Hypoxic pulmonary vasoconstriction is a normal physiological response that coordinates pulmonary perfusion to respiratory ventilation. NADH (reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide) is thought to have a role in pulmonary artery contraction. Oxidized NAD (NAD+) is a substrate used by ADP-ribosyl cyclase to make cyclic ADP-ribose (cADPR), which regulates ryanodine receptor-mediated Ca2+ release. Wilson et al. investigated whether the ratio of NAD+:NADH in pulmonary arteries functioned as an oxido-reductive sensing rheostat to control pulmonary vasoconstriction. cADPR production in pulmonary artery smooth muscle homogenates was increased when NADH was added, but concentrations of NAD+ were constant. This result suggests that the enzymatic breakdown of cADPR by cADPR hydrolase is inhibited by the presence of NADH. Pulmonary artery sections incubated in hypoxic conditions produced greatly increased amounts of cADPR, whereas, in other experiments, vasoconstriction was inhibited by pretreatment with a cADPR antagonist, indicating that cADPR, produced in response to lower oxygen tension, can mediate pulmonary artery smooth muscle contraction. The authors suggest that cADPR, cADP hydrolase, and ADP-ribosylase function together to link the redox state of pulmonary smooth cells to Ca2+ release from the ryanodine receptor-regulated sarcoplasmic reticulum and consequent vasoconstriction. H. L. Wilson, M. Dipp, J. M. Thomas, C. Lad, A. Galione, A. M. Evans, ADP-ribosyl cyclase and cyclic ADP-ribose hydrolase act as a redox sensor: A primary role for cyclic ADP-ribose in hypoxic pulmonary vasoconstriction. J. Biol. Chem. 276, 11180-11188 (2001). [Abstract] [Full Text]


We argue that the analysis of multiple political connections in an event study framework can improve the study of institutional change. Based on a unique data set of multiple political relationships of 4,936 South Korean board of director members, we show that the large business conglomerates, the chaebol, did not benefit from the unexpected conservative election victories in the 2012 South Korean parliamentary and presidential elections. Personal connections to the presidential candidates and to the opposition party were relevant for the stock returns of small firms. Our findings suggest that Korea's political economy has evolved into a hybrid regime in which the political power of large multinational corporations is limited, but political connections still matter for smaller firms. The corruption scandal that led to the impeachment of President Park in 2017 and the long‐term development of market capitalisation appear to be congruent with the results of our study.


Summary
Studies on the efficacy of atabrine suppression of malaria in American and Australian troops in New Guinea and Australia from June 1943 to January 1945 are presented. The concentration of atabrine present in the plasma of those developing malaria despite supposed suppression is compared with data from adequately suppressed troops. This comparison shows that clinical malaria develops in the presence of inadequate amounts of atabrine. The concentration of atabrine present in "break-throughs" is the same in chronic relapses and "primary" attacks of malaria. It is possible that P. falciparum requires in the field a slightly greater amount of atabrine to be completely suppressed. Our data would support but not establish such a contention. The difference is not great enough to be of practical importance.
The difficulty of obtaining any large number of cases of malaria who consistently claim to have regularly taken 0.1 gram or more of atabrine every day and who have nevertheless developed clear-cut malaria emphasizes the fact that atabrine suppression is mainly a problem of drug administration. However, the development of malaria in an individual can not be taken as definite proof that that individual has failed to take atabrine regularly even if his drug level is low. Variation of drug level obtained with a standard dose is so great that, granting concentration is related to protection, a small percentage would be unprotected by the standard dosage of 0.7 grm of atabrine per week.
The evaluation of several different dosages of atabrine by studies of the concentration of atabrine in the plasma under different conditions and at different times fails to indicate any need for a dosage greater than 0.1 gram per day. Atabrine levels are adequate between doses when 0.4 gram or 0.5 gram is given twice a week. This dosage scheme must be judged on the realtive value of giving the drug fewer times during the week, the increased nausea produced by larger doses, and the greater hazard of more serious reactions when such amounts of atabrine are ingested over a long period.


This paper reports on a new method for compensation of machine tool thermal errors that is based on system of thermal transfer functions. Due to their relative simplicity they enable real-time calculations which make them suitable for compensation algorithms of thermal displacements at tool centre point. The applicability and robustness of the thermal transfer function compensation model have been experimentally verified on a real machine tool. Tested compensation algorithms proved its ability to significantly reduce thermal errors. The thermal error minimization of more than 85 % of the standard compensation technique based on linear regression model was achieved in particular machine tool coordinate direction.


The decision to undertake this research was a pragmatic response to the debates
which followed the introduction of a new innovative secondary education system in Ghana.
This paper will investigate the said innovation during its formation since 1974, inception from
1987 and, in respect of field research, aspects of its operation from 1998 to 2000.
The innovation was designed as a complex package offering an integrated approach
to change educational values, orientation and learning outcomes. The changes subsumed in
each aspect of the innovation have far-reaching implications for the entire education system.
One element, the vocationalised curriculum, caused immediate concern at the time of
implementation because of pre-existing evidence of similar attempts made previously in
Ghana and other countries which yielded unsatisfactory results. This concern was increased
by the complexity of subsequent changes in the examination system and in the new structure
of Junior Secondary Schooling (JSS). Furthermore, there were mixed opinions regarding a
new emphasis on the individual learner as the focus of school activities augmented by the
introduction of guidance and counselling.
The primary aim of the research was to monitor the implementation processes in as
many aspects as possible. This was done in order to see what benefits might be gained, and
what lessons in order to continue the innovation. In order to conduct this assessment it was
necessary to examine critically the characteristics of each element of the reform and their
implications, using a variety of research methods to generate relevant data. This approach
yielded a substantial amount of original evidence on the dynamics of educational change.
While this evaluation specifically helps to deepen understanding of the said innovation, it also
makes a contribution to the literature on educational innovation in developing countries. The
particular theoretical framework used to direct analysis of the processes is derived from the
IAC evaluation model developed by Havelock and Huberman (1977) and is used in their
study of educational innovations in the developing countries. The theory proposes that a large
and complex problem requires a sophisticated level of competency to handle it. An innovative
situation requires an efficient system in order to muster the relevant level of IAC factors as
were required. This paper explores and extends the IAC model by incorporating the new
research regarding the Ghanaian educational innovation. In this new dimension, the
Ghanaian model has tended to display far more interactive and cohesive characteristics than
in the original Havelock and Huberman study, thus making the measure for success relatively
more complex.
There is overwhelming evidence to show that by the end of its second cycle in
December 1999, none of the JSS innovation components had been in any way implemented.
In all respects, the level of systemic competency was far below what was demanded by the
innovation. When placed in the framework of the IAC theoretical model, analysis of the
conclusive empirical findings provides key recommendations for future innovative
educational projects. Crucial coordinating factors must be considered and necessarily
established to ensure that strategies are put in place which strengthen the infrastructure. This
coordinating initiative should encompass internal and external logistics coordination for
resource persons and materials, while simultaneously linking the organizational management
of the project with key administrative, political, and social interest groups.


The influence of predation in structuring ecological communities can be informed by examining the shape and magnitude of the functional response of predators towards prey. We derived functional responses of the ubiquitous intertidal amphipod Echinogammarus marinus towards one of its preferred prey species, the isopod Jaera nordmanni. First, we examined the form of the functional response where prey were replaced following consumption, as compared to the usual experimental design where prey density in each replicate is allowed to deplete. E. marinus exhibited Type II functional responses, i.e. inversely density-dependent predation of J. nordmanni that increased linearly with prey availability at low densities, but decreased with further prey supply. In both prey replacement and non-replacement experiments, handling times and maximum feeding rates were similar. The non-replacement design underestimated attack rates compared to when prey were replaced. We then compared the use of Holling's disc equation (assuming constant prey density) with the more appropriate Rogers' random predator equation (accounting for prey depletion) using the prey non-replacement data. Rogers' equation returned significantly greater attack rates but lower maximum feeding rates, indicating that model choice has significant implications for parameter estimates. We then manipulated habitat complexity and found significantly reduced predation by the amphipod in complex as opposed to simple habitat structure. Further, the functional response changed from a Type II in simple habitats to a sigmoidal, density-dependent Type III response in complex habitats, which may impart stability on the predator−prey interaction. Enhanced habitat complexity returned significantly lower attack rates, higher hand ling times and lower maximum feeding rates. These findings illustrate the sensitivity of the functional response to variations in prey supply, model selection and habitat complexity and, further, that E. marinus could potentially determine the local exclusion and persistence of prey through habitat-mediated changes in its predatory functional responses.


This Element analyzes the political dynamics of neoextractivism in Latin America. It discusses the critical concepts of neo– extractivism and the commodity consensus and the various phases of socio-environmental conflict, proposing an eco-territorial approach that uncovers the escalation of extractive violence. It also presents horizontal concepts and debates theories that explore the language of Latin American socio-environmental movements, such as Buen Vivir and Derechos de la Naturaleza. In concluding, it proposes an explanation for the end of the progressive era, analyzing its ambiguities and limitations in the dawn of a new political cycle marked by the strengthening of the political rights.


Economic theory has evolved without paying proper attention to behavioral approaches, especially to social, economic, and cognitive psychology. This has recently changed by including behavioral economics courses in many doctoral study programs. Although this new development is most welcome, the typical topics of the behavioral economics courses are not truly behavioral. More specifically, we question whether eoclassical repairs or game fitting exercises as well as more or less mechanic adaptation processes qualify as behavioral approaches. To avoid criticizing without offering alternatives, we suggest some truly behavioral concepts, especially the satisficing approach.


Objective To compare patient outcomes of restrictive versus liberal blood transfusion strategies in patients with cardiovascular disease not undergoing cardiac surgery. Design Systematic review and meta-analysis. Data sources Randomised controlled trials involving a threshold for red blood cell transfusion in hospital. We searched (to 2 November 2015) CENTRAL, Medline, Embase, CINAHL, PubMed, LILACS, NHSBT Transfusion Evidence Library, ClinicalTrials.gov, WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform, ISRCTN Register, and EU Clinical Trials Register. Authors were contacted for data whenever possible. Trial selection Published and unpublished randomised controlled trials comparing a restrictive with liberal transfusion threshold and that included patients with cardiovascular disease. Data extraction and synthesis Data extraction was completed in duplicate. Risk of bias was assessed using Cochrane methods. Relative risk ratios with 95% confidence intervals were presented in all meta-analyses. Mantel-Haenszel random effects models were used to pool risk ratios. Main outcome measures 30 day mortality, and cardiovascular events. Results 41 trials were identified; of these, seven included data on patients with cardiovascular disease. Data from a further four trials enrolling patients with cardiovascular disease were obtained from the authors. In total, 11 trials enrolling patients with cardiovascular disease (n=3033) were included for meta-analysis (restrictive transfusion, n=1514 patients; liberal transfusion, n=1519). The pooled risk ratio for the association between transfusion thresholds and 30 day mortality was 1.15 (95% confidence interval 0.88 to 1.50, P=0.50), with little heterogeneity (I2=14%). The risk of acute coronary syndrome in patients managed with restrictive compared with liberal transfusion was increased (nine trials; risk ratio 1.78, 95% confidence interval 1.18 to 2.70, P=0.01, I2=0%). Conclusions The results show that it may not be safe to use a restrictive transfusion threshold of less than 80 g/L in patients with ongoing acute coronary syndrome or chronic cardiovascular disease. Effects on mortality and other outcomes are uncertain. These data support the use of a more liberal transfusion threshold (>80 g/L) for patients with both acute and chronic cardiovascular disease until adequately powered high quality randomised trials have been undertaken in patients with cardiovascular disease. Registration PROSPERO CRD42014014251.


The fire behavior modeling described here, conducted as part of the Biomass to Energy (B2E) life cycle assessment, is funded by the California Energy Commission to evaluate the potential net benefits associated with treating and uti- lizing forest biomass. The B2E project facilitates economic, environmental, energy, and effectiveness assessments of the potential public benefits associated with: (1) various options for treatment, disposition, and utilization of forest biomass and (2) energy production from biomass produced by forest remediation activities. The study models forest conditions, fire behavior and fuel changes over a 40-year pe- riod, under three fuel treatment scenarios: no treatment; harvest and thinning on industrial private lands; and a range of prescriptions on industrial private and public multiple use ownerships. Effects of three fuel treatment scenarios are evaluated on fuel treatment effectiveness, economic feasibility, energy production supported, ecosystem impacts, and the location and capacity of modeled biomass facilities. The B2E project is novel in its scale of analysis, modeling the landscape effects of fire and treatments on 2.7 million acres of forest and brushland in the northern Sierra Ne- vada. This landscape represents high-hazard fuel areas, a broad range of ownerships, diverse habitats, complex infrastructure, and other values at risk. With 50 percent public multiple use and 17 percent industrial private lands, this landscape provides a unique opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of Strategically Placed Area Treat- ments (SPLATs) and compare them with industrial private thinning and harvest. With average pretreatment biomass levels of 79 bone-dry tons (bdts) per acre, the private treatments removed an average of 31 bdts/acre while SPLATs removed an average of 24 bdts/acre. Wildfire modeling of these treatments showed a 6 percent reduction in the number of acres burned from private treatments and a 22 percent reduction from both private and SPLATs on public lands. While the ownerships, forest type, density, and slope dictated the type of treatment prescriptions, the spatial arrange- ment of treatments has a greater impact on their ability to change fire intensity and extent than the prescription applied.


Human mobility is highly predictable. Individuals tend to only visit a few locations with high frequency, and to move among them in a certain sequence reflecting their habits and daily routine. This predictability has to be taken into account in the design of location privacy preserving mechanisms (LPPMs) in order to effectively protect users when they expose their whereabouts to location-based services (LBSs) continuously. In this paper, we describe a method for creating LPPMs tailored to a user's mobility profile taking into her account privacy and quality of service requirements. By construction, our LPPMs take into account the sequential correlation across the user's exposed locations, providing the maximum possible trajectory privacy, i.e., privacy for the user's past, present location, and expected future locations. Moreover, our LPPMs are optimal against a strategic adversary, i.e., an attacker that implements the strongest inference attack knowing both the LPPM operation and the user's mobility profile. The optimality of the LPPMs in the context of trajectory privacy is a novel contribution, and it is achieved by formulating the LPPM design problem as a Bayesian Stackelberg game between the user and the adversary. An additional benefit of our formal approach is that the design parameters of the LPPM are chosen by the optimization algorithm.


BACKGROUND
Inflammatory and anti-inflammatory mediators may play a significant role in patients with gingivitis. The purpose of this study was to assess the short-term effects of the systemic administration of two different concentrations of aspirin (81 and 325 mg/day, by mouth) on clinical periodontal parameters and gingival crevicular fluid (GCF) levels of 15-epi-lipoxin A4 (15-epi-LXA4), lipoxin A4, leukotriene B4 (LTB4), prostaglandin E2 (PGE2), and interleukin (IL)-6 and -1beta in a sample of naturally occurring gingivitis patients.

METHODS
At day 0, after initial screening for entry, baseline periodontal parameters, including bleeding on probing (BOP), periodontal probing depths (PDs), and plaque index (PI) were measured, and GCF was sampled from 12 intrasulcular sites with filter paper strips for the measurement of six types of inflammatory and anti-inflammatory mediators using competitive enzyme immunoassay and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (prevalues). Forty-seven subjects were assigned randomly to one of three treatment groups: placebo (15 subjects); aspirin, 81 mg (16 subjects); and aspirin, 325 mg (16 subjects) once daily. On day 7, subjects were recalled for the measurement of periodontal parameters and collection of GCF samples for the measurement of six types of mediators (postvalues).

RESULTS
Changes in inflammatory and anti-inflammatory mediator levels were not statistically significant for any of the three treatment groups. However, when pre- and postvalues were compared in the subjects receiving aspirin, 325 mg, there was a negative trend in the relationship between 15-epi-LXA4 and PGE2, whereas the relationship between LTB4 and PGE2 was not as strong. This might indicate that the subjects responding to aspirin-mediated PGE2 suppression effects produced higher 15-epi-LXA4 in GCF than non-responders. No statistically significant differences in PD and PI between pre- and postvalues were found for any of the three treatment groups. However, the results demonstrated a significant increase in BOP when aspirin, 325 mg was compared to placebo (P <0.001) and aspirin, 81 mg (P = 0.001).

CONCLUSIONS
Aspirin can have an affect on BOP in naturally occurring gingivitis patients. Although most of the inflammatory mediators did not show significantly detectable changes after aspirin treatment for 7 days, the trend of aspirin-associated increases of 15-epi-LXA4 implied that this recently discovered aspirin-dependent eicosanoid may be associated with the increased incidence of BOP observed in the subjects who received aspirin therapy.


The epithelial sodium channel (ENaC) is expressed in the aldosterone-sensitive distal nephron, and it determines the final urinary sodium concentration. To ensure sodium preservation, ENaC-mediated sodium transport is redundantly regulated by several mechanisms. Among them, activation by proteases is a special feature that leads to the removal of inhibitory tracts from the αand γ-subunits, thus maximizing the channel open probability. Proteolytic ENaC activation by aberrantly filtered proteases or proteasuria has been implicated in the pathogenesis of edema formation and sodium retention in nephrotic syndrome. This concept was strongly supported by the finding that sodium retention in nephrotic mice could be prevented by treatment with either the ENaC blocker amiloride or the serine protease inhibitor aprotinin. In clinical practice, loop diuretics such as furosemide are most commonly used for the antiedematous treatment of patients with nephrotic syndrome. ENaC blockade using amiloride or triamterene could serve as an alternative with better efficacy; however, clinical data are scarce, and ENaC blockade poses the threat of hyperkalemia. This review starts with a case vignette that highlights the therapeutic potential of pharmacological ENaC blockade in treatment-resistant nephrotic edema and continues with discussing the concept of proteolytic ENaC activation in nephrotic syndrome and its therapeutic potential.


Ants are known to use the terrestrial visual panorama in navigation. Recent evidence has accumulated for the use of the currently perceived visual panorama to determine a direction to head in. The pattern of the height of the terrestrial surround, the skyline, is one key cue for the Central Australian red honey ant Melophorus bagoti in determining a direction of travel. But ants might also possess some mechanism to match the skyline heights encountered during training, which functions to steer away from regions whose skyline is too high and towards regions whose skyline is too low. We made an initial test of this hypothesis by training ants to visit a feeder centred between two experimentally constructed walls of black cloth. Trained ants were then tested for their initial homing direction with the walls retaining their heights as encountered in training (controls), with one of the walls lowered or raised in height, or with one wall lowered and the opposite wall raised. Wall-height manipulations deflected the initial headings of ants towards the lower wall, with combined wall lowering and wall raising changing the initial headings by ~30° when compared with controls. The results suggest that the ants combined the dictates of the panorama in determining the best direction of travel (a heading towards the nest) with some attractor mechanism that functions to establish the skyline heights of training conditions (a heading towards the lower wall).


The purpose of this paper is to develop an output oriented methodology for calculating productivity growth by using Malmquist productivity index (MPI) and two different data envelopment analysis (DEA) views (optimistic and pessimistic) simultaneously, and apply it to five Iranian Commercial Banks over the four time period (2009-2013). Consequently, we have proposed a new approach called the double frontiers two-stage DEA or DFTDEA for simultaneous measurement of the MPI from both different DEA views. Furthermore, this paper has used two-stage DEA with reference to the variable return to scale technology (VRS) and applied a new viewpoint to measure the overall efficiency of the process.


Abstract Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge on the Delmarva Peninsula, Maryland, USA has been the wintering area of a small population of Lesser Snow Geese (Chen caerulescens caerulescens; LSGO) since the 1930s. Snow Geese primarily pair in wintering areas and gene flow could be restricted between this and other LSGO wintering populations. Winter pair formation also could facilitate interbreeding with sympatric but morphologically differentiated Greater Snow Geese (C. c. atlantica; GSGO).We sequenced 658 bp of the mitochondrial DNA control region for 68 Snow Geese from East Coast and Louisiana wintering populations to examine the level of genetic differentiation among populations and subspecies. We found no evidence for genetic differentiation between LSGO populations but, consistent with morphological differences, LSGO and GSGO were significantly differentiated. We also found a lack of genetic differentiation between different LSGO morphotypes from Louisiana. We examined available banding data and found the breeding range of Delmarva LSGO overlaps extensively with LSGO that winter in Louisiana, and documented movements between wintering populations. Our results suggest the Delmarva population of LSGO is not a unique population unit apart from Mid-Continent Snow Geese.


Peasants and Revolution in Rural China: Rural Political Change in the North China Plain and the Yangzi Delta, 1850-1949, by Chang Liu. London; New York: Routledge, 2007. xiv + 258 pp. £80.00/US$145.00 (hardcover). Until the late 1980s the history of Communist success during the War of Resistance to Japan (1937-45) was both much contested and highly controversial. Opinions differed over the importance of socio-economic conditions and the Communist appeal to the peasantry; the Communists' superior organizational skills; and the impact of invasion and war on the local population, particularly in terms of appealing to popular nationalism. Intellectual conflict was at its height when access to archives and other materials was most limited. In recent years, however, the republication of both Communist and other sources, and a general greater access to archives and information, has led research into new and largely more interesting directions. There have been a series of extremely detailed local studies of social, economic and political change, particularly in North China in the century before 1945. Chang Liu's excellent study of peasants and social change in the century before the end of the War of Resistance builds on this intellectual foundation, but by way of a research design goes to the next stage. The sheer socio-economic variety of China is a challenge to generalization. The result is often either essentialization, or no attempt to build wider explanation. In this study Chang Liu adopts an implicit comparative approach, attempting to highlight similarities and differences between processes of social change on the North China plain and in the Yangtze Delta region. There is no question that the major objective is to provide explanation of Communist success in North China and its relative failure further south. At the same time, though, Chang Liu develops a theory about the relationship between state and rural society in the century before 1945 in China that is likely to be a major topic of research for many years to come. The key finding is that state-society relationships on the North China plain had already started to become state-village relations because of changes in the immediate and increasingly globalized economy of the time. In the Yangtze Delta area, village development was considerably less central to the relationship between state and society, not least because of the higher levels of commercialization, workforce skills and transport integration. …


Background: Perinatal, foetal and neonatal mortality statistics are important to show the development of a health care system in a country. However, in our country there are very few national and regional data about the changing pattern of perinatal neonatal mortality along with the development of new technologies in this area. Aims: Evaluation of the changes in mortality rates and the causes of perinatal and neonatal deaths within years in a perinatal reference centre which serves a high-risk population. Study Design: Cross-sectional retrospective study. Methods: The perinatal, neonatal and foetal mortality rates in the years 1979-1980 (1st time point) and 1988-1989 (2nd time point) were compared with the year 2008 (3rd time point). The causes of mortality were assessed by Wigglesworth classification and death reports. The neonatal mortality in the neonatal intensive care unit was also calculated. Results: Foetal mortality rates were 44/1000, 31.4/1000 and 41.75/1000 births, perinatal mortality rates were 35.6/1000, 18.8/1000 and 9/1000 births, and neonatal mortality rates were 35.6/1000, 18.8/1000 and 9/1000 live births for the three study time points, respectively. The mortality rate in neonatal intensive care unit decreased consistently from 33%, to 22.6% and 10%, respectively, together with decreasing neonatal mortality rates. The causes of perinatal deaths were foetal death 85%, immaturity 4%, and lethal congenital malformations 8% according to Wigglesworth classification in 2008, showing the high impact of foetal deaths on this high perinatal mortality rate. Infectious causes of neonatal deaths decreased but congenital anomalies increased in the last decades. Conclusion: Although neonatal mortality rate decreased significantly; foetal mortality rate has stayed unchanged since the late eighties. In order to decrease foetal and perinatal mortality rates more efficiently, reducing consanguineous marriages and providing better antenatal care for high risk pregnancies are needed.


Foraging animals face decisions about when and where to forage based, in part, on prey availability, which can fluctuate temporally as well as spatially. For temperate insectivorous bats, wetlands are important forage habitats because they provide water and high abundances of insects. My overall objective was to identify abiotic and biotic factors that influence bat foraging activity over wetlands in the channeled scablands of eastern Washington. I surveyed 12 wetland sites at Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge (TNWR) in Cheney, Washington, 3 or 4 times during summer 2012. Ten stations were set up at each site to measure insect abundance using floating aquatic emergence traps and pan traps. Bat feeding activity was measured using ultrasonic recording devices. I measured vegetation abundance, water temperature and depth, presence/absence of fish, and wetland type at each site. I collected 3,127 aquatic insects from 5 different orders. I recorded calls from ten bat species, including two species that have not been previously detected at TNWR. Feeding buzzes were recorded at all 12 sites during at least one sampling period. There was spatial variation in water depth, cattail abundance, and calls from high-frequency bats. Water depth was deeper at one permanent wetland than at one permanent and one non-permanent wetland. Cattail abundance varied across sites. Calls from high-frequency bats were higher at one permanent wetland compared to one wetland that dried up during July. There was temporal variation in wetland characteristics, insect biomass, and bat activity. Water temperature, insect biomass, and bat activity (both total calls and total feeding buzzes)


Purpose: This paper examines the transformation of the South African gaming and casino sub-sector after South Africa's democratic dispensation in 1994 and the National Gambling Act (33 of 1996). These developments introduced an adapt-or-die scenario to the gambling and lotteries sector leading to a total overhaul of strategy, structure, systems, processes, technology, work, culture, behaviour and mindset. More specifically, Sun International's gaming and casino division's response to transformational change was examined by tapping into, and reflecting on, the experiences of managers involved in day-to-day casino operations. Design: The conceptual framework of the research is based on transformation as a form of change where business principles and people management are highly integrated. Subsequently, a user-friendly tool called the "See-Saw model" was developed to measure transformational progress. The model was applied in six change management workshops for casino managers and, from this framework, transformational progress was interpreted. Findings: The results highlighted the magnitude of change in the gambling and lotteries sector. It appeared that this sector has evolved in 10 year cycles up to 2000, whereas the current level of competitiveness fuels the demand for innovation and change in less than two year cycles. The second significant finding revolved around employees' perception that Sun International's gaming and casinos division has performed well in terms of value innovation variables. Implications: The study confirmed that, in successful transformation, business innovation needs to be balanced by fairness principles. Moreover, that the threat-rigidity in leader and employee mindset has become a most challenging people management puzzle to position in securing sustainable competitive advantage. Originality: The value of the research lies in the development of a user-friendly, non-threatening strategic tool called the "see-saw model" which can be used across industries to evaluate transformational progress from the employees' point of view.


The visible surface problem for three dimensional objects is examined from a global point of view in which planar surfaces derived from convex three-dimensional objects are regarded as the natural display elements. By retaining global information on surface and object relationships it is possible to considerably simplify the resolution of visible surfaces for a large class of realistic objects. Implementation of this approach suggests a display in which surfaces written to the display device can overlay and obscure previous picture information in the manner of an oil painting. A display system is proposed in which this is implemented by a large buffer memory which holds a complete point-by-point description of the picture in low-cost MOS shift-registers. By combining new data to be entered in the memory in a variety of ways with the data already present, it is possible to considerably enhance the displayA��A��A��A�¢A��A��A��A��A��A��A��A��s capabilities. The buffer memory also allows an easy match of the display system to conventional (TV) video equipment.


Atherosclerosis manifests as plaques within large arteries of the body and remains as a leading cause of mortality and morbidity in the world. Major cardiovascular events may occur in patients without known preexisting symptoms, thus it is important to monitor progression and regression of the plaque burden in the arteries for evaluating patient's response to therapy. In this dissertation, our main focus is quantification of plaque burden from the carotid and femoral arteries, which are major sites for plaque formation, and are straight forward to image noninvasively due to their superficial location. Recently, 3D measurements of plaque burden have shown to be more sensitive to the changes of plaque burden than one-/two-dimensional measurements. However, despite the advancements of 3D noninvasive imaging technology with rapid acquisition capabilities, and the high sensitivity of the 3D plaque measurements of plaque burden, they are still not widely used due to the inordinate amount of time and effort required to delineate artery walls plus plaque boundaries to obtain 3D measurements from the images. Therefore, the objective of this dissertation is developing novel semi-automated segmentation methods to alleviate measurement burden from the observer for segmentation of the outer wall and lumen boundaries from: (1) 3D carotid ultrasound (US) images, (2) 3D carotid black-blood magnetic resonance (MR) images, and (3) 3D femoral black-blood MR images. Segmentation of the carotid lumen and outer wall from 3DUS images is a challenging task due to low image contrast, for which no method has been previously reported. Initially, we developed a 2D slice-wise segmentation algorithm based on the level set method, which was then extended to 3D. The 3D algorithm required fewer user interactions than manual delineation and the 2D method. The algorithm reduced user time by ≈ 79% (1.72 vs. 8.3 min) compared to manual segmentation for generating 3D-based measurements with high accuracy (Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) > 90%). Secondly, we developed a novel 3D multi-region segmentation algorithm, which simultaneously delineates both the carotid lumen and outer wall surfaces from MR images by evolving two coupled surfaces using a convex max-flow-based technique. The algorithm required user interaction only on a single ii transverse slice of the 3D image for generating 3D surfaces of the lumen and outer wall. The algorithm was parallelized using graphics processing units (GPU) to increase computational speed, thus reducing user time by ≈ 93% (0.78 vs. 12 min) compared to manual segmentation. Moreover, the algorithm yielded high accuracy (DSC > 90%) and high precision (intra-observer CV < 5.6% and inter-observer CV < 6.6%). Finally, we developed and validated an algorithm based on convex max-flow formulation to segment the femoral arteries that enforces a tubular shape prior and an inter-surface consistency of the outer wall and lumen to maintain a minimum separation distance between the two surfaces. The algorithm required the observer to choose only about 11 points on its medial axis of the artery to yield the 3D surfaces of the lumen and outer wall, which reduced the operator time by 97% (1.8 vs. 70–80 min) compared to manual segmentation. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm reported DSC greater than 85% and small intra-observer variability (CV ≈ 6.69%). In conclusion, the development of robust semi-automated algorithms for generating 3D measurements of plaque burden may accelerate translation of 3D measurements to clinical trials and subsequently to clinical care.


The state of advice given to people today on how to stay safe online has plenty of room for improvement. Too many things are asked of them, which may be unrealistic, time consuming, or not really worth the effort. To improve the security advice, our community must find out what practices people use and what recommendations, if messaged well, are likely to bring the highest benefit while being realistic to ask of people. In this paper, we present the results of a study which aims to identify which practices people do that they consider most important at protecting their security online. We compare self-reported security practices of non-experts to those of security experts (i.e., participants who reported having five or more years of experience working in computer security). We report on the results of two online surveys—one with 231 security experts and one with 294 MTurk participants—on what the practices and attitudes of each group are. Our findings show a discrepancy between the security practices that experts and non-experts report taking. For instance, while experts most frequently report installing software updates, using two-factor authentication and using a password manager to stay safe online, non-experts report using antivirus software, visiting only known websites, and changing passwords frequently.


We introduce a new realistic input model for geometric graphs and nonconvex polyhedra. A geometric graph G is local if (1) the longest edge at every vertex v is only a constant factor longer than the distance from v to its Euclidean nearest neighbor and (2) the lengths of the longest and shortest edges differ by at most a polynomial factor. A polyhedron is local if all its faces are simplices and its edges form a local geometric graph. We show that any boolean combination of any two local polyhedra in IRd, each with n vertices, can be computed in O(n log n) time, using a standard hierarchy of axis-aligned bounding boxes. Using results of de Berg, we also show that any local polyhedron in IRd has a binary space partition tree of size O(n logd-1 n). Finally, we describe efficient algorithms for computing Minkowski sums of local polyhedra in two and three dimensions.


In this paper we describe the Seiberg-Witten invariants, which have been introduced by Witten, for manifolds with b_+=1. In this case the invariants depend on a chamber structure, and there exists a universal wall crossing formula. For every Kahler surface with p_g=0 and q=0, these invariants are non-trivial for all Spin^c(4)-structures of non-negative index.


I mbalance of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems is probably the most prevalent autonomic mechanism underlying many a rrhythmias . Recently, vagus nerve stimulation ( VNS has emerged as a novel therapeutic modality to treat arrhythmias through its anti adrenergic and anti inflammatory actions . C linical trials applying VNS to the cervical vagus nerve in heart failure pati en ts yielded conflicting results, possibly due to limited understanding of the optimal stimulation parameters for the targeted cardiovascular diseases. Transcutaneous VNS by stimulating the auricular branch of the vagus nerve, has attracted great attention d ue to its noninvasiveness. In this r eview, we summarize current knowledge about the complex relationship between VNS and cardiac arrhythmias and discuss recent advances in using VNS , particularly transcutaneous VNS , to treat arrhythmias.


Increasing population and climate change are causing water managers to reassess water storage. In this context, alluvial aquifer storage and recovery (ASR), in which excess water is stored in the alluvium near a river, offers a plausible option. To investigate this option, a coupled technical–administrative analysis was conducted to investigate the feasibility of alluvial ASR in the semi-arid American state of Colorado, where water rights are governed by the doctrine of prior appropriation. A hypothetical alluvial ASR facility near Brighton, Colorado with a storage capacity of 118,500 cubic meters (96 ac-ft) was considered. This analysis comprises both technical feasibility, using a groundwater model that explicitly accounts for clogging, and administrative feasibility, using a first-of-its-kind analysis of the legal availability of water including both free river and reusable effluent water. This coupled technical–administrative analysis suggests that alluvial ASR facilities present a viable option to meet rising demand for water storage, preventing water loss due to evaporation, reducing the effect of climate stress on water resources, and avoiding the need to purchase land for above-ground water storage facilities. More generally, this study illustrates the crucial importance of placing hydrologic analysis in the broader context of policy constraints.


A Review of:
Aharony, N. (2009). Librarians and information scientists in the blogosphere: An exploratory analysis. Library & Information Science Research, 31(3), 174-181.

Objective – This study analyzes library and information studies (LIS) oriented blogs to determine the content, and looks at tags and folksonomies of these blogs to determine whether they form a consistent, coherent scheme or whether they are lacking in internal logic.

Design – A qualitative content analysis of tags assigned to 30 LIS blogs.

Setting – The research took place on the internet from May to July, 2008.

Subjects – Thirty LIS blogs were examined, each of which was written by a librarian or an information scientist.
Methods – The researcher reviewed 100 blogs that were found by browsing the Top 25 Librarian Bloggers as published by the Online Education Database in 2007 and by searching Technorati, one of the main search engines for blogs, using the term "library and information science." Thirty blogs were chosen for analysis based on two criteria: the blog had to be written by a librarian or an information scientist, and the blog had to be active during the period studied (May-July, 2008).

A content analysis was undertaken on the tags assigned to the 30 blogs by categorizing the tags that appeared as tag clouds (visual representations of user-generated tags in which the tags used more frequently are depicted in larger, bolder font) in Technorati. In order to validate the Technorati tags, the researcher's coders read and analyzed all the blog posts over the given time period. The categorization consists of five major categories, each with several subcategories. The categories were developed using a clustering approach, with new categories coming into being when a tag did not fit into an already established category.

Main Results – The tag categorization resulted in five broad categories, each with several sub-categories (a few of which are listed here):
1. General (Nouns, Disciplines, Place Names)
2. Library-related (Web 2.0, Librarians' Activities, Catalogues)
3. Technology-related Products, Technology – Types, People)
4. Information-related (Access to Information, Information Sources)
5. Social web-related (Names of Blogs, Names of Social Networks)

The tag analysis resulted in the following percentages of distribution:
• 33.62% of the tags associated with LIS blogs were general in nature
• 20.21% of the tags were technology-related
• 19.12% of the tags were library-related
• 14.60% of the tags were information-related
• 12.90% of the tags were related to the social web
These percentages add up to 100.45%. The author makes no mention of this oddity and it is assumed to be an error.

The researcher attempted to determine if tags and folksonomies form a consistent scheme. In reporting her findings, she concluded that four major categories of professional-related content were revealed, which reflect the blogger-librarians' fields of interest. The prominence of the general category revealed that bloggers' personal interests and experiences were written about more often. As well, it appears that although bloggers seem to assign non-related tags randomly, the analysis shows that tags still can be categorized.

Conclusion – The researcher concludes that this study is helpful for librarians and information scientists because it can help them to navigate the LIS blogosphere. She reports that the categories of tags beyond the general category, which mainly contains tags related to bloggers' personal interests and experiences, shows that blogs can contribute to professional development. Although more informal in nature, the research has shown that LIS blogs do contain professional information, and it behooves professionals to become familiar with the tag scheme in topic oriented blogs, and to try to work within the scheme to make use of the content within. The researcher suggests further ideas for research, including the differences in LIS blogs written by a single blogger as compared with blogs written by multiple authors, as well as gender differences between male and female authored blogs. The author also suggests further research on multimedia blogs such as photoblogs, and audio and video blogs.


Rainfall simulators are beneficial tools for studying soil erosion processes and sediment transport for different circumstances and scales. They are useful to better understand soil erosion mechanisms and, therefore, to develop and validate process-based erosion models. Simulators permit experimental replicates for both simple and complex configurations. The 2 m × 6 m EPFL erosion flume is equipped with a hydraulic slope control and a sprinkling system located on oscillating bars 3 m above the surface. It provides a near-uniform spatial rainfall distribution. The intensity of the precipitation can be adjusted by changing the oscillation interval. The flume is filled to a depth of 0.32 m with an agricultural loamy soil. Raindrop detachment is an important process in interrill erosion, the latter varying with the soil properties as well as the raindrop size distribution and drop velocity. Since the soil detachment varies with the kinetic energy of raindrops, an accurate characterization of drop size distribution (DSD, measured, e.g., using a laser disdrometer) can potentially support erosion calculations. Here, a laser disdrometer was used at different rainfall intensities in the EPFL flume to quantify the rainfall event in terms of number of drops, diameter and velocity. At the same time, soil particle motion was measured locally using splash cups. These cups measured the detached material rates into upslope and downslope compartments. In contrast to previously reported splash cup experiments, the cups used in this study were equipped at the top with upside-down funnels, the upper part having the same diameter as the soil sampled at the bottom. This ensured that the soil detached and captured by the device was not re-exposed to rainfall. The experimental data were used to quantify the relationship between the raindrop distribution and the splash-driven sediment transport.


Excessive intake of saturated fatty acids and/or linoleic acid favors the induction of an array of lipid mediators and cytokines enhancing inflammatory responses. Conversely, dietary supplementation with (n-3) fatty acids or vitamin D ameliorates inflammation and autoimmune diseases. Although it was well accepted that conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) prevented diseases with a common inflammatory pathogenesis (i.e., cancer and atherosclerosis), no studies were available on the roles of CLA in mucosal inflammation. The present study was designed to investigate the anti-inflammatory actions and molecular mechanisms underlying the regulation of colonic health by CLA. We hypothesized that colonic inflammation can be ameliorated by dietary CLA supplementation. To test this hypothesis, inflammation of the colonic mucosa was triggered by challenging pigs fed either soybean oil-supplemented or CLA-supplemented diets with an enteric bacterial pathogen (i.e., Brachyspira hyodysenteriae). Immunoregulatory cytokines and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-gamma (PPAR-gamma) mRNA expression were assayed in colonic lymph nodes and colon of pigs. Colonic mucosal lesions and lymphocyte subset distribution were evaluated by histology and immunohistochemistry. Supplementation of CLA in the diet before the induction of colitis decreased mucosal damage; maintained cytokine profiles (i.e., interferon-gamma and interleukin-10) and lymphocyte subset distributions (i.e., CD4+ and CD8+), resembling those of noninfected pigs; enhanced colonic expression of PPAR-gamma; and attenuated growth failure. Therefore, CLA fed preventively before the onset of enteric disease attenuated inflammatory lesion development and growth failure.


We present a scenario for the formation of disks that explains not only the properties of normal galaxies but also the properties of the population of low surface brightness galaxies (LSBs) as well. We use a gravitationally self-consistent model for disk collapse to calculate the observable properties of disk galaxies as a function of mass and angular momentum of the initial protogalaxy. The model naturally produces both smooth, asymptotically flat rotation curves and exponential surface brightness profiles over many disk scale lengths. In this scenario, low-mass and/or high angular momentum halos naturally form low baryonic surface density disks, which will tend to be low surface brightness. Theoretical and numerical calculations suggest galaxy halos should form with a wide range of mass and angular momenta, and thus, the disks that form within these halos should have a wide range of surface brightnesses and scale lengths. We use theoretical predictions for the distribution of halo masses and angular momenta to calculate explicitly the expected number density of disk galaxies as a function of central surface brightness and disk scale length. The resulting distribution is compared to the observed properties of galactic disks and is shown to explain the range of observed disk properties, including the cutoff in the maximum disk scale length as a function of surface brightness. We also show that disk instabilities explain the observed lack of high surface density disks. The calculated distribution of disk properties also suggests that there are large numbers of galaxies that remain undetected owing to biases against galaxies with either low surface brightness or small scale length. We quantify this by calculating the difference between the intrinsic luminosity function and the luminosity function that would be measured in a galaxy survey with a given limiting surface brightness. We show that current measurements of the galaxy luminosity function may be missing more than half of all L* galaxies, and an even larger fraction of faint galaxies, given the correlation between mass and surface brightness. The likely underestimate of the luminosity density is also expected to be large. We discuss how this affects observations of the "faint blue galaxy" population. We also investigate the dynamics of galaxies as a function of surface brightness. We show that, in the absence of any systematic change in the ratio of disk mass to disk luminosity, galaxies of all surface brightnesses should lie on the same Tully-Fisher relation. Our models also show systematic changes in the shape of the rotation curve as a function of angular momentum, which leads to LSBs having slowly rising rotation curves. Furthermore, because high angular momentum LSB disks have their baryonic mass spread over a larger area than normal galaxies of comparable mass, LSB disks contribute very little to the observed dynamics of the galaxy. Thus, LSBs provide a very effective tracer of the shape and mass profile of the dark matter halo, out to proportionally larger radii than is possible to observe with normal galaxy rotation curves.


The enzyme transketolase (TK) (EC220.127.116.11) catalyses a reversible asymmetric carboncarbon
bond forming reaction, where a two carbon ketose donor is transferred to an
aldose acceptor. The use of hydroxypyruvate (HPA), a non-phosphorylated ketol
donor with subsequent loss of carbon dioxide renders the reaction irreversible
generating the dihydroxyketone product. Several years ago the TK gene from the
plasmid of E. coli (BJ502/pKD112A) was incorporated into a high copy plasmid leading
to the overexpression of the protein in E. coli, a suitable host for industrial processes.
The TK condensation of HPA with glycoladehyde and propanal, in analogous but
separate experiments, has been described in the literature. The on-going development
of the enzyme TK as a practical biocatalyst performed on a small scale recently led to
the discovery of the first biomimetic TK reaction.
The aims of the PhD project were principally two-fold; to explore both biomimetic and
biocatalytic routes to α,α'-dihydroxyketones. Firstly, investigation of the new one pot
synthesis of racemic dihydroxyketones; in terms of substrate scope of the reaction,
including aromatic, aliphatic hydrophobic aldehydes as substrates. Donors other than
hydroxypyruvate (HPA) were also investigated to assess the general synthetic utility of
the reaction. Reaction optimisation studies and preliminary mechanistic studies were
performed. In addition, investigations into the development of an asymmetric
organocatalytic reaction were pursued. Secondly, libraries of TK mutants were also
screened against a range of non-natural substrates. A colorimetric assay for screening
active mutants in a 96 well plate format was used to identify sucessfully a number of
active mutants with enhanced substrate specificity towards novel cyclic and aromatic
acceptor molecules, as well as being used for determining initial rate velocities. A
chiral assay as a means to determine the absolute stereochemistry, using chiral
derivatising agents (CDAs) was established which was used with HPLC for successful
characterisation of the dihydroxyketone motifs.
Chapter 1 of this thesis is an introduction to the important role of thiamine dependent
enzymes in synthesis, in particular transketolase: the structure, mechanism and its
usage in industry is covered. Chemical synthetic routes to ketodiol motifs are also
mentioned. Chapter 2 presents the use of a novel chiral assay to determine absolute
stereochemistries achieved in biocatalytic or biomimetic reactions. Chapter 3 describes
studies of stereoselectivities with active point single TK mutants on cyclic aldehydes.
Chapter 4 covers the use of aromatic acceptor substrates with transketolase. Chapter
5 describes investigation into novel asymmetric biomimetic routes to ketodiol synthesis
and finally Chapter 6 concludes the studies and encourages further research.


During the last few years, unfair suretyships have come up as a topic on the European Community level. Unfair suretyship may be defined as suretyship entered into by non-professionals (often consumers) for the benefit of close relations or employers, whereby the surety has nothing to do with financial gains. Also, it may be defined as suretyship of shareholders, their spouses or even directors in order to secure small to medium size companies' credits because it is all what such a company is able to offer to the creditor. The author analyzes the legal grounds of voidability of the surety contract in Lithuania, comparing them to foreign countries doctrine and case law. The author states that suretyships must be explored not only by law, but also by economics because suretyships make economic consequences as well as some recommendations on how suretyship law may be improved. Despite the fact that various legal grounds of voidability of the suretyship exist in different states, the research showed that it is quite impossible to make the suretyship voidable in Lithuania. First of all, there are no special legal grounds to void surety agreement and the case law on this issue is also incomplete. However, it is obvious that the existing case law does not meet the foreign practice because Lithuanian courts are not considering the economic interest of the surety and the disproportion of surety assets and liabilities as important as they are considered in foreign countries. Secondly, lower Lithuanian courts do not take into account the question of balance of interests of the borrower, the lender and the guarantor. Unfortunately, many cases do not pass the selection to the Supreme Court of the Republic of Lithuania that has to ensure uniform court practice of courts of general jurisdiction in Lithuania by means of precedents formulated in the cassation rulings. Thirdly, plaintiffs are often trying to make surety contracts voidable due to the lack of will or the lack of experience, which are subjective criteria, and it is hard to prove them, whereas courts tend to use objective bonus pater familias criteria. Therefore, to prove the legal grounds for the plaintiff is even more difficult. It must be noticed that the plaintiffs do not exercise their procedural rights properly as well, e.g., they do not try to use Article No. 1.81 of the Civil Code of the Republic of Lithuania (contracts contrary to public policy or good morals) or Article No. 3.85 of the Civil Code of the Republic of Lithuania, which could be an appropriate basis for them. Also, the plaintiffs do not tend to claim for contracts' amendments. The author states that besides the economic interest of the surety and the disproportion of surety assets and liabilities, economic efficiency should be considered as one of the factors justifying legal intervention to contractual relationships.


The brown marmorated stink bug (BMSB), Halyomorpha halys (Stål), is a major pest of vegetable crops, fruit crops, and even ornamental plants in the Mid-Atlantic States. Organic growers have limited chemical options to manage this pest, and are in need of better management options. Several organically-approved insecticides including pyrethrins (Pyganic), azadirachtin (Aza-Direct), azadirachtin + pyrethrins (Azera), spinosad (Entrust), potassium salts of fatty acids (M-Pede), sabadilla alkaloids (Veratran D), extract from Burkholderia sp. (Venerate), and one experimental product, potassium salts + spinosad (Neudorff 1138), were evaluated for toxicity to BMSB nymphs and adults using lab bioassays and field trials on tomatoes and peppers. Another potential control option is to use natural chemicals to deter BMSB feeding in vegetables. Kaolinite [Al4Si4O10 (OH)8] (Surround WP); a white, plate-shaped, aluminosilicate mineral that is sprayed on plants to alter the appearance, feel, and smell of a plant to an insect. Essential oils (Ecotec) are chemicals produced by plants which are repellent and even toxic to certain insects, and by mimicking octopomine these chemicals disrupt the insect's neurotransmitters. Treatments were evaluated in choice test bioassays and field experiments on peppers using weekly applications of the highest labeled rates of the products. The results showed that, although some organically-approved insecticides demonstrate a high level of activity on BMSB in lab bioassays, none of these products appear to be effective at reducing stink bug damage to fruiting vegetables in the field. However, kaolinite provided significant control of BMSB nymphs (p=0.03) and adults (p=0.01) in both choice test bioassays and in field trials. Essential oils did not provide any significant control of BMSB in choice test bioassays or in field trials. Further research is needed to determine if the efficacy of kaolinite holds up under heavy pest pressure.


The constraint graph is introduced as a general character representation framework for recognizing multifont, multiple-size Chinese characters. Each character class is described by a constraint graph model. Sampling points on a character skeleton are taken as nodes in the graph. Connection constraints and position constraints are taken as arcs in the graph. For patterns of the same character class, the model captures both the topological invariance and the geometrical invariance in a general and uniform way. Character recognition is then formulated as a constraint-based optimization problem. A cooperative relaxation matching algorithm that solves this optimization problem is developed. A practical optical character recognition (OCR) system that is able to recognize multifont, multiple-size Chinese characters with a satisfactory performance was implemented. >


The organics in surface water and treated wastewater were analyzed for their polarity by a modified natural organic matter polarity rapid assessment method (NOM-PRAM). Selected water samples were then introduced to reverse osmosis (RO) and nanofiltration (NF) membrane system to study the relationship between organics polarity and membrane fouling. Results showed that the more organic fractions with non-polar property, the more serious fouling found for both RO and NF. Pre-treatment with KMnO 4 was then conducted to modify the organics polarity in feed water. Under the optimum dosage, where more non-polar organics were converted to polar or negatively charged fractions, the subsequent membrane fouling was found to be reduced.


Most popular urban hydrological model used in research and engineering (e.g. MOUSE, SWMM, MUSIC,P8) are spatially distributed with linknode drainage network. If some of them (e.g. PURPS, RUNQUAL, SLAMM, StormTac and WBM) treat the catchment in a lumped fashion, ignoring the drainage network, they are nonetheless unfit for routing of the drainage network and baseflow simulation (Elliott and Trowsdale 2007) . Yet, water science abounds with mathematical tools designed for conceptual lumped hydrological studies, including stochastic and deterministic approaches (see e.g. Singh and Woolhiser (2002) for a review). But so far, these models have been mostly experimented on rural areas where a parsimonious approach seems more natural (Basu, Rao et al. 2010; Jacobson 2011) The objective of this paper is to propose a light mathematical framework to assess continuous flow dynamics at waste water treatment plant (WWTP) inlet and urban river outlet. In this perspective, we adapt existing theory in rural hydrology to the specificity of urban environment. Thus, our model is built as series of three linear and non linear boxes. One box stands to account for "flashy" response on impervious surfaces (Deletic 1998), another for pervious areas and finally one for sub surface flow. This conceptual model totally ignores the complexity of the drainage system. Indeed, pipe network is indirectly considered through the impervious surface box. The model described is calibrated and validated for the Vidy WWTP and the Vuachere River, both being located in a 2000.000 equivalent inhabitants' city Lausanne, Switzerland. Automatic Monte-Carlo calibration procedure is used to optimize model performance based on Nash-Sutcliffe (NS) and Normal Biais (NB) coefficients. The proposed framework indicates that, despite heterogeneities, a dynamic yet computationally light and parsimonious approach can be successfully employed to simulate the hydrograph response of engineered hydrosystems. It presents the great benefit of insignificant computation time to be run, and thus stands as a valuable and flexible tool for future integrated models that shall develop in a close future. Example of coupling with complex water quality function to assess the risk of "first flush" contaminated rain water on sensitive aquatic species can be found in Coutu et al. (submited to Water Research). Further possibilities of coupling are being developed.


Populace is in need of an instrument that is useful to calibrate a diverse range of views and opinions on globalisation found in the growing volume of literature. The instrument will help them exercise their own judgement for keeping their footing in the rapidly evolving economic and social conditions. Such a theoretical instrument is developed here by placing globalisation in historical perspective and visualising it as an evolutionary process of human interaction. This theoretical instrument explicates the inherent nature of today's globalisation to dichotomise human society. It also helps to explain why many nations experience societal stresses and instability today. The instrument also helps to identify obstacles which globalisation needs to overcome before reaching its logical destination of the borderless world, as well as the prospective measures to enhance its sustainability.


The "Superwoman" ideal is a construct born out of the women's movement in the 1960's
defined as women who can "do it all and have it all" However, women today may actually be
receiving the message that they should have it all and are experiencing stressors as a result of
that pressure. Studies have found that girls who endorsed the superwoman ideal were also
more likely to experience disordered eating behaviors. In contrast to the concept of the
"Superwoman" and the possible negative effects it may have on young women, most research
on feminist identity development have shown it to have a positive effect on both men and
women. The gap in the literature today is whether there is a relationship between feminist
identity and the superwoman ideal. The current study sought to examine a possible
relationship between feminist identity and the superwoman ideal. Results indicate a
significant inverse relationship between the passive acceptance stage of feminist identity and
adherence to the superwoman ideal (r=-.253, p


A new methodology is developed to discover and analyze the hidden knowledge of massive taxi trajectory data within a city. This approach creatively transforms the geographic coordinates (i.e. latitude and longitude) to street names reflecting contextual semantic information. Consequently, the movement of each taxi is studied as a document consisting of the taxi traversed street names, which enables semantic analysis of massive taxi data sets as document corpora. Hidden themes, namely taxi topics, are identified through textual topic modeling techniques. The taxi topics reflect urban mobility patterns and trends, which are displayed and analyzed through a visual analytics system. The system integrates interactive visualization tools, including taxi topic maps, topic routes, street clouds and parallel coordinates, to visualize the probability-based topical information. Urban planners, administration, travelers, and drivers can conduct their various knowledge discovery tasks with direct semantic and visual assists. The effectiveness of this approach is illustrated by case studies using a large taxi trajectory data set acquired from 21, 360 taxis in a city.


Abstract. Long-term (1999 to 2013) data from the Southeastern Aerosol Research and Characterization (SEARCH) network are used to show that anthropogenic emission reductions led to important decreases in fine-particle organic aerosol (OA) concentrations in the southeastern US On average, 45 % (range 25 to 63 %) of the 1999 to 2013 mean organic carbon (OC) concentrations are attributed to combustion processes, including fossil fuel use and biomass burning, through associations of measured OC with combustion products such as elemental carbon (EC), carbon monoxide (CO), and nitrogen oxides (NOx). The 2013 mean combustion-derived OC concentrations were 0.5 to 1.4 µg m−3 at the five sites operating in that year. Mean annual combustion-derived OC concentrations declined from 3.8 ± 0.2 µg m−3 (68 % of total OC) to 1.4 ± 0.1 µg m−3 (60 % of total OC) between 1999 and 2013 at the urban Atlanta, Georgia, site (JST) and from 2.9 ± 0.4 µg m−3 (39 % of total OC) to 0.7 ± 0.1 µg m−3 (30 % of total OC) between 2001 and 2013 at the urban Birmingham, Alabama (BHM), site. The urban OC declines coincide with reductions of motor vehicle emissions between 2006 and 2010, which may have decreased mean OC concentrations at the urban SEARCH sites by > 2 µg m−3. BHM additionally exhibits a decline in OC associated with SO2 from 0.4 ± 0.04 µg m−3 in 2001 to 0.2 ± 0.03 µg m−3 in 2013, interpreted as the result of reduced emissions from industrial sources within the city. Analyses using non-soil potassium as a biomass burning tracer indicate that biomass burning OC occurs throughout the year at all sites. All eight SEARCH sites show an association of OC with sulfate (SO4) ranging from 0.3 to 1.0 µg m−3 on average, representing  ∼  25 % of the 1999 to 2013 mean OC concentrations. Because the mass of OC identified with SO4 averages 20 to 30 % of the SO4 concentrations, the mean SO4-associated OC declined by  ∼  0.5 to 1 µg m−3 as SO4 concentrations decreased throughout the SEARCH region. The 2013 mean SO4 concentrations of 1.7 to 2.0 µg m−3 imply that future decreases in mean SO4-associated OC concentrations would not exceed  ∼  0.3 to 0.5 µg m−3. Seasonal OC concentrations, largely identified with ozone (O3), vary from 0.3 to 1.4 µg m−3 ( ∼  20 % of the total OC concentrations).


Taekwondo (TKD) is a popular sport
among adolescents, but the potential benefits of TKD training to young
individuals are not well understood. The objectives of this cross-sectional
exploratory study were to compare flexibility, muscular endurance, body
composition, and simple reaction time between TKD-trained adolescents and
controls. Twenty TKD-trained adolescents aged between 10 and 14 and 20 age-matched
healthy controls were asked to perform five physical fitness tests: a
sit-and-reach test, leg split test, skinfold measurement, one-minute curl-up test,
and ruler-drop reaction time test. The results revealed no significance differences
between the two groups in sit-and-reach distance (p = 0.690), leg split angle
(p = 0.789), percentage of body fat (p = 0.342), or number of repetitions in
the one-minute curl-up test (p = 0.250). However, the TKD group had
significantly faster reaction times in the rulerdrop test than the control
group (p = 0.005). The results thus suggest that although TKD training may
improve reaction times in adolescents, it may have little effect on
flexibility, muscular endurance, and body composition (percentage of fat). TKD
may be a suitable exercise for improving simple reaction time, but it may not
be suitable for improving general physical fitness in adolescents.


A primary goal of instruction is to prepare learners to transfer their knowledge and skills to new contexts, but how far this transfer goes is an open question. In the research reported here, we seek to explain a case of transfer through examining the processes by which a conceptual representation used to reason about complex systems was transferred from one natural system (an aquarium ecosystem) to another natural system (human cells and body systems). In this case study, a teacher was motivated to generalize her understanding of the Structure, Behaviour, and Function (SBF) conceptual representation to modify her classroom instruction and teaching materials for another system. This case of transfer was unexpected and required that we trace back through the video and artefacts collected over several years of this teacher enacting a technology-rich classroom unit organized around this conceptual representation. We provide evidence of transfer using three data sources: (1) artefacts that the teacher created (2) in-depth semi-structured interview data with the teacher about how her understanding of the representation changed over time and (3) video data over multiple years, covering units on the aquatic ecosystem and the new system that the teacher applied the SBF representation to, the cell and body. Borrowing from interactive ethnography, we traced backward from where the teacher showed transfer to understand how she got there. The use of the actor-oriented transfer and preparation for future learning perspectives provided lenses for understanding transfer. Results of this study suggest that identifying similarities under the lens of SBF and using it as a conceptual tool are some primary factors that may have supported transfer.


Small molecule organic semiconductors such as phthalocyanines and their derivatives represent a very interesting alternative to inorganic semiconductor materials for the development of flexible electronic devices such as organic thin field effect transistors, organic Light Emitting Diodes and photo-voltaic cells. Phthalocyanine molecules can easily accommodate a variety of metal atoms as well in the central core of the molecule, resulting in wide range of magnetic properties. Exploration of optical properties of organic crystalline semiconductors thin films is challenging due to sub-micron grain sizes and the presence of numerous structural defects, disorder and grain boundaries. However, this can be overcome by fabricating macroscopically ordered semiconductor films by solution processing. Presence of fewer grain boundaries and defects while modifying the π orbital overlap by controlling the molecular stacking by forming macroscopic long range ordered grains, was essential in understanding the delocalization and diffusion length and its role in magnetic exchange mechanisms in this system. The origins of magnetic exchange mechanism between delocalized ligand electrons and spins in organic semiconductors has been of key interest as it underlies many complex optical and transport properties and is investigated in this thesis. The interaction between magnetic ions in organic magnetic semiconductors is quite challenging to interpret due to competing exchange mechanisms present in crystalline thin films. Better understanding of these exchange mechanisms is essential for tuning of magnetic exchange interaction to suit the need of practical magnetic storage and spintronic devices. Optical techniques such as linear dichroism, magnetic circular dichroism and magneto-photoluminescence are used and provided key understanding about the relation between excitons, spin exchange mechanisms and collective magnetic behavior of delocalized electrons in organic semiconductors. An enhancement in the collective magnetization of the crystalline thin films with strong exchange coupling between the delocalized ligand electrons and d-electrons is observed. The electronic states responsible for magnetic exchange are identified utilizing magnetic field and temperature dependent studies. Furthermore, soluble organics allowed engineering of organic analogues to diluted magnetic semiconductors (DMS) by creation of metal/metal-free Pc alloys. Optical studies provided crucial information about delocalization and diffusion lengths in these systems allowing fine tuning of this delocalization length scale and metal-metal distance. The exploration of magnetic behavior in metal/metal-free Pc alloys opens an avenue for tuning magnetic properties through an exchange similar to Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya Yosida (RKKY) type interaction in organic magnetic semiconductors. Dedicated to my family, for all the love and sacrifice during these years. Their patience and encouragement kept me going every day.


This article examines nonhuman agency, or the capacity of nonhumans to carry out goal-directed action. The central argument is that agency should be conceptualized not as a binary (someone/something does or does not have agency) but rather as a spectrum, with degrees of agency. Based upon an empirical study of the design and use of frog dissection simulations (cyberfrogs) in high school biology classes, the author develops two parallel spectra of agency, bioagency and cyberagency, to describe the degrees of agency experienced by biological life forms and technologies. These spectra put agency into an evolutionary perspective, comparing how humans evolved agency over time to how technologies are now evolving agency. The article concludes with challenges for future research to further explore the validity and implications of a notion of cyberagency that evolves over time, can be represented on an analog spectrum, and is independent of human agency.


In recent years, the growing interest in the use of satellites as a quick and cheap way to access space, is increasing the request of new-concept, lower cost, re-usable and flexible systems. A good answer to such a growing demand is the development of innovative high-performance architectures compatible with a wide range of platforms and applications and compliant with ECSS standards.
The Ph.D. activities start in this frame, as a cooperation between the University "Federico II" of Naples and the Italian Company Carlo Gavazzi Space S.p.A.. The research work is focused on the design, integration and validation of new-concept satellite equipments, such as a Li-ion modular battery and a magnetic actuator. Starting from an evaluation of the technologies state-of-the-art and from an assessment of the products currently available on the market, the main potential innovative aspects (able to improve the product characteristics while reducing development costs and times) are pointed out. A critical analysis of the potential innovations is carried out, including the description of the benefits, as well as the strategies to manage the drawbacks. The design of both the modular battery and the magnetic actuator is completely ITAR free and characterized by a simple and reversible integration process. It is also worth mentioning that, for the first time, thanks to an Italian research project, an Italian space company presents itself on the space market as an internationally recognized supplier of batteries and magnetic actuators for space applications.
The Li-ion battery is modular in the sense that it can satisfy a large number of energy requests for different satellite configurations by simply adding or removing basic elements named "modules", i.e. it does not need to be re-designed and re-qualified for each mission. Each battery module, including eight Saft MPS176065 cells, is completely self-standing from a structural, thermal, and electrical point of view. The first flight opportunity for the modular battery is represented by Lares, i.e. a mission of the Italian Space Agency (ASI). Lares is the payload for the qualification flight of Vega launcher. Lares battery has been manufactured and integrated as a proto-flight model and has been submitted to a successful acceptance campaign, including performance, vibration, and thermal tests. The next flight opportunities for the modular battery are the ASI satellite missions Miosat and Prisma, and the ESA mission named Eseo. A very promising future evolution of the modular battery design is represented by a hybrid Li-ion/supercapacitor battery system able to satisfy the requirements of satellite missions characterized by high peak power requests. The integration of supercapacitors with Li-ion cells can increase battery lifetime and significantly reduce the total mass of the energy storage unit. The integration of supercapacitors in the battery system requests for an accurate evaluation of the use of such technology in the space environment and of the impacts on both Electrical Power Subsystem and Spacecraft System design.
A magnetic actuator (or torque rod) for satellite applications consists of a cylindrical ferromagnetic rod winded by a copper wire. The current circulating into the wire determines a magnetic dipole moment interacting with the earth magnetic flux density. This interaction produces a mechanical torque for satellite attitude control. The equipment, designed in the frame of the Ph.D. activities, is characterized by a simple and highly-reversible integration process thanks to an innovative housing and to a non-elastomeric thermal filler. The magnetic core has been selected as an off-the-shelf (non-custom) ferromagnetic alloy, minimizing procurement times and minimum order quantity. The design process, taking into account the demagnetizing field as function of the core shape, follows three main steps: the first is the definition of the core geometry, the second is the selection of the core material, and the third is the sizing of the winding. The actuator design has been preliminary verified by a numerical simulation and successfully validated by a full qualification campaign including performance, vibration, and thermal tests.
Part of the Ph.D. work has been also dedicated to the sizing of the Electrical Power Subsystem (including the Li-ion modular battery as energy storage unit) for different ASI/ESA missions and to further spacecraft-level system activities such as the integration of a telecom payload on a pre-existing satellite platform, and the modification of the platform architecture due to a postponement of the satellite launch.


Edge matching puzzles have been, for a very long time, a common toy for children. Their simplicity hides a subtle and complex problem structure that results, in certain cases, in very hard problems. Those hard cases are being commercially exploited, capturing a wide attention due to generous prizes. Edge matching puzzles have been proven to be NP-Complete problems [1], and their phase transition has been recently located experimentally [2]. This work approaches the problem of defining and locating the phase transition for edge matching puzzles from an analytical point of view, defining statistical measures that; on one hand,  upper bound the phase transition and prove to be good estimators for locating the hardest problems, and on the other hand, approaches the lower bound of the phase transition as a previous step to determine an exact asymptotic behavior.


This research investigates how simple domestic objects can be employed as
visual metaphors for vulnerability, entrapment and unfulfilled expectations
experienced by many women who take on primary domestic roles. In its use of
domestic objects as visual metaphors, the project locates itself within the context
of the still life genre but at the same time seeks to re-interpret this tradition in a
way which makes it relevant to contemporary concerns.
The exegesis contextualises the project through discussion of what the domestic
object traditionally symbolised in the history of Western art, specifically looking
at the still life and narrative genre painting which used the domestic object to
deliver moralising and ideological messages. The discussion then focuses, on
artists who in the twentieth century re-deployed domestic objects in other ways,
wresting them from their traditional meanings. Of particular relevance to the
project is how artists moved away from painterly depictions of domestic objects
to assimilating the ephemera of daily life into their work and also how they have
invested them with meanings which challenge the traditional concept of home as
a safe and nurturing environment. In this regard, the artists who have been most
relevant to the project have been feminist artists such as Donna Marcus,
Vivienne Binns, Helen Fuller, Judy Chicago, Faith Ringgold, Miriam Schapiro
and Louise Bourgeois. These artists reference domestic objects as an appropriate
visual vehicle to tell their stories, seek equality and reconcile their identities as
both women and artists.
The outcomes of studio-based investigations are encapsulated in a suite of mixed
media artworks that explore different ways of engaging with domestic objects.
The materials include paper and glass to reference vulnerability and fragility,
while all the objects have been made using recycled materials and collage to
invoke memory of a lived experience. Everyday acts of sewing and patchwork
are employed to parallel the tedium, repetition and the entrapment of domestic
obligations.
The use of symbolism and metaphor connect my work to the historic tradition of
still life; the use of found objects, materials and process connect it to the many
conceptual and material changes that have affected the genre over the last one
hundred years. Whilst the project acknowledges that the still life does not hold
the same cultural importance that it once had, it does, however, suggest that this
tradition can be re-interpreted and re-worked to express current day concerns,
particularly those pertaining to the experience of women and the domestic
sphere. As such, it builds on the works of feminist artists such as Chicago and
Schapiro but, at the same time, goes beyond their concerns of celebrating the
female crafts.


Hydraulic conductivities of volcanic and carbonate lithologic units at the Nevada Test Site were estimated from flow logs and aquifer-test data. Borehole flow and drawdown were integrated and interpreted using a radial, axisymmetric flow model, AnalyzeHOLE. This integrated approach is used because complex well completions and heterogeneous aquifers and confining units produce vertical flow in the annular space and aquifers adjacent to the wellbore. AnalyzeHOLE simulates vertical flow, in addition to horizontal flow, which accounts for converging flow toward screen ends and diverging flow toward transmissive intervals. Simulated aquifers and confining units uniformly are subdivided by depth into intervals in which the hydraulic conductivity is estimated with the Parameter ESTimation (PEST) software. Between 50 and 150 hydraulic-conductivity parameters were estimated by minimizing weighted differences between simulated and measured flow and drawdown. Transmissivity estimates from single-well or multiple-well aquifer tests were used to constrain estimates of hydraulic conductivity. The distribution of hydraulic conductivity within each lithology had a minimum variance because estimates were constrained with Tikhonov regularization. AnalyzeHOLE simulated hydraulic-conductivity estimates for lithologic units across screened and cased intervals are as much as 100 times less than those estimated using proportional flow-log analyses applied across screened intervals only. Smaller estimates of hydraulic conductivity for individual lithologic units are simulated because sections of the unit behind cased intervals of the wellbore are not assumed to be impermeable, and therefore, can contribute flow to the wellbore. Simulated hydraulic-conductivity estimates vary by more than three orders of magnitude across a lithologic unit, indicating a high degree of heterogeneity in volcanic and carbonate-rock units. The higher water transmitting potential of carbonate-rock units relative to volcanic-rock units is exemplified by the large difference in their estimated maximum hydraulic conductivity; 4,000 and 400 feet per day, respectively. Simulated minimum estimates of hydraulic conductivity are inexact and represent the lower detection limit of the method. Minimum thicknesses of lithologic intervals also were defined for comparing AnalyzeHOLE results to hydraulic properties in regional ground-water flow models.


Applications that handle sensitive information need to express and reason about the trust relationships between security principals. Such reasoning is difficult because the trust relationships are dynamic, and must thus be reasoned about at runtime when discovering and reasoning about trust relationships might inadvertently reveal confidential information and be subject to manipulation by untrusted principals. The Flow-Limited Authorization Model (FLAM) by Arden et al. exactly meets these needs. However, previous attempts to use FLAM in a programming language have not reaped the full benefits of the model. We present Flamio, an instantiation of FLAM in a language with coarse-grained dynamic information-flow control (IFC) which naturally lends itself to dynamic enforcement techniques. In our implementation of Flamio, the FLAM proof search rules for deriving trust relationships are implemented as regular Flamio computations: the IFC requirements for FLAM proof rules are a natural fit with coarse-grained information-flow mechanisms. Flamio even supports remote procedure calls, and thus seamlessly supports FLAM's distributed proof search. We have implemented Flamio as a Haskell library, and proved that a calculus based on Flamio enforces a noninterference-based security guarantee. We have implemented several case studies, demonstrating the expressiveness and usefulness of Flamio in distributed settings, as well as our novel approach to control label creep during proof search.


The three novels which make up The Forsyte Saga chronicle the ebbing social power of the commercial upper-middle class Forsyte family between 1886 and 1920. Soames Forsyte is the brilliantly portrayed central figure, a Victorian who outlives the age, and whose baffled passion for his beautiful but unresponsive wife Irene reverberates throughout the saga. Written with both compassion and ironic detachment, Galsworthy's narrative examines not only the family's fortunes but also the wider developments within society, particularly the changing position of women in an intensely competitive male world. Above all, Galsworthy is concerned with the conflict at the heart of English culture between the soulless materialism of wealth and property and the humane instincts of love, beauty, and art.


Purpose Integrated clinical clerkships represent a relatively new and innovative approach to medical education that uses continuity as an organizing principle, thus increasing patient-centeredness and learner-centeredness. Medical schools are offering longitudinal integrated clinical clerkships in increasing numbers. This report collates the experiences of medical schools that use longitudinal integrated clerkships for medical student education in order to establish a clearer characterization of these experiences and summarize outcome data, when possible. Method The authors sent an e-mail survey with open text responses to 17 medical schools with known longitudinal integrated clerkships. Results Sixteen schools in four countries on three continents responded to the survey. Fifteen institutions have active longitudinal integrated clerkships in place. Two programs began before 1995, but the others are newer. More than 2,700 students completed longitudinal integrated clerkships in these schools. The median clerkship length is 40 weeks, and in 15 of the schools, the core clinical content was in medicine, surgery, pediatrics, and obstetrics-gynecology. Eleven schools reported supportive student responses to the programs. No differences were noted in nationally normed exam scores between program participants and those in the traditional clerkships. Limited outcomes data suggest that students who participate in these programs are more likely to enter primary care careers. Conclusions This study documents the increasing use of longitudinal integrated clerkships and provides initial insights for institutions that may wish to develop similar clinical programs. Further study will be needed to assess the long-term impact of these programs on medical education and workforce initiatives.


This paper proposes an optical packet switch with parametric wavelength converters (PWCs), where the pump wavelengths are dynamically changed in every time slot. It is called the dynamic pump wavelength selection (DPS) switch. A PWC, which performs multiple wavelength conversion, uses a pump wavelength that can be flexibly chosen to define which wavelengths can be converted. To enhance switch performance, the DPS switch employs a matching scheme, which sets connections between input and output ports, in combination with dynamic pump wavelength selection; a conventional switch, on the other hand, performs matching with a given set of pump wavelengths that are configured in a static manner. The dynamic pump wavelength selection is used to select the pump wavelength for each PWC to maximize the number of wavelength conversion pairs supported. Numerical results from a simulation show that the DPS switch provides lower blocking rates than the conventional switch with pump wavelengths assigned statically, under both uniform and non-uniform traffic.


This study examines the contrast between verbal system of Arabic and Malay. The researcher starts with a descriptive study for issues of verbal system in Malay. The following subjects are discussed: active voice, passive voice, derivation through prefixes and suffixes, repetition of the numbers and structures. In Arabic this study describes conditional sentences, conjugation, the expression, actions in different kinds, derivation, inflection, types of sentences, derivation of verbs and forms of perfect. The study found that the differences between two languages are in the subject of present tense, future, verb agreement, and passive voice and active voice.


An electronic nose (e-nose) is a device that analyzes the chemical components of an odour. The e-nose consists of an array of gas sensors for chemical detection and a mechanism for pattern recognition to return the odour concentration. Odour concentration defines the identifiabilty and perceivability of an odour. It is of high importance to assess the validity of measurements during the sampling as the qualified measurements can only produce an accurate prediction for odour concentration. The physical impairment of the e-nose and/or environmental factors (including wind, humidity, temperature, etc.) can introduce significant amount of noise into sensor measurements. Inevitably, the pattern recognition results are affected. Here, we propose an online algorithm to assess the validity of sensor measurements. The algorithm enables e-nose to perform a self-assessment procedure during the sampling before utilizing the data for pattern recognition phase. The proposed algorithm is proved to be computationally cheap and easy to implement.


This article defends Hegelian dialectics against the critique of Derrida and Bataille. This defense revolves around the fate of abstract negation in dialectical sublation. Focusing on the Lordship-Bondage section of the Phenomenology of Spirit, it is proposed that in the sublated figure of the slave there remains an absolute detachment irreducible to any capitalistic, 'restricted' economy of preservation. The consequence of such a reading of sublation is that no move outside or beyond dialectics, no transcendent escape from the Aufhebung , is called upon in order to account for notions of alterity, detachment, or transformation.