Surface parameterization is to establish a transformation that maps the points on a surface to a specified parametric domain. It has been widely applied to computer graphics and image processing fields. The challenging issue is that the usual positional constraints always result in triangle flipping in parameterizations (also called foldovers). Additionally, distortion is inevitable in parameterizations. Thus the rigid constraint is always taken into account. In general, the constraints are application-dependent. This thesis thus focuses on the various constraints depended on applications and investigates the foldover-free constrained parameterization approaches individually. Such constraints usually include, simple positional constraints, tradeoff of positional constraints and rigid constraint, and rigid constraint. From the perspective of applications, we aim at the foldover-free parameterization methods with positional constraints, the as-rigid-as-possible parameterization with positional constraints, and the well-shaped well-spaced pre-processing procedure for low-distortion parameterizations in this thesis. The first contribution of this thesis is the development of a RBF-based re-parameterization algorithm for the application of the foldover-free constrained texture mapping. The basic idea is to split the usual parameterization procedure into two steps, 2D parameterization with the constraints of convex boundaries and 2D re-parameterization with the interior positional constraints. Moreover, we further extend the 2D re-parameterization approach with the interior positional constraints to high dimensional datasets, such as, volume data and polyhedrons. The second contribution is the development of a vector field based deformation algorithm for 2D mesh deformation and image warping. Many presented deformation approaches are used to employ the basis functions (including our proposed RBF-based re-parameterization algorithm here). The main problem is that such algorithms have infinite support, that is, any local deformation always leads to small changes over the whole domain. Our presented vector field based algorithm can effectively carry on the local deformation while reducing distortion as much as possible. The third contribution is the development of a pre-processing for surface parameterization. Except the developable surfaces, the current parameterization approaches inevitably incur large distortion. To reduce distortion, we proposed a pre-processing procedure in this thesis, including mesh partition and mesh smoothing. As a result, the resulting meshes are partitioned into a set of small patches with rectangle-like boundaries. Moreover, they are well-shaped and well-spaced. This pre-processing procedure can evidently improve the quality of meshes for low-distortion parameterizations.


INTRODUCTION The tertiary education sector in Nigeria is made up of three categories of institutions (JAMB, 2012). These are Universities, Polytechnics/Colleges of Technology and Colleges of Education (CoE). Various legislative enactments have established distinct roles for each of these higher institutions. The Universities produce highly-skilled manpower in diverse disciplines at the undergraduate and graduate levels while Colleges of Education specifically train teachers for pre-primary, primary and junior secondary schools. On the other hand, Polytechnics were originally established to provide middle-level manpower to drive the economy and further the country's technological-cum-scientific aspirations. Liberalization of Nigeria's tertiary education sector has brought about an unprecedented increase in the number of post-secondary educational institutions arising from the involvement of Federal and State Governments, as well as, private organizations. Presently, Nigeria has 108 Universities, 81 Polytechnics, and 109 Colleges of Education approved by various regulatory agencies (JAMB, 2012). As with other climes, tertiary educational institutions in Nigeria are involved in several degrees of teaching, research, dissemination of knowledge and community development. These tasks are accomplished, largely, through various institutional libraries (popularly called academic libraries), lecture halls, laboratories and workshops. Fafunwa (1994) sees libraries in tertiary institutions as crucial centres in the educational development of man and his environment. This, perhaps, explains why the National Universities Commission (NUC), National Board for Technical Education (NBTE), and National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE), which supervise the three arms of the tertiary education sector in Nigeria, insist on the provision of purpose-built, well-equipped, information resource-rich and adequately staffed libraries, as a pre-condition for approval of these institutions and accreditation of courses offered in them. The place of academic libraries as capital-intensive educational agencies that require, for their uptimal performance, physical facilities, personnel, accommodation, books, journals, electronic resources, etc have been documented in the literature. (Ehigiator, 1997; Anafulu, 1997; Nnadozie, 2007; Ubogu and Okiy, 2011, etc). To acquire the necessary facilities for the discharge of their statutory responsibilities, these academic libraries require adequate funding for their capital and recurrent expenditures. Presently, such funds come from two (2) main sources, namely; (i) financial allocations from parent institutions, which varies from fixed percentage of an institution's gross/entire budget to adhoc arrangements (Emojorho, 2004 and Akporhonor, 2005) and (ii) yearly financial disbursement from the Education Trust Fund (ETF), established under Education Tax Act No. 7 of 1993, with the objective of using funding with project management to improve the quality of the various levels of education in Nigeria. To strengthen and enable the ETF achieve its mandate, Act No. 7 of 1993 was amended in Act No. 40 of 1998 to impose a 2% education tax on the assessable profit of all registered companies in Nigeria (Nigeria, 1998). The ETF is now called Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TET-Fund) following a recent amendment of the original act which has further streamlined and restricted the operations of the fund to periodic financial allocations to the country's tertiary education institutions. CRUX OF THE MATTER Contemporary economic realities clearly show that the challenge of diminished funding is exacerbated by inflationary spirals which have diminished the purchasing power of libraries worldwide (Ananwu and Akanwa, 2001). This is in the midst of increasing output of published, unpublished and digitized information sources, as well as, Information and Communication Technology (ICT). …


The micro-oxygenation (MOX) of aged wine in contact with pieces of wood is a technique widely used for aging wines as an alternative to barrels. The available range of passive MOX systems is very wide and offers a behavior closer to that of barrels because it uses materials with a similar permeability to oxygen. The aim of this work has been to age the same red wine for 6 months using the main passive MOX systems and compare them with the classic MOX in stainless steel tanks and with barrels as a reference, in order to evaluate phenolic composition and establish its influence. The quantity and the way in which oxygen is incorporated into wine have been found to determine its evolution and final properties. Wine from barrels could be distinguished throughout the aging period since a better level of individualized anthocyanins was maintained, whereas stainless steel + MOX and PMDS (polydimethylsiloxane) wines presented more bluish hues.


Over a four-year period, 26 consecutive patients with Guillain-Barrd syndrome (GBS) were seen. Their ages ranged from 18 months to 68 years. Fifteen were male and 11 female. The crude annual incidence was estimated to be 1.5 per 100,000 population. East Indians made up the majority of the patients. An antecedent infection was reported in 65% of patients. Significant pain was present in halfofthe cohort. F-wave abnormalities were the commonest electrophysiological disturbance. Twenty-nine per cent of patients required ventilation. Intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) treatment was beneficial in 88% of patients. Eighty-four per cent made a complete or near complete recovery. One patient died.


Classication is an important topic in statistics and machine learning with great potential in many real applications. In this paper, we investigate two popular large-margin classication methods, Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Distance Weighted Discrimination (DWD), under two contexts: the high-dimensional, low-sample size data and the imbalanced data. A unied family of classication machines, the FLexible Assortment MachinE (FLAME) is proposed, within which DWD and SVM are special cases. The FLAME family helps to identify the similarities and dierences between SVM and DWD. It is well known that many classiers overt the data in the high-dimensional setting; and others are sensitive to the imbalanced data, that is, the class with a larger sample size overly inuences the classier and pushes the decision boundary towards the minority class. SVM is resistant to the imbalanced data issue, but it overts high-dimensional data sets by showing the undesired data-piling phenomenon. The DWD method was proposed to improve SVM in the highdimensional setting, but its decision boundary is sensitive to the imbalanced ratio of sample sizes. Our FLAME family helps to understand an intrinsic connection between SVM and DWD, and provides a trade-o between sensitivity to the imbalanced data and overtting the high-dimensional data. Several asymptotic properties of the FLAME classiers are studied. Simulations and real data applications are investigated to illustrate theoretical ndings.


In Michigan v. Bryant, a dying victim lying in a parking lot provided responding officers with the identity of the man who shot him. In determining whether the subsequent use of the deceased declarant's statement at trial violated the Confrontation Clause, the Bryant Court applied the testimonial versus nontestimonial analysis established in the Court's previous decision, Crawford v. Washington. Holding that testimonial hearsay covered statements involving past events, while nontestimonial statements were directed at an "ongoing emergency," the Bryant Court applied a multi-factor, totality of the circumstances analysis and found that the deceased declarant's identification had been directed at the ongoing emergency. As such, the hearsay statement was nontestimonial and, accordingly, outside the protection of the Confrontation Clause.Bryant, was roundly (and deservedly) criticized by all commentators, who unanimously accused the Court of making a shambles of Confrontation Clause jurisprudence. To an extent, Crawford also shared the commentator's blame. But for the authors of this article, it is the Court's Confrontation Clause analysis in Davis v. Washington, a case involving a 911 call, which is truly to blame for the debacle that is Bryant; for Davis carelessly equated "nontestimonial" with a decontextualized, commonplace notion of an "ongoing emergency." That was the mistake that led to Bryant. As this article will demonstrate, the issue for purposes of Confrontation Clause analysis in cases like Davis and Bryant is not whether or not there exists an ongoing emergency in some general sense; but rather whose emergency it is. If the emergency is the government's, then any statements made by citizens to help the government address that emergency are testimonial. If the emergency is one in which a citizen is seeking the government's help (regardless of whether or not it's also the government's emergency), any statements by the citizen are nontestimonial.


Abstract The continental margin to the east and south of China comprises an active margin in the East China Sea, a collision mountain belt in Taiwan, and a passive margin in the South China Sea. These three segments were generally regarded as separate tectonic entities and their interrelations have long been the subject of debate. Here we synthesize available information to outline the tectonic and geological background of the China margin, examine the link between Taiwan and the neighbouring China margins, and thereby establish a Cenozoic evolutionary model. The China margin is floored with a pre-Cenozoic continental basement covered with an up to 10-km-thick pile of Cenozoic sedimentary strata. The continental basement has been invariably stretched and moulded into a series of northeast-trending horsts and grabens. Except in the Okinawa Trough of the East China Sea, the Cenozoic sedimentary cover typically exhibits a two-tier tectonostratigraphic structure, with narrow Palaeogene rift basins draped by a blanket-like Neogene-Quaternary sequence. The two-tier structure prevails in the entire inner part of the China margin, including the Taiwan Strait off western Taiwan. In the outer China margin, however, the two-tier structure persists only in the South China Sea, and is in stark contrast with the collisional orogen of Taiwan and the Ryukyu arc of the East China Sea. By untangling the contractional deformation of the northern Taiwan mountain belt, it has been possible to reconstruct a precollisional tectonostratigraphic section with a distinctive two-tier structure shown by a Palaeogene half-graben covered with a Miocene drape sequence. When put together with Palaeogene rift basins of the Taiwan Strait, it becomes clear that the precollisional continental margin of Taiwan resembles that of the South China Sea, characterized by two lines of Palaeogene rift basins. Hence before the collision started in Late Miocene times, Taiwan was part of the passive South China margin that extended northward to the southern Ryukyu area. Ever since the end of the Cretaceous, the China continental margin has been dominated by extensional tectonics, regardless of the presence or absence of subduction zones. In the Early Cenozoic, extensive crustal attenuation resulted in region-wide subsidence and formation of rift basins. Extension in the South China Sea culminated in Late Oligocene times, when part of the outer margin was drifted away by the opening ocean basin. In the East China Sea, the margin remained intact and became separated from the South China Sea margin by a transform fault. From the Miocene onwards, the South China Sea margin has been passively subsiding, sporadically punctuated with basaltic volcanism. In the East China Sea margin, the Okinawa Trough has opened and the Ryukyu volcanic arc thrived. The NE edge of the South China Sea margin was deformed as the Taiwan orogen.


Natural biofilms constitute a complex network of microorganisms (bacteria, diatoms, protozoa, fungi) and their extracellular polymeric substances (EPS), which influence settlement in benthic invertebrates. We investigated the influence of diatom (Bacillariophyceae) films and EPS (>1000 molecular weight) on metamorphosis in the acorn barnacle Balanus amphitrite Darwin, a dominant fouling organism, using axenic and non-axenic films, and free and biofilm EPS, of 5 species of pennate diatoms: Amphora coffeaeformis and A. rostrata, and Navicula transitans var. derasa f. delicatula, N. crucicula and N. subinflata. Fourier-transformed infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) spectra revealed that the EPS produced by diatoms are of similar nature; however, the proportion of mono- saccharides varies with species, indicating a potential role for influencing larval metamorphosis. Free EPS of axenic diatoms had no effect, whereas biofilm EPS induced larvae to metamorphose. Amphora spp. produced more biofilm EPS, but had relatively weaker effects than Navicula spp. Axenic diatom films also facilitated larval metamorphosis (depending on species and cell density) in some cases, suggesting that the cues provided by the diatoms themselves can also mediate invertebrate larval metamorphosis in the absence of microbial films. Non-axenic diatom films (which had higher cell densities) and biofilm EPS promoted metamorphosis to a greater degree than those of axenic diatoms. Enhancement of metamorphosis depended on diatom species and on their density in the films, as well as on the composition of their EPS. Differential responses of barnacle larvae to different diatom species and their EPS indicate that each diatom species provides a different set of physico-chemical signals to settling larvae.


Book synopsis: The field of literary studies has long recognised the centrality of psychoanalysis as a method for looking at texts in a new way. But rarely has the relationship between psychoanalysis and performance been mapped out, either in terms of analysing the nature of performance itself, or in terms of making sense of specific performance-related activities. In this volume some of the most distinguished thinkers in the field make this exciting new connection and offer original perspectives on a wide variety of topics, including: · hypnotism and hysteria · ventriloquism and the body · dance and sublimation · the unconscious and the rehearsal process · melancholia and the uncanny · cloning and theatrical mimesis · censorship and activist performance · theatre and social memory. The arguments advanced here are based on the dual principle that psychoanalysis can provide a productive framework for understanding the work of performance, and that performance itself can help to investigate the problematic of identity.


This essay (13.000 words) outlines the general, conceptual framework of material presented in a series of five lectures delivered in the fall of 2015 at the facilities of the Athens School of Fine Arts' annex in the village of Delphi, where faculty members and students – artists, theorists, programmers and technologists – from the Athens School of Fine Arts (Athens-Greece) and OCAD University (Toronto-Canada) formed an international workshop team for the purpose of experimenting and reflecting on the subject of "affect & emotion in artistic practice". My contribution to the project aimed at thematizing a number of topics – touching upon matters of philosophy, aesthetics, science, art history, cultural and media studies – that I deemed relevant to the core subject of our workshop. The present essay – to be published in a collective volume by OCAD University in 2016 – draws heavily on themes and topics thoroughly elaborated and developed in my doctoral thesis (PhD), obtained in 2008, titled: Into the den of phenomenality – Toward a philosophy & aesthetics of simulation, that one can find online at the website of the Greek National Archive of PhD Theses.


Social factors have always been the leading predictor of crime rates in the United States, but environmental factors such as heavy metals are now also being linked to crime rates. Social factors including sufficient financial income, a safe living environment, a supportive family, and adequate education have the greatest impact on whether or not a child will grow up to lead a successful life. Although, with more research there have been links between environmental factors, specifically heavy metals such as lead, cadmium and mercury, and life outcome. Heavy metals have been directly associated with causing neurotoxicity, specifically in young children. Neurotoxicity has been linked with mental instability and aggressive behavior; common traits of individuals who commit crimes. There has also been a correlation between individuals living in low income housing and facing higher exposures to heavy metals, in both urban and rural areas. The Public Health significance is that individually social factors and environmental factors are leading to crime rates, although together they increase the risk of criminal behavior. Two cases of individuals exposed to both detrimental environmental factors (mercury and lead) and social factors are examined in this essay showing how individuals are more susceptible to neurotoxicity and criminal activity when exposed to both.


It is the aim of this article to analyze the political system in effect at the end of the XIX century in a border territory, such as Trentino Alto Adige, a region straddling to worlds: the Italian and the German speaking one. In this analysis I will retrace the origins of regional autonomy by recalling the historical and political events that let to a deep imprint of the concept of self-governance in this area; starting from the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the same year of the annexation of the Bishopric of Trento to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and until the outbreak of WWI. The aim of this study is to understand how deeply the forms of self-governance that the Austrian empire granted to the area influenced the culture and society of the time, and even left traces in today's modern society.


An in-depth look at diversity and the changing racial makeup of America's older population-what do they mean for their contemporaries and their children? Ceferina, a 70-year-old Filipina who shared her life story for a research project on older immigrants, could be the future face of aging in America. Foreign-born and non-white, Ceferina mixes comfortably with neighbors of other races. With her male companion, who is white, she embraces life and aging in the United States, saying: I have a boyfriend who's a senior citizen and lives at the same apartment [building] and he is all alone. And if we are all alone, we call each other. He is a Caucasian. He calls me if he wants to eat outside or go to the park. We are not lonely when we are together. He is 73 years old and I am 70. We keep us feel young. Growing racial and ethnic diversity is a reality in the United States. Older adults who are immigrants, non-white, or ethnic minorities will become increasingly common. With the falling of some barriers that have historically divided groups, older adults from diverse backgrounds could share a common future. Outside immigrant enclaves, color lines are fading, so that race and ethnicity may well play a different, perhaps more symbolic, role in the lives of tomorrow's older Americans. Gray and White Today, gray is the new white. Eight in ten older Americans are non-Hispanic whites. Other groups are minorities claiming small shares of the older population. Table 1 (on page 39) shows that blacks make up 8.5 percent of Americans ages 65 and older, while 6.8 percent are Hispanic and 3.3 percent are Asian. Other census categories- American Indians and Alaska Natives (AIAN) and Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (NHPI)-add up to less than 1 percent each. The same is true for multiracial Americans. The younger population tells a different story. Among Americans younger than age 65, fewer than two-thirds are non-Hispanic whites. One-third is minority. Unlike elders, the younger population has more Hispanics than it does blacks (17 percent versus 13 percent). Asian Americans make up nearly 5 percent. While still small, the population shares for other groups such as AIAN and NHPI are about twice as large for the young as the old. The same is true for mixed-race Americans. Fueled by immigration, Hispanics and Asians are changing the balance between majority and minority, just as Southern and Eastern European immigrants did a century ago when their numbers overtook those for immigrants from Northern and Western Europe. In the total population, whites could lose their majority status as early as 2042 (Perez and Hirschman, 2009). Whites would become the largest minority in a population with no other group topping 50 percent. New Mexico, California, Texas, and Hawaii are already "minority-majority" states. The younger population is a bellwether of changes to come. Immigration is driven largely by young people from Asia and Latin America, drawn by economic opportunities. The young are more racially and ethnically diverse than the cohort of those ages 65 and older. Inevitably, the young grow old. In the future, the makeup of older workers, grandparents, church elders, and candidates for bypass surgery will change-reflecting the greater diversity of today's children and younger adults. What's Ahead? Figure 1 (on page 40) shows how the distribution of racial and ethnic groups in the older population across the United States could change between 2010 and 2050. Projections are not set in stone. They rely on assumptions about future fertility, mortality, and immigration. Nonetheless, they point to growing diversity for tomorrow's older population, and they showcase the major role that immigration plays. Much of the growth in the older population will come from Hispanics and Asians, populations with high immigration levels. The share for older Hispanics is projected to more than double between 2010 and 2050-from 7. …


In June of 1938, Action Comics debuted with a new kind of comic book character on its cover: A costumed man with two identities, who possessed extraordinary strength and powers, a man able to protect the public when ordinary measures would not do. He was not the first super hero, but the Man of Steel would become the prototype for all super heroes thereafter. Superman's story, and those of Batman, Wonder Woman, and hundreds of other DC Comics characters are all told in "The Golden Age of DC Comics". The single most comprehensive book on the subject, this volume traces the company's first decades, from its pulp origins up to the comic book burnings of the McCarthy '50s in over 400 pages bursting with comics, art, comics, photographs, and more comics. Plus an exclusive interview with legendary Sgt. Rock/Hawkman artist Joe Kubert! TASCHEN's series on "DC Comics" explores the origins of comics' most enduring legends and the behind-the-scenes stories of the men who created them, era by era. Expanded from the Eisner Award - winning XL book, "75 Years of DC Comics", this new series hits the shelf at a reader friendly size with essays updated by author Paul Levitz and over 500 new images across five volumes. Thousands of covers and interiors, original illustrations, photographs, film stills, and collectibles have been reproduced using the latest technology to bring the story lines, the characters, and their creators to vibrant life, making this an invaluable reference for comics fans.


"Fostering Freedom Online: the Role of Internet Intermediaries" is the third title in the UNESCO Internet freedom series. With the rise of Internet intermediaries that play a mediating role on the internet between authors of content and audiences, UNESCO took a joint initiative, with the Open Society Foundations, the Internet Society, and Center for Global Communication Studies at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication, to examine this recent historical phenomenon and how it impacts on freedom of expression and associated fundamental rights such as privacy. The case study research, collaboratively delivered by 16 international researchers led by Ms Rebecca MacKinnon and Mr Allon Bar, as well as 14 members of International Advisory Committee, covers of three categories of intermediaries: Internet Service Providers (fixed line and mobile) such as Vodafone (UK, Germany, Egypt), Vivo/Telefonica Brasil (Brazil), Bharti Airtel (India, Kenya), Safaricom (Kenya), Search Engines such as Google (USA, EU, India, China, Russia), Baidu (China), Yandex (Russia) and Social Networking Platforms such as Facebook (USA, Germany, India, Brazil, Egypt), Twitter (USA, Kenya), Weibo (China), iWiW (Hungary). The research showed that internet intermediaries are heavily influenced by the legal and policy environments of states, but they do have leeway over many areas of policy and practice affecting online expression and privacy. The findings also highlighted the challenge where many state policies, laws, and regulations are – to varying degrees - poorly aligned with the duty to promote and protect intermediaries' respect for freedom of expression. It is a resource which enables the assessment of Internet intermediaries' decisions on freedom of expression, by ensuring that any limitations are consistent with international standards. The research also recommends specific ways that intermediaries and states can improve respect for internet users' right to freedom of expression. This is through promoting: adequate legal frameworks and policies consistent with international norms, multi-stakeholder policy development, transparency of governance, accountability in self-regulation, mechanisms for remedy, and public information and education. UNESCO has succeeded in raising awareness and promoting good practice through past research in the UNESCO Series on Internet Freedom: Freedom of connection, freedom of expression: the changing legal and regulatory ecology shaping the Internet (2011) and Global survey on Internet Privacy and Freedom of Expression (2012). This rich material in this, the third in UNESCO Series on Internet Freedom, will be of great value to all stakeholders. These are industry actors, UNESCO Member States, technical community, Intergovernmental organizations, private sector, civil society, and others both national and international. This research is linked to UNESCO draft conceptual framework of "Internet universality" which draws from UNESCO decisions on the Internet, and recognises that four core principles should inform cyber actors. These principles are that the Internet should be human rights-based, open, accessible for all and governed by multi-stakeholder participation. The research also helps to inform UNESCO's implementation of a comprehensive and consultative multi-stakeholder Internet study as mandated by the Organization's 37th General Conference Resolution 52. The study, due in 2015, covers UNESCO's key competence areas of access to information and knowledge, freedom of expression, privacy, and ethical dimensions of the information society, and contains possible options for future actions.


OBJECTIVE
To assess the completeness of hospital discharge summaries and the efficiency of the discharge summary system in two urban teaching hospitals.

DESIGN
Descriptive study, with follow-up telephone survey.

SETTING
General internal medicine services at two urban tertiary care hospitals affiliated with the University of Ottawa.

PATIENTS
A total of 135 patient charts, representing 10% of the patients discharged from the services between Aug. 1 and Dec. 31, 1993. Three charts were unavailable for review, and 26 were excluded because of patient death, early patient discharge (within 48 hours after admission) or lack of discharge summary; this left 106 summaries for analysis of completeness and 114 (including the charts without a summary) for analysis of efficiency.

OUTCOME MEASURES
Completeness: proportion of summaries in which the following information was reported: admission diagnosis, drug allergies, physical examination, significant laboratory tests and results, discharge diagnosis, discharge medications and medical follow-up. Efficiency: time taken to generate the discharge summary and whether the patient's family physician received it.

RESULTS
Of the 106 charts with a discharge summary, information was available from the dictation system database for all but one (99.1% complete). Information was missing on the admission diagnosis in 34.0% (36/106) of the summaries, the discharge diagnosis in 25.5% (27/106) and the discharge medications in 22.8% (23/101). Of the 268 significant laboratory tests and results noted in the charts 115 (42.9%) were not reported in the discharge summary. Of the 94 discharge summaries in charts with the patient's family physician listed on the facesheet, 38 (40.4%) were not received by the family physician.

CONCLUSIONS
Considerable deficiencies in the completeness of the discharge summaries and the efficiency of the discharge summary system were found in the participating hospitals. Replication of this study in other settings is indicated, and strategies to improve the process should be pursued.


The field of Urogynaecology has expanded dramatically over the past decade with the advent of a number of new medical and surgical treatment modalities. The evidence base on pelvic floor dysfunction has also grown extensively. This multi-contributor textbook will prove invaluable to gynaecology, urology and surgery registrars and specialists. Physiotherapists and nurses working in the field of Urogynaecology will also find it extremely useful.


Micronized porcine urinary bladder matrix (UBM) is an extracellular matrix biomaterial that has immunomodulatory and pro-regenerative properties. The objective of this study was to assess the ability of UBM to alter disease progression in a mouse model of post-traumatic osteoarthritis (OA). Ten-week-old wild-type C57BL/6 male mice underwent anterior cruciate ligament transection (ACLT) to induce OA. Two weeks after ACLT, UBM (50 mg/mL) or saline was injected into the mouse joint. At 4 and 8 weeks post-ACLT, cartilage integrity was assessed using OARSI scoring of histology, pain was evaluated, and joints were harvested for quantitative RT-PCR analysis of cartilage-specific and inflammatory gene expression. UBM-treated animals showed improved cartilage integrity at 4 and 8 weeks and reduced pain at 4 weeks compared to saline-injected mice. Animals injected with UBM expressed higher levels of genes encoding structural cartilage proteins, such as collagen2α1 and aggrecan, as well as anti-inflammatory cytokines, including interleukins 10 and 4. UBM decreased cartilage degeneration in the murine ACLT model of OA, which may be due to reduced inflammation in the joint and maintenance of high expression levels of proteoglycans.


This article deals with the approach to exegesis of biblical narrative, especially in Exodus, in finding its theological significance for contemporary and relevant biblical interpretation. It shows that the historical-critical method is unable to span the divide between the original context and our contemporary context, and to provide the present relevance of Scripture. After arguing for the validity of a set canonical text, this article shows that biblical narrative in general, and the Exodus narratives in particular, are best explored theologically by means of a canonical approach. It shows that the theological significance translates more easily into life-application. It demonstrates how the Exodus narratives are employed canonically for its theological significance throughout the Bible. It concludes that the Church needs teachers who recognise their responsibility to accurately interpret their whole Scriptures, the Bible, with the necessary historical, linguistic (rhetorical) and theological considerations, and that this is best done in a canonical context - whether we use a synchronic or a diachronic approach.


OBJECTIVE
Thrombolysis within the first 3 hours after the onset of symptoms of a stroke has been shown to be a cost-effective treatment because treated patients are 30% more likely than nontreated patients to have no residual disability. The objective of this study was to calculate by means of a discrete event simulation model the budget impact of thrombolysis in Spain.

METHODS
The budget impact analysis was based on stroke incidence rates and the estimation of the prevalence of stroke-related disability in Spain and its translation to hospital and social costs. A discrete event simulation model was constructed to represent the flow of patients with stroke in Spain.

RESULTS
If 10% of patients with stroke from 2000 to 2015 would receive thrombolytic treatment, the prevalence of dependent patients in 2015 would decrease from 149,953 to 145,922. For the first 6 years, the cost of intervention would surpass the savings. Nevertheless, the number of cases in which patient dependency was avoided would steadily increase, and after 2006 the cost savings would be greater, with a widening difference between the cost of intervention and the cost of nonintervention, until 2015.

CONCLUSION
The impact of thrombolysis on society's health and social budget indicates a net benefit after 6 years, and the improvement in health grows continuously. The validation of the model demonstrates the adequacy of the discrete event simulation approach in representing the epidemiology of stroke to calculate the budget impact.


Gains from government crime-reducing programs are not always visible to the average citizen. The media overexpose crime events, but the absence of crime rarely makes the news, increasing the risk that citizen may have inaccurate perceptions of security. Through a survey experiment carried out in Bogota, Colombia, a city that experienced a substantial reduction in homicides over the last decade, as well as a noticeable drop in robberies, this paper tests the effect that communicating objective crime trends could have on such perceptions. The results show that information improves perceptions of safety and police effectiveness, and lowers distrust in the police. However, the information treatment is not able to impact those with biased priors, and tends to weaken over time. A more active and regular engagement with citizens regarding these trends is needed to bridge the gap between perception and reality.


"The undesired or waste materials are universally acknowledged to threaten all kinds of life. Additionally, due to its negative implications, it is recommended that they must be disposed of without devastating the human health, flora, animal health, water as well as the welfare of society and in the process, comply with new regulations. In other words, waste management is considered as a basic need in most societies. As a result, a number of waste management techniques such as composting, recycling, incineration, among others have been employed on previous occasions. However, due to the social, economic, and environmental impact of this methods, they must be assessed using different techniques such as modelling. Statistics show that approximately 45% of waste materials emanate from the construction industry. Since construction is a very important activity in human life, it is therefore necessary to explore and examine waste management at the construction sites in various countries in order to establish how best to deal with the devastating effects cause by wastes. The primary goal of this research is to compare, examine, investigate and explore the issue of waste management at the construction sites in Oman and see how some of their techniques compare with the UK. In the process, the impact of the current waste management system was assed using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach where it is social, environmental and economic implications were assessed to see which management system approach is the best. The primary instruments of collecting data in this research were basically survey questionnaires and interviews at construction sites. The analysis and synthesis of data was conducted using SPSS, mean score rankings and correlation of coefficient, r. Research questions in this research were based on the review of previous literature on the problems that are associated with material waste at the construction sites in Oman and other countries In UK and from which the research design was constructed. The findings of the research indicated that, the waste management in Oman is far behind when compared to that of the UK and besides, there are some level of waste management practices that are already in play but the local citizens of both Oman and UK are not aware of. This research work concludes by making some suggestions on how to improve the current state of waste management in Oman, the limitations that were encountered during the research process and making some recommendations for future studies. I In this case, it was recommended that the government of Oman establish a scientifically engineered landfill that is very environmental sustainable to help the already existing landfill in Al Amarat and there should be training programs that will educate the citizens of both countries on waste management. Since one of the limiting factors of this research was the fact that small-scale corporations were not taken into considerations, it was recommended that future research works should try and encompass the small-scale corporations in their research works. "


Intraoperative radiotherapy (IORT) involves the administration of higher doses of irradiation to the pancreas in patients with locally advanced disease, and to the surgical bed in patients following pancreaticoduodenectomy. IORT was initially used in patients with unresectable lesions on whom palliative surgery was being performed. In all the series local control was improved, although no parallel increase in survival has been confirmed. Various institutions have used IORT after pancreatic resection, integrated into a complementary programme of chemo-and radiotherapy. A significant reduction in the index of local recurrence has been documented in all the series. No significant improvement in survival has been documented, owing to the development of metastases.


This study identifies and proposes the approach of a new intelligent system regarding stopping the phenomenon of migration of young people during the current economic crisis. We investigate the manner in which the labour market and the educational system in Romania can contribute to the option of emigration as the only saving opportunity for more and more young people. The economic crisis influences the socialeconomic development and has a major impact on the decision of young people to migrate from Romania to those countries that may offer a general framework optimum for their future human and professional development. The objectives refer to the assessment of the tendencies of the migration phenomenon and to the analysis of the impact for the educational system. In the end, possible solutions are searched for the identified problems, with the purpose of drawing attention to the loss of our country, due to the migration of the most important segment of the labour market in Romania: the young people. The inductors of migration among young people are the professional-educational factors motivated by the wish to attend a form of higher education and the aspiration to a profession according to their formation. The impact of this study is produced in practice, through the results and conclusions of the analysis carried out.


47 Periampullary tumors include neoplastic lesions of the pancreatic head, the ampulla of Vater, the duodenum, and the distal common bile duct. Although of different origins, these neoplasms are treated the same, with pancreaticoduodenectomy. Early and accurate diagnosis is extremely important to both the overall survival and the quality of life of patients with periampullary malignant tumors [1]. Unfortunately, until now, there has been no ideal imaging modality for the diagnosis of periampullary lesions. Since it is difficult to use biopsies to confirm the diagnosis because of the anatomical location of the tumors, many noninvasive tests, such as ultrasound, computed tomography (CT), and magnetic resonance imaging, have become important in diagnosing periampullary tumors. Even though there are some diagnostic inaccuracies in these noninvasive tests, invasive procedures, such as endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography or endoscopic ultrasound, also carry risks of complications, such as bleeding, perforation, and the spreading of tumors [2]. Several studies have reported the clinical utility of carbohydrate antigen 19-9 (CA19-9) levels and positron emission tomography-CT (PET/CT) in the diagnosis and management of periampullary tumors [3,4]. Serum CA19-9 is an extensively studied and validated biomarker of pancreatic cancer that has also been used for the diagnosis and surveillance of periampullary tumors. It has well-known roles in predicting prognosis, overall survival, response to chemotherapy, and postoperative recurrence [3,5-7]. 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose PET/CT (FDG-PET/CT) is a metabolic imaging system based on glucose uptake capacity [3,6-8]. The accumulation of FDG reflects the rate of carbohydrate metabolism, which is an index of the metabolic activity of the cells. Carbohydrate metabolism is more active in malignant cells, resulting in a significant accumulation of FDG [6]. This examination has been well investigated in the field of esophageal, rectal, and some other cancers for detecting residual, viable cancer after anticancer treatment [5]. The maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax marker of tumor glucose metabolism detected by [18F]) is a FDGPET/CT value. The SUVmax reflects tumor aggressiveness and is an independent prognostic factor in pancreatic cancer. The evaluation of SUVmax offers an advanced method of detecting small solid lesions, based on the focal uptake of FDG-labeled glucose in malignant tumor cell populations [3,7]. The authors aimed to determine the preoperative predictive value of the FDG-PET and CA19-9 diagnostic tools for periampullary tumors [9]. They found that elevated CA19-9 levels and the SUVmax of PET/CT were associated with malignancy in periampullary tumors. And thus, normal CA19-9 and no uptake of FDGPET were correlated with benign lesions. However, there were some limitations to this study due to the small numbers of benign lesions (n = 17) and the heterogenicity of the periampullary tumors, in which important pathologic factors, such as tumor differEditorial Korean Journal of Clinical Oncology 2019;15:47-48 https://doi.org/10.14216/kjco.19009 pISSN 1738-8082 ∙ eISSN 2288-4084


OBJECTIVE
To compare characteristics of family physicians planning to discontinue or stay in intrapartum care.

DESIGN
Self-administered questionnaire.

SETTING
Department of Family Practice at Children's and Women's Health Centre of British Columbia.

PARTICIPANTS
Ninety-five family physicians who attended at least one birth at the Health Centre between April 1997 and August 1998.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Intention to leave or stay in family practice maternity care, physician characteristics and beliefs.

RESULTS
Forty-five percent (43/95) of family physicians planned to leave maternity care within the next 5 years. Physicians planning to leave had more negative attitudes about the alternative birthing centre, doulas, and practising in free-standing settings without on-site obstetricians; were more likely to report missing personal events because they had put their maternity patients first; were less likely to make housecalls during women's labour; and were more likely to be paid through fee-for-service.

CONCLUSION
Being paid by fee-for-service, having negative attitudes toward non-traditional maternity care, and conflict between maternity care and personal life were associated with intention to leave intrapartum care.


Recent hydrocarbon exploration in the Solway Basin has revealed the existence of Lower Carboniferous paralic sediments which contain numerous discrete anhydrite beds. Anhydrite S isotope ratios from the Easton-1 Well are compared with new isotopic data from barite mineralization that occurs along the faulted southern margin of the Northumberland-Solway Basin and published data from the Northern Pennine orefield. Similarities between the δ34S of anhydrite and barites from major mines at Haydon Bridge and the Alston district of the Northern Pennine orefield supports a Lower Carboniferous marine sulphate source for mineralization at these sites. Identification of extensive evaporite deposits hi the Solway Basin resolves several longstanding problems associated with mineralization hi the Northern Pennines including the source of barite sulphate and the origin of hypersaline mineralizing fluids. In an earlier investigation of the S isotope geochemistry of Carboniferous-hosted barite mineralization in and around the Alston district of theNothern Pennine orefield (NPO, Fig. 1a), Solomon et al. 1971 drew attention to the similarity between the δ34S of Lower Carboniferous marine sulphate and the sulphur isotopic composition of barite deposits. A model for barite mineralization was proposed in which deep, circulating, BaCl2 brines mixed with shallow (< 1 km depth), sulphate-rich, connate fluids composed of Lower Carboniferous sea water. Although the model proposed by Solomon et al. 1971 is consistent with aspects of barite mineralization, more recent studies of the evolution of pore fluid geochemistry in sedimentary basins (Land 1987; Hanor 1994a, b) argue against a marine connate origin for the sulphate component


STUDY QUESTION
Does the incidence of spontaneous abortion correlate positively over conception cohorts with the incidence of non-clinically indicated induced abortion as predicted by shared risk aversion?

SUMMARY ANSWER
We find that the number of spontaneous and non-clinically indicated induced abortions correlates in conception cohorts, suggesting that risk aversion affects both the conscious and non-conscious mechanisms that control parturition.

WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY
Much literature speculates that natural selection conserved risk aversion because the trait enhanced Darwinian fitness. Risk aversion, moreover, supposedly influences all decisions including those that individuals can and cannot report making. We argue that these circumstances, if real, would manifest in conscious and non-conscious decisions to invest in prospective offspring, and therefore affect incidence of induced and spontaneous abortion over time.

STUDY DESIGN, SIZE, DURATION
Using data from Denmark, we test the hypothesis that monthly conception cohorts yielding unexpectedly many non-clinically indicated induced abortions also yield unexpectedly many spontaneous abortions. The 180 month test period (January 1995 through December 2009), yielded 1 351 800 gestations including 156 780 spontaneous as well as 233 280 induced abortions 9100 of which were clinically indicated.

PARTICIPANTS/MATERIALS, SETTING, METHODS
We use Box-Jenkins transfer functions to adjust the incidence of spontaneous and non-clinically indicated induced abortions for autocorrelation (including seasonality), cohort size, and fetal as well as gestational anomalies over the 180-month test period. We use cross-correlation to test our hypothesized association.

MAIN RESULTS AND THE ROLE OF CHANCE
We find a positive association between spontaneous and non-clinically indicated induced abortions. This suggests, consistent with our theory, that mothers of conception cohorts that yielded more spontaneous abortions than expected opted more frequently than expected for non-clinically indicated induced abortion.

LIMITATIONS, REASONS FOR CAUTION
Limitations of our work include that even the world's best registration system will not capture all spontaneous abortions and that results may not generalize beyond Denmark.

WIDER IMPLICATIONS OF THE FINDINGS
Our findings imply that abortion, intentional or 'spontaneous,' follows from a woman's estimate, made consciously or otherwise, of the costs and benefits of extending gestation given characteristics of the prospective offspring, likely environmental circumstances at birth, and maternal resources.

STUDY FUNDING/COMPETING INTERESTS
The Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholars Program funded the research described in this manuscript. None of the authors has any conflict of interest to declare.


Objective. (1) To determine the prevalence of depression and anxiety in patients with psoriatic arthritis (PsA) and to identify associated demographic and disease-related factors. (2) To determine whether there is a difference in the prevalence of depression and anxiety between patients with PsA and those with psoriasis without PsA (PsC). Methods. Consecutive patients attending PsA and dermatology clinics were assessed for depression and anxiety using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. Patients underwent a clinical assessment according to a standard protocol and completed questionnaires assessing their health and quality of life. T tests, ANOVA, and univariate and multivariate models were used to compare depression and anxiety prevalence between patient cohorts and to determine factors associated with depression and anxiety. Results. We assessed 306 patients with PsA and 135 with PsC. There were significantly more men in the PsA group (61.4% vs 48% with PsC) and they were more likely to be unemployed. The prevalence of both anxiety and depression was higher in patients with PsA (36.6% and 22.2%, respectively) compared to those with PsC (24.4% and 9.6%; p = 0.012, 0.002). Depression and/or anxiety were associated with unemployment, female sex, and higher actively inflamed joint count as well as disability, pain, and fatigue. In the multivariate reduced model, employment was protective for depression (OR 0.36) and a 1-unit increase on the fatigue severity scale was associated with an increased risk of depression (OR 1.5). Conclusion. The rate of depression and anxiety is significantly higher in patients with PsA than in those with PsC. Depression and anxiety are associated with disease-related factors.


Sudden cardiac death (SCD) is a devastating event afflicting 350 000 Americans annually despite the availability of life-saving preventive therapy, the implantable cardioverter defibrillator. SCD prevention strategies are hampered by over-reliance on global left ventricular ejection fraction <35% as the most important criterion to determine implantable cardioverter defibrillator candidacy. Annually in the United States alone, this results in ≈130 000 implantable cardioverter defibrillator placements at a cost of >$3 billion but only a 5% incidence per year of appropriate firings. This approach further fails to identify individuals who experience the majority, as many as 80%, of SCD events, which occur in the setting of more preserved left ventricular ejection fraction. Better risk stratification is needed to improve care and should be guided by direct pathophysiologic markers of arrhythmic substrate, such as specific left ventricular structural abnormalities. There is an increasing body of literature to support the prognostic value of cardiac magnetic resonance imaging with late gadolinium enhancement in phenotyping the left ventricular to identify those at highest risk for SCD. Cardiac magnetic resonance has unparalleled tissue characterization ability and provides exquisite detail about myocardial structure and composition, abnormalities of which form the direct, pathophysiologic substrate for SCD. Here, we review the evolution and the current state of cardiac magnetic resonance for imaging the arrhythmic substrate, both as a research tool and for clinical applications.


Bargains, deals, and tacit understandings between states and insurgents are common in civil wars. This fascinating mix of conflict and cooperation shapes patterns of politics, governance, and violence. Building on recent findings about state formation, I offer a conceptual typology of political orders amidst civil war. Wartime political orders vary according to the distribution of territorial control and the level of cooperation between states and insurgents. Orders range from collusion and shared sovereignty to spheres of influence and tacit coexistence to clashing monopolies and guerrilla disorder. Examples from contemporary South Asian conflicts illustrate these concepts, which are scalable and portable across contexts. Scholars need to think more creatively about the political-military arrangements that emerge and evolve during war. A key policy implication is that there are many ways of forging stability without creating a counterinsurgent Leviathan.


We propose the first framework to learn control policies for vision-based human-to-robot handovers, a critical task for human-robot interaction. While research in Embodied AI has made significant progress in training robot agents in simulated environments, interacting with humans remains challenging due to the difficulties of simulating humans. Fortunately, recent research has developed realistic simulated environments for human-to-robot handovers. Leveraging this result, we introduce a method that is trained with a human-in-the-loop via a two-stage teacher-student framework that uses motion and grasp planning, reinforcement learning, and self-supervision. We show significant performance gains over baselines on a simulation benchmark, sim-to-sim transfer and sim-to-real transfer. Video and code are available at https://handover-sim2real.github.io.


Glioblastoma is considered incurable, even with a combination of therapies (chemo and radiotherapy), and surgical resection. New therapeutic approaches are needed to improve the prognosis of patients with glioblastoma. In recent decades, research has focused on molecular biology of brain tumors. We examined the role of programmed cell death, apoptosis, through two microRNAs that act as possible pro and anti-apoptotic gene regulators. We evaluated the expression of the genes CASPASE-8 and C-FLIP and microRNAs miR126-5p and miR-873-5p in adhered cells (AC) and neurospheres (NS) from cell line U343, which were submitted to temozolomide (TMZ) and ionizing radiation (IR), isolated and associated (TMZ + IR). We concluded that microRNA-126 and 873 were differentially expressed as as a function of treatment regime in glioblastomas. The higher expression of the caspase-8 gene in adhered cells in the group treated with IR when compared to the other groups at time 48 h suggests that the ionizing radiation in the adhered cells of the glioblastoma cell line culture has apoptosis-inducing properties.


Background and Aim: Given the dramatic decline in the ability of test due to test anxiety, the goal of this study was to evaluate the relationship between test anxiety and academic performances in students. Materials and Methods: This descriptive-analytical study was performed on 216 Iranian nursing and midwifery students in 2011-2012, utilizing Sarason Anxiety Inventory, demographic checklist and the average mark of students in the period of midterm and final exam. Multinomial logistic regression analyses by reporting odds ratios and their 95% confidence intervals were performed by SPSS17 software to assess the relationship between test anxiety and academic performances. Results: Mild, moderate and sever test anxiety was observed in 30.6, 43.1 and 26.4 percent of students respectively. Test anxiety was significantly related to academic performance (average), major and city. Also, there was 52.9% decrease for odds of having sever anxiety (compared to mild anxiety) with 1 point increase in average (OR = 0.471, 95% CI = (0.298 - 0.745) and p = 0.001). Conclusions: Due to inverse relationship between test anxiety and academic performance, performing preventive programs such as in time treatment of anxiety, empowering the students to deal with anxiety and conducting consulting services for how to studying are very important. Consequently it would be a big step in decreasing the test anxiety and therefore in improving the academic performance.


From the Publisher:
The research described in this book addresses the semantic gap between logic programming languages and the architecture of parallel computers - the problem of how to implement logic programming languages on parallel computers in a way that can most effectively exploit the inherent parallelism of the language and efficiently utilize the parallel architecture of the computer.
Following a useful review of other research results, the first project explores the possibilities of implementing logic programs on MIMD, nonshared memory massively parallel computers containing 100 to 1,000 processing elements. The second investigates the possibility of implementing Prolog on a typical SIMD machine, called a Distributed Processor Array.
The author's objectives are to define a parallel computational paradigm (the Extended Cellular-Dataflow Model) that can be used to create a Parallel Prolog Abstract Machine as a general starting point for implementing logic programming languages on parallel computers, to exploit the different types of parallelism of these programs, to define an efficient parallel logic machine, to explore the possibilities of implementing logic programming languages on array processors, such as the DAP, to invent parallel implementation techniques for effectively executing Prolog on the DAP, and to define a parallel extension of Prolog that is able to utilize the processor aggregate of the DAP for effectively solving numerical subproblems within logic programs
Peter Kacsuk is with Multilogic Computing Ltd. of Budapest, Hungary.


Letter from John Stewart to C. B. Moore. He talks about his health and about getting older. His cough has stayed with him still. He says everyone else is well and mentions what Stewart Williams is doing. He talks about grand children. Cary Nimmo is in Nashville. He talks about the small pox that has broken out there. Dr. Hiran Moore died. He mentions all the kinds of doctors they have. He mentions a few more friends and how they are doing.


This book is a welcome consolidation and extension of the recent expanding debates on happiness and economics. Happiness and economics, as a new field for research, is now of pivotal interest particularly to welfare economists and psychologists. This Handbook provides an unprecedented forum for discussion of the economic issues relating to happiness. It reviews the more recent literature and offers the interested reader an insight into the vast scope of the field in terms of the theory, its applications and also experimental design. The Handbook also gives substantial indications as to the future direction of research in the field, with particular regard to policy applications and developing an economics of interpersonal relations which includes reciprocity and social interaction theory.


This paper presents Pasture, a secure messaging and logging library that enables rich mobile experiences by providing secure offline data access. Without trusting users, applications, operating systems, or hyper-visors, Pasture leverages commodity trusted hardware to provide two important safety properties: access-undeniability (a user cannot deny any offline data access obtained by his device without failing an audit) and verifiable-revocation (a user who generates a verifiable proof of revocation of unaccessed data can never access that data in the future). For practical viability, Pasture moves costly trusted hardware operations from common data access actions to uncommon recovery and checkpoint actions. We used Pasture to augment three applications with secure offline data access to provide high availability, rich functional-ity, and improved consistency. Our evaluation suggests that Pasture overheads are acceptable for these applications .


Leiomyosarcoma is a rare gynaecologic malignancy accounting for approximately 3-9 percent of all tumours derived from the uterus. Several case reports have noted elevated levels of CA-125 with leiomyosarcoma, though this is not typical. Here we report a case of a patient with leiomyosarcoma, presenting with a suspicious adnexal mass and clinical presentation suggestive of ovarian carcinoma.


In article the author reflects on the demand made last year by theatre managing director and critic Maciej Nowak, who called for a new 'popular theatre' and 'people's theatre' to be established in Poland so that theatre's vital mission in society can be restored. Taking as her starting point the idea of the 'people's theatre', once devised by Giorgio Strehler and now referenced by Nowak, Ewa Bal makes an attempt to look into how the idea of theatre meant for a broad, democratic audience was being implemented in Italy. She analyzes the examples of Teatro Piccolo di Milano (established in 1947) and various theatre initiatives which emerged on the rising tide of movements contesting the established social and cultural order – a sentiment conveyed by Dario Fo's engage theatre.


Abstract This paper examines the suitability for trustees and other investment fiduciaries of the class of investments known variously as "socially responsible", "ethical", "screened", "social" or "sustainable" investments, in the context of the legal duties imposed on fiduciaries to invest the fund entrusted to them in a prudent manner. The paper is intended to provide trustees and investment fiduciaries with the legal tools for appraising socially responsible investments, a task fraught with difficulties given the political sensitivities and controversies associated with such investments. An estimated $1.9 billion has been invested according to socially responsible investment r'SRI") strategies by Australian managed investment schemes and superannuation funds (as at 31 December 2001). 2 The value of funds under management is likely to increase substantially, in line with the growing perception on the part of Australian investors in managed investment schemes and members of superannuation funds that funds can be invested in a socially responsible manner without sacrificing financial performance. 3 Moreover, the adoption of SRI strategies by trustees and other investment fiduciaries has been tacitly advanced by the Financial Services Reform Act 2001 (Cth). This Act - pursuant to amendments introduced in the Senate by the Australian Democrats in August 2001 - requires ttproduct Disclosure Statements" issued in respect of managed investment funds and other investment products to disclose the extent to which labour standards or environmental, social or ethical considerations have been taken into account by the manager of the fund or product in selecting, retaining and realising investments. 4


In an earlier work by the authors, a new class of non-toxic and renewable bisphenols able to substitute bisphenol A and exhibiting potent antioxidant and antiradical activities has been prepared from ferulic acid through chemo-enzymatic pathways at bench scale. Scaling-up a process is not always trivial and straightforward. Technical feasibility of the synthesis and overall process yield must be assessed. All decisions should be justified regarding technical constraints and environmental sustainability. This work is focused on the kilolab production of bis-O-dihydroferuloyl 1,4-butanediol (BDF), one of the very promising renewable bisphenols. Recrystallization and organic diananofiltration in a single stage (SSD) and two stages (TSD) were compared taking into account the previous considerations. As a result, the synthesis and purification of BDF by recrystallization were successfully scaled-up at the kilolab scale, with a significant improvement in the overall yield obtained (from 63% at the labscale to 84% at the kilolab scale) for a purity grade of 95%. To assess organic diananofiltration as an alternative purification method, a set of 6 commercial organic solvent resistant membranes was evaluated. Starting from a solution (1 g L−1) containing 80% (w/w) of BDF and 20% (w/w) of an excess reagent (ethyl dihydroferulate, EtDFe), GMT-oNF1 membrane showed the ability to discriminate them. A two-stage membrane diafiltration (TSD) in cascade was proposed, with a drastic increase in the product yield observed (from 77% in a single stage to 95%) without compromising its final purity (95%). Since solvent recycling has a significant impact on the process sustainability, a nanofiltration step for solvent recovery was assessed. 90% of the solvent was recovered with a level of impurities lower than 1%. Recrystallization and all filtration-based processes were compared in terms of green metrics such as mass and solvent intensity and energy consumption. Results showed that only the integration of solvent recycling in filtration-based processes and the use of a concentrated starting solution (150 g L−1 instead of 1 g L−1) may lead to similar magnitude values observed for recrystallization. Thus, even being a less energetically intensive process (4-fold), the TSD is still a solvent intensive process (3-fold), which is inevitably reflected in a higher environmental footprint (evaluated by LCA).


Efficient use of multiple batteries is a practical problem with wide and growing application. The problem can be cast as a planning problem. We describe the approach we have adopted to modelling and solving this problem, seen as a Markov Decision Problem, building effective policies for battery switching in the face of stochastic load profiles. Our solution exploits and adapts several existing techniques from the planning literature and leads to the construction of policies that significantly outperform those that are currently in use and the best published solutions to the battery management problem. We achieve solutions that achieve more than 99\% efficiency compared with the theoretical limit and do so with far fewer battery switches than existing policies. We describe the approach in detail and provide empirical evaluation demonstrating its effectiveness.


[1] Measured turbulence power spectra, cospectra, and ogive curves from a shallow tidal flow were scaled using Monin-Obukhov similarity theory to test the applicability to a generic tidal flow of universal curves found from a uniform, neutrally stable atmospheric boundary layer (ABL). While curves from individual 10 min data bursts deviate significantly from similarity theory, averages over large numbers of sufficiently energetic bursts follow the general shape. However, there are several differences: (1) Variance in the measured curves was shifted toward higher frequencies, (2) at low frequencies, velocity spectra were significantly more energetic than theory while cospectra were weaker, and (3) spectral ratios of momentum flux normalized by turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) indicate decreased fluxes and/or elevated TKE levels. Several features of the turbulence structure may explain these differences. First, turbulent dissipation exceeded production, indicating nonequilibrium turbulence, possibly from advection of TKE. Indeed, using the production rate rather than dissipation markedly improves agreement in the inertial subrange. Second, spectral lag of the largest eddies due to inhomogeneous boundary conditions and decaying turbulence could explain spectral deviations from theory at low frequencies. Finally, since the largest eddies dominate momentum transfer, the consequence of the cospectra difference is that calculated ogive curves produced smaller total momentum fluxes compared to theory, partly because of countergradient fluxes. While ABL similarity scaling applied to marine bottom boundary layers (MBBLs) will produce curves with the general shape of the universal curves, care should be taken in determining details of turbulent energy and stress estimates, particularly in shallow and inhomogeneous MBBLs.


Inadequate quantity and quality of livestock feed is a persistent constraint to productivity for mixed crop-livestock farming in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. To assess on-farm niches of improved forages, demonstration trials and participatory on-farm research were conducted in four different sites. Forage legumes included Canavalia brasiliensis (CIAT 17009), Stylosanthes guianensis (CIAT 11995) and Desmodium uncinatum (cv. Silverleaf), while grasses were Guatemala grass ( Tripsacum andersonii ), Napier grass ( Pennisetum purpureum ) French Cameroon, and a local Napier line. Within the first six months, forage legumes adapted differently to the four sites with little differences among varieties, while forage grasses displayed higher variability in biomass production among varieties than among sites. Farmers' ranking largely corresponded to herbage yield from the first cut, preferring Canavalia, Silverleaf desmodium and Napier French Cameroon. Choice of forages and integration into farming systems depended on land availability, soil erosion prevalence and livestock husbandry system. In erosion prone sites, 55–60%of farmers planted grasses on field edges and 16–30% as hedgerows for erosion control. 43% of farmers grew forages as intercrop with food crops such as maize and cassava, pointing to land scarcity. Only in the site with lower land pressure, 71% of farmers grew legumes as pure stand. When land tenure was not secured and livestock freely roaming, 75% of farmers preferred to grow annual forage legumes instead of perennial grasses. Future research should develop robust decision support for spatial and temporal integration of forage technologies into diverse smallholder cropping systems and agro-ecologies.


A sustained increase in gross rail loads and cumulative freight tonnages on heavy haul railways, as well as increased interest in high- and higher-speed passenger rail development, is placing an increasing demand on railway infrastructure and its components. Rail seat deterioration (RSD) refers to the degradation of the material at the contact interface between the sleeper's rail seat and the pad that protects the bearing area of the sleeper. RSD continues to be identified as one of the primary factors limiting concrete sleeper service life, particularly in heavy haul operations. This paper includes results from two laboratory experiments that used test setups and protocols and were designed to isolate the abrasion mechanism. The first experiment was used to acquire quantitative and qualitative data related to the frictional properties of rail pad materials sliding on a concrete surface under various normal loads. The second experiment quantified the abrasion resistance of rail seat materials. Results confirmed that abrasion is a feasible RSD mechanism and that the frictional characteristics at the contact interface between the rail pad and concrete rail seat appear to have an impact on the transfer of forces and relative movement, and thus the abrasion mechanism. Also, the abrasion resistance of the rail seat's surface can be improved by grinding off the top cement paste layer to expose a hard aggregate surface and also by applying an epoxy coating to the surface. Increasing the service life of railway track components will facilitate capacity building on heavy haul, mixed-traffic and passenger railways around the world by reducing maintenance costs and decreasing the demand for maintenance windows.


The study of international environmental regime effectiveness is contextualized in globalization. In this classificatory and comparative study, the cases of the ozone depletion regime and climate change regime are evaluated for their level of effectiveness. Regime effectiveness is conceptualized in a three-fold indicator operationalization of "output," "outcome," and "impact." This multiple-measurement approach to regime effectiveness facilitates a robustness check of the levels of effectiveness of the ozone depletion regime and the climate change regime. The study employs an analytical framework based on the standards of collective optimum and goal attainment. The classification of regime effectiveness through this framework provides nuanced findings for each regime depending on which operationalization of effectiveness is applied. The comparison between the regimes finds that they are similar in terms of the outcome indicator, but vary significantly on the output and impact indicators, with the ozone regime scoring a high level of effectiveness and the climate regime ranking a low level of effectiveness. The findings emphasize areas of institutional design and scientific overlap between the regimes that could be used as a platform for a future explanatory study.


Tropical Indonesian rainforest is managed using an Intensive Forest Management System (IFMS). The main activity is selective logging for timber harvesting and intensive line planting to enrich the standing stock. These activities signifi cantly alter the forest canopy cover and the hydrologic response of catchments, including peak discharge, direct runoff and soil erosion. Understanding the hydrologic effects in an IFMS is helpful to develop a forest management strategy. This study investigated the impact of vegetation changes on runoff and soil erosion characteristics in different periods of an IFMS resulting from their respective forestry treatments. This study was conducted in a natural tropical rainforest at Bukit Baka Experimental Catchment, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. Runoff and soil erosion characteristics were investigated in three small catchments, a virgin forest catchment (C1), a 10-year-old line plantation catchment (C2) and a 1-year-old line plantation catchment (C3). The IFMS has increased in large scale of open forests and exposed the bare soil, especially in the early years after forest operation. This condition has changed drastically in the catchment hydrologic responses. The increase in discharge, direct runoff, and suspended sediment discharge in the C3 was higher than those in the C2 and C1, particularly for large rainfall events. The proportion of annual rainfall as water yield in the C1, C2, and C3 was 27, 30, and 41%, respectively. The annual suspended sediment yield in the C1, C2, and C3 was 0.15, 3.6, and 14.9 t ha −1 y −1 , respectively. The results showed that the magnitude of runoff and soil erosion depends on the interaction among the rainfall, forest cover changes, forest treatment applied and catchment characteristics. Ten years after forest operation, forest cover has recovery close to natural condition, but still there are differences in hydrological response. Controlling soil erosion during logging activities by reducing the impact of logging and combining ecologically based vegetation structure design is an effective way to control runoff and soil erosion.


An efficient AgOTf-catalyzed sequential reaction involving the oxidative ring-opening of aziridines by DMSO and aza-Michael addition has been developed. A series of 2,3-dihydro-4(1H)-isoquinolones were afforded in moderate to good yields by the formation of one new C[double bond, length as m-dash]O bond and one new C-N bond. The features of this sequential reaction include high bonding efficiency, use of a catalytic amount of catalysts, a broad substrate scope and mild conditions. This methodology provides a good choice for constructing the libraries of 2,3-dihydro-4(1H)-isoquinolones.


A novel agent based, artificial life model, for the evolution of mimicry is presented. This model is a predator-prey co-evolution scenario where pattern representation phenotype is simulated with Cellular Automata, while behaviors of pattern recognition is configured with Hopfield Network. A visual three dimensional toroidal cube is used to construct a universe in which agents have complete freedom of mobility, genetic representation of behavior and reproduction capability to evolve new behaviors in successive generations. These agents are classified into categories of predator and prey species. Genome of prey species control their mobility and palatability, while 2D Cellular Automata (CA) is used to represent a pattern, where the rule to generate the CA is also genetically represented. Through evolution, successive generations of prey species develop new patterns to represent them both visually and to the predators. Predators are agents with the primary purpose of providing selection pressure for the evolution of mimicry. They are equipped with Hopfield Network memory to recognize new CA pattern and make intelligent decisions to consume the prey based on their level of palatability. Using the above construction of ideas, successful emulation of the natural process of mimicry is achieved. Also complex behavior pattern of Batesian and Mullerian mimicry is simulated and studied.


Purpose: There is ongoing debate about whether testing low-risk genes at multiple loci will be useful in clinical care and public health. We investigated the usefulness of multiple genetic testing using simulated data.Methods: Usefulness was evaluated by the area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve (AUC), which indicates the accuracy of genetic profiling in discriminating between future patients and nonpatients. The AUC was investigated in relation to the number of genes assumed to be involved, the risk allele frequency, the odds ratio of the risk genotypes, and to the proportion of variance explained by genetic factors as an approximation of the heritability of the disease.Results: We demonstrated that a high (AUC > 0.80) to excellent discriminative accuracy (AUC > 0.95) can be obtained by simultaneously testing multiple susceptibility genes. A higher discriminative accuracy is obtained when genetic factors play a larger role in the disease, as indicated by the proportion of explained variance. The maximum discriminative accuracy of future genetic profiling can be estimated at present from the heritability and prevalence of disease.Conclusions: Genetic profiling may have the potential to identify individuals at higher risk of disease depending on the prevalence and heritability of the disease.


BACKGROUND
A secular trend towards a younger age of puberty onset has been reported in Chilean girls.

AIM
To evaluate the age of onset of puberty and prevalence of early puberty in Chilean boys.

MATERIAL AND METHODS
A pediatric endocrinologist examined 319 children attending schools in central Santiago. Pubertal development was assessed by testicular volume (TV) and genital inspection (GI) using Tanner graduation. Precocious and early puberty development was diagnosed if TV ≥ 4 ml or GI > stage 2 occurred in boys younger than 9 years and at 9-10 years of age, respectively.

RESULTS
Pubertal onset occurred at 10.2 ± 1.5 years according to TV and at 11.1 ± 1.6 years according to GI (p < 0.01). Before the age of nine, 15.2% of children had a VT ≥ 4 ml, 3% had genital changes in GI and only 3% had both changes simultaneously. Early puberty was observed in 23.8% of children according to TV and 9.5% according to GI. However, no child of less than 11 years old had a TV ≥ 4 ml, genital changes and pubic hair simultaneously. Late pubertal stages occurred at the same age according to both criteria used. Body mass index z score was not associated with the age of pubertal onset.

CONCLUSIONS
Testicular enlargement occurs one year earlier than changes in genitalia according to inspection. Testicular growth, but not late stages of puberty, are occurring one year earlier than previously reported in Chile 10 years ago.


This paper explores optimal fiscal policy in an overlapping-generations general-equilibrium model under uncertainty and the impact on optimal policy of the introduction of a type of policy stickiness intended to account for the stylized fact that major reforms happen infrequently. In general, our analysis suggests not only that action should not be delayed, but further that action should actually be accelerated. The added realism of restrictions on the frequency of policy changes alters this result in two ways. The prospect of being unable to set policy in the future occasions even more precautionary saving today, if the government acts. However, the government may also choose not to set policy, and its inaction range is very asymmetric. Because the impact of its policies on the current elderly cannot be reversed in the future, the government is much more likely to choose inaction when fiscal tightening is called for. Thus, the optimal policy response over time might best be characterized by great caution in general, but punctuated by occasional periods of apparent irresponsibility.


Hypothalamic‐pituitary‐adrenal (HPA) axis responses following naloxone administration have been assumed to provide a measure of opioid receptor activity. Employing positron emission tomography (PET) using the mu opioid receptor (MOR) selective ligand [11C] carfentanil (CFN), we demonstrated that cortisol responses to naloxone administration were negatively correlated with MOR availability. In this study, we examined whether naloxone‐induced cortisol and adrenocorticotropin (ACTH) responses in 15 healthy control and 20 recently detoxified alcohol‐dependent subjects correlated with delta opioid receptor (DOR) availability in 15 brain regions using the DOR‐selective ligand [11C] methyl‐naltrindole (MeNTL) and PET imaging. The day after the scan, cortisol responses to cumulative doses of naloxone were determined. Peak cortisol and ACTH levels and area under the cortisol and ACTH curve did not differ by group. There were negative relationships between cortisol area under curve to naloxone and [11C] MeNTL‐binding potential (BPND) in the ventral striatum, anterior cingulate, fusiform cortices, temporal cortex, putamen and a trend in the hypothalamus of healthy control subjects. However, in alcohol‐dependent subjects, cortisol responses did not correlate with [11C]MeNTL BPND in any brain region. Plasma ACTH levels did not correlate with [11C]MeNTL BPND in either group. The study demonstrates that naloxone provides information about individual differences in DOR availability in several mesolimbic structures. The data also show that the HPA axis is intimately connected with mesolimbic stress pathways through opioidergic neurotransmission in healthy subjects but this relationship is disrupted during early abstinence in alcohol‐dependent subjects.


This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of replacing fishmeal with Spirulina spp. in four different levels 0%, 5%, 10%, 15% and 20%, as T1, T2, T3, T4and T5 respectively on Carcass means weight (CMW) with head and without peripheral organs and CMW without head and peripheral organs, where the third and fifth treatment give the higher value in CMW with head and without peripheral organs, and the fifth treatment obtain significant differences in CMW without head and peripheral organs as compared to other treatment. When regarding the chemical composition in which the higher significant difference found in the T3 and T5 in crude protein, the T5 significantly differ in crude fat as compared with other treatments.


Chinese literature has been the slave of politics at least since 1948 and especially during the Cultural Revolution. So repressed and convoluted is most Chinese literature that the West cannot read it as literature at all but rather as sociological and political texts. Professor Duke believes this has changed enough since 1977 to permit genuine literary analysis. This book surveys and analyzes the most important literary events in the PRC from 1977 to 1982. Chapter I covers the significant changes in the Chinese Party line on literature and art during this period and thus provides the backdrop for literary and artistic endeavor. Subsequent chapters deal with the critique of Chinese literature by China's own writers, the neo-realistic fiction of 1979-80, the nonfiction works of a courageous investigative reporter for "The People's Daily", and the theme of humanism and its treatment in the works of Bai Hua and Dai Houying. The final chapter discusses the post-Mao generation of young writers, who are trying to create works that go beyond narrowly ideological boundaries of the past and reach toward a true modern Chinese literature.


This paper develops algorithms for the pricing of discretely sampled barrier, lookback, and hindsight options and discretely exercisable American options. Under the Black-Scholes framework, the pricing of these options can be reduced to evaluation of a series of convolutions of the Gaussian distribution and a known function. We compute these convolutions efficiently using the double-exponential integration formula and the fast Gauss transform. The resulting algorithms have computational complexity of O(nN), where the number of monitoring/exercise dates is n and the number of sample points at each date is N, and our results show the error decreases exponentially with N. We also extend the approach and provide results for Merton's lognormal jump-diffusion model.


Just over a century ago, Orville and Wilbur Wright achieved the first powered flight, which lasted 12 seconds, having travelled 120 feet; less than the length of a Boeing 747. This was the shape of things to come and between 1950 and 2011 the number of international arrivals has grown from 25 million to 980 million. With continued growth predicted to continue in 2012, albeit at a somewhat slower rate, international tourist arrivals are on track to reach the milestone one billion mark later this year. Despite various terrorist attacks and natural disasters, such as the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami, travellers' confidence to explore the world continues unabated. Growth in travel occurred in particular to Africa by 7%, Asia and the Pacific by 6%, and international tourist arrivals worldwide are expected to grow by a further 3 to 4% in 2012, reaching the historic one billion mark by the end of this year. The specialty of travel medicine has evolved rapidly as a result of the massive increase in international travel facilitated by the introduction of economical and fast air transport across the world, the construction of transcontinental road and rail connections, giant ship cruisers, travel to and exploration of regions and areas that were previously inaccessible or remote, and the explosive increase in tourism. Concomitant with the predicted increase in international travel, this also means exposure of travellers to genes, bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites and other health hazards in the new environment, and the transfer of genes and microorganisms across continents to the host population. This can result potentially, in public health concerns in host countries as exemplified by the transmission and subsequent spread of the infectious diseases, SARS and H1N1. Travel medicine extends well beyond diseases of warm climates and the exigencies of travel and tropical life. It includes exposure to new environments and new cultures, and new hazards ranging from high-altitude and deep-sea environments to medical problems of cosmic radiation and space travel; emerging and re-emerging infections; safe food, safe water, safe clothing; natural and accidental disasters; issues such as jet lag and tourist risk of violence and importantly, the avoidance of accidents which is the most common cause of morbidity and mortality in travellers. Extensive knowledge of current and new vaccines and of prophylactic and therapeutic drugs is essential. These include malaria chemoprophylaxis, strategies for emergency standby treatment for malaria and drugs for the treatment of travellers' diarrhoea. The re-emergence of infections such as diphtheria and syphilis in parts of Eastern Europe, the epidemiology of drugresistant malaria, extensive outbreaks of dengue fever and antigenic shifts of influenza leading to pandemic influenza, are examples of the imperative need for rapid access to accurate information in order to protect the health of those who travel. …


This paper presents new evidence on intergenerational mobility in the top of the income and earnings distribution. Using a large dataset of matched father-son pairs in Sweden, we find that intergenerational transmission is very strong in the top, more so for income than for earnings. In the extreme top (top 0.1 percent) income transmission is remarkable with an IG elasticity above 0.9. We also study potential transmission mechanisms and find that sons' IQ, non-cognitive skills and education are all unlikely channels in explaining this strong transmission. Within the top percentile, increases in fathers' income are, if anything, negatively associated with these variables. Wealth, on the other hand, has a significantly positive association. Our results suggest that Sweden, known for having relatively high intergenerational mobility in general, is a society where transmission remains strong in the very top of the distribution and that wealth is the most likely channel.


The business model concept is useful in analysing and communicating the essence of a business, and for predicting the implications of electronic commerce on an existing business. As useful as the concept is, there is a lack of consensus among researchers on the definition of a business model, and on the constructs of the business model. The aim of this paper is to propose a conceptual framework for business model research that provides a basis for theory development and debate. Without such a conceptual framework business model research will progress in an ad hoc fashion and be directed by the immediate needs of individual researchers. The financial reporting conceptual framework developed over many years by the accounting profession, is used as a mould for the hierarchically structured, business model conceptual framework that is the subject of this paper. In addition the notion of primacy of concept is used to determine the business model elements and architecture. It is envisaged that the business model conceptual framework will guide future research and that it will be reviewed and refined, just as the financial reporting conceptual framework has been reviewed and refined over decades.


This essay surveys a century of debate on the Marx-nature question. It seeks to expose, critique and reformulate a set of foundational assumptions which, it is argued, have informed this debate. Three main arguments are put forward. First, it is suggested that successive attempts to expound a Marxian theory of nature have see-sawed between naturalistic and social constructionist positions. Second, as such many Marxist theories of nature are shown (ironically) to have much in common with forms of bourgeois and anti-bourgeois environmentalism they otherwise oppose. Finally, as a way out of the impasse of Marxian thinking on nature, a conception of the production of nature is tentatively put forward.


We present a practical strategy to optimize a set of Hybrid Monte Carlo parameters in simulations of QCD and QCD-like theories. We specialize to the case of mass-preconditioning, with multiple time-step Omelyan integrators. Starting from properties of the shadow Hamiltonian we show how the optimal setup for the integrator can be chosen once the forces and their variances are measured, assuming that those only depend on the mass-preconditioning parameter.


Italy is faced with increasing pressures to reduce the amount of refuse disposed of in landfills. Compost represents a contribution to solve this problem. To give information for the correct management of composts as nitrogen fertiliser, it is necessary to assess their nitrogen release rhythm compared with the crop needs. This semi-field trial investigated the performance of three different composts coming from food processing industry residues and municipal waste (C1), green cuttings residues and the organic fraction of municipal waste solid residues (C2), municipal sludge and green cuttings residues (C3) as nitrogen source on a two-year crop succession. The influence of compost used as N-fertilizer was studied in lysimeters over a period of 2 years (2003-2005). The experiment was carried out at the Experimental Farm of Padova University Faculty of Agricultural Sciences on potato (cv. Agata) and two catch crops (ryegrass - Lolium multiflorum Lam., cereal rye - Secale cereale L.), using three types of compost as unique nitrogen source, compared with an unfertilized control. The compost N-level was 200 kg ha−1 per year, applied prior to the potato crop. The experiment had a completely randomized design, with 12 replications. Nitric nitrogen concentration was measured every one-two weeks in the soil throughout the trial period. Crop yields were measured and samples of produce were taken to be analysed for N concentration and calculate N uptake. With the only exception of compost derived from food processing industry residues and municipal waste (C1), immediately after the first application, compost fertilization did not increase the nitrogen concentration in the soil compared to the unfertilized treatment. Potato yield, in both seasons, was increased by C1 application, while C2 and C3 did not induce significant differences with respect to the control. No significant differences in yield and N uptake were found in catch crops. Taking the whole crop succession, the application of compost maintained the apparent N balance (input-uptake) at around −100 kg ha−1, while it exceeded 400 kg of deficit without fertilization. The compost nitrogen mineralization rate was estimated at around 36-44%, without differences among compost types.


Abstract Instrumental variable (IV) methods are widely used to identify causal effects in models with endogenous explanatory variables. Often the instrument exclusion restriction that underlies the validity of the usual IV inference is suspect; that is, instruments are only plausibly exogenous. We present practical methods for performing inference while relaxing the exclusion restriction. We illustrate the approaches with empirical examples that examine the effect of 401(k) participation on asset accumulation, price elasticity of demand for margarine, and returns to schooling. We find that inference is informative even with a substantial relaxation of the exclusion restriction in two of the three cases.


In his 'pains and Places' (Philosophy 78, 2003), John Hyman is right that pains are not located in their causes or effects but in the hurting limbs. However, his position may be consonant with Wittgensteinian expressivism or the view that consciousness is the locus of pain: In producing its own parts, a living organism 'autopoietically' sustains itself as an activity functionally present in its limbs. It thus supplies the biological basis for pain consciousness as something wholly present in organs that hurt.