes (mutations) and transmission processes (diffusion), using two coupled spatial interaction models. Explorations of the model on synthetic systems of cities show the role of spatial interaction and innovation diffusion ranges on measures of diversity and utility, and the existence of intermediate ranges yielding an optimal utility. Multi-objective optimization shows how the model produces a compromise between utility and diversity. This model paves the way towards more elaborated formalizations of urban evolution.


Ventilated air cavities have been a mandatory part of thermally insulated pitched roofs in the Czech Republic. The purpose of these important elements is, among other things, primarily to prevent condensation of water vapor, which could otherwise endanger the roof structure and thus negatively affect the life of the entire composition. However, their thermal properties are often neglected and their overall design is overwhelmingly approached, due to the very difficult and complex calculation, as an empirical and normative matter without a higher link to the actual properties of the air cavity itself. It is therefore necessary that mentioned properties must be investigated more thoroughly, especially with increasing demands on thermal properties and increasingly extreme temperature fluctuations. This work describes a real full-scale experiment in which the properties of temperature and humidity of ventilated air cavities at the boundary with the external environment were measured. The composition of the experimental roof of the building was measured in all important layers, together with all the external and internal environmental conditions. The output is then a detailed course of behavior, which was analyzed and described.


This thesis explores the nature of, and developments in, the coverage of religion and spirituality in factual British television programming 2000-2009, focusing on mainstream terrestrial networks (BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Five) with a public service remit.

The study employs a mixed-method approach with an emphasis on discourse. Working within a broadly Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework, it explores discourses around religion/spirituality, identity and nationality across a range of environments – from the programmes themselves to audience discussion (in focus groups, questionnaires, forum and Twitter discussions, YouTube comments and blogs) and industry accounts of production (in policies, guidelines, publicity and interviews with several of those involved at different stages of the production process).

The theoretical context of this study includes debates over the 'secularisation thesis', the rise of 'fundamentalism', the individualisation of religion and the apparent interest
in 'spirituality' as opposed to 'religion', the role of public service broadcasting, issues of media representation of minorities, and developments within British factual television genres.

The study concludes that, despite public service commitments, there is a lack of diversity in the portrayal of religion and spirituality within mainstream factual British television, with Christianity, Islam and Atheism dominating coverage. All faiths are represented by a limited repertoire of signifiers. Audiences, both those who have
been researched for this study and those who feature in research by the broadcasters and Ofcom, often complain about what they perceive as 'misrepresentation', whilst at the same time discussing 'other' people in stereotypical terms. Within all of the discursive contexts studied, there is a construction of Britain as a liberal, tolerant, moderate place, where spiritual/religious belief is acceptable as long as it operates within particular parameters. When beliefs and practices do not conform to these standards, they are exoticised, ridiculed or presented as dangerous, and often linked to other nations, thus emphasising how they are not a British way of expressing one's spirituality.
However, I argue that the problematic nature of these constructions is in part a result of the complex interaction between audiences, programme makers, policy, academic
discourse and media texts. Each area of discourse informs the other, replicating and reinforcing notions of Britishness, religion and spirituality across multiple contexts.


Aim: The aim of this cross-sectional study is to estimate the prevalence of genital prolapse among married women of Udupi taluk, Karnataka, India. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on 1256 married women using a structured questionnaire. Women were interviewed in their residence using the Manipal Pelvic Floor Dysfunction screening questionnaire. Result: The mean age of the women participated in this study was 42.3±12.2. The overall prevalence of genital prolapse found in this study was 2% (n=25). Thirty-two percent (n=8) of the women with prolapse had symptoms of urinary incontinence. An association was reported between the age and the genital prolapse. Conclusion: This study shows a 2% (n=25) prevalence of genital prolapse in married women of Udupi Taluk.


SOLMOD is a discrete event simulation model written in FORTRAN 77 and operates in a VAX or PC environment. The model emulates the movement and interaction of equipment and radioactive waste as it is processed through the FWMS. SOLMOD can be used to measure the impacts of different operating schedules and rules, system configurations, reliability, availability, maintainability (RAM) considerations, and equipment and other resource availabilities on the performance of processes comprising the FWMS and how these factors combine to determine overall system performance. Model outputs are a series of measurements of the amount and characteristics of waste at selected points in the FWMS and the utilization of resources needed to transport and process the waste. The model results may be reported on a yearly, monthly, weekly, or daily basis to facilitate analysis.


This essay explores the ways in which sentimentality is manifested through the visible, and through associative functions of the eye, in two of Dickens's Christmas books of the 1840s. I situate the relationship between vision and sentiment within discourses from eighteenth-century moral philosophy, as Adam Smith's figure of the "Impartial Spectator" (of central importance to the development of ideas around sympathy) is constructed mainly through the visual. I focus on two of the Christmas Books as they offer an interesting local study to test these ideas, coming at a critical juncture within the development of Dickens's own writing style, and also at an important historical moment within an investigation into Victorian sentimentality. Within Dickens's writing, sentimentality is typically associated with the exaggerated emotional portrayal of pathetic scenes (particularly the deaths of children), designed to elicit emotional responses from the reader. However, behind the hyperbole rests a concern with the self's need to take social, ethical and moral care of others, and the role of literature and art in tutoring the reader's emotional response, with the eye playing a crucial role in this act. I further explore the way in which Dickens's interest in blindness both reinforces, and points to certain disturbances, in his sentimental vision.


PURPOSE
To develop a three-dimensional (3D) deformable head-and-neck (H&N) phantom with realistic tissue contrast for both kilovoltage and megavoltage computed tomography and use it to objectively evaluate deformable image registration (DIR) algorithms.

METHODS
The phantom represents H&N patient anatomy. It is constructed from thermoplastic, which becomes pliable in boiling water, and hardened epoxy resin. Using a system of additives, the Hounsfield unit (HU) values of these materials were tuned to mimic anatomy for both kilovoltage (kV) and megavoltage (MV) imaging. The phantom opened along a sagittal midsection to reveal nonradiopaque markers, which were used to characterize the phantom deformation. The deformed and undeformed phantom was scanned with kV and MV computed tomography. Additionally, a calibration curve was created to change the HUs of the MV scans to be similar to kV HUs, (MC). The extracted ground-truth deformation was then compared to the results of two commercially available DIR algorithms, from Velocity Medical Solutions and MIM Software.

RESULTS
The phantom produced a 3D deformation, representing neck flexion, with a magnitude of up to 8 mm and was able represent tissue HUs for both kV and MV imaging modalities. The two tested deformation algorithms yielded vastly different results. For kV-kV registration, MIM made the lowest mean error, and Velocity made the lowest maximum error. For MV-MV, kV-MV, and kV-MC Velocity produced both the lowest mean and lowest maximum errors.

CONCLUSION
The application of DIR across different imaging modalities is particularly difficult, due to differences in tissue HUs and the presence of imaging artifacts. For this reason, DIR algorithms must be validated specifically for this purpose. The developed H&N phantom is an effective tool for this purpose.


Agricultural sector is subject to a larger number of risks: not only to the ones faced by businesses but also to all the risks associated in working with organic and living material, such as seeds, livestock and fresh produce, and their biological processes. Agricultural risk management (ARM) aims at protecting agricultural businesses, farmers, and countries from the potential losses incurred due to unpredictable events, becoming also a means to boost the resilience at different levels. PARM has identified elements/pillars of an ARM-proof agricultural/rural project through a participatory engagement with stakeholders in a knowledge sharing event. These elements/pillars ultimately translate to mitigate negative shocks and boost resilience. At the same time, understanding resilience can contribute to building more grounded ARM strategies.


Topic I
Molecular basis of RNA polymerase III transcription repression by Maf1

RNA polymerase III (RNAP III) is a conserved 17-subunit enzyme that transcribes genes encoding short
untranslated RNAs such as transfer RNAs (tRNAs) and 5S ribosomal RNA (rRNA). These genes are essential
and involved in fundamental processes like protein biogenesis; hence RNAP III activity needs to be tightly
regulated. RNAP III is repressed upon stress and this is regulated by Maf1, a protein conserved from yeast to
humans. Many stress pathways were shown to converge on Maf1 and result in its phosphorylation, followed by
its nuclear import and eventual repression of RNAP III activity. However, the molecular mechanisms of this
repression activity were not known at the beginning of these studies.
This work establishes the mechanism of RNAP III specific transcription repression by Maf1. The
crystal structure of Maf1 was solved. It has a globular fold with surface accessible NLS sequences, which sheds
new light on already published results and explains how stress-induced phopshorylation leads to import of Maf1
into the nucleus. Additionally, cryo EM studies and competition assays show that Maf1 binds RNAP III at its
clamp domain and thereby induces structural rearrangements of RNAP III, which inhibits the interaction with
Brf1, a subunit of the transcription initiation factor TFIIIB. This specifically impairs recruitment of RNAP III to
its promoters and implies that Maf1 is a repressor of transcription initiation. Competition and transcription
assays show that Maf1 also binds RNAP III that is engaged in transcription, leaving RNAP III activity intact but
preventing re-initiation.

Topic II
Structure of human mitochondrial RNA polymerase

The nuclear-encoded human mitochondrial RNAP (mitoRNAP) transcribes the mitochondrial genome, which
encodes rRNA, tRNAs and mRNAs. MitoRNAP is a single subunit (ss) polymerase, related to T7 bacteriophage
and chloroplast polymerases. All share a conserved C-terminal core, whereas the N-terminal parts of mitoRNAP
do not show any homology to other ss RNAPs. Unlike phage RNAPs, which are self-sufficient, human
mitoRNAP needs two essential transcription factors for initiation, TFAM and TFB2M. Both of these factors are
likely to control the major steps of transcription initiation, promoter binding and melting. Thus human
mitoRNAP has evolved a different mechanism for transcription initiation and exhibits a unique transcription
system. Structural studies thus far concentrated on the nuclear enzymes or phage RNAPs, whereas the structure
of mitochondrial RNA polymerase remained unknown. The structural organization of human mitoRNAP and the
molecular mechanisms of promoter recognition, binding and melting were subject of interest in these studies.
In this work the crystal structure of human mitoRNAP was solved at 2.4 A resolution and reveals a
T7-like C-terminal catalytic domain, a N-terminal domain that remotely resembles the T7 promoter-binding
domain (PBD), a novel pentatricopeptide repeat (PPR) domain, and a flexible N-terminal extension.
MitoRNAP specific adaptions in the N-terminus include the sequestering of one of the key promoter binding
elements in T7 RNAP, the AT-rich recognition loop, by the PPR domain. This sequestration and repositioning of
the N-terminal domain explain the need for the additional initiation factor TFAM. The highly conserved active
site within the C-terminal core was observed to bind a sulphate ion, a well known phosphate mimic, and thereby
suggests conserved substrate binding and selection mechanisms between ss RNAPs. However, conformational
changes of the active site were observed due to a movement of the adjacent fingers subdomain. The structure
reveals a clenching of the active site by a repositioned fingers subdomain and an alternative position of the
intercalating -hairpin. This explains why the conserved transcription factor TFB2M is required for promoter
melting and initiation. A model of the mitochondrial initiation complex was build to further explore the initiation
mechanism, and to rationalize the available biochemical and genetic data.
The structure of mitoRNAP shows how this enzyme uses mechanisms for transcription initiation that
differ from those used by phage and cellular RNAPs, and which may have enabled regulation of mitochondrial
gene transcription and adaptation of mitochondrial function to changes in the environment.


The Application Programming Interface (API) for the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) Aerodynamic Database has been developed to provide the developers of software an easily implemented, fully self-contained method of accessing the CEV Aerodynamic Database for use in their analysis and simulation tools. The API is programmed in C and provides a series of functions to interact with the database, such as initialization, selecting various options, and calculating the aerodynamic data. No special functions (file read/write, table lookup) are required on the host system other than those included with a standard ANSI C installation. It reads one or more files of aero data tables. Previous releases of aerodynamic databases for space vehicles have only included data tables and a document of the algorithm and equations to combine them for the total aerodynamic forces and moments. This process required each software tool to have a unique implementation of the database code. Errors or omissions in the documentation, or errors in the implementation, led to a lengthy and burdensome process of having to debug each instance of the code. Additionally, input file formats differ for each space vehicle simulation tool, requiring the aero database tables to be reformatted to meet the tool s input file structure requirements. Finally, the capabilities for built-in table lookup routines vary for each simulation tool. Implementation of a new database may require an update to and verification of the table lookup routines. This may be required if the number of dimensions of a data table exceeds the capability of the simulation tools built-in lookup routines. A single software solution was created to provide an aerodynamics software model that could be integrated into other simulation and analysis tools. The highly complex Orion aerodynamics model can then be quickly included in a wide variety of tools. The API code is written in ANSI C for ease of portability to a wide variety of systems. The input data files are in standard formatted ASCII, also for improved portability. The API contains its own implementation of multidimensional table reading and lookup routines. The same aerodynamics input file can be used without modification on all implementations. The turnaround time from aerodynamics model release to a working implementation is significantly reduced


This study proposes a stratified approach of drought severity assessment using multi-layer simulated soil moisture. SWAT (Soil & Water Assessment Tool) models are calibrated for 50 watersheds in the South-Atlantic Gulf region of the Southeastern US and a high-resolution daily soil moisture dataset is obtained at Hydrologic Unit Code (HUC-12) resolution for a period of January 1982 through December 2013. A near real-time hydrologic simulation framework by coupling the calibrated SWAT models with the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) coupled forecast system model version 2 (CFSv2) weather data is developed to forecast various water balance components including soil moisture (SM), actual evapotranspiration (ET), potential evapotranspiration ET (PET), and runoff (SURQ) for near-real time drought severity assessment, and drought forecasting for a lead of 9-months. A combination of the surface and total rooting depth soil moisture percentiles proves to be an effective increment over conventional drought assessment approaches in capturing both, transient and long-term drought impacts. The proposed real-time drought monitoring approach shows high accuracy in capturing drought onset and propagation and shows a high degree of similarity with the U.S. Drought Monitor (USDM), the long-term (PDSI, PHDI, SPI-9 and SPI-12), and the short-term (Palmer Z index, SPI-1 and SPI-6) drought indices. Near Real-time Seasonal Drought Forecasting and Retrospective Drought Analysis Using Simulated Multi-layer Soil Moisture from Hydrological Models at Sub-watershed Scales


In 1971 Jay Forrester published his book World Dynamics, where he presented a high-level simulation model of the socio-economic-environmental world system. The main purpose of the model and the accompanying book was to encourage an open debate about the long-term future on our planet. The World Model was created in a time where pollution and other negative effects of industrialization and economic growth started to become recognized. Forrester made the assumption that life on earth is bounded within certain limits, such as available space and resources. Based on this he concluded that exponential economic growth cannot continue forever; sooner or later one or more limits will be reached. The question, then, is how mankind can manage its own future in ways that can avoid an unpleasant encounter with the limits to growth. The Club of Rome, a non-profit research organization, appointed Dennis Meadows, Donella Meadows and others to elaborate on the work initiated by Forrester. The resulting report, Limits to Growth, became a bestseller almost over night. Large parts of the established economic community reacted with massive criticism towards the limits to growth ideas, and characterized the work as dooms day prophecies with no basis in observed data and established theories. In this essay I describe system dynamics and econometrics; the scientific home bases of the two sides in the controversy. Based on a theoretical framework developed by Ernan McMullin, I try to categorize the issues that were discussed in the context of the World Model. My findings are that the World Model debate is a mixed controversy, involving different views on facts, theories, principles and values. The controversy has evolved over three decades, and has not ended. The main questions are still relevant and subject to discussion among scientists, politicians, environmentalists, and ordinary people.