A visual target designation and tracking system is being developed within the context of the Autonomous Scout Rotorcraft Testbed Project at Georgia Tech. This paper describes both the algorithms and the hardware being used for this purpose by the Mission Equipment Package Technology Area Team. Preliminary results using two simple tracking algorithms are presented.


We test whether different empirical methods give different results when evaluating job-search assistance programs. Budgetary problems at the Dutch unemployment insurance (UI) administration in March 2010, caused a sharp drop in the availability of these programs. Using administrative data provided by the UI administration, we evaluate the effect of the program using (1) the policy discontinuity as a quasi-experiment, (2) conventional matching methods, and (3) the timing-of-events model. All three methods use the same data to consider the same program in the same setting, and also yield similar results. The program reduces job finding during the first six months after enrollment. At longer durations, the quasi-experimental estimates are not significantly different from zero, while the non-experimental methods show a small negative effect.


Competition for coastal land use and overexploitation have reduced or degraded mangrove coverage throughout much of their distribution, especially in South-east Asia. Timber production was the initial motivation for early mangrove reforestation projects. More recently, benefits from protection against erosion and extreme weather events and direct improvements in livelihoods and food security are perceived as justifications for such restoration efforts. This study examines the socioeconomic impacts of a community-led reforestation project in the Philippines through a survey of the local fishers. Revenues from mangrove fisheries, tourism and timber result in an annual benefit to the community of US$ 315 ha−1 yr−1. This figure is likely to be considerably more if the contribution of the mangrove to the coastal catch of mangrove-associated species is included. This estimate only includes direct benefits to the community from mangroves, and not intangible benefits such as coastal protection, which paradoxically is perceived by the community as one of the most important functions. More than 90% of all fishers, regardless of where they fished, thought the mangrove provided protection from storms and typhoons and acted as a nursery site and should be protected. Those fishing only in the mangrove perceived more benefits from the mangrove and were prepared to pay more to protect it than those fishing outside. This study concludes that replanting mangroves can have a significant economic impact on the lives of coastal communities. Acknowledgement of the value of replanted mangroves compared with other coastal activities and the benefits they bring to the more economically-vulnerable coastal dwellers should support better informed policy and decision-making with regard to coastal habitat restoration.


Against a background of institutional fragmentation and lack of coordination among the respective role players, the notion of co-management of natural resources has emerged in many countries around the world as the most promising institutional prospect for resolving resource conflicts and building partnerships in conservation and management between local actors and government authorities. In South Africa, like elsewhere, the fragmentation and lack of coordination among the various executing agencies represent a significant hurdle and a barrier to successfully integrated environmental governance. Following international trends, and supported by the constitutional vision of cooperative governance and the transformation agenda of the government – which created an openness to new and alternative service-delivery mechanisms – innovative new networked regional and community-based natural resource governance systems emerged in the late 1990s. These new forms of cooperative management of natural resources, and in particular the role of networks and partnerships, have led to a new and growing general interest in evaluating cooperative environmental governance systems. Following a broadly institutionalist approach, which is useful for studying situations of governance where policy formulation and implementation involve a wide range of actors, a diagnostic tool was developed to facilitate opportunities for organisational and social learning. The perceived usefulness of having such a tool was put to the test by applying it to two case studies in the Western Cape, namely the Kogelberg Biosphere Reserve and the Olifants-Doorn Catchment Management Agency. In this article the characteristics of two evolving environmental governance systems are mapped, using the framework to assess


This thesis deals with the implementation of quantum channels using linear optics. We begin with overviews of some important concepts in both quantum information and quantum optics. First, we discuss the quantum bit and describe the evolution of the states via quantum channels. We then discuss both quantum state and process tomography, methods for how to determine which states and operations we are experimentally implementing in the lab. Second, we discuss topics in quantum optics such the generation of single photons, polarization entanglement, and the construction of an entangling gate. The first experiment is the implementation of a quantum damping channel, which intentionally can add a specific type and amount of decohering noise to a photonic qubit. Specifically, we realized a class of quantum channels which contains both the amplitudedamping channel and the bit-flip channel, and did so with a single, static, optical setup. Many quantum channels, and some gates, can only be implemented probabilistically when using linear optics and postselection. Our main result is that the optical setup achieves the optimal success probability for each channel. Using a novel ancilla-assisted tomography, we characterize each case of the channel, and find process fideilities of 0.98± 0.01 for the amplitude-damping channel and 0.976± 0.009 for the bit-flip. The second experiment is an implementation of a protocol for quantum computing on encrypted data. The protocol provides the means for a client with very limited quantum power to use a server's quantum computer while maintaining privacy over the data. We perform a quantum process tomography for each gate in a universal set, showing that only when the proper decryption key is used on the output states, which is hidden from the server, then the action of the quantum gate is recovered. Otherwise, the gate acts as the completely depolarizing channel.


Learn Game Design, Prototyping, and Programming with Todays Leading Tools: Unity and C# Award-winning game designer and professor Jeremy Gibson has spent the last decade teaching game design and working as an independent game developer. Over the years, his most successful students have always been those who effectively combined game design theory, concrete rapid-prototyping practices, and programming skills. Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping, and Development is the first time that all three of these disciplines have been brought together into a single book. It is a distillation of everything that Gibson has learned teaching hundreds of game designers and developers in his years at the #1 university games program in North America. It fully integrates the disciplines of game design and computer programming and helps you master the crucial practice of iterative prototyping using Unity. As the top game engine for cross-platform game development, Unity allows you to write a game once and deliver it to everything from Windows, OS X, and Linux applications to webpages and all of the most popular mobile platforms. If you want to develop games, you need strong experience with modern best practices and professional tools. Theres no substitute. Theres no shortcut. But you can get what you need in this book. COVERAGE INCLUDES In-depth tutorials for eight different game prototypes Developing new game design concepts Moving quickly from design concepts to working digital prototypes Improving your designs through rapid iteration Playtesting your games and interpreting the feedback that you receive Tuning games to get the right game balance and game feel Developing with Unity, todays best engine for independent game development Learning C# the right way Using Agile and Scrum to efficiently organize your game design and development process Debugging your game code Getting into the highly competitive, fast-changing game industry


This study investigated the impact on Year 10 students' attitudes towards mathematics when learning mathematics in a sporting context. A closed ended, self-reported questionnaire with Likert type statements was used to collect data. Individual statements were analysed by comparing the percentage of students agreeing or disagreeing pre-teaching and post-teaching. In this study, students' attitude comprised of their confidence, awareness of mathematics and engagement. This study suggests that when students learn in a sporting context, their confidence, seeing the importance of mathematics and engagement increases. The paper also considers implications for teachers, teacher educators and for scholars who are interested in further research.


NH4+ and NO3− seasonal uptake by the phytoplankton and <2−µm communities were investigated in the Menai Strait using 15N tracer techniques. Based on O2‐determined primary production and DIN metabolism measurements, five phases were defined: (1) prebloom (before April), (2) primary net autotrophic (April and May), (3) net heterotrophic (June), (4) secondary net autotrophic (July and August), and (5) regenerative (remainder of calendar year). The inorganic N nutrition of phytoplankton and <2–µm organisms was NO3−−based in spring and NH4+ ‐based in summer and autumn, reflecting varying ambient concentrations of these nutrients superimposed on a general preference for NH4+ by both communities. The percent contribution of picoplankton to the total NH4+ uptake was higher than to nitrate (seasonal averages of 50 ± 14% and 32 ± 24%, respectively). The contribution of the <2–µm size fraction was lowest during both net autotrophic phases (4–13%) and highest during the net heterotrophic, prebloom and regenerative phase (70–84%). A strong correlation between percent NH4+ and NO3− assimilation by the <2–µm size fraction and bacteria abundance between May and July suggests significant bacterial uptake at this time. Bacterial DIN utilization was estimated by correcting uptake rates by the <2−µm fraction, for picophytoplankton presence. During the primary net autotrophic phase, inferred bacterial uptake constituted 13 and 34% of total NO3− and NH4+ uptake, respectively. In the net heterotrophic phase, it amounted to ca. 70% of the total DIN uptake, with no differences between nutrients. Competition between bacteria and phytoplankton for depleted DIN could have contributed to the phytoplankton bloom termination.


The scour depth that develops around bridge piers is known to be related to flow intensity, particle size of bed sediment, and pier dimensions. Earlier approaches to this issue have mainly relied on empirical formulas. Even numerical simulations have not been so successful due to problems associated with interactions between water flow and streambed morphology. This necessitates the application of an artificial intelligence (AI)-type approach to understanding the effects of local scour around bridge piers. Although previous studies reported that AI-based models are better predictors, they do not predict field-scale local scour well. Motivated by this, the present study reports on the use of data quality assessment with an artificial neural network (ANN) model for predicting field-scale scour depth around bridge piers. Both univariate and multivariate methods were applied and the predicted results are compared. For the multivariate method, the Euclidean distance method and Mahalanobis distance method were used and the predicted results are compared. The ANN model was first trained and validated using laboratory data and the model was applied to data obtained in laboratory experiments. The model was then applied to field data. Quantitative descriptions are given on how much the data quality assessment improves predictions based on the use of the ANN model.


The traditional economic approach to tax evasion does not appear to be particularly successful in explaining the extent of tax compliance. We argue instead that a psychological tax contract which establishes a fiscal exchange between the state and the citizens shapes tax compliance to a large extent. In that respect, a case study of Switzerland is useful because the small size of the cantons and their direct democratic political systems procedurally establish a close exchange relationship between taxpayers and tax authorities. In this paper, evidence is discussed on how tax evasion and tax morale in Switzerland evolved over time. In addition, the impact of economic, legal, socio-demographic, psychological and institutional factors on Swiss tax evasion is discussed.


Rotavirus diarrhea causes a disproportionate amount of the world's childhood mortality. Approximately 611,000 children die each year due to complications of rotavirus infections. In this study we evaluate rotavirus vaccination using four different methods. We look at the epidemiological history of the disease and vaccination against the disease, then we evaluate the effectiveness of vaccination first using a cost-benefit analysis, then using an ordinary differential equations based model, and last through computer simulations in Matlab. We do a traditional cost-benefit analysis as suggested by the Public Health Service of the United States to evaluate the costs and benefits of implementing a rotavirus vaccination program in Egypt with the RotaRix vaccine. Our results show that given the current standards of care in Egypt, it would be more cost-beneficial for Egypt not to use the rotavirus vaccine. We formulate a model of the spread of rotavirus diarrhea based on a continuous time ordinary differential equations model of two viral strains of influenza. We expand this influenza model to include the case of co-infection. We further expand the original model to explore the effects of vaccination. We used computer simulations to further analyze the effect of vaccination as a control method. These simulations show that the spread of the disease is highly sensitive to the levels of cross-immunity between the strains, and the level of vaccination in the population. We found that the dynamics observed in the new model are similar to the dynamics observed in the original model. We found the minimum levels of vaccination necessary in this model to eradicate severe rotavirus disease and minimum levels of cross-immunity between the strains.


One of the management of azoospermia is utilizing Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) by Intra-Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI) with sperm obtained from the epididymis or directly from testis. In some conditions such as hypogonadism or undescended testis, the sperm are not successfully obtained. Thus, it is considered to perform Spermatogonial Stem Cells (SSCs) culture to restore men fertility. The objective of this work was to systematically review and discuss articles dealing with the subject of SSCs as a current update of azoospermic management. To this purpose, a computerized search of PubMed database was performed on the general term such as "male infertility", "azoospermia" and "human spermatogonial stem cells" and the articles obtained were evaluated and collected. SSCs are adult stem cells which capable to self-renewal, differentiate, transmit the material genetic to offspring. SSCs have a vital role in spermatogenesis and in vitro proliferation which could be utilized for azoospermic management. Some alternative of SSCs utilization followed by ICSI in men with azoospermia, the formation of artificial sperms and auto-transplantation of in vitro proliferated SSCs, are under the preclinical phase of development. SSCs utilization is the proper approach to manage the azoospermic infertile men who sperm couldn't be obtained. The procedure of SSCs utilization such as culture method, including isolation, identification and tumor forming, should be investigated prior to clinical application.


City rats are among the most important but least-studied wildlife in urban environments. Their presence, compounded by the rate of human urbanization and effects of climate change, frequently bring potentially infectious organisms into contact with people and other wildlife. Urban rat control, however, is ineffective, largely because so little is known about their ecology. It is therefore, essential that we exploit new research avenues if we are to better understand and manage these risks. The hallmark of robust science includes replication at the level of the individual and urban landscape, allowing researchers to study behaviors and populations over time. However, unlike most wildlife, urban rats are confined to environments where there are numerous incentives to exterminate, but few reasons to study them. Thus, gaining access to rats presents an exceptional challenge for researchers. To address this problem, we first identified prevailing knowledge gaps in the literature and then used a five-step 'wicked problem' framework to define the issues, identify stakeholders, and systematically examine options for remediation. We discuss pest management professionals (PMPs) as an important conduit between private enterprise and the research community and suggest that businesses supporting research be rewarded through part-compensation, or allowances (credits) from the health department. This allows urban rats to be studied like all other ecological research subjects—in the field, while animals are alive. Appropriate incentives could enable scientists and PMPs to work together toward 'smart' ecologically based rodent management, hereby enhancing options for control while preparing for the challenges of continued urbanization.


American corporate law scholarship has witnessed the waxing and waning of a variety of grand theories about the globalization of corporate law in the past two decades. The first idea was that harmonization of European company law might lead to a productive form of uniformity. The second was that American law was out of step with that of other leading industrialized nations, and perhaps we should look to their models, generally involving controlling shareholders, for guidance. The third idea was that investors and corporations face common problems regardless of local law, and in a competitive environment one might expect a convergence of corporate laws through market forces that sought the most efficient solutions to these common problems. This kind of convergence has only occurred at a few margins, and seems unlikely to occur in such a way that choice of law rules in corporate law would become less relevant. Indeed, the fourth wave of scholarship in this field now seeks to explain why significant differences persist.


This project proposes a new algorithm to generate reference voltage for a distribution static compensator (DSTATCOM) operating in voltagecontrol mode. The proposed scheme exhibits several advantages compared to traditional voltage-controlled DSTATCOM where the reference voltage is arbitrarily taken as1.0 p.u. The proposed scheme ensures that unity power factor (UPF) is achieved at the load terminal during nominal operation, which is not possible in the traditional method. Also, the compensator injects lower currents and, therefore, reduces losses in the feeder and voltage-source inverter. Further, a saving in the rating of DSTATCOM is achieved which increases its capacity to mitigate voltage sag. Nearly UPF is maintained, while regulating voltage at the load terminal, during load change. The state-space model of DSTATCOM is incorporated with the deadbeat predictive controller for fast load voltage regulation during voltage disturbances. With these features, this scheme allows DSTATCOM to tackle power-quality issues by providing power factor correction, harmonic elimination, load balancing, and voltage regulation based on the load requirement. Simulation and experimental results are presented to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed algorithm.


To deepen understanding of the relation between economic development and energy demand, this study estimates the relations between per-capita GDP5 and per-capita energy consumption in major economic sectors. Panel data covering up to 123 nations are employed, and measurement problems are treated both in dataset construction and in estimation. Time and country fixed effects are assumed, and flexible forms for income effects are employed. There are substantial differences among sectors in the structure of country, time, and income effects. In particular, the household sector's share of aggregate energy consumption tends to fall with income, the share of transportation tends to rise, and the share of industry follows an inverse-U pattern.


We evaluated relationships between (1) salinity and species richness and (2) frontal zones and community structure for the rocky intertidal macrobenthic community of the Uruguayan coast. A large-scale sampling design (extent ~500 km) covering 9 rocky shores across 3 intertidal levels was performed between September and November 2002. The linear relationship between salinity and species richness (minimum at the freshwater extreme) and the lack of correlation between variation in salinity and richness rejected two previous empirical models, explaining variations in species richness along the salinity gradient. Other factors (e.g. turbidity) may explain this discrepancy. The estuarine front defined two communities—freshwater and estuarine-marine—differing in species composition and richness. The freshwater community was characterised by low richness and few individuals confined to crevices or tide pools, and must be structured by physical processes (e.g. desiccation); the estuarine-marine community, with individuals occupying almost all available substrata, must be structured by both physical and biological processes. A marine front, separating estuarine and marine habitats, had a weak effect on community structure although estuarine and marine assemblages differed according to species characterising different functional groups. We conclude that the position of the estuarine frontal zones is important for explaining large-scale patterns of community structure in the study area.


The white-tailed eagle is a formerly threatened raptor that is commonly used as a flagship and indicator species in conservation work. This thesis uses molecular genetic methods to study sex determination of nestlings, genetic variability, population structure and phylogeography of the white-tailed eagle.Fourteen microsatellite markers were developed and tested for the white-tailed eagle.A method to sex white-tailed eagle nestlings in the field is presented. The method is based on just one tarsus measure, and is suitable for situations where a single person is handling the nestlings alone in a treetop.Most European white-tailed eagle populations underwent extreme declines during the 20th century. The results presented here show that bottlenecked populations have maintained significant levels of genetic diversity. Gene flow between regions is not a main explanation for this, as indicated by both genetic and ringing data. Instead, the long generation time of white-tailed eagles has acted as an intrinsic buffer against rapid loss of genetic diversity. Additionally, local conservation led to protection of more genetic diversity than if conservation had focused on the large remnant population in Norway.Mitochondrial DNA of white-tailed eagles is structured in two main clades with a predominantly eastern and western Eurasian distribution. The clades likely correspond to separate Ice Age refugia but do not grant classification as evolutionary significant units given their current extensive overlap across large parts of Eurasia.Microsatellite variation was studied in populations across Eurasia. Variability was rather constant across the continent, but clearly lower on Iceland and Greenland. This is best explained by founder effects during their colonisation, but only weak bottlenecks during colonisation of and persistence on the continent. Current population differentiation between Europe and eastern Eurasia is not compatible with a zero gene flow model but requires some amount of gene flow over evolutionary time scales.


Social media applications can be valuable investigative tools in the search for missing and unidentified persons. As yet, no forensic App exists with the aim of assisting the human identification process, through the search of antemortem data to be used as adjunct data in the comparison with postmortem data collected. The aim of this article is to introduce a new application for Smartphones called "Selfie Forensic ID" App which will employ selfie and face photographs as an archive of dental data and dental features of the front teeth of missing persons sharing with Instagram, Tumblr, and Twitter Social Networks (available for free download from both Android and Apple store at http://onelink. to/selfieforensic). Features such as diastema rotated or wrongly positioned teeth, lip anomalies, recognizable fixed prosthetics, dental crown discolorations, dental or cutis piercing could represent strong identifiers in the comparison of AM and PM data. The increased number of terrorist attacks and natural disasters which result in the premature death of innocent people underlines the importance of storing personal identification data to avoid bodies remaining unidentified. The authors believe there will be an increased public willingness to share personal ID information through understanding of the ethical and administrative consequences to the families of deceased persons should bodies remain unidentified.


Nystr\"om approximation is a fast randomized method that rapidly solves kernel ridge regression (KRR) problems through sub-sampling the n-by-n empirical kernel matrix appearing in the objective function. However, the performance of such a sub-sampling method heavily relies on correctly estimating the statistical leverage scores for forming the sampling distribution, which can be as costly as solving the original KRR. In this work, we propose a linear time (modulo poly-log terms) algorithm to accurately approximate the statistical leverage scores in the stationary-kernel-based KRR with theoretical guarantees. Particularly, by analyzing the first-order condition of the KRR objective, we derive an analytic formula, which depends on both the input distribution and the spectral density of stationary kernels, for capturing the non-uniformity of the statistical leverage scores. Numerical experiments demonstrate that with the same prediction accuracy our method is orders of magnitude more efficient than existing methods in selecting the representative sub-samples in the Nystr\"om approximation.


Environmental vulnerability in Bangladesh—especially vulnerability to climate change—is too often treated in isolation from the social, economic, and political contexts in which communities and their inhabitants make their livelihood. We propose that resilience and vulnerability to environmental stress are best understood in terms of a modification of Ostrom's socioecological systems paradigm that we call "multiple dynamic equilibria:"multiple dynamic equilibria: livelihoods in vulnerable regions are shaped by multiple overlapping patterns of interaction between the physical environment in which people live and the social, economic, and political environments in which they interact, within their communities, with other communities, and external actors. Translating policy goals into effective action requires understanding these interactions at multiple levels.We report on a new transdisciplinary project that draws geoscientists, engineers, and social scientists together to investigate the interactions between communities and the environment in the southwestern coastal region of Bangladesh and understand the dynamics of vulnerability and resilience.


This chapter presents an FDG analysis of spatial adpositions, showing that they divide into two classes, lexical and grammatical. Lexical adpositions are primitives that feed into formulation, whereas grammatical adpositions are primitives at encoding, realizing semantic functions from the Representational Level. Not only complex adpositions but also many simple adpositions co-express a semantic function and a lexical adposition, but an unmarked spatial adposition can also signal the semantic category Location (l1). Drawing on a 50-language sample, the chapter demonstrates that the great majority of these use one of two constructions that involve an interplay of lexical and grammatical adpositions, the Lexical Head Construction and the Lexical Modifier Construction. The chapter concludes that the spatial adposition lies between lexicon and grammar.


Despite the presence in documents of Joanot Martorell in the court of Naples, Italy (the geography, the linguistical influx, the humanism, the glorious king Alfons d'Arago…) does not belong to the novel project titled Tirant lo Blanc, which ranges from the Athlantic West to the Byzantine East. Although the appearance of two different lists of noble people from Naples – identified by Riquer, respectively, as supporters and detractors of the king Ferran – there is not any coherence nor accuracy. Nevertheless, the precarious coexistence in Naples of Joanot Martorell with Jaume de Vilaragut (hero in the siege of Rodes, chaptain in an unsuccessful crusade in Constantinople, master of a "servant" called Carmesina) had an influence in the plot and the fictional universe thought by the writer.


It is important to use adequately reliable non-destructive methods that would be capable of determining the reinforcement conditions in concrete structures. Three different methods: ground penetrating radar, impact-echo method, and metal magnetic memory method were used for testing laboratory-prepared reinforced concrete beams (with a reinforcing bar of the same diameter along its whole length, reinforcing bar locally impaired, and reinforcing bar interrupted). The ground-penetrating radar proved the correlation of signal parameters with the reinforcing bar condition. An impairment/interruption reinforcing bar appeared in the record from measurements in the transversal and longitudinal direction by changes of the observed depth of the reinforcing bar from the concrete surface and direct wave attenuation. The impact-echo method proved that the shifts of the dominant frequencies from the response signal correspond with the impairment/interruption of the reinforcing bar. Results of diagnostics by the metal magnetic memory method were presented by a magnetogram of the magnetic field strength and field gradient on the measured distance. The changes in the magnetic field strength proved different stress concentration zones due to the reinforcing bar condition. The used non-destructive methods showed that they are capable of indicating the different reinforcement conditions in reinforced concrete beams. This paper indicates in which cases and for what reason it is appropriate to use these three methods and in what way they differ from each other.


Decision Support Systems (DSS) are computer tools that combine models and data, to a user interface to help decision-makers solve complex problems. Despite their perceived usefulness, DSS are often not used. Past and recent reviews of existing decision support tools have shown a lack of implementation. Reasons behind their rejection were multiple, from poor design to more complex organisational and personal issues. Researchers have advocated the use of a more user-centred design framework for DSS development. A series of approaches aimed at involving users in the design process have been developed and applied with mixed results. In this thesis, I argue that DSS success or failure may be due to a lack of fit between the design process and the culture of the organisation in which it is being implemented. Through literature reviews on science, decision-making, DSS and organisational culture and two case studies, I show how the assumptions taken by scientists and DSS developers on decision-making and problem-solving become embedded within the systems they produce and may conflict with that of users. I further propose a novel approach that is centred on an understanding of the cultural system in which DSS will be used. The culture-centred iterative design approach is based on a constructivist theoretical perspective using methodologies borrowed from the social sciences. It follows an iterative design process such as that described by Sprague and Carlson (1982) with an embedded investigation of the working culture of the organisation. The study of culture is performed through group and individual interviews and aims at identifying areas of potential frictions between the DSS stated aims and user norms and values. The results from the analyses are then used to produce a DSS that will maximise outputs whilst minimising the risk of rejection. The approach was applied to the development of TooiHab, a DSS for prioritising habitat enhancement work on rivers for the Environment Agency Thames Region Fisheries section. The Environment Agency is a government organisation responsible for the management and regulation of river ecology, pollution, discharge, abstraction and for the protection of land and property against flooding. Through this case study, I show how the use of a cultural enquiry as part of the design process can lead to the resolution of potential conflicts and a greater acceptance of DSS.


We study the clustering of galaxies, as a function of their colour, from Data Release Ten (DR10) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III) Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey. DR10 contains 540 505 galaxies with 0.43 < z < 0.7; from these we select 122 967 for a 'Blue' sample and 131 969 for a 'Red' sample based on k + e corrected (to z =0.55) r − i colours and i-band magnitudes. The samples are chosen such that both contain more than 100 000 galaxies, have similar redshift distributions and maximize the difference in clustering amplitude. The Red sample has a 40 per cent larger bias than the Blue (bRed/bBlue = 1.39 ± 0.04), implying that the Red galaxies occupy dark matter haloes with an average mass that is 0.5 log10 M⊙ greater. Spherically averaged measurements of the correlation function, ξ0, and the power spectrum are used to locate the position of the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) feature of both samples. Using ξ0, we obtain distance scales, relative to the distance of our reference Λ cold dark matter cosmology, of 1.010 ± 0.027 for the Red sample and 1.005 ± 0.031 for the Blue. After applying reconstruction, these measurements improve to 1.013 ± 0.020 for the Red sample and 1.008 ± 0.026 for the Blue. For each sample, measurements of ξ0 and the second multipole moment, ξ2, of the anisotropic correlation function are used to determine the rate of structure growth, parametrized by fσ8. We find fσ8,Red = 0.511 ± 0.083, fσ8, Blue = 0.509 ± 0.085 and fσ8, Cross = 0.423 ± 0.061 (from the cross-correlation between the Red and Blue samples). We use the covariance between the bias and growth measurements obtained from each sample and their cross-correlation to produce an optimally combined measurement of fσ8, comb = 0.443 ± 0.055. This result compares favourably to that of the full 0.43 < z < 0.7 sample (fσ8, full = 0.422 ± 0.051) despite the fact that, in total, we use less than half of the number of galaxies analysed in the full sample measurement. In no instance do we detect significant differences in distance scale or structure growth measurements obtained from the Blue and Red samples. Our results are consistent with theoretical predictions and our tests on mock samples, which predict that any colour-dependent systematic uncertainty on the measured BAO position is less than 0.5 per cent.


In our global, multicultural world, how we understand and relate to those who are different from us has become central to the politics of immigration in western societies. Who we are and how we perceive ourselves is closely associated with those who are different and strange. This book explores the pivotal role played by 'the stranger' in social theory, examining the different conceptualisations of the stranger found in the social sciences and shedding light on the ways in which these discourses can contribute to an analysis of cross-cultural interaction and cultural hybridity. Engaging with the work of Simmel, Park and Bauman and arguing for the need for greater theoretical clarity, Theories of the Stranger connects conceptual questions with debates surrounding identity politics, multiculturalism, online ethnicities and cross-cultural dialogue. As such, this rigorous, conceptual re-examination of the stranger will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in social theory and the theoretical foundations of discourses relating to migration, cosmopolitanism, globalisation and multiculturalism.


One of the critical issues for the US space program is fire safety of the space station and future launch velucles. A detailed understanding of the scattering signatures of particulate is essential for the development of a false alarm free f i e detection system This paper describes advanced optical htrumentation developed and applied for 6re detection. The system is being designed to determine four important physical properties of disperse fractal aggregates and particulates including size distribution, number density, refractive indices, and £ractal dimmion Combustion generated particdate are the primary detection target; however, in order to discriminate from other particulate, non-combustion generated particles should also be characterized. The angular scattering signature is measured and analyzed using two photon optical laser scattering. The Rayleigh-Debye-Gans (R-D-G) scattering theory for disperse fractal aggregates is utilized. The system consists of a pulsed laser module, detection module and data acquisition system and software to analyze the signals. The theory and applications are described.


The influence of broken and inhomogeneous clouds on satellite cloud-phase retrievals is investigated. The research comprises two parts: First, an assessment of the effect of broken and inhomogeneous water clouds on the cloud-phase retrieval is performed through an evaluation of the errors in retrieved optical thickness (τ) and effective radius (reff) using synthetic datasets. Second, a comparison of MODIS low-resolution (3x3 km) cloud properties against corresponding high-resolution (1x1 km) retrievals for low-resolution cases of broken and inhomogeneous clouds was carried out. The evaluation of the synthetic datasets reveal that, for water clouds with high values of τ and reff, a shift in cloud phase from 'water' to 'ice' can be expected at cloud fractions between 0.4 and 0.8. For overcast fields of inhomogeneous water clouds, reff is overestimated by ~3-5 μm at low-resolution as compared to high-resolution. Depending on the amount of cloud variability and the underlying surface this overestimation may lead to a shift in cloud phase from 'water' to 'ice'. Although the MODIS observations do not reveal a sharp increase in reff with decreasing cloud fraction, the expected increase in reff for inhomogeneous overcast water clouds is clearly manifested in the observations.


Stock momentum, long-term reversal, and other past return characteristics that predict future returns also predict future realized betas, suggesting these characteristics capture time-varying risk compensation. We formalize this argument with a conditional factor pricing model. Using instrumented principal components analysis, we estimate latent factors with time-varying factor loadings that depend on observable firm characteristics. We show that factor loadings vary significantly over time, even at short horizons over which the momentum phenomenon operates (one year), and that this variation captures reliable conditional risk premia missed by other factor models commonly used in the literature. Our estimates of conditional risk exposure can ex- plain a sizeable fraction of momentum and long-term reversal returns and can be used to generate even stronger return predictions.


Regarding trademarks, the EU and US regulate comparative advertising differently. One particular matter of significant difference is whether or not competitors are allowed to say they offer an imitation or replica of a trademarked product. In the US, competitors may claim equality of their product as long they clearly eliminate confusion and distinctly market their product as separate from the original. European firms, by contrast, face more obstacles concerning advertising statements conceived to establish their product as equal or identical to a competitor's trademarked product. If the economic functions of trademarks are clear, it is easier to answer a number of legal questions in the comparative advertising field. One facet rarely explored is the fact that trademarks are the "name" of a product and the legal bridge between consumers' past and future experiences. Such experiences are referred to as attributes or qualities of a product. Attributes describe product characteristics driving individual consumer experiences. Because such experiences are difficult to objectively verify, statements of this kind must submit to particular scrutiny. In principle, the same is true regarding product qualities. Quite often, it is easy to measure quality experiences, but sometimes measuring is not possible depending on whether qualities are public or private. Like with attributes, the legality of referring to product qualities depends on verifiability. Uncertainty of an attribute's verifiability or quality information creates a risk of undue exploitation, particularly consumer confusion. In such cases, strict regulation of comparative advertising is important. In other words, the legal system must prevent confusion in advertising because confusion increases consumer search costs. In addition to preventing confusion, the issue of trademark dilution is another aspect relevant in analyzing comparative advertising. According to European doctrine, using a competitor's trademark in comparative advertising can be improper goodwill misappropriation. Displaying a competitor's trademark may diminish its distinctiveness, tarnish its image and reputation, or constitute what the ECJ defines as freeriding or parasitic competition. The meandering standards of legal doctrine, however, hardly provide for consistent guidelines. Whether misappropriation is a justifiable term to use in defining comparative advertising requires a closer look at the field's underlying economics. As we will show, in none of these constellations will the appropriation of the competitor's investment be implemented through the market mechanism. It is not a pecuniary, but a technological externality. The metric for assessing admissibility of appropriation must thus be changed from the governing European doctrine of necessity or proportionality to a principle of economic efficiency taking into account both the trademark owner's and the advertising competitor's costbenefitratio.


The Ionospheric Plasma and Electrodynamics Instrument (IPEI) is one of the three payloads on the ROCSAT-1 satellite. The IPEI consists of two major packages: Sensor Electronics Package (SEP) and Main Electronics Package (MEP). The SEP carries four sensors: an Ion Trap (IT), Horizontal and Vertical Drift Meters (HDM and VDM), and a Retarding Potential Analyzer (RPA). These sensors measure ion concentration, ion temperature, cross-track ion velocity, and major ion composition at the satellite position along the ROCSAT-1 orbit. This will nominally yield coverage at600km altitude within the latitude band of ±35°.The MEP contains four major parts: a digital processing unit (DPU), command interface, science data interface, and power supplies. The MEP provides the electrical interface between IPEI and the spacecraft. Also, the MEP implements the operational modes of IPEI: NORMAL, FAST, and AUTO. In the NORMAL mode the IT, HDM, and VDM provide measurements of the total ion concentration and the cross-track ion drift velocity at 32Hz, while the RPA provides the in-track ion drift, the ion temperature and the major ion composition at a nominal 1/2 Hz rate. In the FAST mode these sample rates are 1024 Hz and 1/4 Hz respectively. The AUTO mode enables IPEI to switch from the default NORMAL mode to the FAST mode when sudden large changes in the ion concentration, commonly associated with plasma structures called bubbles, are detected. The unique feature of the AUTO mode allows the scientists to investigate spatial structures with scale sizes as small as 16 meters.


Tidal turbines have the potential to impact diving birds, primarily through collision with turbine blades. There is a legal requirement to assess these impacts. Collision risk modelling has been used widely to quantify collision risk to birds flying through wind farms. Intuitively, the same approach can be taken when assessing risk of underwater turbines to diving birds. Such models require data on a bird's foraging and diving behaviour to calculate their likely exposure to a tidal turbine array while foraging underwater. Accordingly, we have reviewed studies from peer-reviewed literature that present estimates for diving parameters for diving marine birds that occur in UK waters. These values can be used within underwater collision risk models. This work will provide a key resource to the consenting process as it can be used in the assessment of environmental impacts of marine renewable developments.


Generalized zero-shot learning is a significant topic but faced with bias problem, which leads to unseen classes being easily misclassified into seen classes. Hence we propose an embedding model called co-representation network to learn a more uniform visual embedding space that effectively alleviates the bias problem and helps with classification. We mathematically analyze our model and find it learns a projection with high local linearity, which is proved to cause less bias problem. The network consists of a cooperation module for representation and a relation module for classification. It is simple in structure and can be easily trained in an end-to-end manner. Experiments show that our method outperforms existing generalized zero-shot learning methods on several benchmark datasets.


Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to review quantitative research since 1999 evaluating the effectiveness of democratic therapeutic community (DTC) treatment for individuals with personality disorders (PD) with reference to interpersonal and offending risk outcomes.

Design/methodology/approach
– A systematic search resulted in the review of ten studies. All of the studies investigated DTCs treating PD in community, inpatient residential and forensic settings. Only peer-reviewed, English-language articles employing a quantitative design were included.

Findings
– The majority of studies were conducted poorly and of low methodological quality, with limitations located in the representativeness of participants, limited use of control and comparison groups, follow up periods and controls for confounders. Heterogeneity remained in use of measures and limited consideration was given to the validity of interpersonal measures used. While improved interpersonal outcomes post DTC treatment were noted in forensic and residential settings, results were mixed in day and mini TC settings. Inconsistent findings in offending risk outcomes were also indicated. A study with increased methodological rigour indicated residential treatment had limited effects on interpersonal outcomes, when compared to combination treatment (residential TC and step-down treatment).

Originality/value
– The study provided an evaluation of the limitations of DTC research across a range of settings and highlighted a combination of residential TC and step-down treatment may achieve superior outcomes to residential TC treatment alone in a community inpatient population. Recommendations are made for future research to contribute to the treatment of PD.


This paper explores how music consumers perform and act within transmedia marketing, focusing on music marketing campaigns. We follow the music consumers' movement within the promotional campaign of one internationally known artist, capturing the their actions and interactions. Through an exploratory case study adopting a multi-method approach rooted in digital methods, we map how the consumers move through the campaign, how the campaign guides them through various media platforms, how consumers are engaged in the production of content and how this content then recirculates within the campaign. We argue that transmedia entertainment carries spatial qualities, and that the use of spatial metaphors offer both a way to explore the movement of the consumer as well as to represent and to visualize how the marketing campaign constructs immersive worlds where consumers transform into free labor – suggesting that we can understand transmedia campaigns as transmediascapes. Using spatial metaphors also provides us with a methodological approach to transmedia marketing, positioning actions and actors in relation to each other in time and space. Our preliminary results indicate that consumers within the music industry are mobilized as they assemble consumer affect and promote physical as well as virtual fan movement. The consumer follows a path constructed by the marketing campaign, making the consumer migrate between various spaces located in different platforms. Our paper also contributes with methodological development, where acknowledging the spatial dimensions of free labor and transmedia marketing provides a methodological approach to media consumers within contemporary transmediascapes.


Title of dissertation: PRIMARY CONTROL OF A MACH SCALE SWASHPLATELESS ROTOR USING BRUSHLESS DC MOTOR ACTUATED TRAILING EDGE FLAPS Anand Saxena, Doctor of Philosophy, 2015 Dissertation directed by: Professor Inderjit Chopra Department of Aerospace Engineering The focus of this research was to demonstrate a four blade rotor trim in forward flight using integrated trailing edge flaps instead of using a swashplate controls. A compact brushless DC motor was evaluated as an on-blade actuator, with the possibility of achieving large trailing edge flap amplitudes. A control strategy to actuate the trailing edge flap at desired frequency and amplitude was developed and large trailing edge flap amplitudes from the motor (instead of rotational motion) were obtained. Once the actuator was tested on the bench-top, a lightweight mechanism was designed to incorporate the motor in the blade and actuate the trailing edge flaps. A six feet diameter, four bladed composite rotor with motor-flap system integrated into the NACA 0012 airfoil section was fabricated. Systematic testing was carried out for a range of load conditions, first in the vacuum chamber followed by hover tests. Large trailing edge flap deflections were observed during the hover testing, and a peak to peak trailing edge flap amplitude of 18 degree was achieved at 2000 rotor RPM with hover tip Mach number of 0.628. A closed loop controller was designed to demonstrate trailing edge flap mean position and the peak to peak amplitude control. Further, a soft pitch link was designed and fabricated, to replace the stiff pitch link and thereby reduce the torsional stiffness of the blade to 2/rev. This soft pitch link allowed for blade root pitch motion in response to the trailing edge flap inputs. Blade pitch response due to both steady as well as sinusoidal flap deflections were demonstrated. Finally, tests were performed in Glenn L. Martin wind tunnel using a model rotor rig to assess the performance of motor-flap system in forward flight. A swashplateless trim using brushless DC motor actuated trailing edge flaps was achieved for a rotor operating at 1200 RPM and an advance ratio of 0.28. Also, preliminary exploration was carried out to test the scalability of the motor driven trailing edge flap concept. In conclusion, the concept of using brushless DC motors as on-blade actuators, actuating trailing edge flaps has the potential to replace the current mechanically complex swashplate with a hydraulic-free swashplateless system and thereby reduce overall weight and hub drag. PRIMARY CONTROL OF A MACH SCALE SWASHPLATELESS ROTOR USING BRUSHLESS DC MOTOR ACTUATED TRAILING EDGE FLAPS


In recent years, there has been an increased interest in point cloud representation for visualizing digital humans in cross reality. However, due to their voluminous size, point clouds require high bandwidth to be transmitted. In this paper, we propose a temporal interpolation architecture capable of increasing the temporal resolution of dynamic digital humans, represented using point clouds. With this technique, bandwidth savings can be achieved by transmitting dynamic point clouds in a lower temporal resolution, and recreating a higher temporal resolution on the receiving side. Our interpolation architecture works by first downsampling the point clouds to a lower spatial resolution, then estimating scene flow using a newly designed neural network architecture, and finally upsampling the result back to the original spatial resolution. To improve the smoothness of the results, we additionally apply a novel technique called neighbour snapping. To be able to train and test our newly designed network, we created a synthetic point cloud data set of animated human bodies. Results from the evaluation of our architecture through a small-scale user study show the benefits of our method with respect to the state of the art in scene flow estimation for point clouds. Moreover, correlation between our user study and existing objective quality metrics confirm the need for new metrics to accurately predict the visual quality of point cloud contents.


Medical and other researchers in developing countries conduct much valuable research. Yet difficulties in writing and publication often prevent this research from being widely known. AuthorAID (http://www.authoraid.info), a project of the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP), was established in 2007 to help address this problem. Aspects of AuthorAID include on-site and online instruction, a resource library, a blog, an e-mail discussion list, small grants, and mentorship. Medical writers can contribute to AuthorAID by volunteering as mentors and assisting in other ways. In addition, AuthorAID resources can help medical writers and the researchers worldwide with whom they work.


This paper explores the ways in which civil society actors and developing countries are limited in their engagement in global governance for sustainable development. Beginning with the relevant literature about how these social actors face obstacles to full participation, we present the notion of what we call disenfranchisement to describe the condition of being marginalized within the global policy-making arena. We put forward a conceptual framework that outlines what we identify as the three dimensions of disenfranchisement. By dis-aggregating the notion of disenfranchisement into its constituent dimensions, we outline potential operationalizations of these dimensions. Through the dimensions, the framework explicitly describes the mechanics of disenfranchisement, outlining the reasons that these actors become disenfranchised. We conclude by presenting the ways in which this framework can be applied in future empirical research, which will be critical to understanding the challenges to meaningful inclusion of stakeholders in global governance for sustainable development.


Many inference problems, such as sequential decision problems like A/B testing, adaptive sampling schemes like bandit selection, are often online in nature. The fundamental problem for online inference is to provide a sequence of confidence intervals that are valid uniformly over the growing-into-infinity sample sizes. To address this question, we provide a near-optimal confidence sequence for bounded random variables by utilizing Bentkus' concentration results. We show that it improves on the existing approaches that use the Cram{e}r-Chernoff technique such as the Hoeffding, Bernstein, and Bennett inequalities. The resulting confidence sequence is confirmed to be favorable in both synthetic coverage problems and an application to adaptive stopping algorithms.


During July, August and September 1998, Bangladesh was subjected to the most extensive flood in living memory. At peak flood, approximately two‐thirds of the country was under water. The media showed submerged houses, drowned livestock, and women and children wading neck deep in water carrying water jars or food on their heads. Such images reinforce many people's perceptions of Bangladesh as a country incessantly subjected to devastating floods that destroy crops and cause untold misery to the nation's people. Yet, beyond this media‐generated view, there is a country where agricultural production is still the mainstay of the rural population's livelihood system. The nation's water resources, both above and below ground, provide a multitude of services to the population: water to drink and in which to bathe, fish to eat and water to irrigate crops. This paper outlines the local‐level research indicating that most rural Bangladeshis living on the central Bangladesh floodplain, view the annual monsoon flood season not as an inconvenience but as a necessity. It suggests that many people in the research areas recognize the benefits associated with extreme flood events. The 1998 flood provided plentiful amounts of fish, a staple diet and labouring work in the form of building up flood defences. It also flushed out stagnant water in ponds and pagars (open system ponds), and in time, led to a bumper harvest of rice. The research highlights the lives of those whose livelihoods are devastated by such events, describes the nature of the monsoon of 1998, analyses the effects on the community's livelihood systems and describes the nature of their coping strategies. It also suggests ways in which the government and aid agencies could better assist those whose livelihoods are most vulnerable. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Purpose: To evaluate safety, efficacy, and stability of crosslinking (CLX) procedure as a method for keratoconus treatment in the I and II stage of disease. Materials and methods: Twenty eyes of 15 patients (13 males, 2 females, average age 31 years) with keratoconus I stage (13 eyes) and II stage (2 eyes) (by Krumeich classification) were treated by CLX procedure, using riboflavin Medio Cross for standard CLX); riboflavin Medio Cross TE for transepithelial CLX was used to treat keratectasia after previous keratorefractive surgery; in all the cases UV CBM X linker (Vega, CSO) was used. The study included evaluation of uncorrected visual acuity (UCVA), best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) preand postoperative, pachymetry (central cornea thickness) (Visante OCT, Zeiss) preand postoperative, total astigmatism preand postoperative, using keratotopography (Atlas, Zeiss). Diagnosis and analysis have been performed at the International Center for Ophthalmology in Moscow, Russian Federation, since 2012 to 2014 years. Follow-up period was from 1 to 24 months. Results: Average UCVA preoperative was 0.4 (Decimal), and average BCVA was 0.64. Average UCVA postoperative was 0.49; average BCVA was 0.66. Total astigmatism preoperative was 2.81 D; total astigmatism postoperative 2.80 D. Central cornea thickness (CCT) preoperative 454 mkm; CCT postoperative 447 mkm. Conclusion: Cross-linking indicated safety, stability, and efficacy for treatment of I and II stage keratoconus at the end of follow-up period. Cross-linking is not effective in the treatment of II and III stage of disease. Further study is required.


The Munich Air Disaster claimed the lives of 23 people in a plane crash in Munich in 1958. It is a significant event within modern England's cultural history as a number of Manchester United footballers, known as the Busby Babes were amongst the dead. The players who died have continued to be extensively commemorated, especially Duncan Edwards.
This research considers the commemorative activity associated with Edwards since his death and was initiated when the researcher pondered the extensive commemorative activity by strangers that she encountered at the family grave of her cousin Edwards. The commemoration of the Disaster and of Edwards has been persistent and various with new acts of commemoration continuing conspicuously even after fifty years since the event. Such unique activity particularly demonstrated at Edwards' grave was considered worthy of further investigation to ascertain why such activity was occurring at such a volume. Although general historical and biographical accounts of the Disaster and Edwards are apparent, specific research concerning the commemoration of the event was not evident. The researcher set out to identify who the commemorators were, why they were undertaking dedicatory acts and what those acts manifest as. At Edwards' grave the offerings left upon it were regularly documented from 2010-2014 and analysed. Interviews with identified significant commemorators were undertaken including Edwards' family members and fans. A comprehensive literature review was undertaken and relevant online sources and data were also examined in order to inform a distinct social and cultural analysis of the event within the context of its commemoration. The study focussed upon the researcher's connection to the subject, commemorators, memorials, commemorative objects and sites. Although there was a distinct personal element to the research, the data collected was analysed in the wider context of commemoration, the perception of heroes and attitudes towards the dead, death and dying. This research specifically considers the commemoration of Disaster victim Duncan Edwards as a local sporting hero.
The unique contribution to the knowledge and understanding of this research topic is principally through the generation and interrogation of new research data, created from fieldwork undertaken at Edwards' grave and from interviews with significant commemorators. The interview-generated research data from certain Edwards' family members was only possible to attain because of the researcher's particular ancestral link to the interviewees.


The use of gaze shifts as social cues has various evolutionary advantages. To investigate the developmental processes of this ability, we conducted an object-choice task by using longitudinal methods with infant chimpanzees tested from 8 months old until 3 years old. The experimenter used one of six gestures towards a cup concealing food; tapping, touching, whole-hand pointing, gazing plus close-pointing, distant-pointing, close-gazing, and distant-gazing. Unlike any other previous study, we analyzed the behavioral changes that occurred before and after choosing the cup. We assumed that pre-choice behavior indicates the development of an attentional and spatial connection between a pointing cue and an object (e.g. Woodward, 2005); and post-choice behavior indicates the emergence of object permanence (e.g. Piaget, 1954). Our study demonstrated that infant chimpanzees begin to use experimenter-given cues with age (after 11 months of age). Moreover, the results from the behavioral analysis showed that the infants gradually developed the spatial link between the pointing as an object-directed action and the object. Moreover, when they were 11 months old, the infants began to inspect the inside of the cup, suggesting the onset of object permanence. Overall, our results imply that the ability to use the cues is developing and mutually related with other cognitive developments. The present study also suggests what the standard object-choice task actually measures by breaking the task down into the developmental trajectories of its component parts, and describes for the first time the social-physical cognitive development during the task with a longitudinal method.


We consider the situation of estimating Cox regression in which some covariates are subject to missing, and there exists additional information (including observed event time, censoring indicator and fully observed covariates) which may be predictive of the missing covariates. We propose to use two working regression models: one for predicting the missing covariates and the other for predicting the missing probabilities. For each missing covariate observation, these two working models are used to define a nearest neighbor imputing set. This set is then used to nonparametrically impute covariate values for the missing observation. Upon the completion of imputation, Cox regression is performed on the multiply imputed datasets to estimate the regression coefficients. In a simulation study, we compare the nonparametric multiple imputation approach with the augmented inverse probability weighted (AIPW) method, which directly incorporates the two working models into estimation of Cox regression. We show that all approaches can reduce bias due to non-ignorable missing mechanism. The proposed nonparametric imputation method is robust to mis-specification of either one of the two working models and robust to mis-specification of the link function of the two working models. In contrast, the AIPW method is not robust to mis-specification of the link function of the two working models and is sensitive to the selection probability. We apply the approaches to a breast cancer dataset from Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) Program .


This article describes and analyses one example of a successful grassroots-based collaborative introduction to teacher education class that was based at a small education program in a private Malaysian university. This class formed the beginning of government-sponsored program in English language primary education; developed and implemented at extremely short notice it led to an accidental but extremely informative 'shake up' of ordinary teaching practices. This in fact may offer some promise as an alternative to the heavy central planning typically found in the current Malaysian education system. Because this particular class needed to be developed over the space of a weekend and then be taught over a three-week trimester break it was organised and taught in a highly collaborative fashion. This opened up a grassroots-based and entirely non-threatening experimental space in which lecturers drifted in and out. For example an entirely impromptu session ran by this author at five minutes' notice (because there was confusion about who was to teach) led the author to realise that his academically focussed and carefully structured approach to teaching served to alienate himself from his students. It also revealed that the students in this particular class characterised their 'ideal teacher' as rather stricter and much less intellectually demanding than this author had previously presumed. The article argues that although there are challenges associated with implementing critical reflection within a Malay-Islamic context this does not necessarily preclude either some challenging discussions or interesting experiments from taking place within Malaysian teacher education classrooms.


For many years, the docket books kept by a number of the justices of the Hughes Court have been held by the Office of the Curator of the Supreme Court. Yet the existence of these docket books was not widely known, and access to them was highly restricted. Recently, however, the Court adopted new guidelines designed to increase access to the docket books for researchers. This article offers the first-ever examination of the available docket book entries relevant to what scholars commonly regard as the major decisions rendered during the early years of the Hughes Court, from the 1929 through the 1933 Terms. The decisions examined concern the Commerce Clause, the dormant Commerce Clause, substantive due process, equal protection, fair trade, labor relations, intergovernmental tax immunities, criminal procedure, civil rights, and civil liberties. The information in the docket books sheds particularly fascinating new light on decisions such as Nebbia v. New York, Home Bldg. & Loan Assn. v. Blaisdell, New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, Powell v. Alabama, Nixon v. Condon, and Burnet v. Coronado Oil & Gas Co. In particular, the docket books often reveal what the justices said to one another at their conference deliberations over major cases, and illuminate many previously unknown changes in justices' votes between those conferences and the times the decisions were published. Analysis of the voting data contained in the docket books yields some surprising results, and offers a contribution to two bodies of political science scholarship on judicial behavior: the literature on vote fluidity and unanimity norms in the Supreme Court, and the literature on the so-called "freshman effect" that some scholars have found exhibited by the Court's newest members.


An experiment with two picture categorization tasks with auditory distracters containing redundant information was carried out to investigate the effects distracters, in this case earcons, have on categorization. In the first task participants had to carry out an extra mental addition task. The secondary task consisted of just the categorization. The dual-task situation was expected to lead to longer reaction times and more errors than the single-task situation, possibly providing new insights when analyzed. The results confirmed previous experimental results and indicated that significantly fewer errors were made in conditions in which the earcons contained relevant redundant information, compared to conditions with no relevant redundant information.


The augmentation of tabletop multi-touch surfaces with physical objects is a well visited approach for the realisation of tangible user interfaces. Interaction with objects on a multi-touch surface is often limited to spatial manipulation and common marker-based techniques for object tracking typically provide little more than position and orientation information for the objects. We present a novel, low-cost, approach for tracking objects on a camera-based multi-touch surface. Our approach utilises modulated Infrared light to provide a bi-directional communication channel between objects and the surface and thereby presents the opportunity for much richer forms of interaction with physical objects.


Modern radio telescopes, such as the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) in the north of the Netherlands, process the signal from the sky in software rather than expensive special purpose hardware, This gives the astronomers an unprecedented flexibility to perform a vast amount of various scientific experiments. However, designing the actual software that would give optimal performance for many different experiments, possibly also running on different hardware is a challenging task. Since optimizing the software by hand to fit the various experiments and hardware is unfeasible, we employ a technique called parameter auto-tuning to find the optimal solution. Auto-tuning is based on a construction of a more generic software which has the ability to explore its parameter space and choose the values optimal for the experiment and hardware at hand. In our work we devise a systematic approach for auto-tuning signal processing pipelines which is not limited to radio astronomy and can be easily extended to other fields as well. Since the computations in radio astronomy are suitable candidates for parallelization, we exploit the power of GPUs. For that purpose we use the OpenCL programming standard. Furthermore, we combine OpenCL with Java to gain the advantages of higher level programming language such as greater productivity and code portability.


This chapter deals with coded modulation and impairment compensation techniques in optical fiber communication. Probabilistic shaping is a new coded modulation technology, which can reduce transmission power by precoding, reduce bit error rate and improve communication rate. We proposed a probabilistic shaping 16QAM modulation scheme based on trellis coded modulation. Experimental results show that this scheme can achieve better optical SNR gain and BER performance. On the other hand, in order to meet the demand of transmission rate of next generation high speed optical communication systems, multi-dimensional modulation and coherent detection are sufficiently applied. The imperfect characteristics of optoelectronic devices and fiber link bring serious impairments to the high baudrate and high order modulation format signal, causes of performance impairment are analyzed, pre-compensation and receiver side's DSP techniques designed for coherent systems are introduced.


As large Open Data are increasingly shared as RDF graphs today, there is a growing demand to help users discover the most interesting facets of a graph, which are often hard to grasp without automatic tools. We consider the problem of automatically identifying the k most interesting aggregate queries that can be evaluated on an RDF graph, given an integer k and a user-specified interest-ingness function . Our problem departs from analytics in relational data warehouses in that ( i ) in an RDF graph we are not given but we must identify the facts, dimensions, and measures of candidate aggregates; ( ii ) the classical approach to efficiently evaluating multiple aggregates breaks in the face of multi-valued dimensions in RDF data. In this work, we propose an extensible end-to-end framework that enables the identification and evaluation of interesting aggregates based on a new RDF-compatible one-pass algorithm for efficiently evaluating a lattice of aggregates and a novel early-stop technique (with probabilistic guarantees) that can prune uninteresting aggregates. Experiments using both real and synthetic graphs demonstrate the ability of our framework to find interesting aggregates in a large search space, the efficiency of our algorithms (with up to 2 . 9 × speedup over a similar pipeline based on existing algorithms), and scalability as the data size and complexity grow.


1. Gall-bladder bile was obtained at cholecystectomy from seven patients who had been given [64Cu]cupric acetate intravenously. 2. Studies using dialysis and Sephadex gel filtration indicated that most of the 64Cu in the bile was in a heat-stable complex of molecular weight exceeding 50 000. The remaining biliary 64Cu was in a low-molecular-weight component. 3. Above pH 4, 64Cu could not readily be removed from the macromolecular complex either by excess carrier copper ions, by D-penicillamine or by EDTA. 4. Absorption of 64Cu from 64Cu-labelled bile injected intraduodenally into rats was significantly less than from [64Cu]cupric acetate similarly injected. 5. These observations suggest that limitation of an entero-hepatic circulation of copper by a biliary macromolecule which differs from caeruloplasmin, may be a significant factor in copper homeostasis in man.


THI6 is a bifunctional enzyme found in the thiamin biosynthetic pathway in eukaryotes. The N-terminal domain of THI6 catalyzes the ligation of the thiamin thiazole and pyrimidine moieties to form thiamin phosphate, and the C-terminal domain catalyzes the phosphorylation of 4-methyl-5-hydroxyethylthiazole in a salvage pathway. In prokaryotes, thiamin phosphate synthase and 4-methyl-5-hydroxyethylthiazole kinase are separate gene products. Here we report the first crystal structure of a eukaryotic THI6 along with several complexes that characterize the active sites responsible for the two chemical reactions. THI6 from Candida glabrata is a homohexamer in which the six protomers form a cage-like structure. Each protomer is composed of two domains, which are structurally homologous to their monofunctional bacterial counterparts. Two loop regions not found in the bacterial enzymes provide interactions between the two domains. The structures of different protein-ligand complexes define the thiazole and ATP binding sites of the 4-methyl-5-hydroxyethylthiazole kinase domain and the thiazole phosphate and 4-amino-5-hydroxymethyl-2-methylpyrimidine pyrophosphate binding sites of the thiamin phosphate synthase domain. Our structural studies reveal that the active sites of the two domains are 40 Å apart and are not connected by an obvious channel. Biochemical studies show 4-methyl-5-hydroxyethylthiazole phosphate is a substrate for THI6; however, adenosine diphospho-5β-ethyl-4-methylthiazole-2-carboxylic acid, the product of THI4, is not a substrate for THI6. This suggests that an unidentified enzyme is necessary to produce the substrate for THI6 from the THI4 product.


A property right (ius in rem, real right) is an abstract legal concept which relates to an object, referred to as "thing" or "res," or imprecisely, but commonly, "property." This object of property is a product of legal categorisation; it may be represented by a physical thing or it can be an abstract legal creation itself, as is the case with an intellectual property right. In any event, for the law the "property-object" (whether tangible, intangible or purely intangible) is the product of a legal conceptualisation. The law (private law) creates any res or thing, whether corporeal or not, through the legal concept of real rights. That enables legal recognition of the res in question. The material object (if there is one) only becomes a res in law if real rights are attached to it. Therefore, real rights and res are both "property", and particularly with (purely intangible) intellectual property, property rights and property objects merge into one. The abstract conceptual res typically has a reifier to make it recognisable in the material world and for the purpose of social interactions. This reifier can be a corporeal object, in which case it is a direct reifier (a table being a direct reifier and incident of a res, chattel), but, for example in case of copyright, a chattel may act not only as direct reifier of the notional personal (moveable) property right (e.g. a canvas of a painting, the score of a symphony, the paper of a manuscript), but also as an indirect reifier of the notional copyright (artistic work, musical work, literary work). The chattel in question represents directly the personal/moveable property (but does not constitute it, because the res remains a legal concept), and, in addition, the chattel represents indirectly the copyright in the work which is expressed and recorded in the chattel in question (a painting, sculpture etc.).


Vocalizations are a widespread means of communication in the animal kingdom. Mice use a large repertoire of ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) in different social contexts, for instance courtship, territorial dispute, dominance and mother-pup interaction. Previous studies have pointed to differences in the USVs in different context, sexes, strains and individuals, however, in many cases the outcomes of the analyses remained inconclusive. We here provide a more general approach to automatically classify USVs using deep neural networks (DNN). We classified the sex of the emitting mouse (C57Bl/6) based on the vocalization's spectrogram, reaching unprecedented performance (~84% correct) in comparison with other techniques (Support Vector Machines: 64%, Ridge regression: 52%). Vocalization characteristics of individual mice only contribute mildly, and sex-only classification reaches ~78%. The performance can only partially be explained by a set of classical shape features, with duration, volume and bandwidth being the most useful predictors. Splitting estimation into two DNNs, from spectrograms to features (57-82%) and features to sex (67%) does not reach the single-step performance. In summary, the emitter's sex can be successfully predicted from their spectrograms using DNNs, excelling over other classification techniques. In contrast to previous research, this suggests that male and female vocalizations differ in their spectrotemporal structure, recognizable even in single vocalizations.


Here at last is a book that reveals what the public really wants to know about this legendary investor: how he determines where he puts his money. From a team with privileged insight, Mary Buffett, a savvy CEO and Warren Buffett's former daughter-in-law, and David Clark, a successful portfolio analyst, comes Buffettology, the most detailed explanation ever of the billionaire's unique investment techniques. Using Warren Buffett's system to access a company's potential economic excellence and the right price to pay for its stock, Buffettology demonstrates the actual mathematical models and equations, revolving around three variables: the yearly per share earnings figure, its predictability, and the market price of security. With Buffettology, individual investors will come to truly understand, and emulate, Warren Buffett's masterful insight, and see that investment is most intelligent when it is most businesslike.


The usage of high-level synthesis (HLS) tools for FPGAs has increased significantly over the last years since they matured and allow software programmers to take advantage of reconfigurable hardware technology. Most HLS tools employ methods to optimize for loops, e. g. by unrolling or pipelining them. But there is hardly any work on the optimization of while loops. This comes at no surprise since most while loops have loop-carried dependences involving the loop condition which result in large recurrence cycles in the dataflow graphs. Therefore typical while loops cannot be parallelized or pipelined. We propose a novel transformation which allows to optimize while loops nested within a for loop. By interchanging the two loops, it is possible to pipeline (and thereby parallelize) the inner loop, resulting in a reduced execution time. We present two case studies on different hardware platforms and show the speedup factors - compared to a host processor and to an unoptimized hardware implementation - achieved by our while loop optimization method.


Structural and functional features of E. minor, using morphometric traits and phytomass fractions of model coenopopulations are studied to determine adaptive capacity of species in different environments transformed the environment of forest, forest-steppe and steppe zones. Depending on edaphic conditions plants and organs of plants may increase several times in size and weight. The index of morphological integration of model coenopopulations indicates the uniformity of vegetative and generative organs of plants at different environmental conditions. In various conditions significant value to coenopopulations differentiation contribute signs of individual length as well as length and number of generative organs. Formation of the maximum number of spikelets (feature with the highest contribute to dispersion of data) corresponds to extreme edaphic conditions of growth combined with a high degree of recreation. However, decreasing environmental transformation is accompanied by double fulfillment of breeding potential of E. minor coenopopulations, while setting density of individuals reduce in almost 5-15 times. Thus, E. minor has mixed competitive Stress-tolerant Ruderal type as adaptation to condition of secondary areal.


We present a study of spectral diagnostics available from optical spectra with R = 17 000 obtained with the VLT/Giraffe HR15n setup, using observations from the Gaia-ESO Survey, on the gamma Vel young cluster, with the purpose of classifying these stars and finding their fundamental parameters. We define several spectroscopic indices, sampling the amplitude of TiO bands, the H alpha line core and wings, and temperature- and gravity-sensitive sets of lines, each useful as a T-eff or log g indicator over a limited range of stellar spectral types. H alpha line indices are also useful as chromospheric activity or accretion indicators. Furthermore, we use all indices to define additional global T-eff - and logg-sensitive indices tau and gamma, valid for the entire range of types in the observed sample. We find a clear difference between gravity indices of main-sequence and pre-main-sequence stars, as well as a much larger difference between these and giant stars. The potentially great usefulness of the (gamma, t) diagram as a distance-independent age measurement tool for young clusters is discussed. We discuss the effect on the defined indices of classical T Tauri star veiling, which is however detected in only a few stars in the present sample. Then, we present tests and calibrations of these indices, on the basis of both photometry and literature reference spectra, from the UVES Paranal Observatory Project and the ELODIE 3.1 Library. The known properties of these stars, spanning a wide range of stellar parameters, enable us to obtain a good understanding of the performances of our new spectral indices. For non-peculiar stars with known temperature, gravity, and metallicity, we are able to calibrate quantitatively our indices, and derive stellar parameters for a wide range of stellar types. To this aim, a new composite index is defined, providing a good metallicity indicator. The ability of our indices to select peculiar, or otherwise rare classes of stars is also established. For pre-main-sequence stars outside the parameter range of the ELODIE dataset, index calibration relies on model isochrones. We check our calibrations against current Gaia-ESO UVES results, plus a number of Survey benchmark stars, and also against Gaia-ESO observations of young clusters, which contribute to establishing the good performance of our method across a wide range of stellar parameters. Our gravity determination for late-type PMS stars is found to be accurate enough to let us obtain gravity-based age estimates for PMS clusters. Finally, our gravity determinations support the existence of an older pre-main-sequence population in the gamma Vel sky region, in agreement with evidence obtained from the lithium depletion pattern of the same stars. (Less)


During photosynthesis, plants inevitably lose water that has to be continuously replaced by soil water absorbed by the roots. Hydrological status of the soil, root absorption, plant water transport, gas exchange and atmosphere are therefore intricately coupled within the soil–plant–atmosphere continuum (SPAC). It appears therefore straightforward to derive information on hydrology or plant ecophysiology from models that include as many components of the SPAC as possible. For example, plant related parameters might indicate the state of soil parameters. In this contribution, a basic model system is introduced that describes soil related parameters as dependent on plant parameters that are species‐specific or have to be measured on‐site: transpiration rate, leaf area index, root area index, ground area that is covered by the plant canopy, xylem conductivity, and leaf water potential. Test of the model indicates that plant subsurface parameters have no great influence on the model behavior. It appears feasible to obtain basic information on soil parameters by plant physiological parameters that can be readily measured above ground. In this case the approach has to be applied to at least three species of a site.


The increasing domination of biological approaches in suicide research and prevention, at the expense of social and cultural understanding, is severely harming our ability to stop people dying - so run the clearly set out arguments and evidence in this lucid book by leading social scientists and suicide researchers. In the first part of this book, instead of simply comparing suicide in different countries, the authors review and examine the fundamental issues of why culture is of vital importance in understanding and preventing suicidal behavior, what the "cultural meaning" of suicide is, and where current research and theory are leading us. The second part of the book then presents (and, importantly, also critiques) exemplary recent research, including an quantitative and qualitative study on the meaning of suicide in Australia, India, and Italy, which is reported in detail, as well as other studies on correlates of suicidal behavior in Kuwait and the US, on a culturally specific form of suicide (sati), and on the role of cultural conflict in South Korea.In the concluding section, the editors highlight both the necessity and the challenges of conducting good culturally sensitive studies, as well as suggesting solutions to these challenges. This volume is thus essential reading for anyone involved in suicide research and prevention.


Previous research has established that people with severe mental illness and co-occurring substance use disorder leaving prison have multiple and complex health, social and economic challenges. How the criminal justice and mental health systems influence the individual prison-to-community transition experience of this population is less well understood. This paper draws on unique qualitative data from a study of 18 men with co-occurring severe mental illness and substance use disorder leaving prison in Queensland, Australia. A repeat in-depth interview method was used to explore the experiences of the men in prison just prior to release and at two points post-release. Two themes are discussed from analysis of interviews: "risk behaviour and relapse" and "once a criminal always a risk". The findings suggest that individual risk behaviour is structured within a transition risk environment that reduces individual agency, thus facilitating a vicious cycle of release, relapse and reincarceration.


In this paper we introduce methods for approximating local standard time in the Northern Hemisphere using Polaris and the Big Dipper as well as alternative reference stars, and describe in detail how to construct a device we call a dipperclock to facilitate this process. An alternative method which does not require a dipperclock is also discussed. Ways of constructing dipperclocks which glow in the dark are presented. The accuracy of dipperclocks is examined, both theoretically and through field testing. A java program is provided for creating dipperclocks customized to a particular year-long time period and place to get improved accuracy. Basic astronomical definitions and justifications of the results are provided. We also discuss the use of dipperclocks to find longitude and latitude.


The article sets out to show that gender-based violence is no longer restricted to 'women by men'. Rather society must appreciate that gender battering is a reality across the gender divide, particularly in the 21st century Africa. In its methodology, the article has engaged a theo-philosophical approach that involves a social, religious, and a cultural analytical approach. The materials are gathered primarily after interviewing the staff and students from Kenyatta University, Mombasa Campus, and some selected people from the campus surroundings who were consulted orally. To this end, a questionnaire was released in June and July 2012 where about 200 respondents from across the various counties of Kenya were called upon to shed light on men battering in Kenya. In particular, some of the questions that were posed included: Has battering of men by women been part of our African societies from ancient times or is it a new phenomenon? Statistically, who are battered more men or women? How does domestic violence against men manifest itself? What causes it? Why does it sound new to our society? What can we do about it? The article rests on the premise that even though battering of women is more explicit, men battering by women, which takes many forms, has been there for quite some time, albeit unreported. By taking a holistic approach hence 'collective responsibility' across the gender divide, the society can be healed from all forms of gender-based violence.


Purpose: To develop a method for PET hypoxia tracer validation based on statistical analysis of the spatial correspondence between the intratumoral distributions of tracer uptake (assessed by digital autoradiography) and pimonidazole, an independent marker of hypoxia (assessed by immunofluorescent microscopy). The utility of the method was demonstrated by applying it to three PET hypoxia tracers, IAZGP, FMISO and Cu‐ATSM. Method and Materials: Eight rats bearing R3327‐AT tumors were divided into four groups of two animals each. Group♯1 was injected with 18F‐FMISO and sacrificed 2hr later. Group♯2 was injected with 124I‐IAZGP and sacrificed 3hr later. Groups♯3 and ♯4 were injected with 64Cu‐ATSM and sacrificed, respectively, 24hr or 1hr later. Pimonidazole was administered to all animals 2hr before sacrifice. Tumors were excised, frozen and sectioned. Digital autoradiograms of the tracer distribution were obtained from selected sections and co‐registered with images of pimonidazole‐associated immunofluorescence derived from adjacent sections. The statistical analysis of association between PET tracer uptake and pimonidazole immunofluorescent staining intensity was then performed on a pixel‐by‐pixel basis. Results: For rats from group♯1 correlation coefficients between pimonidazole‐associated immunofluorescent staining intensity and 18F‐FMISO uptake were 0.84 and 0.75. For group♯2 rats correlations between pimonidazole and 124I‐IAZGP were 0.85 and 0.77. For group♯3 (64Cu‐ATSM administered 24hr prior to sacrifice), the correlations with pimonidazole were 0.61 and 0.64. However, for group♯4 (64Cu‐ATSM administered 1hr prior to sacrifice), the correlation coefficients were −0.76 and −0.77, demonstrating that in this tumormodel64Cu‐ATSM uptake was not indicative of hypoxia at early times post injection. Conclusion: The proposed method enables evaluation of the degree of spatial correspondence between distributions of a PET tracer and alternative markers (either endogenous or exogenous) or tracers of the biological process under study. This method can be used for the in‐vivo validation of any nuclear medicine tracer.


The development of a high speed pin-on-disc wear testing rig has been undertaken and it has enabled the wear behaviour of zirconia sliding against silicon carbide to be examined. Sliding wear experiments were conducted for zirconia pins and silicon carbide discs under both water-lubricated and unlubricated conditions. Under water-lubricated conditions, tests at a relative sliding speed of 6 m s-1 showed that wear was geometry dependent and the exact alignment of the pin was crucial. At this speed it was possible, with pins polished in-situ on the rig, to achieve hydrodynamic lubrication (HDL) which resulted in low wear. Increasing the nominal contact pressure to 70 MPa resulted in the breakdown of the lubrication and led to high wear coefficients (e.g. 1.1 x 10-6 mm3 N-1 m-1). Under unlubricated conditions, the zirconia pin wore faster than with water lubrication present, the wear rate increasing with speed and nominal contact pressure in the range 1-6 m s-1 and 2-14 MPa. Wear coefficients ranged from 1.4 x 10-6 to 5.1 x 10 -5 mm3 N-1 m-1. The wear tests were followed by examination of the worn surfaces, using a variety of techniques including reflected light and scanning electron microscopy, in order to elucidate likely wear mechanisms. These techniques revealed that there was some degree of commonality between water-lubricated and unlubricated tests, suggesting a universal mechanism which operates over a broad spectrum of testing conditions. The electron microscopy study, combined with observations in the literature, led to the development of a physical model for the wear mechanism, including surface modification and material removal. During the initial stages of wear, and under mild testing conditions, grooves were formed on the surface by plastic deformation due to counterface asperities and trapped debris. The surface was further smeared and deformed as the test proceeded. A deformed surface layer built up which caused intergranular cracks parallel to the surface, at a depth of approximately 3 m. Wear occurred when these cracks linked up with the surface, a process which may be helped by the formation of a network of cracks parallel and normal to the sliding direction. The mechanism of formation of these crack networks remains controversial but is thought to involve thermal shock. Once material is removed from the surface, it is either thrown out of the contact or trapped in it causing further damage.


We report the fabrication of single-crystal monolayer WxMo1−xS2 alloy triangles using chemical vapor deposition method. Raman and photoluminescence property are investigated in correlation to the composition. In the monolayer triangles, the photoluminescence peak shifts continuously from 687.4 nm at the triangle center to 633.6 nm at the edge, corresponding to a switch from MoS2 to WS2 across the heterojunction. This composition-graded alloy may have interesting functions in broadband photodetection and multi-color light emission.