In June 2002, journalists throughout the world began to hear of the gang rape of a Pakistani woman from the impoverished village of Meerwala. The rape was ordered by a local clan known as the Mastoi and was arranged as punishment for indiscretions allegedly committed by the woman's brother. While certainly not the first account of a female body being negotiated for honor in a family, and (sadly) not the last, journalists and activists were captivated. This time the survivor had chosen to fight back, and in doing so, single-handedly changed the feminist movement in Pakistan. Her name was Mukhtar Mai, and her decision to stand up to her accusers was an act of bravery unheard of in one of the world's most adverse climates for women. By July 2002, Mai's case was headline news in Pakistan and under international scrutiny, the government awarded her the equivalent of 8,500 U.S. dollars in compensation money (a historic settlement), and her attackers were sentenced to death. Mukhtar Mai went on to open a school for girls in an effort to ensure that future generations would not suffer, as she had, from illiteracy. In this rousing account, Mai describes her experience and how she has since become an agent for change and a beacon of hope for oppressed women around the world. Timely and topical, "In the Name of Honor" is the remarkable and inspirational memoir of a woman who fought and triumphed against exceptional odds.


This paper presents a very low-complexity design of variable bandedge linear phase finite-impulse-response (FIR) filters with fixed sharp transition width. The idea is to first decompose the input signal into several channels in the frequency domain. The channel(s) involved with the transition band of the variable filter due to the variation of the bandedge is (are) shaped to produce the required transition band, and then summed up with the channels involved with the passband of the variable filter to produce the required frequency response. The proposed variable filter has extremely low complexity when the transition band is sharp, if compared with other techniques such as the Farrow structure. It is possible that the computational complexity of the variable filter is even lower than that of a corresponding fixed filter with the same transition width and ripple specifications implemented in its direct form.


What does it mean to be a manager, and how does the practice of managing a diaconal hospital manifest itself in everyday practice? Even though diaconal institutions have played a central part of the church's ministry for over a hundred years, little attention has been given to diaconal management. This article addresses the everyday practice of a single manager's job in a private faith-affiliated hospital in Norway, and is based on data from an observational study combined with a interview of the manager. The article concludes that diaconal managing in practice largely resembles the job of hospital managers in general. The manager mostly spent time dealing with internal and short-range issues. At the same time, the activities observed also related to critical long-range issues (processing information, strategic adjustment and profiling the diaconal foundation of the hospital), and involves handling different rationalities. Diaconal identification and profile are sought through the use of narratives and values in practice drawing on overarching narratives, values, and the tradition of professional diaconia as an impetus for managing professional practice. It seems necessary to reformulate the relation between church and diaconal institutions, and to develop a platform for diaconia that might communicate within institutions acting on the boundaries of religion, health and society.


One of the fastest growing technical certification markets is the Adobe Certified Associate (ACA) exam program. Introduction to Adobe Photoshop CS6 with ACA Certification, written by expert instructors, includes all the classroom tools needed to teach an introductory Photoshop course and prepare your students for the certification exam. In addition to learning Adobe Photoshop, this textbook prepares students to earn this valuable job-focused certification helping them jump-start their careers in such fields as commercial design and print/web production. Students will master the skills needed when working with Adobe Bridge, Camera RAW, masks and layers, painting and retouching, project management and much more.This single book provides students with a complete introduction to Photoshop along with a comprehensive exam preparation. This curriculum, created by a team of Adobe experts who have developed training programs for Adobe Systems, offers your students the opportunity to confidently prove their skills mastery and gain this valuable certification to give them the needed edge on their career path. Adobe Certified Associate exam vouchers are available for bundling for an additional fee.


During the past thirty years various efforts have been made to stimulate improvements in the education and training of librarians in Greece. Workshops, seminars, and nonuniversity training courses have been offered in the past and remain the principal methods of instruction today. Although these programs have been considered useful, they are not completely satisfactory, and the hope for a university-level school of librarianship continues to be expressed. The establishment of such a school has been formally suggested at various times, but little has come from such proposals. A review of these efforts indicates that the lack of progress may be due to circumstances beyond the direct control of librarians: the nature of the Greek educational system and the current pattern of staffing libraries. A proposal for dealing with the present needs of Greek librarians is offered as an interim solution.


Mixtures of biosiliceous and heterozoan-dominated carbonate deposits are commonly interpreted as recording cold-water polar or deep basinal conditions. However, a growing body of literature is documenting examples from the rock record that show these deposits accumulated in shallow-water middle- to low-latitude environments. The continued recognition of ancient neritic heterozoan carbonate and biosiliceous accumulations is broadening our understanding of the various paleoenvironmental controls on their development.
Early-Middle Mississippian time was characterized by the development of biosiliceous and carbonate accumulations in North America. This study focuses on Osagean cherty dolomitic strata in cores from the Schaben field in Kansas, which is located in Ness County on the southwest flank of the Central Kansas uplift (CKU). During the Osagean, Kansas was located at approximately 20° S latitude, within the tropical to subtropical latitudinal belt. Study area strata are characterized by shallow-water inner-shelf carbonates that were deposited on a gently southward-sloping shelf (ramp). Two depositional sequences (DS1 and DS2) are identified in cores and are separated by a sequence boundary (SB1) that evidences subaerial exposure. The primary facies in the two depositional sequences include 1) Mudstone-Wackestone (MW); 2) Sponge Spicule-Rich Wackestone-Packstone (SWP); 3) Echinoderm-Rich Wackestone-Packstone-Grainstone (EWPG); and 4) Dolomitic Siltstones and Shale facies. Other features identified in cores include 1) Silica Cementation and Replacement; 2) Silica Replaced Evaporites; 3) Brecciation and Fracturing; and 4) Calcite Cementation and Replacement.
The abundance of echinoderm facies with other diverse fauna, evidence of extensive reworking by burrowing organisms, and only rare occurrence of evaporites suggest subtidal deposition in a normal to slightly restricted marine inner-shelf setting for DS1. After the SB1 subaerial exposure event, marine conditions returned but the depositional environment over the study area changed compared to that for much of DS1 deposition. The volumetric increase of sponge-spicule wackestone and packstone (SWP) with less diverse fauna, abundance of early evaporites (replaced by silica), and evidence for shallowest water to subaerially exposed conditions throughout DS2 suggest deposition in more restricted environments that likely ranged from restricted inner shelf/protected embayment to evaporative lagoon and possibly supratidal flat.
One of the more significant characteristics in DS2 is the dominance of siliceous sponge spicule facies and heterozoan carbonates that were deposited in shallow-water and restricted environments. This study and others from numerous periods in the geologic record are indicating that shallow-marine, mid-latitude biosiliceous and heterozoan carbonates may be more common than previously thought. Especially interesting are the examples from Mississippian (Osagean-Meramecian) strata in North America that show similar facies associations with DS2 strata of this study.
The predominance of Early-Middle Mississippian heterozoan carbonate and biosiliceous (spiculitic) deposits, and lack of photozoan deposits, in the mid-latitude shallow-shelf setting in Kansas and surrounding areas was likely due to abundant nutrients and dissolved silica derived from basinal and/or terrestrial sources. Based on available evidence, upwelling of basinal waters rich in nutrients and dissolved silica appears to have been a primary control on shelf margin and shelf facies. Upwelling even may have had a primary imprint on shallow-water, inner-shelf areas, especially during transgression(s). Nutrients and dissolved silica from terrestrial sources may have contributed to the facies associations in shallowest water, inner-shelf areas. However, the available evidence suggests that terrestrial sourced nutrients and dissolved silica were not the dominant control.
The results of this study have implications from a petroleum reservoir standpoint. The DS2 sponge spicule, heterozoan carbonate, and silica-replaced evaporite facies in this study form reservoirs in Schaben field and another nearby field composed of similar facies. Because regional upwelling is likely to have had at least some control, facies similar to DS2 strata may form important reservoirs in Lower-Middle Mississippian strata that were deposited in shallow-water inner shelf/ramp settings elsewhere in Kansas and North America.
Continuing studies of the controls on biosiliceous and heterozoan carbonate deposition and diagenesis in mid-latitude neritic settings will improve our understanding and predictive capabilities.


This research investigated the influence
and relationship of two cognitive diversity frameworks on student design team
knowledge integration capabilities and team contribution among seventy-five
(75) student teams in Purdue's Tech 120: Design Thinking in Technology course.

When in cognitively diverse teams, students do
not effectively integrate the knowledge available to them. Past research
results in this area have further demonstrated that students tend to get worse
at collaboration as the cognitive differences emerge and are exposed over time.
The costs of this lack of collaboration and assimilation of knowledge assets
are significant, such as diminished creativity, coordination, and other team
performance measures. The purpose of this study then, was to provide student
design teams with models or frameworks for visualizing and understanding the
cognitive diversity available to them in their team and test the impact these
frameworks have on various measures of team effectiveness: knowledge
integration, psychological safety, and individual contribution.

Cognitive diversity frameworks in question have
been used successfully in various industry and organizational settings. The
first, is the FourSight Thinking Profile™. This framework is used to understand
one's creative problem-solving preferences and how those preferences (high,
neutral, and low) impact group dynamics. The second, is the AEM-Cube®. This
framework draws on several theoretical foundations to assess an individua's
patterns of thinking and responses to change. Both the FourSight Thinking
Profile™ and the AEM-Cube® have shown to help teams in industry settings
collaborate (DeCusatis, 2008; Reynolds & Lewis, 2017), but their use in
educational settings to solve the knowledge integration and team contribution
problem in student teams is untested.

The nearly 470 students in Purdue's TECH 120
course were organized into teams ranging from 3-5 members by their instructors,
thus creating a total of 129 teams. The researcher then divided the 129 teams
into two fairly equal treatment groups. Each treatment group was given one of
two cognitive diversity assessments (FourSight or AEM-Cube) to complete
individually, time to review the results, and then asked to create a team
charter or contract where students discussed cognitive strengths and weaknesses
and how they planned to manage those assets and deficiencies as they worked on
a 4-week long design thinking project. Only 75 teams completed all steps of the
treatment (either FourSight or AEM-Cube) and thus were the focus of analysis.

The major conclusions of this study are that
while neither the FourSight or AEM-Cube frameworks for cognitive diversity were
more effective in raising student knowledge integration capability or overall
team contribution, these frameworks did not negatively impact the student
experience; high levels of psychological safety were maintained among both more
homogeneous teams and those that were more heterogeneous; and higher levels of
knowledge integration capabilities and team contribution were achieved by students
in varying degrees of diversity of creative problem-solving preferences and
strategic agility. While the reason(s) for such high scores for knowledge
integration capability, team member contribution, and psychological safety are
unknown, the students reported that the processes by which these teams
integrated their knowledge assets and solicited the contribution of their team
members was both positive and effective.

Further research into the effectiveness of the
treatment, the influence of demographic diversities on team functions, and the
experience of the 54 student teams that did not complete the treatment are
needed to elucidate and understand the findings of this study.


Parental Parity begins a critical dialogue regarding the reformation of legal parentage. Scholars have been advocating for more than a decade that courts and legislatures eschew traditional status based parentage (e.g., birth and biology) in the context of parentage establishment when assisted reproductive technologies ("ARTs") are used. Parental Parity sets forth a much bolder agenda: to use intentional parenthood as the default framework to establish all legal parent-child relationships at birth. Intentional parenthood is a superior parentage establishment doctrine because it appropriately captures who should and should not be a parent. It avoids the over and under inclusive problems of traditional status based parentage. Most importantly, intentional parenthood yields parental parity: the doctrine's neutrality prevents inherent discrimination based on gender, sexual orientation, marital status, and class. While other scholars have written about the issue of intentional parenthood, no other scholar has specifically advocated for intentional parenthood as the default basis for establishing all parent-child relationships at birth. Parental Parity represents the culmination of my previous scholarship advocating against status-based parentage and sets forth a broader agenda and proposal to reform parenthood in the 21st century.


Since the late 1980s, the population of Filipinas married to Japanese men has increased in Kyoto. Numerous women had initially entered Japan as entertainers, later found partners, and built families in the city. The growing numbers of resident Filipinas led to the organization of the local Pag-asa Filipino community. Considering migrants as city-makers, we explore how Filipina residents together with residents springing off earlier cohorts of migrants have contributed to the emergence of new socialities, among others by providing the (infra)structure for newly arriving migrants to access substantial citizenship rights and to foster ties with local residents. We look at these encounters, ties, and relationships forming on the premises of the Kyoto City Multicultural Exchange Networking Salon in terms of socialities as this allows us to avoid reifying the cultural essentialism that undergirds both Japanese nationalism and multiculturalism, while acknowledging the social and institutional constraints within which these socialities emerge and are made sense of. Empirically drawing upon data collected among the Kyoto Filipino community, we use the conceptual lens of hosting to capture how multiculturalism is made in Kyoto City, while challenging dichotomous conceptions of the host versus the migrant.


A hospital-based case-control study was designed herein to investigate the relationship between parity, breast feeding and breast cancer in Taiwan. Reproductive histories of patients with breast cancer confirmed by either pathology or cytology were assessed by questionnaire and compared with age-matched healthy controls. One hundred and fourteen cases and 228 age-matched controls were recruited for this study. According to those results, women having had more than three full-term pregnancies, age at first full-term pregnancy younger than 30, and breast feeding for more than 3 years displayed significantly protective effects against breast cancer. Following adjustment for ethnicity and menopausal status, women with more than three full-term pregnancies and younger than 30 years old at first full-term pregnancy had a decreased risk of breast cancer. However, duration of breast feeding was not related to breast cancer, after adjustment for ethnicity and menopausal status. The effect of number of full-term pregnancies on the risk of breast cancer was found to be independent of the effect of age at first full-term pregnancy. Moreover, the effect of age at first full-term pregnancy and number of full-term pregnancies was also independent of the effect of breast feeding.


One of the most widespread approaches for setting spatially-explicit priorities for connectivity conservation consists in evaluating the effects of the individual removal of each habitat patch (one at a time) from the landscape. It however remains unknown the degree to which such priorities are valid and reliable in the longer term, as subsequent habitat losses and other disruptions accumulate in the landscape. We compared the patch prioritizations and estimated connectivity losses resulting from individual patch removals and from a more exhaustive assessment accounting for the potentially synergistic impacts of multiple habitat losses by testing all possible combinations of patch removals. Habitat availability (reachability) metrics and metapopulation capacity were calculated in purposefully simulated landscapes and in habitat distribution data for three bird species (NE Spain). We found that 1) individual patch removals allowed identifying areas of low contribution to connectivity that remained so after subsequent network modifications, 2) the most important patches identified through individual removals often did not coincide with those patches whose removal would actually be most detrimental after multiple habitat losses. However, these differences were smaller for the habitat reachability metrics, as well as for very mobile species that were largely insensitive to habitat spatial arrangement. If many patch losses over time are likely, it might be a more robust and fruitful conservation strategy for managers to pinpoint those patches that, with a low negative impact on connectivity, can be converted to other land uses, instead of trying to elucidate through individual patch removals which subset of protected patches would be the most effective for conserving as much connectivity as possible in the long term. Individual patch removals provide useful but non-permanent guidelines that may need to be reassessed when substantial landscape modifications occur, which requires dynamic strategies for connectivity conservation in the face of global change.


Enron. Tyco. Barings. WorldCom. Arthur Andersen. Parmalat. A new business scandal seems to surface each day, while the relentless media coverage of corporate wrongdoing gives the impression that business people permanently reside on the lower end of the moral spectrum. Despite the current media scrutiny and ethical bankruptcy of some corporations, clearly not all businesses, or even the majority of them, are engaging in criminal or unethical behavior. The entrepreneurial activity of business is an essential and noble pursuit which provides the economic foundation and the fundamental basis of survival for society's members. This special issue of JAME focuses on the role and implications of business ethics in management and entrepreneurship. The articles selected for this issue cover a wide range of topics. The first article "Influence of an HIV/AIDS Policy on Ethical Decision-Making in the Termination Process: A Laboratory Experiment" by Tim O. Peterson and Peggy C. Smith examines the effect of the presence or absence of organizational policies on termination of employees with HIV/AIDS whose performance record would indicate they should not be terminated. In an experimental design using 115 undergraduates in three classes, students were asked to assume the role of a supervisor responsible for laying off three employees due to a downsizing. Students were given information on the company background, as well as files on eight employees containing demographic, performance and medical information, and were asked to rank order them in order of possible layoff. Each class's medical information on how the HIV/AIDS employees contracted the disease varied. In one class, infection occurred through sexual contact, in another through injection drug use, and the third was through blood transfusion. The results indicate that, without some form of policy, slightly more than 20 percent of the subjects will act in an unethical manner and terminate a person with HIV/AIDS who should not be released. The findings also indicate that by having a policy and publicizing top management support of the policy, the rate of inappropriate termination can be significantly reduced. The second article "The Ethical Perspectives of Entrepreneurs: An Examination of Stakeholder Salience" by Donald F. Kuratko, Michael G. Goldsby, and Jeffrey S. Hornsby breaks new ground by empirically examining the salience of a wide range of stakeholder relationships for entrepreneurial firms. In a study of over 400 entrepreneurs, the authors found entrepreneurs place primary focus on customer and employee stakeholder groups. Research results indicate a lack of significance between the stakeholder considered as primary by entrepreneurs and ethical actions. The authors suggest that other factors are instrumental in the ethical stance of entrepreneurs, such as personal value systems. The third article "You Don't Have to Tell the Truth, You Are Only Obligated Not to Lie" by Terrell G. Manyak. The author employs a case approach to analyze ethical dilemmas he was confronted with early in his own managerial career. The scenarios depicted are all too common in many organizational settings in which superiors place considerable pressure on employees to commit morally questionable, yet still legal, acts for the "good of the company. …


The potential of an express enzymological indicator – phosphatase activity index (PAI) – for assessment of different types of pollution and self-purification potential in running waters was evaluated for three river subcatchments, representative for different ecological situations and impacts. According to the values of correlation coefficients, a significant positive correlation existed among PAI and total microbial count, organic loading and phosphate concentrations. The enzyme activity is useful tool for early identification of risks from point discharge of different wastewaters (treated or non-treated). The role of PAI as an indicator is significant at case of disinfection after treatment of wastewaters in treatment plant – the aquatic microbial community at the discharge point is suppressed but not at a functional level. The results allow classical microbiological and chemical parameters (state variables) to be related directly to the dynamics of the transformation processes by functional variable – PAI.


We developed a dual-color total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF) system for single molecule imaging and fluorescence fluctuation spectroscopy (FFS). For a performance analysis, we measured a synthetic binding assay with dual-color global fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (2CG-FCS) and dual-color fluorescence intensity distribution analysis (2D-FIDA). We show that dual-color TIR-FFS is a suitable method for measuring coincidence assays at the surface. In particular, our setup has a very high fluorescence collection efficiency resulting in a two- to three-fold increased molecular brightness. Using a customized workbench setup, we improved the setup alignment, the sample handling and the system versatility.


Johansson's (1973) point light walkers remain one of the most compelling demonstrations of how motion can determine the perception of form. Most studies of biological motion perception have presented isolated point-light figures in unstructured environments. Recently we have begun to explore the perception of human motion using more naturalistic displays and tasks. Here, we report new findings on the perception of gender using a visual search paradigm. Three-dimensional walking sequences were captured from human actors (4 male, 4 female) using a 7 camera motion capture system. These sequences were processed to produce point-light computer models which were displayed in a simple virtual environment. The figures appeared in a random location and walked on a random path within the bounds of an invisible virtual arena. Walkers could face and move in all directions, moving in both the frontal parallel plane and in depth. In separate blocks observers searched for a male or a female target among distractors of the opposite gender. Set size was varied from between 1 and 4. Targets were present on 50% of trials. Preliminary results suggest that both male and female observers can locate targets of the opposite gender faster than targets of the same gender.


The need for energy-efficient routing and data gathering protocols in large-scale environments becomes very challenging. Hierarchical routing in WSNs is a very important topic. It has been widely investigated relative to energy efficiency based routing protocols. LEACH (Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy algorithm) is the pioneering cluster routing protocol in WSNs. However, it is not suitable for large scale network and wireless channel conditions are ignored during packet forwarding. To address this issue, we proposed a novel multi-hop clustering cross layer protocol based on LEACH. It considers both the SNR of different links and the residual energy of sensor nodes. Simulation results in terms of the average energy consumption, the network lifetime and the Packet Delivery Ratio show clearly the outperformance of the proposed algorithm versus the conventional LEACH.


This study tests the hypothesis that a change in hematocrit (ΔHct) during initial trauma work-up is as reliable as conventional vital signs for detecting bleeding, even with ongoing fluid resuscitation. Consecutive trauma patients admitted to a Level I trauma center receiving two Hct measurements during initial resuscitation between January 2010 and January 2011 were stratified based on estimated blood loss greater than 250 mL (bleeding) or nonbleeding. Sensitivity, specificity, and receiver operating characteristic curves were calculated for systolic blood pressure (SBP), heart rate, base deficit, and ΔHct. In 168 (72%) nonbleeding versus 64 (28%) bleeding patients, age and gender were similar. Arrival SBP was highly specific (90 to 99%) but poorly sensitive (13 to 31%) for detecting bleeding. Combinations of vital signs increased specificity, albeit at the expense of sensitivity. For bleeding versus nonbleeding patients (all receiving resuscitation fluid), ΔHct was 9.0 versus 1.8, ΔHct/liter was 4.8 versus 1.5, and ΔHct/liter/hour was 2.8 vs 0.6 (all P < 0.001). Only SBP (area under the curve [AUC] 0.608 to 0.695) and ΔHct (AUC 0.731 to 0.921) were significant for identifying bleeding with ΔHct 6 or greater being the best predictor (sensitivity 89%, specificity 95%, AUC 0.921). During ongoing fluid resuscitation of a trauma victim, ΔHct is the single most reliable indicator of continuing blood loss. A ΔHct 6 or greater during initial resuscitation is highly suspicious for ongoing blood loss, but even lesser changes have predictive value. Altogether, these results support the idea that fluid shifts are rapid after hemorrhage and Hct can be valuable during initial trauma assessment.


In situ application of soluble phosphates and organic matter is considered to be a costeffective remediation technique for immobilizing lead (Pb) and other heavy metals and reducing health and ecological risks associated with contaminated soils. However, a longterm assessment of risk reduction induced by metal immobilization is needed to verify efficacy and gain regulatory and public acceptance of phosphate-based and organic matter-based remedial technologies. The study sites included a smelter-contaminated urban site, a mill-waste contaminated site, and a mining-waste contaminated site within the Jasper County Superfund Site, Southwestern Missouri. Field plots at the urban site were treated with phosphoric acid at a rate of 10 g kg using surface application (SA), rototilling (RT), and pressure injection (PI); plots at the mill-waste site were treated with phosphoric acid at rates of 7.5 and 10 g kg and incorporated using rototilling; plots at the mining-waste site were treated with different types of organic amendments, including biosolids and agricultural byproducts. The parameters chosen to assess long-term risk reduction were: (1) metal bioavailability to organisms; (2) metal availability to plants (i.e., phytoavailability); (3) toxicity of treated soils to microorganisms; (4) phosphate and metal stability; and (5) solid phase P and Pb speciation assessed using microscopic, spectroscopic, and chemical fractionation techniques. Results demonstrated that most of the phosphoric acid and OM treatments significantly reduced bioavailability, phytoavailability, and leachability of metals (Pb and Cd) in the contaminated soil. Analysis of P and Pb fractionation confirmed these reductions as well. In addition, most of treatments did not significantly impact toxicity in the soil to microorganisms. Thus, the in situ remediation of metal contaminated soil using phosphoric acid and OM is considered to be a practical remediation strategy with longterm benefits.


1. To determine the validity of employing intrathoracic heat flux as a reflection of changes in bronchial blood flow, we used a thermal probe to record airstream temperatures within the tracheobronchial tree in five normal and five asthmatic subjects during isocapnic hyperventilation challenges with and without inflation of the lower limb bladders of a pressure suit. 2. During hyperpnoea, airstream temperatures fell progressively in both subject groups. When blood volume was acutely shifted from the legs into the thorax via anti-shock trousers, airstream temperatures within the tracheobronchial tree rose and were significantly higher than the temperature recorded during hyperpnoea alone. In the normal subjects, once hyperpnoea ceased, the rate of airway re-warming was similar whether or not the anti-shock trousers were inflated. In the asthmatic subjects, however, shifting blood into the thorax attenuated the obstructive response to hyperpnoea and slowed the rate of re-warming. 3. These data demonstrate that changes in airway blood volume are reflected in fluctuations in intrathoracic heat exchange and that disruption of the end hyperpnoea thermal gradient attenuates the airway obstruction that follows hyperpnoea. Since the bronchial blood supply is the major source of heat to the airways, this circulation may play an important role in thermally induced asthma.


Laser target triggering has been investigated at the University of Missouri as a method to reduce the laser energy required to trigger a laser triggered gas switch. Laser targets were solid materials embedded into the cathode of a LTGS that acted as a source of plasma when struck by a triggering laser. The expanding plasma altered the electric field in the switch, resulting in switch closure. Aluminum, graphite and tungsten were chosen as laser target materials based on several criteria including the results of measuring the liberated charge as a function of laser energy in a vacuum. Triggering was performed on the Tiger pulsed power machine which pulse charged a LTGS containing a laser target to between 185 kV and 330 kV. The LTGS was triggered by directing a laser pulse from a Nd:YAG laser onto the laser target. Experiments varied laser energy, spot size on the laser target surface, target material and laser wavelength. The project successfully demonstrated reliable triggering with less than 1 mJ of laser energy with both 1064 and 266 nm wavelength laser pulses. Findings will be used in the design of switches for LTD-based pulsed power accelerators.


One of the challenges in analyzing youth who participated in the recent Arab uprisings relates to explaining and understanding their revolutionary practices. Adopting a leaderless and cross-ideological form of mobilization, youth during the eighteen days of the Egyptian uprising managed to practice inclusion by uniting a diverse group of Egyptians. After toppling Mubarak, the revolutionary youth, however, did not present themselves as aiming to seize power, a defining feature of revolutions at least until the 1970s. To understand the meaning of these new cross-ideological and leaderless forms of mobilization, I suggest understanding youth within their time and space. Drawing on Alain Badiou and his conception of the intervallic period and the rebirth of history through the Arab revolts, this article highlights important differences among this generation in their conception of doing politics. More specifically, this paper focuses on the changed meaning of the hero figure, highlighting the importance of inclusionary politics. It will suggest that since the 2011 revolutionary event, a shift away from traditional politics based on a leader and an ideology is being contested for a more inclusionary politics as desired by the younger generation in Egypt.


The subscription covering optimization, whereby a general subscription quenches the forwarding of more specific ones, is a common technique to reduce network traffic and routing state in content-based routing networks. Such optimizations, however, leave the system vulnerable to unsubscriptions that trigger the immediate forwarding of all the subscriptions they had previously quenched. These subscription bursts can severely congest the network, and destabilize the system. This paper presents techniques to retain much of the benefits of subscription covering while avoiding bursty subscription traffic. Heuristics are used to estimate the similarity among subscriptions, and a distributed algorithm determines the portions of a subscription propagation tree that should be preserved. Evaluations show that these mechanisms avoid subscription bursts while maintaining relatively compact routing tables.


The public vocational education and training (VET) system is now one of the few areas in Australia's tertiary education system where students are required to pay up-front fees without access to loan assistance. These arrangements may lead to sub-optimal educational outcomes to the extent that prospective students reject a VET education on the basis of short-term financial constraints. In this paper we present a case for introducing an income contingent loan to the VET sector. The economic rationale is similar to that for higher education, and the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) provides a useful template. Using data from the first three waves of the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, we establish that there are indeed significant private returns to VET qualifications. An income contingent loan is argued to enhance access to these benefits, and the collection streams are analysed for different qualifications. The form that an income contingent loan might take for VET is considered, as are the implications for the Commonwealth Government with respect to potential subsidies associated with the design parameters.


The inactivation rate constants (k-value) of pathogenic viruses, bacteria and protozoa and indicator or model microorganisms for monochromatic UV 2 5 3 . 7 radiation have been calculated from literature studies describingexperiments of seeded microorganisms in collimated beam apparatus with low-pressure lamps. Results show that data of most studies fitted well in the first-order Chick-Watson disinfection kinetics. Viruses require the highest UV fluence and the double-stranded DNA adenovirus is by far the most persistent species with an UV fluence requirement of 125 mJ/cm 2 for 3 log inactivation. Translation of these k-values to full-scale UV systems requires accurate fluence assessment in these continuous flow systems with fluence distribution, variations in water quality (UV transmittance) and operational aspects like lamp age and fouling. Determination of the reduction equivalent fluence or REF with seeded model organisms is an accepted methodology to validate UV systems. Frequently used model organisms F-specific RNA phage MS2 and spores of Bacillus subtilis have low k-values. For validation of systems with low fluence requirement to inactivate UV sensitive organisms, alternative model organisms are suggested. Further research is needed to verify the potential of REF verification of full-scale systems by monitoring inactivation of indigenous spores (anaerobic or aerobic) with large volume sampling.


The presence of snow and ice during winter in northern states, including Iowa, leads to many problems related to public safety and transportation efficiency. Therefore, selecting a de-icing product to solve these problems is important. There is a continuous search for the ideal product that is effective against ice, and not harmful to pavement and environment at the same time. A laboratory program was carried out to investigate the effects of the de-icing product, named Ossian Season One, on a portland cement concrete pavement mixture. The assessment included the following: Damage to concrete, Effect on skid resistance, and Sealing effect on concrete. Based on the findings of this work, the data collected indicate that, in all cases, the effects of Ossian Season One are either acceptable, neutral, or beneficial.


This paper estimates the impact of the high food prices of 2010 on income poverty and the achievement of MDG 1 in Asia and the Pacific. It also estimates the impacts of high price during 2011 under various scenarios for the prices of food and oil. We find that although the high food prices of 2010 have not caused an increase in poverty in the region, they slowed down the rate of poverty reduction - the estimated number of poor decreased by 24.5 million people between 2009 and 2010, compared with 43.8 million people if staple food prices had not increased above domestic rates of inflation. By detailing the methodology and assumptions used to produce our estimates, the paper also highlights the need for broader and more open discussion on methodological issues to provide policymakers and poverty data users with a better understanding of the limitations of any such exercise.


CONTEXT
Although drug cues reliably activate the brain's reward system, studies rarely examine how the processing of drug stimuli compares with natural reinforcers or relates to clinical outcomes.

OBJECTIVES
To determine hedonic responses to natural and drug reinforcers in long-term heroin users and to examine the utility of these responses in predicting future heroin use.

DESIGN
Prospective design examining experiential, expressive, reflex modulation, and cortical/attentional responses to opiate-related and affective stimuli. The opiate-dependent group was reassessed a median of 6 months after testing to determine their level of heroin use during the intervening period.

SETTING
Community drug and alcohol services and a clinical research facility.

PARTICIPANTS
Thirty-three opiate-dependent individuals (mean age, 31.6 years) with stabilized opiate-substitution pharmacotherapy and 19 sex- and age-matched healthy non-drug users (mean age, 30 years).

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Self-ratings, facial electromyography, startle-elicited postauricular reflex, and event-related potentials combined with measures of heroin use at baseline and follow-up.

RESULTS
Relative to the control group, the opiate-dependent group rated pleasant pictures as less arousing and showed increased corrugator activity, less postauricular potentiation, and decreased startle-elicited P300 attenuation while viewing pleasant pictures. The opiate-dependent group rated the drug-related pictures as more pleasant and arousing, and demonstrated greater startle-elicited P300 attenuation while viewing them. Although a startle-elicited P300 amplitude response to pleasant (relative to drug-related) pictures significantly predicted regular (at least weekly) heroin use at follow-up, subjective valence ratings of pleasant pictures remained the superior predictor of use after controlling for baseline craving and heroin use.

CONCLUSIONS
Heroin users demonstrated reduced responsiveness to natural reinforcers across a range of psychophysiological measures. Subjective rating of pleasant pictures robustly predicted future heroin use. Our findings highlight the importance of targeting anhedonic symptoms within clinical treatment settings.


Informed by new planetary discoveries and the findings from recent robotic missions to Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, scientists are rapidly replacing centuries of speculation about potential extraterrestrial habitats with real knowledge about the possibility of life outside our own biosphere-if it exists, and where. This second edition of Kevin W. Plaxco and Michael Gross's widely acclaimed text incorporates the latest research in astrobiology to bring readers the most comprehensive, up-to-date, and engaging introduction to the field available. Plaxco and Gross expand their examination of the origin of chemical elements, the developments that made the Universe habitable, and how life continues to be sustained. They discuss in great detail the formation of the first galaxies and stars, the diverse chemistry of the primordial planet, the origins of metabolism, the evolution of complex organisms, and the feedback regulation of Earth's climate. They also explore life in extreme habitats, potential extraterrestrial habitats, and the current status of the search for extraterrestrial life. Weaving together the relevant threads of astronomy, geology, chemistry, biophysics, and microbiology, this broadly accessible introductory text captures the excitement, controversy, and progress of the dynamic young field of astrobiology. New to this edition is a glossary of terms and an epilogue recapping the key unanswered questions, making Astrobiology an ideal primer for students and, indeed, for anyone curious about life and the Universe.


Die ontwikkeling van die leksikografieteorie is daarop gerig om die produksie van beter woordeboeke te verseker. As naslaanbronne het woordeboeke 'n bepaalde data-aanbod, vertoon hulle sekere leksikografiese strukture en moet hulle bepaalde leksikografiese funksies bevredig. Talle aspekte van die teoretiese leksikografie sou ook gebruik kon word in die beplanning en samestelling van ander naslaanbronne. In hierdie bydrae word gewys hoe bepaalde beginsels uit die teoretiese leksikografie vir die daarstelling van ander naslaanbronne benut kan word. 'n Verhoging in die toegang tot data en 'n doeltreffender onttrekking van inligting word in die vooruitsig gestel in die geval waar bestaande toeristewoordeboeke opgeneem word in omvattender toeristegidse wat volgens 'n geleksikografiseerde benadering saamgestel is. Die fokus is op die benutting van leksikografi ese funksies en op 'n erkenning aan verskillende onderafdelings van die toegangsproses in naslaanbronne.
Increased lexicographic accessibility in the transition from a tourist dictionary to a tourist guide
Research in theoretical lexicography has led to the formulation of various models for the planning and compilation of dictionaries. These dictionaries belong to different typological categories but they should all be regarded as reference sources with a specific data presentation, specific structures and well defined functions. Although directed at the compilation of dictionaries, many aspects of these theoretical models can also be applied to other sources of reference. In this paper it is proposed that the implementation of developments in theoretical lexicography should be extended so that certain types of reference sources other than dictionaries, also fall within the scope of their application. These suggestions may look like an attempted lexicographisation of other reference works. However, they should rather be seen as a proposed delexicographisation of a well developed theory, which is at present restricted in its application to the field of dictionaries.
Following a brief discussion of some salient features in the development of theoretical lexicography, especially the lexicographic functions approach, the focus switches to the possibility of planning a more general reference source according to criteria laid down for dictionaries. Due to the lack of a proper theoretical basis, many tourist dictionaries fail to satisfy the needs of their intended target users. Accordingly, as opposed to merely proposing an improved tourist dictionary, this article employs tourist dictionaries as a case in point to argue in favour of a more comprehensive tourist guide that will include the tourist dictionary as one of the texts in its central component. Various aspects of the reference needs of tourists are discussed and an indication is given of ways in which dictionaries can provide in these needs.
The transition from a tourist dictionary to a tourist guide is presented as the best solution to the problem of inadequate tourist dictionaries. Various aspects of the relevant adaptation and implementation of lexicographic criteria are discussed. Innovative suggestions regarding the structure of the more comprehensive reference source, e.g. the use of an amalgamated central component in which so-called drawer texts are presented as equal status integrated inner texts, are complemented by a focus on the way in which access to the data on offer in such a reference source could be enhanced. It is indicated that, contrary to the prevailing approach in tourist dictionaries, not only a communicative function but also a cognitive function should be satisfied by tourist reference guides. In order to achieve this, the access process needs to make provision for a poli-accessible reference source which allows different search routes with a variety of reference source external points of departure to guide the intended target user to a variety of destinations within the reference source, where the external access routes are linked to internal routes. The notion of intra access routes to link different texts within the amalgamated central component to ensure an optimal retrieval of information and to ascertain textual cohesion is introduced. In a reference source like a tourist guide, access should not be limited to the source internal data. Users often need to be guided to pragmatic and cognitive destinations outside the reference source. To assist users in this regard, suggestions are made for an exit process, giving access to the source external environment. This form of access activates the use of a further lexicographic function, i.e. the operative function. Information retrieved from the reference source should enable knowledgeable target users to employ it in the pragmatic source external environment in order to satisfy certain needs. The reference source, in this case the comprehensive tourist guide, is elevated to a communicative, cognitive as well as operative access route directed at the real tourist environment. Such an approach helps to fulfil the genuine purpose of the relevant reference source.
By delexicographising certain aspects of lexicographic theory its more general application can enhance the quality, accessibility and usefulness of many other sources of reference.


A system intervention is usually done with the view of changing some aspect of the system. That aspect might be the boundary of the system, the desired results of the system, the ability to apply a given set of metrics to the system or some other aspect. The nature of the intervention is always a matter of delicate selection. Systems practitioners eventually learn that certain leverage points exist in all systems that can be used to initiate change in the system and thus avoid the frustrating effort of attempting to 'muscle" the system into a state of change. Of course the understanding of the existence of leverage points is really just the surface of the problem; the crux of the thing is the identification of the various leverage points in the system and the attempt to have some understanding of the possible unintended consequences of an intervention of that system through the adjustment of the identified leverage points. Meadows developed taxonomy of systemic intervention points in 1999. Those intervention points are arranged from the one with the smallest overall effect such as changing constants, parameters and numbers (such as subsidies, taxes, standards)to that having the most dramatic effect upon the system; changing the ability to transcend paradigms. As of 2012 this taxonomy had not been subject to empirical validation. During a two year period three different cohousing communities were studied for the purpose of exploring the dynamic of the ethical change. The data collected was analyzed and various themes were developed. Pivotal ethical moments were identified and the leverage point in each change was distinguished and inspected for the effects of its applicati This paper discusses systemic leverage points from the perspective of a larger study of ethical change within three cohousing communities that were studied over a two year period. Its purpose is to discover if Meadows taxonomy can be empirically validated as a useful tool to design a process of system intervention to achieve the greatest possible effect, or alternatively the least possible effect upon the system. The communities that were studied were all located in the Northern California area of the United States and were selected through the process of snowball sampling as were the participants in the study. Data was collected though semi structured interviews and the personal observations of the researcher as well as an analysis of the public presentation of the various communities through their websites. The data that was collected was coded using Atlas.ti and themes developed from that data, in part focusing upon Meadows model. Leverage Points in Systemic Change 2 This paper is divided into an exposition of the various research sites and major pivotal moments within the sites. Those pivotal moments are then examined from the viewpoint of Meadows' twelve leverage points to determine if the data supports that model. Conclusions from the examination are drawn and suggestions for further research are made on.


More than fifty years of computer music research has established a wide range of techniques and tools. Implementing all of these within a single application is impractical, yet each task might require a different selection to be applied. Therefore, the sharing of structured information between distinct applications becomes a key challenge for computer music as a field. While existing protocols provide a great deal of support for communication between the synthesis engines, minimal facilities exist for communicating userinterface constructs between distributed computer music applications. As a result, it remains difficult to apply techniques for computer supported cooperative work in a format which can be reused by a wide range of applications. This diminishes the opportunities by which more general collaborative composition and performance environments can be developed. In a distributed environment where user-interface objects may be replicated across multiple remote locations, concurrency control is required to maintain the integrity of each object. Previous methods for managing concurrent objects have typically introduced strong guarantees regarding a range of behaviours; however, these guarantees come at the cost of more complicated object frameworks which have failed to gain widespread community acceptance. Instead, a light-weight component model providing only the essential facilities is seen as a viable alternative. This dissertation investigates the use of lock-free shared-memory techniques for distributed computer music composition and performance environments. A method is presented by which the underlying user-interface structures may be separated from their manipulation, establishing an environment in which concurrent applications can provide multiple real-time views of shared components. Results include a formal correctness model for lock-free algorithms, a portable framework for concurrent components and a practical demonstration using a collection of components to implement a distributed text buffer.


The role of improved schooling, a central part of most development strategies, has become controversial because expansion of school attainment has not guaranteed improved economic conditions. This paper reviews the role of cognitive skills in promoting economic well-being, with a particular focus on the role of school quality and quantity. It concludes that there is strong evidence that the cognitive skills of the population - rather than mere school attainment - are powerfully related to individual earnings, to the distribution of income, and to economic growth. New empirical results show the importance of both minimal and high level skills, the complementarity of skills and the quality of economic institutions, and the robustness of the relationship between skills and growth. International comparisons incorporating expanded data on cognitive skills reveal much larger skill deficits in developing countries than generally derived from just school enrollment and attainment. The magnitude of change needed makes clear that closing the economic gap with developed countries will require major structural changes in schooling institutions.


With the introduction of pharmaceutical product patents for the first time (via the 2005 amendments to India's patents act), it is feared that there would be a steep rise in drug prices and a consequential adverse impact on access to important drugs. Civil society proponents argue that the TRIPS flexibilities available were not exploited appropriately and that adequate safeguards were not built in to ensure an affordable supply of medicines. While this concern by civil society has some merit, what it misses is the flexibility that already inheres in the Patent Office to tailor patent protection to suit policy needs. This article argues that the Indian Patent Office has had an interesting history of taking itself to be a policy guardian of sorts and demonstrating a rather conservative approach to the issue of patentability. This policy-style reasoning can be traced back to the Ayyangar Committee report, a document that formed the very basis for the current Indian patent regime. Underlying this report was the clear message that fewer patents resulted in a stronger indigenous industry, particularly in the area of pharmaceuticals and chemicals. This article demonstrates the influence of this policy document on the decisions of the Patent Office even today and posits that, rooted in a system that stressed the virtues of a weak patent system, it is likely that the Patent Office would continue with a conservative approach to the issue of patentability, even with regard to pharmaceutical inventions (that are patentable under the 2005 Act).


Bioinformatics is a necessary technology and tool, which current molecular biologists cannot do without in light of the genome data explosion and advent of fields such as genomics and proteomics. Yet, even with this in mind, there is still a limited pool of human resource to support and develop bioinformatics particularly in poorer developing nations. The highly multidisciplinary nature of this field can be an obstacle in converting just any molecular biologist into a proficient and capable bioinformaticist. Coupled with the high costs of software, hardware, technical maintenance and systems support; many developing and poor countries may not be able to fully realize their biotech potential either academically or economically due to the inability to fully utilize bioinformatics as a technology to support and co-develop with molecular biology oriented research programmes. Malaysia, a developing South East Asian nation took steps to counter these problems and develop an infrastructure for bioinformatics to support nationally important biotech research agendas, particularly government initiatives in genomics and proteomics, with the setting up of NBBnet - The National Biotechnology and Bioinformatics network. We further propose the setting up of similar models in other developing countries, an endeavour which we are willing to share our experiences and resources. We hope that these networks may in the future evolve into a super network of national or regional networks on biotechnology and bioinformatics.


The Code contains two "pass-through" tax regimes for business entities. One is contained in Subchapter K, which applies to partnerships, the other in Subchapter S, which, unsurprisingly, applies to S corporations. In the main, both Subchapters tax the owners of the entities rather than the entities themselves. Having two pass-through tax regimes creates obvious administrative and other inefficiencies. There was a time when S corporations served a valuable purpose, particularly when taxpayers needed a fairly simple and foolproof pass-through entity that provided a liability shield. But limited liability companies (LLCs), which are usually taxed as partnerships, 1 in most contexts make S corporations obsolete. LLCs too can be fairly simple and foolproof, while providing the superior tax benefits of the partnership provisions of Subchapter K. The advent and popularity of LLCs means that the inefficiency created by two separate pass-through tax regimes can no longer be justified. I propose that a new pass-through regime be created that retains Subchapter K and incorporates the best parts of Subchapter S, with the balance of Subchapter S repealed. Integrating these two pass-through regimes requires that some changes be made to the C corporation provisions of Subchapter C as well. I also make Subchapter K available to most nonpublic C corporations, putting most closely held businesses on a level playing field. Part II of the Article discusses the tax entity selection process generally, as well as the basics of the taxation of C corporations, S corporations, and partnerships. Part III explores the tax advantages and disadvantages of partnerships and S corporations. Part IV looks at the data on the relative popularity of the major business entities and provides a possible explanation for the continued popularity of S corporations. Part V discusses H.R. 4137, a bill that was ahead of its time (and not unflawed). Part VI asks whether we should repeal Subchapter K instead. Part VII recommends that nonpublic corporations also be allowed to elect Subchapter K. Part VIII proposes taxpayer-friendly methods for getting to my version of the promised land, and Part IX gives a brief conclusion.


Karl Marx was the greatest champion of the labor theory of value. The logical problems of this theory have, however, split scholars of Marx into two factions: those who regard it as an indivisible component of Marxism, and those who wish to continue the spirit of analysis begun by Marx without the labor theory of value. In the debate between these two camps, the former has attempted to draw support from Marx's concepts of value, while the latter has ignored them, taking instead as their starting point the truism that production generates a surplus. Nevertheless, a careful examination of the development of Marx's logic uncovers the profound irony that, after a chance rereading of Hegel, Marx made a crucial advance which should have led him to replace the labor theory of value with the theory that commodities in general are the source of surplus. Marx's value analysis is thus consistent, not with those who would defend the labor theory of value, but with those who would transcend it.


This paper examines India's federal system in the context of prospects for India's future economic growth and development. After a brief review of India's recent policy reforms and economic development outcomes, and of the country's federal institutions, the analysis focuses on the major issues with respect to India's federal system in terms of their developmental consequences. We examine the impacts of tax assignments, expenditure authority and the intergovernmental transfer system on the following aspects of India's economy and economic performance: the quality of governance and government expenditure, the efficiency of the tax system, the fiscal health of different tiers of government, and the impacts on growth and on regional inequality. In each case, we discuss recent and possible policy reforms. We make comparisons with China's federal system where this is instructive for analyzing the Indian case. Finally, we provide a discussion of potential reforms of aspects of India's federal institutions.


Numerical abstract domains such as Polyhedra, Octahedron, Octagon, Interval, and others are an essential component of static program analysis. The choice of domain offers a performance/precision tradeoff ranging from cheap and imprecise (Interval) to expensive and precise (Polyhedra). Recently, significant speedups were achieved for Octagon and Polyhedra by manually decomposing their transformers to work with the Cartesian product of projections associated with partitions of the variable set. While practically useful, this manual process is time consuming, error-prone, and has to be applied from scratch for every domain. In this paper, we present a generic approach for decomposing the transformers of sub-polyhedra domains along with conditions for checking whether the decomposed transformers lose precision with respect to the original transformers. These conditions are satisfied by most practical transformers, thus our approach is suitable for increasing the performance of these transformers without compromising their precision. Furthermore, our approach is ``black box:'' it does not require changes to the internals of the original non-decomposed transformers or additional manual effort per domain. We implemented our approach and applied it to the domains of Zones, Octagon, and Polyhedra. We then compared the performance of the decomposed transformers obtained with our generic method versus the state of the art: the (non-decomposed) PPL for Polyhedra and the much faster ELINA (which uses manual decomposition) for Polyhedra and Octagon. Against ELINA we demonstrate finer partitions and an associated speedup of about 2x on average. Our results indicate that the general construction presented in this work is a viable method for improving the performance of sub-polyhedra domains. It enables designers of abstract domains to benefit from decomposition without re-writing all of their transformers from scratch as required by prior work.


Even though millions of dollars have been spent on demand management (DM) over the last decade across Australia, there is still very little evaluation of implemented DM/water efficiency programs. This paper brings together some of the limited examples of evaluation studies undertaken, providing details of both the statistical analysis method used and the findings of such studies undertaken by the Institute for Sustainable Futures (ISF) on behalf of water utilities. The studies include measurement of water savings in the residential and non-residential sectors and economic assessment of implemented programs. The paper highlights the importance of evaluation and need for embedding evaluation into the water planning process. It also highlights additional research currently being undertaken in this field associated with pressure reduction and energy usage when implementing DM programs. This paper will be of interest to a broad spectrum of practitioners beginning or currently involved in the development of DM programs or implementing and evaluating existing DM programs.


Foams prepared with polyurethanes (PU), a polymer with units in the main chain joined by urethane linkages, are commonly used in isolation panels, seals, automative seats, and bedding. The reaction causing the formation of polyurethane foams is a conventional, yet spectacular, way to attract the attention of polymer chemistry students. Infrared cameras are a relatively inexpensive apparatus that allow for semi-quantitatively temperature monitoring at the surface of objects. Because the formation of polyurethane is exothermic, the polymerization reaction and the expansion of the foam can be easily detected by an infrared camera. Information such as volume expansion, maximum temperature, temperature distribution in time and space, and reaction time can be retrieved from short videos. These data can be correlated and discussed in relationship with the reactivity of the components for synthesizing the foam. The primary goal of this activity was to investigate the exothermic reaction of polyurethane foam using an infrared camera which has been successfully used for monitoring the exothermic formation of polyurethane foams. These values can be discussed in term of reactivity of isocyanates (aromatic and aliphatic/cycloaliphatic) for a given formulation of polyols. The highly visual content of such experiments is attractive for children and students. Chemicals for performing the experiments can be donated either individually or as ready sets ("polyols") from the industry. It is anticipated that the investment required for buying the infrared camera can be redeemed by using it for other types of exo- or endothermic reactions and for teaching heat transfer in physics class.


FACE RECOGNITION: AN ENGINEERING APPROACH By Farshad Ghahramani In computer vision, face recognition is the process of labeling a face as recognized or unrecognized. The process is based on a pipeline that goes through collection, detection, pre-processing, and recognition stages. The focus of this study is on the last stage of the pipeline with the assumption that images have already been collected and pre-processed. Conventional solutions to face recognition use the entire facial image as the input to their algorithms. We present a different approach where the input to the recognition algorithm is the individual segment of the face such as the left eye, the right eye, the nose, and the mouth. Two separate experiments are conducted on the AT&T database of faces [1]. In the first experiment, the entire image is used to run the Eigen-face, the Fisher-face, and the local binary pattern algorithms. For each run, accuracy and error rate of the results are tabulated and analyzed. In the second experiment, extracted facial feature segments are used as the input to the same algorithms. The output from each algorithm is subsequently labeled and placed in the appropriate feature class. Our analysis shows how the granularity of collected data for each segmented class can be leveraged to obtain an improved accuracy rate over the full face approach.


This paper deals with the integration of multiple advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and in-vehicle information systems (IVIS) in a holistic driver-support system. The paper presents the results of a project named Integrated Safety Systems (INSAFES), which was part of PReVENT: an integrating project carried out under the European Framework Programme 6. Integration in INSAFES is tackled at three different levels in the framework of a "cognitive car" perspective: 1) at the perception level, to represent the world around the vehicle, including object-tracking between sensor fields and the detection of driver intentions; 2) at the decision level, to reproduce humanlike holistic motion plans, which serve as "reference maneuvers" to evaluate the motion alternatives that a driver faces; and 3) at the level of interaction with the driver and vehicle control ( action level), to arbitrate between the requests of functions competing for driver attention. A function that provides simultaneous longitudinal and lateral support has been developed. It gives support for safe speed, safe distance, lane change, and all-around collision avoidance all at the same time. At its core, there is a tool (evasive/reference maneuver) that constantly evaluates two possible alternatives (in lane and evasive/lane change) and compares them with the driver input to detect which one applies, which dictates warnings and driver interactions, and whether there is a better alternative. In addition, a "warning manager" has been developed, acting like a referee who lets the ADAS applications work standalone and then combines the requests of each application, prioritizes them, and manages the interaction with the user. The warning manager can be particularly useful in the case of integration of pre-existing standalone functions, which can be quickly reused. If a holistic ADAS is developed, the warning manager can still be used to combine it with IVIS functions. In fact, depending on the kind of ADAS and IVIS considered, the most suitable approach can be either to combine functions in a unified multifunctional driver-support application or to arbitrate between them through the warning manager.


'The Moment We Knew Nothing of Each Other' is a permanent installation of a large scale photographic diorama in the foyer of Royal and Derngate Theatres, Northampton.

Hamann's work operates in the space between the still and the moving image, and is conceptually founded on the integration of old and new media.

The permanent photographic installation is inspired by the 19th century diorama principle of exhibiting translucent pictures with lighting effects and applies the latest digital printing technology to create images in continuous transition and change. Combining Hamann's original film-strip technique with a novel use of 19th century diorama optical devices, the imagery creates a metaphysical sense of movement as well as making visible another world behind everyday appearances.

The artist positions traces of everyday public performance, people travelling, again in a public meeting place, creating a physicality of real time and recorded movement. Using methods of performance, chance and permanent transition both in the creation of imagery and the technology of display Hamann manages to create a dynamic artwork that will look different each time visited. The piece reflects on the parallel of theatre and photography describing a period of time. The momentary encounter of passers-by photographically frozen on two film-strips, escapes the viewers gaze in the installation when the images are slowly dissolving into each other.

In a climate of high resolution realistic photography Hamann's film-strip imagery offers a new representation of the way we see and observe and the process of observing rather than the observed object itself. Some of the figures walking by have not registered on the film-strips due to the incongruence of the movement of the film in the camera and the movement of the figure. Similarly when we focus our attention on a person or a thing we may not register other persons or things in the same optical field.


Background Traditional diagnostic methods for tuberculosis (TB) cannot be reliably applied to tuberculous pleurisy. Therefore, this prospective, randomized, controlled trial was performed to compare the diagnostic sensitivity and safety of ultrasound-guided cutting-needle pleural biopsy versus thoracoscopic pleural biopsy in patients suspected of tuberculous pleurisy following inconclusive thoracentesis. Material/Methods A total of 196 adult patients with acid-fast bacillus (AFB)-negative exudative pleural effusions clinically suspected of tuberculous pleurisy were recruited. Enrollees were randomized into 2 cohorts: ultrasound-guided cutting-needle pleural biopsy (n=96) or thoracoscopic pleural biopsy (n=96). The overall diagnostic yields, diagnostic sensitivities for tuberculous pleurisy, and post-procedural complications for both cohorts were statistically compared. Results Ultrasound-guided pleural biopsy displayed an overall diagnostic yield of 83%, while thorascopic pleural biopsy displayed a similar overall diagnostic yield of 86% (χ2=1.88, df=1, p=0.17). There were 127 patients conclusively diagnosed with tuberculous pleurisy, resulting in a tuberculous pleurisy prevalence of 65% in this patient population (66% in the ultrasound cohort vs. 63% in the thoracoscopy cohort; p>0.05). Ultrasound-guided pleural biopsy displayed a sensitivity of 82% in detecting tuberculous pleurisy, while thorascopic pleural biopsy displayed a similar sensitivity of 90% (χ2=1.05, df=1, p=0.30). The sensitivities of these 2 modalities did not significantly differ based on the degree of pleural thickening (p>0.05). Post-procedural complications were minor. Conclusions Ultrasound-guided and thoracoscopic pleural biopsy both display strong (>80%) but statistically similar overall diagnostic yields for diagnosing pleural effusions following inconclusive thoracentesis. Both modalities also display strong (>80%) but statistically similar sensitivities in detecting tuberculous pleurisy.


Society is currently inundated with more information than ever, making efficient management
a necessity. Alas, most of current information management suffers from several
levels of disconnectedness: Applications partition data into segregated islands,
small notes don't fit into traditional application categories, navigating the data is different
for each kind of data; data is either available at a certain computer or only online,
but rarely both. Connected information management (CoIM) is an approach to information
management that avoids these ways of disconnectedness. The core idea of
CoIM is to keep all information in a central repository, with generic means for organization
such as tagging. The heterogeneity of data is taken into account by offering
specialized editors.
The central repository eliminates the islands of application-specific data and is formally
grounded by a CoIM model. The foundation for structured data is an RDF repository.
The RDF editing meta-model (REMM) enables form-based editing of this data,
similar to database applications such as MS access. Further kinds of data are supported
by extending RDF, as follows. Wiki text is stored as RDF and can both contain
structured text and be combined with structured data. Files are also supported by the
CoIM model and are kept externally. Notes can be quickly captured and annotated with
meta-data. Generic means for organization and navigation apply to all kinds of data.
Ubiquitous availability of data is ensured via two CoIM implementations, the web application
HYENA/Web and the desktop application HYENA/Eclipse. All data can be
synchronized between these applications. The applications were used to validate the
CoIM ideas.


Context. Several works have found an increase of the abundances of the s-process neutron-capture elements in the youngest Galactic stellar populations. These trends provide important constraints on stellar and Galactic evolution and they need to be confirmed with large and statistically significant samples of stars spanning wide age and distance intervals.
 Aims. We aim to trace the abundance patterns and the time evolution of five s-process elements – two belonging to the first peak, Y and Zr, and three belonging to the second peak, Ba, La, and Ce – using the Gaia-ESO IDR5 results for open clusters and disc stars.
 Methods. From the UVES spectra of cluster member stars, we determined the average composition of clusters with ages >0.1 Gyr. We derived statistical ages and distances of field stars, and we separated them into thin and thick disc populations. We studied the time-evolution and dependence on metallicity of abundance ratios using open clusters and field stars whose parameters and abundances were derived in a homogeneous way.
 Results. Using our large and homogeneous sample of open clusters, thin and thick disc stars, spanning an age range larger than 10 Gyr, we confirm an increase towards young ages of s-process abundances in the solar neighbourhood. These trends are well defined for open clusters and stars located nearby the solar position and they may be explained by a late enrichment due to significant contribution to the production of these elements from long-living low-mass stars. At the same time, we find a strong dependence of the s-process abundance ratios on the Galactocentric distance and on the metallicity of the clusters and field stars.
 Conclusions. Our results, derived from the largest and most homogeneous sample of s-process abundances in the literature, confirm the growth with decreasing stellar ages of the s-process abundances in both field and open cluster stars. At the same time, taking advantage of the abundances of open clusters located in a wide Galactocentric range, these results offer a new perspective on the dependence of the s-process evolution on the metallicity and star formation history, pointing to different behaviours at various Galactocentric distances.


Software application ontologies have the potential to become the keystone in state-of-the-art information management techniques. It is expected that these ontologies will support the sort of reasoning power required to navigate large and complex terminologies correctly and efficiently. Yet, there is one problem in particular that continues to stand in our way. As these terminological structures increase in size and complexity, and the drive to integrate them inevitably swells, it is clear that the level of consistency required for such navigation will become correspondingly difficult to maintain. While descriptive semantic representations are certainly a necessary component to any adequate ontology-based system, so long as ontology engineers rely solely on semantic information, without a sound ontological theory informing their modeling decisions, this goal will surely remain out of reach. In this paper we describe how Language and Computing nv (L&C), along with The Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Sciences (IFOMIS), are working towards developing and implementing just such a theory, combining the open software architecture of L&C's LinkSuite TM with the philosophical rigor of IFOMIS's Basic Formal Ontology. In this way we aim to move beyond the more or less simple controlled vocabularies that have dominated the industry to date.


We develop a model to analyze the link between financial leverage, worker pay structure and the risk of job termination. Contrary to the conventional view, we show that even in the absence of any agency problem among workers, variable pay can be optimal despite workers being risk averse and firms risk neutral. We find that firms employing workers with safer projects (and lower probability of job termination) use more variable compensation, and that leverage is strictly increasing in the amount of variable pay. These two results lead to the main insight of the paper: the more likely it is that a worker is terminated, the lower a firm's leverage. We provide empirical support for these predictions with a novel data set of all Canadian financial brokers and dealers. In the context of our empirical analysis, the model provides a novel mechanism to help explain why high leverage and high amounts of variable pay may be pervasive in financial relative to non-financial institutions.


Japanese Buddhism was introduced to a wide Western audience when a delegation of Buddhist priests attended the World's Parliament of Religions, part of the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. In describing and analysing this event, Judith Snodgrass challenges the predominant view of Orientalism as a one-way process by which Asian cultures are understood strictly through Western ideas. Restoring agency to the Buddhists themselves, she shows how they helped reformulate Buddhism as a modern world religion with specific appeal to the West, while simultaneously reclaiming authority for the tradition within a rapidly changing Japan. Snodgrass explains how the Buddhism presented in Chicago was shaped by the institutional, social and political imperatives of the Meiji Buddhist revival movement in Japan and was further determined by the Parliament itself, which, despite its rhetoric of fostering universal brotherhood and international goodwill, was thoroughly permeated with confidence in the superiority of American Protestantism. Additionally, in the context of Japan's intensive diplomatic campaign to renegotiate its treaties with Western nations, the nature of Japanese religion was not simply a religious issue, Snodgrass argues, but an integral part of Japan's bid for acceptance by the international community.


Focusing on the case of urban development in Gangnam, this article explores how middle-class identity based on residence in apartment complexes was created in South Korea beginning in the late 1970s. I argue that state policy, speculation, and exclusion were key ingredients in the making of the middle class in Gangnam. Many white-collar families became apartment owners through a government-subsidised apartment lottery programme, and subsequently climbed the economic ladder more rapidly than others because of skyrocketing housing prices. Their rise to middle-class status, facilitated by chance and furthered by their willingness to engage in real estate speculation, was seen by many as illegitimate. In the face of scepticism about their status, Gangnam residents strived to cultivate cultured, modernised, and Westernised middle-class lifestyles so as to distinguish themselves from non-Gangnam residents and justify their economic success. This paper emphasises the dialectical process – both top-down and bottom-up – of middle class formation during the Gangnam boom. Based on a year of field research conducted in Korea, I analyse the lives and experiences of the middle class and their strategies for upward social mobility in the housing market.


After hundreds of savings and loan institutions became insolvent in the 1980s, Congress enacted the Federal Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act, which was designed to provide affordable mortgage financing to low and moderate income individuals, and to dispose of the assets of the failed savings and loan institutions. Among the powers granted by FIRREA to the FDIC was the ability to disaffirm or repudiate leases held by insolvent institutions if those leases are deemed burdensome. In "Resolution Trust Corp. v. Diamond," the United States District Court wrongly held that FIRREA cannot be construed to allow Federal preemption of State and local rent regulations, even with respect to tenants other than the low and moderate income individuals that FIRREA was designed to protect. While protections for low and moderate income tenants are appropriate, the language of FIRREA does not preclude Federal preemption of regulations as they are applied to high income tenants. By disallowing preemption with respect to this class of leases, the "Diamond" decision undermines the goals of FIRREA by preventing the FDIC from maximizing the net present value of the assets of failed financial institutions.


SUMMARY 1. The depression of p-aminohippurate and o-iodohippurate transport induced by uraemic serum in rabbit and rat renal cortex in vitro was confirmed. At the same time no change in oxygen consumption was observed. 2. The transport of the tetraethylammonium ion was unimpaired by uraemic serum from man or rat. 3. When sera from neomycin-treated uraemic rats were incubated with rabbit renal cortex, the uptakes ofp-aminohippurate and of o-iodohippurate were 50% higher than when sera from untreated uraemic rats were used. 4. In rat uraemic serum, the levels of hippuric and indole acetic acids are markedly elevated. Administration of neomycin causes a substantial reduction in these levels. 5. The implications of these observations upon the impaired renal transport of hippurates produced by uraemic serum is discussed.


The purpose of this research was to develop a matrix-type transdermal therapeutic system containing drug heparin sodium with different ratios of hydrophilic polymeric systems by the solvent evaporation technique by using 30% (w/w) of PEG 400 LR to the dry polymer weight, incorporated as plasticizer. Different concentrations of oleic acid and isopropyl myristate were used to enhance the transdermal permeation of heparin sodium. The physicochemical compatibility of the drug and the polymers studied by differential scanning calorimetry and infrared spectroscopy suggested absence of any incompatibility. Formulated transdermal films were physically evaluated with regard to thickness, weight variation, drug content, flatness, tensile strength, folding endurance, percentage of moisture content and water vapour transmission rate. All prepared formulations indicated good physical stability. In-vitro permeation studies of formulations were performed by using diffusion cell apparatus. Formulation prepared with hydrophilic polymer containing permeation enhancer showed best in-vitro skin permeation through Wistar albino rat skin as compared to all other formulations. Formulation F9 showed highest flux among all the formulations and 1.369-fold enhancements in drug permeation. These results indicate that the formulation containing 10% of oleic acid with 10% isopropyl myristate give better penetration of heparin sodium through rat skin.


The synthesis and systematization of the literature on the history of modern economic reform, accumulated over more than twenty years, allow us to streamline the existing ideas about the processes occurring in the framework of transformations and to set a new vector for comprehending the socio-economic development of Russia in the last decade of the 20th century and the first decades of the 21st century. A step in this direction is the analysis of publications reflecting the preparation, progress and results of state and municipal property privatization in the 1990s. The historiographical review includes monographs and articles written by both the apologists of accelerated privatization, and their opponents and critics. The review of this literature reveals a range of opinions on the preferences for the denationalizing Russian economy, evaluation of the results of privatization by the end of the 1990s, and the possibility of alternative ways to improve the efficiency of domestic enterprises. In particular, it is noted that the apologists of accelerated privatization (E. T. Gaidar, A. B. Chubais) focus on the quantitative indicators of State and municipal property transfer into private ownership. Critics of the Government's privatization option prefer talking about qualitative implications of "property revolution†, including reducing the efficiency of privatized enterprises, falling living standards, deteriorating the legal status of employees. In the first part of the article, the author analyses the publications dedicated to the study of the foreign experience of privatization preceding the preparations for the reform of the property relations in Russia and to the evaluation of the process and results of the accelerated privatization from the position of Government supporters of the course of market reforms in the domestic economy.


In this paper we address the controversial issue of nucleation of cavities in Al 5083 alloys and their subsequent growth to coalescence and failure. We focus on the origin and growth of cavities not only during the primary processing of Al 5083 in sheet forms, but also during the manufacture of these sheets into SPF (superplastic forming) components. Experimental observations of pre-existing cavities in this alloy are made using optical and electron microscopy. The role of sheet rolling direction, and the state of stress during superplastic deformation on the cavity formation and coalescence are also discussed. The effect of the state of stress (uniaxial, plane strain, balanced biaxial, and tri-axial) on the growth characteristics of cavitation is also examined. It is found that the uniaxial model based cavitation cannot directly be extended to predict the behavior of more complex stress states, unless great care is taken to identify the right strain measure for the mapping process.


Verification and testing of a newly installed wellbore barrier, in older assets has proven to be challenging. Even more so when the well has structural issues, indemnities or weak spots in the barrier envelope, or weakend well construction that limits the possibility to acheive a positive pressure verification of the barrier with an applied surface pressure versus the reservoir pressure.
 A suitable location with necessary support and strength should be located in the well. If installing a mechanical barrier in means of a bridge plug as the primary barrier, we will monitor the installation forces in the anchoring and sealing sequence. This individual signature will be verified towards a nominal base line signature of a ISO approved test and a library of thousands of collected installation profiles. Any abnormality can trigger a release and relocating of the barrier. A second verification barrier will then be installed close above the primary barrier and installation sequence will be verified the same way as the primary barrier. When both installation signatures are accounted for we can pressure test the installed barriers. This can be done with a pressure manipulation tool, where we introduce a calculated predetermined pressure drop between the installed primary barrier and the verification barrier above. By monitoring this pressure alteration vs. the pressure above the verification barrier, we can determine if we have a verified primary and verification barrier.
 The Primary Barrier is verified in the direction of flow (negative pressure test). And verification barrier as the secondary barrier is verified with a positive pressure test. If a dual barrier is requested you can leave the verification barrier as secondary barrier or pull to re-use.


Intensive computational methods have been used by Earth scientists in a wide range of problems in data inversion and uncertainty quantication such as earthquake epicenter location and climate projections. To quantify the uncer- tainties resulting from a range of plausible model congurations it is necessary to estimate a multidimensional probability distribution. The computational cost of estimating these distributions for geoscience applications is impractical using traditional methods such as Metropolis/Gibbs algorithms as simulation costs limit the number of experiments that can be obtained reasonably. Several alternate sampling strategies have been proposed that could improve on the sampling e- ciency including Multiple Very Fast Simulated Annealing (MVFSA) and Adaptive Metropolis algorithms. The performance of these proposed sampling strategies are evaluated with a surrogate climate model that is able to approximate the noise and response behavior of a realistic atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM). The surrogate model is fast enough that its evaluation can be embed- ded in these Monte Carlo algorithms. We show that adaptive methods can be superior to MVFSA to approximate the known posterior distribution with fewer forward evaluations. However the adaptive methods can also be limited by inad- equate sample mixing. The Single Component and Delayed Rejection Adaptive Metropolis algorithms were found to resolve these limitations, although challenges remain to approximating multi-modal distributions. The results show that these advanced methods of statistical inference can provide practical solutions to the cli- mate model calibration problem and challenges in quantifying climate projection uncertainties. The computational methods would also be useful to problems out- side climate prediction, particularly those where sampling is limited by availability of computational resources.


The Chinese first developed stoneware ash glazes about 3500 years ago, when their kiln technology progressed sufficiently to reach temperatures high enough to fuse such glazes. More than 2000 years went by before this knowledge reached Japan and Korea, where ash glazes were also subsequently produced. In Britain, the advent of studio pottery in the 20th century led to interest in oriental approaches to ceramics, including ash glazes. A number of studio potters used and indeed continue to use ash glazes in their work. The great majority of these glazes have, throughout history, been made of wood ash and are mainly fired to high stoneware temperatures of at least 1280C, Cone 10. Worldwide interest in this subject continues today; however, a general increase in environmental concern, especially fuel economy, raises a number of issues for contemporary ceramic practitioners. This research addresses these issues by employing multiple methods in a "composite" methodology, rooted in art practice, the aims being:
 To develop a range of new glazes, for lower stoneware temperature (1240C, Cone 7) oxidised firings, using ash from arable crop waste as an environmentally sensitive ingredient.
 To demonstrate and articulate the possible creative, practical and environmental benefits of the new glazes for contemporary ceramic practitioners, principally through artworks.
 To offer a model for investigating the potential of a new source of ash, as a glaze material.
The plant species explored are the Combining pea and Field bean, neither of which is documented in any of the contextual sources located. Both plants are widely grown as protein crops in many countries of the world and were available in North Yorkshire for this research. Glaze calculation methods and empirical approaches to glaze development have been investigated and the ashes have been analysed. From this information, glaze recipes have been developed and tested. Since the appearance of a glaze is affected by the clay body to which it is applied, the compositions of available clays have been studied and four widely differing examples chosen for the tests. Case studies have been undertaken of contemporary ceramic practitioners, whose approaches to ash glazing vary widely. These studies further develop the context for the new glazes and provide a framework within which to assess their significance. The creative potential of the glazes developed has been explored through their application in ceramic artworks, exhibited both during and at the end of the research. During the creation of these artworks, a theme emerged, closely linking them to their place of origin. In addition to the new artworks, the research contributes both a range of new ash glaze recipes and a model for exploring the potential of ash from a new source.