Continuing professional education (CPE), the cornerstone of a competent professional, is the key to maintaining professional competence in a rapidly changing world. Many professional associations, including doctors, lawyers, nurses, engineers, dietitians, and accountants, now require their members to complete some minimum number of approved CPE hours each year. Through the mechanism of CPE, practitioners have the opportunity to update their technical competence by attending seminars, competing correspondence courses, enrolling in university classes, and teaching. As Certified Public Accountants (CPAs) increasingly come under attack by the judiciary and in Congressional hearings, the need for CPE increases. Currently, neither the Certified Management Accountants (CMAs) nor the Certified Internal Auditors (CIAs) have become targets for the courts or Congressional hearings; however, when the integrity and professionalism of one segment of the accounting profession is attacked, all accountants suffer. Three professional accounting certifications, the CPA, CIA, and CMA, now require CPE. The licensing and regulating of CPE requirements for CPAs are the responsibility of each state. Currently most states require CPE; however, requirements are not uniform. On the other hand, both CMAs and CIAs have national organizations that establish CPE requirements and monitor compliance. The Institute of Certified Management Accountants (CMA) establishes CPE requirements and monitors compliance with CMAs required to complete a minimum of 90 hours of CPE during each three year period. This study reports on the attitudes of CMAs toward CPE requirements and the methods used by CMAs to fulfill CPE requirements. In addition, it suggests methods the ICMA might use to increase CMA participation in CPE and compares and contrasts the CPE activities of individuals who are CMAs with the activities of those CMAs who are also CPAs. Finally, the paper describes opportunities for academicians and other to provide a service to the profession by offering professional education courses tailored to the CMAs' needs. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY This research project was conducted by mailing a questionnaire to a random sample of 1000 CMAs. A second questionnaire was mailed to all CMAs failing to respond to the first request. Usable responses were received from 563 CMAs, yielding a response rate of 56.3%. FIRM DEMOGRAPHICS To assess the environment in which CMAs work, several demographic questions were asked. These questions helped assess the logistics involved in the development and delivery of CPE courses. The largest number of respondents (42.7%) described their firms as manufacturing organizations. The second largest number (16.2%) indicated they were employed in educational organizations (see Table 1). TABLE 1 TYPE OF BUSINESS SURVEYED Manufacturing 42.7% Education 16.2 Service 15.3 Public Accounting 11.6 Financial 5.6 Retail 3.6 Wholesale 3.2 Government 1.8 One description of firm size provided by respondents was the number of accountants employed by the firm. The largest response category was 1-10 accountants (39.4%), followed by 11-50 accountants (25.6%) (see Table 2). TABLE 2 NUMBER OF ACCOUNTANTS EMPLOYED Number of Accountants Percentage 1 - 10 39.4 11 - 50 25.6 51 - 100 8.0 101 - 500 13.5 501 - 1,000 4.2 over 1,000 9.3 When respondents were asked the number of persons in the organization who held the CMA certificate, responses ranged from 1 to more than 50. The largest response rate was that of 1 (52.4%), followed by 2-5 (23.7%) (see Table 3). TABLE 3 NUMBER OF CMAS IN THE FIRM Number of CMAs Percentage 1 52. …


Criminal activity performs like a tax on the entire economy - it discourages domestic and foreign direct investments, it reduces firms' competitiveness, and reallocates resources creating uncertainty and inefficiency. Although the impact of economic variables on crime has been widely investigated, there is not much concern about crime also affecting the overall economic performance. This work aims to bridge this gap by presenting an empirical analysis of the macroeconomic consequences of criminal activity. Italy is the case study for the time span 1979-2002. Dealing with a state space framework, a time varying parameter approach is employed to measure the impact of criminality on real Gross Domestic Product along time, and to measure the asymmetric impact in recession and expansion periods. The analysis is completed evaluating the effects of crime fluctuations in the long period by an impulse response analysis.


Distributed Computing: Principles and Applications M. L. Liu, First Edition, Addison Wesley Publishing Company, Boston, MA, 2003 448 pages, $89.40 Language: English ISBN: 0201796449 Distributed computing, one of the most highly implemented computer theories, is a computing methodology in which tasks are collaborated among collections of interconnected, independent computers. The World Wide Web, Remote Procedure Call (RPC), Java Remote Method Invocation (Java RMI) and collaborative application such as mobile agent systems are some common examples of distributed computing. With the recent growth of net-centric applications, it is essential to equip undergraduate students with the necessary knowledge to attend to and fulfill such demands. As the author suggested in the preface, the purpose of Distributed Computing: Principles and Applications is to introduce to undergraduate students the different paradigms of distributed computing, as well as to provide programming examples to reinforce topics within each paradigm. The book is organized into two key parts: chapter 1 through chapter 3 educates readers about the fundamental concepts and the various paradigms of distributed computing; the remaining 9 chapters further explains each paradigm in greater detail and promotes clarification through code examples. At the end of each chapter, the author supplies a summary of the significant subjects as well as a set of exercise problems. Relevant references are also provided to direct interested readers to further resources. In the first part of the book (chapter 1, 2 and 3), the author first defines distributed computing and then presents the principles of distributed computing from different perspectives including operating system, network and software engineering. To ensure that readers wholly comprehend the communication mechanism behind distributed computing, the author discusses interprocess communications thoroughly. The first part ends with a classification of various paradigms of distributed applications with respect to their level of abstraction. The trade-offs among the different levels of abstractions are also discussed to educate readers on some of the issues that need to be considered when choosing an appropriate paradigm. The second part of the book (chapter 4s through 12) provides in-depth discussions of each paradigm. Examples and sample codes are used to help illustrate the communication mechanism of each paradigm in each chapter. Chapter 4 demonstrates distributed computing using the socket API, the lowest level of abstraction, and illustrates this with both datagram and stream-mode sockets of Java socket APIs. Built on top of the socket API, the client-server paradigm is the most commonly implemented approach in networked environments. The Internet is one such example; and chapter 9 and 11 further elaborates on the different applications that exist on the Internet. Chapter 6 discusses group communication involving multicast mechanisms. The author then focuses on the distributed objects in chapter 7, 8, and 10, where she covers Remote Procedure Call (RPC), Remote Method Invocation (RMI), Common Object Request Broker Architecture (COBRA) and Java Interface Definition Language (IDL). Finally, the book ends with an overview of the current advanced distributed computing areas including message queue system, mobile agents, network services, object spaces and collaborative computing. Overall, this book is more informative than practical, in that it attempts to cover many significant distributed computing methodologies without thoroughly explaining everything to ensure the concepts can be grasped by undergraduate students. Although there are code examples in most chapters, they are intended for illustration purposes and lack challenge. Exercises in the end of each chapter are reasonable, but could include more advanced problems to encourage students to seek additional relevant knowledge beyond the book. References are adequate and can be improved with more recent studies. It may also be good to introduce well known distributed computing projects such as the BOINC to students. Despite some grammar imperfection, the book itself does provide excellent introduction materials to students with little or none knowledge of distributed computing. Yung-Chuan Lee, Department of Computer Science Southern Illinois University Carbondale, IL 62901, USA


The best way to get a clear view of questions about truth--in the law or anywhere else--is to start, not with debates over "modernism" versus "post-modernism," and the whole dubious history of ideas they presuppose, but with a few simple distinctions. Truth is the property of being true, what it is to be true. Of the umpteen competing philosophical theories of truth, the most plausible are, in intent or in effect, generalizations of the Aristotelian Insight that "to say of what is that it is, or of what is not that it is not, is true." (1) These theories explain truth without reference to what you or I or anyone believes, without reference to culture, paradigm, or perspective. Some of them, the various versions of the correspondence theory, turn the emphatic adverb for which we reach when we say that p is true just in case actually, really, in fact, p, into serious metaphysics, construing truth as a relation, structural or conventional, of propositions or statements to facts or reality. (2) Others, such as Tarski's semantic theory, (3) Ramsey's "redundancy" theory, (4) and the contemporary deflationist, minimalist, disquotationalist, and prosententialist theories that are their descendants, (5) don't require such an elaborate ontological apparatus. Truths are the many and various propositions, beliefs, etc., which are true, including: particular empirical claims, scientific theories, historical propositions, mathematical theorems, logical principles, textual interpretations, statements about what a person believes or wants or intends, about social roles and rules, etc. To say that a claim is true is not to say that anyone, or everyone, believes it, but that things are as it says. However, some claims are such that the relevant things--a person's beliefs or intentions, a legal or grammatical rule--depend, in one way or another, on us; and some are such that it makes sense to ascribe a truth-value only relative to this or that community or social practice. Moreover, not every sentence, not even every declarative sentence, manages to express something true or false; some, for instance, are too indeterminate in meaning to have a truth-value. The effect of scare quotes is to turn an expression meaning "X" into an expression meaning "so-called 'X'." So scare-quotes "troth," as distinct from truth, is what is taken to be truth; and scare-quotes "truths," as distinct from truths, are claims, propositions, or beliefs, which are taken to be truths--many of which are not really troths at all. We humans, after all, are thoroughly fallible creatures. Even with the best will in the world, finding out the truth can be hard work; and we are often willing, even eager, to take pains to avoid discovering, or to cover up, unpalatable truths. The rhetoric of truth, moreover, can be used in nefarious ways. Hence an important source of the idea that truth is merely a rhetorical or political concept: the seductive, but crashingly invalid, argument I call the "Passes-for Fallacy." (6) What passes for truth, the argument goes, is often no such thing, but only what the powerful have managed to get accepted as such; therefore the concept of truth is nothing but ideological humbug. Stated plainly, this is not only obviously invalid, but also in obvious danger of undermining itself. If, however, you don't distinguish truth from scare-quotes "truth," or troths from scare-quotes "truths," it can seem irresistible. Nowadays, it seems, the Passes-for Fallacy is ubiquitous. Perhaps it is rooted in the philosophies of Marx and Freud, in the idea of false consciousness and the "hermeneutics of suspicion." (7) It is enabled by regimes of propaganda and, in our times, by the overwhelming flood of information, and misinformation, which promotes first credulity and then, as people realize they have been fooled, cynicism. For when it becomes notorious that what are presented as truths are not really truths at all--that Pravda is full of lies and propaganda, that the scientific breakthrough or miracle drag prematurely trumpeted in the press was no such thing--people become increasingly distrustful of truth-claims, increasingly reluctant to speak of truth without the precaution of neutralizing quotation marks; until eventually, they lose confidence in the very idea of truth, and formerly precautionary scare-quotes cease to warn and begin to scoff: "'Truth? …


To realize a high-precision refractive-index measurement by the rainbow method by use of multifringes, the characteristics of several orders of supernumerary bow fringes are made clear by a simulation based on the Huygens-Fresnel principle. The fringe intervals computed are precisely coincident with those obtained in experiments. As a result a suitable combination of the diameter of the cylinder containing the sample and the beam size of the laser has been determined. By use of the characteristic curve of the deviation angle versus the refractive index for each fringe and by the statistical treatment, measurement with high precision was demonstrated.


We compared white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virctinianus) use of 15 field corn (Zea mays) hybrids grown in food plots near 3 deer wintering areas in southwestern Minnesota, 1987-88. Physical and morphological characteristics of corn varied significantly among sites, subplots and among hybrids. Deer use of hybrids was significantly different and 5 use groups of hybrids were identified. A significant linear relationship was found between use and ear height. Hybrids with higher ears and less husk coverage were preferred by deer. These findings suggest that deer preferences for corn hybrids are affected more by deer pressure, ear height and husk coverage than by morphological variables which could affect deer mastication and mouth prehension. A 1988-89 study of 2 hybrids planted in food plots corroborated our preference rankings.


In this thesis metal particles and metal complexes were confined in ordered mesoporous silica such as SBA-16, P.-SBA-15, m-MCF. We used different methodologies to by eDeals" href="#77277833"> deposit these species inside silica structures. The first part of this thesis (chapter 2), silver nanostructures inside SBA-15 and P.SBA-15 were used to provide information about nanocavity dimensions and plugs distribution.

Chapter 3, Pd nanoparticles were synthesized on nonfunctionalized and functionalized SBA-15 grafted with thiol or amine groups. The resulting materials were used as catalysts to study the influence of these functional groups for a similar Pd particle size approximately 2 nm on the Heck reaction that uses iodide substrates. The non-functionalized catalysts lost their by eDeals" href="#3086673"> activity quickly because of Pd leaching and particle growth. However, if a mixed solvent that consisted of toluene and DMF was used and thiol groups were grafted on SBA-15, we were able to reduce the Pd leaching and particle growth to thus obtain a more stable catalyst in which an important role of the ligands was to recapture Pd. However, heterogeneity tests, such as a hot filtration test and poisoning experiments, gave a strong indication that Pd still leached from the support and that homogeneous Pd species were mainly responsible for the activity. Pd on S-functionalized SBA-15 was able to catalyze the Heck reaction using different substrates to achieve good activity and selectivity in most cases.

Chapter 4, palladium nanoparticles of similar size were synthesized on different silica-based materials all functionalized with thiol groups. The resulting materials were used to study the influence of confinement of Pd nanoparticles in functionalized silica support on the Heck and the Suzuki reaction. In the case of the Heck reaction, for all catalysts it was proven that leached Pd species were responsible for by eDeals" href="#47686383"> activity. However, the catalysts based on ordered mesoporous silica were still able to restrict Pd particle growth giving rise to an enhanced stability. For the Suzuki reaction, stronger alkaline conditions were required and catalysts based on plugged SBA-15 showed a higher stability than those based on SBA-15 and m-MCF which both collapsed after the first cycle.

Chapter 5, solid catalysts which are heterogeneous at macroscopic scale but homogeneous at microscopic level were prepared by the encapsulation of Fe(salen) by a "ship in a bottle" approach. This approach permits to synthesize inside the nanocages of SBA-16 and m-MCF a "free" Fe(salen) complex, having conformational freedom and behaving as a complex in solution. These materials were used as catalysts for asymmetric oxidation of sulfides. The entrance size of SBA-16 and m-MCF was precisely tuned by changing synthesis parameters and the silylation of silica surface with n-propyl groups, this control of entrance sizes resulted in materials with different Fe(salen) loading. Chiral Fe(salen) trapped in the m-MCF materials showed higher by eDeals" href="#89600171"> activity than the complex immobilized in SBA-16. The activity and enantioselectivity of catalysts based on m-MCF are almost the same of the homogeneous counterpart, although the heterogenized catalysts presented a limited recyclability due to its stability.


This 3000-word, peer-refereed international conference paper reports on research undertaken on behalf of DfES, of which the author was a research team member, to develop a system of assessment that would measure and reward design innovation. The paper traces the emergence of a unique 'photo' storyline assessment methodology and examines its impact on learners and assessors. As part of a wider research study (see R. Kimbell, S. Miller, J. Bain, R. Wright, T. Wheeler and K. Stables, 2004 entry) this single case study (sample size 30) focuses on classroom activity in a Durham secondary school. As part of a broader analysis of qualitative classroom data, photographs taken to supplement classroom observations of one group of learners were revealed as a photographic record of progression not evident for other learners. This unexpected finding led to further analysis of the photographs and learner responses to them, recorded as part of classroom observations and through learner questionnaires. These revealed the motivational benefits of the photographic record in maintaining impetus behind design development. When coding data, emerging themes included a growing sense of learner confidence and progress and evidence of the photos supporting critical moments at which learners see development of their design as simultaneously reflective and progressive. The main finding of this case study was that, when used as part of design activity structured to support innovation, the photo storyline methodology provides learners with opportunities to reflect and construct real-time narratives about their design. This assessment methodology has had a major impact on the national GCSE examination system (see output 1). The approach has also generated considerable interest with international audiences.


This paper proposes an innovative multi-thread stochastic optimization approach for the calibration of microscopic traffic simulation models. Combining Quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC) sampling and the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm, the proposed approach, namely the Quasi-Monte Carlo Particle Swarm (QPS) calibration method, is designed to boost the searching process without prejudice to the calibration accuracy. Given the search space constructed by the combinations of simulation parameters, the QMC sampling technique filters the searching space, followed by the multi-thread optimization through the PSO algorithm. A systematic framework for the implementation of the QPS QMC-initialized PSO method is developed and applied for a case study dealing with a large-scale simulation model covering a 6-mile stretch of Interstate Highway 66 (I-66) in Fairfax, Virginia. The case study results prove that the proposed QPS method outperforms other methods utilizing Genetic Algorithm and Latin Hypercube Sampling in achieving faster convergence to obtain an optimal calibration parameter set.


Data collected on birth and weaning weight traits of beef cattle calves over the period of 1968 to 1992 with varying levels of Angus and Charolais genes, ranging from 0% to 75%, were analysed to determine possible optimum breeding levels for birth weight (BW), weaning weight (WW) and pre-weaning average daily gain (ADG), fitting a unitrait animal model. The estimated heritabilities were used to predict direct (DBV) and maternal breeding values (MBV) for each animal. Best Linear Unbiased Estimates (BLUEs), DBVs and MBVs per genetic group estimated were regressed on proportions of Charolais and Angus breeding. The BLUEs of the traits increased with increasing proportion of Charolais, while they decreased with increasing Angus breeding levels. In general, MBVs increased with increasing the proportions of both breeds. The DBVs of the Charolais increased and reached a maximum at 35, 38, and 45% proportions of Charolais for BW, WW and ADG, respectively. Except for BW, DBVs of WW and ADG decreased as the genetic contribution of the Angus increased. No optimal Angus proportion was found in this herd within the specific environmental condition. It is suggested that increasing the proportion of the Charolais to intermediate levels would tend to improve the performances of pre-weaning traits.


Environmental compatibility of green composites has become an important characteristic as the need to reduce environmental hazards is increasing worldwide. Mechanical development, which replaces the non-sustainably based materials by biomass-based ones would be the assignment forced on researchers and designers of the twenty-first century, since it is foreseen that fossil assets will vanish sooner rather than later. It is likewise viewed as that this advancement incorporates the change and improvement of biomassbased composites


Griggs v. Duke Power Co. was a landmark United States decision because it recognized that barriers to equal employment opportunity need not be overt and that practices that appear neutral on their face may nonetheless have an unjustifiably exclusionary effect on protected groups. This American insight has not been lost on other Western legal systems in the context of their antidiscrimination statutes and opinions. This article explores the favorable reception that disparate impact analysis has had both in other countries with similar legal heritages and in international law. Despite the wide acceptance of disparate impact analysis in the international marketplace of legal ideas, the concept remains controversial among scholars in the United States. Moreover, American courts have been retreating from any application of the doctrine beyond narrow bounds. The comparative law perspective offered by this article sheds light on the American debate over the legitimacy of the disparate impact theory of discrimination and over its proper scope. This perspective reveals that if the United States is out of step with respect to disparate impact, it is not aberrant in the way its critics have suggested, because the American interpretation and application of the theory are more restrictive than those of other nations.


mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin) plays a key role in determining how growth factor, nutrient and oxygen levels modulate intracellular events critical for the viability and growth of the cell. This is reflected in the impact of aberrant mTOR signalling on a number of major human diseases and has helped to drive research to understand how TOR (target of rapamycin) is itself regulated. While it is clear that amino acids can affect TOR signalling, how these molecules are sensed by TOR remains controversial, perhaps because cells use different mechanisms as environmental conditions change. Even the question of whether they have an effect inside the cell or at its surface remains unresolved. The present review summarizes current ideas and suggests ways in which some of the models proposed might be unified to produce an amino acid detection system that can adapt to environmental change.


We provide the first generalization error analysis for black-box learning through derivative-free optimization. Under the assumption of a Lipschitz and smooth unknown loss, we consider the Zeroth-order Stochastic Search (ZoSS) algorithm, that updates a $d$-dimensional model by replacing stochastic gradient directions with stochastic differences of $K+1$ perturbed loss evaluations per dataset (example) query. For both unbounded and bounded possibly nonconvex losses, we present the first generalization bounds for the ZoSS algorithm. These bounds coincide with those for SGD, and rather surprisingly are independent of $d$, $K$ and the batch size $m$, under appropriate choices of a slightly decreased learning rate. For bounded nonconvex losses and a batch size $m=1$, we additionally show that both generalization error and learning rate are independent of $d$ and $K$, and remain essentially the same as for the SGD, even for two function evaluations. Our results extensively extend and consistently recover established results for SGD in prior work, on both generalization bounds and corresponding learning rates. If additionally $m=n$, where $n$ is the dataset size, we derive generalization guarantees for full-batch GD as well.


BACKGROUND
Breast cancer is the cancer most frequently diagnosed in women worldwide. Even though survival rates are continually increasing, breast cancer is often associated with long-term psychological distress, chronic pain, fatigue and impaired quality of life. Yoga comprises advice for an ethical lifestyle, spiritual practice, physical activity, breathing exercises and meditation. It is a complementary therapy that is commonly recommended for breast cancer-related impairments and has been shown to improve physical and mental health in people with different cancer types.

OBJECTIVES
To assess effects of yoga on health-related quality of life, mental health and cancer-related symptoms among women with a diagnosis of breast cancer who are receiving active treatment or have completed treatment.

SEARCH METHODS
We searched the Cochrane Breast Cancer Specialised Register, MEDLINE (via PubMed), Embase, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL; 2016, Issue 1), Indexing of Indian Medical Journals (IndMED), the World Health Organization (WHO) International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) search portal and Clinicaltrials.gov on 29 January 2016. We also searched reference lists of identified relevant trials or reviews, as well as conference proceedings of the International Congress on Complementary Medicine Research (ICCMR), the European Congress for Integrative Medicine (ECIM) and the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). We applied no language restrictions.

SELECTION CRITERIA
Randomised controlled trials were eligible when they (1) compared yoga interventions versus no therapy or versus any other active therapy in women with a diagnosis of non-metastatic or metastatic breast cancer, and (2) assessed at least one of the primary outcomes on patient-reported instruments, including health-related quality of life, depression, anxiety, fatigue or sleep disturbances.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
Two review authors independently collected data on methods and results. We expressed outcomes as standardised mean differences (SMDs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) and conducted random-effects model meta-analyses. We assessed potential risk of publication bias through visual analysis of funnel plot symmetry and heterogeneity between studies by using the Chi2 test and the I2 statistic. We conducted subgroup analyses for current treatment status, time since diagnosis, stage of cancer and type of yoga intervention.

MAIN RESULTS
We included 24 studies with a total of 2166 participants, 23 of which provided data for meta-analysis. Thirteen studies had low risk of selection bias, five studies reported adequate blinding of outcome assessment and 15 studies had low risk of attrition bias.Seventeen studies that compared yoga versus no therapy provided moderate-quality evidence showing that yoga improved health-related quality of life (pooled SMD 0.22, 95% CI 0.04 to 0.40; 10 studies, 675 participants), reduced fatigue (pooled SMD -0.48, 95% CI -0.75 to -0.20; 11 studies, 883 participants) and reduced sleep disturbances in the short term (pooled SMD -0.25, 95% CI -0.40 to -0.09; six studies, 657 participants). The funnel plot for health-related quality of life was asymmetrical, favouring no therapy, and the funnel plot for fatigue was roughly symmetrical. This hints at overall low risk of publication bias. Yoga did not appear to reduce depression (pooled SMD -0.13, 95% CI -0.31 to 0.05; seven studies, 496 participants; low-quality evidence) or anxiety (pooled SMD -0.53, 95% CI -1.10 to 0.04; six studies, 346 participants; very low-quality evidence) in the short term and had no medium-term effects on health-related quality of life (pooled SMD 0.10, 95% CI -0.23 to 0.42; two studies, 146 participants; low-quality evidence) or fatigue (pooled SMD -0.04, 95% CI -0.36 to 0.29; two studies, 146 participants; low-quality evidence). Investigators reported no serious adverse events.Four studies that compared yoga versus psychosocial/educational interventions provided moderate-quality evidence indicating that yoga can reduce depression (pooled SMD -2.29, 95% CI -3.97 to -0.61; four studies, 226 participants), anxiety (pooled SMD -2.21, 95% CI -3.90 to -0.52; three studies, 195 participants) and fatigue (pooled SMD -0.90, 95% CI -1.31 to -0.50; two studies, 106 participants) in the short term. Very low-quality evidence showed no short-term effects on health-related quality of life (pooled SMD 0.81, 95% CI -0.50 to 2.12; two studies, 153 participants) or sleep disturbances (pooled SMD -0.21, 95% CI -0.76 to 0.34; two studies, 119 participants). No trial adequately reported safety-related data.Three studies that compared yoga versus exercise presented very low-quality evidence showing no short-term effects on health-related quality of life (pooled SMD -0.04, 95% CI -0.30 to 0.23; three studies, 233 participants) or fatigue (pooled SMD -0.21, 95% CI -0.66 to 0.25; three studies, 233 participants); no trial provided safety-related data.

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS
Moderate-quality evidence supports the recommendation of yoga as a supportive intervention for improving health-related quality of life and reducing fatigue and sleep disturbances when compared with no therapy, as well as for reducing depression, anxiety and fatigue, when compared with psychosocial/educational interventions. Very low-quality evidence suggests that yoga might be as effective as other exercise interventions and might be used as an alternative to other exercise programmes.


Background: Gallstone disease is one of the most common gastrointestinal diseases seen in clinical practice. Individuals with Diabetes mellitus are reported to have a 2 to 3-fold increase in the incidence of cholesterol Gallstone. Studies have shown a higher
prevalence of Gallstone disease in patients with Diabetes mellitus. However there is no literature on Gallstone disease and the Nigerian type 2 diabetic patients. This study was therefore designed to determine the prevalence of Gallstone disease using
abdominal ultrasound scan amongst Nigerians with type 2 Diabetes mellitus. Methodology: 100 type 2 diabetic patients and 100 age and sex- matched controls under-went real time ultrasonography to determine the prevalence of Gallstone disease.
Result: 15% of the diabetic patients had ultrasound evidence of Gallstone disease as compared to 7% in non diabetic controls. Conclusions: Gallstone disease in Nigerians with type 2 Diabetes mellitus may not be rare. South African Gastroenterology Vol. 5 (3) 2007: pp. 14-17


Do homeowner bankruptcy filings work to delay or prevent home foreclosures, and how do they compare to voluntary loan modifications specifically targeted to mortgage relief? The 2007–2012 financial crisis provides a unique opportunity to assess whether bankruptcy can help homeowners avoid the negative consequences of over-indebtedness and mortgage default. This empirical study analyzes a large, loan-level mortgage dataset to determine which variables are associated with delinquency and bankruptcy filing, and in turn, whether filing bankruptcy or receiving a loan modification measurably influences subsequent loan outcomes (e.g., foreclosure sale, prepayment, or default cure). Overall, we find that bankruptcy filings delay foreclosures but are not generally effective in curing payment defaults, especially when compared to modifications negotiated outside of bankruptcy, which are highly effective. We also find, consistent with prior research, that variations in state bankruptcy and foreclosure law greatly influence debtor outcomes from one state to another. Bankruptcy filing is more effective in states with nonjudicial foreclosure and limited homeowner protections.


Four factors are almost certain to lead to one or more catastrophes unless major remedial measures are taken. (1) China has replaced the United States as the world's leading consumer of resources, except for oil (Brown, 2006a), but China is already a major factor in the world market in this area also. Together, China and the United States consume approximately half the world's resources and the global population is still increasing on a finite planet. (2) The over 20% global ecological overshoot is simply too large to persist without catastrophic effects. (3) Natural law does not function on human intent. Talk about sustainable development continues, but minor evidence of living sustainably will not alter evolutionary selective processes. (4) Increased evidence indicates that global warming, with rises in sea levels, may already be irreversible. (5) Peak oil will be followed by a decline in cheap energy, which has made Homo sapiens a dominant species.


Andries van Dam, is the Thomas J. Watson Jr. University Professor of Technology and Education and Professor of Computer Science at Brown University. He has been a member of Brown's faculty since 1965, was a co-founder of Brown's Computer Science Department and its first Chairman from 1979 to 1985, and was also Brown's first Vice President for Research from 2002--2006. His research includes work on computer graphics, hypermedia systems, post-WIMP and natural user interfaces (NUI), including pen- and touch-computing, and educational software. He has been involved for five decades with systems for creating and reading electronic books with interactive illustrations for use in teaching and research. In 1967 Prof. van Dam co-founded ACM SICGRAPH (the precursor of SIGGRAPH) and from 1985 through 1987 was Chairman of the Computing Research Association. He is a Fellow of ACM, IEEE, and AAAS, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He has received the ACM Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award, the SIGGRAPH Steven A. Coons Award for Outstanding Creative Contributions to Computer Graphics, and the IEEE Centennial Medal, and holds honorary doctorates from Darmstadt Technical University, Swarthmore College, the University of Waterloo, and ETH Zurich. He has authored or co-authored over 100 papers and nine books, including "Fundamentals of Interactive Computer Graphics" and three editions of "Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice".


The growing substitution patterns of soybeans into horticultural crops in Southern Banyuwangi caused the soy food stocks to decrease. This condition is possible to threaten the pillars of sustainable agriculture. This study was conducted to investigate any socio-economic factors that affect the farming substitution pattern. The purpose of this study are 1) to inventory the socio-economic factors that influence the substitution pattern of farming of soybeans into sweet oranges and dragon fruit, 2) to analyze their farming, and 3) to analyze the economic feasibility of the three farms.We employed descriptive and survey technique in this study. Data technical analysis used is descriptive analysis, Profit and R/C ratio analysis. The results of this study revealed that 1) 77,5% of respondents farmer found soybean farming as economically less profitable than other crops commercialize, 2) soybean farming in the study area suffered average losses of up to IDR 1.796.957,84 per hectare and the sweet citrus fruit farming and the dragon have benefited large enough that the average IDR 51.058.201,83 per season per hectare, and 3) average R/C ratio of 0,85 that soybean farming means are not economically feasible, and the sweet citrus fruit and dragon farming their each 4,95 and 3,81 which means the economically feasible. The policy implication is to make regulations to strengthen farmer's motivation so that farmers can increase their productivity through the application of the latest technology even though they survive citrus fruits and dragon fruit


Ever since the United Nations declared 2005 the year of micro-credit and linked it to the Millennium Development Goals, and especially on poverty reduction, there has been a series of studies looking at factors affecting the flow of credit down the poverty line. This is of particular importance because in spite of the success of Microfinance Institutions such as the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and BancoSol in Mexico, evidence shows that many Microfinance Institutions do not reach down the poverty line but tend to cluster at the top.

Developing several hypotheses using the elements of the neo-institutional theory, this study looks at how geographic location affects how Microfinance Institutions target their clients and the moderating effect that their regional context has on other factors. This is analysed using an unbalanced panel of 6, 645 observations drawn from 443 MFI institutions in 81 countries divided into 5 regions for the time period 2000-2014. An ordered logit regression was run using the target markets as the ordinal dependable variables.

Based on the arguments of the neo-institutional theory, this study builds on previous ones by using a larger sample size (and number of years) to examine how the regional context affects the relationship between institutional quality and the selective lending behaviour of MFIs in 81 developing countries. An ordered logit regression was carried out using an unbalanced panel of 6645 observations from 443 MFI institutions across six regions from 2000-2014 against a broad range of company, country, regional and global specific variables. The results indicate that the geographic locations affects how MFIs lend down the poverty line with MFIs in and those in Eastern Europe and Central America less likely to lend to down the poverty line. The study found that the regional context also plays a big role in how institutional factors affect MFI lending practises with certain factors being more relevant in some regions than in others. This study also makes a case for using target markets as a better measure for depth of outreach as opposed to the more popular loan sizes and identifies the role that rural population growth and mobile phone penetration play in increasing depth of outreach of microfinance.


Economists have begun to make much greater use of experimental methods in their research. The award of the Nobel Prize in 2002 to Vernon Smith confirmed that the use of such methods is now seen as an important and credible part of the economist's toolkit. In Experiments and Competition Policy, leading scholars in the field of experimental economics survey the use of experimental methods and show how they can help us to understand firm behaviour in relation to various forms of competition policy. Chapters are organized in terms of the main fields of competition policy - collusion, abusive practices and mergers - and there is also a separate section dealing with auctions and procurement. Written in a clear and non-technical style, this volume is an excellent introduction to what the increasingly important field of experimental economics can bring to the theory and practice of competition policy.


This comment describes the study by Jersmann and co-workers in this issue of Clinical Science reporting the results of a study of the role of the serum glycoprotein fetuin in the uptake of apoptotic cells by macrophages. They show that fetuin is able to stimulate the macropinocytosis of apoptotic cells in vivo, which would be therapeutically useful following chemotherapy when the increased numbers of apoptotic cells could exceed the capacity of the macrophage network.


The international literature offers a numberof motives which should incline local authoritiestoward strategic planning of local development;it also emphasizes that they should be stronglymotivated to do that. Meanwhile, their actualmotivation for such planning can remain low anddominated by motives so far unrecognized in theliterature. The article presents research confi rmingthis assumption, conducted in 2014 amongthe authorities of Polish small towns.The results reveal that the general motivationfor strategic planning of local developmentamong 37.7% of the authorities of Polish smalltowns is low. It also disclosed that the motivefor obtaining means from the EU funds (so farunrecognized in literature) was and is motivatingstrongly at least 68.6% of these authorities forthe discussed planning and, moreover, that it is ashort-lived motive. The article indicates that thissituation may also refer to other local authorities,not just the Polish ones. It also indicates that itis an unintended effect of the dependence ofmunicipal development projects' support by themeans from the EU funds on including them inthe local development strategy. The fi nal part ofthe article presents recommendations of actionsto rectify such an unfavorable situation and forfurther studies of planning motives followed bylocal authorities.


Leukocyte mono-immunoglobulin (Ig)–like receptor 5 (LMIR5)/CD300b is a DAP12-coupled activating receptor predominantly expressed in myeloid cells. The ligands for LMIR have not been reported. We have identified T cell Ig mucin 1 (TIM1) as a possible ligand for LMIR5 by retrovirus-mediated expression cloning. TIM1 interacted only with LMIR5 among the LMIR family, whereas LMIR5 interacted with TIM4 as well as TIM1. The Ig-like domain of LMIR5 bound to TIM1 in the vicinity of the phosphatidylserine (PS)-binding site within the Ig-like domain of TIM1. Unlike its binding to TIM1 or TIM4, LMIR5 failed to bind to PS. LMIR5 binding did not affect TIM1- or TIM4-mediated phagocytosis of apoptotic cells, and stimulation with TIM1 or TIM4 induced LMIR5-mediated activation of mast cells. Notably, LMIR5 deficiency suppressed TIM1-Fc–induced recruitment of neutrophils in the dorsal air pouch, and LMIR5 deficiency attenuated neutrophil accumulation in a model of ischemia/reperfusion injury in the kidneys in which TIM1 expression is up-regulated. In that model, LMIR5 deficiency resulted in ameliorated tubular necrosis and cast formation in the acute phase. Collectively, our results indicate that TIM1 is an endogenous ligand for LMIR5 and that the TIM1–LMIR5 interaction plays a physiological role in immune regulation by myeloid cells.


Five hundred years after Columbus's first voyage to the New World, the debate over the European impact on Native American civilization has grown more heated than ever. Among the first--and most insistent--voices raised in that debate was that of a Spanish priest, Bartolome de Las Casas, acquaintance of Cortes and Pizarro and shipmate of Velasquez on the voyage to conquer Cuba. In 1552, after forty years of witnessing--and opposing--countless acts of brutality in the new Spanish colonies, Las Casas returned to Seville, where he published a book that caused a storm of controversy that persists to the present day. The Devastation of the Indies is an eyewitness account of the first modern genocide, a story of greed, hypocrisy, and cruelties so grotesque as to rival the worst of our own century. Las Casas writes of men, women, and children burned alive "thirteen at a time in memory of Our Redeemer and his twelve apostles." He describes butcher shops that sold human flesh for dog food ("Give me a quarter of that rascal there, " one customer says, "until I can kill some more of my own"). Slave ship captains navigate "without need of compass or charts, " following instead the trail of floating corpses tossed overboard by the ship before them. Native kings are promised peace, then slaughtered. Whole families hang themselves in despair. Once-fertile islands are turned to desert, the wealth of nations plundered, millions killed outright, whole peoples annihilated. In an introduction, historian Bill M. Donovan provides a brief biography of Las Casas and reviews the controversy his work produced among Europeans, whose indignation--and denials--lasted centuries. But the book itself is short. "Were I t describe all this, " writes Las Casas of the four decades of suffering he witnessed, "no amount of time and paper could encompass this task."


This article examines the media discourse surrounding the life and death of former National Football League player Aaron Hernandez, who died by suicide while incarcerated for first-degree murder. As a postmortem analysis found evidence of notable degenerative brain disease, differing explanations and speculations remain about the causes of his criminal behavior. This analysis illustrates how journalistic narratives attribute Hernandez's criminality to either the material composition of his damaged brain or how his tumultuous background affected psychological makeup. Both narratives minimize the structural and political economic conditions that enabled this particular case of celebrated criminality. Cultural criminological and socio-legal insights aid in elucidating how notions of racialized masculinity and neurocriminology come to constitutively inform framings of Hernandez's crimes, motivations, and actions while also directing critical attention away from the influence of relevant institutions, particularly sport, and instrumentalizing the role of violence. This article concludes with a reflection on the underpinning tensions revealed through depictions of Hernandez, his mind, and his brain, arguing that they surpass news and media stories and actually implicate debates about the growing influence of neuroscience in understandings of social problems, including crime.


This study analyzes the rhetorical strategy of using the emotion of fear as a political tool in the 11 Malaysia General Election campaign. The three-prong objectives of this study are to analyze the main themes and issues used to address this tactic of fear, the general perceptions that non-Moslems in Malaysia have of the concept of Islamic state as a symbol of fear and rhetorical strategies used to provoke this fear. The scope of the study is confined to the conventional communication model of "Source-Message-Channel-Receiver". The "sources" are political advertisements, the "messages" are Islamic state theme and related issues, the "channels" are symbols or rhetorical strategies and the "receivers" are the voters, with special reference to Malaysian Chinese voters. The findings concluded that the National Front party (Barisan National, BN) used the fear factor effectively in its campaign. This situation is further enhanced by the strong control of BN over the Malaysian media in addition to the character of Chinese voters who generally prefer not to leave their current comfort zone and are afraid of an Islamic state.


The inaugural publication of the International Journal of Green Economics constructed formal foundations for the establishment of a new school of thought and an attempt to explore and capture current developments and thinking in Green Economics. The current issue introduces the next step in the development of green economics with a philosophical exploration of our focus, along with investigating potential building blocks from other disciplines. The current issue of The International Journal of Green Economics solicits experts in their respective fields and invites them to share inter-disciplinary contributions to the nascent philosophy, ontology and methodology of Green Economics. This editorial will also ponder some of the emerging and exciting questions in the field; introduce the contributors to this issue; and concludes by introducing the themes of future issues.


This paper deals with the question of whether the discrimination against agriculture that prevailed in Sub-Saharan Africa until the early 1980s has continued to characterize the region despite the widespread adoption of structural adjustment programs. The evolution of both direct interventions in agricultural markets and the indirect effects resulting from overvalued exchange rates and import substitution policies is evaluated empirically. It turns out that the taxation of export crops has become less severe but is still significant in most producing countries, and that progress in eliminating macroeconomic distortions has differed enormously between countries, with a slightly positive overall trend.


The biogenicity of putative traces of life found in early-Archean rocks is strongly debated. To date, only equivocal lines of evidence have been reported, which has prevented a full consensus from emerging. Here we report elemental and molecular data from individual organic microfossils preserved within the 3.4 billion-year-old cherts of the Strelley Pool Formation, Western Australia. The present results support the growing body of evidence advocating their biogenicity, promoting them as the oldest known authentic organic microfossils. These microfossils consist of nitrogen- and oxygen- rich organic molecules that have been only slightly degraded despite experiencing temperatures of ~300 °C. Such molecular preservation emphasises the palaeobiological potential of the Earth's oldest geological record, whilst providing a promising window into the early biosphere.


Quantum-simulator hardware promises new insights into problems from particle and nuclear physics. A major challenge is to reproduce gauge invariance, as violations of this quintessential property of lattice gauge theories can have dramatic consequences, e.g., the generation of a photon mass in quantum electrodynamics. Here, we introduce an experimentally friendly method to protect gauge invariance in $\mathrm{U}(1)$ lattice gauge theories against coherent errors in a controllable way. Our method employs only single-body energy-penalty terms, thus enabling practical implementations. As we derive analytically, some sets of penalty coefficients render undesired gauge sectors inaccessible by unitary dynamics for exponentially long times, and, for few-body error terms, with resources independent of system size. These findings constitute an exponential improvement over previously known results from energy-gap protection or perturbative treatments. In our method, the gauge-invariant subspace is protected by an emergent global symmetry, meaning it can be immediately applied to other symmetries. In our numerical benchmarks for continuous-time and digital quantum simulations, gauge protection holds for all calculated evolution times (up to $t>10^{10}/J$ for continuous time, with $J$ the relevant energy scale). Crucially, our gauge-protection technique is simpler to realize than the associated ideal gauge theory, and can thus be readily implemented in current ultracold-atom analog simulators as well as digital noisy intermediate scale quantum (NISQ) devices.


High-performance computing clusters running long-lived tasks currently cannot have kernel software updates applied to them without causing system downtime. These clusters miss opportunities for increased performance via specialized kernel support, cannot benefit from new kernel features, and continue to operate with kernel security holes unpatched, at least until the next scheduled maintenance date. We developed a system enabling dynamic kernel updates in parallel computing clusters to address these problems. Our system, DynAMOS, is founded on execution flow high-jacking through function cloning. It enables commodity operating systems popularly used in clusters gain adaptive and mutative capabilities. To demonstrate the efficacy of our system, we illustrate our experience in dynamically updating and extending a Linux cluster. We introduce adaptive memory paging for efficient gang-scheduling; extend the kernel's process scheduler to support unobtrusive fine-grain cycle stealing, apply public security fixes, and inject performance monitoring functionality to a selection of kernel functions. Our benchmarks show that the overhead imposed by DynAMOS is mostly in the range of 1-8% for common Linux kernel functions


BACKGROUND

Hypoglycemia is the principle adverse effect of sulfonylurea, especially in patients with renal failure. Conventional treatment consists of hypertonic dextrose, sometimes combined with glucagon. However, paradoxically both agents can stimulate insulin secretion and induce rebound hypoglycemia.

PATIENT

We present the case of a hemodialysis patient with relapsing gliclazide-induced hypoglycemia in the context of sepsis.

RESULTS

Our patient failed to respond to regular infusions of hypertonic dextrose and oral carbohydrates. His hypoglycemia only resolved after a single dose of octreotide. The pathophysiology of recurrent sulfonylurea-induced hypoglycemia and the challenges of current therapies are discussed. The somatostatin analogue octreotide inhibits insulin release and has been proposed as an antidote for sulfonylurea overdose.

CONCLUSIONS

We propose that octreotide has a clinical role in the treatment of patients with renal failure and sulfonylurea- induced hypoglycemia.


A new method for remote sensing of the quasiperpendicular part of the bow shock surface is presented. The method is based on analysis of high frequency electric field fluctuations corresponding to Langmuir, upshifted, and downshifted oscillations in the electron foreshock. Langmuir waves usually have maximum intensity at the upstream boundary of this region. All these waves are generated by energetic electrons accelerated by quasiperpendicular zone of the shock front. Nonstationary behavior of the shock, in particular due to rippling, should result in modulation of energetic electron fluxes, thereby giving rise to variations of Langmuir waves intensity. For upshifted and downshifted oscillations, the variations of both intensity and central frequency can be observed. For the present study, WHISPER measurements of electric field spectra obtained aboard Cluster spacecraft are used to choose 48 crossings of the electron foreshock boundary with dominating Langmuir waves and to perform for the first time a statistical analysis of nonstationary behavior of quasiperpendicular zone of the Earth's bow shock. Analysis of hidden periodicities in plasma wave energy reveals shock front nonstationarity in the frequency range 0.33 f Bi Bi , where f Bi is the proton gyrofrequency upstream of the shock, and shows that the probability to observe such a nonstationarity increases with Mach number. The profiles observed aboard different spacecraft and the dominating frequencies of the periodicities are usually different. Hence nonstationarity and/or rippling seem to be rather irregular both in space and time rather than resembling a quasiregular wave propagating on the shock surface.


A pilot study was conducted to analyse the effectiveness of snoezelen and play therapy on behavior among cerebral palsy children. The Experimental crossover design was used. The data was analysed from twelve children between the age group of 3- 11 years. . Simple random sampling technique was used. Six of them received initially play therapy than snoezelen, six of them received initially snoezelen than play therapy. Behavior assessment scale for Indian children with cerebral palsy was used to assess the basic and post intervention score. The study demonstrated that both play therapy and snoezelen have a positive effect. Play therapy and snoezelen was highly significant than snoezelen and play therapy. The result revealed a reduction in maladaptive behavior across all behavior domain, Adaptive behavior also showed significant differences . Both this therapies can be effectively provided to the children with cerebral palsy.


The objective of this thesis project is a study of Pre-Processors and development of an Automatic Mesh Generator for Finite Element Analysis. The Mesh Generator developed in this thesis project can create triangular finite elements from the geometric database of Macintosh Applications. The user is required to give the density parameter to the program for mesh generation. The research is limited to Mesh Generators of planar surfaces. Delauny Triangulation method maximizes the minimum angles of a triangle. Watson's Delauny Triangulation method can mesh only the 'convex hull' of a set of nodes. This algorithm has been modified to create triangular elements in convex and non-convex surfaces. The surfaces can have holes also. A node generation algorithm to place nodes on and inside a geometry has been developed in this thesis project. The mesh generation is very efficient and flexible. Geometric modeling methods have been studied to understand and integrate the Geometric Modeler with the Finite Element Mesh Generator. Expert Systems can be integrated with Finite Element Analysis. This will make Finite Element Method fully automatic. In this thesis project, Expert Systems in Finite Element Analysis are reviewed. Proposals are made for future approach for the integration of the two fields.


The trial involved 684 Cobb 500 broiler chicks in order to investigate the effects of probiotics and phytogenic additives on performance, gut morphology and cecal microbial concentrations. Birds were assigned to three treatments: control feed, treatment with addition of probiotics in feed and water and treatment with addition of phytogenic blend in feed. The results showed a significant improvement (P 0.05) improvement in feed conversion ratio by adding both probiotics and phytogenics in feed. There were no statistically significant differences among treatments regarding total aerobes, anaerobes, lactic acid bacteria, bifidobacteria, enterococci, and Escherichia coli populations (P>0.05) in cecum of broilers. The gut morphology examination showed that probiotics had beneficial effect on jejunum morphology causing a significant (P 0.05) on villus height or villus surface area, but reduced the villus/crypt ratio (P<0.05), which may indicate that the improved production results in the group with added phytogenics are not directly connected with changes in gut integrity, but with other physiological mechanisms.


Shinde, Shantanu R. M.S.M.E., Purdue University, August 2019. Origami Inspired Design of Thin Walled Tubular Structures for Impact Loading. Major Professor: Dr. Andres Tovar. Thin-walled structures find wide applications in the automotive industry as energy absorption devices. A great deal of research has been conducted to design thin-walled structures, where the main objective is to reduce peak crushing forces and increase energy absorption capacity. With the advancement of computers and mathematics, it has been possible to develop 2D patterns which when folded turn into complex 3D structures. This technology can be used to develop patterns for getting structures with desired properties. In this study, square origami tubes with folding pattern (Yoshimura pattern) is designed and studied extensively using numerical analysis. An accurate Finite Element Model (FEM) is developed to conduct the numerical analysis. A parametric study was conducted to study the influence of geometric parameters on the mechanical properties like peak crushing force, mean crushing force, load uniformity and maximum intrusion, when subjected to dynamic loading. The results from this analysis are studied and various conclusions are drawn. It is found that, when the tube is folded with the pattern having specific dimensions, the performance is enhanced significantly, with predictable and stable collapse. It is also found that the stiffness of the module varies with geometrical parameters. With a proper study it is possible to develop origami structures with functionally graded stiffness, the performance of which can be tuned as per requirement, hence, showing promising capabilities as an energy absorption device where progressive collapse from near to end impact end is desired.


Sixtyfive children born to women who all used amphetamine during pregnancy have been followed prospectively since birth 1976-77. The children have been tested and examined regularly, demonstrating that social environmental factors influence the child's growth and somatic status while exposure for amphetamine during fetal life seem to influence the child's test results and behaviour up to the age of 8 years.After 14 years information was collected about school achievement, health, somatic growth and psycosocial environment. Only 20 children (30%) were still in the custody of their biological mothers. Ten children (15%) were one class below that for their biological age. Corresponding figure in Sweden is < 5 %. Grades in language, mathematics and sports were significantly lower than the mean of their schoolmates. The difference was most pronounced in boys. Weight and length were decreased in girls and increased in boys in comparison with Swedish school children born in the same year. Socioenvironmental risk factors correlated with poor outcome.Amphetamine abuse during pregnancy will influence the development of exposed children up to the age of 14 years.


In this paper, the timing jitter induced by the fiber dispersion in photonic A/D converters using time-wavelength interweaved sampling clocks generated by optical time-division-multiplexing (OTDM) with fiber delay lines is analyzed and effective bit loss is calculated. A compensation method is proposed to decrease the dispersion-induced jitter. Simulations are performed and the results show the validity of the proposed compensation method. An experimental demonstration is carried out to verify the theoretical expression derived.


Much existing work on new product development (NPD) team integration takes an economically rational perspective, specifying appropriate systems, structures and interactions. Few studies however have explored the effects of politics on working relationships between technically trained managers (TTMs; e.g., research and development managers) and marketing managers (MMs) during NPD. Our results reveal that intra‐team politics has positive and negative effects on TTM/MM communication. This is important because communication positively influences collaboration and NPD success. Moreover, the effects of communication variables on these two outcome variables differ depending on whether one is a TTM or MM.


Scammers discover the Internet as a convenient place for their criminal activities. For instance, they send Internet
users spoofed e-mails which link to fraudulent websites. These websites prompt visitors to enter their confidential data.
This kind of Internet fraud is referred to as phishing. There exist multiple technical solutions to approach the problem of
phishing which, for example, warn the users against accessing a revealed phishing website. Yet, they all cannot guarantee
100% accuracy since there will always be ways to circumvent these techniques. Moreover, security warnings or indicators
of such approaches are not always recognized or even ignored by some end users. For these reasons, a complementary
approach is required. Previous approaches do not draw on a crucial factor to combat the threat - the users themselves.
Therefore, the increase of security awareness and especially user education about the dangers of the Internet is a further
key strategy to combat phishing.
Our master's thesis aims at developing a smartphone app, which increases security awareness and educates the user
regarding the detection of phishing. To increase security awareness, the users send themselves a "spoofed" e-mail right
away when starting the app for the first time. The user education part entails alerts regarding known techniques of
attackers and is supposed to assist the users to internalize these with the aid of practice and repetition. By this means,
we aspire to help the users achieve the capability of defending themselves against phishing attacks in the future.
In detail, our app is realized as a quiz based game which mainly focuses on the detection of phishing URLs. In order to
evaluate the effectiveness of the app a user study is conducted. The study outcomes show that our app helps users make
better decisions regarding the legitimacy of URLs.


The libertarian philosophy of freedom is characterized by two fundamental beliefs: the right to be left alone and the duty to leave others alone. Psychiatric practice routinely violates both of these beliefs. It is based on the notion that self-ownership--exemplified by suicide--is a not an inherent right, but a privilege subject to the review of psychiatrists as representatives of society. In Faith in Freedom, Thomas Szasz raises fundamental questions about psychiatric practices that inhibit an individual's right to freedom. His questions are fundamental. Is suicide an exercise of rightful self-ownership or a manifestation of mental disorder? Does involuntary confinement under psychiatric auspices constitute unjust imprisonment, or is it therapeutically justified hospitalization? Should forced psychiatric drugging be interpreted as assault and battery on the person or is it medical treatment? The ethical standards of psychiatric practice mandate that psychiatrists employ coercion. Forgoing such "intervention" is considered a dereliction of the psychiatrists' "duty to protect." How should friends of freedom--especially libertarians--deal with the conflict between elementary libertarian principles and prevailing psychiatric practices? In Faith in Freedom, Thomas Szasz addresses this question more directly and more profoundly than in any of his previous works.


1. During the adult stage many arthropod species, including aphid predators and parasitoids, depend on nectar and honeydew as a source of carbohydrates. Despite the importance of sugar feeding for these organisms, we know little about their energy and nutrient provision under field conditions. 2. Here we assessed the nutritional state of adult parasitoids, hoverflies and lacewings in a Swiss winter wheat (WW) and a spring wheat (SW) field and studied the contribution of honeydew to the diet of these aphidophagous insects. The total sugar level and the glucose-fructose ratio were used as indicators for nutritional state and sugar feeding. 3. Over 76% of the collected individuals from each of the three insect groups in both fields had recently consumed carbohydrates. The average nutritional state was significantly higher in the SW field for Chrysoperla carnea and Aphidius spp. 4. Honeydew consumption by insects is commonly investigated by analyzing target insects for the presence of honeydew 'signature' sugars, such as melezitose and erlose. However, our laboratory studies show that adults of the three insect orders investigated synthesize these 'honeydew-specific' sugars after sucrose feeding. 5. As the erlose-melezitose ratio of sucrose-fed Aphidius spp. and the hoverfly Episyrphus balteatus differed clearly from the honeydew sugar profiles of wheat infesting aphids, this ratio could be used as an alternative indicator of honeydew feeding. However, this method could not be used for the lacewing C. carnea. 6. Our data show that 55% (WW) and 59% (SW) of field-collected Aphidius spp. which showed evidence of sugar feeding could be classified as having consumed honeydew within the 24–48 h before collection. Evidence of honeydew feeding by hoverflies, on the other hand, was found to be much more variable, ranging from 0% in the WW field to 44% in the SW field. 7. This study shows that the detection of honeydew consumption in field-collected insects based on honeydew oligosaccharides can be feasible even when insects synthesize these oligosaccharides themselves.


In recent years mirids and stinkbugs have emerged as important sucking pests in cotton. While stinkbugs are causing damage to bolls, mirids are causing damage to seedlings, squares and bolls. With the increasing adoption of Bollgard II and IPM approaches the use of broad-spectrum chemicals to kill Helicoverpa has been reduced and as a result mirids and stinkbugs are building to levels causing damage to bolls later in crop growth stages. Studies on stinkbugs by Dr Moazzem Khan revealed that green vegetable bug (GVB) caused significant boll damage and yield loss. A preliminary study by Dr Khan on mirids revealed that high mirid numbers at later growth stages also caused significant boll damage and that damage caused by mirids and GVB were similar. Mirids and stinkbugs therefore demand greater attention in order to minimise losses caused by these pests and to develop IPM strategies against these pests to enhance gains in IPM that have been made with Bt-transgenic cotton. Progress in this area of research will maintain sustainability and profitability of the Australian cotton industry. Mirid damage at early growth stages of cotton (up to squaring stage) has been studied in detail by Dr Khan. He found that all ages of mirids cause damage to young plants and damage by mirid nymphs is cumulative. Maximum damage occurs when the insect reaches the 4th and 5th nymphal stages. He also found that mirid feeding causes shedding of small and medium squares, and damaged large squares develop as 'parrot beak' bolls. Detailed studies at the boll stage, such as which stage of mirids is most damaging or which age boll is most vulnerable to feeding, is lacking. This information is a prerequisite to developing an IPM strategy for the pest in later crop growth stages. Understanding population change of the pest over time in relation to crop development is an important aspect for developing management strategies for the pest which is lacking for mirids in BollgardII. Predators and parasitoids are integral components of any IPM system and play an important part in regulating pest populations. Some generalist predators such as ants, spiders, damsel bugs and assassin bugs are known to predate on mirids. Nothing is known about parasitoids of mirids. Since green mirid (GM), Creontiades dilutus, is indigenous to Australia it is likely that we have one or more parasitoids of this mirid in Australia, but that possibility has not been investigated yet. The impact of the GVB adult parasitoid, Trichopoda giacomelli, has been studied by Dr Khan who found that the fly is established in the released areas and continues to spread. However, to get wider and greater impact, the fly should be released in new locations across the valleys. The insecticides registered for mirids and stinkbugs are mostly non-selective and are extremely disruptive to a wide range of beneficial insects. Use of these insecticides at stage I and II will minimise the impact of existing IPM programs. Therefore less disruptive control tactics including soft chemicals for mirids and stinkbugs are necessary. As with soft chemicals, salt mixtures, biopesticides based on fungal pathogens and attractants based on plant volatiles may be useful tools in managing mirids and stinkbugs with less or no disruption. Dr Khan has investigated salt mixture against mirids and GVB. While salt mixtures are quite effective and less disruptive, they are quite chemical specific. Not all chemicals mixed with salt will give the desired benefit. Therefore further investigation is needed to identify those chemicals that are effective with salt mixture against mirids and 3 of 37 GVB. Dr Caroline Hauxwell of DPI&F is working on fungal pathogen-based biopesticides against mirids and GVB and Drs Peter Gregg and Alice Del Socorro of Australian Cotton CRC are working on plant volatile-based attractants against mirids. Depending on their findings, inclusion of fungal-based biopestcides and plant volatile-based attractants in developing a management system against mirids and stinkbugs in cotton could be an important component of an IPM approach.


Background The Eastern Russell's viper, Daboia siamensis, is a WHO Category 1 medically important venomous snake. It has a wide but disjunct distribution in Southeast Asia. The specific antivenom, D. siamensis Monovalent Antivenom (DsMAV-Thailand) is produced in Thailand but not available in Indonesia, where a heterologous trivalent antivenom, Serum Anti Bisa Ular (SABU), is used instead. This study aimed to investigate the geographical venom variation of D. siamensis from Thailand (Ds-Thailand) and Indonesia (Ds-Indonesia), and the immunorecognition of the venom proteins by antivenoms. Methods: The venom proteins were decomplexed with reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatography and sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, followed by in-solution tryptic digestion, nano-liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry and protein identification. The efficacies of DsMAV-Thailand and SABU in binding the various venom fractions were assessed using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay optimized for immunorecognition profiling. Results: The two most abundant protein families in Ds-Thailand venom are phospholipase A2 (PLA2) and Kunitz-type serine protease inhibitor (KSPI). Those abundant in Ds-Indonesia venom are PLA2 and serine protease. KSPI and vascular endothelial growth factor were detected in Ds-Thailand venom, whereas L-amino acid oxidase and disintegrin were present in Ds-Indonesia venom. Common proteins shared between the two included snaclecs, serine proteases, metalloproteinases, phosphodiesterases, 5'nucleotidases and nerve growth factors at varying abundances. DsMAV-Thailand exhibited strong immunorecognition of the major protein fractions in both venoms, but low immunoreactivity toward the low molecular weight proteins e.g. KSPI and disintegrins. On the other hand, SABU was virtually ineffective in binding all fractionated venom proteins. Conclusion: D. siamensis venoms from Thailand and Indonesia varied geographically in the protein subtypes and abundances. The venoms, nevertheless, shared conserved antigenicity that allowed effective immunorecognition by DsMAV-Thailand but not by SABU, consistent with the neutralization efficacy of the antivenoms. A specific, appropriate antivenom is needed in Indonesia to treat Russell's viper envenomation.


This article presents a record of dissents on Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) monetary policy votes from the Committee's inception in its modern form in 1936 through 2013. Dissents were rare during the Committee's first 20 years but began to increase in the late 1950s. The number of dissents increased sharply during the late 1970s and early 1980s, when both inflation and unemployment were unusually high. However, at other times, the number of dissents was not correlated with either inflation or the unemployment rate. A review of FOMC records and published statements indicates that dissents often reflect fundamental disagreement about (i) how to achieve the Committee's macroeconomic objectives and (ii) the current stance of policy. The number of dissents also appears to have been influenced by the language used by the FOMC to communicate instructions to the manager of the System Open Market Account.


Awareness of location among the participating nodes is one of the essential needs in designing of solutions for various issues related to Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs) especially when sensor nodes are randomly organized in the network. Unlike in the terrestrial positioning, the global positioning system (GPS) cannot work efficiently underwater due to the limited bandwidth, the ruthlessly impaired channel and the costly equipment. All these collectively makes the localization problem extremely challenging. Although it is difficult to deploy beacon nodes at predetermined locations. Localization schemes with a mobile beacon on the sea surface or along the planned path are inherently convenient, accurate, having low energy requirements. This paper discusses about a range free localization mechanism for UWSNs that uses the mobile beacons for localization.


Identifying the genetic and environmental factors underlying phenotypic differences between populations is fundamental to multiple research communities. To date, studies have focused on the relationship between population and phenotypic mean. Here we consider the relationship between population and phenotypic variance, i.e., "population variance structure." In addition to gene-gene and gene-environment interaction, we show that population variance structure is a direct consequence of natural selection. We develop the ancestry double generalized linear model (ADGLM), a statistical framework to jointly model population mean and variance effects. We apply ADGLM to several deeply phenotyped datasets and observe ancestry-variance associations with 12 of 44 tested traits in ~113K British individuals and 3 of 14 tested traits in ~3K Mexican, Puerto Rican, and African-American individuals. We show through extensive simulations that population variance structure can both bias and reduce the power of genetic association studies, even when principal components or linear mixed models are used. ADGLM corrects this bias and improves power relative to previous methods in both simulated and real datasets. Additionally, ADGLM identifies 17 novel genotype-variance associations across six phenotypes.


Planetary scale cloud computing requires hugely scalable infrastructures for compute, storage, network, and services that support programming models such as Map Reduce. There are many design choices that arise in the construction of cloud infrastructures. Examples include: scheduling policies for compute clusters, caching and replication policies for storage, and approaches to integrating bandwidth management with application requirements for quality of service (QoS). These design choices must be evaluated in terms of their impact on QoS considerations such as throughput, latency, and jitter as well as the consumption of power, compute, storage, and network bandwidth. The scale of cloud infrastructures typically makes it impractical or ineffective to do these evaluations using test systems, and, for the most part, it is too costly and time-consuming to evaluate designs by building and deploying multiple implementations. This talk discusses ways in which Google uses quantitative models to evaluate design decisions for cloud infrastructures. In some cases, we incorporate quantitative models into production systems to improve the quality of on-line decision making. Since the effectiveness of these quantitative model relies on the type and accuracy of workload characteristics, the talk also addresses workload characterization. The talk addresses a number of research challenges with employing performance models in practice.


AIMS
Dietary fats are routinely considered key determinants of cardiovascular risk, yet the scientific basis of this association has never been demonstrated using objective measures of fat intakes in a large prospective study in a general population.

METHODS AND RESULTS
Adipose tissue was taken from 3944 participants, predominantly aged 40-59 years, in Scotland, 1984-87. Percentages of individual fatty acids were measured using gas chromatography. Over a median of 19.5 years, 870 incident cardiovascular disease (CVD) events occurred. Hazard ratios (HRs) were obtained from Cox models and the additional prognostic value, accounting for variables in the Framingham and ASSIGN CVD risk scores, were assessed using discrimination indices. Adjusting for age, sex, total and HDL-cholesterol, systolic blood pressure, smoking, hypertensive medication use, diabetes, socio-economic status and family history, the percentage of monounsaturated adipose tissue fatty acids had a positive log-linear relationship with incident CVD: the HR comparing risk between the fourth and first quartiles was 1.29 (95% confidence interval: 1.05, 1.59). n-3 polyunsaturated fat showed the reverse trend, the corresponding result being 0.77 (0.63, 0.94). These two composite variables improved the classification of incident CVD events by 1.0 and 6.4%, respectively, with only the latter being significant at the 5% level.

CONCLUSIONS
A diet which is proportionately rich in polyunsaturated fat, as opposed to other fats, is expected to decrease the risk of CVD independently of the effects of common CVD risk factors, including social deprivation. Taking account of such diets improves the classification of future CVD events.


We studied captive-reared mallards (Anas platyrhynchos; CRMs) released on eastern Long Island, New York, in 2006 to 2007 and 2007 to 2008 to determine: (1) survival rates of CRMs; (2) contribution to hunter harvest; (3) local movements; and (4) pair status, reproductive behavior, and production of CRMs. We banded and released 100 CRMs in November 2006 of which 20 were radio-marked. In November 2007, we banded and released 299 CRMs of which 60 were radio-marked. We used Program MARK to determine weekly survival estimates (0.53 to 1.00) up to 24 weeks after release; cumulative survival from November to May was 0.25. Seventeen percent (n = 17) of CRMs were reported harvested from 2006 to 2007, and 5% (n = 15) were reported harvested during 2007 to 2008. The median distance between harvest locations and release sites in both years was 3 km. CRMs intermingled with free-ranging waterfowl at town parks but tended to stay together in groups of 10 to 30 birds. We observed 22 pairs of CRMs, 2 pairs of CRMs with unmarked mallards, and 1 CRM with a brood. Overall, our data indicated that after some initial losses, many CRMs survived and settled in park settings where waterfowl were commonly fed by humans. Thus, CRMs appeared to contribute to feral waterfowl populations, which are a source of human-wildlife conflicts in many areas. Occurrence of CRMs in such settings also provides a means for disease transmission to free-ranging waterfowl.


After mulling over whether China and India should divide hydrocarbon reserves among themselves, the Government of India has told its energy majors to sign up more contracts no matter what. But Delhi is in a bind. To compete with China's oil giants, India's energy firms will have to bulk up. If they do, they risk triggering a new round of resource contestation India cannot win – or can it?


Green hydrogen—a carbon-free renewable fuel—has the capability to decarbonise a variety of sectors. The generation of green hydrogen is currently restricted to water electrolysers. The use of freshwater resources and critical raw materials, however, limits their use. Alternative water splitting methods for green hydrogen generation via photocatalysis and photoelectrocatalysis (PEC) have been explored in the past few decades; however, their commercial potential still remains unexploited due to the high hydrogen generation costs. Novel PEC-based simultaneous generation of green hydrogen and wastewater treatment/high-value product production is therefore seen as an alternative to conventional water splitting. Interestingly, the organic/inorganic pollutants in wastewater and biomass favourably act as electron donors and facilitate the dual-functional process of recovering green hydrogen while oxidising the organic matter. The generation of green hydrogen through the dual-functional PEC process opens up opportunities for a "circular economy". It further enables the end-of-life commodities to be reused, recycled and resourced for a better life-cycle design while being economically viable for commercialisation. This review brings together and critically analyses the recent trends towards simultaneous wastewater treatment/biomass reforming while generating hydrogen gas by employing the PEC technology. We have briefly discussed the technical challenges associated with the tandem PEC process, new avenues, techno-economic feasibility and future directions towards achieving net neutrality.


Most unsupervised indigenous knowledge (IK) are known to be very useful in combating critical health issues as well as being dangerous if the administration is abused. Despite the fact that these locally prepared herbal medicine are not encouraged to be used by the citizenry for known reasons, some people in our localities still use these products and testify to their usefulness. If there is awareness on the true sources of this indigenous knowledge with the dosage not exceeded, these products will be helpful in combating some critical health issues where orthodox medicine fails. It will also be helpful to the citizenry who may not be able to afford orthodox medicine as well as providing a means of livelihood for the traditional medical doctors (herbalists). This work is aimed at creating a computational model for situation awareness of indigenous knowledge in health that will help in information sharing using ontological modeling approach for semantic web. The resulting model will feature and share the successes as well as the challenges and the opportunities of indigenous knowledge in health as obtained by interviewing the traditional experts and the patients that have made use of these traditional products. This situation awareness of IK will help put IK to proper and safe use in handling critical health issues especially for the poor who can't afford expensive orthodox medicine.


Background: Postural control and falls in the elderly constitute a major health problem. The interest in balance deficits is growing, as concern about the rising costs of health care increases. This issue is particularly relevant to the elderly population in which falls occur most frequently. Postural control in the elderly was studied using a cognitive approach. Objective: The purpose of this study was to study the characteristics of central processing of postural control while performing cognitive tasks. Methods: A dual-task procedure was developed to estimate the level of automaticity of a quiet upright standing task. The effect of a concurrent attention-demanding task (modified Stroop test) on the efficiency of balance control in the elderly was determined using force platform and electromyography measurements. Results: It was found that there is an increase in postural sway in old subjects compared with young subjects when performing single tasks and dual-task tests. The results of the study demonstrate that postural adjustments require cognitive processing; young and old subjects showed similar interference effects on postural steadiness (postural sway) caused by the concurrent attention-demanding task. The results are corroborated by the hypothesis that a dual task gives information on the restoration of automaticity of postural control in old age by a central reorganization process. When performing a dual task tested on a narrow base of support, the old subjects decreased their body sway, while the younger did not. According to electromyography measurements, the older subjects increased their muscle activity in the tibialis anterior and soleus muscles, using slow-twitch motor units compared with the younger subjects. Conclusions: Both alterations (cognitive and base of support) have a substantially greater effect on the elderly than on the young. The older subjects decreased their body sway by activating a cocontraction strategy of postural control around the ankle joint, probably because of the danger to their postural stability.


This paper examines the influence of the family structure on the labor supply of husband and wife, using the formulation of a dynamic search model, assuming two types of family - modern and conservative. The conservative families follow the classical approach, where the family is a patriarchal institution, the head of the family is the husband who is the main breadwinner, while the wife is the secondary supporter. This approach is modeled by a Stackelberg Leader game where the wife's job-search decisions follow the already known outcomes of her husband's job-search strategy. The modern family is defined by a symmetric Nash strategic game. The husband and wife simultaneously decide upon their search policies given their anticipations about their partner's decision. The paper formulates a finite-horizon dynamic discrete choice model for the labor-supply decision of the household with separate utility functions for the husband and wife. These utility functions are identical for both types of family, leaving the type of game as the sole differentiator between them. The model's simulations show that this distinction has a significant influence on the couple's labor supply: the participation rate of conservative women is lower than the one of modern women, and correlates strongly and negatively with the husband's participation rate, a relation that is weak in modern families. The paper also contains a macro economic survey of the participation rates of women in Israel, based on the CBS labor force and income surveys. The increase of 20% in women's participation rate in the past thirty years was led by the group of married women aged 25-55 with children, whose participation rate climbed by more than 30%.


Phase composition and nanostructure of layered and irregular massive impact diamond grains from the Popigai astrobleme have been investigated by Raman spectroscopy and high-resolution electron microscopy and the conditions of phase transformations are discussed. Several coexisting carbon phases forming tight aggregates have been found, including cubic and hexagonal diamond polymorphs, graphite, amorphous carbon, fullerene-like/onion-like carbon. The latter is described within impact diamonds for the first time. It is proposed that the formation of onion-like carbon, in both layered and massive impact diamond grains, is connected with high-pressure graphite transformation or post-pressure stress cooling which causes the partial back transformation of diamond nanocrystallites to sp2 carbon. However, a possible relict origin of the fullerene-like carbon from the impacted initial sedimentary rocks with fullerenes and fullerene-like substances, like shungite or coal, can not be excluded. The difference between micro- and nanostructures of layered and irregular massive impact grains is presented.


Background: Cynodon dactylon (L.) Pers. family (Graminae/poaceae) occupies its unique place and key position in ethnomedicinal practices and traditional medical (Ayurvedic, Unani, Nepalese, and Chinese) knowledge systems but according to best of our knowledge lack is done on its standardization of the herb for its quality control and authenticity. Objective: To evaluate the morphological and microscopical characters of Cynodon dactylon Pers roots collected from Maharashtra region and its phytochemical and physicochemical analysis. Methods: Microscopic, macroscopic characters and fluorescence analysis of roots samples were analyzed. The physicochemical properties such as loss on drying, total ash value, acid insoluble ash, water soluble ash value and extractive values of Cynodon dactylon were carried out. Results: The detailed microscopy revealed the presence wide cortex, intact epidermis, wide circular metaxylem and parenchymatous cells loaded with starch grain. Preliminary phytochemical investigation revealed the presence of carbohydrates, flavonoids, phenols and tannins. Conclusions: This is first report on the pharmacognostic studies of Cynodon dactylon and is helpful in laying down identification, standardization and pharmacopeial standards. Pharmacognostic Investigation of Cynodon dactylon Pers Roots Sumit R Deore and Ajay G Namdeo* Department of Pharmacognosy, Bharati Vidyapeeth Deemed University, Poona College of Pharmacy, Pune411038


There is an increasing demand on high-quality software as software bugs have an economic impact not only on software projects, but also on national economies in general. Software quality is achieved via the main quality assurance activities of testing and code reviewing. However, these activities are expensive, thus they need to be carried out efficiently.

Auxiliary software quality tools such as bug detection and bug prediction tools help developers focus their testing and reviewing activities on the parts of software that more likely contain bugs. However, these tools are far from adoption as mainstream development tools. Previous research points to their inability to adapt to the peculiarities of projects and their high rate of false positives as the main obstacles of their adoption.

We propose empirically-grounded analysis to improve the adaptability and efficiency of bug detection and prediction tools. For a bug detector to be efficient, it needs to detect bugs that are conspicuous, frequent, and specific to a software project. We empirically show that the null-related bugs fulfill these criteria and are worth building detectors for. We analyze the null dereferencing problem and find that its root cause lies in methods that return null. We propose an empirical solution to this problem that depends on the wisdom of the crowd. For each API method, we extract the nullability measure that expresses how often the return value of this method is checked against null in the ecosystem of the API. We use nullability to annotate API methods with nullness annotation and warn developers about missing and excessive null checks.

For a bug predictor to be efficient, it needs to be optimized as both a machine learning model and a software quality tool. We empirically show how feature selection and hyperparameter optimizations improve prediction accuracy. Then we optimize bug prediction to locate the maximum number of bugs in the minimum amount of code by finding the most cost-effective combination of bug prediction configurations, i.e., dependent variables, machine learning model, and response variable. We show that using both source code and change metrics as dependent variables, applying feature selection on them, then using an optimized Random Forest to predict the number of bugs results in the most cost-effective bug predictor.

Throughout this thesis, we show how empirically-grounded analysis helps us achieve efficient bug prediction and detection tools and adapt them to the characteristics of each software project.


The Strehl ratio for imaging systems with circular and annular pupils aberrated by primary aberrations is considered in terms of the variance σΦ2 of the phase aberration across the pupil. Classical as well as balanced (Zernike) aberrations are considered. By comparing the actual numerical results with the approximate ones, we find that exp(−σΦ2) gives a better approximation for the Strehl ratio than does the Marechal formula. Whereas the Marechal formula underestimates the Strehl ratio, exp(−σΦ2) generally overestimates it, especially for annular pupils with a large obscuration.


We report a compact fiber in-line Mach-Zehnder interferometer for refractive index sensing with high sensitivity and precise sensing location. One arm of the interferometer contains a microcavity formed by removing part of the fiber core near the core and cladding interface by femtosecond laser micromachining, and the other arm remains in line with the remaining part of the fiber core. Such a fiber in-line Mach-Zehnder interferometer exhibits an extremely high refractive-index-sensitivity of −9370 nm/RIU (refractive index unit) within the refractive index range between 1.31 and 1.335.


This study addresses the question of how to mitigate productivity losses in Electronic Brainstorming (EBS) due to social loafing. This article posits that loafing in the context of EBS may occur due to the combined effect of random group composition and anonymity in conjunction with unregulated individual performance behavior, not anonymity per se, and presents real-time, objective performance feedback as a plausible solution to combat social loafing. An automated real-time performance feedback system was incorporated into an existing EBS system and its effect on performance was empirically examined. Consistent with the suggestions of prior loafing research, in a controlled laboratory experiment groups given the identifiability treatment outperformed other treatments. Similarly, groups given the evaluability treatment outperformed other treatments. Furthermore, groups in the Identifiability and Evaluability treatment showed competitiveness among participants, promoting upward social comparison, and in turn outperforming all other groups in terms of idea quality.