During the past decade there have been major developments in the way that research investments have been monitored and evaluated. While there are differences in the ways governments fund research around the world, and a diversity of approaches to evaluation, there are a number of common themes that can be observed in national experiences. As the importance of evaluation increases, the gap between current practice and best practice becomes more significant, and the need for comparative study and methods development grows. Current international 'better-practice' approaches to research evaluation and performance indicators reflect two important considerations. First, they make a clear distinction between input, output and outcome indicators and assessments of impact. Only limited refinements have occurred in recent years in input and output performance indicators. However, quite considerable developments have occurred in relation to the development of indicators and approaches for assessing the outcomes and impact of research.1 Second, evaluation and reporting mechanisms vary considerably according to the intended audience for the reporting. In particular, as nations move toward strategically targeting limited government research resources reporting demands at the programme level, and for specific stakeholder groups becomes all the more pressing.


When physicians search the web for personal information about their patients, others have argued that this undermines patients' trust, and the physician-patient relationship in general. We add that this practice also places other relationships at risk, and could jeopardize a physician's career. Yet there are also reports of web searches that have unambiguously helped in the care of patients, suggesting circumstances in which a routine search of the web could be beneficial. We advance the notion that, just as nonverbal cues and unsolicited information can be useful in clinical decision making, so too can online information from patients. As electronic records grow more voluminous and span more types of data, searching these resources will become a clinical skill, to be used judiciously and with care—just as evaluating the literature is, today. But to proscribe web searches of patients' information altogether is as nonsensical as disregarding findings from physical exams—instead, what's needed are guidelines for when to look and how to evaluate what's uncovered, online.


Online education continues to grow exponentially, and the majority of universities now offer online courses. However, the unprecedented explosion of online learning courses has resulted in increased demands for online teachers, and regular classroom teachers are often asked to teach in an online environment. Tools for Successful Online Teaching introduces teachers to the tools of the learning management system (LMS), or the online learning environment. These tools, including chat, threaded discussion, e-mail, surveys, exam builders, and more, are explored to show the strengths and weaknesses of each tool. Multiple examples of objectives and activities are provided to instill a deep understanding, and the reader will gain a long-term ability to create a unique curriculum.


21 August 1973 Meeting in collaboration with the British Association for the Advancement of Science held at Canterbury Salt Deposits The stratigraphy and tectonics of salt. Sir Percy Kent. The evolution of the Permian evaporite basin in Yorkshire. D. B. Smith. The rheological behaviour of salt. H. Albrecht. 10–13 September Engineering Group Meeting at Durham The engineering geology of reclamation and redevelopment 20–23 Geological Societies of the British Isles Meeting at Manchester Engineering Group Scale in engineering geology Volcanic Studies Group Tertiary volcanic districts of NW Scotland: a review Introduction. G. M. Brown. Geophysics. R. McQpillin. The lavas. R. N. Thompson. The intrusive complex of the Isles of Skye. J. D. Bell. The Rhum igneous complex. A. C. Dunham. The evolution of the first centre, Isle of Mull. R. R. Skelton Geological Society Tertiary basins around the British Isles Some Tertiary deposits on the western side of the British Isles as far north as 56° A. Wood & M. R. Dobson. The Tertiary marine geology of the Rockall Plateau and Trough. D. G. Roberts. Aspects of North Sea Tertiary stratigraphy. F. C. Dilley. Palaeogene successions of the eastern and central English Channel and their relation to those of adjoining land areas. D. Curry & A. J. Smith. Earth Science Education Methods Group Are Earth Science graduates employable? 9 October 1973 Engineering Group Meeting The influence of geology on the design of the Peochos Dam, northern Peru D. J. Eastaff. 10 October 1973 Ordinary General Meeting Emplacement of a high temperature


In this study, we revisit the three largest historical earthquakes in California—the 1857 Fort Tejon, 1872 Owens Valley, and 1906 San Francisco earthquakes—to review their published moment magnitudes, and compare their estimated shaking distributions with predictions using modern ground-motion models (GMMs) and ground-motion intensity conversion equations. Currently accepted moment magnitude estimates for the three earthquakes are 7.9, 7.6, and 7.8, respectively. We first consider the extent to which the intensity distributions of all three earthquakes are consistent with a moment magnitude toward the upper end of the estimated range. We then apply a GMM-based method to estimate the magnitudes of large historical earthquakes. The intensity distribution of the 1857 earthquake is too sparse to provide a strong constraint on magnitude. For the 1872 earthquake, consideration of all available constraints suggests that it was a high stress-drop event, with a magnitude on the higher end of the range implied by scaling relationships, that is, higher than moment magnitude 7.6. For the 1906 earthquake, based on our analysis of regional intensities and the detailed intensity distribution in San Francisco, along with other available constraints, we estimate a preferred moment magnitude of 7.9, consistent with the published estimate based on geodetic and instrumental seismic data. These results suggest that, although there can be a tendency for historical earthquake magnitudes to be overestimated, the accepted catalog magnitudes of California's largest historical earthquakes could be too low. Given the uncertainties of the magnitude estimates, the seismic moment release rate between 1850 and 2019 could have been either higher or lower than the average over millennial time scales. It is further not possible to reject the hypothesis that California seismicity is described by an untruncated Gutenberg–Richter distribution with a b-value of 1.0 for moment magnitudes up to 8.0.


Despite a growing interest in the paleoclimate evolution of the Holocene period in the Siberian sector of the Arctic Ocean relatively few data are available about the marine conditions from the shallow Siberian shelf seas. Within the frame of the joint Russian-German projects "Laptev Sea" and "SIRRO" high-resolution records from the Kara and Laptev seas have been studied for their palynological content in order to reconstruct sea-surface conditions and freshwater input from the large Siberian rivers during the Holocene.Holocene dinoflagellate cyst assemblages from both the Kara and Laptev Sea indicate the presence of a marine thermal optimum in the early Holocene. The onset occurred in the Laptev Sea shortly after the transition to the Holocene while sediment cores studied so far from the inner Kara Sea do not span this period. A long-term cooling in the mid and late Holocene is recognised in both shelf seas but, obviously, major steps did not occur synchronously. The records are characterised by few sub-millennia oscillations suggesting that conditions were relatively stable in the later part of the Holocene. Chlorococcalean algae reflect a variable freshwater input during the Holocene that was related to the post-glacial sea-level rise and retreat of the estuaries of the large rivers, Ob, Yenisei and Lena to their present position.


When it was released in 1955, the film "Rebel Without a Cause" had a revolutionary impact on moviemaking and youth culture, virtually giving birth to our concept of the American teenager. For the first time, "Live Fast, Die Young" tells the complete story of the explosive making of "Rebel," a film that has rocked every generation since its release. Set against a backdrop of the Atomic Age and an old Hollywood studio system on the verge of collapse, it vividly evokes the cataclysmic, immensely influential meeting of four of Hollywood's most passionate artists.When James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, and director Nicholas Ray converged, each was at a crucial point in his or her career. The young actors were grappling with fame, their burgeoning sexuality, and increasingly reckless behavior. As Ray engaged his cast in physical melees and psychosexual seductions of startling intensity, the on- and off-set relationships between his ambitious young actors ignited, sending a shock wave through the film. Through interviews with the surviving members of the cast and crew and firsthand access to both personal and studio archives, Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel reveal Rebel's true drama -- the director's affair with sixteen-year-old Wood, his tempestuous "spiritual marriage" with Dean, and his role in awakening the latent homosexuality of Mineo, who would become the first gay teenager to appear on film.Complete with thirty photographs, including ten never-before-seen photos by famed Dean photographer Dennis Stock, "Live Fast, Die Young" tells the absorbing inside story of an unforgettable and absolutely essential American film -- a story that is, in many ways, as provocative as thefilm itself.


Survival analysis is a commonly used tool in many fields but has seen little use in education research despite a common number of research questions for which it is well suited. Researchers often use logistic regression instead; however, this omits useful information. In research on retention and graduation for example, the timing of the event is an important piece of information omitted when using logistic regression. A simulation study was conducted to evaluate four methods of analyzing competing risks survival data, Cox proportional hazards regression, Weibull regression, Fine and Gray's Method, and Cox proportional hazards regression with frailty. College student retention and graduation is presented as an example. The results indicate that there is no one best model for all simulated scenarios. Instead, it appears the selection of the method of analysis should be based on the characteristics of the data. Both Cox proportional hazards and the Weibull regression are accurate with the base combination (sample size of 500 per group, continuous event time format, no correlation between event times, homogeneous shape parameter for both events for both groups, homogeneous failure rates for both events for both groups, and no frailty) as well as when one parameter is changed from the base combination. In addition, for data where the event time distribution shape does not differ by event, the accuracy of the models is quite similar. However, differences begin to emerge with some combinations of conditions. Cox performs especially poorly with data sets containing both differing event time distribution shapes by event and differing failure rates by group or event while Weibull is least accurate with the combination of homogeneous event time distribution shape, heterogeneous failure rate by group and/or event, and discrete format time. Fine and Gray's method was often ranked last by accuracy, but there are some situations where its accuracy is quite good including retention and graduation data. Cox proportional hazards regression with frailty performed very similarly to the Cox regression without frailty with no


There are many formal approaches to specifying how the mental state of an agent entails the particular actions it will perform. These approaches put the agent at the center of analysis. For some questions and purposes, it is more realistic and convenient for the center of analysis to be the task environment, domain or society of which agents will be a part. This paper presents such a task environment-oriented modeling framework that can work hand in hand with more agent-centered approaches. Our approach features careful attention to the quantitative computational interrelationships between tasks, to what information is available and when to update an agent's mental state and to the general structure of the task environment rather than single-instance examples. A task environment model can be used for both analysis and simulation, it avoids the methodological problems of relying solely on single-instance examples and provides concrete, meaningful characterizations with which to state general theories. This paper is organized around an example model of co-operative problem solving in a distributed sensor network.


Basic spectral and temporal sound properties, such as frequency content and timing, are evaluated by the auditory system to build an internal representation of the external world and to generate auditory guided behaviour. Using echolocating bats as model system, I investigated aspects of spectral and temporal processing during echolocation and in relation to passive listening, and the echo-acoustic object recognition for navigation.
In the first project (chapter 2), the spectral processing during passive and active hearing was compared in the echolocting bat Phyllostomus discolor. Sounds are ubiquitously used for many vital behaviours, such as communication, predator and prey detection, or echolocation.
The frequency content of a sound is one major component for the correct perception of the transmitted information, but it is distorted while travelling from the sound source to the receiver. In order to correctly determine the frequency content of an acoustic signal, the receiver needs to compensate for these distortions. We first investigated whether P. discolor compensates for distortions of the spectral shape of transmitted sounds during passive listening. Bats were trained to discriminate lowpass filtered from highpass filtered acoustic impulses, while hearing a continuous white noise background with a flat spectral shape. We then assessed their spontaneous classification of acoustic impulses with varying spectral content depending on the background's spectral shape (flat or lowpass filtered). Lowpass filtered noise background increased the proportion of highpass classifications of the same filtered impulses, compared to white noise background. Like humans, the bats thus compensated for the background's spectral shape. In an active-acoustic version of the identical experiment, the bats had to classify filtered playbacks of their emitted echolocation calls instead of passively presented impulses. During echolocation, the classification of the filtered echoes was independent of the spectral shape of the passively presented background noise. Likewise, call structure did not change to compensate for the background's spectral shape. Hence, auditory processing differs between passive and active hearing, with echolocation representing an independent mode with its own rules of auditory spectral analysis.
The second project (chapter 3) was concerned with the accurate measurement of the time of occurrence of auditory signals, and as such also distance in echolocation. In addition, the importance of passive listening compared to echolocation turned out to be an unexpected factor in this study. To measure the distance to objects, called ranging, bats measure the time delay between an outgoing call and its returning echo. Ranging accuracy received considerable interest in echolocation research for several reasons: (i) behaviourally, it is of importance for the bat's ability to locate objects and navigate its surrounding, (ii) physiologically, the neuronal implementation of precise measurements of very short time intervals is a challenge and (iii) the conjectured echo-acoustic receiver of bats is of interest for signal processing. Here, I trained the nectarivorous bat Glossophaga soricina to detect a jittering real target and found a biologically plausible distance accuracy of 4–7 mm, corresponding to a temporal accuracy of 20–40 μs. However, presumably all bats did not learn to use the jittering echo delay as the first and most prominent cue, but relied on passive acoustic listening first, which could only be prevented by the playback of masking noise. This shows that even a non-gleaning bat heavily relies on passive acoustic cues and that the measuring of short time intervals is difficult. This result questions other studies
reporting a sub-microsecond time jitter threshold.
The third project (chapter 4) linked the perception of echo-acoustic stimuli to the appropriate behavioural reactions, namely evasive flight manoeuvres around virtual objects presented in the flight paths of wild, untrained bats. Echolocating bats are able to orient in complete darkness only by analysing the echoes of their emitted calls. They detect, recognize and classify objects based on the spectro-temporal reflection pattern received at the two ears. Auditory object analysis, however, is inevitably more complicated than visual object analysis, because the one-dimensional acoustic time signal only transmits range information, i.e., the object's distance and its longitudinal extent. All other object dimensions like width and height have to be inferred from comparative analysis of the signals at both ears and over time. The purpose of this study was to measure perceived object dimensions in wild, experimentally naive bats by video-recording and analysing the bats' evasive flight manoeuvres in response to the presentation of virtual echo-acoustic objects with independently manipulated acoustic parameters. Flight manoeuvres were analysed by extracting the flight paths of all passing bats. As a control to our method, we also recorded the flight paths of bats in response to a real object. Bats avoided the real object by flying around it. However, we did not find any flight path changes in response to the presentation of several virtual objects. We assume that the missing spatial extent of virtual echo-acoustic objects, due to playback from only one loudspeaker, was the main reason for the failure to evoke evasive flight manoeuvres. This study therefore emphasises for the first time the importance of the spatial dimension of virtual objects, which were up to now neglected in virtual object presentations.


We analyze the impact of trade liberalization and removal of the federal tax credit in the United States on U.S. and Brazilian ethanol markets using a multi-market international ethanol model calibrated on 2005 market data and policies. The removal of trade distortions induces a 23.2 percent increase in the price of world ethanol on average between 2006 and 2015 relative to the baseline. The U.S. domestic ethanol price decreases by 14.1 percent, which results in a 7.5 percent decline in production and a 3.2 percent increase in consumption. The lower domestic price leads to a 2.5 percent rise in the share of fuel ethanol in gasoline consumption. U.S. net ethanol imports increase by 192.8 percent. Brazil responds to the higher world ethanol price by increasing its production by 8.8 percent on average. Total ethanol consumption in Brazil decreases by 3.2 percent and net exports increase by 61.9 percent relative to the baseline. The higher ethanol price leads to a 4.7 percent increase in the share of sugarcane used in ethanol production. The removal of trade distortions and 51¢ per gallon tax credit to refiners blending ethanol induces a 22.5 percent increase in the world ethanol price.


By 2019, Norway will complete the national rollout of advanced metering systems (AMS) for all customers. Beyond near-time monitoring of voltage quality and frictionless billing of customers, such a rollout opens a host of possibilities. However, a full-scale rollout is not without challenges. For instance, throughput limitations of radio-mesh networks, privacy considerations, and bounds on compute and storage infrastructure limit the cardinality of metering data to levels below that of which established techniques (for example non-intrusive load disaggregation) require. Pilot projects are now exploring how to mitigate these challenges as well as seeking novel opportunities that open up through data fusion and recent advances in machine learning. In this contribution, we outline the capabilities of the Norwegian AMS system and describe established use-cases and non-intrusive load monitoring. We then discuss a pilot on detection of electric vehicles. Based on preliminary findings, we map the path forward.


This paper proposes to investigate the impact of financialization on energy markets (oil, gas, coal and electricity European forward prices) during both normal times and extreme fluctuation periods through an original behavioral and emotional approach. To this aim, we propose a new theoretical and empirical framework based on a heterogeneous agents model in which fundamentalists and chartists co-exist and are subject to regret and uncertainty. We find significant evidence that energy markets are composed by heterogeneous traders which behave differently depending on the intensity of the price fluctuations and uncertainty context. In particular, energy prices are mainly governed by fundamental and chartist neutral agents during normal times whereas they face to irrational chartist averse investors during extreme fluctuations periods. In this context, the recent energy prices surge can be viewed as the consequence of irrational exhuberance. Our new theoretical model outperforms the random walk in out-of-sample predictive ability.


A new geometric approach for nonlinear independent component analysis (ICA) is presented in this paper. Nonlinear environment is modeled by the popular post nonlinear (PNL) scheme. To eliminate the nonlinearity in the observed signals, a novel linearizing method named as geometric post nonlinear ICA (gpICA) is introduced. Thereafter, a basic linear ICA is applied on these linearized signals to estimate the unknown sources. The proposed method is motivated by the fact that in a multidimensional space, a nonlinear mixture is represented by a nonlinear surface while a linear mixture is represented by a plane, a special form of the surface. Therefore, by geometrically transforming the surface representing a nonlinear mixture into a plane, the mixture can be linearized. Through simulations on different data sets, superior performance of gpICA algorithm has been shown with respect to other algorithms.


Abstract Participation has regained a remarkable presence in academic debates within Communication and Media Studies, amongst other fields and disciplines. At the same time, the concept of participation has remained vague because of its frequent and diverse usages and its intrinsically political nature, which renders it difficult to use in an academic context. Conceptual clarity is generated through a combination of negative-relationist and interdisciplinary strategies. The former means that an argument is made in favour of a more focussed meaning of participation, on the basis of a comparison with two other concepts, access and interaction. The interdisciplinary strategy consists of a broad theoretical re-reading that focuses on the academic literature in which these distinctions are made, or where the independent nature of one of the three concepts is particularly emphasized. At the end of this text, the different meanings of access, interaction and participation are structured and integrated in a model, which is labelled the AIP model.


The history and extent of the Quaternary glaciations in Eurasia isstill discussed controversly. Within this context, the largestremaining uncertainty is how far the Kara Sea ice sheet extendedtowards the east during the Last Glacial Maximum (=LGM) (Svendsen etal., 1999; Polyak et al., 2000, 2002; Stein et al. 2002). The keyquestion related to this problem is: how did the discharge of thesiberian rivers interact with a proximal ice sheet?Detailed high frequency seismic reflection profiles provide data for amodel of shelf evolution based on the principles of sequencestratigraphy. Both rivers incised into the recent shelf, leaving filledand unfilled river channels and river canyons/valleys connecting to acomplex paleo drainage network.The lowstand (or regressive) system tract sediments are absent but arerepresented by an unconformity atop of Pleistocene sediments on theshelf. The subsequent transgressive and highstand system tracts arebest preserved in the incised channels and only minor sedimentaccumulation on the adjacent shelf areas are documented.Major factors governing the stratigraphic architecture area) sea level fluctuationsb) LGM ice sheet influenceAsymmetrical channel levee complexes with incision depths of 60 metersand more developed, in some places bordering to glacial dominatedmorphology, implying fluvial deflection by the LGM ice masses. Thisfinding denotes the non-existence of an ice sheet on large areas of theKara Sea shelf. Furthermore mapping of sediment thickness andreflection character reveals no evidence for an ice dammed lake, aspostulated by some workers.Sidorchuk et al. (2001) found "macromeanders" formed during the LGMuntil 14000 years BP, fluvial features an order of magnitude largerthan recent fluvial dimensions. Therefore it seems reasonable to relatefluvial features on the Kara Sea shelf, developed during sea levellowstand, to a pronounced riverine discharge as proposed by Sidorchuket al. (2001).Literature:Polyak, L., V. Gataullin, et al. (2000). New constraints on the limitsof he Barents-Kara ice sheet during the Last Glacial Maximum based onborehole stratigraphy from Pechora Sea. Geology 28 (7): 611-614.Polyak, L., V. (2002).Kara Sea expedition yields insight into extent ofLGM ice sheet. EOS, Tansactions, American Geophysical Union 83 No. 46.Sidorchuk et al. (2001) Fluvial response to the Late Valdai/Holoceneenvironmental change on the East European Plain. Global and PlanetaryChange Vol. 28, no. 1-4, pp. 303-318.Stein, R., (2002). ability of Siberian climate and Arctic riverdischarge, Geology.2002). Siberian River Run-Off and Late Quaternary Glaciation in theSouthern Kara Sea, Arctic Ocean: Preliminary Results, Polar Research,21, 315-322.Svendsen, J. I., V. I. Astakhov, et al. (1999). Maximum extent of theEurasian ice sheets in the Barents and Kara Sea region during theWeichselian. Boreas 28(1): 234-242.


Video presented as part of the USECA 2011 workshop at WISE 2011.

Real-time sales assistant service is a problematic component of remote delivery of sales support for customers. Solutions involving web pages, telephony and video support prove problematic when seeking to remotely guide customers in their sales processes, especially with transactions revolving around physically complex artefacts. This process involves a number of services that are often complex in nature, ranging from physical compatibility and configuration factors, to availability and credit services. We propose the application of a combination of virtual worlds and augmented reality to create synthetic environments suitable for remote sales of physical artefacts, right in the home of the purchaser. A high level description of the service structure involved is shown, along with a use case involving the sale of electronic goods and services within an example augmented reality application. We expect this work to have application in many sales domains involving physical objects needing to be sold over the Internet.


This study, dealing with the question of the impact of climate and extreme weather events on famines, has two objectives. The first objective is to review recent literature on the topic, distinguishing between economic and political science papers aimed at addressing contemporary famine events in the Third World countries, and historical research dealing with famines of the past. The former category of literature is characterized by a tendency to take the connection between the two variables for granted. The latter category, however, tends to exercise more analytical caution, but it still exhibits a degree of environmental determinism. The second objective of the article is to reassess the role and impact of climate and short‐term weather anomalies on famines in pre‐Industrial societies, in both European and non‐European history. At first, it appears that famines went invariably hand‐in‐hand with climatic changes and anomalies. A closer analysis, however, reveals that those climatic events created environmental shocks (harvest failures and blights), which implied shortages, rather than famines. Whether those shortages were bound to transform into full‐fledged famines was determined by nonenvironmental factors: primarily, human institutions and demographic trends. Climate alone, it is argued, is incapable of creating famines. The often unquestioned connection between the two variables appears to be an imaginary cultural and political construct of our era, when the fear of global warming and the awareness of climate change dominate the public and scholarly discourse. WIREs Clim Change 2016, 7:433–447. doi: 10.1002/wcc.395


Abstract
This research studies the development of policies for quality assurance in four European
systems of higher education, namely England, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland. It
compares how these four countries have adopted the policies for quality assurance that can be
observed currently and investigates the extent to which cross-national convergence may be
taking place.
The theoretical approach to the topic is based on policy analysis. Quality assurance is
approached as a policy domain within which particUlar public policies are formulated and
implemented. These policies correspond to the responses of the different countries to a
number of fundamental choices regarding the organisation of the quality assurance policy
domain and are composed of ideational (the policy beliefs) and material (the policy
instruments) elements. The type of response is influenced, it is argued, by a number of
factors. These can be either internal or external to the system of higher education and can
originate either from within the national environment or internationally.
The comparative method upon which the empirical studies are based makes a distinction
between diachronic and synchronic comparisons. First, the analysis focuses on the factors
that can influence the emergence of quality assurance as a political issue in each national
context. Then, the focus shifts to the factors potentially at play in the construction of the
quality assurance policy domain. This distinction permits the assessment of the emergence of
quality assurance as a problem and the kind of policies each country has developed to
address the fundamental choices in quality assurance in HE.
The data consist of documentary sources of different type as well as twenty-three interviews
with actors involved in the process of policy formulation in HE in general and quality
assurance in particular in the four countries.
The comparative analysis of the national quality assurance policy domains reveals that crossnational
convergence has been (and still is) taking place. This convergence, however, takes
place at the level of the policy beliefs, the paradigm core of the national policies, whereas the
policy instruments form~lated in each country tend to reflect, to a substantial degree, the
impact of national factors.


Abstract TiO2/stevensite nanocomposite photocatalysts were synthesized by a solvothermal method using TiCl3/HCl as reactants and the stevensite clay mineral extract as support. The prepared photocatalyst samples were then characterized using various techniques such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), Infrared spectroscopy (IR) and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM). The Points of Zero Charge (PZC) of the various samples were evaluated by titration of the non-modified and the Ti-modified clay aqueous dispersions, with cationic surfactant solutions. The photocatalytic activity of the resulting nanocomposites samples were evaluated for the removal of Orange G (OG) from aqueous solution as a model dye pollutant. The data indicate that the formation of Na+-stevensite by the TiO2 particles leads to TiO2/stevensite nanocomposites having higher specific surface areas and mesopore volumes, and lower PZC values. Further, the photocatalytic activity was greater for the TiO2/stevensite nanocomposites having the greatest Ti amount, as compared to a pure TiO2 sample, and increased with the increase of the TiO2 content in the TiO2/stevensite nanocomposites.


In a world increasingly "globalized" through advances in transportation and communication, place still matters. Our urban communities, dense and mixed in character, are homes for important social, economic, and political institutions and relationships (DeFilippis, Fisher, & Shragge, 2006), with volunteer-run neighbourhood associations bringing the voices of community residents into the conversation. My research with two such groups in Kitchener, Ontario, originally focused on organizational characteristics that aided their work in addressing neighbourhood issues such as crime, but later expanded to include considerations of the urban context within which both groups belong. Semi-structured qualitative interviews with association members and external actors highlighted the importance of leadership, organizational structure, flexibility, and partnerships with external organizations. Safety concerns in the communities provided an initial impetus, with both groups focusing on specific issues and engaging in ongoing learning to improve their neighbourhoods. The associations also appear to benefit their communities indirectly by fostering residential pride and informal neighbouring activities. Based on insights from empowerment theory, urban studies, and my own critical reflections on my experiences living in urban neighbourhoods, I suggest that the associations are uniquely shaped by their settings, with structures and behaviours that respond to the complexity of life in our cities. In turn, these neighbourhood groups have the potential to address the paradoxes often encountered in urban living: by bridging the individual and the community, they serve as an example of a "third way" (Newbrough, 1995). This research provides suggestions for neighbourhood residents, groups, community practitioners, and researchers.


Abstract. Advanced oxidation processes, such as the Fenton's reagent, are powerful methods for decontamination of different environments from recalcitrant organics. In this work, the degradation of paraquat (PQ) pesticide was assessed (employing the commercial product gramoxone) directly inside the pipes of a pilot scale loop system; the effect of corroded cast iron pipe and loose deposits for catalysing the process was also evaluated. Results showed that complete degradation of paraquat ([PQ]0= 3.9 × 10−4 M, T = 20–30 °C, pH0 = 3, [H2O2]0 = 1.5 × 10−2 M and [Fe (II)] = 5.0 × 10−4 M,) was achieved within 8 h, either in lab scale or in the pilot loop. Complete PQ degradation was obtained at pH 3 whereas only 30% of PQ was degraded at pH 5 during 24 h. The installation of old cast iron segments with length from 0.5 to 14 m into PVC pipe loop system had a significant positive effect on degradation rate of PQ, even without addition of iron salt; the longer the iron pipes section, the faster was the pesticide degradation. Addition of loose deposits (mostly corrosion products composed of goethite, magnetite and a hydrated phase of FeO) also catalysed the Fenton reaction due to presence of iron in the deposits. Moreover, gradual addition of hydrogen peroxide improved gramoxone degradation and mineralization. This study showed for the first time that is possible to achieve complete degradation of pesticides in situ pipe water system and that deposits and corroded pipes catalyse oxidation of pesticides.


Abstract We use high-resolution (1.5–2.4 points/m 2 ) bare-earth airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) imagery to identify, map, constrain, and visualize fault-related geomorphology in densely vegetated terrain surrounding Martis Creek Dam near Truckee, California. Bare-earth LiDAR imagery reveals a previously unrecognized and apparently youthful right-lateral strike-slip fault that exhibits laterally continuous tectonic geomorphic features over a 35-km-long zone. If these interpretations are correct, the fault, herein named the Polaris fault, may represent a significant seismic hazard to the greater Truckee–Lake Tahoe and Reno–Carson City regions. Three-dimensional modeling of an offset late Quaternary terrace riser indicates a minimum tectonic slip rate of 0.4±0.1 mm/yr. Mapped fault patterns are fairly typical of regional patterns elsewhere in the northern Walker Lane and are in strong coherence with moderate magnitude historical seismicity of the immediate area, as well as the current regional stress regime. Based on a range of surface-rupture lengths and depths to the base of the seismogenic zone, we estimate a maximum earthquake magnitude ( M ) for the Polaris fault to be between 6.4 and 6.9.


Methanol is today considered a viable green fuel for combustion engines because of its low soot emissions and the possibility of it being produced in a CO2-neutral manner. Methanol as a fuel for combustion engines have attracted interest throughout history and much research was conducted during the oil crisis in the seventies. In the beginning of the eighties the oil prices began to decrease and interest in methanol declined. This paper presents the emission potential of methanol. T-Φ maps were constructed using a 0-D reactor with constant pressure, temperature and equivalence ratio to show the emission characteristics of methanol. These maps were compared with equivalent maps for diesel fuel. The maps were then complemented with engine simulations using a stochastic reactor model (SRM), which predicts end-gas emissions. The SRM was validated using experimental results from a truck engine running in Partially Premixed Combustion (PPC) mode at medium loads. The SRM was able to predict the combustion in terms of pressure trace and rate of heat release. The CO and NOx emissions were matched, however, the HC emissions were underestimated. Finally, the trajectories from the SRM simulations were superimposed on the T-Φ maps to investigate the in engine conditions. The T-Φ map analysis shows that emission of soot are non-existent, formaldehyde can be avoided and that emissions of methane are kept at, compared to diesel combustion, low levels, however CO and NOx levels are similar to diesel combustion. These results were confirmed for engine conditions by the SRM simulations and the engine experiments.


In this paper, we propose a motion-planning method of multiple mobile robots for cooperative transportation of a large object in a three-dimensional environment. This task has various kinds of problems, such as obstacle avoidance and stable manipulation. All of these problems cannot be solved at once, since it would result in a dramatic increase of the computational time. Accordingly, we divided the motion planner into a global path planner and a local manipulation planner, designed them, and integrated them. The aim was to integrate a gross motion planner and a fine motion planner. Concerning the global path planner, we reduced the dimensions of the configuration space (C-space) using the feature of transportation by mobile robots. We used the potential field to find the solution by searching in this smaller-dimension reconstructed C-space. In the global path planner, the constraints of the object manipulation are considered as the cost function and the heuristic function in the A/sup */ search. For the local manipulation planner, we developed a manipulation technique, which is suitable for mobile robots by position control. We computed the conditions in which the object becomes unstable during manipulation and generated each robot's motion, considering the robots' motion errors and indefinite factors from the planning stage. We verified the effectiveness of our proposed motion planning method through simulations.


Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS) is a sensory-motor neurological disorder that overallyaffects about 10 percent of adults. RLS can be correlated with opioid abuse relapse and considered as a risk factor in relapse of opioid abuse . This study aimedto investigate the relationship between restless legs syndrome and opioid use relapse.In this crosssectional study participants included 214 patients with opioid abuse referred to Tehran Psychiatric Institute for substance abuse treatment in 2015.After obtaining informed consent from patients, Restless Legs Syndrome Rating Scale appliedto assess Restless Legs Syndrome severity.To determine relapse of substance abuse urine morphin test was used.The results showed that there was no significant difference statistically between patients with substance abuse relapse and patients without substance abuse relapse in terms of sex, marital status and education level (p> .05) while there was significant difference between the two groups in terms of age, the age of onset of drug use, way of drug consumption, family history of drug abuse and smoking (p <.05). Three month after the withdrawal the frequencies of mild and sever cases of RLS in group without substance abuse relapse were 66.7% and 1.3% respectively while in group with substance abuse relapse the frequency of mild and sever cases of RLS were 22.8% and 19.9% respectively which statistically was meaningful(p = .0001).Based on the findings of this study there was a correlation between RLS and substance abuse relapse in abusers who experienced substance withdrawal. As well as increasing the time from withdrawal the severity of this syndrome will increase.


The extraction of deep fractured and compromised endodontically or parodontically teeth is a routine procedure for any dental practice. The extraction technique is of considerable importance for the bone loss in the course of the extraction as well as the post extraction period of healing. The post extraction bone loss is estimated to 40%60% for the first six months (Cristensen GJ) Bone presence is important for the further prosthetic recovery, especially when further implant treatment is under consideration.


Within the engineering design community there is support for further research into the development of improved approaches to design management. Such research has lead to coordination being identified as an important and pervasive characteristic of many existing approaches (e.g., concurrent engineering and work-flow management). In this article, operational design coordination is proposed as the basis for an improved approach. This article also presents a novel integrated approach that incorporates the key elements of operational design coordination: coherence, communication, task management, resource management, schedule management, and real-time support. Through unifying these key elements, this approach provides an integrated means of managing design in a controlled and harmonious fashion. The approach also provides knowledge of the constituent techniques involved in operational design coordination, the interrelationships and dynamic interactions between them, and the knowledge used and maintained within and between them. The approach has been realized within an agent-oriented system called the Design Coordination System, which provides a systematic means of simultaneously coordinating operational management tasks and technical design tasks. To evaluate the approach, the system has been applied to an industrial case study involving the computational process of turbine blade design. This application has been shown to enable the structured undertaking of interrelated tasks by allocating and using resources of varying performance efficiency in an optimized fashion in accordance with dynamically derived schedules in a coherent, appropriate, and timely manner. This is achieved by managing tasks, their dependencies, and the information required to undertake them. In addition, the approach enables and sustains the continuous optimized use of resources by monitoring, forecasting, and disseminating resource performance efficiency. The approach facilitates dynamic scheduling and the subsequent enactment of the resulting schedules. Decision making for rescheduling is also incorporated within the approach such that it is only performed as and when appropriate. If rescheduling is performed, it is done so in parallel with task enactment such that resources continue to be utilized in an optimized manner.


Introduction: The management of advanced NSCLC has been shifted by histology-driven treatment and molecularly targeted therapy, especially in lung adenocarcinoma. However, as the second most common histology in NSCLC, the treatment options for squamous cell lung cancer (SQCLC) remain very limited. Areas covered: The review first discusses the role of histology in management of NSCLC and new cytotoxic agents in SQCLC, and then addresses genomic characterization and potential molecular targets in SQCLC. The article then provides an overview for several major categories of novel molecularly targeted therapies and immune-based strategies with particular attention to ongoing SQCLC trials. Expert opinion: The key challenges in drug development are to uncover novel actionable targets and to identify predictive biomarkers. Progress in genomic analysis has identified some promising targetable genes and oncogenic pathways in SQCLC with a wave of targeted agents being tested in clinical trials. Immunotherapy has also raised great interest in management of SQCLC, especially agents targeting immune check points, cytotoxic T-lymphocyte antigen-4, programmed death-1 receptor and its ligands. Better understanding of tumor biology and development of novel targeted therapies will help to facilitate more effective personalized therapy for patients with this devastating illness.


These Flood Story drawings imagine environments so submerged that they can only be visited by scuba divers. For us, today, inundation events on this scale remain in the future, yet when viewing these drawings, the sense is of looking back into history. Through this temporal shift they suggest we, and the divers, have been transported forward in time to look back at the remains of our folly. The crisis of climate change and rising sea levels is spoken of as having 'biblical' proportions and such reference is apt. In Flood Story the divers appear the only sign of human life, yet even they have an otherworldly appearance. Their bodies, which hover and glow, are created by making an absence to represent a presence. In some drawings their role as visitors from another realm is enhanced to include hand gestures of supplication, suggesting they may be angelic saviours. These imaginative images of a radical Anthropocene forewarn us of the global consequences of our actions.


I IN a famous passage defending native plays, Thomas Nashe praises dramas "borrowed out of our English Chronicles" such as The Famous Victories of Henry V and 1 Henry VI (glorifying Talbot) that confer "immortalitie" upon the nation's heroes and inspire patriotism, valor, and moral uplift in spectators; compared to the theater "beyond sea," he continues, "our Sceane is more statelye furnisht..., our representations honourable, and full of gallant resolution, not consisting, like theirs, of a Pantaloun, a Whore, and a Zanie, but of Emperours, Kings, and Princes...." (1) Honor, resolution, and stateliness do indeed abound in the stage histories performed during the decade in which Nashe wrote, but a number of these plays also contain a greater element of lust, adultery, and nonconformist sexuality than Nashe suggests. Nor is it unremarkable that the royal figures who give their names to many of the plays' titles are themselves profoundly implicated in attempted seductions, extramarital affairs, or other illicit expressions of sexual desire as well as sometimes being cuckolded. The intention of this essay is to survey some of the more obvious instances of carnality in the histories of the period, to inquire what dramatic purposes they serve, and to suggest that the pervasiveness of these elements may help illuminate the politics and cultural significance of a genre that flowered colorfully in the 1590s and thereafter rapidly declined. It is convenient to begin with the four King Edward plays--Peele's Edward I (1590-91), Marlowe's Edward II (1591-92), Shakespeare's (?) Edward III (1592-93), and the two parts of Heywood's Edward IV (1592-99)--not only because these works comprise a range of playwrights and styles but also because, the difficulties of precise dating aside, they would appear to span the decade chronologically. II Peele's play, which probably preceded Marlowe's since the latter seems to have borrowed verbally from it, (2) is episodic, textually garbled as the result of imperfect revision, and inconsistent in its characterization of Queen Elinor: sometimes she appears as a comedic figure, speaking in a tone of unroyal jocosity as King Edward's "sweete Nell" (line 74) (3)--as his earthy, plain-spoken but adored companion in military campaigns (including a crusade) and even as a vulgar boxer of her husband's ear; at other points she emblematizes hateful Spanish pride, being portrayed as a witch-like foreign princess (Elinor of Castile) who would have the beards of all her male subjects shaved off and the breasts of all women mutilated, and who is given to haughty, egregiously inflated rhetoric. By the end of the play she has become the "scourge of England" (line 2104), an "accursed monster" (line 2473) guilty of both murder and adultery, although her deathbed repentance is represented as sincere. Apart from the use of chronicle material for the depiction of Edward's conquest of Wales and Scotland and the influence of Tamburlaine for the tone of Edward's more vaunting speeches, the play obviously draws upon the traditions of balladry and romantic comedy (several scenes invoke the holiday ambience and greenwood setting of the Robin Hood legend) like that represented by the anonymous Fair Em (1589-91?) and Greene's Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (1589-92) and The Scottish History of James IV (1590?). (4) A pageant in the middle of the play presents Edward's "beautuous lovely Queene" (line 1452) discovered in her tent, having just been delivered of the Prince of Wales (the future Edward II) whom she ceremoniously presents to the king for christening: "He is thine owne, as true as he is thine" (line 1479). The legitimacy of royal descent is thus celebrated with regal pomp and much lyrical effusion in an episode that echoes the equally ceremonial presentation of the crown to the title character as successor of Henry III in the opening scene. The final section of Edward I then vilifies Elinor almost beyond recognition, concentrating on her barbaric cruelty, her jealousy of the Mayoress of London (whom she poisons by means of an adder applied to her breast), and on her "loose delights" (line 2466) and "lawles lust" (line 2517); in a death-bed confession the queen reveals that she has violated her marriage to King Edward by sleeping with his brother Edmund and by conceiving her daughter Joan of Acon (now married to the Earl of Gloucester) not legitimately as everyone had supposed, but rather by "a leacherous Frier" (line 2579). …


Abstract The formulation of accurate clinical case definitions is an integral part of an effective process of public health surveillance. Although such definitions should, ideally, be based on a standardized and fixed collection of defining criteria, they often require revision to reflect new knowledge of the condition involved and improvements in diagnostic testing. Optimal case definitions also need to have a balance of sensitivity and specificity that reflects their intended use. After the 2009–2010 H1N1 influenza pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) initiated a technical consultation on global influenza surveillance. This prompted improvements in the sensitivity and specificity of the case definition for influenza – i.e. a respiratory disease that lacks uniquely defining symptomology. The revision process not only modified the definition of influenza-like illness, to include a simplified list of the criteria shown to be most predictive of influenza infection, but also clarified the language used for the definition, to enhance interpretability. To capture severe cases of influenza that required hospitalization, a new case definition was also developed for severe acute respiratory infection in all age groups. The new definitions have been found to capture more cases without compromising specificity. Despite the challenge still posed in the clinical separation of influenza from other respiratory infections, the global use of the new WHO case definitions should help determine global trends in the characteristics and transmission of influenza viruses and the associated disease burden.


Abstract The neurodegenerative Huntington's disease (HD) is caused by a polyglutamine (polyQ) amplification in the huntingtin protein (HTT). Currently there is no effective therapy available for HD; however, several efforts are directed to develop and optimize HTT-lowering methods to improve HD phenotypes. To validate these approaches, there is an immediate need for reliable, sensitive, and easily accessible methods to quantify HTT expression. Using the AlphaLISA platform, we developed two novel sensitive and robust assays for quantification of HTT in biological samples using commercially available antibodies. The first, a polyQ-independent assay, measures the total pool of HTT, while the second, a polyQ-dependent assay, preferentially detects the mutant form of HTT. Using purified HTT protein standards and brain homogenates from an HD mouse model, we determine a lower limit of quantification of 1 and 3 pm and optimal reproducibility with CV values lower than 7% for intra- and 20% for interassay. In addition, we used the assays to quantify HTT in neural stem cells generated from patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells in vitro and in human brain tissue lysates. Finally, we could detect changes in HTT levels in a mouse model where mutant HTT was conditionally deleted in neural tissue, verifying the potential to monitor the outcome of HTT-lowering strategies. This analytical platform is ideal for high-throughput screens and thus has an added value for the HD community as a tool to optimize novel therapeutic approaches aimed at modulating HTT protein levels.


Winnie and Wilbur: The Midnight Dragon, the new edition, is available on ISBN: 9780192748232. It's just after midnight. Winnie has gone to bed and is snoring peacefully when Wilbur is woken by a strange noise. He goes downstairs to investigate and, to his horror, discovers a baby dragon squeezing through his cat-flap! Wilbur is not impressed by the scaly visitor, especially when it starts chasing him around Winnie's house. But the baby dragon just wants to play and, in his exuberance, manages to topple a grandfather clock and knock over a suit of armour. All the clattering wakes Winnie and she's not happy about a baby dragon in her house, either. After all, there are puffs of smoke coming out of his nose and he might start a fire. So Winnie uses a little magic to turn the smoke into...a cloud of butterlies. This makes Wilbur feel better, he loves chasing butterflies! So now Winnie has a baby dragon and a cat who just want to play whereas she just wants to sleep! Winnie decides she's had enough of babysitting a dragon and goes onto the roof to look for his mother. But how will she catch the attention of a mother dragon flying past? By magicking a full moon over her house! So with mother and baby dragon reunited, Winnie and Wilbur can finally settle down for an overdue good night's sleep.


During the Suez crisis the head of the Royal Navy, Admiral Lord Mountbatten, twice appeared to offer his resignation, fearing Sir Anthony Eden favoured a military resolution of Britain's dispute with President Nasser over Egypt's nationalization of the Suez Canal. Mountbatten believed that an Anglo-French seizure of the Canal Zone would destabilize the Middle East, undermine the authority of the UN, divide the Commonwealth and diminish Britain's global standing. Within the Chiefs of Staff Committee, and in advice to cabinet, the First Sea Lord voiced his fears, querying what the exit strategy was. The parallels with the Iraq war are striking, except that in 1956 the White House opposed military intervention, compounding Mountbatten's unease by deploying the US Navy to delay its erstwhile allies' taskforce en route to Port Said. Mountbatten believed his unique status as royal confidant and imperial consul, and presumed close friend of the prime minister, allowed him to buck constitutional convention and complement military advice with keenly felt political opinion. Yet at the same time he prepared the Royal Navy for war with characteristic professionalism and thoroughness, finding himself party to the collusion with Israel which he later condemned. How did Mountbatten reconcile genuine dissent with a state servant's obvious sense of duty, and was this achieved through constructing an alternative version of events that ran counter to actuality? From a contemporary perspective what insight does this episode offer into the historic relationship between executive and chiefs of staff within the British model of civil–military relations?


ABSTRACT The effect that nature can have on the development of mental health and the implications for recovery is important for understanding the impact nature has on humans, as well as delineating possible alternative venues for treating psychological problems. The present qualitative study examined how individuals understand the significance of nature in relation to their mental health and treatment. A total of 12 participants in residential treatment for varying nonpsychotic mental health issues were interviewed about previous and present experiences with nature and the meaning these experiences have for them in recovery. Thematic analysis resulted in the creation of two main themes: «being human in nature», which included three sub-themes 'experience of nature', 'effects on focus and attention' and 'change and the transformative in nature', and «nature, the patient and treatment», with two sub-themes 'nature as therapy' and 'nature and therapy'. Participants describe a feeling of coming closer to themselves, to their problems and existential meanings when in nature. In addition, they report being able to make new relational experiences with other patients, and that some experiences in nature can function as symbolic tools in therapy. The study underlines the complex interrelationships between nature and humans and points to new lines for future research.


In the modern era of investing, diversification has become the cornerstone of most investors' investment philosophy. Within the equity space, the primary focus of many an institutional investor has been to diversify their active equity managers—combining equity funds exhibiting uncorrelated return sources such as value, growth, momentum, and size—in order to smooth the return generation. Remarkably, the engrained virtues of diversification have hardly made their way through to the passive equity investment space. Market capitalization–weighted indexing still represents the vast majority of assets invested in passive equity strategies. In the past few years, however, a paradigm shift has started to occur, with a new breed of indexing methods entering the passive equity space. Investors are now beginning to evaluate and invest in new passive indexing methods, looking to diversify among their passive managers as well. This article scrutinizes these new alternatives to traditional passive investing and evaluates whether or not an investor can achieve diversification effects by adding alternative indexing approaches to the traditional index portfolio.


Spinal cord injury (SCI) disrupts the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and impairs communication with organ systems throughout the body, resulting in chronic multi-organ pathology and dysfunction. This dysautonomia contributes to the pronounced immunosuppression and gastrointestinal dysfunction seen after SCI. All of these factors likely contribute to the development of gut dysbiosis after SCI—an imbalance in the composition of the gut microbiota that can impact the development and progression of numerous pathological conditions, including SCI. The gut microbiota are the community of microbes (bacteria, viruses, fungi) that live in the GI tract and are critical for nutrient absorption, digestion, and immune system development. These microbes also communicate with the CNS through modulation of the immune system, production of neuroactive metabolites and neurotransmitters, and activation of the vagus nerve.
 After SCI, gut dysbiosis develops and persists for more than one year from the time of injury. In experimental models of SCI, gut dysbiosis is correlated with changes in inflammation and functional recovery. Moreover, probiotic treatment can improve locomotor recovery and immune function in the gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT). Since different types of bacteria produce different metabolites with unique physiological and pathological effects throughout the body, it may be possible to predict the prevalence or severity of post-injury immune dysfunction and other related comorbidities (e.g., metabolic disease, fatigue, anxiety) using microbiome sequencing data. As research identifies microbial-derived small molecules and the genes responsible for their production, it is likely that it will become feasible to manipulate these molecules to affect human biology and disease.


Real and apparent conflicts between ecosystem and human needs for fresh water are contributing to the emergence of an alternative model for conducting river science around the world. The core of this new paradigm emphasizes the need to forge new partnerships between scientists and other stakeholders where shared ecological goals and river visions are developed, and the need for new experimental approaches to advance scientific understanding at the scales relevant to whole-river management. We identify four key elements required to make this model succeed: existing and planned water projects represent opportunities to conduct ecosystem-scale experiments through controlled river flow manipulations; more cooperative interactions among scientists, managers, and other stakeholders are critical; experimental results must be synthesized across studies to allow broader generalization; and new, innovative funding partnerships are needed to engage scientists and to broadly involve the government, the private sector, and NGOs.


Google Voice is a service that lets you manage all your phone numbers through a single, Internet-connected phone number. Google Voice is free, although you still have to pay for your regular phone services. Users select a free phone number and then use that number to manage all their phones. Sams Teach Yourself Google Voice in 10 Minutes offers straightforward, practical answers for fast results. By working through the 10-minute lessons, you learn everything you need to know to quickly and easily use Google Voice. Step-by-step instructions walk you through the most common questions, issues, and tasks... "Did You Know?" tips offer insider advice and shortcuts... "Watch Out!" alerts help you avoid problems. This book will provide you with fast, at a glance tips pointing out helpful shortcuts and solutions, cautions to help avoid common Google Voice pitfalls, and is written in a clear, easy to understand format. You will learn how to use Google Voice's tons of cool features that go beyond mere voicemail and call forwarding, including: " Connecting phones using one number, and manage which phone rings when-by time, by caller, and more. " Find out who's calling so you can answer or route the call to voicemail. " Get transcribed voicemail messages delivered to an email inbox. " Record personalized voicemail greetings for specific callers. " Record calls and save the recordings online Google Voice is a revolutionary new free service, which lets you manage all your phone numbers through a single number, among many other cool features Organized into lessons that distill the most crucial information on each Google Voice topic Tips and cautions point out shortcuts, solutions, and help you avoid common pitfalls


We propose a new deep network for audio event recognition, called AENet. In contrast to speech, sounds coming from audio events may be produced by a wide variety of sources. Furthermore, distinguishing them often requires analyzing an extended time period due to the lack of clear subword units that are present in speech. In order to incorporate this long-time frequency structure of audio events, we introduce a convolutional neural network (CNN) operating on a large temporal input. In contrast to previous works, this allows us to train an audio event detection system end to end. The combination of our network architecture and a novel data augmentation outperforms previous methods for audio event detection by 16%. Furthermore, we perform transfer learning and show that our model learned generic audio features, similar to the way CNNs learn generic features on vision tasks. In video analysis, combining visual features and traditional audio features, such as mel frequency cepstral coefficients, typically only leads to marginal improvements. Instead, combining visual features with our AENet features, which can be computed efficiently on a GPU, leads to significant performance improvements on action recognition and video highlight detection. In video highlight detection, our audio features improve the performance by more than 8% over visual features alone.


Cluster analysis is concerned with partitioning cases into clusters such that the cases in a cluster are similar in terms of a set of variables. The K-Means Clustering Algorithm is a popular clustering method. It finds k clusters by choosing k data points as initial cluster centroids. Each data point is then assigned to the cluster with center that is closest to that point. In K-Means, the number of clusters has to be supplied in advance, which may be difficult in practice. A new method, the X-Means Clustering Algorithm, was proposed to solve this problem, which starts with an initial partition, then recursively runs a local KMeans in each cluster to split it until a lower Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) value is reached compared with the previous larger cluster. However, this method would introduce a more severe local mode problem, that is, the previous inappropriate partition of cases cannot be corrected in the following local splitting. In this work, we develop a new algorithm that is based on Bayesian Dirichlet process mixture models, called the Non-MCMC DPM clustering algorithm. In the new clustering algorithm, we run the EM algorithm with all the cases to find a tentative partition, and then decide whether to accept the new partion with a criterion called DPC. We have tested our new clustering algorithm based on several simulated data sets, and found that it performs better than X-Means. We have also applied the algorithm to a real micorarray sample data set for predicting the class label (cancer or normal) based on the clustering results found by our new algorithm, and found that the prediction performance is comparable to state-of-the-art methods.


Complex protein-protein interaction networks govern biological processes in cells. Protein interfaces are the sites where proteins physically interact. Identification and characterization of protein interfaces will lead to understanding how proteins interact with each other and how they are involved in protein-protein interaction networks. What makes a given interface bind to different proteins; how similar/different the interactions in proteins are some key questions to be answered. Enormous amount of protein structures and experimental protein-protein interactions data necessitate advanced computational methods for analyzing and inferring new knowledge. Interface prediction methods use a wide range of sequence, structural and physico-chemical characteristics that distinguish interface residues from non-interface surface residues. Here, we present a review focusing on the characteristics of interfaces and the current status of interface prediction methods.


In this paper we investigate whether REITs with strong corporate governance benefit from higher credit ratings relative to REITs with weak governance. We document that, after controlling for REIT-specific characteristics, the credit ratings are negatively associated with number of CEOs, CEO busyness and number of directors above 70 years old; and positively related to expertise of the board and aggregated stock ownership of the board. We find that REITs with stronger corporate governance has higher probability of being in investment grade. We also find that the relationship between corporate governance and credit ratings are stronger among REITs with lower dividend yield.


The response of the surface ocean and terrestrial climate in the New Zealand region to interglacial Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 11 (423-380ka) is documented, using assemblages of fossilised marine algae (dinoflagellate cysts, or dinocysts) and spores/pollen from terrestrial plants, analysed from marine sediment cores. This work is underpinned by studies on the modern distribution of dinocysts, factors that influence their accumulation in marine sediment, and the use of dinocyst assemblages to quantify past sea surface temperature (SST). In the first of the modern-process studies, a dataset of modern sea-floor dinocyst assemblages from the Southern Hemisphere is collated, including new observations from the SW Pacific. Variations in the assemblages are related to environmental gradients. Cluster analysis reveals distinct biogeographic assemblage zones, individual taxa indicative of specific water masses are identified, while ordination of the databases indicates that the assemblages vary most with changes in SST. A second modern process study reports on the dinocyst assemblages from two time-incremental sediment traps (3 years of data) moored north and south of the Subtropical Front in the ocean east of New Zealand. This study provides observations of seasonal and inter-annual variability of dinocyst flux to the deep sea, which are used to identify possible biases in the sea-floor dinocyst assemblages. Observations from these first two studies are used in a systematic analysis of the strengths and weakness of using dinocyst assemblages to quantify SST in the SW Pacific. The best transfer function performance achieved was a root mean squared error of 1.47˚C, for an artificial neural network model, and the benefits in considering a range of model results are also established. Fossil records that document the oceanographic and terrestrial response to MIS11 are developed from two areas around New Zealand; (i) dinocysts assemblages are collected from the east Tasman Sea, from giant piston cores MD06-2987, -2988, and 2989, and (ii) dinocysts and pollen assemblages are analysed from Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) Site 594, from the east of New Zealand. Dinocyst assemblages confirm that SST in the east Tasman Sea was ~2-3˚C warmer than the present during late MIS11 (415-400ka), while SSTs were slightly below modern levels during an early phase (428-415ka). Two assemblage – based productivity indices suggest that the elevated SSTs during MIS11 were accompanied by lower rates of primary productivity in the east Tasman Sea study area than the present. As in the east Tasman Sea, two distinct phases of MIS11 are recognised in both the dinocyst and pollen assemblages at DSDP 594. The dinocyst assemblages of late MIS11 are similar to, but qualitatively represent warmer waters than the Holocene. The succession of pollen assemblages during MIS12-11 is very similar to that observed during the previous two interglacials at this site (MIS1 and MIS5), with two notable variations: (i) the deglacial vegetation succession during MIS11 was prolonged, and (ii) the pollen assemblage representing the warmest forest type was also present for longer (ca. 15ky) than later interglacials. Changes in the pollen record during MIS11 at DSDP 594 correlate more closely to SST variations in the east Tasman Sea than to ocean variations at DSDP 594, suggesting that the eastern ocean had only limited influence on conditions on the adjacent landmass during MIS11.


Since 1990, the academic literature on historical responsibility (HR) for climate change has grown considerably. Over these years, the approaches to defining this responsibility have varied considerably. This article demonstrates how this variation can be explained by combining various defining aspects of historical contribution and responsibility. Scientific knowledge that takes for granted choices among defining aspects will likely become a basis for distrust within science, among negotiators under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and elsewhere. On the other hand, for various reasons, not all choices can be explicated at all times. In this article, we examine the full breadth of complexities involved in scientifically defining HR and discuss how these complexities have consequences for the science–policy interface concerning HR. To this end, we review and classify the academic literature on historical contributions to and responsibility for climate change into categories of defining aspects. One immediately policy‐relevant conclusion emerges from this exercise: Coupled with negotiators' highly divergent understandings of historical responsibility, the sheer number of defining aspects makes it virtually impossible to offer scientific advice without creating distrust in certain parts of the policy circle. This conclusion suggests that scientific attempts to narrow the options for policymakers will have little chance of succeeding unless policymakers first negotiate a clearer framework for historical responsibility.


The regional role of universities is of increasing concern both to the managers of universities and to regional and national policymakers. Changes in the external environment are having a significant effect on the nature of the university and its approach to managing its interactions with external stakeholders, especially at a regional scale. Changes in the conceptualisation of regional development and in regional strategies also place universities more centrally to new policies. In the UK, since the late 1990s, a number of new national initiatives have dramatically increased the support for regional engagement in parallel with the application of regional level policies towards university activities. In consequence survey evidence suggests a growing focus on local and regional communities in university missions, but with a varying degree of identification for specific territorial scales. New institutional arrangements or responses include internal changes within universities such as new regional offices, and more significantly perhaps new collaborative regional arrangements and associations.


In this research paper I discuss about the challenges to implement secure personal identification protocols with biometric technology are increasing and the need for accurate human identification is higher than ever. Single modality biometric systems have to contend with a variety of problems such as noisy data, intra class variations, non-universality, spoof attacks, and distinctiveness. Some of these limitations can be addressed by deploying multimodal biometric systems that integrate multiple biometric modalities in a single scan to alleviate the challenges of a unimodal system. Performance in biometric verification is often affected by external conditions and variabilities. These are often related to mismatched conditions between enrolment and verification sessions, e.g. handsets/microphones for recording speech, cameras for capturing facial images and fingerprint readers. In addition, the user's speech may vary according to ambient noise conditions, the speaker's health (e.g. contracting a cold) or speaking styles. The user's facial images may vary due to changes in backgrounds, illumination, head positions and expressions. While none of the biometrics alone can guarantee absolute reliability, they can reinforce one another when used jointly to maximize verification performance. This motivates multi-biometric (multimodal) authentication.


In Response: As Dr. Samuels points out, some individuals may consume large amounts of aspartame through food or pharmaceutical items containing small doses per serving (e.g., <10 mg per piece of chewing gum; ref. 1). Aspartame consumption for the majority of the public, however, comes largely from artificially sweetened beverages, which contain much higher amounts of aspartame per serving (180 mg per 12-oz can of diet soda, around 40-90 mg per cup of fruit drinks or iced tea, or 35 mg per table-top packet added to hot coffee or tea) than other food or pharmaceutical items (2). Diet soda alone accounts for over 70% of aspartame sales in the United States (3). Therefore, although we may have missed a small fraction of people in the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study cohort who consume large amounts of aspartame through items other than artificially sweetened beverages, it is unlikely that consideration of consumption by these individuals would have altered the overall null association we found for aspartame and hematopoietic and brain cancers (2). Dr. Samuels notes the importance of looking at high consumption rather than average. In the NIH-AARP cohort, 3,867 participants reported consuming 1,200 mg or more aspartame daily (equivalent to seven or more 12-oz cans of diet soda), which is the lowest dose that was followed by doubled hematopoietic cancers in female rats in a recent study (4, 5). The rates of hematopoietic (n = 12 cases) and brain cancers (n = 3 cases) among our study participants with high consumption, however, were not elevated. We found similarly null risk estimates, with tighter confidence intervals, for consumers of 600 mg or more aspartame (three or more 12-oz cans of diet soda) with no evidence of a dose response (2). Dr. Samuels notes that the NIH-AARP Study cohort participants were AARP members who were 50 years of age or older at the beginning of the study, thus not representative of the entire U.S. population exposed to aspartame. It is theoretically possible that aspartame would cause cancer in younger people, but not in those older than 50 years, but few human carcinogens show that pattern. Within our cohort, effects were similar at ages 50 to 59, 60 to 69, and 70 to 76 years. Also, as Dr. Samuels points out, we excluded certain individuals from the analysis to reduce potential bias (2). Including them (n = 52,887), however, did not change the null associations. The food frequency questionnaires used in our study, and in most other large epidemiologic studies, were targeted to ''usual'' dietary intake over the previous year. There is reasonable evidence, however, that diets remain consistent over long periods (6–8); that is, those who reported relatively high and low consumption of diet soda over the previous year were probably high and low consumers for much longer than the previous year. Therefore, the dietary assessment does not neglect dietary intake at younger ages: It is simply not directly measured in prior years. Nevertheless, as we explicitly acknowledge in our article and have discussed elsewhere (9), food frequency questionnaires do measure dietary intake with error, and we cannot rule out the possibility that a modest, but real, relation between aspartame and cancer has been attenuated in our data. Additional data are always useful, of course, but we respectfully disagree with Dr. Samuels' assessment of the current literature. Numerous animal studies to date by independent investigators have not determined aspartame to be carcinogenic (10–12), and other human studies have not yielded any positive findings (13–15). Similarly, the European Food Safety Authority (16) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (17) concluded from their review of Soffritti et al.'s data (4, 5) that the increased number of hematopoietic and other cancers in the aspartame-treated group of rats was probably due to experimental conditions other than aspartame. Animal laboratory and epidemiologic studies each have their strengths and limitations. The observation of no association within the NIH-AARP epidemiologic study does not by itself eliminate as possible the hypothesis raised by Soffritti et al., but it contributes prospective cohort data to the evaluation of aspartame safety. In the end, it is the totality of evidence that matters.


There are many concepts and ideas in the introductory Engineering curriculum that are difficult to convey with static diagrams. The depiction of processes, dynamic phenomena or geometric relations which depend upon a single parameter can all be enhanced with the use of computer animations. Animations can be a valuable aid to visual learners and can even provide a limited degree of interactivity. The development of computer animations (especially 3-D animations) has generally been considered expensive computationally as well as fiscally. However, with the advent of the modern PC, the computational power to render sophisticated graphics in reasonable time is readily available to most instructors. The multitude of collaborative projects on the Internet has provided an array of lowand no-cost programs that help make animation development accessible to all. POV-Ray is a freely available 3-D rendering package, an Internet collaborative project having over 10 years of code maturity.1 The focus of this paper is the use of POV-Ray to create short animations.


Female japanese quails (Coturnix coturnix japonica) were dosed for a period of six weeks with an equal amount of perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoate (PFOA) through feed (190, 330, 580 or 1000 µg PFT/kg bw/d) or for a period of five weeks through drinking water (330 or 580 µg PFT/kg bw/d). Concentrations of PFOS and PFOA in eggs have been determined on day 0, 14 and 35 and those in liver and muscle tissue subsequently to the experimental period. Both compounds were accumulating in eggs and tissue probes in a dose related manner. In comparison to PFOA, PFOS was more effectively eliminated through the egg. Concentrations of PFOA measured on day 35 in eggs from the feed trial were 1597 ± 213, 3438 ± 234, 4880 ± 1210 and 11963 ± 3119 µg/kg dw respectively for dose groups 190 to 1000 and concentrations of PFOS were 3315 ± 54, 6591 ± 1016, 8983 ± 2133 and 29762 ± 5988 µg/kg dw respectively. Concentrations of PFOA measured in eggs of dose group 330 and 580 from the water trial were 6428 ± 452 and 11469 ± 595 µg/kg dw respectively and concentrations of PFOS were 11050 ± 3620 and 23643 ± 3071 µg/kg dw respectively. The PFOS:PFOA ratio has been nearly constant at a value of 2:1 through all dosing groups on day 14 and 35. In contrast, PFOA was more effectively accumulating in liver and muscle tissue than PFOS. The PFOA:PFOS ratio in muscle and liver tissue ranged from 1.5:1 to 2.3:1 and 0.9:1 to 1.8:1 respectively. The proportion of the total cumulative dose ranged from 1.7 to 5% for the concentration of PFOA in eggs on day 14 and from 0.8 to 3% on day 35. For PFOS the proportion of the total cumulative dose ranged from 3.5 to 14% on day 14 and from 1.5 to 4% on day 35 respectively. In the liver 0.4 to 0.8% of the total dose were found for PFOA and 0.2 to 0.8 for PFOS. The muscle tissue contained 0.4 to 1.6% of the total cumulative dose of PFOS. In contrast to eggs and liver tissue there has been a remarkable difference in accumulation of PFOA in muscle tissue concerning the uptake route. It ranged from 0.6 to 1.6% for admission through feed and from 3.2 to 3.6% for admission through drinking water.
Toxic effects were remarkable in dose group 1000 only and were displayed as weight loss, reduced feed consumption and reduced egg production. All toxic effects were completely reversible after cessation of dosing.


OBJECTIVES
The aim of this study was to analyze the incidence of pleural tumors among various categories of Swedish construction workers and to determine to what extent its change over time differs from that of the general male population.

METHODS
Traditional methods have been used to study cancer incidence through 1998 in a cohort comprising 370 165 male workers examined in 1971-1992 by Bygghälsan, an organization at the time providing nationwide occupational health service. Incidence was assessed by linkage to the national cancer register.

RESULTS
Swedish construction workers, particularly those heavily exposed to asbestos, had an excess incidence of pleural tumors in 1975-1998 [standardized incidence ratio (SIR) 3.16, 95% confidence interval (95% CI) 2.55-3.88]. The excess declined with subsequent follow-up periods and birth cohorts with the exception of the most recent period (SIR 3.83, 95% CI 2.64-5.38) and those borne in the 1930s.

CONCLUSIONS
A possible decline in pleural tumors among men following the cessation of asbestos use 25 years earlier in the population at large may not be applicable to an end-user sector like construction work. In occupations charged with repairing and refurbishing work, there may even have been an increase lately.


The objective of this study was to fully characterise drift phenomena in inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy ( ICP-AES) in order to develop novel correction procedures to aid routine analysis. Long-term drift of the analytical signal continues to be a potential disadvantage when using ICP-AES and often necessitates regular recalibration. The long-term stability of three commercially available Instruments was studied using In each case a range of analyte and intrinsic plasma emission lines. Long-term fluctuations were observed which generated drift bias of up to 20% on the initial values. The drift pafterns were characterised and found to be qualitatively reproducible. In most cases, similar long-term fluctuations were observed independent of the analyte or nature of the emission line. In addition, high inter-element correlation was observed on the long-term fluctuations even when sequential acquisition was employed. In order to study the fundamental causes of drift, the effect of two key instrumental parameters, i.e. the RF power and the nebutiser gas flow rate were studied with respect to the stability of the signal. Different drift patterns were found depending on the working conditions. Classical statistical methods and a multi-way approach. PARAFAC. were then employed to describe the system. The use of intemal standards to correct for drift has also been investigated, but found to be of benefit only under certain defined conditions (i.e. robust conditions, high R F power and low nebuliserflow rate). At soft conditions, low R F power and medium to high nebuliser flow rate, the system Is very unstable and intemal standardisation is not fully effective as a correction method. For such conditions, a novel correction procedure has been developed, which employs the drift pattem of one intrinsic plasma line (i.e. an argon line) and a correction factor which is specific for each emission line. The drift values were reduced from around 20% before correction to better than ±2% following the described protocol. Finally, the effects of chemical matrices on the long-term stability of the emission signals have been evaluated. Three synthetic matrices were prepared simulating nitric, soil and water matrices. The stability of the instrument when working wrth these matrices at both robust and soft conditions was found to be poor, especially when the solution was matched with the soil matrix. The use of more robust conditions did not improve the long-temi stability of the emission signals. The outcome of this study proved to be a better understanding of drift phenomena and a novel method for drift correction.


Both the objective and the powers of the central bank are clearly specified in its legal framework. In this respect, its aims and activities are transparent and explicit. Monetary policy influences the monetary aggregates through market instruments, sending clear signals to economic agents regarding the direction and objectives pursued. Despite major changes in monetary policy management, policy implementation still encounters problems. The main problems are: • A modest quantity of money: total liquidity (including deposits in local and foreign currency), i.e. the quantity of money in circulation in the economy, is equal to just over 180/0 of GDP with a high degree of dollarisation (almost 75 0/0 of total deposits is in foreign currency). The persistently low level of local currency means that seasonal liquidity flows, generated for example by tax payments, can become quite large in relative terms. • The central bank's capacity to buy foreign exchange is restricted by the cost of sterilisation. This may induce a rise in interest rates, in turn attracting larger foreign capital inflows and leading to an appreciation of the exchange rate. • The dealing room's intervention strategy has improved; however, it is still restricted to buy dollars, while maintaining a passive stance when the market requires a larger dollar supply. • Financial market segmentation: the financial market is made up of groups of institutions of widely different size and performance. Interinstitutional behaviour is therefore not homogeneous. Market segmentation creates situations in which the system as a whole can show a liquidity surplus, while on an individual basis some banks are encountering liquidity problems. Institutions with liquidity problems do not have access to interbank loans, owing either to the market's inefficiency or to the institution's specific situation. This creates a need for collateralised credits, bringing about an increase in the monetary base, despite the excess reserves in the system as a whole. As these entities' demand for central bank CDs is usually small, the scope for repurchase operations as a source of funds is limited.


SUMMARY Open innovation is now a widely used concept in academia, business, and policy making. This article describes the state of open innovation at the intersection of research, practice, and policy. It discusses some key trends (e.g., digital transformation), challenges (e.g., uncertainty), and potential solutions (e.g., EU funding programs) in the context of open innovation and innovation policy. With this background, the authors introduce select papers published in this Special Section of California Management Review that were originally presented at the second annual World Open Innovation Conference, held in Santa Clara, California, in December of 2015.


Developing mathematical models to predict changes in ocular bioavailability and pharmacokinetics due to differences in the physicochemical properties of complex topical ophthalmic suspension formulations is important in drug product development and regulatory assessment. Herein, we used published FDA clinical pharmacology review data, in-house, and literature rabbit pharmacokinetic data generated for dexamethasone ophthalmic suspensions to demonstrate how the mechanistic Ocular Compartmental Absorption and Transit model by GastroPlus™ can be used to characterize ocular drug pharmacokinetic performance in rabbits for suspension formulations. This model was used to describe the dose-dependent (0.01 to 0.1%) non-linear pharmacokinetic in ocular tissues and characterize the impact of viscosity (1.67 to 72.9 cP) and particle size (5.5 to 22 μm) on in vivo ocular drug absorption and disposition. Parameter sensitivity analysis (hypothetical suspension particle size: 1 to 10 μm, viscosity: 1 to 100 cP) demonstrated that the interplay between formulation properties and physiological clearance through drainage and tear turnover rates in the pre-corneal compartment drives the ocular drug bioavailability. The quick removal of drug suspended particles from the pre-corneal compartment renders the impact of particle size inconsequential relative to viscosity modification. The in vivo ocular absorption is (1) viscosity non-sensitive when the viscosity is high and the impact of viscosity on the pre-corneal residence time reaches the maximum physiological system capacity or (2) viscosity sensitive when the viscosity is below a certain limit. This study reinforces our understanding of the interplay between physiological factors and ophthalmic formulation physicochemical properties and their impact on in vivo ocular drug PK performance in rabbits.


In this paper, we use an economics decision-making experiment to test a key assumption underpinning the efficacy of price-level targeting relative to inflation targeting for business cycle stabilization and mitigating the effects of the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates. In particular, we attempt to infer whether experimental participants understand the stationary nature of the price level under price-level targeting by observing their inflation forecasting behaviour in a laboratory setting. This is an important assumption since, without it, price-level targeting can lead to worse outcomes than inflation targeting. Our main result suggests that participants formulate inflation expectations consistent with the target-reverting nature of the price level but that they do not fully utilize it in their forecasts of future inflation.


Internal structure of the migmatitic belt in the crystalline core of the northern Sierras Pampenas Northwestern Argentina. The Las Cañas Complex located in Aconquija Range (Sierras Pampeanas Septentrionales) is formed by rocks of the crystalline basement, mainly migmatites and, in smaller proportion, schists which are as resisters included in the migmatites. The migmatites range from metatexites to diatexites. They show a migmatitic foliation accompanied by intrafoliated folds generated under high metamorphic conditions, with partial melt and anatexis. A later superposed folding episode under high ductile conditions generated interference patterns. Finally a brittle-ductile shear episode involving the migmatites is recognized. It affects some portions more intensively than others; its distribution is not uniform. The structural and petrographic observations in the field and in microscope allow the recognition of pre, syn and post migmatization deformation episodes. This tectonic evolution occurred along a significant stretch of the crystalline basement of NW Argentina in a mobile belt along the west border of supercontinent Gondwana, where the recognized deformation episodes correspond to the Pampean Orogeny (550 500 Ma) and to the superposed Famatinian Orogeny (500 440 Ma).


The boreal ecosystem encircles the Earth above about 48° N, covering Alaska, Canada, and Eurasia. It is second in areal extent only to the world's tropical forests and occupies about 21% of the Earth's forested land surface (Whittaker and Likins 1975). Nutrient cycling rates are relatively low in the cold wet boreal soils. Whittaker and Likins (1975) estimate the annual net primary productivity of the boreal forest at 800 g C m–2 y–1 and its tundra at 140 g C m–2 y–1, in contrast to tropical forests averaging 2 200 g C m–2 y–1 and temperate forests at 1 250 g C m–2 y–1. However, the relatively low nutrient cycling rates at high latitudes result in relatively high longterm boreal carbon storage rates averaging roughly 30 to 50 g C m–2 y–1 (Harden et al. 1992), a result of relatively high root turnover from trees, shrubs and mosses with relatively low decomposition rates. Over the past few thousand years, these below-ground storage processes have created a large and potentially mobile reservoir of carbon in the peats and permafrost of the boreal ecosystem. Currently, the boreal ecosystem is estimated to contain approximately 13% of the Earth's carbon, stored in the form of above-ground biomass and 43% of the Earth's carbon stored below-ground in its soils (Schlesinger 1991). Meridional gradients in atmospheric CO2 concentrations suggest that forests above 40° N sequester as much as 1 to 2 gigatons of carbon annually (Denning et al. 1995; Randerson et al. 1997), or nearly 15 to 30% of that injected into the atmosphere each year through fossil fuel combustion and deforestation. Given the enormous areal extent of the ecosystem, roughly 20 Mkm2 (Sellers et al. 1996b; Fig. A.45), shifts in carbon flux of as little as 50 g C m–2 y–1 can contribute or remove one gigaton of carbon annually from the atmosphere. The size of the boreal forest, its sensitivity to relatively small climatic variations, its influence on global climate and the global carbon cycle, therefore, make it critically important to better understand and represent boreal ecosystem processes correctly in global models. In Sect. A.7.1 we will first describe the global boreal ecosystem, its landscape structure and composition and the extant factors that have shaped this landscape; its palaeoand modern climate, and its fire disturbance history. We will pay particular attention to the effects of high-latitude climate change on snow extent and depth. In Sect. A.7.2 we will review research relevant to energy dissipation and transport between the boreal land surface and atmospheric boundary layer. We will discuss how the boreal landscape, its albedo and biophysical control on the surface energy and water budget affects atmospheric circulation in the short term and climate at longer time scales. In Sect. A.7.3 we will consider biogeochemical cycling by the boreal landscape, focusing on carbon uptake and release for both carbon dioxide and methane; how the cycling rates are affected by landcover type, climate, soils and surface hydrology. Finally, in Sect. A.7.4 we will examine the projected impacts of future climate change on the land surface and potential feedbacks, including the effects of variation in snow cover extent and duration, carbon sequestration and release by the surface to the atmosphere and the effects of land-cover change.