The aim of this paper is considering the relationship between return and volatility in Tehran Stock Exchange. We have used the daily data of price index of TSE during 2009-2010. The data are available on website of TSE. We have estimated ARMA (1, 1)-GARCH (1, 1) model for estimation volatility of Tehran stock exchange. Results indicate that there is a negative relationship between volatility and rate of return in TSE. The correlation coefficient between volatility and return is -0.00182. The hypothesis of "return does not Granger Cause volatility" has rejected. Also, the hypothesis of volatility does not Granger because return has not rejected. [Seyed Hossein Miri. Return and Volatility in Tehran Stock Exchange. Life Sci J 2013;10(1):1255-1259] (ISSN:1097-8135). http://www.lifesciencesite.com. 191


Two simple, rapid, precise and novel spectrophotometric methods have been developed for the determination of Enzalutamide (EZA) in pure and pharmaceutical dosage form. A novel, non-steroidal antiandrogen agent EZA used in the treatment of metastatic castration resistant prostate cancer. No single UV spectrophotometric method is reported for estimation of EZA. Present study focused on the development of simple spectrophotometric method (Method I) based on the determination of EZA at 236 nm and area under curve (AUC) spectrophotometric method (Method II) involved determination of AUC in between 220.0 nm to 255.0 nm. The drug follows Beer-Lambert's law in concentration range of 3 μg/mL to 15 μg/mL in solvent methanol (r2=0.999). The methods were validated according to ICH guidelines for accuracy, precision, sensitivity and ruggedness. There was no significant difference between performance of the proposed methods regarding mean values and standard deviation. The percent relative standard deviation was not more than 2%. The proposed method is suitable for routine quality control.


The rapid evolution in microsystems and optoelectronics creates the demand for robotic production means with increased performance. The required precision for specific tasks in machining, positioning and assembly is a factor 10 to 100 better than 1 micrometer, while keeping high dynamic properties and motion ranges of up to 1 centimeter. Every application has its own constraints, for the layout of the desired degrees of freedom of the robot as well as for the available volume, and induces a considerable development duration. This thesis aims at making the first phase of manipulator design process more efficient, from the specifications gathering down to the kinematics structure design. The solutions space of all possible kinematics in 3D being incredibly broad and rich, several simplifications have been introduced, in order to respond to the designer's need for structure and pragmatism. On the one hand, only structures having forces aligned with the main orthogonal axes in space are considered, which allows a systematic classification of the kinematics chains and allows us to define the generic concept of "functional" joint with well defined kinematics properties. On the other hand, the proposed methodology is limited to qualitative aspects of motion, for small motion ranges, with a systematic use of the "parasitic" motion concept. The first phase of the design problem is solved in two steps: first, the "elementary" kinematics function of the robot is identified, and second, alternative structures are generated in a creative process, following a set of principles and using a variety of partial and global solutions. The generation of structures with parallel or hybrid kinematics is thereby greatly enhanced and possible problems of mechanical overconstraint are systematically identified. Elastic solid state joints are incorporated in the generated structures on the one hand through a set of design recommendations and on the other hand through specific substitutions. A 6 degrees of freedom micromanipulator with high dynamics and nanometric position resolution was designed during this thesis and a patent application was filed. The prototype "Sigma 6" was built and successfully used to perform an active fiber alignment procedure. A new family of rotational structures with 1 or 3 degrees of freedom, a remote rotation center and reduced parasitic rotation center shift was designed. A new decoupled arm with increased mechanical load capability made of 18 elastic joints was designed and a prototype built, as an alternative to traditional arms ended by a universal and a spherical joint.


<http://journals.ateneo.edu/ojs/kk/> Abstract In recent years, K-pop or Korean popular songs have enjoyed immense popularity around the world. However, the situation was very different before the mid-2000s when the industry was suffering from widespread piracy of its music. Furthermore, the emergence of the MP3 phone in the early 2000s provoked two critical conflicts. One was between the producers of the MP3 phone who were large conglomerates and the manufacturers of the standalone MP3 player who were smaller companies that feared for their future. The other conflict was between the producers of the MP3 phone and the Korean music industry who believed this new device would hinder their development. Given the current global popularity of K-pop, it is meaningful to analyze the position and rationale of these players at the time and their consequences. In brief, protecting existing industries hindered the corporate and industrial adaptions in the global competition and held back the momentum to explore innovation and a new business model. First, the MP3 player manufacturers encountered serious financial and managerial problems and even went into bankruptcy because they were too slow in pursuing change. Second, the Korean conglomerates were late in producing a new digital device, the smartphone, and entering its growing market. Third, the Korean music industry was able to survive but only because entertainment companies have adopted a new business model that generated alternative sources of earnings. This paper demonstrates the importance of having a broader view and recognition of industrial dynamics in formulating effective policies.


Security is critical to the adoption of open source software (OSS), yet few automated solutions currently exist to help detect and prevent malicious contributions from infecting open source repositories. On GitHub, a primary host of OSS, repositories contain not only code but also a wealth of commitrelated and contextual metadata - what if this metadata could be used to automatically identify malicious OSS contributions? In this work, we show how to use only commit logs and repository metadata to automatically detect anomalous and potentially malicious commits. We identify and evaluate several relevant factors which can be automatically computed from this data, such as the modification of sensitive files, outlier change properties, or a lack of trust in the commit's author. Our tool, Anomalicious, automatically computes these factors and considers them holistically using a rule-based decision model. In an evaluation on a data set of 15 malware-infected repositories, Anomalicious showed promising results and identified 53.33% of malicious commits, while flagging less than 1% of commits for most repositories. Additionally, the tool found other interesting anomalies that are not related to malicious commits in an analysis of repositories with no known malicious commits.


While the gender income gap has been examined extensively, the gender wealth gap has largely been ignored, especially for emerging markets such as Vietnam. The lack of serious analysis has caused great concern for practitioners and policymakers as public policy targeting the inequality in income and wealth across genders has not achieved their desired outcomes. Previous studies on gender in emerging markets have focused on income rather than wealth. This paper provides a comprehensive review and insightful policy recommendations on the important issue. Using data from Vietnam's Household Living Standard Survey (VHLSS), the paper examines the gender wealth inequality for sole-head families and partner-head families in Vietnam in 2016, the latest year for which data are available. In addition, the paper extends the Machado-Mata decomposition technique based on the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, which was developed for quantile regressions, to examine the relationship across the distributions of wealth accumulation. The empirical findings from the paper indicate that, among partnered heads, female-head families experienced a larger gap of wealth accumulation. At the lower quantiles of wealth accumulation, the gender wealth gap is primarily associated with different characteristics for both sole and partner-head households. At the median and upper tails of the distribution of wealth accumulation, gender differences in endowments (such as education level and living area) are the main determinants in explaining the wealth gap. Given the empirical findings in the paper, policy implications emerge for the Vietnam Government to consider policies targeting a support for females as female-head families appear to be poorer than their male-head counterparts in terms of wealth.


Submicrometer variations in the median diameter of siliciclastic mud in Orca Basin, northern Gulf of Mexico, sensitively monitor Laurentide ice sheet runoff to the gulf during early stages of the last deglaciation. Grain-size data document a prominent pulse of very fine-grained sediment to the northern Gulf from 12.6 to 12.0 ka, corresponding with the well-known sea-surface meltwater spike in δ 18 O records. Meltwater megafloods at this time eroded and transported large volumes of clay to the Gulf via the Mississippi River system. The nonquartzose megaflood sediments appear to have been derived from clay-rich midcontinental terrace deposits rather than from glacial outwash supplied by the Laurentide ice margin. Sediment grain-size data, in combination with other terrigenous proxies (clay minerals and reworked calcareous nannofossils), indicate substantial variability in deglacial meltwater discharge and associated sediment load of meltwater runoff. This variability reflects changes in continental plumbing consistent with terrestrial records of North American deglaciation.


PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES
To present models for the payment of research subjects, pros and cons of each, and the application of ethical principles in the current environment.

DATA SOURCES
Federal regulations and guidelines, current and historical research, and opinions expressed in the nursing, medical, bioethics, pharmacology, and clinical trial literature.

DATA SYNTHESIS
Relevant regulations are sparse. A variety of payment models exist, but all are somewhat problematic. Balancing the principles of respect for people and justice in our current society will not be entirely possible. Practice decisions must be made for individual situations. Special care must be taken with patients because they are subject to therapeutic misconception.

CONCLUSIONS
No model fits all situations, but research nurses can use their skills to evaluate particular applications. As a society, nurses must promote participation in research as a socially responsible activity and prevent unethical payment models from predominating.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING PRACTICE
Oncology research nurses may be involved with the consent process, the development of protocols, and staff education. A thorough understanding of an issue that may impair the consent process or impinge upon subjects' rights is critical to effective and ethical practice.


Interest in sources of renewable energy has led to increasing attention being paid to the potential of strong tidal currents. There is a limit to the available power, however, as too many turbines will merely block the flow, reducing the power generated. The maximum average power available from a tidal stream along a channel, such as that between an island and the mainland, is estimated and found to be typically considerably less than the average kinetic energy flux in the undisturbed state through the most constricted cross-section of the channel. A general formula gives the maximum average power as between 20 and 24% of the peak tidal pressure head, from one end of the channel to the other, times the peak of the undisturbed mass flux through the channel. This maximum average power is independent of the location of the turbine 'fences' along the channel. The results may also be used to evaluate the power potential of steady ocean currents.


This paper seeks to investigate the motivations of countries that participate in the One Belt and One Road (B&R) Initiative, a China-led economic development programme with the intention of enhancing regional economic cooperation. We examine the income convergence hypothesis for B&R countries with both linear and nonlinear unit root tests to detect the presence of economic integration over the periods 1960–2016 and 1979–2016. For the B&R countries that are found to show income convergence to China in our income convergence testing, we argue that they tend to have a strong existing economic relationship with China. By contrast, the countries that have relatively weak economic relationships with China tend to show no convergence to China, and they take advantage of the B&R as an opportunity to catch up. Moreover, we find evidence that more countries converge to China's real per capita income for the years after 1978 when China started its transition to a market economy and initiated the open-door policy to embrace globalization. The results suggest that China contributes to a higher degree of income convergence in regional integration.


Restoration, through its potential to reduce the negative effects of habitat fragmentation, is becoming increasingly important in saving global biodiversity. However, evidence is increasing that passive faunal recolonization of restored areas may take centuries for some species, subsequently reducing, or negating, any restoration benefits for those species. Reptiles have been identified as typically the slowest vertebrate group to recolonize restored areas due to their low vagility and, often, specific thermal and microhabitat requirements, but relatively few studies have examined their recolonization of restored areas. We examined reptile recolonization patterns in pits restored after bauxite mining in eucalypt forests in south-western Australia to identify filters that slow, or prevent, reptile return and identify practices that reduce the effect of these filters. Three species, the skinks Cryptoblepharus buchananii and Egernia napoleonis and the gecko Christinus marmoratus were slow, or failed, to recolonize restored mine-pits. All rely on slow developing microhabitats (e.g. coarse woody debris and tree hollows) for shelter so the absence, or scarcity, of these microhabitats in restored forest is likely the unidirectional filter slowing their recolonization. Our work on E. napoleonis suggest that coarse woody debris densities need to be much higher ( ~ 50 logs ha-1) than current restoration prescriptions (1 log pile ha-1) to accelerate recolonization by that species. Another skink, Morethia obscura, was common in unmined forest and rapidly recolonized restored areas but disappeared as restored areas matured. Thinning and burning was an effective management strategy to facilitate recolonization by this species but its effects were short-term (<7 years), indicating that overdense vegetation structure is a dynamic filter that influences recolonization by this species, probably due to thermal requirements. Our study shows active management of restored areas to facilitate and accelerate faunal recolonization is required for some species, to maximise biodiversity benefits from restoration. Provision of coarse woody debris and planting species at densities that will approximate the structure of reference communities are two strategies likely to facilitate faunal recolonization in many forested ecosystems. Techniques to accelerate the formation of slow-developing microhabitats are poorly developed and are an important area for future research.


The controversial new thesis of Faces of Inequality is that a state's racial and ethnic composition, more than any other factor, directs its political processes and policies. Social diversity is therefore central to any understanding of state political cultures. Overturning long-established conventional wisdom, Rodney Hero has developed a completely new lens through which to view American politics.


BACKGROUND
Two decades ago the Islamic Republic of Iran was among countries most severely affected by iodine deficiency. Iran has since achieved great success in the control and elimination of iodine deficiency disorders (IDDs) following the national salt iodization program, initiated in 1989. The aim of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of sustained consumption of iodized salt by Iranian households and the current status of iodine nutrition in all 30 provinces of Iran.

METHODS
Goiters-measured by palpation-and urinary iodine concentration of children were assessed. In this descriptive cross-sectional study, 36,000 schoolchildren (18,000 girls and 18,000 boys), aged 8-10 years, were randomly selected, from October 2007 to February 2008, from 30 provinces of the country. Goiter prevalence and urinary iodine excretion in schoolchildren and the iodine content of salt at household, factory, and distribution site levels were measured.

RESULTS
The goiter rate in the country was 6.5% (6% grade 1 and 0.5% grade 2), and the weighted goiter rate was 5.7%. The total goiter rate in Hamedan, Zanjan, Kermanshah, Mazandaran, and Gilan provinces was over 10%. The median urinary iodine was 140 μg/L. Urinary iodine levels of 20-50, 50-99, and ≥100 μg/L were noted in 15.3%, 19.8%, and 64.9% of the samples, respectively. In four provinces, the median urinary iodine was lower than 100 μg/L. The mean (±SD) and median salt iodine values were 23.2 (±13.8) and 34.7 ppm, respectively, at the production level, and 32.4 (±14.7) and 32.3 ppm, respectively, at the distribution level. Ninety-eight percent of households consumed iodized salt, 58% of households had appropriate salt storage, and 27% of the household salts contained <20 ppm.

CONCLUSIONS
Iran has achieved much in the development of universal salt iodization strategy and elimination of IDDs and currently meets all criteria for sustainable elimination of iodine deficiency. However, the lack of adequate iodine nutrition in some provinces necessitates special attention and proper monitoring.


Myths are the ways people in ancient societies perceived the world and the main constituents of culture. Mythology creates a subject area by making use of both the beliefs and the stories told in ancient times and the stories which have been created by the experiences of societies so far. The entities in this area generally create a cult which can be good or bad. Letavitsa can be seen mostly in the form of a devilish spirit in Slavic Mythology and in the sources of Russia, Ukraine and the other Slavic countries; apart from that, Letavitsa is described as a witch, a brutal woman or rarely as a divinity. Letavitsa has a role in which Letavitsa sometimes attracts and tricks women by posing as a man or sometimes attracts and tricks men by posing as a woman but in both situations, has a harmful effect on human beings. In this study, it has been emphasized how Letavitsa is accepted by different countries and cultures and what kind of an image Letavitsa creates in Russian literature notably in poetry, novels and legends by first maknig a description of Letavitsa having a place as one of the bad spirits in Slavic Mythology.


This book is relevant to the practice and theory of agricultural extension. In the current context of significant changes in thinking, policy, and expectations, these changes require extension agents to respond to challenges in developing leadership skills to support and encourage changes at farm and household levels. The book has identified the background, personal, and environmental factors influencing achievement motivation in leadership role of extension agents. The background factors are primary dimensions of diversity and are less amenable to change, exert significant impacts, and shape our basic self-image, sense of identity, and early learning experiences. Researchers often ignore the interdependence of the background factors with other (secondary) dimensions of diversity, in which the latter are changeable personal characteristics that are acquired, and may be modified or abandoned throughout life. Although the secondary dimensions of diversity are more controllable, they will be affected by other people's decisions, which in this book we see as environmental factors. The reliability and applicability of the above-mentioned theoretical discussion have been tested in an original study involving extension agents in Iran.


Within the growing of the gaming industry and mobile technologies, cloud-based video games streaming to mobile devices gains popularity fast. However, several issues and challenges such as user responsiveness, video quality, service quality, operating cost and energy consumption have to be addressed. Previous research studies did not thoroughly investigate the energy consumption of mobile devices used for cloud gaming. This paper focuses on how mobile device energy consumption is impacted by video game content characteristics, transmission protocol and wireless network type. The results show that game content characteristics impact energy consumption (i.e., up to 47% between games at maximum brightness for OLED screens), UDP is more energy efficient than TCP (i.e., up to 13.6%), while WiFi is more energy efficient than 3G (i.e., up to 40%). The outcome of this study can provide beneficial input for adaptive energy efficient cloud-based video games streaming mechanisms.


This review focuses on how water knowledge and technology are linked to power relations when they shape water access, sharing, and distribution. It examines how scholars have tackled this issue explicitly or implicitly. To do this, the paper first discusses the way knowledge and technology are intimately intertwined. Since knowledge and technology are never produced in a sociopolitical vacuum, it goes on to discuss how they embed and produce power relations. This article particularly highlights the way the concept of co‐production has been used to address these issues by focusing on how boundaries and categories are made. Lastly, the review suggests four lines of research to further explore co‐production processes: (1) understanding the political construction of scales of water use and access; (2) identifying the diversity and dynamics of the relations toward water that societies deploy, (3) grasping the way framings and paradigms have been historically shaped, and (4) pursuing the simultaneous analysis of the political and material dimensions of water. WIREs Water 2018, 5:e1261. doi: 10.1002/wat2.1261


The precise mechanisms of four-electron-transfer water oxidation processes remain to be further understood. Oxide-based precipitation from molecular catalysts as a frequent observation during water oxidation has raised extensive debates on the differentiation between homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis. Although soluble cobalt salts are known to be active in water oxidation, CoOx species formed in situ were generally considered to be the true catalyst. Here we report on the possibility homogeneous water oxidation with cobalt chloride in acidic conditions, which prevent CoOx precipitation. Interestingly, both the buffer media and counteranions were found to significantly influence the oxygen evolution activity, and their roles in the water oxidation process were analyzed with various techniques. This study sheds new light on Co2+ ions in key transformation processes of homogeneous water oxidation catalysts.


This study examines a global universe of public companies and identifies some properties of companies to become takeover targets. The analysis shows that low headcount-related ratios, low advanced performance ratios, and low leverage ratios are most likely to be associated with becoming a takeover candidate for private equity investors. Further, grouping private equity investors into different levels of risk aversion leads to an even more granular description of potential selection determinants of specific types of private equity investors. TOPICS: Wealth management, private equity Key Findings • The key properties of public companies to become takeover targets by PE investors are found to be low leverage, low personnel-related profitability, low cash ratio, low return on equity and return on assets, and the potential to improve the existing inefficiencies. • Long-term-oriented PE investors look for companies with a strong growth potential and a high asset base. • Risk-seeking PE investors focus on factors like return on equity and return on assets, but also look for a high trading turnover of the target company's stock.


Drug-induced cardiotoxicity is a major concern to the pharmacological industry and it is one of the main reasons for non-approval, re-labelling, warnings and withdrawal of pharmaceutical compounds from the market.1 Doxorubicin is an anthracycline antibiotic used in cancer therapy. Although issues relating to Doxorubicin and cardiac safety have been well established in normal conditions, the effects of this drug on the myocardium during ischaemia-reperfusion have not been investigated in detail to date. Studies were undertaken in Langendorff hearts and adult/neonatal ventricular myocytes subjected to ischaemia-reperfusion. Hearts underwent triphenyl tetrazolium staining for infarct size assessment. Treatment groups (n=7–10) were perfused in the presence or absence of Doxorubicin. Following isolation, neonatal or adult cardiomyocytes were subjected to simulated ischaemia-reoxygenation and Doxorubicin was administered at reoxygenation. Cellular injury was subsequently determined by measurement of live/death ratio and apoptosis using flow cytometry. Administration of Doxorubicin in normoxic conditions or during ischaemia-reperfusion significantly increased infarct size to risk ratio (%) compared to respective non-treated controls (30±5% and 81±6% Doxorubicin vs 10±2% and 65±3% non-treated control, respectively, p<0.01). Doxorubicin also significantly increased apoptosis and decreased cell viability after reoxygenation compared to control. This is the first study to show that the anticancer drug Doxorubicin exacerbates myocardial ischaemia reperfusion injury. Further studies are being undertaken to determine the cellular mechanism via which Doxorubicin mediates increased myocardial injury in conditions of ischaemia-reperfusion.


Most surface properties used in calculating contact conductance are not intrinsic to the surface, but vary with the sampling frequency of the instrument used to characterize the surface. This paper offers a methodology for characterizing a surface based on intrinsic surface characterization properties (the self-affine fractal dimension and topothesy), intrinsic material properties, and applied load. A surface characterization model is developed to predict the wavelengths on a surface that are significant in predicting thermal contact conductance. The surface characterization model is combined with surface deformation and constriction resistance models to predict contact conductance across nominally flat, metallic surfaces. The long-wavelength cutoff in the surface characterization is set by the dimensions of the contact area. A theoretical correlation for the short-wavelength cutoff as a function of surface and material properties and load is developed, and then improved by a least-squares fit to experimental data. The integrated model developed predicts contact conductance in three modules: defining unique asperity geometries important in deformation modeling; calculating the mode of asperity deformation; and accounting for the actual geometry of asperities in the constriction resistance model. The predicted contact conductance compares well to experimental data over a range of surface roughnesses, pressures, and substrate materials.


OPTIMIZING CONTAINER RETRIEVAL OPERATION AT A PORT CONTAINER TERMINAL by Dej an Besenski In the presence of major challenges, where ports are striving to improve their operation and stay competitive in the global market, the issue of port efficiency, particularly the intelligent management of straddle carriers is investigated in this study. A new approach is presented that optimizes container handling equipment operation and is beneficial for the terminal operator in terms of improving productivity, providing faster service and reducing operating cost, Also, the solution provides acceptable service for truckers, The operational strategies presented are able to assess the operation from the truckers' and terminal operators' perspective. The research is structured into four different scenarios that use an assignment logic and scheduling methodology to describe the continuous time dependable assignment process of straddle carriers to trucks. In doing so it provides the solution to the question that this dissertation poses. The assignment models used in an attempt to answer the research question are stated as follows: • A model is developed to assign straddle carriers to trucks based on the First Come First Served (FCFS) Rule, This is the baseline model and other algorithms will try to improve upon this solution. • Two different applications of the Hungarian Algorithm are used for the straddle carrier to truck assignment problem. The first implementation of the Hungarian Algorithm does not consider truck waiting time. The second model implements the truck priority rule into the assignment procedure. • Finally, a heuristic implementation of the implicit enumeration procedure develops the sequence of jobs assigned to straddle carriers that will minimize the total distance travelled by them. The concept of a planning period is introduced for models where the Hungarian Algorithm and the Heuristic with Integer Enumeration are used. The planning period is defined as a time interval within which one can find the optimal solution to the straddle assignment problem. The assumption that by introducing a planning period and thus taking advantage of known truck-container pairs provides better allocation of straddle carriers to trucks is investigated and the answers to questions that this dissertation addresses are presented. An analysis is presented that utilizes the knowledge of the truck arrival rate to determine the optimal straddle carrier fleet size and the duration of the planning period. The results can be used by port terminal management to develop an optimal straddle carrier deployment strategy and planning period that will minimize the total cost of operation. The framework is designed to answer questions of interest to port terminal management, and to investigate the trade-off between the cost of operation and the service provided to trucks. The analysis presents guidelines for pricing strategy if an appointment system is implemented, OPTIMIZING CONTAINER RETRIEVAL OPERATION AT A PORT CONTAINER TERMINAL


Data from the Longitudinal Study (LS) of the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys are used to examine patterns of regional migration in England and Wales between 1939 and 1971. The source of information on region in 1939 is from a national population register established shortly after the start of the Second World War. Of the 146 444 women and 129 267 men in the LS born before the register was established, 83.5% of the women and 50.1% of the men could be assigned to a region in 1939 and were included in the migration analyses. The effect of the exclusion of a considerable proportion of the study group from the analyses is discussed, as is the effect of wartime evacuation. It is concluded that although these factors may affect the results, they are unlikely to have a substantial impact. Overall, 18% of persons in the analysis moved between region from 1939 to 1971. Migrants tended to be socioeconomically advantaged compared with nonmigrants. Moreover, those moving to regions where the nonmigrants were the most advantaged, were themselves the most advantaged of the migrants. This paper illustrates a new source of data on long-term migration that deserves further exploration.


We report a rare case of a patient presenting with a nonmuscle invasive papillomatosis transitional cell carcinoma of the bladder in the second trimester of pregnancy. We describe the management dilemmas encountered and the challenging treatment option selected to optimize outcome for the patient and infant. Close collaboration between urologists, obstetricians and medical colleagues is needed for optimal, safe and effective management of bladder tumours during pregnancy.


Virtual meetings are critical for remote work because of the need for synchronous collaboration in the absence of in-person interactions. In-meeting multitasking is closely linked to people's productivity and wellbeing. However, we currently have limited understanding of multitasking in remote meetings and its potential impact. In this paper, we present what we believe is the most comprehensive study of remote meeting multitasking behavior through an analysis of a large-scale telemetry dataset collected from February to May 2020 of U.S. Microsoft employees and a 715-person diary study. Our results demonstrate that intrinsic meeting characteristics such as size, length, time, and type, significantly correlate with the extent to which people multitask, and multitasking can lead to both positive and negative outcomes. Our findings suggest important best-practice guidelines for remote meetings (e.g., avoid important meetings in the morning) and design implications for productivity tools (e.g., support positive remote multitasking).


Technology transfer in Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects of the Kyoto Protocol has become one of the important issues addressed both in policy agenda and by academic scholars. In many CDM project host countries, technology transfer is among the key provisions of sustainable development objectives of the CDM projects. This study is an effort to investigate CDM projects' related technology transfer process from the organizational learning perspective. The prerequisite for successful technology transfer and organizational technological learning is to foster technological capabilities (TC) of an organization. In this study we used data from our survey of the CDM project host organizations in four largest CDM host countries India, Brazil, Mexico and China. We assessed TC building progress and studied various characteristics of the organizations. The present paper focuses on absorptive capacity related determinants of technological capability building in the CDM projects. Absorptive capacity is a multidimensional concept thus we investigated the effect of the dimensions such as prior knowledge, personnel qualification, and training efforts. A strong positive association was established between prior knowledge and TC building; and less for qualification variable. Besides we proved a curvilinear relationship between prior knowledge and TC building outcomes.


Adequate yeast assimilable nitrogen (YAN) levels in grape juice are necessary for yeast cells to complete fermentation to dryness. Nitrogen (N) uptake by grapevine roots varies seasonally; therefore, environmental conditions and cultural practices can affect grapevine N status. In addition, genetic differences between rootstock cultivars can influence root dynamics and, subsequently, N uptake, canopy biomass, and fruit composition. Two rootstock cultivars, 1103P and 101-14 Mgt, were fertilized with nitrogen during spring or fall or received no treatment. Vine biomass, leaf N concentration, fruit composition, juice amino-N levels, and fermentation kinetics were measured. The rootstock 1103 Paulsen (Vitis berlandieri × V. rupestris cv. 1103P) has a root system that tends to produce large canopies and high shoot growth. The rootstock 101-14 Millardet et de Grasset (V. riparia × V. rupestris cv. 101-14 Mgt) has a root system associated with smaller canopies and moderate shoot growth. The scion Merlot (V. vinifera L. cv. Merlot clone 1) was grafted onto the two rootstocks in an experimental block in Oakville, California. Merlot on 1103P had higher YAN levels and completed fermentation faster compared to Merlot on 101-14 Mgt. Differences in fermentation kinetics were observed within rootstock N treatments that were not explained by YAN levels, indicating that other factors related to N metabolism may play important roles in fermentation dynamics. Results indicated that Merlot grown on 1103P in the Napa Valley may require little to no N supplementation while Merlot on 101-14 Mgt may require N supplementation to avoid slow fermentations.


This paper considers the possibilities for and mechanisms of cognitive development in adulthood with the primary objective of providing an impetus for its alternative conceptualisation. The analysis covers the classical (Vygotsky and Piaget) and the postmodern, constructivist developmental and contextualist theories of cognitive development, as well as the relevant available empirical research. Despite the significant inconsistencies in the analysed theories and the empirical evidence, the results of the analysis point to the conclusion that significant positive changes in cognitive development can and do happen during adulthood and that they are founded on systems and structures of knowledge formed during the individual's life. The mechanisms responsible for cognitive development in adulthood are as follows: a progression in the use of systems of meaning and knowledge, the establishment of a unified conceptual framework for the interpretation of reality and the intellectualisation of the cognitive space as a whole and of individual cognitive functions.


In this paper, a new stochastic multiobjective model for the market clearing of the joint energy and reserve auctions is proposed wherein both supply and demand sides can participate as reserves. The proposed framework considers the dynamic security aspect of the power system in the scenario-based market operation. To solve the problem, first, on the basis of lattice Monte Carlo simulation, different scenarios are generated to model the uncertainties of power system (including generating units and transmission line contingencies). Then, the competing objective functions of the proposed framework, including the expected social welfare function and expected corrected transient energy margin (CTEM), are simultaneously optimized for each scenario in the multiobjective framework. To calculate the CTEM, a sensitivity analysis based on the ac power flow formulation is incorporated before solving the optimization problem of the market clearing. The optimization problem is solved considering dc power flow constraints and system reserve requirements. Eventually, the scenarios are aggregated based on the expected value of decision variables to produce the final results of the market clearing framework. The model is applied to the New England test system, and simulation studies are implemented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.


Urgent societal problems, including climate change, require innovation, and can benefit from interdisciplinary solutions. A small body of research has demonstrated the potential of positive emotions (e.g., gratitude, awe) to promote creativity and prosocial behavior, which may help address these problems.
 This study integrates, for the first time, psychology research on a positive and prosocial emotion (i.e., gratitude) with engineering-design creativity research. In a pre-registered study design, engineering students and working engineers (pilot N = 49; full study N = 329) completed gratitude, positive-emotion control, or neutral-control inductions. Design creativity was assessed through rater scores of responses to an Alternate Uses Task (AUT) and a Wind-Turbine-Blade Repurposing Task (WRT).
 No significant differences among AUT scores emerged across conditions in either sample. While only the pilot-study manipulation of gratitude was successful, WRT results warrant further studies on the effect of gratitude on engineering-design creativity. The reported work may also inform other strategies to incorporate prosocial emotion to help engineers arrive at more original and effective concepts to tackle environmental sustainability, and in the future, other problems facing society.


innocent American civilians, the public response is initially one of shock, which then quickly turns into anger. It is also common for people to experience a deep sense of anxiety in the aftermath of such attacks—especially as they hear poignant stories about fellow citizens who were so suddenly and unexpectedly killed. Such stories are a harsh reminder of one's own mortality and vulnerability. Government officials typically respond to terrorist attacks by proposing and enacting "antiterrorism" legislation. To assuage the widespread anxiety of the populace, policymakers make the dubious claim that they can prevent terrorism by curtailing the privacy and civil liberties of the people. Because everyone wants to be safe and secure, such legislation is usually very popular and passes the legislative chambers of Congress with lopsided majorities. As the president signs the antiterrorism bill into effect, too many people indulge in the assumption that they are now safe, since the police, with their newly acquired powers, will somehow be able to foil the terrorists before they can kill again. The plain truth, however, is that it is only a matter of time before the next attack. This cycle of terrorist attack followed by government curtailment of civil liberties must be broken—or our society will eventually lose the key attribute that has made it great: freedom. The American people can accept the reality that the president and Congress are simply not capable of preventing terrorist attacks from occurring. Policymakers should stop pretending otherwise and focus their attention on combating terrorism within the framework of a free society. Breaking the Vicious Cycle Preserving Our Liberties While Fighting Terrorism


Yudowski et al. report that they have been able to observe insertion of single receptor-containing vesicles into the plasma membrane of cultured hippocampal neurons from rats. The authors accomplished this by expressing in the cells a modified form of the β2-adrenergic receptor (β2AR) in which the extracellular end of the receptor was tagged with a variant of the green fluorescent protein (GFP). The fluorescence of this particular GFP protein is quenched when exposed to the acidic environment of endocytic vesicles but increases when exposed to culture medium of pH 7.4 at the cell surface. The vesicle fusion events appeared to represent recycling of internalized receptors to the cell surface because they were detected only after exposure of the cells to the β2AR agonist isoproterenol (which causes receptor internalization and subsequent reinsertion in the plasma membrane). Two distinct modes of insertion were detected: In one, spots of membrane insertion were visible transiently for an average duration of 340 ms, whereas another class of event showed persistence of about 31 s. Receptors in both categories subsequently appeared to disperse laterally within the membrane with a rate of 3 x 10–10 square centimeters per second. The β2AR stimulates adenylyl cyclase, thus causing accumulation of the second messenger cyclic AMP (adenosine 3′,5′-monophosphate) and activation of protein kinase A (PKA). In cells previously stimulated with isoproterenol for 10 min, inhibition of PKA or removal of the isoproterenol signal rapidly (within the next minute) increased the frequency of the transient insertion events. The more stable insertion events were not affected by inhibition of PKA, but their frequency decreased if the receptor agonist was removed. The functional consequences of these distinct modes of insertion are not yet understood, but the authors propose that they are important for homeostatic regulation of signaling by β2ARs and emphasize that trafficking events that modulate receptor abundance may be subject to complex regulation like that controlling neurotransmitter release. G. A. Yudowski, M. A. Puthenveedu, M. von Zastrow, Distinct modes of regulated receptor insertion to the somatodendritic plasma membrane. Nat. Neurosci. 9, 622-627 (2006). [Online Journal]


Vaidman, Phys.Rev. A 87, 052104 (2013), has proposed a weak value criterion for the past of a quantum particle, and applied it to photons in a particular setup of nested Mach-Zehnder interferometers. From his analysis, he draws some astonishing conclusions regarding which arms of the setup the photons populate. I argue that the weak values Vaidman employs as weak tracers in his analysis cannot be used in this case and that, consequently, the conclusions he draws cannot be upheld. The reason is that weak values are defined as a limit which in this case turns out to be discontinuous. I propose instead a weak mean value criterion which avoids these shortcomings.


This study investigates the effects of human capital, social capital and their interaction on the performance of 1,398 Vietnamese new-born firms. Operating profit is used as the measure of success. Human capital is captured by individual-level professional education, start-up experience, and learning. Whereas the first two dimensions of human capital are measured with traditional indicators, we define learning as the ability to accumulate knowledge to conduct innovation activities (new product introduction, product innovation and process innovation). Social capital is measured as benefits obtained from personal strong-tie and weak-tie networks. Key findings are threefold: (i) human capital strongly predicts firm success, with learning exhibiting a statistically significant positive association with operating profit, (ii) benefits from weak ties outweigh those from strong ties, (iii) interaction of human capital and social capital displays a statistically significant positive effect on new-firm performance.


In energy harvesting wireless sensor networks, ensuring complete targets coverage is a fundamental problem. In particular, targets are required to be monitored by at least one sensor node at all times. To date, past works have proposed to schedule sensor nodes alternately in the active/sleep state to maximize network lifetime whilst maintaining complete targets coverage, and affording sensor nodes recharging opportunities. However, they do not consider connectivity to the sink. We first propose a Linear Programming (LP) based solution to determine the activation time of sensor nodes. The design constraints include complete targets coverage, energy, and flow conservation to ensure data from sensor nodes monitoring targets are able to forward their data to the sink. We also propose an efficient heuristic algorithm as the LP solution requires an exhaustive collection of set covers. The heuristic iteratively selects sensor nodes to monitor targets and forward sensed data according to their residual energy. The simulation results show that the heuristic algorithm achieves 80% of the network lifetime computed by the LP solution at a fraction of the computation time.


Based on the evaluation principle of the measuring uncertainty of the traditional coordinate measuring machine (CMM), the analysis and evaluation of the measuring uncertainty for optical micro-CMM have been made. Optical micro-CMM is an integrated measuring system with optical, mechanical, and electronic components, which may influence the measuring uncertainty of the optical micro-CMM. If the influence of laser speckle is taken into account, its longitudinal measuring uncertainty is 2.0 ?m, otherwise it is 0.88 ?m. It is proved that the estimation of the synthetic uncertainty for optical micro-CMM is correct and reliable by measuring the standard reference materials and simulating the influence of the diameter of laser beam. With Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and quantum mechanics theory, a method for improving the measuring accuracy of optical micro-CMM through adding a diaphragm in the receiving terminal of the light path was proposed, and the measuring results are verified by experiments.


Ensemble experiments with a climate model are carried out in order to explore how incorporating a stochastic ice strength parameterization to account for model uncertainty affects estimates of potential sea ice predictability on time scales from days to seasons. The impact of this new parameterization depends strongly on the spatial scale, lead time and the hemisphere being considered: Whereas the representation of model uncertainty increases the ensemble spread of Arctic sea ice thickness predictions generated by atmospheric initial perturbations up to about 4 weeks into the forecast, rather small changes are found for longer lead times as well as integrated quantities such as total sea ice area. The regions where initial condition uncertainty generates spread in sea ice thickness on subseasonal time scales (primarily along the ice edge) differ from that of the stochastic sea ice strength parameterization (along the coast lines and in the interior of the Arctic). For the Antarctic the influence of the stochastic sea ice strength parameterization is much weaker due to the predominance of thinner first year ice. These results suggest that sea ice data assimilation and prediction on subseasonal time scales could benefit from taking model uncertainty into account, especially in the Arctic.


During chick embryonic development, the formation of the primitive streak and of Hensen's node (which regulates axis formation, mesoderm dorsalization, and induction of the nervous system) depends on the inhibition of bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) signaling. Ohta et al. screened a chick lens library and identified chick-Tsukushi (C-TSK), which encoded a secreted protein that belongs to the small leucine-rich proteoglycan (SLRP) family. C-TSK was expressed in the chick primitive streak and in Hensen's node. C-TSK mRNA injected into Xenopus embryos could induce formation of a secondary dorsal axis; in Xenopus embryo explants, it promoted mesoderm dorsalization and the expression of neural markers. When coinjected into Xenopus embryos, C-TSK and BMP mRNAs antagonized each other's effects; however, C-TSK could not antagonize the effects of a constitutively active BMP receptor, which suggests that it acted upstream of BMP receptor activation. Coimmunoprecipitation analysis indicated that C-TSK formed a ternary complex with BMP, and the BMP antagonist chordin and coinjection studies indicated that C-TSK and chordin cooperated in suppressing BMP activity. COS-7 cells expressing TSK transplanted into chick embryos together with the middle primitive streak or together with cells expressing cVg1 and Wnt1 were able to induce ectopic node formation, whereas C-TSK siRNA inhibited node induction. Thus, TSK appears to act cooperatively with chordin to inhibit BMP and promote the induction of Hensen's node. K. Ohta, G. Lupo, S. Kuriyama, R. Keynes, C. E. Holt, W. A. Harris, H. Tanaka, S.-i. Ohnuma, Tsukushi functions as an organizer inducer by inhibition of BMP activity in cooperation with chordin. Dev. Cell 7, 347-358 (2004). [Online Journal]


The refractive index of purple membranes in a water suspension has been measured refractometrically in the visible range of the spectrum. A region of anomalous dispersion has been found, due to a strong absorption by the retinal residue in bacteriorhodopsin macromolecules.


BACKGROUND AND AIMS
An intense pollen-pistil interaction precedes fertilization. This interaction is of particular relevance in agronomically important species where seeds or fruits are the edible part. Over time some agronomically species have been selected for the ability to produce fruit without seeds. While this phenomenon is critical for commercial production in some species, very little is known about the events behind the production of seedless fruit. In this work, the relationship between pollen-pistil interaction and the onset of fruiting was investigated in citrus mandarin.

METHODS
Pistils were sequentially examined in hand-pollinated flowers paying attention to pollen-tube behaviour, and to cytochemical changes along the pollen-tube pathway. To evaluate which of these changes were induced by pollination/fertilization and which were developmentally regulated, pollinated and unpollinated pistils were compared. Also the onset of fruiting was timed and changes in the ovary examined.

KEY RESULTS
Conspicuous changes occurred in the pistil along the pollen-tube pathway, which took place in a basipetal way encompassing the timing of pollen-tube growth. However, these changes appear to be developmentally regulated as they happened in the same way and at the same time in unpollinated flowers. Moreover, the onset of fruiting occurred prior to fertilization and the very same changes could be observed in unpollinated flowers.

CONCLUSIONS
Pollen-pistil interaction in citrus showed similarities with unrelated species and families belonging to other taxa. The uncoupling of the reproductive and fruiting processes accounts for the parthenocarpic ability of unpollinated flowers to produce fruit in citrus. However, the maintenance of a functional reproductive process reflects the potential to produce seeded fruits, providing a basis for the understanding of the production of seeded or unseeded fruits and further understanding of the process of parthenocarpy in other species.


Abstract We describe a methodology for generating kinematic earthquake ruptures for use in 3D ground‐motion simulations over the 0–5 Hz frequency band. Our approach begins by specifying a spatially random slip distribution that has a roughly wavenumber‐squared fall‐off. Given a hypocenter, the rupture speed is specified to average about 75%–80% of the local shear wavespeed and the prescribed slip‐rate function has a Kostrov‐like shape with a fault‐averaged rise time that scales self‐similarly with the seismic moment. Both the rupture time and rise time include significant local perturbations across the fault surface specified by spatially random fields that are partially correlated with the underlying slip distribution. We represent velocity‐strengthening fault zones in the shallow ( 15  km) crust by decreasing rupture speed and increasing rise time in these regions. Additional refinements to this approach include the incorporation of geometric perturbations to the fault surface, 3D stochastic correlated perturbations to the P ‐ and S ‐wave velocity structure, and a damage zone surrounding the shallow fault surface characterized by a 30% reduction in seismic velocity. We demonstrate the approach using a suite of simulations for a hypothetical M w  6.45 strike‐slip earthquake embedded in a generalized hard‐rock velocity structure. The simulation results are compared with the median predictions from the 2014 Next Generation Attenuation‐West2 Project ground‐motion prediction equations and show very good agreement over the frequency band 0.1–5 Hz for distances out to 25 km from the fault. Additionally, the newly added features act to reduce the coherency of the radiated higher frequency ( f >1  Hz) ground motions, and homogenize radiation‐pattern effects in this same bandwidth, which move the simulations closer to the statistical characteristics of observed motions as illustrated by comparison with recordings from the 1979 Imperial Valley earthquake.


In the blooming era of smart edge devices, surveillance cameras have been deployed in many locations. Surveillance cameras are most useful when they are spaced out to maximize coverage of an area. However, deciding where to place cameras is an NP-hard problem and researchers have proposed heuristic solutions. Existing work does not consider a significant restriction of computer vision: in order to track a moving object, the object must occupy enough pixels. The number of pixels depends on many factors (How far away is the object? What is the camera resolution? What is the focal length?). In this study, we propose a camera placement method that identifies effective camera placement in arbitrary spaces and can account for different camera types as well. Our strategy represents spaces as polygons, then uses a greedy algorithm to partition the polygons and determine the cameras' locations to provide the desired coverage. Our solution also makes it possible to perform object tracking via overlapping camera placement. Our method is evaluated against complex shapes and real-world museum floor plans, achieving up to 85% coverage and 25% overlap.


Benzodiazepines such as Valium are widely prescribed for the treatment of anxiety. However, the drugs have undesirable side effects that include sedative effects and disruption of memory. The target of these drugs is the γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA)A receptor. But there are several subtypes of GABAA receptors that are composed of different subunits and differentially distributed in the nervous system. A key question has been whether the distinct receptor subtypes are responsible for the various effects of benzodiazepines and thus whether development of receptor-specific drugs might yield agents that retain the beneficial effects but have reduced deleterious side effects. Rudolph et al. created mice in which they altered the most abundant form of GABAA receptor in the brain so that it was no longer sensitive to benzodiazepines. The mice still responded to anxiolytic effects of the drugs, but did not show sedative or amnesic effects. The results indicate that the various effects of benzodiazepines are mediated by different receptor subtypes and emphasize the potential value of development of a new generation of drugs that target the specific GABA receptor subtypes. Rudolph, U., Cretani, F., Benke, D., Brunig, I., Benson, J.A., Fritschy, J.-M., Martin, J.R., Bluethmann, H., and Mohler, H. (1999) Benzodiazepine actions mediated by specific gamma-aminobutyric acid A receptor subtypes. Nature 401: 796 - 800. [Online Journal]


3D printed polycaprolactone (PCL)-blended scaffolds have been designed, prepared, and evaluated in vitro in this study prior to the incorporation of a polyvinyl alcohol–polyacrylic acid (PVA–PAA) hydrogel for the delivery of in situ-formed sodium indomethacin. The prepared PCL–PVA–PAA scaffold is proposed as a potential structural support system for load-bearing tissue damage where inflammation is prevalent. Uniaxial strain testing of the PCL-blended scaffolds were undertaken to determine the scaffold's resistance to strain in addition to its thermal, structural, and porosimetric properties. The viscoelastic properties of the incorporated PVA–PAA hydrogel has also been determined, as well as the drug release profile of the PCL–PVA–PAA scaffold. Results of these analyses noted the structural strength, thermal stability, and porosimetric properties of the scaffold, as well as the ability of the PCL–PVA–PAA scaffold to deliver sodium indomethacin in simulated physiological conditions of pH and temperature. The results of this study therefore highlight the successful design, fabrication, and in vitro evaluation of a 3D printed polymeric strain-resistant supportive platform for the delivery of sodium indomethacin.


This is the second of two papers dealing with a systematic study of the linearized problems in magneto-hydrodynamics of incompressible and compressible fluids. The first paper (Banos 1955) deals mainly with the general theory of plane homogeneous waves and of time harmonic cylindrical waves propagating in a homogeneous and isotropic conducting fluid of infinite extent embedded in a uniform field of magnetic induction. The medium is assumed to consist of an ideal fluid devoid of viscosity and expansive friction, which is characterized (in rationalized mks units) by the rigorously constant macroscopic parameters p, e and o, where pe = c-2 and o is the (ohmic) conductivity. The present paper deals with the application of the general theory to the determination of the modes of propagation and to the computation of the corresponding propagation constants. It is shown that an incompressible fluid sustains two types of modes: one type devoid of pressure fluctuations (velocity modes), and the other accompanied by pressure oscillations (pressure modes). In the case of cylindrical waves in an incompressible fluid there are two distinct pressure modes, one of which, however, is highly attenuated and therefore of little physical interest. It is found that a compressible fluid also sustains the same class of velocity modes (devoid of pressure fluctuations and hence independent of the velocity of sound in the medium) as an incompressible fluid. In addition, a compressible fluid is shown to propagate two distinct pressure modes which, under appropriate limiting conditions peculiar to each type, behave respectively as a modified sound wave and as a modified magneto-hydrodynamic wave. And, for every mode discussed here, there are presented the limiting forms of the propagation constant in three cases of physical interest: infinite conductivity, slightly attenuated modes, and weak magneto-hydrodynamic coupling which arises when the externally applied field is vanishingly small.


Over the last decade, a new push for criminal justice reform has taken hold. While the moral and fiscal costs have been exorbitant over the last forty years, failing state budgets and bipartisan recognition of the "broken" system have finally caused legislatures, politicians, and advocates to reassess the costs and benefits of the criminal justice system. Breaking the "tough on crime/soft on crime" binary, the "smart on crime" motto has become a helpful tool in reform efforts aimed at reducing the number of individuals incarcerated and ensuring its fairness, regardless of race and socioeconomic status. Little attention, however, has been given to the criminal justice system's shifting focus to noncitizens, targeted as "criminal aliens." Notwithstanding that the interrelationship between the immigration and criminal justice system raises similar concerns about race, racial profiling, severity in sentencing, hyper-incarceration and cost, it has been largely overlooked as a significant component of the criminal justice system and its reform efforts.
This Article discusses this failure. By recognizing the role that the criminal-immigration relationship, also known as crimmigration, plays within the criminal justice system, advocates, politicians, and scholars can enter into a dialogue on criminal justice reform that recognizes its true impact and establish better mechanisms for criminal justice reform that will attack the changing structure of the criminal justice system in the 21st century. Without taking into account its expanding focus, successful reform will not only fail but also exacerbate the issues it alleges to combat.


The overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy in 1958 was followed by an upsurge in collective action, which took the form of strikes and huge street demonstrations. Tens of thousands joined political organizations that had been forced to operate in secret during the pre-revolutionary era, including the trade unions and political parties, such as the Communist Party and Ba'ath Party. This article takes a contrasting perspective to those existing accounts of this period which focus exclusively on the role of the state in empowering these social movements, arguing that collective action during the Iraqi revolution was both enabled from above, through the actions of elite figures and by processes within the state, and driven from below by the dynamic of the social movements which had fatally undermined the monarchy. The article analyses the dimensions of political opportunity for Communists and Ba'athists in the aftermath of the military coup, the interaction between their two movements and explores the impact of the organizational and ideological legacy of the pre-revolutionary era on the translation of opportunity into collective action.


No analytical expression has been found for the optimal exercise boundary of finite maturity American put options. This thesis evaluates the performance of approximating the optimal boundary with a class of analytically tractable sub-optimal exercise boundaries which admit known first passage time density functions. The performance is evaluated in two steps, first by computing and comparing the value of the put option under the sub-optimal exercise policy to existing numerical approximation methods such as the binomial price, then by examining the profit/loss of a trader that would result from hedging and trading strategies based on the suboptimal exercise policy. We discovered that the valuation results from sub-optimal boundary exercise is very close to the binomial price. A closed form expression for the delta of the American put under sub-optimal exercise is derived, and the formula is remarkably close to the true numerical delta at significantly reduced computational time.


Introduction: Complex lesions on the lower limbs have always been challenging because of their difficult resolution. Microsurgical free flaps have been an excellent surgical option; however, they have limited use because there are an insufficient number of clinicians trained in such structured services. Fasciocutaneous flaps, specifically reverse flow, have been shown to be an excellent option in treating lower limb injuries as an alternative to complex microsurgical free flaps. Methods: From January 2012 to June 2015, nine patients underwent reconstruction of the lower limbs with reverse fasciocutaneous flaps. All had extensive lesions on these limbs. Results: In eight patients, the results were satisfactory, and there were no major complications. In one patient, there was total necrosis of the flap. Conclusion: Because of the relative technical simplicity of performing such a technique, fasciocutaneous flaps are a viable option for the reconstruction of complex wounds of the lower limbs and are an additional therapeutic option for patients with these lesions. ■ ABSTRACT


In this paper we compare and contrast student's pretest/post-test performance on the Halloun-Hestenes force concept inventory (FCI) to the Thornton-Sokoloff force and motion conceptual evaluation (FMCE). Both tests are multiple-choice assessment instruments whose results are used to characterize how well a first term, introductory physics course promotes conceptual understanding. However, the two exams have slightly different content domains, as well as different representational formats; hence, one exam or the other might better fit the interests of a given instructor or researcher. To begin the comparison, we outline how to determine a single-number score for the FMCE and present ranges of normalized gains on this exam. We then compare scores on the FCI and the FMCE for approximately 2000 students enrolled in the Studio Physics course at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute over a period of eight years (1998--2006) that encompassed significant evolution of the course and many different instructors. We found that the mean score on the FCI is significantly higher than the mean score on the FMCE, however there is a very strong relationship between scores on the two exams. The slope of a best fit line drawn through FCI versus FMCE data is approximately 0.54, and the correlation coefficient is approximately $r=0.78$, for preinstructional and postinstructional testings combined. In spite of this strong relationship, the assessments measure different normalized gains under identical circumstances. Additionally, students who scored well on one exam did not necessarily score well on the other. We use this discrepancy to uncover some subtle, but important, differences between the exams. We also present ranges of normalized gains for the FMCE in a variety of instructional settings.


Variation and change in relativization strategies are well documented. Previous studies have looked at issues such as (a) relativizer choice with respect to the semantics of the antecedent and type of relative, (b) prescriptive traditions, (c) variation across text types and regional varieties, and (d) the role that relative clauses play in the organization of information within the noun phrase. In this article, our focus is on scientific writing in British and American English. The addition of American scientific texts to the ARCHER corpus gives us the opportunity to compare scientific discourse in the two national varieties of English over the whole Late Modern period. Furthermore, ARCHER has been parsed, and this kind of syntactic annotation facilitates the retrieval of information that was previously difficult to obtain. We take advantage of new data and annotation to investigate two largely unrelated topics: relativizer choice and textual organization within the NP. First, parsing facilitates easy retrieval of relative clauses which were previously difficult to retrieve from plain-text corpora by automatic means, namely that- and zero relatives. We study the diachronic change in relativizer choice in British and American scientific writing over the last three hundred years; we also test for the accuracy of the automatically retrieved data. In addition, we trace the development of the prescriptive aversion to which in restrictive relatives (largely peculiar to American English). Second, the parsed data allow us to investigate development in the structure of the NP in this genre, including not only phrasal but also clausal modification of the head noun. We examine the contribution of relative clauses to NP complexity, sentence length and structure. Structural changes within the NP, we argue, are related to the increased professionalization of the scientific publication process.


The ubiquitous presence of insulin resistance cannot be understated. First brought to light by Himsworth and Kerr (1) in 1939, insulin resistance, defined as a subnormal response to a given dose of insulin, was ushered into prime time by Gerald Reaven (2), where it has remained at center stage. Insulin resistance is a major feature of type 2 diabetes (2). Insulin resistance is also associated with obesity, essential hypertension, dyslipidemia, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, obstructive sleep apnea, and cancer (3). This cluster of maladies has been termed by Reaven as the "insulin resistance syndrome." Therefore, an individual with insulin resistance is strongly predisposed to an increased risk of life-threatening clinical conditions, including cardiovascular disease.

As Reaven points out, the clinical consequences of insulin resistance are not due to insulin resistance per se but come from the hyperinsulinemia that occurs as the individual with insulin resistance attempts to maintain normoglycemia. In reality, compensatory hyperinsulinemia is akin to cutting a deal with the devil. Chronic hyperinsulinemia may be beneficial to resistant tissues requiring it, for example to maintain insulin action in liver, muscle, and adipose tissues; however, it may wreak havoc with tissues that have normal sensitivity to insulin. Even within the same tissue, some of the insulin-regulated pathways, such as the glucose metabolic pathway, are more resistant to insulin than others, including the mitogenic pathway (4). Thus, it is likely that chronic overstimulation of the mitogenic pathway by insulin also plays a causative role in mediating the clinical consequences of insulin resistance. Therefore, intensive efforts are being directed toward identifying novel nutritional and pharmacological approaches that improve insulin sensitivity in target tissues.

Our knowledge of …


One of the research areas of the Energy research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN) concerns the built environment. Several facilities to conduct the research activities are at ECN's disposal. One of these facilities, are five research dwellings located on the terrain of ECN. Measured data from these facilities together with weather data and computer models are used to evaluate innovative energy concepts and components in energy systems on their performance. The facilities are used for a broad range of research activities as well as product development. This paper explains more about the test facilities and the methods that are used to evaluate performance.


Throughout its long and distinguished history, Wisden has reported on Indian cricket around the world and commented on its highs and lows. One of the first references to a touring Indian cricket side was in 1889: 'Perhaps the most notable feature of the tour was the wonderfully successful bowing of Mr Pavri, who took 170 wickets at a cost of under 12 runs each'. For a time, India enjoyed a golden age of cricket, largely through Lord Hawke's tours in the 1890s and then buoyed up by the exploits of Kumar Shri Ranjitsinhji who was chosen as a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1897. But there were set-backs to come, such as the team's 1953 'Worst Start in Test Cricket' which saw Trueman scythe through their top order at Headingley to leave the team in disrepair at 0 for 4 wickets after 14 balls. Recent decades have seen formidable players such as Ganguly, Laxman, Sehway, Dravid and Tendulkar lift India's game to great heights, making them a force to be reckoned with. This anthology charts the progress of India through Wisden's pages, using match reports, articles, notes, obituaries and illustrations to bring this extraordinary team - and their equally extraordinary nation - to vivid and delightful life.


Computer art' has become a meaningless term, because soon virtually all art will be computerized in some way or another. The author introduces the concept of proceduralism as a label to represent a special class of art, one that constructs images using abstract qualitative and quantitative parameters, rather than simulates classical drawing and painting. This approach to making art differs radically from drawing and painting approaches because the picture-making process is detached from the picture. The net result is that an entirely new area of creativity has been unveiled for the artist. As such, proceduralism is a logical successor to conceptual/process art; it is a major art movement and a new medium.


Sector determination for a normalised space vector pulse width modulation (SVPWM) scheme is proposed for four-switch three-phase (FSTP) voltage source inverter (VSI) by using already available stationary reference frame stator voltages without requiring complex trigonometric calculations. The proposed method has been simulated by using MATLAB/Simulink and implemented using a VSI with a TMS320F28335 floating-point digital signal processing. Simulation and experimental results show the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed SVPWM algorithm for FSTP inverter.


Diffuse optical tomography (DOT) is an emerging oncological imaging modality that is based on a near-infrared optical technique. DOT provides the spatial volume and depth of tumors by determination of optical properties of biological tissues, such as the absorption and scattering coefficients. During a DOT, the optical fibers are kept in contact with biological tissues that introduce a certain amount of pressure on the local biological tissue. Due to this pressure, the shape of the organ, for instance a breast, deforms. Moreover, this pressure could influence the intrinsic characteristics of the biological tissue. Therefore, pressure can be an important parameter in DOT. In this paper, the effects of pressure on the determination of the size and position of a tumor in biological phantoms are studied. To do so, tissue-like phantoms that are made of intralipid, Indian ink, and agar are constructed. Defects with optical properties similar to those of tumors are placed inside the phantoms. Then various values of pressure are applied to the phantoms. Subsequently, the optical properties of phantoms as well as the position and size of the tumor are reconstructed by inverse models based on the boundary integral method. The variations of reconstructed data induced by pressure are studied. The results demonstrate that pressure causes an increase in the scattering coefficient.


Moral Accountability and International Criminal Law: Holding Agents of Atrocity Accountable to the World. By Kirsten J. Fisher. London: Routledge, 2011. 224 pp. $135.00 cloth.This timely volume makes a significant contribution to exploring the normative dimensions of International Criminal Law (ICL), a subfield that has been underexplored and clearly outpaced by the quantity of works in (positive) ICL. Fisher makes a worthy entry into these debates, one free of legalistic jargon, and this book will serve as a foundational text in this subject-area for students in the years to come. The book makes a number of important contributions, including developing threshold criteria to define international crime and substantiating a framework of justice for international criminal prosecution and punishment based on retributive and expressive models.Fisher aims to examine "how responsible agents, individuals and the collectives they comprise, ought to be held accountable to the world for the commission of atrocity." The volume evaluates international prosecution as the "right" response to a range of international crimes, such as crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide (p. 3). More specifically, the book attempts to define the proper domain of ICL and its ambit regarding international crime. To this end, Fisher constructs a useful typology of international crimes and offers a normative engagement with the question of the need for international prosecution. Her argument is that ICL is normatively justified as a response to international crimes defined as those that assault basic human rights and which constitute a travesty of political organization.For Fisher, to be identified as an international crime-and be considered devastating enough to require explicit condemnation by the international community-actions must meet a dual threshold test, firstly regarding the type of human rights that are violated, and secondly, in terms of the manner in which those rights are violated (Chapter 1). Severity refers to the type of human rights violations, divided according to the categorization of the infringement and level of urgency. Fisher judges that it is the infringement of basic rights that meets the required level of severity-those rights that secure the (pre)conditions of all others such as physical security, bodily integrity and sustenance. These "physical security human rights" are distinguished from liberty human rights that Fisher argues only give rise to human rights violations rather than constituting international crime per se. The second threshold-the associative threshold-refers to how a physical security human right is violated in such a way that involves political organization. This associative threshold is met where criminal act/s attack our fundamental need to politically organize (pp. 23-25). This unique criterion captures not only direct attacks on forms of political organization but also those instances where political organizations operate contrary to their primary function as a protector or promoter of the interests of its members. Fisher explores a number of acts against the severity and associative thresholds, including crimes against humanity, genocide, war crimes and crimes of aggression-all of which are shown to satisfy these two requirements and thereby justify condemnation and prosecution (Chapter 2). …


Approximate Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) offers the promise of more rapid sampling at the cost of more biased inference. Since standard MCMC diagnostics fail to detect these biases, researchers have developed computable Stein discrepancy measures that provably determine the convergence of a sample to its target distribution. This approach was recently combined with the theory of reproducing kernels to define a closed-form kernel Stein discrepancy (KSD) computable by summing kernel evaluations across pairs of sample points. We develop a theory of weak convergence for KSDs based on Stein's method, demonstrate that commonly used KSDs fail to detect non-convergence even for Gaussian targets, and show that kernels with slowly decaying tails provably determine convergence for a large class of target distributions. The resulting convergence-determining KSDs are suitable for comparing biased, exact, and deterministic sample sequences and simpler to compute and parallelize than alternative Stein discrepancies. We use our tools to compare biased samplers, select sampler hyperparameters, and improve upon existing KSD approaches to one-sample hypothesis testing and sample quality improvement.


Objective: To report on a series of 4 horses with supraglenoid tubercle fractures repaired with locking compression plates. Study Design: Case series. Animal: Four horses ranging in age from 6 weeks to 20 months and weighing from 121 to 425 kg with supraglenoid tubercle fractures of 1 day to 6 weeks in duration. Methods: Supraglenoid tubercle fractures were reduced and stabilized with transversely positioned locking compression plate(s) with and without additional tension band wiring. Results: All fractures reached bony union. Two postoperative surgical site infections were managed with drainage and antibiotherapy. Three of the 4 horses continued onto athletic careers including flat racing, dressage, and hunter/jumper competition. The remaining horse was lame for a prolonged period, but was sound at 4 years. Conclusions: The application of one or two, transversely positioned LCPs should be considered for the repair of SGT fractures because of the relative ease of the technique, and its elimination of a biceps brachii tenotomy. All screws can be inserted in a lateral to medial direction without transection or drill penetration of the biceps brachii tendon. Clinical Relevance: SGT fractures of various durations can be repaired in a wide range of horses with transversely positioned LCPs, and allow return to athletic function.


A critical link missing from our understanding of the nursery role of specific marine habitats is the evidence of connectivity between juvenile and adult habitats. This paper reviews and evaluates evidence of, and spatial scales for, movements from juvenile to adult habitats and it sum- marises the methods used to study movements. Examples include many fish families but few inverte- brate taxa, and most are species of economic importance for USA and Australia. The types of juvenile habitat range from the entire estuary or shallow open coastal waters to specific habitats within estu- aries or coastal waters; in some cases juvenile habitats include habitats not traditionally regarded as nursery areas (e.g. the surf zone). The duration of time spent in juvenile habitats averages 13 mo (range 8 d to 5 yr). The majority of organisms move distances of kilometres to hundreds of kilometres from juvenile to adult habitats, although the scale of movements ranged from metres to thousands of kilometres. Changes in abundance among separate habitats and the progression of size classes among separate habitats are the main methods used to infer movement and habitat connectivity. Spa- tial partitioning of stages of maturity, natural parasites, and a variety of artificial tagging methods have also been used. The latter will become more useful with continued developments in the minia- turisation of artificial tags. More recent studies have used natural tags (e.g. trace elements and stable isotopes) and these methods show great promise for determining movements from juvenile to adult habitats. Few studies provide good evidence for movement from specific juvenile habitats to adult habitats. Future studies need to focus on this movement to supplement data on density, growth and survival of organisms in putative nursery habitats. Such information will allow management and con- servation efforts to focus on those habitats that make the greatest contribution to adult populations.


An atomistic full-band quantum transport simulator has been developed to study three-dimensional Si nanowire field-effect transistors in the presence of electron-phonon scattering. The nonequilibrium Green's function (NEGF) formalism is solved in a nearest-neighbor $s{p}^{3}{d}^{5}{s}^{\ensuremath{\ast}}$ tight-binding basis. The scattering self-energies are derived in the self-consistent Born approximation to inelastically couple the full electron and phonon energy spectra. The band dispersion and the eigenmodes of the confined phonons are calculated using a dynamical matrix that includes the bond and the angle deformations of the nanowires. The optimization of the numerical algorithms and the parallelization of the NEGF scheme enable the investigation of nanowire structures with diameters up to 3 nm and lengths over 40 nm. It is found that the reduction in the device drain current, caused by electron-phonon scattering, is more important in the ON state than in the OFF state of the transistor. Ballistic transport simulations considerably overestimate the device ON currents by artificially increasing the charge injection mechanism at the source contact.


Most farm land acquisitions involve a significant commitment of money capital. The proportion of owned versus borrowed wealth used to meet the purchase commitment is reflected in the down-payment ratio. The larger the down-payment ratio, the greater the proportion of owned wealth employed in the acquisition of the land. The availability of wealth from either or both sources may impose a constraint on land acquisition and may influence the market price of land;A model of firm behavior under a money capital constraint has been developed in order to examine this influence. This model shows the firm's demand for fixed inputs (i.e. farm land) to be a function of the price of the firm's output, the prices of all inputs, and the availability of money capital constraint is binding, an easing of the constraint, ceteris paribus, can change the level of input use at which equality between marginal value product and marginal factor cost is achieved. Assuming the level of factor use to be fixed, this change may be translated into a change in factor price (i.e. land price);A single equation econometric model was specified in order to test three hypotheses derived from the theoretical model. First, given a fixed equity level, the required down-payment percentage, as a reflection of the constraint on money capital, should be negatively related to the price of farm land. Second, existing buyer wealth, also deemed a measure of money capital availability, should be positively related to land price. Third, an interaction between existing wealth and required down-payment percentage exists whereby land buyers with different levels of wealth react differently, in terms of the price they bid, to changes in the required down-payment percentage. The direction of this interaction, ambiguous in the sense that it depends on factors which might vary over a given sample of land buyers, was deemed to be negative in light of the characteristics of the present sample;The results of the estimation, using data on farm sales in Iowa over the years 1975 through 1979, failed to reject the first two hypotheses. The hypothesized interaction between wealth and down-payment percentage, although of the predicted sign, was acceptable only at lower levels of confidence.


The STIQE 2004 paper presents the identified triplets at macro and micro level of the socio-economic system. Through the important triplets identified are the following: European Union (UE) – State Members (SM) – European Citizens (ECz); European parliament will (PW) – national commitment (NC) – personal desire (PD); sustainable development(SD) - environment protection(EP) - quality of life(QL); economics(EC) – social climate(SC) – politics(P); material resources(MR) – financial resources(FR) – human resources(HR); life security (peace)(LS) – food security (survival)(FS) – environment security(ES); agriculture development (AD) - industrial development (ID) – infrastructure development (IsD); jobs/salaries (JS) – affordability/ expenses (AE) - quality of life (QL). It was also proposed a way of the triplets identification, a system to organize and link them on two dimensions: micro and macro level, and to get possible final structures by linking the two plans. The output, through a geometrical approach, has to be a system of interconnected triplets able to provide potential effects on the whole by action (modification) one point, than could be use for national strategies design and effects estimation. According with the opinions expressed at the conference we decide to revise the fundamentals of the theory. So, there were settled some criteria of knots identification, triplets assemble and plans definition. The main delimitation are euro/national areas, micro/macro levels and socio/economic approaches. The revised fundamentals are based on a more structured view, able to conduct us to a better triplets assembly as a whole. Also, the selection of the knots is made more carefully taken into account the future step of their evolution and dependences expressed by mathematic functions. At the same time there were identified potential factors of knots influence. It is a step back on the theory development, but it allows a better analysis and structuring of the elements taken into account, that could be a crucial decision in reaching the right composite of the system.


The author provides evidence on the perceived existence of a strong liquidity effect. The analysis is based on the response of the term structure of interest rates to the weekly Federal Reserve announcements of bank reserves during the post-October 1979 time period. It is shown that unanticipated changes in the mix between borrowed and non-borrowed reserves cause expected real interest rates to change after the announcement because they provide information about a future change in the supply of money. A precise model is developed and tested during subperiods of non-borrowed and borrowed reserve targeting by the Fed. Copyright 1987 by American Finance Association.


Nighttime intersection crashes account for nearly half of all the intersection crashes, making them a major traffic safety concern. Although providing lighting at intersections has proven to be a successful countermeasure against these crashes, existing approaches to designing lighting at intersections are overly simplified. Current standards are based on recommending lighting levels, but do not account for the role of human vision or vehicle headlamps or the numerous pedestrian-vehicle conflict locations at intersections. For effective intersection lighting design, empirical evidence is required regarding the effects of lighting configuration (part of the intersection illuminated) and lighting levels on nighttime visibility. This research effort had three goals. The first was to identify an intersection lighting design that results in the best nighttime visibility. The second goal was to determine the effect of illuminance on visual performance at intersections. The third goal was to understand the relationships between object luminance, contrast, and visibility. To achieve these goals, three specific configurations were used, that illuminated the intersection approach (Approach), intersection box (Box), and both the intersection approach and box (Both). Each lighting configuration was evaluated under five levels of illumination. Visibility was assessed both objectively (visual performance) and subjectively (perceptions of visibility and glare). Illuminating the intersection box led to superior visual performance, higher perceived visibility, and lower perceived glare. For this same configuration, plateaus in visual performance and perceived visibility occurred between 8 and 12 lux illuminance levels. A photometric analysis revealed that the Box lighting configuration rendered targets in sufficient positive and negative contrasts to result in higher nighttime visibility. Negatively contrast targets aided visual performance, while for targets rendered in positive contrast visual performance was dependent on the magnitude of the contrast. The relationship between pedestrian contrast and perceived pedestrian visibility was more complex, as pedestrians were often rendered in multiple contrast polarities. These results indicate that Box illumination is an effective strategy to enhance nighttime visual performance and perceptions of visibility while reducing glare, and which may be an energy efficient solution as it requires fewer luminaires.


This essay reflects on the status of kinesiology amidst the current pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement. Utilizing the metaphor coined by mathematician and physicist Freeman Dyson, I contend that the continued success of kinesiology is more plausible if we prepare more visionary birds, those with broader range and a variety of interests, to supplement the more narrowly focused frogs who currently dominate the field. Implicit in the essay is the contention that the field would benefit if it took a more interdisciplinary approach to the study of physical activity, sport, exercise, and other human movement forms as advocated by the American Kinesiology Association and individual scholars in the field. More specifically, I argue that the social sciences and humanities should be provided a more prominent place in kinesiology curriculums and serve as an academic core for all students in the field, irrespective of career aspirations and goals.


In her paper "Between Subjection and Dispossession: Butler's Recent Performative Thought on Foucault's Latest Work," Elisa Cabrera argues that Butler's latest works on public assemblies aim to constitute a collective subject based on vulnerability and interdependence as a guiding principle. This objective is possible, only through the dual action of the subject's dispossession, which implies the loss of recognition within a certain regime of truth on one hand, yet the gain of becoming an interdependent and relational being on the other. To reach this conclusion, this paper will address Michel Foucault's later works on "regimes of truth" On the Government of the living (1980) and the Dartmouth and Berkeley Conferences (1980) and how these lectures, which are centered on the shift of Western subjectivity in primitive Christianity, are interpreted by Butler in a very new sense. This interpretation allows her to develop a new theory on dispossession and collective performativity. Elisa Cabrera, "From Subjection to Dispossession: page 2 of 9 Butler's Recent Performative Thought on Foucault's Latest Work" CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 20.4 (2018):  Special Issue Processes of Subjectivation: Biopolitics and Politics of Literature. Ed. Azucena G. Blanco


Most of the hay produced in Kentucky for feeding livestock is packaged as large round bales. Large package sizes and rapid baling rates minimize labor requirements for baling and transport around the farm (local). However, storage losses of round bales are frequently much greater than those of similar hay in smaller rectangular bales. Most of the increased storage loss for round bales appears to result from storage outside without protection from the weather. Losses during outside storage of twine-tied round bales result from weathering and from moisture movement from the ground into the bale. Weathering is visually associated with a change in color and deterioration of the outer layers of hay following exposure to rainfall, sunlight, and other factors during storage. Weathered hay suffers substantial losses of both yield and forage quality and is much less palatable to livestock than undamaged hay.


National meteorological offices are largely concerned with synoptic-scale forecasting where weather predictions are produced for a whole country for 24 hours ahead. In practice, many local organisations (such as emergency services, construction industries, forestry, farming, and sports) require only local short-term, bespoke, weather predictions and warnings. This thesis shows that the less-demanding requirements do not require exceptional computing power and can be met by a modern, desk-top system which monitors site-specific ground conditions (such as temperature, pressure, wind speed and direction, etc) augmented with above ground information from satellite images to produce `nowcasts'. The emphasis in this thesis has been towards the design of such a real-time system for nowcasting. Local site-specific conditions are monitored using a custom-built, stand alone, Motorola 6809 based sub-system. Above ground information is received from the METEOSAT 4 geo-stationary satellite using a sub-system based on a commercially available equipment. The information is ephemeral and must be captured in real-time. The real-time nowcasting system for localised weather handles the data as a transparent task using the limited capabilities of the PC system. Ground data produces a time series of measurements at a specific location which represents the past-to-present atmospheric conditions of the particular site from which much information can be extracted. The novel approach adopted in this thesis is one of constructing stochastic models based on the AutoRegressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) technique. The satellite images contain features (such as cloud formations) which evolve dynamically and may be subject to movement, growth, distortion, bifurcation, superposition, or elimination between images. The process of extracting a weather feature, following its motion and predicting its future evolution involves algorithms for normalisation, partitioning, filtering, image enhancement, and correlation of multi-dimensional signals in different domains. To limit the processing requirements, the analysis in this thesis concentrates on an `area of interest'. By this rationale, only a small fraction of the total image needs to be processed, leading to a major saving in time. The thesis also proposes an extention to an existing manual cloud classification technique for its implementation in automatically classifying a cloud feature over the `area of interest' for nowcasting using the multi-dimensional signals.