In the fall of 2011, the Environmental Studies capstone class led by Professor Rutherford Platt was asked to write Gettysburg College's first Sustainability Plan. The goal of the plan was to develop specific sustainable practices for the campus that were related to the three pillars of sustainability: economic, social, and environmental, and how integrating diligent sustainable practices into each of these respected pillars will result in a more conscious campus, community, and future. In 2010, Gettysburg College turned to the Sustainability Tracking Assessment and Rating System (STARS) to quantify the institution's sustainability efforts, providing a self-check mechanism to encourage sustainability applications to all aspects of the College. The American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment was signed in 2007 by former Gettysburg College President Katherine Haley Will, declaring that Gettysburg College would become carbon neutral by 2032. Gettysburg College has made large strides in the search for sustainability, and aims to continue its dedication to furthering sustainable practice. The following plan outlines the six priority areas identified by the Capstone class: progress of the American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment, Dining Services, campus green space, community outreach, integration of sustainability into the Gettysburg College Curriculum, and the Sustainability Advisory Committee. This student research paper is available at The Cupola: Scholarship at Gettysburg College: http://cupola.gettysburg.edu/ student_scholarship/7 The first priority area identified was monitoring and upholding the American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment (ACUPCC). Though creating new sustainability initiatives on campus is the driving force towards an increasingly sustainable college and community, it is imperative that these goals be carried out in full to maximize beneficial returns. In order to reach carbon neutrality, Gettysburg College hopes to increase energy efficiency in buildings, incorporate renewable energy sources on campus, and mitigate remaining emissions through the purchase of carbon offsets. To further the College's progress, it is proposed that Gettysburg College continue its energy-efficient appliance purchasing policy, as well as create a policy to offset all greenhouse gas emissions generated by air travel for students study abroad. As stated by the ACUPCC, a Sustainability Committee should take responsibility for the updates and progress reports required to meet the goal of carbon neutrality. The second priority area identified was sustainability in Dining Services. Gettysburg College is home to 2,600 students, all of whom require three full meals a day. Dining Services accounts for a large fraction of Gettysburg College's sustainability efforts, already implementing sustainability through composting, buying local produce, and using biodegradable products. The proposed on-campus sales cuts of non-reusable to-go items, a change in campus mentality on food waste, and improved composting practices will translate to an increasingly sustainable campus, as well as a well-fed campus body. The third priority was maintaining green space on campus. Ranked as the 23rd most beautiful campus in the United States by The Best Colleges, Gettysburg College utilizes campus green space to create an atmosphere that is conducive to activity as well as tranquility. The plan proposes that Gettysburg College and its grounds facilities continue their exceptional efforts, focusing on increasing the use of the student garden, creating a new rain garden or social area on campus, and converting unnecessary parking lots into green space. As these additions are completed, they must be introduced to the student body and faculty alike to assure these areas are known and utilized. The fourth priority was utilizing community outreach to spread awareness of sustainability initiatives on and off campus. To connect the sustainability-geared changes proposed in this plan, community outreach at Gettysburg College is assessed to estimate how well these initiatives are communicated and promoted to both potential and enrolled students, faculty, and other concerned parties. To evaluate the efficiency of communication at Gettysburg College, a quantitative assessment is presented to measure the ease of finding the sustainability webpage, the quality of sustainability-related topics available on the webpage, and quality of webpage design. The webpage is in need of improved text to image ratios, locations of sustainability topics, and data displays. Despite not having a link to the sustainability webpage on the Gettysburg College homepage, sustainability events should be covered and presented on the rotational news feed found on the homepage to maximize outreach to interested parties or simply to add to the definition of Gettysburg College. The fifth priority was integrating sustainability into the Curriculum to build a culture on campus that values academic rigor, supports students as they cultivate intellectual and civic passions, and promotes the development of healthy social relationships and behaviors. The proposed Sustainability Committee on Sustainability in the Curriculum (SCC) will hold sustainability workshops for faculty with the aim to instill sustainability into all academic disciplines, providing all Gettysburg graduates with a means to approach their professional careers in a fashion that is conscious of sustainability. The sixth and last priority was the Sustainability Advisory Committee. Established in 2007, the Sustainability Advisory Committee is currently under review, but it is recommended that the committee restructure itself in accordance with the new Sustainability Committee Bylaws. These bylaws aim to define the purposes, membership, governance, and involvement with the college. With a clearly defined set of goals and This student research paper is available at The Cupola: Scholarship at Gettysburg College: http://cupola.gettysburg.edu/ student_scholarship/7 methodology, the Sustainability Advisory Committee will be able to improve the solidarity of the sustainability movement on campus as a whole. By following the propositions laid out in the Gettysburg College Sustainability Plan, the student body, faculty, and community alike will become a part of a multi-faceted progression toward a more sustainable future. Comments This is a joint project created by the 13 members of the Fall 2011 Environmental Studies Senior Seminar Class at Gettysburg College. It was presented at Celebration 2012. Authors Joseph W. Boone, Andrea Carson, Sarah F. Hecklau, Erik J. Hughes, Catherine A. Leech, Taylor J. McGrath, Nicole L. Moody, Christian I. Neumann, Mary K. Ranii, John D. Ryder, Megan Sherman, Sara W. Tower, and Sarah Weinstein This student research paper is available at The Cupola: Scholarship at Gettysburg College: http://cupola.gettysburg.edu/ student_scholarship/7 GETTYSBURG COLLEGE SUSTAINABILITY PROPOSAL Fall 2011 Environmental Studies Senior Seminar Authors: Joseph William Boone, Andrea Carson, Sarah Hecklau, Erik Hughes, Catherine Leech, Taylor McGrath, Nicole Moody, Christian Neumann, Mary Kate Ranii, John David Ryder, Megan Sherman, Sara Tower, and Sarah Weinstein Gettysburg College Sustainability Proposal Gettysburg College Sustainability Proposal E N V I RO N M E N TA L S T U D I E S S E N I O R S E M I N A R Acknowledgements The Fall 2011 Environmental Studies Senior Seminar Class would like to extend our appreciation to everyone involved with the process of creating this innovative document for their invaluable intellectual contributions:


An ontogenetic sequence of Atlantic halibut Hippoglossus hippoglossus larvae, reared in intensive culture conditions, was cleared and stained and histologically processed to determine normal cranial chondrification for specimens ranging from 0 to 41 days post-hatch (dph). Twenty-six cranial cartilaginous structures were described, at daily intervals post-hatch. The ontogenetic trajectory, composed of alternating steps and thresholds, was interpreted as saltatory. In comparison with other flatfishes, H. hippoglossus exhibits delayed onset of chondrification. From 9 dph onwards, the ontogenetic trajectory resembles more than that of the turbot Psetta maxima than that of the common sole Solea solea or the summer flounder Paralichthys dentatus and winter flounder Pseudopleuronectes americanus. Hippoglossus hippoglossus with the gaping-jaw malformation, common in intensively cultured individuals of this species, were examined histologically. The reason larvae cannot close their mouth, as their yolk-sac resorbs, seems to be related to the fusion of the interhyal to the hyosymplectic and ceratohyal with which it is normally articulated.


A two-dimensional principal component analysis (2DPCA) by J. Yang et al. (2004) was proposed and the authors have demonstrated its superiority over the conventional principal component analysis (PCA) in face recognition. But the theoretical proof why 2DPCA is better than PCA has not been given until now. In this paper, the essence of 2DPCA is analyzed and a framework of generalized 2D principal component analysis (G2DPCA) is proposed to extend the original 2DPCA in two perspectives: a bilateral-projection-based 2DPCA (B2DPCA) and a kernel-based 2DPCA (K2DPCA) schemes are introduced. Experimental results in face recognition show its excellent performance.


Huff and Hertel (2001) derive a welfare decomposition for the equivalent variation in the GTAP model. The derivation appears to be very specific to GTAP. Nevertheless, it contains nearly all the ingredients required for performing welfare decomposition for any CGE model. In this paper, the approach of Huff and Hertel (2001) is generalised to derive a welfare decomposition that can be applied to most, if not all, CGE models. General production and utility functions are accommodated, as are foreign income flows. A brief guide to coding the proposed welfare decomposition in GEMPACK is also provided. The decomposition is applied to decomposing the equivalent variation in GTAP.


In a series of earlier papers we have examined the impact of exchange rate movements on employment and output in the manufacturing sector, disaggregated by industry sector and by production and non-production workers. In this paper we examine the impact of exchange rate movements on manufacturing employment, disaggregated geographically, using census divisions, regions, states and SMSA's as the unit of analysis. Empirical estimates of employment changes are first presented for the four census regions, the nine census divisions, and the fifty states plus the District of Columbia. For the country as a whole, we estimate that movements in the real exchange rate led to the loss of about 1 million manufacturing jobs over this period. We go on to examine in greater detail manufacturing employment in New York State, and report that exchange rate movements had a much larger impact in the areas outside of New York City than in the metropolitan area. This result is consistent with earlier work that found that employment in management or research is not as sensitive to exchange rate movements as employment in production processes. The New York results are followed by an examination of manufacturing employment in five southern states with large rural populations. Some policy makers have expressed a concern that manufacturing employment in rural areas suffered more than in urban areas during the period of the dollar appreciation. We find that within these five states, the impact of the exchange rate on manufacturing employment in the non-SMSA areas was the same or less than was the case for employment within SMSA areas. Finally, we use a multivariate model to explore why manufacturing employment is more sensitive to exchange rate movements in some states than in others. Factors which are associated with greater sensitivity of manufacturing employment to exchange rate movements are: the percent of the population living outside of SMSA areas, the level of production worker wages, and crude oil production. Factors that are associated with less sensitivity of manufacturing employment to exchange rate movements include the percent of the population with 4 years or more of college or per-capita expenditures on public secondary schools.


Simple flushing and cold storage of human kidneys for transplantation has not been accepted for preservation times exceeding 24 hours. A prospective study of 25 primary cadaver kidney transplants was performed to evaluate Collins C2 solution for human kidney preservation. Cold storage time was 10 to 23 hours in 14 cases and 26 to 44.5 hours in 11 cases. Seventeen (68%) of the kidneys had immediate, sustained function. The one-month function rate was 88%. There were no significant differences between the 10- to 23-hour and the 26- to 44.5-hour groups with respect to the incidence of first-week dialysis, one-month graft function, or mean lowest serum creatinine value. Human kidney preservation time can be safely extended beyond 24 hours with Collins C2 flushing followed by simple cold storage.


""When interpreted with proper scientific passion, pathology can be not only fascinating but beautiful"". This is a quotation from a recent book review in the Observer. I cannot guarantee to show you the beauty of pathology but hope to reveal some of its fascination. There are, I believe still some laymen who associate the word 'pathologist' only with crime, the law court and amazing deductions in detective fiction. These forensic brothers, however, represent only a small part of the pathological band and most pathologists are as concerned with diagnosis in the living patient as they are with causes of death. In a medical school the various branches of pathology should form a bridge between the preclinical scientists concerned with a study of normal structure and function and the clinicians studying their individual patients.


Each year large numbers of Western men travel to Thailand in order to engage in paid-for sex with female sex workers, a practice referred to as 'sex tourism'. While many male sex tourists use condoms during these sexual encounters, there is also evidence that some do not, potentially exposing themselves and others to the risk of acquiring sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. This thesis draws on data collected from 1237 online discussion board posts and 14 face-to-face interviews. It examines the ways in which Western heterosexual male sex tourists formulate their understandings of voluntary sexual risk-taking in relation to their masculinities and their perceived ability to control these risks. The findings suggest that many men value unprotected sex as an authentic and masculine practice, and believe that they can protect themselves from contracting sexually transmitted infections in other ways than by using condoms. The findings also demonstrate the role that setting and fantasy have on men's sexual risk-taking behaviours, and illustrate how beliefs and attitudes about gender and risk are constructed and maintained within locally reconceptualised masculine hegemonies. With female sex workers often disempowered to demand safer sexual practices, and men's attitudes towards unprotected sex deeply entrenched and resistant to external health promotion advice, the thesis concludes by considering what this means for theory, policy and practice, and suggests areas for future work that would further complement and enhance the findings of this study.


This paper focuses on deployment of smart meters in the power distribution systems to enhance the operation infrastructure. An important challenge in establishing a communication paradigm between the utilities and the customers is that customers are susceptible to privacy concerns. In this paper, we present a model to ensure the privacy and integrity of communicating parties within the smart grid by using smart meters as a gateway between intra- and inter-network communications. In particular, we utilize the smart meter as a firewall to manage incoming and outgoing traffic and mediate household devices based on the instructions from the electric utility. Moreover, third parties are introduced in our model such as service providers so that they can monitor and manage the contracted customers by using the existing communication infrastructure.


BACKGROUND
Among police responders enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Registry (WTCHR), Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was almost twice as prevalent among women as men 2-3 years after the 9/11 attacks.

METHODS
Police participants in the WTCHR Wave 1 survey 2-3 years after 9/11/01, were reassessed for probable PTSD at Wave 2, 5-6 years after 9/11/01, using PCL DSM-IV criteria.

RESULTS
Police participants in the Wave 2 survey included 2,527 men, 413 women. The prevalence of "Probable PTSD" was 7.8% at Wave 1 and 16.5% at Wave 2. Mean PCL scores increased from 25.1 to 29.9 for men and 28.6 to 32.2 for women. Prevalence of PTSD was higher for women than for men at Wave 1 (χ(2)  = 10.882, P = 0.002), but not Wave 2 (χ(2)  = 2.416, P = 0.133). Other risk factors included losing one's job after 9/11 and being disabled.

CONCLUSIONS
Prevalence of probable PTSD among police doubled between 2003-2004 and 2006-2007. After the 2-year time span, the gender difference was no longer significant; prevalence of PTSD symptoms increased and there was a substantial amount of co-morbidity with other mental health problems. Further development of prevention and intervention strategies for police responders with symptoms of PTSD is needed. The observed upward trend in PCL scores over time in police officers with PCL scores less than 44, suggests that PTSD prevention and intervention strategies should be applied to all police affected by the 9/11 attacks, not limited just to those with PTSD symptoms.


A finite-element method (FEM) is newly formulated for the modal analysis of nonlinear periodic optical waveguides. In order to treat periodicity in the propagation direction, periodic boundary conditions are imposed on the envelope of electromagnetic fields. The validity of this method is verified by way of numerical examples of a PC waveguide composed of nonlinear dielectric pillars placed on square array in the cladding region. Furthermore, the present method is applied to various nonlinear photonic crystal waveguide structures for exploring appropriate structures to enhance the nonlinearity and their nonlinear modal properties are presented, including coupled-resonator optical waveguides.


The Israel lobby in Washington is a network of organizations and community groups dedicated to influencing American policy towards the Middle East. Their success and access has made them the model for lobbies on Washington's Capitol Hill and US Government. Long known for successfully influencing American policy towards the Middle East, the lobby now faces its strongest challenge in history at a time when it is also facing what it considers a historically significant issue. The interim accord between Iran and members of the P5+1 have led to turmoil in Washington over the wisdom and plausibility of President Obama's diplomatic approach and about the softening of the current US posture towards Iran. In this debate, powerful conservative groups, a number of key Democrats, and the Israel lobby have been pit against progressive groups and Democratic elected officials in the Senate and the White House. In this article, I will briefly look at the history of the Israel lobby in America and explore its evolution as well as investigate the factors that, over time, caused it to take on a hard-line posture and drift towards the right. I will explore the tactics and strategies that the Israel lobby - the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in particular - has undertaken to influence the outcome of events and undermine the possibility of diplomatic conflict resolution. Finally, I will examine the pitfalls and challenges hard-line pro-Israel groups face in effectively pursuing these policies and the long term harm they expose themselves to in alienating progressive and pro-peace groups.


Organizations are increasingly employing business process modelling techniques in an attempt to visualise their processes and highlight the improvements that need to be made. However, despite the plethora of modelling techniques available, the main focus has typically been the graphical depiction of a process. As of yet little consideration has been given into how a process can be presented in such a way as to allow the key stakeholders to realise its true value. The aim of this paper is to establish if benefits realisation can help develop a value focused process modelling technique. Stakeholder and Sense making theory will be employed to develop practical guidelines around how the modelling should be conducted and presented. The research presents a new modelling prototype that addresses the gap in the literature concerning benefits orientated process modelling.


Hookworm infection can cause nausea, stomach pain and anemia, with the most harmful effect being found among women of reproductive age and children. The infection rates is high in poor parts of the world with a high number of infected in Asia. The infection is many times neglected since it rarely causes mortality, however the morbidity can be destructive. In Vietnam the prevalence of hookworm is largely unknown, but there is believed to be a 29-80 % infection rate in the country. Through a field study in Da Nang, Vietnam, the prevalence of hookworm was identified using two methods, Willis flotation and formal ethyl acetate concentration. Any correlation between hookworm infection and individuals' gender, age and geographic area was evaluated. A total of 101 consecutive selected samples from hospitals and communities in rural and urban parts of the city were obtained from both gender ranging between 1-72 years in age. No quantitative differences were found between the two methods nor any correlation between genders (p-value 0,143). The overall prevalence was 16,8%. The rural part of the city showed a higher infection rate in contrast to the urban districts (p-value 0,001). Individuals in the age group 25-48 showed a higher infection rate in contrast to the other age groups (p-value 0,035).


Both heat shock proteins (HSPs), which have key roles in vital cell functions, as well as members of the mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs), which adjust gene expression by transducing cellular signals to the nucleus, are necessary for normal embryonic development in vertebrates. Therefore, protein expression levels of HSP70 and HSP90 and the activation of members of the MAPK protein family, such as p38 MAPK, ERKs, and JNKs were studied in the early developmental stages of the Gilthead sea bream, Sparus aurata Linnaeus, 1758. The protein expression of HSP70 and the phosphorylation ratio of JNKs remained at equal levels at all examined developmental stages, while the other examined proteins exhibited a differential profile. HSP90 levels were mostly increased at the 16-cell stage and towards the morula stages, and the lowest values were observed at the two- to four-cell and one-half epiboly stages. While p38 MAPK phosphorylation ratio exhibited increased values mostly in the early developmental stages, the opposite was observed concerning ERK phosphorylation ratio, where increased values were observed in the later embryonic stages (high blastula to one-half epiboly stages). These differential profiles of the examined protein expression levels highlight the importance of these proteins during embryogenesis and pave the way for further research to unveil their distinct role in early development.


Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution the amount of waste being
created in the UK has risen at a rate greater than natural resources and the
environment can handle.
As waste arisings kept growing and the true effects of the landfill gases, carbon
dioxide and methane, created when the biodegradable fraction of the waste is
decomposed, became apparent the need to extract resources began to evolve.
The biggest resource in a landfill is recyclables, therefore the simplest way of
reducing waste being landfilled is their removal.
As a consequence to collect and divert recyclables from landfill Local
Authorities (LAs) have been required to expand on the tonnages collected at
'bring sites', a local collection point for recyclables, through the introduction of
convenient kerbside collection regimes. Throughout the UK the type of
materials collected from the householder at the kerbside vary owing to the
infrastructure chosen by the local authority. They also differ between co-mingled
and source separated collections depending on the requirements of the
merchants and associated end markets. However, the best regime would not
work without understanding public attitudes towards the separation of waste by
the householder. Therefore, to understand the constraints and drivers that are
holding back Lancashire from achieving high levels of quality recyclate this
dissertation looks to establish if it is not so much attitudes, but the type and
number of containers in conjunction with how the waste must be presented at
the kerbside and the frequency of collections that is deterring residents from
recycling.


Conservatives in America have succeeded in casting government spending as useless profligacy that has made their economy worse, centering the policy debate in the wake of the financial crisis on draconian budget cuts. Americans are told that they need to live in an age of austerity since they have all lived beyond their means and now need to tighten their belts. This view conveniently forgets where all that debt came from. Not from an orgy of government spending, but as the direct result of bailing out, recapitalizing, and adding liquidity to the broken banking system. Through these actions private debt was rechristened as government debt while those responsible for generating it walked away scot free, placing the blame on the state, and the burden on the taxpayer. That burden now takes the form of a global turn to austerity, the policy of reducing domestic wages and prices to restore competitiveness and balance the budget. The problem, according to political economist Mark Blyth, is that austerity is a very dangerous idea. First of all, it doesn't work. As the past two years of trying and countless other historical examples show, while it makes sense for any one state to try and cut its way to growth, it simply cannot work when all states try it simultaneously: all that happens is a shrinking economy. Second, it relies upon those who didn't make the mess to clean it up, which is always bad politics. Third, it rests upon a tenuous and thin body of evidence and argumentation that acts more to prop up dead economic ideas and preserve astonishingly skewed income and wealth distributions than to restore prosperity for all. In Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea, Blyth demolishes the conventional wisdom, marshaling an army of facts to demand that we recognize austerity for what it is, and what it costs us.


In high power applications, switching devices such as MOSFETs and IGBTs must often be connected in parallel in order to provide higher current capability. However, the current imbalance of parallel connected IGBTs due to stray inductance, variations in device characteristics and asymmetric PCB layout, necessitates de-rating of the IGBTs. This deliberate de-rating is required in order to ensure the IGBTs function within their Safe-Operating-Area. Unfortunately, de-rating also leads to an increase in cost, size and complexity of the overall power electronics system. A current balancing method for parallel connected IGBTs using a dynamically adjustable gate driving resistance (Rg_dyanmic) is presented in this paper. Experimental results are achieved by measuring the current distribution between two parallel connected IGBTs (rated at 600V, 90A). These experimental results indicate an improvement in average current imbalance of 74% and 65% for the turn on and off periods, respectively.


This paper is an attempt to discern the importance of the way in which philosophers read each other to the philosophical enterprise. To do this I compare Socrates' treatment of Parmenides and Heraclitus in the Theaetetus to Heidegger's treatment of Kant in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. Using Heidegger's notion of 'unthought thoughts', I attempt to tease out ontological points that contradict the way in which most people think of the philosophers examined in this paper. In this way we see an upset in the traditional understanding of the theory of Forms and the Phenomena/ Noumena distinction.


Remnant ecosystems in agricultural landscapes are poorly understood in terms of their diversity, function and dynamics under altered disturbance regimes, and of how these influence resilience to future disturbance. Understanding native ecosystem responses to novel and multiple disturbances is a crucial foundation for adaptive management to maintain and enhance biodiversity and critical ecosystem services in production landscapes. This is particularly significant where environmental change drives irreversible threshold responses and ecosystem transitions to less functional, or less preferred, alternative ecological states. This research was conducted in remnant riparian woodland ecosystems along a regulated section of the Condamine River, southern Queensland, an ephemeral dryland river system draining an intensively farmed landscape in eastern Australia. Riparian woodland remnants on the Upper Condamine floodplain are subject to significant changes in hydrological regimes and land use intensity. They also exhibit dieback and limited recruitment of canopy species, as well as widespread invasion by the introduced perennial herb Phyla canescens (lippia); however, efforts to address these issues have largely failed to curb ongoing degradation, potentially due to a lack of understanding of the key drivers of ecological change operating in this complex socio-ecological landscape.

This research addressed questions about the drivers of floristic composition, functional diversity and woodland condition in fragmented riparian woodland communities associated with a regulated dryland river system, and embedded in a production landscape. In particular, it investigated ecological responses to the range of disturbances (including altered hydrology, land use intensity, resource availability, and key species interactions) prevalent in this highly modified landscape. Two of the four studies presented test the hypothesis that the composition and condition of riparian woodland remnants on the Upper Condamine floodplain are associated with current levels of longitudinal and lateral hydrological connectivity. These studies used a stratified sampling design which partitioned the study area into river sections, and also considered the influence of lateral overbank and overland flood flows, and grazing within ecosystem fragments (remnants). Full floristic sampling and condition assessments of mature Eucalyptus camaldulensis/E. tereticornis trees were conducted at a total of 24 sites in 2004/05. Significant patterns in floristic composition, functional diversity and woodland condition were explained by differences in hydrological variability; however, the confounding influence of land use and interaction between within-remnant land use (specifically grazing) and hydrological factors for some measures, indicated response to a complexity of drivers.

A third study investigated the influence of local and landscape-scale hydrological and land use variables. It used a Bayesian model averaging (BMA) approach to identify informative model sets of explanatory variables, and key environmental predictors of floristic composition, community structure and ecological condition. A novel method was developed to examine dynamic transitions in species richness and abundance between reciprocal pairs of functional groups; this method used the ratio of species richness (or total abundance) in corresponding pairs of functional trait groups (e.g. C3:C4 species) as a community response variable reflecting the relative importance of each group along the environmental gradients tested. Groundwater decline was the primary predictor of ecosystem response, with lower floristic and functional diversity and more severe dieback associated with increasing depth to groundwater; this result suggests an overarching reliance on shallow groundwater resources for maintenance of ecosystem resilience not previously reported for this ecosystem type in Australia. Lippia abundance and dominant tree condition were also important biotic drivers of ecosystem condition in these communities, and key predictors of floristic composition and functional group richness and abundance transitions. Poor tree condition and loss of hydraulic function was associated with secondary impacts on less well adapted 'terrestrial' groundcover species, while the subdominant species Acacia stenophylla responded positively to competitive release due to poor tree function and reduced tree density. Lippia cover was also strongly associated with the density (positively) and mortality (negatively) of mature trees.

Small scale species interactions were investigated in a study which tested differences in groundcover vegetation composition and lippia cover, reproductive condition and growth habit between 'distance from tree' and topographic position treatments in a riparian woodland on the Upper Condamine floodplain. Sampling was conducted along twelve transects extending from the base of mature Eucalyptus camaldulensis/E. tereticornis trees into canopy gaps. Results indicated that scattered trees play a significant role in facilitating the abundance and condition of lippia in this landscape, with evidence of high lippia abundance, reproductive effort and consolidated clonal growth under trees canopies (described as a 'halo' effect). This interaction is likely to play a significant role in the persistence of this mesic, though highly adaptive, species in this drought prone landscape. Lippia cover greater than approximately 20% was also found to have a significant impact on the abundance and diversity of non-lippia species in these grassy woodlands.

Results of this research are synthesised in a conceptual resilience-based state and transition 'riparian woodland response' model identifying three critical transitions for riparian ecosystem condition and function related to effectively irreversible changes in the landscape: (i) transformation to a lippia-invaded landscape with the introduction, establishment and spread of lippia on the floodplain; (ii) transformation from riparian communities which are well buffered against drought, due to connection with shallow groundwater, to communities reliant on and susceptible to stochastic climatic variability; and (iii) population failure in the dominant functional canopy species complex, Eucalyptus camaldulensis/E. tereticornis, and transformation to non-eucalypt-dominant floodplain ecosystem types such as Acacia stenophylla-dominant woodlands, floodplain grasslands or lippia-dominant herblands with significantly reduced capacity to provide essential ecosystems services in riparian contexts.

In conclusion, this research indicates that observed condition in riparian woodlands on the Upper Condamine floodplain is an integrated response to a range of disturbances, but that certain changes (in particular, groundwater decline due to overextraction in combination with extended drought) may be critical to the long-term persistence and function of these remnants. This study indicates the importance of systems-based empirical research to developing better understanding of the function and dynamics of remnant ecosystems in highly modified landscapes subject to both natural and anthropogenic disturbance regimes. The resilience-based approach also focuses attention on the key drivers of stability and critical transitions in these complex socio-ecological systems. Such research is vital to evaluating and predicting changes in remnant native ecosystems and the provision of important ecosystem services, and as a basis for adaptive management in multi-use production landscapes.


Multiple transmit antennas will play an essential part in order to support a high link quality in wireless communications systems. We employ multiple antennas at the mobile station to perform cooperative space-time coding with other spatially distributed relay stations in a wireless network in order to achieve spatial diversity. Furthermore, through cooperation of the mobile station with relay stations it is possible to cope with distortions due to impairments like, e.g., path-loss and shadowing. Therefore, we propose a regular block Markov superposition encoding strategy based on space-time block codes (STBC) for a cooperative system with one mobile transmitting station and two relay stations, either mobile themselves or fixed. These relay stations cooperate by detecting and retransmitting the information received from the transmitter to the destination. Applying our proposed strategy achieves the same diversity gain of a multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) single user system with the same number of transmit and receive antennas. Simulation results show significant improvements in comparison to the system without cooperation.


Given evidence on a set of variables in a Bayesian network, the most probable explanation (MPE) is the problem of finding a configuration of the remaining variables with maximum posterior probability. This problem has previously been addressed for discrete Bayesian networks and can be solved using inference methods similar to those used for finding posterior probabilities. However, when dealing with hybrid Bayesian networks, such as conditional linear Gaussian (CLG) networks, the MPE problem has only received little attention. In this paper, we provide insights into the general problem of finding an MPE configuration in a CLG network. For solving this problem, we devise an algorithm based on bucket elimination and with the same computational complexity as that of calculating posterior marginals in a CLG network. We illustrate the workings of the algorithm using a detailed numerical example, and discuss possible extensions of the algorithm for handling the more general problem of finding a maximum a posteriori hypothesis (MAP).


nloaded kground: The link between squamous cell cervical carcinoma and human papillomavirus (HPV) 16/18 l established, but the magnitude of the risk association is uncertain and the importance of other highPV (HRHPV) types is unclear. thods: In two prospective nested case-control series among women participating in cytologic screening eden, we collected 2,772 cervical smears from 515 women with cancer in situ (CIS), 315 with invasive ous cell carcinoma (SCC), and individually matched controls. All smears were tested for HPV with ssays, and the median follow-up until diagnosis was 5 to 7 years. Conditional logistic regression sed to estimate relative risks (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI). ults: The presence of HPV16/18 in the first smear was associated with 8.5-fold (95% CI, 5.3-13.7) and ld (95% CI, 9.0-38.9) increased risks of CIS and SCC, respectively, compared with women negative for Infection with other HRHPV types in the first smear was also associated with significantly increased or both CIS and SCC. Persistence of HPV16 infection conferred a RR of 18.5 (95% CI, 6.5-52.9) for CIS .5 (95% CI, 4.7-81.7) for SCC. The HPV16/18 attributable risk proportion was estimated at 30% to 50% S, and 41% to 47% for SCC. Other HRHPV types also conferred significant proportions. clusions: Our large population-based study provides quantification of risks for different HPV types rospective evidence that non-16/18 HRHPV types increase the risk for future cervical cancer. and p Impact: This study gives further insights into cervical cancer risk stratification with implications for HPVbased prevention strategies. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 19(10); 2469–78. ©2010 AACR.


Significance The study of fitness landscapes is fundamentally concerned with understanding the relative roles of stochastic and deterministic processes in adaptive evolution. Here, the authors present a uniquely large and complete multiallelic intragenic fitness landscape of 640 systematically engineered mutations in the heat-shock protein Hsp90 in yeast. Using a combination of traditional and recently proposed theoretical approaches, they study the accessibility of the global fitness peak and the potential for predictability of the fitness landscape topography. They report local ruggedness of the landscape and the existence of epistatic hotspot mutations, which together make extrapolation and hence predictability inherently difficult if mutation-specific information is not considered. The study of fitness landscapes, which aims at mapping genotypes to fitness, is receiving ever-increasing attention. Novel experimental approaches combined with next-generation sequencing (NGS) methods enable accurate and extensive studies of the fitness effects of mutations, allowing us to test theoretical predictions and improve our understanding of the shape of the true underlying fitness landscape and its implications for the predictability and repeatability of evolution. Here, we present a uniquely large multiallelic fitness landscape comprising 640 engineered mutants that represent all possible combinations of 13 amino acid-changing mutations at 6 sites in the heat-shock protein Hsp90 in Saccharomyces cerevisiae under elevated salinity. Despite a prevalent pattern of negative epistasis in the landscape, we find that the global fitness peak is reached via four positively epistatic mutations. Combining traditional and extending recently proposed theoretical and statistical approaches, we quantify features of the global multiallelic fitness landscape. Using subsets of the data, we demonstrate that extrapolation beyond a known part of the landscape is difficult owing to both local ruggedness and amino acid-specific epistatic hotspots and that inference is additionally confounded by the nonrandom choice of mutations for experimental fitness landscapes.


This study estimated greenhouse gas (GHG) and air pollutant emissions from aircraft in the troposphere (aircraft cruise altitudes, 1 12 km) over South Korea over a two-year period (2009 2010) using an activity-based (Landing and TakeOff (LTO) cycle) methodology. Both domestic and international LTOs covering 4 major airports and 11 smaller airports in South Korea were considered. The annual mean GHG emissions (CO2, N2O, CH4, and H2O) in the troposphere (1 12 km) over South Korea during the study period were approximately 3.5 × 103, 3.4 × 10-2, -6.6 × 10-2, and 1.4 × 103 kiloton (kt) yr-1, respectively. The tropospheric air pollutant emissions (CO, NOx, VOCs, and PM2.5) were approximately 3.0, 20, 1.0, and 0.2 kt yr-1, respectively. The monthly GHG and air pollutant emissions showed no significant variations. The GHG and air pollutant emissions during cruises over the South Korean airspace were significant contributors to (e.g., about 80% for NOx and about 75% for CO2) the total national aviation emissions including the emissions at airports, boundary layer and the free troposphere.


The effect of variance estimation of regression coefficients when disturbances are serially correlated in time series regression models is studied. Variance estimation enters into confidence interval estimation, hypotheses testing, spectrum estimation, and expressions for the estimated standard error of prediction. Using computer simulations, the robustness of various estimators, including Estimated Generalized Least Squares (EGLS) was considered. The estimates of variance of the coefficient estimators produced by computer packages were considered. Models were generated with a second order auto-correlated error structure, considering the robustness of estimators based upon misspecified order. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) (order zero) estimates outperformed first order EGLS. A full comparison of order zero and four estimators indicate that over specification is preferable to under specification.


Background: The quality of services is a comparison of the customer ́s perspective (expectations) with what it has received. If the expectations are more than perceptions, the quality of received services is not sufficient based on customer ́s view which resulted in his/her dissatisfaction. The present study performed with the purpose of determining the quality of provided and excepted services to outpatients among hospitals affiliated to Tehran University of Medical Sciences. Material and Methods: The present study is a descriptiveanalytics and cross sectional one which has been done in 2015. The study population included all outpatients attending hospital clinics affiliated to Tehran University of Medical Sciences.The sample size was calculated 225 participants based on formula. In order to data gathering in quality of provided and expected services, a 22-items standard questionnaire of Servqual was utilized. Data analysis performed by SPSS using paired t-test, Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests. Results: The study findings represented that there was a negative gap in the quality of services provided. The highest gap was related to accountability (-0.97) and the lowest gap related to tangibles factors (-0.69) . Moreover, regarding to relationship between demographic variables with perceived service quality, there were significant relationship between insurance type with reliability and empathy dimensions and supplementary insurance with tangibles factors and reliability. Conclusion: Negative gap (higher expectations than perception) in all aspects of quality improvement is required in all dimensions. Especially, it is necessary to adopt some strategies in the accountability dimension. Reforming management processes, reducing waiting times and increasing employees' motivation in order to achieve appropriate accountability are in this kind of strategies.


Large relative wave motions along the side of a ship can lead to green water on the deck. With a simplified test setup of a thin plate under an angle with the wave direction (to separate non-linear wave run up from motion effects), the non-linear wave reflection along the side of ships is studied in the present paper. These pilot tests with regular and irregular waves gave new insight in the process of non-linear wave run up with plunging and spilling breakers close to the plate. The complex processes observed made clear that linear or second order models will not be able to predict this behavior accurately. Previously [1] it was concluded that CFD methods that allow wave breaking are necessary for a prediction of these important effects. In the present paper a first pilot study is presented with an improved Volume of Fluid (VoF) Method. It is concluded that the method is in principle able to present these relative wave motions, but that a finer gridding is necessary to study the detailed flows.Copyright © 2014 by ASME


Abstract. This paper demonstrates the capabilities of chemical ionization mass spectrometry (CIMS) to study secondary organic aerosol (SOA) composition with a high-resolution (HR) time-of-flight mass analyzer (aerosol-ToF-CIMS). In particular, by studying aqueous oxidation of water-soluble organic compounds (WSOC) extracted from α-pinene ozonolysis SOA, we assess the capabilities of three common CIMS reagent ions: (a) protonated water clusters (H2O)nH+, (b) acetate CH3C(O)O− and (c) iodide water clusters I(H2O)n− to monitor SOA composition. Furthermore, we report the relative sensitivity of these reagent ions to a wide range of common organic aerosol constituents. We find that (H2O)nH+ is more selective to the detection of less oxidized species, so that the range of O / C and OSC (carbon oxidation state) in the SOA spectra is considerably lower than those measured using CH3C(O)O− and I(H2O)n−. Specifically, (H2O)nH+ ionizes organic compounds with OSC ≤ 1.3, whereas CH3C(O)O− and I(H2O)n− both ionize highly oxygenated organics with OSC up to 4 with I(H2O)n− being more selective towards multi-functional organic compounds. In the bulk O / C and H / C space (in a Van Krevelen plot), there is a remarkable agreement in both absolute magnitude and oxidation trajectory between ToF-CIMS data and those from a high-resolution aerosol mass spectrometer (HR-AMS). Despite not using a sensitivity-weighted response for the ToF-CIMS data, the CIMS approach appears to capture much of the chemical change occurring. As demonstrated by the calibration experiments with standards, this is likely because there is not a large variability in sensitivities from one highly oxygenated species to another, particularly for the CH3C(O)O− and I(H2O)n− reagent ions. Finally, the data illustrate the capability of aerosol-ToF-CIMS to monitor specific chemical change, including the fragmentation and functionalization reactions that occur during organic oxidation, and the oxidative conversion of dimeric SOA species into monomers. Overall, aerosol-ToF-CIMS is a valuable, selective complement to some common SOA characterization methods, such as AMS and spectroscopic techniques. Both laboratory and ambient SOA samples can be analyzed using the techniques illustrated in the paper.


Most biometric cryptosystems that have been proposed to protect fingerprint minutiae make use of public alignment helper data. This, however, has the inadvertent effect of information leakage about the protected templates. A countermeasure to avoid auxiliary alignment data is to protect absolutely pre-aligned fingerprints. As a proof of concept, we run performance evaluations of a minutiae fuzzy vault with an automatic method for absolute pre-alignment. Therefore, we propose a new method for estimating a fingerprint's directed reference point by modeling the local orientation around the core as a tented arch.


A study of the transglycosylationr eactionsc atalysedb y a multi-enzymec omplex,
cellulase from Trichoderma reesei, was undertaken. An activated substrate donor,
p-nitrophenyl P-D-cellobioside (PNPQ, and various mono- and disaccharide
acceptors were tested in the studies which were performed under kinetically
controlled conditions.

Surprisingly, three main transfer products were obtained as opposed to the single
product cited in the literature for the cellulase catalysed reaction. Two were
identified as the N-(p-nitrophenyl)-p-D-ceUobioside (a P-(14) linked
disaccharide)a nd the N-(p-nitrophenyl)-p-D-gentiobiosylamine(a P-(1-6) linked
disaccharide)A. number of experimentalp arametersw ere varied and their effects
on the yield of the transglycosylation reaction were determined. The variables
investigated included: increasing of substrate concentration, increasing the
acceptor concentration, varying the pH and the temperature of the reaction. The
effect of the addition of a co-solvent (ACN, t-butanol, dioxane or acetone) was
also studied.T he reactionsw ere found to be stereospecificb ut not regioselective.
The latter was found to vary with the substrate concentration: at low
concentrations (< 1.5 mM), the P-(1-6) linked disaccharide was the preferred
transfer product whereasa t higher concentrationst,h e P-(14) linked disaccharide
was favoured. Increasing the acceptor concentration was found to increase the
transglycosylationy ield (6% to 19%) whereast he addition of co-solvent resulted
in a decrease. Ilese results are discussed in relation to the components of the
complexw hich are responsiblef or the production of the various transferp roducts.
Interestingly,t he use of p-nitrophenyl 1-thio-p-D-glucopyranosidea s an acceptor
proved to give a higher yield of the transfer products (-40 %) showing the
importanceo f the acceptors tructure in the transglycosylationr eaction

Moreover, the transglycosylation studies were also undertaken in the presence of
the P-glucosidasein hibitor, 1,5-glucono-S-lactoneT. his resulted in the formation
of a single product, the P-(14) linked disaccharide and therefore P-glucosidase
was the only cellulase component responsible for producing the P-(1-6) transfer
product. A difference in the degree of orientation of the acceptor between the
different enzyme components of the cellulase complex was then suggested.


In human relations individuals' gender and age play a key role in the structures and dynamics of their social arrangements. In order to analyze the gender preferences of individuals in interaction with others at different stages of their lives we study a large mobile phone dataset. To do this we consider four fundamental gender-related caller and callee combinations of human interactions, namely male to male, male to female, female to male, and female to female, which together with age, kinship, and different levels of friendship give rise to a wide scope of human sociality. Here we analyse the relative strength of these four types of interaction using a large dataset of mobile phone communication records. Our analysis suggests strong age dependence for an ego of one gender choosing to call an individual of either gender. We observe a strong opposite sex bonding across most of their reproductive age. However, older women show a strong tendency to connect to another female that is one generation younger in a way that is suggestive of the \emph{grandmothering effect}. We also find that the relative strength among the four possible interactions depends on phone call duration. For calls of medium and long duration, opposite gender interactions are significantly more probable than same gender interactions during the reproductive years, suggesting potential emotional exchange between spouses. By measuring the fraction of calls to other generations we find that mothers tend to make calls more to their daughters than to their sons, whereas fathers make calls more to their sons than to their daughters. For younger people, most of their calls go to same generation alters, while older people call the younger people more frequently, which supports the suggestion that \emph{affection flows downward}.


Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) is the first satellite mission capable of measuring sea surface salinity and soil moisture from space. Its novel instrument (the L-band radiometer MIRAS) has required the development of new algorithms to process SMOS data, a challenging task due to many processing issues and the difficulties inherent in a new technology. In the wake of SMOS, a new community of users has grown, requesting new products and applications, and extending the interest in this novel brand of satellite services. This paper reviews the role played by the Barcelona Expert Centre under the direction of Jordi Font, SMOS co-principal investigator. The main scientific activities and achievements and the future directions are discussed, highlighting the importance of the oceanographic applications of the mission.


New measurements of the analyzing powers Ay and T20 have been obtained for the 2 Hsd, gd 4 He reaction at a laboratory beam energy of 115 keV. A transition matrix element analysis results in a unique solution which indicates that the reaction proceeds by 55% E2, 29% E1, and 16% M2 radiation. These results are shown to be in good agreement with the results of a new refined resonating group model calculation. The impact of these results on the extrapolated value of the astrophysical S factor for this reaction is discussed.


Pandemic vaccines from four manufacturers are now available for use within the European Union (EU). Use of these vaccines will protect individuals and reduce the impact on health services to more manageable levels. The majority of the severely ill will be from known risk groups and the best strategy will be to start vaccinating in line with the recommendation from the European Union Health Security Committee prioritizing adults and children with chronic conditions, pregnant women and healthcare workers. The composition of authorized vaccines is reviewed in this article. The vaccine strain in all authorized pandemic vaccines worldwide is based on the same initial isolate of influenza A/California/7/2009 (H1N1)v but the vaccines differ in conditions for virus propagation, antigen preparation, antigen content and whether they are adjuvanted or not. The vaccines are likely to be effective since no significant genetic or antigenic drift has occurred and there are already mechanisms for estimating clinical effectiveness. Influenza vaccines have good safety records and no safety concerns have so far been encountered with any of the vaccines developed. However, special mechanisms have been devised for the early detection and rigorous investigation of possible significant side effects in Europe through post-marketing surveillance and analysis. Delivery of the vaccines to the risk groups will pose difficulties where those with chronic illnesses are not readily identifiable to the healthcare services. There is considerable scope for European added value through Member States with excess vaccines making them available to other states.


In this collaborative Dissertation of Practice we examined the leadership frameworks, leader characteristics, and effective character education practices that can help foster students' intellectual, moral, performance, and civic character development (Shields, 2011). The project used a mixed-methods approach to study the relationships among: (a) three frameworks of character education leadership, (b) effective character education practices, and (c) school and student outcomes. Three members of the team focused on a specific set of leadership characteristics: (a) a newly created framework called Vulnerable Leadership, (b) the existing model of Transformational Leadership, and (c) a newly created framework called Professional Growth Leadership. The fourth member examined effective character education practices using a new measure called the Effective Character Education Score (ECES). The team measured outcomes to include performance data (academic, behavior, attendance), climate data (parent, student, staff), and character education recognitions or awards. Significant correlations were found between each of the leadership frameworks and the ECES, among the three leadership frameworks, and between ECES and the outcomes. Ultimately, this work proposes a taxonomy of effective character education practices and a paradigm shift for effective school leadership; the suggested new model is called The Connected Leader. The Connected Leader includes three components: personal growth, positive school culture, and caring relationships. This new model stresses that an effective character education leader should connect with self, staff, students, and stakeholders of a school community.


Variational autoencoder (VAE) is a deep generative model for unsupervised learning, allowing to encode observations into the meaningful latent space. VAE is prone to catastrophic forgetting when tasks arrive sequentially, and only the data for the current one is available. We address this problem of continual learning for VAEs. It is known that the choice of the prior distribution over the latent space is crucial for VAE in the non-continual setting. We argue that it can also be helpful to avoid catastrophic forgetting. We learn the approximation of the aggregated posterior as a prior for each task. This approximation is parametrised as an additive mixture of distributions induced by encoder evaluated at trainable pseudo-inputs. We use a greedy boosting-like approach with entropy regularisation to learn the components. This method encourages components diversity, which is essential as we aim at memorising the current task with the fewest components possible. Based on the learnable prior, we introduce an end-to-end approach for continual learning of VAEs and provide empirical studies on commonly used benchmarks (MNIST, Fashion MNIST, NotMNIST) and CelebA datasets. For each dataset, the proposed method avoids catastrophic forgetting in a fully automatic way.


This article aims to contribute to the literature of dynamic capabilities by evidencing how they can explain the creation of new businesses through the entrepreneur's acting. It was used content analysis on the La La Land film, considering the dynamic capabilities division proposed in three dimensions: sensing, seizing and transforming. The results evidenced that the dynamic capabilities can explain how new business are created by demonstrating: (i) how the entrepreneur's ideas, imagination and instinctive notion make opportunities to be sensed; (ii) how decision-making on capturing opportunities and mobilizing the resources allows the enterprise to move from an idea to reality; (iii) how the transforming adapted the entrepreneur in face of adversity's, and for reconfiguring the market. In this sense, the dynamic capabilities are present in the entrepreneur even before the existence of the formally constituted organization and are elements without which the enterprise would not be viable.


The technology in the area of automated vehicles is gaining speed and promises many advantages. However, with the recent introduction of conditionally automated driving, we have also seen accidents. Test protocols for both, conditionally automated (e.g., on highways) and automated vehicles do not exist yet and leave researchers and practitioners with different challenges. For instance, current test procedures do not suffice for fully automated vehicles, which are supposed to be completely in charge for the driving task and have no driver as a back up. This paper presents current challenges of testing the functionality and safety of automated vehicles derived from conducting focus groups and interviews with 26 participants from five countries having a background related to testing automotive safety-related topics. We provide an overview of the state-of-practice of testing active safety features as well as challenges that needs to be addressed in the future to ensure safety for automated vehicles. The major challenges identified through the interviews and focus groups, enriched by literature on this topic are related to 1) virtual testing and simulation, 2) safety, reliability, and quality, 3) sensors and sensor models, 4)required scenario complexity and amount of test cases, and 5)handover of responsibility between the driver and the vehicle.


The theme of hunting occurs throughout the Aeneid at strategic points to link specific events and foreshadow certain outcomes. Many scholars have noted the increasingly ominous nature of hunting in the epic: from Aeneas's first hunt in book one to provide food for his people, through Ascanius's trophy hunt that sparks the war in Italy, to Aeneas's final vengeful hunting of Turnus. But as far as the protagonist Aeneas is concerned it is specifically through acts of deer hunting that an increasing lack of feeling in his character comes to light. In this paper I will argue that, through recurring instances of deer hunting, both literal and symbolic, a gradual desensitization of Aeneas is revealed. This prepares the reader for his final act in the epic: his killing of Turnus in book twelve, an unnecessary act that strips him of the qualities of pietas so abundantly attributed to him throughout the work.


Abstract Market demand for the orange-headed thrush Zoothera citrina, a prestigious songbird competition species in Indonesia, is supplied by chicks harvested from Bali Island. Using ethnographic and interview surveys conducted during the 2008–2009 breeding season we established the structure and scale of this trade and investigated means to improve its sustainability in two districts of Bali. We found that well-organized agent networks supplied an estimated 116,000 chicks worth EUR 3.175 million from Bali during the 6-month harvest season. Chicks are harvested when 4–16 days old and exported from Bali when 16–18 days old. Of 50 nests followed 60% were harvested and just 6% fledged young. Farmers deploy techniques to improve thrush food supply but lack practices to ensure continued recruitment to the thrush population. The practice of thrush harvesting started in the mid 1990s and is not yet regulated by the traditional institutions (Subak) that govern collective farming practices. Three networks determine the sustainability of the practice: (1) the fraternity of Indonesian songbird keepers, (2) agricultural agent networks, and (3) traditional village institutions. We identify the potential for coordinated forms of self-regulation and thrush population management by Subak and key groups involved in songbird contests. Furthermore, we argue that this would more likely enhance sustainability than interventions by government conservation agencies.


In December 2006 Fiji experienced its fourth coup within less than 20 years. The reaction of old metropolitan friends like Australia, New Zealand, the USA and the EU didn't take long. Travel sanctions were announced and development assistance frozen. The climax was reached when the country was fully suspended from the Pacific Island Forum Secretariat in May 2009 and from the Commonwealth in September 2009. Being politically isolated Fiji started to foster secondary political friendships of olden days and established new ones. Relations were intensified with Cuba, Indonesia, Russia, South Africa, Venezuela, and others. Most important however was the intensification of relations with China, and to a lesser extend with India.
In September 2014 an eight year period without elected Government and parliament came to an end. Already before elections the stand of many of the old friends had become more pragmatic and rapprochement happened with a number of countries, most importantly Australia. Seven months before election date Australia's Foreign Minister Julie Bishop met Prime Minister Bainimarama. Not long after the election and as soon as the "new" old government had been sworn in Foreign Minister Bishop was back to Fiji for a state visit in October 2014. High ranking politicians from New Zealand, Europe and the Middle East followed very soon. Also the new friends from the Global South showed their faces. On November 19 a two days state visit of India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi started, the first of an Indian Prime Minister after 33 years when Indira Gandhi came to Fiji in September 1981. Mr. Modi had not even left the country when the Chinese President Xi Jinping with a 100-member delegation arrived on November 21 for a three day state visit. The very first time a Chinese President visited any Pacific Island country (PIC).

The presentation looks into the re-orientation of Fiji's international relations after the coup of 2006. It looks into the mechanics and substance of the intensification of relations especially with China, the deliverables as well as the crucial question, if now, after Fiji has returned to democracy the re-orientation has been a temporary necessity or if there are signs that South-South cooperation will remain sustainable.


The aim of this Ph.D. was to develop a technology for the remediation of seleniferous soils/sediments and to explore microbial reduction of selenium oxyanions under different respiration conditions and bioreactor configurations. Seleniferous soil collected from the wheat-grown agricultural land in Punjab (India) was characterized and its soil washing was optimized by varying parameters such as reaction time, temperature, pH and liquid to solid ratio. In order to maximize selenium removal and recovery from this soil, effect of competing ions and oxidizing agents as chemical extractants for soil washing were also studied. Although oxidizing agents showed a maximum selenium removal efficiency (39%), the presence of oxidizing agents in the leachate and the agricultural soil may increase the cost of their post-treatment. Aquatic plants, Lemna minor and Egeria densa were used to study phytoremediation of the soil leachate containing oxidizing agents. However, the selenium removal efficiency by aquatic weeds was significantly affected by the high concentrations of these oxidizing agents in the soil leachate.
Seleniferous soil flushing revealed the selenium migration pattern across the soil column. Migration of soluble selenium fraction from the upper to the lower layers and its subsequent reduction and accumulation in the lower layers of the soil column was observed during soil flushing. The selenium removal efficiency by the soil flushing method decreased with an increase in the column height. Furthermore, the soil leachate containing selenium oxyanions obtained from soil washing was treated in a UASB reactor by varying the organic feed. Effluent containing less than 5 μg L-1 selenium was achieved, which is in accordance with the USEPA guidelines for selenium wastewater discharge limit.
Moreover, ex situ bioremediation of selenium oxyanions was studied under variable conditions. An aerobic bacterium (Delftia lacustris) capable of transforming selenate and selenite to elemental selenium, but also to hitherto unknown soluble selenium ester compounds was serendipitously isolated and characterized. Alternatively, anaerobic bioreduction of selenate coupled to methane as electron donor was investigated in serum bottles and a biotrickling filter using marine sediment as inoculum. Finally, the effect of contamination of other chalcogen oxyanions in addition to selenium was studied. Simultaneous reduction of selenite and tellurite by a mixed microbial consortium along with the retention of biogenic Se and Te nanostructures in the EPS was achieved during a 120-day UASB bioreactor operation.


textabstractIntroduction: The last detailed report from the National Evaluation
Team for Breast cancer screening (NETB) on the
Dutch breast cancer screening programme appeared
in 2005. It presented the screening results up until
the end of 2003 which, however, were incomplete
for some regions. The same applies to the two brief
interim reports that were released in 2006 and 2007.
The new evaluation report adds four reporting years
to the entire evaluation period, i.e. those from 2004-
2007. The fact that this 12th report by the NETB is
based on complete nationwide data on the screening
activities of all nine screening regions is particularly
good news. This is thanks to the additional efforts
made by the two regions that had had a backlog of
screened women's follow-up data for years, enabling
the backlog to be eliminated by spring 2009.
It also enabled the optimum analysis of 18 years of
national population research, and the presentation
of the results without qualification. Unfortunately,
this does not apply to the data on interval cancers
which, subsequent to 1999, are far from being fully
available at national level....


Humanity's influence upon the environment is growing to encompass the globe and to extend in time to decades and even centuries. One particular global environmental problem, i.e., climatic change, could eventually lead to shifts in agricultural and forestry growing zones, changes in freshwater supply and a rise in sea level, and eventually to migration and "environmental refugees". This could further result in civil unrest, political instability, militarism, and terrorism which could pose as large a threat to world security as the ideological struggle from which we appear to be emerging. The trace gases leading to climatic change, especially carbon dioxide and methane, are closely linked with the production of energy. A more efficient use of energy, both in the developed and developing world, should be the first and main strategy for attacking the impending global threat of climatic change. Incentives for increasing energy efficiency in the developed world should be through the imposition of resource taxes such as carbon taxes. In the developing world, energy efficiency and development could advance hand in hand, if the proper infrastructure were created. This could be financed at least partially by the resource taxes collected in the developed world.


The interview was recorded in New York City, United States,on September 16, 1997. The Interviewer was Jean Krasno.
Ms. Beatrice Rangel served as Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez's Deputy Chief of Staff from 1989 to 1991 and was appointed his Chief of Staff from 1991 to 1993. During this period, Venezuela and the Perez administration were involved in conflict resolution in Central America.

During her civil service career, Ms. Rangel worked in several advisory positions within the Venezuelan Government. From 1970 to 1972, she served under the Ministry of Foreign Relations as Third Secretary in the Office of Protocol. She became an advisor to the Minister of Foreign Relations in 1978. Following this, Ms. Rangel was appointed foreign Affairs Coordinator for the National Council for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICIT) from 1975 to 1977, and became its Director in 1977. She became an Advisor to the President in 1978; Advisor to the Finance Commission of the Chamber of Deputies at the National Congress in 1981; then Advisor to the Minister of Science and Technology in 1984. In 1983, Ms. Rangel was elected to the National Congress of Venezuela as Alternate Deputy of Congress for Miranda State. She then served as the General Secretary of the Ministry of Education of Venezuela in 1985 and became Executive Secretary of the Presidential Commission in charge of drafting the National Education Reform Project.

At the time of this interview, conducted on 16 September 1997, Ms. Rangel was serving as the Senior Advisor to the Chairman & Corporate Vice President of the Cisneros Group of Companies. She shared her thoughts on the role of Venezuela in the resolution of conflicts in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Haiti and Guatemala. Having firsthand knowledge of each situation, as she worked closely with Venezuelan President Perez, she discussed her experiences and Venezuela's determination to quell regional conflict.


Map of a portion of the city of Abilene, Texas at the corner of Hickory and Fifth streets. Curbs are noted and the trees in the area are marked and numbered to correspond with a key in the upper-left corner titled, "Schedule of Trees." A note beneath the title says, "Gutter grades on Fifth will probably be 5" or 6" below curb grade. Gutter grades on Hickory Street will probably be 8" below curb grades. Profiles for the improvement of these streets are not complete." Scale 1:240


Mathematics skills are not only a basic requirement for every member of the society to productively engage in everyday activities but also a universal language that finds meaning in all cultures and civilizations. Every tribe, culture and social group thinks and communicates ideas through quantities. Mathematics education is to a nation what protein is to a young human organism. It is not only a vital tool for the understanding and application of science and technology but also a great determinant of the kind of courses children take at all levels of learning. However, poor mathematics performance in the national examinations has been of great concern to the educationists and the society at large. Factors such as students" negative attitude to mathematics and high pupil teacher ratio due to Free Primary Education have been attributed to this. However, research studies indicate that six to ten percent (6-10%) of primary school age children in the US experience Mathematics Difficulties which make them struggle a lot in their education. In Kenya, about 20% of learners in primary schools experience Learning Difficulties (LD) in mathematics. These learners achieve poorly in mathematics, their self esteem may be lowered, may become truants and drop out of school. In spite of these, studies reviewed only sought to establish the number of learners experiencing LD in Mathematics and Language and possible factors that influenced the early identification of LD. This study was designed to establish if there was early identification and remedial teaching for children with Mathematics Difficulties in lower primary schools in Butere district. The effect of this remedial teaching on children"s achievement in mathematics was also investigated. The study was done in Butere district Kakamega County. Descriptive survey and Quasi-experimental designs were used in this study. Stratified and purposive sampling was also used to select eighty learners with Mathematics Difficulties and eight standard three teachers of the identified schools. A questionnaire was administered to class three teachers and a pre and post experimental test was administered to the pupils in the experimental and control groups. The collected data was coded and analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Descriptive statistics such as frequencies, means and percentages were calculated. The t- test calculated was 4.38 with a p< 0.001 level at an alpha p< 0.05. The p value was less than p< 0.05 meaning the result was quite significant and hence the null hypothesis was accepted. This meant there was a significant difference in mathematics performance of pupils with MD who received remedial teaching from those who did not. It was also established that teachers identified pupils with MD, more boys had MD than girls; learners experienced MD in addition with carrying and subtraction with borrowing. Schools mostly conducted paid tuition and not remedial teaching for pupils with MD. The tuition was conducted in the afternoons and during school holidays. There was no significant difference in mathematics performance of pupils with MD neither in public or private schools nor between boys and girls with MD who received remedial teaching. Therefore, it was recommended that MOEST formulate a policy that supports early identification of pupils with MD and give remedial teaching to mitigate the disability. KICD should develop appropriate curriculum and remedial teaching programme for pupils with MD.


EXAMINING CORRECTIONAI, MANAGERS' AND LEADERS' PERCEPTIONS OF OWN KNOWLEDGE ABOUT RESTORATIVE JUSTICE: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY SIGRUN M. KLAUSEN JULY 2002 There has been an increasing dissatisfaction with the current criminal justice system, and restorative justice with its ancient roots, has made its way into criminal justice in the past 20 years as a different way of thinking about crime. The Minnesota Department of Corrections established a Restorative Justice unit in 1994 as the first state in the nation. To adapt restorative justice in the prison system, a change in organizational culture is required, and it is important that managers and leaders understand and accept the principles. A questionnaire with closed and open-ended questions was sent to managers and leaders in three prisons in Minnesota. The purpose was to gather information about correctional managers' and leaders' perceptions of own knowledge, and acceptance of restorative justice; what barriers they view against change; and to asses to what degree they believe restorative justice is an appropriate future direction for the Department of Corrections. Findings indicated that the majority of managers and leaders understand the basic values and principles, and many believe it is an appropriate future direction. Other indications were that staff training is an important strategy for change, and that lack of funding, work-load and lack of knowledge among staff are barriers to


In this paper we present the first comprehensive bibliometric analysis of eleven open-access mega-journals (OAMJs). OAMJs are a relatively recent phenomenon, and have been characterised as having four key characteristics: large size; broad disciplinary scope; a Gold-OA business model; and a peer-review policy that seeks to determine only the scientific soundness of the research rather than evaluate the novelty or significance of the work. Our investigation focuses on four key modes of analysis: journal outputs (the number of articles published and changes in output over time); OAMJ author characteristics (nationalities and institutional affiliations); subject areas (the disciplinary scope of OAMJs, and variations in sub-disciplinary output); and citation profiles (the citation distributions of each OAMJ, and the impact of citing journals). We found that while the total output of the eleven mega-journals grew by 14.9% between 2014 and 2015, this growth is largely attributable to the increased output of Scientific Reports and Medicine. We also found substantial variation in the geographical distribution of authors. Several journals have a relatively high proportion of Chinese authors, and we suggest this may be linked to these journals' high Journal Impact Factors (JIFs). The mega-journals were also found to vary in subject scope, with several journals publishing disproportionately high numbers of articles in certain sub-disciplines. Our citation analsysis offers support for Björk & Catani's suggestion that OAMJs's citation distributions can be similar to those of traditional journals, while noting considerable variation in citation rates across the eleven titles. We conclude that while the OAMJ term is useful as a means of grouping journals which share a set of key characteristics, there is no such thing as a "typical" mega-journal, and we suggest several areas for additional research that might help us better understand the current and future role of OAMJs in scholarly communication.


We examine the payoff performance, up to the end of 2013, of non-agency residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS), issued up to 2008. We have created a new and detailed data set on the universe of non-agency residential mortgage backed securities, per carefully assembling source data from Bloomberg and other sources. We compare these payoffs to their ex-ante ratings as well as other characteristics. We establish seven facts. First, the bulk of these securities was rated AAA. Second, AAA securities did ok: on average, their total cumulated losses up to 2013 are 2.3 percent. Third, the subprime AAA-rated segment did particularly well. Fourth, later vintages did worse than earlier vintages, except for subprime AAA securities. Fifth, the bulk of the losses were concentrated on a small share of all securities. Sixth, the misrating for AAA securities was modest. Seventh, controlling for a home price bust, a home price boom was good for the repayment on these securities. Together, these facts provide challenge the conventional narrative, that improper ratings of RMBS were a major factor in the financial crisis of 2008.


BACKGROUND
Sedentary behavior is a main risk factor for cardiovascular disease and mortality.

AIM
To investigate the association between sedentary behavior and metabolic and cardiovascular risk factors.

MATERIAL AND METHODS
We assessed 322 participants aged between 18 to 65 years. Physical activity and sedentary behavior were measured with accelerometers (Actigraph®). Body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, percentage of body fat, diet and blood markers (glucose, lipid profile, insulin and HOMA-IR) were measured with standardized protocols.

RESULTS
Thirty four percent of participants were physically inactive and spent on average 8.7 h/day on sedentary activities. Per one hour increase in sedentary behavior there were significant adverse changes in glucose (4.79 mg/dl), insulin (2.73 pmol/l), HOMA-IR (0.75), BMI (0.69 kg/m²), waist circumference (1.95 cm), fat mass (1.03%), total cholesterol (9.73 mg/dl), HDL-cholesterol (-3.50 mg/dl), LDL-cholesterol (10.7 mg/dl) and triglycerides (12.4 mg/dl). These findings were independent of main confounding factors including total physical activity, dietary factors, BMI and socio-demographics.

CONCLUSIONS
The detrimental effect of sedentary behaviors on cardiometabolic and obesity-related traits is independent of physical activity levels. Therefore, reducing sedentary time should be targeted in the population apart from increasing their physical activity levels.


The influence of the mould material on the build-up of internal stresses during autoclave cure of a unidirectional carbon fibre composite material was investigated using embedded optical fibre Bragg gratings. Four flat moulds (i.e. aluminium, steel, carbon composite and carbon foam-based) with different thermal expansion coefficients were tested. It was observed that, from the beginning of cure, the carbon fibres were strained by contact with the expanding mould. The strain was larger when higher pressure was applied, although always below the thermal strain of the mould, but remained significant even under vacuum-bag cure. As a result, residual strains were found in samples cured on aluminium or steel moulds, whereas the samples cured on carbon composite and carbon foam moulds exhibited almost no strain after cooling-down.


Nearly all stress stimuli (e.g., inflammatory cytokines, glucocorticoids, chemotherapeutics, etc.) induce sphingolipid synthesis, leading to the accumulation of ceramides and ceramide metabolites. While the role of these lipids in the regulation of cell growth and death has been studied extensively, recent studies suggest that a primary consequence of ceramide accumulation is an alteration in metabolism. In both cell-autonomous systems and complex organisms, ceramides modify intracellular signaling pathways to slow anabolism, ensuring that catabolism ensues. These ceramide actions have important implications for diseases associated with obesity, such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease.


A series of studies of "ideal" beams has been carried out using Monte Carlo simulation with the goal of providing guidance for the design of epithermal beams for boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT). An "ideal" beam is defined as a monoenergetic, photon-free source of neutrons with user-specified size, shape and angular dependence of neutron current. The dosimetric behavior of monoenergetic neutron beams in an elliptical phantom composed of brain-equivalent material has been assessed as a function of beam diameter and neutron emission angle (beam angle), and the results are reported here. The simulation study indicates that substantial differences exist in the dosimetric behavior of small and large neutron beams (with respect to the phantom) as a function of the extent of beam collimation. With a small beam, dose uniformity increases as the beam becomes more isotropic (less collimated); the opposite is seen with large beams. The penetration of thermal neutrons is enhanced as the neutron emission angle is increased with a small beam; again the opposite trend is seen with large beams. When beam size is small, the dose delivered per neutron is very dependent on the extent of beam collimation; this does not appear to be the case with a larger beam. These trends in dose behavior are presented graphically and discussed in terms of their effect on several figures of merit, the advantage depth, the advantage ratio, and the advantage depth-dose rate. Tables giving quick summaries of these results are provided.


Knowledge of the transition state is crucial in determining the mechanism in order to diversify the applicability of the reaction. The computational method is the most convenient way to locate the transition state in the absence any efficient experimental technique. We have applied the method of the transition state search on the Diels-Alder reaction computationally by means of combined linear synchronous transit and quadratic synchronous transit methods. Here we have shown that, of various methods adopted, BOP functional with numerical basis set provides a computationally economical alternative to the widely used B3LYP functional with higher Gaussian basis sets in the transition state search. It can reproduce the experimental parameters like activation energy of the Diels-Alder reaction, and the calculations are much faster than the corresponding other functional based calculations.


Through a close reading of the theoretical work of folklorists Sir George Laurence Gomme, Sir John Rhŷs, and Alfred Nutt and extensive research into the discourses of human and social origins in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this thesis examines the use of folklore as a tool for the scientific interpretation of the history and identity of the nation. This thesis concentrates in particular on the emergence of indigeneity as a central concern for folklorists working with the archive of traditional lore and custom; through an extensive examination of Gomme, Rhŷs, and Nutt's intellectual relationship, I trace the ways in which each identified and delineated a particular source for the national self. Finally, this thesis argues that the discourse of folklore was a key player in the formation of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century conceptions of national and racial history and demonstrates the extent to which an ethnological discourse, often considered solely in a colonial context, was central to the period's interpretations of Britain's national genealogy and historical identity.

 Part One demonstrates the pivotal role Sir George Laurence Gomme played in the development of folklore as a science and argues for the centrality of the discipline of folklore itself in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century ethnological discourse. Gomme's theory of an indigenous, pre-Aryan racial inheritance in the development of British institutional history is also analyzed in detail, and the intellectual and popular genealogy of the idea of the pre-Aryan is given extensive examination. Part Two considers the work of Sir John Rhŷs and Alfred Nutt on Celtic language and folklore in the context of Gomme's paradigm. Rhŷs' use of folklore as a tool for philological research into the history of Britain is contextualized within intellectual developments in German and British linguistic research, and it is shown that the concept of a pre-Aryan indigenous race was central to his interpretation of European linguistic and racial history. Alfred Nutt's research into the history and development of Celtic narrative and legend is contextualized to demonstrate his inheritance of continental scholarly discourses on Celtic folklore, and the significance of Nutt's argument for a Celtic, rather than a non-Aryan indigeneity, is discussed in relation to both Gomme and Rhŷs' interpretation of British prehistory. Finally, it is shown that Nutt imagined folklore to be an inherently imperialist project, and folklorists as the stewards of Britain's subject nations' racial-cultural archives; his views are examined in the context of early twentieth-century Irish nationalism and the Celtic Revival.


This book presents a major leap forward in the understanding of colour by showing how richer descriptions of colour samples can be operationalized in agent-based models. Four different language strategies are explored: the basic colour strategy, the graded membership strategy, the category combination strategy and the basic modification strategy. These strategies are firmly rooted in empirical observations in natural languages, with a focus on compositionality at both the syntactic and semantic level. Through a series of in-depth experiments, this book discerns the impact of the environment, language and embodiment on the formation of basic colour systems. Finally, the experiments demonstrate how language users can invent their own language strategies of increasing complexity by combining primitive cognitive operators, and how these strategies can be aligned between language users through linguistic interactions.


Sample selection bias is a chronic problem in longitudinal studies that is particularly problematic for studies concerning the relationship between health and socio-economic status. This paper adopts two alternate methods for handling sample selection bias attributable to survey attrition and item non-response. Both methods are applied to examine the magnitude of bias in the effects of childhood cognition and behavior on the adult socio-economic gradient in health. A method for sample selection correction with multiple imputation for item nonresponse is implemented to account for different sources of sample selection bias over time. Estimates of a life course model of health and socioeconomic attainment demonstrate that sample selection bias inflates estimates of socioeconomic gradients. The proposed correction for sample selection bias also suggests that the effects of early child non-cognitive skills rather than cognitive skills may play an important role in the early life origins of adult socioeconomic gradients. _______________________ † Contact address: 1180 Observatory Drive, Center for Demography and Ecology University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706. Email: firstname.lastname@example.com.


This research project seeks to determine the causative factors behind the exceptionally high employee turnover rates in the Irish hospitality industry. For a long time now, the Irish hospitality industry has been characterised by high numbers of employees opting to abandon their jobs. This translates negatively on the various companies in this crucial industry as they constantly have to spend significant amounts of resources on hiring new employees to replace the ones who have left. This is a costly procedure that is consuming potential profits for these companies. This project will identify the main reasons as to why more employees are quitting their job. To do this, the research will focus on getting vital insights from past hotel employees in the Irish hospitality industry. The decision to settle on this target population was based on the need to promote honesty in the responses provided.

The research project will also incorporate a comprehensive review of past literature on this topic. This will introduce the perceptions and opinions of other past researchers into the study. Moreover, these past researchers will contribute towards the topic through their literature. The quantitative research method will be utilised in this project to help further comprehend the research question. An ontology approach will also be adopted since human nature plays a major role in influencing the behaviour of employees in the Irish hospitality sector. In the end, three factors were determined to cause the high employee turnover rates in this sector. They include; low levels of employee motivation, inadequate wages and finally, work-life balance. These three factors have to be adequately addressed to boost the employee retention rates in the Irish hospitality industry. The research project has outlined a variety of recommendations that these companies should consider to make this happen, including, regular periodic training, better wages, employee recognition and much more.


This essay looks at struggles for control over space in the context of recent economic changes in Cartagena, Colombia, focusing on how the construction of space is central to claims of identity and relations of inequality. I begin by examining the spatial reorganization of ruling class power, that is, how the ruling class has built, regulated, and endowed urban space with meaning. I argue that this reorganization must be understood in the context of Cartagena's shifting place in the international political economy. My analysis then shifts to popular-class responses to these developments: how poor people use available spaces to their advantage, occupying them, loading them with oppositional meanings, stretching their borders in novel ways. One important way that popular-class people create meanings is by drawing on images of extranational territory-namely Africa-that contest dominant notions of racial hierarchy. This racial hierarchy is, in turn, sustained by elites' invocation of their own real and imagined relationship to extranational communities, namely North America and Europe. I then discuss how these responses exacerbate racial and gender divisions within the popular class, divisions that are themselves couched in a spatial idiom. The article concludes by briefly examining recent efforts to reimagine Cartagena as part of the Caribbean. While elites promote Cartagena as a peaceful Caribbean tourist destination, some middle-class intellectuals' discourse endows Caribbeanness with liberatory cultural and political meaning. The city's identity, cast increasingly in regional terms (with very definite racial significance), is thus becoming a focus of political struggle.


Noise is often one of the environmental variables where it seems more difficult to guarantee full compliance with legal limits in complex industrial situations and/or in other multi-source environments. This paper describes the application of noise mapping techniques to industrial sources, such as factories, power plants, wind farms, showing the potential of its use, both at the design stage as well as for noise reduction plans of existing installations. Starting from the collection of noise sources data, reflecting and diffracting objects, cartography of the area around the site and identification of sensitive receivers, an acoustic model can be built and run according to ISO 9613 standard. This then allows one to produce noise source ranking, according to the individual contributions to the total noise, as well as comparing different noise control scenarios, thus enabling one to optimize the investment in noise control measures. Practical examples in Portugal and Spain are presented and discussed.


Recent scholarship suggests that combining insights from real option theory with transaction cost economics may improve decision-making models. In response to this suggestion we develop and test a model of international entry mode choice that draws from both perspectives. Examining samples of Dutch and Greek firms entering Central and Eastern European markets, we found that adding real option variables to a transaction cost model significantly improved its explanatory power. Additionally, firms that used the combined real option/transaction cost predicted choices had significantly higher levels of subsidiary performance satisfaction than firms that did not. Our results suggest that effective managerial decision-making may involve more than mere transaction cost minimization considerations; real option value creation insights also appear to influence the success of decision outcomes.