One-to-one promotions are possible when consumers are individually addressable and firms know something about each customer's preferences. We explore the competitive effects of one-to-one promotions in a model with two competing firms where the firms differ in size and consumers have heterogeneous brand loyalty. We find that one-to-one promotions always lead to an increase in price competition (average prices in the market decrease). However, we also find that one-to-one promotions affect market shares. This market-share effect may outweigh the effect of lower prices, benefiting the firm whose market share increases. Our results suggest that of two firms, the firm with the higher-quality product may gain from one-to-one promotions. Our model also has implications for the phenomenon of customer churn, where consumers switch to a less preferred brand due to targeted promotional incentives. We show that churning can arise optimally from firms pursuing a profit-maximizing strategy. Instead of trying to minimize it, the optimal way to manage customer churn is to engage in both offensive and defensive promotions with the relative mix depending on the marginal cost of targeting. (Database Marketing; Game Theory; Strategy; Price Discrimination)


Two Māori flutes in the Peabody Essex Museum provide a multi-faceted view of objects in motion. The flutes, carved in New Zealand, were collected by a Salem captain during a trading voyage and donated to the museum in 1807. This paper follows the movements of the flutes across space and time, tracing the circuits of Māori cosmogony, Western trade, cross-cultural exchange, and breath and sound embodied in the flutes. The paper suggests that these small, carefully crafted instruments, requiring close engagement and focus in order to "play," have their own logic of circulation and organizing power and move across temporal and spatial boundaries, categories and musical planes, refusing to become static, lifeless museum objects.


Studies developing and applying organoid technology have greatly increased in volume and visibility over the past decade. Organoids are three‐dimensional structures that are established from pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) or adult tissue stem cells (ASCs). They consist of organ‐specific cell types that self‐organize through cell sorting and spatially restricted lineage commitment to generate architectural and functional characteristics of the tissue of interest. The field of respiratory development and disease has been particularly productive in this regard. Starting from human cells (PSCs or ASCs), models of the two segments of the lung, the airways and the alveoli, can be built. Such organoids allow the study of development, physiology and disease and thus bridge the gap between animal models and clinical studies. This review discusses current developments in the pulmonary organoid field, highlighting the potential and limitations of current models.


Central Government Silver Treasury is the first English research monograph on revenue, expenditure and inventory statistics of the central government Silver Treasury in the Qing dynasty of China, ca. 1667-1900.


Drawing on the core commitments of Critical Terrorism Studies, and mostly, the ethic of emancipation, this article focuses on the Boko Haram insurgency to investigate recurring violent conflict in Nigeria. It identifies a governance gap not adverted to in the official narrative which has led to gross discontent at the lower levels of the society. The governance gap has created fertile breeding grounds for the recruitment of disillusioned youths who are easily mobilised to violence and lately, insurgency. There are normative and pragmatic reasons to adopt and prioritise social welfare through the implementation of economic, social and cultural obligations and due-process rights as a viable approach to at least reducing the spate of violence in the country. The discussion has relevance for resolving situations of violence and conflict in sub-Sahara Africa in particular and elsewhere in the developing world.


Plutella xylostella is a major pest of crucifier crops in Samoa and other Pacific islands. This pest has developed resistance to most insecticides available in the island nations so the objective of this study was to examine potential biological control options for P. xylostella in Samoa. Existing parasitism of P. xylostella on Chinese cabbage (Brassica rapa subspp.) was investigated at a farm in Alesia and at the USP farm in Alafua, and established populations of Cotesia vestalis were found at both locations. Plutella xylostella larvae turn light yellow and show sluggish behaviour after parasitism, and they could be easily differentiated from unparasitised ones. Developing C. vestalis larvae emerge from their hosts and spin white cocoon around their body. After 5–6 days, a single adult emerges from the C. vestalis cocoon. The average parasitism rate between April 2015 and March 2016 was 10–18% but was significantly higher at the USP farm than the Alesia farm. This result could be because no insecticides were applied to the crops at USP. Parasitism was highest between June and August when the lowest average daily temperatures occur.


Outline of the thesisThis thesis is comprises three papers that are intended for journal publication. The version provided in the thesis is a bit longer than they will be at final publication. However it was the desire to include some additional documentation that may be omitted in the final versions. Each paper in the manuscript is written as an independent paper. Because all the papers are strongly tied together there is significant repetition partly because the documentation and interpretation of the results in on paper depends on the results documented in another paper. The essence of the three papers are summarised below:Paper 1:Sorensen, B.E. and Larsen R.B. 2007. "Fluid induced multistage recrystallisation microstructures in Quartzites and Quartz veins from the Bamble shear zone complex"Paper 1 deduces basic principles of infiltration, physiochemical alteration processes and deformation mechanisms in quartzites and in quartz veins from the Froland area, the Bamble sector. SEM-CL is used to define generations of recrystallised quartz. A progressive quartz purification process ending with high purity quartz through recrystallisation is documented through LA-ICP-MS. The study demonstrates how fluids provokes recrystallisation and trace element mobilisation from the quartz lattice and at fluid-absent conditions, quartz is resistant to retrograde recrystallisation hence preserving its early high grade metamorphic trace element signature. Evidence of retrograde fluid flow is preserved in fluid channel textures intersecting quartz and documented by SEM-CL images as well as changes in the trace element distribution. Quartz recrystallisation is associated with metasomatic processes in the quartzites such as for example the replacement of ilmenite by rutile and replacement of biotite by muscovite. The strong focus of fluid flow along narrow pathways intersecting the quartzites generates mm-scale differences in the rheological properties of the quartz grains with increased ductility and recovery in recrystallised grains. Therefore, the study demonstrates a strong coupling between strain softening, fluid flow and mass transfer in shearzones in quartz rich rocks.Paper 2:Sorensen, B.E. and Larsen R.B. 2007. "The fluid evolution of the Froland area in the Bamble sector from peak P-T through cooling and uplift: implications for retrograde mineral paragenesis and PT evolution of the Bamble sector"Paper 2 comprises a detailed characterisation of the fluid evolution during cooling and uplift through fluid inclusion studies compared with thermodynamic modelling of calc-silicate volatile dependant mineral equilibria. Fluids are documented to be brines throughout the cooling and uplift path. The paper also includes a detailed discussion of the chemical properties of the aggressive brines and their implications for mineral equilibria during cooling and exhumation. The study also document which fluids that were in equilibrium with quartz recrystallisation and purification. The study focussed on fluids that could be related to the quartz SEM-CL textures documented in Paper 1. Had the main purpose of this thesis been to understand calc-silicate equilibria in the Bamble sector fluid inclusions in the calc-silicates would have been in the focus.Paper 3:Sorensen, B.E, Larsen R.B. and Austrheim, H. 2007. "Metasomatic evolution of the Froland amphibolites during cooling and uplift – textural observations and geochemical evolution of hydrous minerals"Paper 3 comprises a detailed study of alteration processes in amphibolites. The study focuses on the chemistry of amphiboles as a function P, T and the composition of the co-existing fluids. Amphibole and biotite undergo a co-genetic evolution both becoming more Mg-rich during cooling and exhumation. The chemical changes in biotite and amphibole reflects the interaction with the brines present throughout cooling and uplift. A relationship between element depletion in amphibolites and formation of Fe-Cu sulphides is observed.As earlier stated the papers are strongly tied together. In conjunction with each other they deduce the metamorphic and metasomatic evolution of the area and put the observed quartz recrystallisation and purification into a physiochemical framework. The locality numbering varies between the papers because samples from different localities are included in each paper, accordingly a locality termed"1" in one of the papers may have a different number in the next paper. This was done because the papers are supposed to be independent research papers and the numbering logically relate to the context of the single papers and not the thesis as a whole.


Yeasty HIPHOP In order to identify how chemical compounds target genes and affect the physiology of the cell, tests of the perturbations that occur when treated with a range of pharmacological chemicals are required. By examining the haploinsufficiency profiling (HIP) and homozygous profiling (HOP) chemogenomic platforms, Lee et al. (p. 208) analyzed the response of yeast to thousands of different small molecules, with genetic, proteomic, and bioinformatic analyses. Over 300 compounds were identified that targeted 121 genes within 45 cellular response signature networks. These networks were used to extrapolate the likely effects of related chemicals, their impact upon genetic pathways, and to identify putative gene functions. Guilt by association helps identify the chemogenomic signatures of compounds targeting yeast genes. Genome-wide characterization of the in vivo cellular response to perturbation is fundamental to understanding how cells survive stress. Identifying the proteins and pathways perturbed by small molecules affects biology and medicine by revealing the mechanisms of drug action. We used a yeast chemogenomics platform that quantifies the requirement for each gene for resistance to a compound in vivo to profile 3250 small molecules in a systematic and unbiased manner. We identified 317 compounds that specifically perturb the function of 121 genes and characterized the mechanism of specific compounds. Global analysis revealed that the cellular response to small molecules is limited and described by a network of 45 major chemogenomic signatures. Our results provide a resource for the discovery of functional interactions among genes, chemicals, and biological processes.


Estimation of parameters in differential equation models can be achieved by applying learning algorithms to quantitative time-series data. However, sometimes it is only possible to measure qualitative changes of a system in response to a controlled condition. In dynamical systems theory, such change points are known as bifurcations and lie on a function of the controlled condition called the bifurcation diagram. In this work, we propose a gradient-based approach for inferring the parameters of differential equations that produce a user-specified bifurcation diagram. The cost function contains an error term that is minimal when the model bifurcations match the specified targets and a bifurcation measure which has gradients that push optimisers towards bifurcating parameter regimes. The gradients can be computed without the need to differentiate through the operations of the solver that was used to compute the diagram. We demonstrate parameter inference with minimal models which explore the space of saddle-node and pitchfork diagrams and the genetic toggle switch from synthetic biology. Furthermore, the cost landscape allows us to organise models in terms of topological and geometric equivalence.


In instance-level detection tasks (e.g., object detection), reducing input resolution is an easy option to improve runtime efficiency. However, this option traditionally hurts the detection performance much. This paper focuses on boosting performance of low-resolution models by distilling knowledge from a high- or multi-resolution model. We first identify the challenge of applying knowledge distillation (KD) to teacher and student networks that act on different input resolutions. To tackle it, we explore the idea of spatially aligning feature maps between models of varying input resolutions by shifting feature pyramid position and introduce aligned multi-scale training to train a multi-scale teacher that can distill its knowledge to a low-resolution student. Further, we propose crossing feature-level fusion to dynamically fuse teacher's multi-resolution features to guide the student better. On several instance-level detection tasks and datasets, the low-resolution models trained via our approach perform competitively with high-resolution models trained via conventional multi-scale training, while outperforming the latter's low-resolution models by 2.1% to 3.6% in terms of mAP. Our code is made publicly available at https://github.com/Jia-Research-Lab/MSAD.


Purpose

As disaster resilience activities are increasingly occurring at the neighbourhood level, there is a growing recognition in research and in practice of the contributions that community stakeholders can make in assessing the resilience of their communities. The purpose of this paper is to describe the process in deriving a disaster resilience measurement framework by soliciting the perspectives of stakeholders from urban neighbourhoods in two countries. The authors examined their community values, and their perspectives on both the concept of resilience and the essential elements that they believe would contribute to the resiliency of their neighbourhoods.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors used an appreciative inquiry approach to draw out the perspectives of 58 stakeholders from nine focus groups in five urban neighbourhoods in New Zealand and in the USA.

Findings

Results of this research show common values and recurring perceived characteristics of disaster resilience across the study sites. A neighbourhood-based disaster resilience measurement framework is developed that encompasses individual/psychological, socio-cultural, economic, infrastructural/built, and institutional/governance dimensions of disaster resilience. In the process of developing the framework, the authors identified challenges in engaging certain segments of the population and in accounting for wider structural influences on neighbourhood resilience.

Research limitations/implications

Issues relating to inclusive community engagement and linkages to cross-scalar resilience factors need to be addressed in future studies.

Practical implications

Results of this research provide insights and guidance for policy makers and practitioners when engaging communities in the development of resilience metrics.

Originality/value

This study fills the literature gap in evaluating community values and stakeholders' perspectives on disaster resilience when identifying metrics for resilience interventions in urban neighbourhoods. The proposed measurement framework is derived from cross-cultural and diverse socioeconomic settings.


Transportation corridor planning is a process that is in nature collaborative with local governments and includes extensive public participation opportunities. A corridor may be divided into logical, manageable smaller areas for the purpose of corridor planning. The planning process looks at the existing transportation system within the corridor and how the system could be changed or expanded to meet long-term needs, and includes discussion of existing and projected travel patterns and social, environmental, and economic issues within the corridor. It includes discussion of infrastructure improvements in combination with wise land-use and systems-management actions. GIS is assessed as [an] advanced tool because of the spatial nature of transportation planning and the determination of a range of potential outcomes. The research is intended to investigate the state-of-the-art technology with a goal of greatly improving [the] corridor planning process together with understanding of GIS capabilities, data awareness and accuracy, decision-making and communications. GIS is utilized as a tool in such a way to enhance the ability to accurately predict and easily understand these capabilities. Its main motivation is to better represent GIS in the corridor planning process. It is intended to provide transportation organizations, planning practitioners, and transportation decision-makers with GIS tools and guidance for planning, organizing, and managing to effectively support transportation investment decisions tailored to the specific conditions and performance needs for major transportation improvements. This research proposes to address the capabilities of GIS in corridor planning and enhance the ability to accurately predict and easily understand these capabilities.


ABSTRACT SOCCER IS CHARACTERIZED AS A HIGH-INTENSITY, INTERMITTENT, CONTACT TEAM SPORT THAT REQUIRES A NUMBER OF PROFICIENT PHYSICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL CAPABILITIES TO PERFORM SUCCESSFULLY. APART FROM THE NECESSARY TECHNICAL AND TACTICAL SKILLS REQUIRED, SOCCER PLAYERS MUST ALSO DEVELOP AND RETAIN A HIGH LEVEL OF AEROBIC AND ANAEROBIC CONDITIONING, SPEED, AGILITY, STRENGTH, AND POWER. THESE ARE BEST DEVELOPED THROUGH HIGH-INTENSITY INTERVAL TRAINING, SMALL-SIDED GAMES, REPEATED SPRINTS, COACHED SPEED AND AGILITY SESSIONS AND STRENGTH AND POWER-BASED GYM SESSIONS. SOCCER COACHES AND STRENGTH AND CONDITIONING COACHES MUST WORK COHESIVELY TO ENSURE A STRUCTURED AND EFFECTIVE PROGRAM IS ADHERED TO.


Polyamide-6 (PA6), acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) and their blends are an important class of engineering thermoplastics that are widely used in electronic and automotive industries. Many efforts have been taken to improve the properties of both pure components and the blends. It was for this reason that the dynamic mechanical and rheological properties of PA6/ABS blend systems compatibilised by acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene–maleic anhydride (ABS-g-MAH) was studied. The compatibiliser levels were kept up to 5wt. % in the blends. Short glass fibre (SGF) was used to improve the stiffness of the compatibilised blends and the fibre contents were from 10 to 30 wt. %. Therefore, the reason behind blending the PA6/ABS blends with short glass fibre was to balance the toughness and stiffness. Both the blends and corresponding composites were compounded using a counter-rotating twin screw extruder. Tensile, flexural and impact properties were determined using the injection moulded test samples according to ASTM standards. The mechanical properties of the blends and the composites were investigated in both static and dynamic modes. Rheological properties were investigated using rotational and capillary rheometer. In general, the mechanical strength either dynamic (refer to dynamic mechanical properties) or static conditions improved by incorporation of compatibiliser to the PA6/ABS blends. The incorporation of SGF into the PA6/ABS blends enhanced the mechanical strength but reduced the toughness of the composites. The rheological measurements confirmed the interaction between the blend components with the incorporation of compatibiliser has been improved. However, the compatibiliser has no favourable effect on the mechanical properties of the composites although it has significant effect on the blends of PA6/ABS. The compatibiliser increased the melt viscosity of the blends. The SGF increased the rheological properties especially viscosity and flowability of the composites. The optimum ratio of compatibiliser and SGF concentration were determined using power law, n and consistency index, K analyses. From the analysis, the optimum ratio obtained was 1.5 wt. % for 50/50 and 60/40 PA6/ABS blends and 3 wt. % for 70/30 PA6/ABS blends. The n values drastically decreased, when concentration of the SGF was about 20 wt % indicating more pseudoplastic nature for the composites and suggesting that, 20 wt % is the optimum SGF concentration


This article explores changing growth regimes in Uganda, from pro-poor growth in the 1990s to growth without poverty reduction, actually even with a slight increase in poverty, after 2000. Not surprisingly, it finds that good agricultural performance is the key determinant of direct pro-poor growth in the 1990s, while lower agricultural growth is the root cause of the recent increase in poverty. At the same time, after 2000 low agricultural growth appears to have induced important employment shifts out of agriculture, which have dampened the increase in poverty. The article also assesses the indirect form of pro-poor growth by analysing the incidence of public spending and the tax system, and finds that indirect pro-poor growth has been achieved to only a limited extent.


We study the mechanical relaxation behavior of human red blood cells by observing the time evolution of shape change of cells flowing through microchannels with abrupt constrictions. We observe two types of relaxation processes. In the first fast process (τ1 ∼ 200 ms) the initially parachute shaped cells relax into cup-shaped cells (stomatocytes). These cells relax and reorient in a second relaxation process with a response time of τ1/2 ∼ 10 s into the equilibrium discoid shapes. The values for the relaxation times of single red blood cells in the population scatter significantly within the cell population between 0.11 s < τ1 < 0.52 s and 9 s < τ1/2 < 49 s, respectively. However, when plotting τ1/2 against τ1, we find a linear relationship between the two timescales and are able to relate both to the elastic properties of the spectrin cytoskeleton underlying the red cell's plasma membrane. Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) enhances dissociation of spectrin filaments resulting in a reduced shear modulus. We modify the cytoskeleton connectivity by depletion and repletion of ATP and study the effect on relaxation. Both the linear relationship of timescales as well as the ATP dependence can be understood by theoretical models.


Neuroendocrine differentiation (NED), which is not uncommon in prostate cancer, is increases in prostate cancer after androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) and generally appears in castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC). Neuroendocrine cells, which are found in normal prostate tissue, are a small subset of cells and have unique function in regulating the growth of prostate cells. Prostate cancer with NED includes different types of tumor, including focal NED, pure neuroendocrine tumor or mixed neuroendocrine-adenocarcinoma. Although more and more studies are carried out on NED in prostate cancer, the molecular components that are involved in NED are still poorly elucidated. We review neuroendocrine cells in normal prostate tissue, NED in prostate cancer, terminology of NED and biomarkers used for detecting NED in routine pathological practice. Some recently reported molecular components which drive NED in prostate cancer are listed in the review.


Background We know that high-performance sports place high stress in the musculoskeletal system, often resulting in injury, pain, or other complaints. It is not unusual for athletes to decide to participate in important competitions, despite an ongoing disability or injury. However, we are unaware of any study that has presented any clear information about this issue in recreational runners. Objective The aims of this study were to calculate the prevalence of presence of musculoskeletal pain in amateur runners immediately before a race and to identify possible factors that could be associated with presence of musculoskeletal pain in this population. Design This is a cross-sectional survey study. Setting These runners were recreational athletes that participated in different races in São Paulo (Brazil), the distance of these races ranged from 5.000/10.000 meters. Participants A convenience sample of 1049 runners, 24.1% women (n=253) and 75.9% men (n=796). Assessment of risk factors This questionnaire contained information on presence of musculoskeletal pain, demographic characteristics, weight, body mass index, running experience, running mileage/week, number of training sessions/week, predominant training surface and coaching utilisation. We used logistic regression analysis to indentify associations between possible factors and presence of musculoskeletal pain (p<0.05). The data were collected 1–2 h prior to the races. Main outcome measurements Presence of musculoskeletal pain. Results The prevalence of presence of musculoskeletal pain was 20% and 26.9% for men and women respectively. Running experience (OR=2.97, 95% CI 1.59 to 5.56) and weekly running distance (OR=1.88, 95% CI 1.02 to 3.48) were associated with presence of musculoskeletal pain in men prior to the race. Conclusion The prevalence of presence of musculoskeletal pain in amateur runners prior to the race was high. We have observed higher experience in running (ie, more than 10 years) and high training volumes (ie, more than 50 Km/week) were associated with presence of musculoskeletal pain.


Plasma lipoproteins can be separated by ultracentrifugation based on their physical properties, without direct reference to their composition, with 'high-density' lipoproteins (HDL) comprising those with density greater than 1.063 g/ml. HDL lipoprotein particles should be explicitly distinguished from HDL-cholesterol, which is but one of the constituents of HDL. Apolipoprotein A-I is the major structural protein of HDL and comprises 70% of total HDL protein. In addition, there is a large number of protein constituents, the functions of which broadly span lipid transport, inflammation, immune function, hormone binding, haemostasis and antioxidant functions.1 Our appreciation of the context-specific roles of these proteins remains rudimentary, and tools to quantify their putative contributions still more so. On the other hand, measurement of HDL-cholesterol is relatively straightforward and has been undertaken widely.

HDL has come to be regarded as atheroprotective, based on three lines of evidence: (1) the inverse relationship between cardiovascular event rates and HDL-cholesterol that is seen in epidemiological studies; (2) animal data showing that the administration of apolipoprotein AI and/or HDL particles reduce atherosclerosis and (favourably remodel atherosclerotic plaques); and (3) a small number of clinical trials suggesting that some drugs that elevate HDL-cholesterol also reduce cardiovascular events or result in plaque regression, assessed by ultrasound or MRI. These observations have raised the possibility that interventions that increase HDL-cholesterol might reduce cardiovascular risk. However, several recent findings have challenged this notion. First, alterations of HDL-cholesterol that are associated with naturally occurring, genetic polymorphisms allow the effects of changes in HDL-cholesterol due to Mendelian randomisation to be mapped to cardiovascular risk. Alterations in HDL-cholesterol by these means do not track with predicted cardiovascular risk. Secondly, niacin (nicotinic acid) is the most efficacious of clinically available drugs to elevate HDL-cholesterol. The AIM—HIGH trial of niacin in patients with low HDL-cholesterol was abandoned due to …


Introduction Helge Ole Bergesen, Georg Parmann, and Bystein B. Thommessen Evaluation of the Climate Change Regime and Related Deve1opments Joyecta Gupta Liability and Compensation for Ship-Source Marine Pollution: The International System Edgar Gold Biodiversity:B etwcen Diverse International Arenas G. Kristin Roscndal International Co-operation in Nuclear Safety Roland Timerbaev and Abram lorysh The Treatment of Environmental Considerations in the World Trade Organization Bcatricc Chaytor and Jamcs Cameron World Business Council for Sustainable Development: The Greening of Business or a Greenwash? Adil Najam General Environmental Concerns Convention on Access to Information, Fublic Participation Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (Arhus Convention), Arhus, 1998 Convention on Environmental Impact Assessment in a Transboundary Context, Espoo, 1991 Atmosphere Annex 16, vol. IT (Environmental Protection: Aircraft Engine Emissions) to the 1944 Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation, Montreal, 1981 Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP), Geneva, 1979 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), New York, 1992 Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer, Vienna, 1985, including the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, Montreal, 1987 Hazardous Substances Convention on the Ban of the Import into Africa and the Control of Transboundary Movements and Management of Hazardous Wastes within Africa, Bamako, 1991 Convention on Civil Liability for Damage Caused during Carriage of Dangerous Goods by Road, Rail. and Inland Navigation Vessels (CRTD), Geneva, 1989 Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal (Basel Convention), Basel, 1989 Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade (PIC Convention), Rotterdam, 1998 Convention on the Transboundary Effects of Industrial Accidents, Helsinki, 1992 Convention to Ban the Importation into Forum Island Countries of Hazardous and Radioactive Wastes and to Control the Transboundary Movement and Management of Hazardous Wastes within the South Pacific Region (Waigani Convention), Waigani, 1995 European Agreement Concerning the International Carriage of Dangerous Goods by Road (ADR), Geneva, 1957 FAO International Code of Conduct on the Distribution and Use of Pesticides, Rome, 1985 Marine Environment Global Conventions Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter (London Convention 1972), London, 1972 International Convention for the Prcvention of Pollution from Ships, 1973, as modified by the Protocol of 1978 relating thcrcto (MARPOL 73/78), London, 1973 and 1978 International Convention on Civil Liability for Oil Pollution Damage 1969 (1969 CLC), Brussels, 1969, 1976, and 1984 International Convention on the Establishment of an International Fund for Compensation for Oil Pollution Damage 1971 (1971 Fund Convention), Brussels, 1971 Convention on Liability and Compensation for Damage in Connection with the Carriage of Hazardous and Noxious Substances by Sea (HNS), London 1996 International Convention on Oil Pollution Preparedness, Response, and Co-operation (OPRC), London, 1990 International Convention Relating to Intervention on the High Seas in Cases of Oil Pollution Casualties (Intervention Convention), Brussels, 1969 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), Montego Bay, 1982 Regional Conventions Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North East Atlantic (OSPAR Convention), Paris, 1992 Convention on the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area (1974 Helsinki Convention), Helsinki, 1974 Convention on thc Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area (1992 Helsinki Convention), Helsinki, 1992 Conventions within the UNEP Regional Seas Programme Convention on the Protection of the Black Sea against Pollution, Bucharest, 1992 Convention for the Protection and Development of the Marine Environment of the Wider Caribbean Region, Cartagena de Indias, 1983 Convention for the Protection, Management, and Development of the Marine and Coastal Environment of the Eastern African Region, Nairobi, 1985 Kuwait Regional Convention for Co-operation on the Protection of the Marine Environment from Pollution, Kuwait, 1978 Convention for the Protection and Development of the Marine Environment and Coastal Region of the Mediterranean Sea (Barcelona Convention), Barcelona, 1976 Regional Convention for the Conservation of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden Environment, Jcddah, 1982 Convention for the Protection of the Natural Resources and Environment of the Soutl~ Pacific Region (SPREP Convention), Noumea, 1986 Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment and Coastal Area ol the South-East Pacific, Lima, 1981 Convention for Co-operation in the Protection and Development of the Marine and Coastal Environment of the West and Central African Region, Abidjaa. 1981 Marine Living Resources Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), Canberra, 1980 International Convention for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), Rio de Janeiro, 1966 International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW), Washington, 1946 Nature Conservation and Terrestrial Living Resources Antarctic Treaty, Washington, DC, 1959 Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (World Heritage Convention), Paris, 1972 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), Nairobi, 1992 Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), Bonn, 1979 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), Washington, DC, 1973 Convention on Wetlands of International Importance especially as Waterfowl Habitat (Ramsar Convention), Kamsar, 1971 Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD), Paris, 1994 FAO International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources, Rome, 1983 International Tropical Timber Agreement, 1994 (TTTA. 1994), Geneva, 1994 Nuclear Safety Convention on Assistance in the Case of a Nuclear Accident or Radiological Emergency (Assistance Convention), Vienna, l986 Convention on Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident (Notification Convention), Vienna, 1986 Convention on Nuclear Safety, Vienna, 1994 Vienna Convention on Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage, Vienna, 1963 Freshwater Resources Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes (ECE Water Convention), Helsinki, 1992 Tables of Agreements and Degrees of Participation, by Country INTERGOVERNMOERNGTAANLI ZKI'I(IOGNOSs ) Cornmission on Sustainable Development (CSD) European Union (EU): Environment Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Global Environment Facility (GEF) International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) International Labour Organization (ILO) International Maritime Organization (IMO) International Monetary Fund (IMF) International Oil Pollution Compensation Funds (IOPC Funds) Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Environment Policy Committee (EPOC) United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) World Bank World Food Programme (WFP) World Health Organization (WHO) World Meteorological Organization (WMO) World Trade Organization (WTO) NON-GOVERNMENOTRAGLA NIZATIO(NNGSO s) Basel Action Network (BAN) Climate Action Network (CAN) Consumers International (CI) Earth Council Earthwatch Institute Environmental Liaison Centre International (ELCI) European Environmental Bureau (EEB) Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) Greenpeace International International Chamber of Commerce ([CC) International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) International Solar Energy Society (ISES) IUCN - The World Conservation Union Pesticide Action Network (PAN) Sierra Club Society for International Development (SID) Third World Network (TWN) Water Environment Federation (WEF) Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) World Federalist Movement (WFM) World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF) Other Networking Instruments * Arab Network for Environment and Development (RAED) Both ENDS Global Legislators for a Balanced Environment (GLOBE) Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (REC) United Nations Non-Governmental Liaison Service (UN-NGLS) Tables of International Organizations and Degrees of Participation, by Country and Territory OECD countries Australia Austria Czech Republic Denmark Finland Greece Hungary Iceland Ireland Republic of Korea Luxembourg Mexico New Zealand Switzerland Turkey Technical Notes and References ,O ECD Countrich Selected non-OECD countries Brazil Indonesia Nigeria South Africa Thailand Technical Notes and References, non-OECD Countries List of Articles in 1992-1999/2000 Volume


Importance of chromium nutrition in dairy cattle. A review. Chromium (Cr) essentially has been recognized for animals and humans since the early 50s. Its major role is as a component of the Glucose Tolerance Factor (GTF) molecule, which activates insulin. Because insulin participates in the metabolism of carbohydrates, lipids and proteins, Cr, through GTF, is also involved in those metabolic processes. Unfortunately, not all Cr present in nature is biologically active. Chromium as a trivalent and in its organic form is found in biological systems. Any inorganic Cr sources need to be converted to organic Cr, such as GTR to be biologically activity. As a trivalent and in its organic form, Cr is nearly non-toxic. However, through industrial Processes a very toxic hexavalent Cr is obtained. During accute stress conditions, animals increase their blood cortisol levels. This hormone is antagonistic to insulin and results in increased blood glucose and insulin levels with the subsequent increase on Cr mobilization and excretion. Because Cr supplementation reduces blood cortisol levels in animals raised under stressful conditions, Cr has been referred to as an anti-stress nutrient. Primiparous cows undergo severe stress during late gestation and early lactation. These animals, in general, are Cr deficient two weeks prior to parturition, indicating that they are more prone to an insulin resistance by peripheral tissues compared to older cows. Blood insulin is decreased as a consequence of the negative energy balance that occurs during early lactation. In this period, however, cows need high levels of glucose for lactose production. Blood glucose and insulin levels are then depressed in early lactation compared to later stages of production when milk yield decreases. Therefore, glucose availability may be a limiting factor for milk production in high producing cows. Additionally, in early lactation there is low insulin sensitivity by peripheral tissues caused by an increase in Growth Hormone. A low insulin sensitivity then favors catabolism and the flow of glucose, lipids and amino acids into the mammary gland, which is insulin independent, with the subsequent increase in milk production. During early lactation, Cr decreases insulin sensitivity by peripheral tissues in first lactation cows, and tends to reduce it in older animals, hence the response to supplemental Cr observed in primiparous cows. Chromium supplementation increased milk production during the first six weeks of lactation in primiparous cows. Milk yield may be increased up to 24'/. by 0.5 mg/kg of supplemental Cr in primiparous animals. It would appear that the increase in milk production observed with Cr supplementation in first calving cows is the result of a lower insulin sensitivity (or increased resistance) of peripheral tissues. Although Cr supplementation does not affect milk production in multiparous cows, there is a reduction in the incidence of ketosis and milk fever.


Abstract One of the key insights of substantive equality is the recognition that it is not colour, gender or some other group characteristic per se which is at issue, but the attendant disadvantage. This focus on disadvantage means that, for substantive equality to be effective, it should include a positive duty to provide. This in turn moves the anti-discrimination agenda onto the uncertain frontier between policy and law. This poses a difficult set of challenges for judges. The political arena is frequently seen as the primary space for developing the positive duty to provide; a space which judges are reluctant to invade. In some jurisdictions the result has been a definition of substantive equality which defers to the state by protecting it from having to justify distributive decisions. On the other hand, the role of reasoned explanation is considerably enhanced when courts are dealing with socio-economic rights. It is argued that the way forward is not judicial deference but judicial intervention which supports rather than usurps the decision-making powers of elected representatives. This is achieved by insisting on reasoned justification for distributive decisions burdening or excluding disadvantaged groups. In this way courts contribute to the democratic process, both by strengthening accountability and by ensuring that political deliberation includes those who would otherwise be silenced in the political arena.


In recent years, the time for motherhood has been postponed, which is related to social aspects and can lead to health problems for the pregnant women and the child. An appropriate follow-up of the pregnancy is essential for identification and early treatment of possible complications. The purpose of this study was to evaluate some social and demographic characteristics and the pregnancy follow-up among puerperas, in two different times separated by 17 years (1991 e 2008). In this study, we found that the birth of a first child occurs now later, is more planned and happens more frequently outside of marriage. The postponement of motherhood can be associated with an increased rate of miscarriages. There has been a decrease in the rate of induced abortions, which is probably the result of the implementation of strategies for family planning. We noticed a decline in the number of pregnancies that had not a proper follow-up, demonstrating the improvement of health care. The immigrant population is responsible for about one quarter of the births in the Algarve, with a higher percentage of unplanned pregnancies, which eventually might be related to socio-economic vulnerabilities, but no difference was found in the surveillance of pregnancy, demonstrating a good accessibility of this population to health care. It is essential the existence of information about the risks of a late pregnancy and of social infrastructures to support motherhood at younger ages. Pregnancy surveillance programs have been successful, but there are still gaps in obstetric monitoring. Despite good results in terms of surveillance of pregnancy, the immigrant population may present some vulnerabilities, which means that their access to maternal and child health care should be monitored.


Due to the unpredictable nature of sudden onset disasters the humans are often caught with surprise so are the humanitarian relief organizations. In order to quickly react to the emergencies, supply chain networks are built instantly by the actors of the relief management. Parallel to this process, need assessment is started with the help of local experts which also confirm that the response cannot be lingered on due a delay in need assessment. After wards the supply chain structure needs to be changed once the right information is gathered by the passage of time. This is not all, actually the situation of the disaster prone area and people also changes by that time which always brings a challenging scenario for humanitarian relief actors to develop the supply chain design with flexibility.Primary focus of this paper is to define right supply chain designs for disaster response and post disaster phases in humanitarian relief.


It still seems to be unknown whether there exist Noetherian groups (— groups with maximum condition on subgroups) that are not almost polycyclic, i.e., possess a soluble normal subgroup of finite index. However, the existence of even finitely generated infinite simple groups shows that in general a group whose subnormal subgroups satisfy the maximum condition need not be almost polycyclic. The following theorem gives a number of criteria for a group satisfying a weak form of the maximum condition to be almost polycyclic.


The view that academic writing as an objective and faceless kind of discourse is now dead and buried. Instead, we tend to see academic discourse as a persuasive activity involving interactions between writers and readers; a place where academics don't just give us a view of the world, but negotiate a credible account of themselves and their work by claiming solidarity with readers, evaluating ideas and acknowledging alternative views. As part of this writers must construct an argument using conventions which establish proximity with readers. I use the term proximity to refer to a writer's control of language features which display both authority as an expert and a personal position towards issues in a text. Essentially this means that writers have to represent themselves, their material and their readers in ways which meet their readers' expectations. In other words, proximity entails taking into account participants' likely objections, background knowledge, expectations and reading purposes. In this paper I explore some of the ways this is done in two very different genres: science research papers and popular science articles. Comparing key features, I show how different language choices are used to construct proximity with very different audiences.


This is the fifth and final volume of the series published as "Atlas of Diseases of the Anterior Segment of the Eye." This monumental work has become one of the outstanding contributions to ophthalmic literature. The beauty of the photographs is unexcelled. Dr Donaldson has established himself for decades as the allaround expert of ocular photography. His numerous contributions to scientific photography are recognized all over the world. In its scope, completeness and beauty it can only be compared with the multivolume atlas published more than 40 years ago by Vogt. Donaldson has added the stereoscopic aspect and has incorporated the advances in our knowledge of diseases of the anterior segment. The fifth volume covers many aspects of the crystalline lens. It starts with congenital anomalies, illustrates the various forms of cataract, and ends with some end results and complications of cataract extractions as they are performed today. Stereoscopic atlases


We present a variational approximation to the information bottleneck of Tishby et al. (1999). This variational approach allows us to parameterize the information bottleneck model using a neural network and leverage the reparameterization trick for efficient training. We call this method "Deep Variational Information Bottleneck", or Deep VIB. We show that models trained with the VIB objective outperform those that are trained with other forms of regularization, in terms of generalization performance and robustness to adversarial attack.


Improvements in computer simulation, materials characterization and lowering of design safety margins leads to significant decrease of components mass. In order to maintain functions and increase components service reliability while reducing their mass, new approaches describing closer material behaviour and in service component properties are applied. The current paper is shoving recent trends contributing to improvement of the forming technology and components design thanks to improved material models and local properties measurements for flat and bulk components. Complex material models taking into account multiaxial loading conditions together with approaches considering load path history influence on material deformation behaviour are presented here. Additionally, local properties measurement with the use of miniaturized tensile specimens is presented here that provides data for anisotropy and local properties assessment that are applied to models tuning and verification.


We study the effect of return migration from the U.S. to Mexico on the economies of Mexican cities. In principle, returnees increase the local labor supply and therefore put pressure on wages and employment rates of locals. However, having worked in the technologically more advanced US economy, they may also possess skills that complement the skills of local workers or even bring in new organizational and technological know-how that leads to productivity improvements in Mexico. Using an instrument based on involuntary return migration due to deportation by US authorities, we find evidence in support of both effects. Returnees affect wages of locals in different ways: whereas workers who share the returnees' occupations experience a fall in wages, workers in other occupations see their wages rise. However, the latter, positive, effect is easily overlooked, because it is highly localized: it only affects coworkers within the same city-industry cell. Moreover, both, positive and negative, wage effects are transitory and eventually disappear. In contrast, by raising the employment levels of the industry in which they find jobs, returnees permanently alter a city's industry composition.


The effectiveness of emergency medical and rescue operations is critical in reducing deaths and injuries resulting from road crashes. However, the post-crash phase is rarely mentioned in road safety strategy documents and, when there is coverage, it is often limited in detail. The NSW Road Safety Strategy 2012 – 2021 includes a specific focus on post-crash response and road trauma treatment, particularly better coordination between emergency retrieval and medical services and the Motor Accidents Authority, as well investigating options for automatic crash notification systems. The literature suggests a number of core features strongly associated with better performance in road crash trauma management. For emergency medical services these include shorter response times, higher levels of staff and standardisation of vehicles. However, to improve the performance of a trauma management system, data is required to establish the characteristics of the system and the current levels of performance of that system. Preliminary work has been undertaken comparing the various characteristics of the Australian Emergency Services with those in the five OECD nations who have performed well in terms of road trauma reduction over the last two decades. This paper will report on the research that has been conducted into how the effectiveness of post-crash emergency response could be measured, the performance indicators that are available, and those indicators that could be collected and recorded.


Ten leopard cats (Prionailurus bengalensis borneoensis) were captured and radio tracked in an agricultural landscape in Sabah, Malaysia. Seventy-two leopard cat scats were analysed for diet while information on prey distribution and abundance was obtained from a concurrent study on small mammals. Mammals, namely murids, were the major prey with Whitehead's rat (Maxomys whiteheadi) being the principal prey species. Leopard cats significantly preferred the relatively open oil palm habitat over both selectively logged dipterocarp forest and secondary forest fragments. Although relative murid abundance was highest in selectively logged dipterocarp forest, oil palm harboured a higher relative abundance of Maxomys whiteheadi. Visibility and ease of movement for leopard cats was also better in oil palm, thereby possibly increasing their hunting success. We suggest that the significantly higher use of oil palm by leopard cats is related to their preference for areas with high prey 'catchability' rather than high prey density. Although secondary-forest fragments were least selected, they were important to leopard cats for resting and possibly breeding, highlighting the importance of forest fragments for the conservation of Bornean leopard cats in agricultural landscapes.


Dating Wood Rot Specific lineages within the basidiomycete fungi, white rot species, have evolved the ability to break up a major structural component of woody plants, lignin, relative to their non–lignin-decaying brown rot relatives. Through the deep phylogenetic sampling of fungal genomes, Floudas et al. (p. 1715; see the Perspective by Hittinger) mapped the detailed evolution of wood-degrading enzymes. A key peroxidase and other enzymes involved in lignin decay were present in the common ancestor of the Agaricomycetes. These genes then expanded through gene duplications in parallel, giving rise to white rot lineages. The enzyme family that enables fungi to digest lignin expanded around the end of the coal-forming Carboniferous period. Wood is a major pool of organic carbon that is highly resistant to decay, owing largely to the presence of lignin. The only organisms capable of substantial lignin decay are white rot fungi in the Agaricomycetes, which also contains non–lignin-degrading brown rot and ectomycorrhizal species. Comparative analyses of 31 fungal genomes (12 generated for this study) suggest that lignin-degrading peroxidases expanded in the lineage leading to the ancestor of the Agaricomycetes, which is reconstructed as a white rot species, and then contracted in parallel lineages leading to brown rot and mycorrhizal species. Molecular clock analyses suggest that the origin of lignin degradation might have coincided with the sharp decrease in the rate of organic carbon burial around the end of the Carboniferous period.


Collaborative sharing of information is becoming much more needed technique to
achieve complex goals in today's fast-paced tech-dominant world. Personal Health
Record (PHR) system has become a popular research area for sharing patients informa-
tion very quickly among health professionals. PHR systems store and process sensitive
information, which should have proper security mechanisms to protect patients' private
data. Thus, access control mechanisms of the PHR should be well-defined. Secondly,
PHRs should be stored in encrypted form. Cryptographic schemes offering a more
suitable solution for enforcing access policies based on user attributes are needed for
this purpose. Attribute-based encryption can resolve these problems, we propose a
patient-centric framework that protects PHRs against untrusted service providers and
malicious users. In this framework, we have used Ciphertext Policy Attribute Based
Encryption scheme as an efficient cryptographic technique, enhancing security and
privacy of the system, as well as enabling access revocation. Patients can encrypt their
PHRs and store them on untrusted storage servers. They also maintain full control
over access to their PHR data by assigning attribute-based access control to selected
data users, and revoking unauthorized users instantly. In order to evaluate our system,
we implemented CP-ABE library and web services as part of our framework. We also
developed an android application based on the framework that allows users to register
into the system, encrypt their PHR data and upload to the server, and at the same
time authorized users can download PHR data and decrypt it. Finally, we present
experimental results and performance analysis. It shows that the deployment of the
proposed system would be practical and can be applied into practice.


This publication presents an overview of the data and information about investing in Indonesia during the period 2007-2012. Data presented includes information about the development of financial investment and annual non-financial investments in various categories of financial transactions undertaken by economic actors (institutional sectors). Sector institutions in this publication are: the Central Bank, Banking, Not Bank, Household, Government, Corporate & Government Nonfinancial Private Companies, and Foreign Affairs.


Voluntary regulations have emerged in recent years as a popular way to address environmental problems. In particular, standards, certification and labeling are popular, market-based mechanisms that aim to use the provision of otherwise difficult to obtain information in order to create a market for more environmentally favorable products. The use of standards, certification, and labeling has been growing in a number of areas, as consumers demand more information about the products that they use. From a consumer perspective, they have become increasingly common in relation to information regarding nutrition, safety, and most recently, the environmental impact of a range of products. Understanding both the theory and the reality of these efforts to date are key to developing a deeper understanding of when and how standards, certification and labeling can be used with the greatest positive impact. Empirical experience has shown that while some programs have been successful, there are many challenges in creating effective certification systems. Like any policy tool, they need to be considered along with other policy options. In cases where certification systems are used, they need to be designed with care. First, they must address a clear goal, to which the standard, the certification process, and the labels can be clearly linked. Secondly, process, not just the end product, matters. Inclusion of stakeholders, and the institutional arrangements used in the decision making process can have long-lasting impacts on the eventual acceptance and uptake of a standard. Standards need to be based on solid scientific and technical knowledge - they must be salient to the goal, and the underlying knowledge should be credible. Similarly, the certification process must also be credible—it must be able to measure compliance and catch cheating. It must also be seen as legitimate, and free from capture or corruption. And finally, labels must also be credible, relate to the underlying goal, and be effectively targeted and branded. The entire process, at the end, should be able to relate otherwise unknown information to the consumers, in order to influence their purchasing decisions and create a market for the labeled products.


The aims of this project were to introduce the VITEK 2 Compact and to implement European Committee Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing guidelines in a small microbiology department. The VITEK 2 Compact is an automated analyser for the identification and antimicrobial susceptibility testing of bacteria and has been associated with decreased sample turn-around-times, cost savings and improved detection of multi-drug resistant organisms. There are 10 different guidelines for the clinical interpretation of antimicrobial susceptibility data. A national decision was made in 2010 to harmonise susceptibility data reporting in Ireland, by adopting European Committee Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing guidelines. This will enable the comparison of data between institutions at the patient, national and internationally level. The HSE Change Model was used to guide the change process. A vision for change, aligned with the organisations strong commitment to quality was created along with the key stakeholders. The vision was communicated along with the drivers for change. A plan was developed and implemented which included validation of the new processes and a training program. Mini-successes during the initial stages of the project were celebrated to ensure mainstreaming. Donabedian's structure, process, outcome model was used for evaluation. Results demonstrated cost savings of €2.90-€10.28 per isolate and reduced turn-around-times of 1-20 hours, depending on organism complexity. Higher scores for external quality assurance samples were achieved in a direct comparison with historical procedures, demonstrating both trainee proficiency and process accuracy. Consumable costs and turn-around times were standardised irrespective of pathogen complexity and resistance. The turn-around-times for healthcare associated infections has been decreased by 20 hours, which has the potential to have a positive impact on infection control in the organisation. The implementation of the VITEK 2 Compact and European Committee Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing guidelines will also facilitate the application of national guidelines for the control of multi-drug resistant organisms in the department.


Institutions can provide incentives to increase cooperation behaviour in a population where this behaviour is infrequent. This process is costly, and it is thus important to optimize the overall spending. This problem can be mathematically formulated as a multi-objective optimization problem where one wishes to minimize the cost of providing incentives while ensuring a desired level of cooperation within the population. In this paper, we provide a rigorous analysis for this problem. We study cooperation dilemmas in both the pairwise (the Donation game) and multi-player (the Public Goods game) settings. We prove the regularity of the (total incentive) cost function, characterize its asymptotic limits (infinite population, weak selection and large selection) and show exactly when reward or punishment is more efficient. We prove that the cost function exhibits a phase transition phenomena when the intensity of selection varies. We calculate the critical threshold in regards to the phase transition and study the optimization problem when the intensity of selection is under and above the critical value. It allows us to provide an exact calculation for the optimal cost of incentive, for a given intensity of selection. Finally, we provide numerical simulations to demonstrate the analytical results. Overall, our analysis provides for the first time a selection-dependent calculation of the optimal cost of institutional incentives (for both reward and punishment) that guarantees a minimum amount of cooperation. It is of crucial importance for real-world applications of institutional incentives since intensity of selection is specific to a given population and the underlying game payoff structure. In this Supplementary Information, we provide detailed calculations and proofs as well as illustrative figures for the analytical results in the main text of the present paper.


We show that the rather tentative application of the ultrarelativistic generalized Lorentzian energy distribution to the spectrum of cosmic ray fluxes may provide evidence for either high TeV chemical potentials generated in the acceleration source region of the observed cosmic rays, or the presence of hypothetical particles of TeV rest mass. Such particles are not known in our accessible Universe at any accessible energies. If true they should have been produced in cosmic ray sources prior to acceleration. Conclusions of this kind depend on the validity of the generalized Lorentzian in application to cosmic rays, a hypothetical statistical mechanical equilibrium distribution occasionally encountered in observations.


This paper selectively reviews various approaches of macroeconometric modelling and highlights some important lessons from more than half a century of model-building particularly in the context of Asian countries. Addressing several issues discussed in this paper can improve the use of macroeconometric models (MEM) in forecasting and policy analysis in the foreseeable future. This survey shows that most MEMs in developing countries are either becoming smaller in size or not being subject to a thorough diagnostic investigation. In the specification of models one should consider the interplay among macroeconomic policies of different countries via international trade and global financial markets. It is argued that the Project Link and the Fair multi-country model are two initiatives in the right direction. It also appears that with advancement of econometric "know-how", the disparity of opinions between advocates and critics of macroeconometric modelling can be narrowed.


In the Indian Ocean subtropical gyre, historical temperature, salinity, and oxygen data with a median date of 1962 are compared with a hydrographic section taken at a mean latitude of 328S in October‐November 1987. Significant basinwide changes in all three hydrographic fields are observed below the mixed layer. On isobaric surfaces the main changes are (i) a warming of the upper 900 dbar of the water column with a maximum change in the sectional mean of 0.58C, (ii) a freshening between 500 and 1500 dbar with a maximum freshening of 0.05 psu, and (iii) a pronounced decrease in oxygen concentration between 300 and 1000 dbar. Examination of water mass properties shows that very significant water mass changes have occurred. On isopycnals subantarctic mode water (SAMW) and Antarctic Intermediate Water (AAIW) have freshened and cooled. Both of these water masses are on average deeper in 1987. Using the analysis of Bindoff and McDougall (1994), the changes of temperature at constant depth and at constant density are used to show that the water mass changes can most simply be explained by a surface warming in the source region of SAMW and by increased precipitation in the source region of AAIW. The decrease in oxygen concentration can be explained simply by a slight slowing of the subtropical gyre allowing more time for biological consumption to decrease the oxygen concentration by water parcel translation from the formation area to the observation point. Estimates show that over the last 25 years there is an apparent decrease of the gyre spin rate of about 20% at the depth levels of SAMW; the estimated spin rate change decreases almost linearly with greater depth to zero at the oxygen minimum in Indian Deep Water (IDW). Below IDW the observed changes in oxygen concentration (and also the changes of temperature and salinity) are associated with the upward movement of isopycnals with no significant water mass change. The differences in temperature and salinity in the SAMW and AAIW are consistent with the relatively young age of these water masses inferred from CFC data.


This thesis establishes a scalable multi-user workflow for the operation of a highly configurable,
large-scale neuromorphic hardware platform. The resulting software framework provides unified
low-level as well as parallel high-level access. The latter is realized by an efficient abstract
neural network description library, an automated translation of networks into hardware specific
configurations and an experiment server infrastructure responsible for scheduling and executing
experiments. Scalability, manual guidance and a broad support for handling hardware imper-
fections render the model translation process suitable for large networks as well as large-scale
neuromorphic systems. Networks with local connectivity, random networks and cortical column
models are explored to study the topological aptitude of the neuromorphic platform and to
benchmark the workflow. Depending on the model, performance improvements of more than
two orders of magnitude have been achieved over a previous implementation. Additionally, an
automated defect assessment for hardware synapses is introduced, indicating that most synapses
are available for model emulation.
In a second study, a tempotron-based hardware liquid state machine has been developed
and applied to different tasks, including a memory challenge and digit recognition. The trained
tempotron inherently compensates for fixed pattern variations making the setup suitable for
analog neuromorphic hardware. The achieved performance is comparable to reference software
simulations.


The lac insect, Laccifer lacca (Kerr) Targ., is one of the most valuable beneficial insects of China which occurs in Yunnan, Taiwan and Tibet. This paper deals with the result of biological studies carried out in Yunnan from 1955 to 1963. It may be summaried as follows.1.In the regions of its endemic distribution in Yunnan, lac insect occurs two generations a year. Jingdong is the northern boundary of its distribution and the two generations occurred in May-June and October-November respectively, while at southern regions it would breed earlier.2.The duration of developmental stages of different generation is influenced by the local climate and the condition of host plant. However, the life cycle of this insect in various regions of Yunnan seems consistent in time if it has long been adapted to the climatic changes of these regions as well as to the ecophysiological characteristics of the host plants.3. The larvae have regular habit of swarming. The abundance of swarming larvae, the critical moment and duration of swarming are obviously influenced by the climatic condition, the "ripeness" in development of the insect and the seasonal generation.4.The dispersing capacity of larvae is rather limited, only a distance about 5 metres can be attained by the newly hatched larvae in their cruising. After settling the larvae are unable to move again. The unsettled larvae can live only for 4-6 days in the first generation (summer generation) and for 6-8 days in the second generation (overwintering generation). Therefore, in order to increase lac production, artificial inoculation and care of brood-lac is quite neccessary.5.The larvae display the behavior of crowding and host selection in colonization. They prefer 2-3 years old shoots located in the high position or in the middle of the crown of dominant host plants to settle, where the temperature, light, ventilation and bark surface are suitable. On the whole, the enviromental condition as described above would provide ideal habitat for the young larvae of this insect to settle and develop. Accordingly, in addition to the selection of good host plants, prunning and care in management, we should pay also attention to host plant nursing.6.The lac insect would secret lac, wax and honey dew during its development. They are not only the signals of life process of the insect but also the qualitative criteria of the living condition. In general, the quantity of lac, wax and honey dew secretion indicates whether growth and development are carried out in optimal condition. 7.The amount of lac secretion is greater in the first generation than in the second generation, the total amount of lac secreted by a single female larva on Eriolaena spectabi-lis (DC.) Planchon ex Mast at Jingdong during the first generation is estimated to be 0.54 mg in average and in the second generation 0.28 mg, and the total amount of lac secreted by a single female adult ranges from 16.3 to 25.7 mg in the first generation and from 7.4 to 10.4 mg in the second generation.8.The reproductive potential of lac insect is relatively high, and a female of the first generation lays 224-307 eggs while that of the second generation 160-240 eggs.9.The sex ratio of lac insect is variable in different generations. Generally, females are predominant in both generations, 75-80% in the first generation and 50-78% in the second generation.10.Tn irs endemic regions in Yunnan the lac insect has larger amount of iac secretion and higher reproductive potential as well as more females in sex ratio in the summer generation than in the overwinter generation, Therefore, it will be very beneficial to adopt the experience on lac production from the masses, cultivate and harvest lac twice annually, and to lay more stress upon the summer generation (cutivation in summer and collection in autumn).


Omphacite in ultra-high pressure (UH P ) eclogites from the Pohorje Mountains in Slovenia, south-eastern Alps, has been investigated by electron microprobe (EMP), infra-red (IR) and Mossbauer spectroscopy to determine OH concentrations and related incorporation mechanisms. Results from polarized IR measurements reveal high contents of structurally bound OH, varying from 530 to 870 ppm H 2 O. Characterization of omphacite composition by EMP analysis and Mossbauer spectroscopy shows that all samples contain vacancies at the M2 position, which can be expressed as a Ca-Eskola component (Ca 0.5 □ 0.5 AlSi 2 O 6 ). The amount of the Ca-Eskola component displays a positive correlation with the OH concentration, which confirms results from previous studies. The occurrence of precipitated quartz rods in some samples indicates that primary omphacite contained a larger Ca-Eskola component. Extrapolation of the observed trend-line for the Ca-Eskola and OH contents point to an original OH concentration around 1500 ppm H 2 O for these samples. The high water contents observed in omphacite are considered to be linked to the UH P origin of the eclogite rocks.


The molluscs (soft bodied animals) belong to the large and diverse phylum Mollusca, which
includes a variety of familiar animals well-known as decorative shells or as seafood. These
range from tiny snails, clams, and abalone to larger organisms such as squid, cuttlefish and
the octopus. These molluscs occupy a variety of habitats ranging from mountain forests,
freshwater to more than 10 km depth in the sea. They range in size from less than 1 mm
to more than 15 m (for example the giant squid) and their population density may exceed
40,000/m2 in some areas. In the tropical marine environment, molluscs occupy every trophic
level, from primary producers to top carnivores. India has extensive molluscan resources
along her coasts. In the numerous bays, brackish waters and estuaries and in the seas around
the subcontinent; molluscs belonging to different taxonomic groups, such as, mussels,
oysters, clams, pearl-oysters, window-pane oysters, ark-shells, whelks, chanks, cowries,
squids and cuttlefish have been exploited since time immemorial for food, pearls and shells.


The knowledge base of an economy measured in terms of Triple Helix relations can be analyzed in terms of mutual information among geographical, sectorial, and size distributions of firms as dimensions of the probabilistic entropy. The resulting synergy values of a TH system provide static snapshots. In this study, we add the time dimension and analyze the synergy dynamics using the Norwegian innovation system as an example. The synergy among the three dimensions can be mapped as a set of partial time series and spectrally analyzed. The results suggest that the synergy at the level of both the country and its 19 counties shoe non-chaotic oscillatory behavior and resonates in a set of natural frequencies. That is, synergy surges and drops are non-random and can be analyzed and predicted. There is a proportional dependence between the amplitudes of oscillations and synergy values and an inverse proportional dependence between the oscillation frequencies' relative inputs and synergy values. This analysis of the data informs us that one can expect frequency-related synergy-volatility growth in relation to the synergy value and a shift in the synergy volatility towards the long-term fluctuations with the synergy growth.


This thesis describes the design and fabrication of a wireless strain gage (WSG) prototype that utilizes a radio-frequency (RF) transponder for the compressor section of a gas turbine engine. The passive transponder will be printed, welded or deposited directly onto the compressor blades, and thus several key issues have to be addressed in the design of the distributed-element microwave circuit. Some of these issues are the temperature inside the engine, which may vary from 300 °F to 1,600 °F; the large "g" forces experienced by the blades rotating at 12,000 RPM; the RF transponder thickness, which should be below that of the boundary layer thickness (800 microns) so the gas flow path through the engine is not affected. The footprint of the RF transponder circuit should not be larger than a few millimeters in any direction to accurately measure strain The proposed WSG concept employs a capacitive/inductive RF transponder design with a specific resonant frequency, which responds to a short band pulse of energy from a transceiver module, such that the return signal has been modulated by the strain transmitted by the component. The goal is to correlate the frequency shift of the modulated signal to the strain in the substrate. The specifics of the transceiver module are beyond the scope of this research. However, a literature review was conducted to determine some possible technologies and approaches to solve this problem. Specifically, this research explored four different approaches for the design and fabrication of RF transponders; including one based on thin film planar structures; one based on thick film technology; one based on a "free standing" structure with a buckled-beam capacitor and one with an antenna being the actual sensing element. Results from this investigation have shown that the "free standing" structures yielded the largest gage factor, i.e. 1000, compared to the thin-film and thick-film transponders which had gage factors between 11 and 14.


Previous research has indicated that in cultures and social environments where individuals are presented with many opportunities to form new relationships (i.e., environments high in relational mobility), individuals tend to form relationships with others like themselves. This tendency can be caused by two different mechanisms: First, the tendency of people to form relationships with similar others may be caused by the similarity-attraction effect, whereby individuals prefer to interact with people like themselves. High relational mobility therefore increases opportunities for individuals to maximize their preference for similar others. However, increased similarity between relationship partners can also be caused by assortment effects, whereby people who possess desirable characteristics form relationships with other desirable individuals, leaving those with less desirable characteristics to form relationships with less desirable partners. This thesis examined how relational mobility might influence the wellbeing of individuals who may be considered less desirable to others. Two exploratory studies examined the relation between attributes associated with lower social attractiveness on psychological well being, and how this relation changed as a function of relational mobility. The first study examined the impact of relational mobility on depression among American undergraduates with higher or lower amounts of social skills, and the second study examined the well being of individuals as a function of their social skills and disability statues. Overall, the results of both studies suggest that individuals who possess characteristics associated with lower social attractiveness (having a disability, or having lower social skills) tended to have higher levels of psychological well being when they perceived relational mobility to be high.


Auto-regressive sequence generative models trained by Maximum Likelihood Estimation suffer the exposure bias problem in practical finite sample scenarios. The crux is that the number of training samples for Maximum Likelihood Estimation is usually limited and the input data distributions are different at training and inference stages. Many method shave been proposed to solve the above problem (Yu et al., 2017; Lu et al., 2018), which relies on sampling from the non-stationary model distribution and suffers from high variance or biased estimations. In this paper, we propose{\psi}-MLE, a new training scheme for auto-regressive sequence generative models, which is effective and stable when operating at large sample space encountered in text generation. We derive our algorithm from a new perspective of self-augmentation and introduce bias correction with density ratio estimation. Extensive experimental results on synthetic data and real-world text generation tasks demonstrate that our method stably outperforms Maximum Likelihood Estimation and other state-of-the-art sequence generative models in terms of both quality and diversity.


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When markets are incomplete, the competitive equilibria considered so far are not constrained Pareto–efficient, production efficiency breaks down and shareholders no longer agree on the objective function of the firm. We first show by way of an example that these inefficiencies can result from the double role of firms in incomplete markets: providing high market value and providing good hedging opportunities (spanning role). To disentangle these two conflicting roles of the firm's decision, we then suggest to let the firm choose a relevant financial policy by issuing securities being collaterized by the production plan. In order to guarantee that the firm does not choose to innovate trivial assets, it is then shown to be crucial that the firm's shareholders agree on the same set of state prices. Therefore we introduce some communication network into the model which allows the shareholders to exchange their views on the firm's best policies. In our main result we demonstrate that competitive equilibria with communication of shareholders and a relevant financial policy of the firm are Pareto–efficient, provided there are at least as many firms as there are shareholders.


Recent gains in black occupational status, importantly aided by such programs as affirmative action, have created new interracial job situations throughout American society. This paper reviews the problems that arise at the recruitment, entry, and promotional stages for black Americans. The problems arise from two interrelated sources: the structure of the situations themselves and the operation of antiblack prejudice in both its traditional and modern forms. A social psychological analysis is advanced that emphasizes the biases introduced by the "triple jeopardy" these new workers often endure: (1) negative racial stereotypes, (2) the solo role—when the worker is the only black in the work group, and (3) the token role—when new black workers are viewed by white co-workers as incompetent simply because they received their jobs through affirmative action. The barriers to black inclusion created by this triple jeopardy are discussed at several levels: biased and stressful recruitment practices; assumed dissimilarity and exaggerated expectations on entry; and later polarized, biased evaluations of performance. These processes often deny the new black employee needed realistic feedback and informal social support. The results, then, can involve not only biased evaluations but actual decrements in black job performance. The analysis is illustrated by several suggested micro-remedies. But these micro-remedies alone are unlikely to be sufficient unless administered in the larger context of structural, macro-remedies. Two illustrative macro-remedies are advanced, both of which aim to prevent solo situations and enlarge the black pool of qualified workers.


BACKGROUND
Depression is a common disease in primary care and produces significant morbidity in the community. Little is known about the outcomes of depression in general practice.

OBJECTIVES
This research set out to explore both the longitudinal management and outcomes of depression as seen in general practice.

METHODS
The Medic-GP database is a collection of the medical records of >50 000 people seen in nine Australian general practices. It was used to follow the management of depressed patients over 4-5 years. Records from 1994-1995 were searched for depression or similar words. Individual records of patients whose notes mentioned depression were randomly selected and examined to determine if they were diagnosed with depression. Records of patients who were diagnosed as suffering from depression were examined to determine progress over the ensuing 5 years.

RESULTS
Six hundred of 5889 patients were examined in detail. A total of 382 patients (63.7%) were diagnosed with depression; 219 had been diagnosed during this time interval. The main findings were 64.7% of patients were female; 93.6% of patients received an antidepressant at some time during the study; 16% of patients were referred to a psychiatrist; 7.3% were hospitalized; 30% of patients who ceased antidepressants without a recurrence had courses of antidepressants of 3 months or less; and only 22.5% of patients had a single episode of depression.

CONCLUSION
Unlike cross-sectional studies, this study has shown a high rate of prescription of antidepressants. GPs often prescribed short courses of antidepressants, and depression behaves as a chronic, recurrent disease.


How do rebel groups turned political parties adapt their ideological profiles after war? Do they continue to mobilize along the main conflict cleavage or do they adopt new issues that are conducive to peace? This article develops an analytical framework that captures the extent to which parties adapt along two dimensions: conflict cleavage issues and peacebuilding issues. It conducts a qualitative content analysis of party manifestos and related discourse of three former rebel parties with backgrounds as secessionist rebel groups: the Aceh Party, the Serb Democratic Party (Bosnia Herzegovina) and the Tamil National Alliance. It finds that while some parties adopt the language of peace settlements to legitimize themselves and actively downplay wartime divisions, others continue to seek support based on ethnic differentiation. It is argued that the programmatic message that former rebel groups mobilize around has implications for how they contribute to forging more peaceful inter-ethnic relations after war.


The application of lignite pre-drying technologies in next generation of lignite power plants by utilizing low pressure steam as a drying medium instead of hot recirculated flue gas – combined with thermal utilization of the vaporized coal moisture – is expected to bring efficiency increase of 2-4 percentage points in future lignite power plants compared with today's state-of-the-art. The pre-drying concept is of particular importance in Greek boilers firing lignite with a high water and ash content. The combustion of Greek pre-dried lignite has been investigated experimentally and via numerical simulations in our previous research. This study focuses on the potential integration of a lignite pre-drying system in an existing Greek power plant with dry lignite co-firing thermal share of up to 30%. The radiative and convective heat fluxes to the boiler and the overall boiler heat balance is calculated for reference and dry lignite co-firing conditions by an in-house calculation code. The overall plant's thermal cycle is then simulated using commercial thermal cycle calculation software. The net plant efficiency is in this way determined for reference and dry coal co-firing conditions. According to the simulation results the integration of a pre-drying system and the implementation of dry lignite co-firing may bring an efficiency increase of about 1.5 percentage points in existing Greek boilers. It is therefore considered as an important measure towards improving plant efficiency and reducing specific CO2 emissions in existing plants.


Employees in many contemporary organizations work with flexible routines and flexible technologies. When those employees find that they are unable to achieve their goals in the current environment, how do they decide whether they should change the composition of their routines or the materiality of the technologies with which they work? The perspective advanced in this paper suggests that the answer to this question depends on how human and material agencies-the basic building blocks common to both routines and technologies-are imbricated. Imbrication of human and material agencies creates infrastructure in the form of routines and technologies that people use to carry out their work. Routine or technological infrastructure used at any given moment is the result of previous imbrications of human and material agencies. People draw on this infrastructure to construct a perception that a technology either constrains their ability to achieve their goals, or that the technology affords the possibility of achieving new goals. The case of a computer simulation technology for automotive design used to illustrate this framework suggests that perceptions of constraint lead people to change their technologies while perceptions of affordance lead people to change their routines. This imbrication metaphor is used to suggest how a human agency approach to technology can usefully incorporate notions of material agency into its explanations of organizational change.


This monumental work presents a careful, well-argued alternative reading of the Greek text of Mark-a reading that pays special attention to such literary devices as word order, chiasm, inclusio, asyndeton, and the historical present tense. Driving the commentary is Gundry's provocative, seldom-defended thesis that Mark's Gospel constitutes a straightforward apology for the shameful manner of Jesus' death; as such Mark is essentially an evangelistic tract rather than an obliquely written handbook of Christian discipleship and church life. "Sure to become recognized as the heavyweight English commentary on the Gospel of Mark...This massive commentary, rich with exegetical detail and critical assessment of the secondary literature, makes an important contribution not only to Markan research but also to the study of the historical Jesus." - Christian Scholars Review


UNLABELLED
Parvalbumin from carp, a major allergen, was purified to homogeneity using ion exchange chromatography and size exclusion chromatography (estimated purity >95% to 98% based on SDS-PAGE and native PAGE) with a yield of 318 mg, and a number of basic biochemical characteristics were determined. The identity was confirmed by peptide-mass fingerprinting, and IgE-binding was demonstrated. The UV/Vis absorbance spectra were explained using the previously published amino acid sequences. Far UV-CD spectroscopy was used to confirm the folding character of parvalbumin. We conclude that parvalbumin from carp can be purified on a comparatively large (hundreds of milligrams) scale using a purification protocol that does not include denaturing steps. The purified protein resembles biochemical characteristics as were earlier published for carp parvalbumin, that is, a molecular weight of approximately 12 kDa, amino acid sequence identity and a secondary structure containing alpha-helices and beta-structures. The described method provides a yield sufficient to produce and characterize antibodies to construct immunochemical methods to detect parvalbumin in food, as well as for use as a standard calibrator for such assays.

PRACTICAL APPLICATION
Parvalbumin is a major allergen from fish. Here, we have purified a comparatively large quantity from carp that can be used to develop antisera for use in an assay method to detect fish allergens.


Focusing on applied and clinical examples, the Second Edition of PRINCIPLIES OF NEUROPSYCHOLOGY is an exciting and dynamic approach to neuropsychology that should inspire both students and teachers. This progressive and accessible text teaches brain function in a clear and interesting manner by providing the most recent studies and research available in this ever-developing field. Applying the underlying thesis that all interactions in daily life, whether adaptive or maladaptive, can be explained neuropsychologically, the authors emphasize five specific ideas: human neuropsychology-both experimental and clinical, integration of theory and research, coverage of the relationship between neuroscience and behavioral function, real-life examples, and the presentation of didactic aids. Integrating these themes with the most up-to-date research provides all readers-whether or not they have had previous exposure to the field-with the most current and accessible text available.


The latest trends in contemporary architecture are fully transparent pavilions: a single storey building free of any steel or concrete frame, where glass panels are used as unique vertical structural elements to support the roof and as wind bracing to stabilize and stiffen the building. In this application, individual glass panel is supported on two sides (roof and foundation) and subjected to in-plane shear force (lateral wind), out-of-plane distributed load (perpendicular wind) and in-plane compression force (self weight of the roof, snow). While several studies on glass plate behaviour under distributed load and column buckling exist, shear buckling of two sides supported glass panel has not been investigated yet. Therefore, research on this topic gives original and innovative importance to both theoretical (glass panel under shear loading) and practical (use of glass envelope for building stabilization) applications. Two structural concepts are developed: point support concept - the glass panel is attached to the substructure by bolted connections at corners linear support concept - the glass panel is glued to the substructure by two shorter sides. The local behaviour of the connection devices and the global behaviour of the glass panel under in-plane shear force are studied by means of experimental investigations, numerical modelling and parametric analyses. Experimental investigation and numerical simulation of connection devices was conducted in order to better understand the behaviour of different types of glass/substructure bolted (for point support) and glued (for linear support) connections. Deformation, stress distribution and local influence on the surrounding glass were analyzed. From these studies, the most suitable connection device for load introduction was chosen and implemented in the glass panel. Tests on full size glass panels were conducted in order to estimate the shear buckling behaviour of a glass panel. Also the influence of different boundary conditions (point and linear) and load interaction (in-plane shear force with out-of-plane distributed load and in-plane compression force) on global glass panel behaviour were analyzed. The specimen deformation, the stress distribution and the failure mode have been analyzed. Advanced numerical models of point and linear supported glass panel were implemented using the Finite Element Code Ansys. Elastic buckling analysis was used to determine the critical shear buckling force, shear buckling coefficient and shear buckling mode shape, further used as the initial geometrical imperfection. By means of nonlinear buckling analyses the global glass panel behaviour was studied analysing glass panel deformations, stresses distribution and support reactions. The influence of initial imperfection shape was investigated as well as the interaction of in-plane shear force with out-of-plane distributed load and in-plane compression force. The models were validated by comparing their results with experimental measurements. The parametric study was carried out to identify the most important parameters, evaluating their influence on shear buckling behaviour. The influence of the glass panel and connection device geometrical/material properties on critical shear force, global deformation, stress distribution and support reaction could be determined. A simple method for preliminary design of glass panels subjected to in-plane shear force was proposed by developing formulas, graphs and curves for determining the glass panel shear buckling resistance. Finally, this study led to some recommendations for practical use of glass panels in fully-transparent pavilions as structural elements.