Introduction I t was the privately-sponsored Russian expedition to the North Pole in August 2007 that opened a new competitive era in Arctic geopolitics, and the technologically elegant PR-trick with planting the flag into the crisscross point of meridians on the depth of 4,261 m produced a resonance that distorted strategic thinking about, and political interactions in the Arctic region. Six years later, the dust of over-excited forecasts of unregulated confrontation across the Northern frontier has mostly settled down and the atmosphere of cooperation has become prevalent, but Russian Arctic policy is in new disarray. With its large population centres (like Murmansk or Norilsk) beyond the Polar circle and huge resource-extraction industry, Russia is objectively the Arctic superpower, and the high concentration of strategic forces on the Kola Peninsula adds a heavy military dimension to this status, but Moscow is nervous about protecting its interests against encroachments of ambiguous neighbours and ambitious newcomers.1 The discourse of 'conquering' and 'owning' the High North is organic to the Russian state identity, incoherent as it is, and is often exploited as political expediency dictates, which increases the sensitivity of public opinion to setbacks and accidents that tend to bedevil many Arctic projects. There is a rich tradition of exploring and developing the vast inhospitable territories and seas, but the attention to environmental issues and to the rights of indigenous peoples is strikingly low. This article focuses on the crucial importance of issues pertaining to sovereignty in Russian policy-making, while starting with examining the revised evaluations of Arctic resources and continuing with assessing the usefulness of military build-up.


Olive oil is an important agricultural food product. Especially, protected designation of origin (PDO) and protected geographic indications (PGI) are useful to protect the intellec-tual property rights of the consumers and producers. For this reason, the importance of the geographic classification increases to trace geographical indications. This chapter suggests a geographical classification system for the virgin olive oils. This system is formed on chemical parameters. These parameters include fuzziness. Novel proposed system constructs the rules by using fuzzy decision tree algorithm. It produces rules over fuzzy ID3 algorithm. It uses fuzzy entropy on the fuzzified data. The reasoning procedure depends on weighted rule-based system and is adapted into the fuzzy reasoning handled with different T-operators. Fuzzification is performed with fuzzy c -means algorithm for the olive oil data set. The cluster numbers of each variable are selected based on partition coefficient validity criteria. The model is examined by using different decision tree approaches (C4.5 and standard version fuzzy ID3 algorithm) and FID3 reasoning method with eight different T-operators. Also, the conclusions are supported by statistical analysis. Experimental results support that the weights have important manner on fuzzy rea- soning method for the geographic classification system. Hamacher 0.25, Dombi 1, Dubois 0.25, and 15 for fuzzy reasoning procedure. The comparison of the performances of unweighted and weighted fuzzy reasoning approaches is performed.


We summarize existing empirical findings regarding the adoption of robotics and AI and its effects on aggregated labor and productivity, and argue for more systematic collection of the use of these technologies at the firm level. Existing empirical work primarily uses statistics aggregated by industry or country, which precludes in-depth studies regarding the conditions under which robotics and AI complement or are substituting for labor. Further, firm-level data would also allow for studies of effects on firms of different sizes, the role of market structure in technology adoption, the impact on entrepreneurs and innovators, and the effect on regional economies amongst others. We highlight several ways that such firm-level data could be collected and used by academics, policymakers and other researchers.


We examine the interaction between foreign aid and binding borrowing constraint for a recipient country. We also analyze how these two instruments aect economic growth via non-linear relationships. First of all, we develop a two-country, two-period trade-theoretic model to develop testable hypotheses and then we use dynamic panel analysis to test those hypotheses empirically. Our main ndings are that: (i) better access to international credit for a recipient country reduces the amount of foreign aid it receives, and (ii) there is a critical level of international nancial transfer, and the marginal eect of foreign aid is larger than that of loans if and only if the transfer (loans or foreign aid) is below this critical level.


A series of 20 patients suffering from migraine were submitted to a battery of tests. The results of two Intelligence tests, Matrices and Wechsler-Bellevue scale, and of the Rorschach test were discussed. Matrices and Wechsler-Bellevue scale were found to agree reasonably well. The I.Q. distribution showed that migraine was not confined to people who are intellectually above average, but that its incidence might increase in the higher I.Q. ranges. The results of the Wechsler-Bellevue test were compared with those of a control group and it appeared that, on the whole, the migraine group functioned well intellectually. The Rorschach test results were compared with those of a group of duodenal ulcer patients. The migraine group showed itself better adjusted. No uniform personality pattern was found for the whole group. Four patients showed features which might be termed hysterical. Rorschach signs which are usually taken to denote an obsessional personality make-up were not greatly in evidence. For the majority within the migraine group the emotional life seemed to be under rational control. The main inferences were that there was a striving to remain in command of a situation and that loss of command and interference with rhythm resulted in tension which might, conceivably, be resolved in a migraine attack.


The barotropic Rossby wave field in the North Atlantic Ocean is studied in an eddy‐resolving ocean model simulation. The meandering model Gulf Stream radiates barotropic Rossby waves southward through preferred corridors defined by topographic features. The smoother region between the Bermuda Rise and the mid‐Atlantic Ridge is a particularly striking corridor of barotropic wave radiation in the 20–50 day period band. Barotropic Rossby waves are also preferentially excited at higher frequencies over the Bermuda Rise, suggesting resonant excitation of topographic Rossby normal modes. The prevalence of these radiated waves suggests that they may be an important energy sink for the equilibrium state of the Gulf Stream.


Environmental health problems have become increasingly complex. Climate change, increased urbanization or exposure to electromagnetic fields are highly divergent examples of issues about which no scientific consensus exists, for which no straightforward solutions are available and which are embedded in a wide societal context. It is challenging to assess the health impacts of such so-called "systemic risks". Integrated Environmental Health Impact Assessment (IEHIA) has been proposed as a set of methods to deal with systemic risks in environmental health. IEHIA includes, amongst others, methods to take account of complexities and uncertainties, potential indirect effects, effects in the far future, and stakeholder perspectives. This thesis presents some methods that can be applied in IEHIA, illustrated with example applications. As such, it makes insights from other disciplines relevant and practicable for environmental health researchers. The methods that are being described include (1) the use of conceptual frameworks, (2) the selection and presentation of indicators, (3) dealing with uncertainties and (4) methods for expert elicitation. (1) Conceptual frameworks are –often graphical- representations of the issues that are being assessed and the relationships between the various elements in IEHIA. These frameworks may for example show the links between the driving forces of environmental problems, the exposure in the population and the subsequent health or economical effects. We distinguish different types of conceptual frameworks and illustrate their potential uses in IEHIA. (2) Indicators are used to communicate the results of IEHIA. They present the relevant outcomes of an assessment in a clear and effective way. This thesis provides guidelines for the selection and presentation of indicators. (3) Uncertainty is an important and often partly ignored element in assessments. Uncertainties can be expressed quantitative of qualitative, derive from natural variation or lack of knowledge, involve the boundaries of the assessment or a specific model parameter, etc. A typology of uncertainty is presented which can be used to characterize different types of uncertainties. It points into directions for dealing with these uncertainties and is illustrated using examples from environmental burden of disease studies. (4) Expert elicitation can be a tool to deal with uncertainties, in case no further empirical evidence can easily be derived. We describe a structured stepwise approach towards organizing a formal expert elicitation. Customization of these steps for specific applications is necessary, based on the types of uncertainties considered, the intended use of the elicited information, and the available resources. The expert elicitation procedure is applied in the context of impact assessment of ultrafine particles (UFP), the smallest fraction of air pollution. Opinions of twelve leading European scientists have been elicited about (1) the health effects considered to be causally related to exposure to UFP; (2) the potential causal mechanisms that underlie UFP-related cardiovascular effects and (3) the concentration-response functions that quantitatively describe the effect of UFP on a variety of health endpoints. Finally, all the methods outlined above are discussed in the context of the need for further development of IEHIA methods and the limitations and potential benefits of the methodology.


The Nallamalai Fold Belt comprises late Palaeoproterozoic to Mesoproterozoic sedimentary rocks deformed into a fold-and-thrust belt along the eastern side of Peninsular India. The age of thin-skinned thrusting, folding and low- to medium-grade metamorphism in the belt is unclear, with estimates ranging from Palaeoproterozoic to early Palaeozoic. A possible Pan-African age for thrusting has previously been inferred from Rb–Sr dating of muscovite in shear zones from the adjacent Krishna Province (501 – 474 Ma) but these structures are separated from the Nallamalai Fold Belt by a major thrust. Here, we present in situ U–Pb dating of metamorphic monazite within a low-grade metasedimentary rock in the Nallamalai Fold Belt at the Mangampeta barite mine. Our date of 531 ± 7 Ma for the monazite is the first direct evidence that west- to NW-directed nappe stacking, folding and low-grade metamorphism in the fold belt are related to Pan-African incorporation of India into the Gondwana supercontinent.


Researchers in the field of study abroad have focused on language, identity construction, and motivation, yet few studies have shown its lasting impact on participants. This article contains the reflections of two individuals who took part in studies abroad and remain engaged in multicultural education and in the instruction and research of second language acquisition. We review the literature in the area of study abroad, then discuss the suitability of using a collaborative autoethnography (CAE) approach, defined as "the study of self collectively" (CHANG, WAMBURA NGUNJIRI & HERNANDEZ, 2013, p.11) for this project. We analyzed our data, which are in the form of reflective narratives and archived e-mails, through open coding, based on grounded theory methodology (see CORBIN & STRAUSS, 2015). Four major themes surfaced from our data analysis: language and culture; academics; identity; and lasting impact. Finally, we compare our experiences, identify some of the lasting effects of our time abroad, and consider both the practical and theoretical implications of the research. This research has been useful for us to understand CAE and the lasting effects of study abroad experiences on students who become language teachers. URN: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs1602238


In this paper, we present a novel approach for medical synonym extraction. We aim to integrate the term embedding with the medical domain knowledge for healthcare applications. One advantage of our method is that it is very scalable. Experiments on a dataset with more than 1M term pairs show that the proposed approach outperforms the baseline approaches by a large margin.


Agriculture in Zimbabwean is now predominantly driven by smallholder farmers. 90% of the farming land is in the hands of smallholder farmers practicing mixed crops and livestock production systems. Approximately, 20% of the total area in the country lies in high rainfall regions of between 700-1050 mm/year, where the potential for rain-fed agriculture is high. Rainfall in the bulk of the country (80%) is in the range of 650-<450mm/yr. The bulk of the land falls in areas where there are incidences of drought and dry spells and the potential for rain-fed agriculture is limited (FAO, 2006). The predominance of rain-fed crop production makes the country vulnerable to the adverse effects of rainfall variations and climate change, which, for example, may reduce production of rain-fed crops and contribute to increased food insecurity. There is evidence of the synergies between economic performance, droughts and agricultural growth. Unpredictable climatic variables combined with biological factors (for example, pests and diseases), and market variables undermine crop production. Climate change poses risks for food security, health and nutrition in Zimbabwe due inter alia to threats from post-harvest losses (PHL) and production challenges related to the climate.


This paper deals with the problematic nature of the transition between education and the workplace. A
smooth transition between education and the workplace requires learners to develop an integrated
knowledge base, but this is problematic as most educational programmes offer knowledge and experiences
in a fragmented manner, scattered over a variety of subjects, modules and (work) experiences. To
overcome this problem, we propose a design approach and shifting the educational focus of attention from
individual learners to learning environments. The broader notion of learning environments facilitates
transitions by establishing horizontal connections between schools and the workplace.
The main argument of this paper is that combining or connecting aspects of school-based settings only
is not sufficient to ensure learners will develop an integrated knowledge base. The concept and examples of
"hybrid learning environment" show how formal, school-based learning and workplace experiences can be
closely connected. The paper offers a framework of four coherent perspectives that can help to understand
the complex nature of such environments and to design hybrid learning environments: the "agency
perspective", the "spatial perspective", the "temporal perspective", and the "instrumental perspective". The
framework is applied to three cases taken from vocational education in the Netherlands to describe what
hybrid learning environments look like in contemporary educational practice.


This article examines a change under way in French in contact with English in Quebec, namely the variation among on 'one', tu 'you', and vous 'you' to express indefinite reference. The variationist analysis of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Quebec French data highlights how the usage of second-person pronouns as indefinite pronouns, although frequent in a twentieth-century sociolinguistic corpus, was rare in the corpus representing an earlier stage of the language and a less intense contact situation. Analysis of the linguistic behavior of bilingual Anglo-Montrealers reveals that their usage of the second-person indefinite not only goes in the same direction as the change under way in favor of second-person pronouns observed for L1 speakers at the end of the twentieth century, but actually advances the change in their own repertoire.


A History of Trigonometry Education in the United States: 1776-1900 Jenna Van Sickle This dissertation traces the history of the teaching of elementary trigonometry in United States colleges and universities from 1776 to 1900. This study analyzes textbooks from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, reviews in contemporary periodicals, course catalogs, and secondary sources. Elementary trigonometry was a topic of study in colleges throughout this time period, but the way in which trigonometry was taught and defined changed drastically, as did the scope and focus of the subject. Because of advances in analytic trigonometry by Leonhard Euler and others in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the trigonometric functions came to be defined as ratios, rather than as line segments. This change came to elementary trigonometry textbooks beginning in antebellum America and the ratios came to define trigonometric functions in elementary trigonometry textbooks by the end of the nineteenth century. During this time period, elementary trigonometry textbooks grew to have a much more comprehensive treatment of the subject and considered trigonometric functions in many different ways. In the late eighteenth century, trigonometry was taught as a topic in a larger mathematics course and was used only to solve triangles for applications in surveying and navigation. Textbooks contained few pedagogical tools and only the most basic of trigonometric formulas. By the end of the nineteenth century, trigonometry was taught as its own course that covered the topic extensively with many applications to real life. Textbooks were full of pedagogical tools. The path that the teaching of trigonometry took through the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries did not always move in a linear fashion. Sometimes trigonometry education stayed the same for a long time and then was suddenly changed, but other times changes happened more gradually. There were many international influences, and there were many influential Americans and influential American institutions that changed the course of trigonometry instruction in this country. This dissertation follows the path of those changes from 1776 to 1900. After 1900, trigonometry instruction became a topic of secondary education rather than higher education.


Diastasis of the rectus is defined as the separation of the midline or alba line, which originates in a laxity of the interlocking fibers from the aponeurosis of both rectus muscles. At present, its surgical correction continues to be discussed. However, there is a multiplicity of factors that justify it.


The forward-backward method with a novel spectral acceleration algorithm (FB/NSA) has been shown to be a highly efficient O(Ntot) iterative method of moments, where Ntot is the total number of unknowns to be solved, for the computation of electromagnetic (EM) wave scattering from both one-dimensional and two-dimensional (2-D) rough surfaces. The efficiency of the method makes studies of backscattering enhancement from moderately rough impedance surfaces at large incident angles tractable. Variations in the characteristics of backscattering enhancement with incident angle, surface impedance, polarization, and surface statistics are investigated by use of the 2-D FB/NSA method combined with parallel computing techniques. The surfaces considered are Gaussian random processes with an isotropic Gaussian spectrum and root-mean-square surface heights and slopes ranging from 0.5 lambda to lambda and from 0.5 to 1.0, respectively, where lambda is the EM wavelength in free space. Incident angles ranging from normal incidence up to 70 degrees are considered in this study. It is found that backscattering enhancement depends strongly on all parameters of interest. America


The use of machine learning (ML) in smart building applications is reviewed in this paper. We split existing solutions into two main classes, occupant-centric vs. energy/devices centric. The first class groups solutions that use ML for aspects related to the occupants, including (1) occupancy estimation and identification, (2) activity recognition, and (3) estimating preferences and behavior. The second class groups solutions that use ML to estimate aspects related either to energy or devices. They are divided into three categories, (1) energy profiling and demand estimation, (2) appliances profiling and fault detection, and (3) inference on sensors. Solutions in each category are presented, discussed and compared, as well as open perspectives and research trends. Compared to related state-of-the-art survey papers, the contribution herein is to provide a comprehensive and holistic review from the ML perspectives rather than architectural and technical aspects of existing building management systems. This is by considering all types of ML tools, buildings, and several categories of applications, and by structuring the taxonomy accordingly. The paper ends with a summary discussion of the presented works, with focus on lessons learned, challenges, open and future directions of research in this field.


A random walk-like model is considered to discuss statistical aspects of tournaments. The model is applied to soccer leagues with emphasis on the scores. This competitive system was computationally simulated and the results are compared with empirical data from the English, the German and the Spanish leagues and showed a good agreement with them. The present approach enabled us to characterize a diffusion where the scores are not normally distributed, having a short and asymmetric tail extending towards more positive values. We argue that this non-Gaussian behavior is related with the difference between the teams and with the asymmetry of the scores system. In addition, we compared two tournament systems: the all-play-all and the elimination tournaments. PACS. 89.75.-k Complex systems – 89.20.-a Interdisciplinary applications of physics


Worldwide, more than 70 million people are infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV), which is a leading cause of hepatocellular carcinoma and liver transplantation. Despite the development of potent direct acting antivirals (DAAs) for HCV treatment, a vaccine is urgently needed due to the high cost of treatment and the possibility of reinfection after cure. Induction of multiple broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) that target distinct epitopes on the HCV envelope proteins is one approach to vaccine development. However, antigenic sites targeted by bNAbs in individuals with spontaneous control of HCV have not been fully defined. In this study, we characterize 13 monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) from a single person who cleared an HCV infection without treatment, and we identify 3 new sites targeted by neutralizing antibodies. The sites targeted by these MAbs could inform HCV vaccine development. ABSTRACT Increasing evidence indicates that broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) play an important role in immune-mediated control of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, but the relative contribution of neutralizing antibodies targeting antigenic sites across the HCV envelope (E1 and E2) proteins is unclear. Here, we isolated thirteen E1E2-specific monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) from B cells of a single HCV-infected individual who cleared one genotype 1a infection and then became persistently infected with a second genotype 1a strain. These MAbs bound six distinct discontinuous antigenic sites on the E1 protein, the E2 protein, or the E1E2 heterodimer. Three antigenic sites, designated AS108, AS112 (an N-terminal E1 site), and AS146, were distinct from previously described antigenic regions (ARs) 1 to 5 and E1 sites. Antibodies targeting four sites (AR3, AR4-5, AS108, and AS146) were broadly neutralizing. These MAbs also displayed distinct patterns of relative neutralizing potency (i.e., neutralization profiles) across a panel of diverse HCV strains, which led to complementary neutralizing breadth when they were tested in combination. Overall, this study demonstrates that HCV bNAb epitopes are not restricted to previously described antigenic sites, expanding the number of sites that could be targeted for vaccine development. IMPORTANCE Worldwide, more than 70 million people are infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV), which is a leading cause of hepatocellular carcinoma and liver transplantation. Despite the development of potent direct acting antivirals (DAAs) for HCV treatment, a vaccine is urgently needed due to the high cost of treatment and the possibility of reinfection after cure. Induction of multiple broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) that target distinct epitopes on the HCV envelope proteins is one approach to vaccine development. However, antigenic sites targeted by bNAbs in individuals with spontaneous control of HCV have not been fully defined. In this study, we characterize 13 monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) from a single person who cleared an HCV infection without treatment, and we identify 3 new sites targeted by neutralizing antibodies. The sites targeted by these MAbs could inform HCV vaccine development.


Keratitis with endophthalmitis of the right eye occurred in a 78-year-female following a complicated cataract surgery. Prompt intravitreal vancomycin and ceftazidime with topical fortified tobramycin and cefazolin treatments were started. The corneal, aqueous and vitreous cultures grew a Burkholderia cepacia complex (Bcc) strain on the fourth day. Restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis of the recA amplicon revealed B. cepacia genomovar I. The organism was found to be susceptible to ceftazidime, ciprofloxacin and ofloxacin. Topical ciprofloxacin was given immediately. At day 10, the pain relieved and the clinical condition of the patient improved with resolution of the purulent discharge, severe circumcorneal congestion and chemosis. The size of the corneal abscess and anterior chamber exudation decreased. The Bcc should be included among the bacterial species that may cause keratitis following intraocular surgeries.


The use of causal rules, or fluent dependency constraints, has proven to provide a versatile means of dealing with the ramification problem. In this paper, we show how fluent dependency constraints, together with the use of durational fluents, can be used to deal with problems associated with action qualification. We provide both a weak and a strong form of qualification and demonstrate the approach using an action scenario which combines solutions to the frame, ramification and qualification problems in the context of actions with duration, concurrent actions, nondeterministic actions and the use of both Boolean and non-Boolean fluents. The circumscription policy used for the combined problems is reducible to the first-order case. In addition, we demonstrate the use of a research tool, called VITAL (VIsualization of Temporal Action Logics), for querying and visualizing action scenarios.


T he science and politics of embryonic stem cells (ESCs) in the United States form an extraordinary tapestry, in which scientific and political threads are delicately intertwined. In this issue, we have two carefully presented views on the subject. On p. [911][1], the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) describes the various programs underway at his institutes to classify, evaluate, and share the human embryonic cell lines that were approved for federal funding by President Bush on 9 August 2001. And on p. [913][2], leading investigators who work with stem cells lay out some of the scientific considerations that must underlie further research based on these cells. Their essay concludes with a recommendation that the United States establish a human ESC repository, like the Stem Cell Bank proposed in the United Kingdom.

Both entries delicately avoid discussing two real political problems. First, much of the scientific community remains unconvinced that the cell lines now available meet research needs. Soon after the presidential order specifying that only cell lines generated before the magic date of 9 August 2001 could be approved for federally funded research, NIH scientists announced that over 70 different lines met that criterion. NIH testimony before Congress in April, however, has indicated that of those, only 11 are now available. The recommendations of the scientists clearly imply that work with new lines will be needed. Second, the stem cell issue has unfortunately been entangled with the issue of cloning, with the result that the politics has tended to take over the science. Congress and the public are already confused enough about cloning; to put stem cells into the mix only compounds the problem.

Cloning actually has no necessary relationship to ESCs, which are usually isolated from excess embryos employed in in vitro fertilization procedures. These cells are clones of one another, but no scientist cloned them! Neither their creation nor their use necessarily involves nuclear transfer, although there are certain purposes for which that technique will be important in the future. What concerns the scientific community now is how access to new lines of stem cells can be arranged.

Why are new lines needed? The approved human ESCs have all been cultured in the presence of mouse cells—called "feeder cells"—that apparently supply needed growth factors. It is believed that contamination from mouse viruses or proteins may make such cells unsuitable for introduction into humans for therapeutic purposes. Fortunately, human ESCs can now be grown and caused to differentiate without the mouse feeder cells. As often happens in research, work done in the United States using nonfederal funds, and in other nations that don't have restrictions like ours, has brought new methods and skills to the task.

It is plainly not sound policy to retain the current restriction on work with human ESCs. Some have argued that for therapeutic purposes, adult stem cells (cells isolated from embryos in which tissues have already undergone some differentiation) can be used instead. Such cells can produce tissues of their own type, and possibly others by a process that developmental biologists call "transdifferentiation." That has been a topic for lively scientific debate. Not in debate, however, is whether ESCs can be made to differentiate into any type of adult tissue. They can. In contrast, the search for adult stem cells has produced useful progenitors for some tissues but not for others. Further study on the capacity of adult stem cells, including the transdifferentiation question, is needed.

But in the meantime, we will need ESCs, especially if we hope to use tissues made in culture to remedy certain human diseases and disorders. For that, we will need to have embryonic cell lines derived from persons with the genetic constitution corresponding to those conditions, as Senator Alan Spector (R-Pa.) has urged upon President Bush. In this respect, the problem with the existing cell lines is their lack of genetic diversity. That provides yet another rationale for removing the obstacles to making new lines. Political comfort might be taken from the situation in the United Kingdom, where stem cell research proceeds apace with the blessing of a friendly government. Unless U.S. policy changes, more cell biologists here may decide it's so friendly they will go and work there.

 [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.1084819
 [2]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.1082940


Integration of Pneumatic Fracturing to Enhance In Situ Bioremediatiors by Conan Dante Fitzgerald The purpose of this thesis was to study the anticipated benefits of integrating pneumatic fracturing with in situ bioremediation. Since pneumatic fracturing increases subsurface air flow in low permeability formations, it has the potential to overcome many of the major limiting factors of microbial growth and activity. A new innovation called pneumatic bio-injection can further enhance in situ bioremediation by efficiently dispersing biological solutions, including microorganisms, into a formation. Bench scale experiments were conducted to examine the ability of microorganisms to survive the pressures and stresses associated with pneumatic injection. Tests conducted at pressures ranging from 60 to 500 psi showed consistent survivability under varied conditions. In fact, many tests showed an increase in microbial growth following pressurization, which was found to be a result of the superior dispersion produced by the injection system. Full scale tests indicated that the prototype pneumatic bio-injection system will disperse a finely-textured mist into the fracture network at flow rates up to 4.5 GPM. A full field pilot demonstration was implemented for an industrial site underlain by petroleum contaminated clayey silt. The characterization and preparation phases are described including the initial pneumatic fracturing activities. Subsurface permeabilites increased 35 times as result of fracturing, and mass removal through vapor extraction for the target contaminants increased 50 to 75 times. INTEGRATION OF PNEUMATIC FRACTURING TO ENHANCE IN SITU BIOREMEDIATION


Thin hard layers deposited on cutting tools known as 'coatings' serve as a protective barrier against abrasion and adhesion wear, while also protecting against thermal and chemical processes that deteriorate the cutting performance of the tool. Coating properties including non-zero thickness, surface roughness, and chemical composition affect the cutting process significantly when compared to uncoated tools. The mechanical properties of coatings can be compared using specific, standardized measurement methods that provide indirect information about the behavior of the coating in a given application of the machining. In practice, it is necessary to evaluate the cutting ability by experimental testing of a given combination of cutting tool, workpiece, cutting conditions and cutting environment. This article discusses various experimental procedures that help to recognize the suitability of a coating for a particular application. These procedures can be applied alone, or in combination, as required by the cutting process. Each of these procedures have associated advantages and disadvantages, as described in this paper.


Being a lady who prefers to be chauffeured around whilst wearing six-inch Christian Louboutins, especially in traffic, the thought of riding a scooter or even learning how to 'work' one never crossed my mind. I had always had an idea of what Vespa stood for - a lifestyle brand that embodied metropolitan culture and an Italian icon of panache - but the actual riding component did not form part of my vocabulary nor my understanding of the benefits of riding a 'two-wheel type of transport', where the chances of me getting wet were the opposite of 'slim to none'. However, after a memorable (and entertaining) brand experience with my colleagues Kerryn Le Cordeur and Sabrina Scherf, my unenthusiastic desire to own a Vespa speedily changed.


The paper analyses the land use behaviour of Scottish land managers and the factors influencing it in the current context of the EU rural land use policies. The analysis employs a frequently used behavioural economics method, namely structural equation modelling (SEM). Central to the empirical analysis in this paper is a cross-section database containing data collected in May to June 2009 through telephone interviews of 600 land managers in Scotland. The model tests and estimates the relationships between land use behaviour, i.e., behavioural intentions to change the size of business/holding, and several of its a priori determinants found significant in the scientific literature. The results indicate that a stronger propensity to change size of their businesses is exhibited by younger land managers who intend to pass their land on to family, with larger land size and stronger attitudes towards increasing it, with lower percentage of their income made up from Government support, who are less likely to have perceived changes in regulation and input/output prices as having an impact on their business, who discuss and plan changes in size of business with their banks/building societies, and frequently access sources of information to help with their strategic decisions.


ABSTRACT Background: We assessed the association between medical illness burden and anxiety symptoms, hypothesizing that greater illness burden would be associated with symptoms of anxiety, and that optimism would buffer, while pessimism would exacerbate, this relationship. Methods: We recruited 109 older adults, aged 65 years and older, from primary care and geriatric clinics to participate in this cross-sectional, interview-based study. Participants completed the Snaith Clinical Anxiety Scale and the Life Orientation Test – Revised, a measure of optimism/pessimism. A physician-rated measure of illness burden, the Cumulative Illness Rating Scale, was also administered. Results: Supporting our hypotheses, greater levels of overall optimism weakened, and pessimism strengthened, the association between illness burden and anxiety symptoms, after accounting for the effects of demographic, cognitive, functional, and psychological covariates. Conclusions: Bolstering positive and reducing negative future expectancies may aid in the prevention of psychological distress in medically ill older adults. Therapeutic strategies to enhance optimism and reduce pessimism, which may be well-suited to primary care and other medical settings, and to which older adults may be particularly amenable, may contribute to reduced health-related anxiety.


The study empirically examined whether stock market liberalization improves the functioning of domestic stock market and accelerates economic growth in Kenya. The study also assessed the kind of relationship between liberalization, stock market performance and economic growth in Kenya. Liberalization was assessed by stock market capitalization while turnover was used to asses stock market performance. The study used quarterly time series data collected through secondary sources and covered a period of 22 years from January, 1991 to December, 2012. The study utilized econometric techniques of Vector autoregressive and Granger Causality Tests to investigate the relationships. The results displayed a one way causality that runs from stock market development to economic growth. The results also show that stock market liberalization indirectly impacts on economic growth through investment. The study found that stock market liberalization has a significant positive impact on the economic growth in Kenya.


Existing qualitative studies into the value of 'participation in the arts' tend to be from a traditional empirical-sociological perspective and do not take into account the value of these projects as part of urban studies strategies, or the art historical concerns and contexts of art practice. Other studies are located from within an art history discipline where scholarship is focused on participatory art practices that accomplish a significant work of art, discounting the social relations attained during the project and resorting to a traditional art historical analysis of discrete objects. We believe that these approaches fail to capture the complexity, significance and value of social art practices. Moreover many interdisciplinary projects look at the question of value in participatory artworks by proposing measuring tools or evaluation research, which we think tend towards 'quantifying' value, rather than mapping the diversity of meanings the idea of 'value' could have. In this paper we claim that is crucial to understand artworks as having various forms of value depending on their context and function.


Although the links between stratospheric dynamics, climate and weather have been demonstrated, direct observations of stratospheric winds are lacking, in particular at altitudes above 30 km. We report observations of winds between 8 and 0.01 hPa (similar to 35-80 km) from October 2009 to April 2010 by the Superconducting Submillimeter-Wave Limb-Emission Sounder (SMILES) on the International Space Station. The altitude range covers the region between 35-60 km where previous space-borne wind instruments show a lack of sensitivity. Both zonal and meridional wind components were obtained, though not simultaneously, in the latitude range from 30 degrees S to 55 degrees N and with a single profile precision of 7-9 ms(-1) between 8 and 0.6 hPa and better than 20 ms(-1) at altitudes above. The vertical resolution is 5-7 km except in the upper part of the retrieval range (10 km at 0.01 hPa). In the region between 1-0.05 hPa, an absolute value of the mean difference 5 ms(-1)). In the mesosphere, SMILES and ECMWF zonal winds exhibit large differences (>20 ms(-1)), especially in the tropics. We illustrate our results by showing daily and monthly zonal wind variations, namely the semi-annual oscillation in the tropics and reversals of the flow direction between 50-55 degrees N during sudden stratospheric warmings. The daily comparison with ECMWF winds reveals that in the beginning of February, a significantly stronger zonal westward flow is measured in the tropics at 2 hPa compared to the flow computed in the analysis (difference of similar to 20 ms(-1)). The results show that the comparison between SMILES and ECMWF winds is not only relevant for the quality assessment of the new SMILES winds, but it also provides insights on the quality of the ECMWF winds themselves. Although the instrument was not specifically designed for measuring winds, the results demonstrate that space-borne sub-mm wave radiometers have the potential to provide good quality data for improving the stratospheric winds in atmospheric models.


Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) provide the service of monitoring and sensing physical environment. With the pervasive applications of WSNs in various fields, the increasing network scale brings considerable challenges in many aspects, from high-level applications to low-level networking and communication. In this thesis, we try to understand large-scale WSNs from geometric perspective. In particular, by exploiting the multi-fold geometric properties of WSNs (e.g., sensor nodes' locations and connectivity as well as their unique sensing/communicating models), we can build geometric models and apply geometric algorithms to address perplexing problems of large-scale WSNs. In contrast to typical geometric techniques which require global information as input, we design localized algorithms which can be performed by individual sensor nodes in a distributed manner using only locally available information, to benefit large-scale WSNs in terms of time cost, system adaptivity and robustness, energy efficiency, as well as network performance. In many applications, a large-scale WSN is deployed to monitor and survey timevariant events, which demands a fast boundary detection technique. Considering sensor nodes may be deployed in a 3D volume, the first focus of this thesis is boundary detection for large-scale 3D WSNs. We model a 3D WSN as point cloud sampled from a hypothetic 3D volume. Borrowing the idea of direct visibility, we present an on-line boundary detection algorithm to identify the sensor nodes on the boundary surfaces of the 3D volume using only local position information. Additionally, we propose a localized parametrization algorithm to regulate the detected arbitrarily shaped network boundaries into spheres, thereby supporting other network functionalities, e.g., distinguishing internal boundaries from the external one, and geographic routing. We evaluate our strategies of boundary detection and regulation with extensive implementations and simulations.


(THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO THE WORLD OF BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY) Grab this GREAT physical book now at a limited time discounted price! Youre about to discover how to... This book covers the exciting topic of blockchain technology. It will teach you what blockchain technology is, how it works and how it could change your life completely. Now, you probably have heard something about Bitcoin. Do you know exactly what it is though? Bitcoin is interesting, and we will give you some information about it here. What is more interesting is the underlying infrastructure that makes Bitcoin work. The blockchain is so much more than just what makes Bitcoin work, though, it is an entirely new way of storing and securing data. Blockchain makes it possible to keep your data out of the hands of hackers in a way that you would never have dreamed of. Were going to go through that so that you understand precisely how it does this. We will then also discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the blockchain, and what the future looks like for it. We are also going to go through what Ethereum is and how it relates to the blockchain. We will look at how Ethereum makes your life easier with smart contracts and how it is fostering creativity by facilitating the development of Dapps. Here Is What You'll Learn About... (What Is The Blockchain?) (How The Blockchain Works)(The History Of The Blockchain & Bitcoin)(The Advantages Of Blockchain Technology)(The Disadvantages Of Blockchain Technology)(Blockchains Impact On The Finance Industry)(Ethereum, Smart Contracts, And Decentralized Apps)(The Future Of Blockchain)Much, much more! Order your copy of this fantastic book today!


Although conservation efforts have sometimes succeeded in meeting environmental goals at the expense of equity considerations, the changing context of conservation and a growing body of evidence increasingly suggest that equity considerations should be integrated into conservation planning and implementation. However, this approach is often perceived to be at odds with the prevailing focus on economic efficiency that characterizes many payment for ecosystem services (PES) schemes. Drawing from examples across the literature, we show how the equity impacts of PES can create positive and negative feedbacks that influence ecological outcomes. We caution against equity-blind PES, which overlooks these relationships as a result of a primary and narrow focus on economic efficiency. We call for further analysis and better engagement between the social and ecological science communities to understand the relationships and trade-offs among efficiency, equity, and ecological outcomes.


Our aim in this paper is to obtain a measure of the potential benefit of reducing the likelihood of economic crises. We define an economic crisis as a Depression-style collapse of economic activity. Based on the observed frequency of Depression-like events, we estimate this likelihood to be approximately once every 83 years for the US. Even for this small probability of transiting into a Depression-like state, the welfare gain from setting it to zero can range between 1.05 percent and 6.59 percent of annual consumption, in perpetuity. These large gains arise because even though the probability of encountering a Depressionlike state is small, it is highly persistent once it occurs. We also find that for some calibrations of the model, uninsured unemployment risk contributes significantly to the size of these gains.


The ability to engage in rugby contact is a highly demanding sports skill. In an 80 min match, these contact skills occur at different frequencies, have distinct injury risk profiles and each has specific physical and technical requirements. Therefore, developing effective contact skills is essential for safe participation and optimal performance. Over the past decade, knowledge has been gained about the dynamic nature of contact, the physical match demands, fitness conditioning requirements, contact injury mechanisms, technical requirements and how to design training for open skills in order for it to effectively transfer to match play. Most of this work is intended to guide the design and development of contact training programmes. However, the translation of this research into practice has been slow. The Knowledge Transfer Scheme aims to bridge the gap between science and practice, by solving problems in practice using the available scientific evidence. Given the current available contact skill evidence, in combination with the literature on skill development and training prescription, it is reasonable to state that we can adequately prepare players of different ages and levels for rugby contact. This discussion piece proposes that rugby needs a contact skill-training programme that includes all contact forms—ruck, scrum, maul, line-out, tackling and ball carrying into contact. The programme should detail the frequency of contact, intensity, contact type, timing, conditions and number of sessions. The programme should be aimed at all ages and playing levels, from the developing school player to the elite player, and account for the player's …


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Before Europeans arrived, the native Americans burned chaparral brush-lands to drive out wildlife in hunting, and to increase accessibility to the land. Now chaparral is often converted to grassland to help control wildfire, increase feed for livestock and wildlife, and increase water yield, as well as to improve accessibility. Reduced sheet erosion is often another benefit.


Obesity is a large and growing problem in Australia and many countries. The health and economic consequences associated with obesity can lead to increased costs and reduced welfare for society as a whole, and also tend to disproportionately affect those who are already socioeconomically disadvantaged. Research into the underlying economic determinants and consequences of obesity is important for developing evidence-based policy to address these issues. This thesis investigates some of the determinants and consequences of obesity in Australia from an economic perspective. Firstly, it examines the influence of an individual's value of time (measured by labour force participation, employment hours and wage rates) on their probability of weight gain and obesity. Secondly, it investigates the health care cost implications of childhood overweight and obesity. The existing literature has paid little attention to the role of the value of time in determining obesity, particularly for women, and very few studies have examined this relationship using Australian data. This thesis contributes to the literature by using Australian panel data and appropriate econometric techniques to examine more closely the influence of labour force participation and work hours on weight gain among young and middle-aged women. It also determines the impact of having a higher value of time on BMI and obesity, separately by gender and by socioeconomic subgroup. The findings indicate that there may be value in preventive efforts that focus on reducing the time costs of maintaining a healthy body weight. The literature on childhood obesity is growing, yet little is known about the health care costs associated with obesity that are incurred during childhood. This thesis uses individual level data that is linked to Australian Medicare records to provide significant new information on the impact of being overweight at age 4 to 5 on publicly-funded health care costs during childhood. It also explores the dynamics behind childhood overweight, including duration and timing of becoming overweight, in relation to health care costs. The findings suggest that early prevention of childhood obesity in children as young as 4 or 5 years may have significant economic implications. In summary, this thesis makes an important contribution to the understanding of the economic determinants and consequences of obesity in some key population groups, including children and young women of Australia.


Recommender systems are being widely applied in many E-commerce sites to suggest products, services, and information items to potential users. Collaborative filtering systems, the most successful recommender system technology to date, help people make choices based on the opinions of other people. While collaborative filtering systems have been a substantial success, there are several problems that researchers and commercial applications have identified: the early rater problem, the sparsity problem, and the large scale problem. Moreover, existing collaborative filtering systems do not consider data recency. For this reason, if a user's preferences have changed over time, the systems might not recognize it quickly. This thesis studies how to apply data recency to collaborative filtering systems to get more predictive accuracy. We define the data recency problem as the negative impact of old data on the predictive accuracy of collaborative filtering systems. In order to mitigate this shortcoming, the combinations of time-based forgetting mechanisms, pruning and non-pruning strategies and linear and kernel functions, are utilized to apply weights. A clustering technique is employed to detect the user's changing preferences. We apply our research approach to the DeliBook dataset. The goal of our experiments is to show that our algorithm that incorporates temporal factors provides better recommendations than existing methods.


ABSTRACT The paper analyzes the effect of financial, knowledge, demand, market structure and regulation barriers to innovation on firms' economic performance. It contributes to the literature on barriers to innovation by accounting for the heterogeneous effects that each barrier has on firms across the productivity distribution. We do so by employing both quantile regression techniques and matching estimators on this UK CIS panel 2002–2010 merged with the Business Structure Database. While we find evidence that both the cost and also the availability of finance negatively affect productivity across the whole distribution, the lack of qualified personnel mostly hinders high productivity firms. Moreover, quantile regression reveals some interesting variation in effect sizes across the (conditional) productivity distribution.


Four en echelon northeast-trending structures, including southeast-dipping monoclines and northwest-dipping, high-angle reverse faults, have been mapped along the inner edge of the Coastal Plain in northeastern Virginia–an area generally considered to be undeformed. Although displacements are small (15 to 60 m), the structures markedly affect the present distribution and thickness of Coastal Plain sediments. Structure-contour maps on Cretaceous and Paleocene lithostratigraphic units show that the amount of displacement on the structures increases downward, indicating recurrent movement. The major deformation took place in the Cretaceous and the middle(?) Tertiary, but some latest Tertiary or Quaternary movement is possible. The structures, herein named the Stafford fault system, extend for at least 56 km parallel to the Fall Line and the northeast-trending reach of the Potomac estuary. This relationship supports the hypothesis that the Fall Line and major river deflections along it have been tectonically influenced.


The aim of this paper is to investigate individual overconfidence on the Tunisian stock market. This was achieved by administrating a questionnaire and by collecting empirical evidence about Tunisian individual investors. The survey is for exploratory purpose and it is based on multiple factorial correspondence analyses. The results reveal that Tunisian investors suffer from the overconfidence bias. In fact, they are confident about their intuition; they consider themselves lucky and trade aggressively. Besides, they use different sources of information when they choose their stocks.


ABSTRACTThe article builds on the perceived gap between 'RRI in theory' and 'RRI in practice' and demonstrates the need for RRI training for different stakeholder groups so as to overcome this gap. The RRI Tools project has developed different kinds of materials and tools that can be used in RRI trainings. Based on the umbrella notion of RRI, as elaborated in the RRI Tools project which spans the six key dimensions of RRI, its process requirements, outcomes and stakeholders, the training illustrates exemplary exercises that would serve a different purpose: to raise awareness for RRI, to enable mutual understanding of different stakeholder groups' perception on RRI, to reflect on RRI and to implement RRI in daily practices. Experiences gained from the various training exercises are described, which result in recommendations and guidelines on how to set up a multi-stakeholder workshop in terms of setting, methodology, content and participants.


ABSTRACT Background: Acculturative stress among international students is a serious issue, resulting of linguistic and cultural differences in the host country. Levels of acculturative stress vary among different groups of international students who may encounter different problems. While international postgraduate students tend to take more stress from academic concerns, financial burdens as well as responsibility for family. Therefore, the aim of this study is to determine the acculturative stress level of international postgraduate students in Malaysia. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among the international postgraduate students in a public university in Malaysia, using multistage random sampling proportionate to the size from six faculties in the university. Data was collected using a pretested, self-administered questionnaire consisting of socio-demographic factors and Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) with 10 items. Data was analysed using IBM SPSS version 22.0. Descriptive analysis was used to determine the factors contributed to acculturative stress. Ρ value of less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Result: A total of 404 respondents were assessed in this study, with the response rate of 82.1%. The obtained data showed that the prevalence of moderate acculturative stress was 77.7%, with 5.2% high stress. Mean age of the respondents was 32 years, whereas the majority of respondents (75.7%) were male students. Respondents were mainly from Middle East (42.3%) and Africa (37.1%). There were 71.5% international students living without their spouses/ single/ alone and 28.5% accompanied by their family while studying at UPM. Conclusion: The findings of the study reveal that over four fifths of international postgraduate students studied were in moderate to high acculturative stress level. Female students, Christian religion group, and those who came from Middle East had more possibilities to experience higher levels of stress compared to other groups of international students. Keywords:  Acculturative stress, international students, postgraduate students, stress level, Malaysia


We analyze physical models accounting for deep-level conduction band transitions to describe impurity absorption spectra in tetrahedral-structured semiconductors. The investigations were carried out for ZnSe crystals doped with transition metals (Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni) from a vapor phase. It was shown that the impurities provide acceptor centers with ground state energy offset by 0.3-0.6 eV from the edge of the conduction band, forming long-wave bands in the absorption spectra of the materials studied.


This is a majestic collection of images from one of Japan's most important early photographers. Captivated in his youth by the new technology of photography, Kazumasa Ogawa (1860-1929) became one of the most enterprising and important early photographers, technicians, and printers in Japan. Born shortly before the Meiji era (1868-1912) and educated in both the US and Japan, Ogawa produced a range of illustrated books for the Western market. His work focused on traditional architecture, scenic views, and subjects associated with Japanese culture, such as national festivals, military tableaux, ritual customs, costumed geisha, and flowers. An original edition of Ogawa's 1896 book of hand-coloured collotype prints, titled "Some Japanese Flowers", in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum, is reproduced here in its entirety. These beautiful photographs feature flowers native to Japan, such as the lotus, several varieties of chrysanthemum, lily, and morning glory, as well as garden scenes. An essay traces Ogawa's distinguished career and describes the collotype process used to produce his exquisite flower images, collected here again for the first time since the late nineteenth century.


IP address blacklists are a useful source of information about repeat attackers. Such information can be used to prioritize which traffic to divert for deeper inspection (e.g., repeat offender traffic), or which traffic to serve first (e.g., traffic from sources that are not blacklisted). But blacklists also suffer from overspecialization – each list is geared towards a specific purpose – and they may be inaccurate due to misclassification or stale information. We propose BLAG, a system that evaluates and aggregates multiple blacklists feeds, producing a more useful, accurate and timely master blacklist, tailored to the specific customer network. BLAG uses a sample of the legitimate sources of the customer network's inbound traffic to evaluate the accuracy of each blacklist over regions of address space. It then leverages recommendation systems to select the most accurate information to aggregate into its master blacklist. Finally, BLAG identifies portions of the master blacklist that can be expanded into larger address regions (e.g. /24 prefixes) to uncover more malicious addresses with minimum collateral damage. Our evaluation of 157 blacklists of various attack types and three ground-truth datasets shows that BLAG achieves high specificity up to 99%, improves recall by up to 114 times compared to competing approaches, and detects attacks up to 13.7 days faster, which makes it a promising approach for blacklist generation.


Low-inductance solenoidal coils, which usually refer to the nonintersecting type and the braid type, have already been employed to build superconducting fault current limiters because of their fast recovery and low inductance characteristics. However, despite their usage there is still no systematical simulation work concerning the AC loss characteristics of the coils built with 2G high temperature superconducting tapes perhaps because of their complicated structure. In this paper, a new method is proposed to simulate both types of coils with 2D axisymmetric models solved by H formulation. Following the simulation work, AC losses of both types of low inductance solenoidal coils are compared numerically and experimentally, which verify that the model works well in simulating non-inductive coils. Finally, simulation works show that pitch has significant impact to AC loss of both types of coils and the inter-layer separation has different impact to the AC loss of braid type of coil in case of different applied currents. The model provides an effective tool for the design optimisation of SFCLs built with non-inductive solenoidal coils.


The study used farm level data collected from rain-fed and irrigated castor seed cultivators from three purposively selected districts namely Rewari, Sirsa and Hisar of Haryana on the basis of highest acreage under castor crop. From each selected district, two villages were selected purposively having large number of castor cultivators. Sixty castor cultivators were interacted to extract relevant information related to various energy utilized in castor seed production using survey method. The aim of this research is to determine the energy input and output involved in castor production in the Haryana. The average energy consumption of the farms investigated in this study is 11064.18 MJha-1 of the total energy, 23.67 per cent is direct and 56.56 per centwas indirect. Renewable energy accounts for 3.49% and energy usage efficiency is found to be 5.92. The total energy input into the production of one kilogram of average castor was estimated to be 8.55 MJ. The dominant contribution to input is energy in the form of nitrogen fertiliser (32.86%), followed by water for dieseloil (20.61%) and irrigation (19.77%). The cost of castor production per hectare is found to be ̀ 97412ha-1 in the region, with 52.70% of this beingfixed costs. It can be concluded that intensive castor farms are being operated in the area since the fixed cost was quite high. As a result of benefit-cost ratio (1.48) analysis, castor production was found to be economically efficient.


Within the next decade, 100,000 class action Chinese plaintiffs, organized by New York trial lawyers, could sue General Motors, Toyota, General Electric, Mitsubishi, and a host of other blue-chip corporations in a US federal court for abetting China's denial of political rights, for observing China's restrictions on trade unions, and for impairing the Chinese environment. These plaintiffs might claim actual damages of $6 billion and punitive damages of $20 billion. Similar blockbuster cases are already working their way through federal and state court systems.This nightmare scenario could become a reality because of a little-known, one-sentence law enacted in 1789--the Alien Tort Statute (ATS): "The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States."In this policy analysis, Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Nicholas K. Mitrokostas examine the chilling impact the ATS could have on trade and foreign direct investment. They trace its history from the original intent to recent court interpretations, including a look at class action suits over asbestos and apartheid. They provide an economic picture of the potential scope of ATS litigation, cite the possible collateral damage, and review the impact that ATS rulings could have on global relations. The authors recommend measures Congress should take to limit expansive court interpretations. The study is a must-read for policymakers, international lawyers, and students.


This paper examines the impact of oil prices on real stock returns for Brazil, China, India and Russia over 1999:1-2009:9 using VAR models. The results suggest that whereas real stock returns positively respond to some of the oil price indicators with statistical significance for China, India and Russia, those of Brazil do not show any significant responses. In addition, statistically significant asymmetric effects of oil price increases and decreases are observed in India. The analysis of variance decomposition shows that the contribution of oil price shocks to volatility in real stock returns is relatively large and statistically significant for China and Russia.


The discrete space, continuous time birth-death model is a key process for describing phylogenies in the absence of coalescent approximations. Extensively used in macroevolution for analysing diversification, and in epidemiology for estimating viral dynamics, the birth-death process (BDP) is an important null model for inferring the parameters of reconstructed phylogenies. In this paper we show how optimal, point process (Snyder) filtering techniques can be used for parametric inference on BDPs. Specifically, we introduce the Bayesian Snyder filter (SF) to estimate birth and death rate parameters, given a reconstructed phylogeny. Our estimation procedure makes use of the equivalent Markov birth process description for a reconstructed birth-death phylogeny (Nee et al, 1994). We first analyse the popular constant rate BDP and show that our method gives results consistent with previous work. Among these results is an analytic solution to the special case of the Yule-Furry model. We also find an equivalence between the SF Poisson likelihood and two standard conditioned birth-death model likelihoods. We then generalise our estimation problem to BDPs with time varying rates and numerically solve the SF for two illustrative cases. Our results compare well with a recent Markov chain Monte Carlo method by Hohna et al (2016) and we numericaly show that both methods are solving the same likelihood functions. Lastly we apply the SF to a model selection problem on empirical data. We use the Australian Agamid dataset and predict the same relative model fit as that of the original maximum likelihood technique developed and used by Rabosky (2006) for this dataset. While several capable parametric and non-parametric birth-death estimators already exist, ours is the first to take the Nee et al approach, and directly computes the posterior distribution of the parameters. The SF makes no approximations, beyond those required for parameter space discretisation and numerical integration, and is mean square error optimal. It is deterministic, easily implementable and flexible. We think SFs present a promising alternative parametric BDP inference engine.


The aim of this study is to explore the pattern of change in multiple measures of cognitive abilities in a sample of oldest-old adults, comparing two different time metrics (chronological age and time to death) and therefore examining both underlying conceptual assumptions (age-related change and terminal decline). Moreover, the association with individual characteristics as sex, education, and dementia diagnosis was also examined. Measures of cognitive status (Mini-Mental State Examination and the Swedish Clock Test) and tests of crystallized (knowledge and synonyms), memory (verbal memory, nonverbal long-term memory, recognition and correspondence, and short-term memory), and visuospatial ability were included. The sample consisted of 671 older Swedish adult participants of the OCTO Twin Study. Linear mixed models with random coefficients were used to analyse change patterns and BIC indexes were used to compare models. Results showed that the time to death model was the best option in analyses of change in all the cognitive measures considered (except for the Information Test). A significant cognitive decline over time was found for all variables. Individuals diagnosed with dementia had lower scores at the study entrance and a faster decline. More educated individuals performed better in all the measures of cognition at study entry than those with poorer education, but no differences were found in the rate of change. Differences were found in age, sex, or time to death at baseline across the different measures. These results support the terminal decline hypothesis when compared to models assuming that cognitive changes are driven by normative aging processes.


In September 2010, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in the controversial Baycol litigation. The central question will be whether, subsequent to a denial of class certification, preclusion can prevent an absentee from seeking to certify another class action on a similar claim. This Article answers that question in the affirmative, while warning that the preclusion is very limited in scope. It arrives at this answer by analogizing to the more established doctrine of jurisdiction to determine no jurisdiction: if a court's finding of no jurisdiction over the subject matter or the person can preclude, then a finding of no authority to proceed as a class action should be preclusive - on that precise issue of no authority, but not on anything else.


A simple numerical model for simulation of air bubble transport in the flow downstream from an aerator is constructed and compared with laboratory experiments. The model consists of two parts: one for velocity and turbulent diffusivity fields, and the other for air-bubble concentration. Numerical results show that variation of air concentration near the spillway surface is primarily affected by Froude number and slope angle of spillway surface. They are in fair agreement with experiments by Shih. With further refinement, the numerical model should be applicable to design of spillway aerators.


The insistence among later eighteenth-century critics of the Gothic novel that sound strongly marks the genre confirms the intuition that sounds in these works are meaningful. The Castle of Otranto is laden with the profusely sonic dimensions that commence with the text's opening pages. The analogue in modern film of Foley effects resonates because these are sounds, applied post-production, that often are louder and more striking than real world sounds; similarly,  film and the novel, unlike ordinary experience, can offer true silence.
Walpole was experimenting with a new written technology of sound description, related to effects on the stage of his day. Such theatrical sounds form part of the historical background to the analogy with Foley effects in modern film. Walpole is pioneering a new kind of rendering of psycho-acoustic ambience in the novel, and also psycho-acoustically actuated action. He opens up modes of experience not found in fiction prior to this novel – both with the use of written sound effects, and also with the psychic introjection of these effects to produce terror and horror in the minds of fictional characters.


Modularity is a key concept that programmers wield in their struggle against the complexity of software systems. The implementation of crosscutting concerns in a traditional programming language (e.g. C, C#, Java) results in software that is difficult to maintain and reuse. Although modules have taken many forms over the years from functions and procedures to classes, no form has been capable of expressing a crosscutting concern in a modular way. The latest decomposition unit to overcome this problem is an aspect promoted by aspect-oriented programming (AOP). The aim of this paper is to review AOP within the context of software modularity.


This paper reports some preliminary results from a study of the effect of elevated temperature curing on mortars and the phenomenon of delayed ettringite formation (DEF). Mortars made from cements with sulphate levels of 3%, 4%, and 5% and with 5% sulphate and added alkali were cured at 20 and 90°C and subsequently stored in water. Expansion measurements showed a pessimum effect with increasing SO3 content. Mortars which expanded showed a corresponding decrease in strength. X-ray diffraction (XRD) studies indicated that no ettringite is present after heat treatment but re-forms over time within the material. However, the ultimate levels of ettringite reached do not correspond to the magnitude of expansion observed. X-ray microanalysis shows that immediately after the heat treatment the aluminate species and most of the sulphate species are incorporated within the C-S-H gel. The concentrations of these species decrease during expansion, such that at the end of expansion the amounts remaining correspond to the presence of AFm phase mixed with C-S-H.


On the basis of pulsed thermography, this article presents the development of a quantitative detection method for sub-surface defects. A two dimensional gapped smoothing algorithm (GSA) applied in this method to process the surface thermal distribution and no reference information is needed. A new thermal contrast is defined and a damage index based on the thermal contrast is proposed to estimate the probability of location of a defect, and differential curves of thermal contrast are applied for further quantification of defect size. One aluminium plate and one glass fibre reinforced composite laminate containing different depths of flat-bottom holes, delaminations and impurities are introduced to assess the performance of proposed method. Numerical and experimental results indicate that the influence of non-uniform heating is clearly suppressed. Compared with the differentiated absolute contrast approach, distinct enhancement of thermal contrast is achieved, and the location and size of sub-surface instances of damage can be quantitatively determined using the proposed method. The relation of damage index and flaw depth is investigated and a general expression is presented for the evaluation of flaw depth. The influence of the distribution density of the gapped grid on detection accuracy is further discussed. The proposed method, which is less dependent on the capture time, can be used for automatic detection and characterisation of defects. The reliability and applicability of the GSA applied to pulsed thermography are verified.


(Citizen Potawatomi Nation), Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI Abstract: The recognition of climate change issues facing tribal communities and indigenous peoples in the United States is growing, and understanding its impacts is rooted in indigenous ethical perspectives and systems of ecological knowledge. This foundation presents a context and guide for contemporary indigenous approaches to address climate change impacts that are comprehensive and holistic. Tribal communities and indigenous peoples across the United States are reenvisioning the role of science in the Anthropocene; working to strengthen government-to-government relationships in climate change initiatives; and leading climate change research, mitigation and adaptation plans through indigenous ingenuity. Unique adaptive capacities of tribal communities stem from their ethics and knowledge, and help frame and guide successful adaptation. As documented in the Special Issue of the Climatic Change Journal on the impacts of climate change to U.S. indigenous communities (Maldonado and others 2013), these issues include the loss of traditional knowledge; impacts to forests, ecosystems, traditional foods, and water; thawing of Arctic sea ice and permafrost; and relocation of communities. This collaboration, by more than 50 authors from tribal communities, academia, government agencies, and NGOs, demonstrates the increasing awareness, interest, and need to understand the unique ways in which climate change will affect tribal cultures, lands, and traditional ways of life. Climate change is expected to affect animal and plant species that indigenous people depend on for their livelihoods, health and cultural practices. The impacts of climate change on forests and other ecosystems that are home to many of these species require tribal engagement in climate change research, assessments, and adaptation efforts. This paper synthesizes key issues and case studies related to climate change impacts on tribally valued forest resources and tribal adaptive responses to climate change.


The exponential increase in the world's population, together with the growth of big cities, which is characterized by the inadequate occupancy of the soil, contributes augment the damage due to seismic catastrophes. The high concentration of population, buildings, in-frastructures and valuables exposed, turn these zones into high risk areas. Most of earth-quake casualties are due to buildings collapsing, that is some 90% of direct deaths. The current study contributes to the development and application of the seismic risk assess-ment in big cities. In this work, a brief description of the namely Vulnerability Index Method (VIM) for assessing seismic damage scenarios in urban areas is presented. This method considers five non null damage states, characterizes the seismic action in terms of macroseismic intensity and buildings by means of a vulnerability index. The estimated damage degree is measured by a semiempirical function relating mean damage factor to intensity and vulnerability index. Damage Probability Matrices (DPM) for a given seismic scenario are obtained by assuming a binomial or beta-equivalent probability distribution. The VIM has been used to analyse the vulnerability of the dwelling buildings of Barcelona (Spain) and to develop earthquake scenarios for the city. Then, the specific residential buildings of Barcelona are classified in different groups characterized by a similar seismic behaviour. Therefore, all buildings belonging to each typology are cast in the most prob-able class according to vulnerability. In this way, the average vulnerability index is associ-ated to each building typology of Barcelona and it is refined later on the basis of behaviour modifiers. In order to apply this method to Barcelona a deterministic (historical event) and a probabilistic (10% occurrence probability in 50 years) earthquake are used to assess expected damage. In both cases the effects of soil are taken into account.
The obtained results showed the peculiarities of individual buildings and were highly con-sistent with the historical and modern evolution of the populated area and with the charac-teristics of soils, demonstrated the solidity of this method. In both scenarios the average damage state is moderate. The damage to the population is significant and its evaluation depends strongly on casualty models. In this sense, it is necessary to consider the spe-cific numerical values as a prediction of the order of magnitude of the evaluated quanti-ties. The seismic risk scenarios at different scales have been of inestimable help to guide the action and decision making in seismic risk prevention and mitigation in the city. Another of the significant contributions of this research is the creation of a powerful and versatile tool, whose design is based on Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Throughout the years, detailed information on the design of buildings has been obtained by collecting and completing a highly complete and reliable GIS database of the dwellings of the city of Barcelona. It has been used to obtain very detailed vulnerability maps and damage scenarios of the entire city at different levels: buildings, census tracks, neighbourhoods and districts. On the other hand, this type of software is essential to map georeferenced scenarios, which are useful to highlight and discriminate the strong and weak points of its social and residential urban network.


Learning to hash has been recognized to accomplish highly efficient storage and retrieval for large-scale visual data. Particularly, ranking-based hashing techniques have recently attracted broad research attention because ranking accuracy among the retrieved data is well explored and their objective is more applicable to realistic search tasks. However, directly optimizing discrete hash codes without continuous-relaxations on a nonlinear ranking objective is infeasible by either traditional optimization methods or even recent discrete hashing algorithms. To address this challenging issue, in this paper, we introduce a novel supervised hashing method, dubbed Discrete Semantic Ranking Hashing (DSeRH), which aims to directly embed semantic rank orders into binary codes. In DSeRH, a generalized Adaptive Discrete Minimization (ADM) approach is proposed to discretely optimize binary codes with the quadratic nonlinear ranking objective in an iterative manner and is guaranteed to converge quickly. Additionally, instead of using 0/1 independent labels to form rank orders as in previous works, we generate the listwise rank orders from the high-level semantic word embeddings which can quantitatively capture the intrinsic correlation between different categories. We evaluate our DSeRH, coupled with both linear and deep convolutional neural network (CNN) hash functions, on three image datasets, i.e., CIFAR-10, SUN397 and ImageNet100, and the results manifest that DSeRH can outperform the state-of-the-art ranking-based hashing methods.


Abstract A combination of historical, functional, and biomechanical constraints has shaped the masticatory apparatus of fossil and extant xenarthrans. Among the more notable features are the teeth: hypselodont; commonly reduced in size, complexity, and number; separated by short diastema; and composed of osteodentine. Enamel is absent, as are the cuspal patterns of other mammals. A comprehensive revision of teeth and other features of the masticatory apparatus of xenarthrans reveals that previous generalizations underestimate the morphological diversity and adaptive possibilities developed within the clade. The great diversity of forms suggests several such possibilities ranging from specialized myrmecophagous species to carrion feeders or predators among animalivores; selective browsers to bulk grazers among herbivores; and omnivores. In some cases xenarthrans represent less extreme versions of patterns developed in other major clades of mammals (marsupials, afrotheres, euarchontoglires, and laurasiatheres) clearly predetermined by a tribosphenic dental morphology, whereas in others they represent unique novelties indicative of particular biological roles. The combination of tooth features that characterize xenarthrans might be seen as the key innovation for the ecologic diversity developed at least since the Oligocene, breaking the mold of the tribosphenic condition that constrained the evolution of the other major clades of mammals.


Thiobenzophenone (2), 2,2,4,4-tetramethyl-3-thioxobutanone (3), adamantanethione (4), and 3-phenyl-5,5-dimethyl-1,3-thiazole-5(4H)-thione (5) reacted quite smoothly with carbonyl substituted diazo compounds. After evolution of nitrogen, derivatives of 1,3-oxathiole, thiirane or 1,3-dithiolane have been isolated as respective products of reactions of thiocarbonyl ylides which are considered as reactive intermediates. The rate of nitrogen evolution and the type of products formed, strongly depended on the type of thioketones and diazo compounds used in the reaction.


Illuminant estimation algorithms are usually evaluated by measuring the recovery
angular error, the angle between the RGB vectors of the estimated and ground-truth
illuminants. However, this metric reports a wide range of errors for an
algorithm-scene pair viewed under multiple lights. In this thesis, a new metric,
"Reproduction Angular Error", is introduced which is an improvement over the
old metric and enables us to evaluate the performance of the algorithms based
on the reproduced white surface by the estimated illuminant rather than the estimated
illuminant itself. Adopting new reproduction error is shown to both effect
the overall ranking of algorithms as well as the choice of optimal parameters for
particular approaches.
A psychovisual image preference experiment is carried out to investigate whether
human observers prefer colour balanced images predicted by, respectively, the reproduction
or recovery error metric. Human observers rank algorithms mostly
according to the reproduction angular error in comparison with the recovery angular
error.
Whether recovery or reproduction error is used, the common approach to measuring
algorithm performance is to calculate accurate summary statistics over a
dataset. Mean, median and percentile summary errors are often employed. However,
these aggregate statistics, by definition, make it hard to predict performance
for individual images or to discover whether there are certain "hard images" where
some illuminant estimation algorithms commonly fail. Not only do we find that
such hard images exist, based only on the outputs of simple algorithms we provide
an algorithm for identifying these hard images (which can then be assessed using
more computationally complex advanced algorithms).


Abstract. Cultural Heritage is a testimony of past human activity, and, as such, its objects exhibit great variety in their nature, size and complexity; from small artefacts and museum items to cultural landscapes, from historical building and ancient monuments to city centers and archaeological sites. Cultural Heritage around the globe suffers from wars, natural disasters and human negligence. The importance of digital documentation is well recognized and there is an increasing pressure to document our heritage both nationally and internationally. For this reason, the three-dimensional scanning and modeling of sites and artifacts of cultural heritage have remarkably increased in recent years. The semantic segmentation of point clouds is an essential step of the entire pipeline; in fact, it allows to decompose complex architectures in single elements, which are then enriched with meaningful information within Building Information Modelling software. Notwithstanding, this step is very time consuming and completely entrusted on the manual work of domain experts, far from being automatized. This work describes a method to label and cluster automatically a point cloud based on a supervised Deep Learning approach, using a state-of-the-art Neural Network called PointNet++. Despite other methods are known, we have choose PointNet++ as it reached significant results for classifying and segmenting 3D point clouds. PointNet++ has been tested and improved, by training the network with annotated point clouds coming from a real survey and to evaluate how performance changes according to the input training data. It can result of great interest for the research community dealing with the point cloud semantic segmentation, since it makes public a labelled dataset of CH elements for further tests.


We report therein the onset of three chronic diseases: Behcet's disease, fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis in three sisters after tick bites. Only Behcet's disease was treated in our department. After failure of the initial treatment including colchicine and corticoids, the patient recovered within a prolonged antibiotic therapy time period of 18 months.

A 23-year-old female patient was admitted to hospital in the Infectious Diseases Department as she presented with headache, diffuse inflammatory arthromyalgia, abdominal pain and cutaneous folliculitis, and for the umpteenth time for several past years, meningeal syndrome recurrence. The physical examination was unremarkable. The biological test assessment was normal, as were the ophthalmological and cerebral MRI examinations. The patient's HLA B5 test was negative. The upper digestive fibroscopy shown digestive ulcerations.

The diagnosis of Behcet's disease was made on the following: inflammatory arthralgias, digestive ulcerations, folliculitis lesions; recurrent bipolar aphthosis was found at patient's interview. The patient was given prednisone 0.5 mg/kg/day and colchicine 1 mg/day. The evolution was characterized by an initial improvement of clinical symptoms followed by further iterative recurrence as soon as the corticosteroid doses were reduced. Upon resuming the interview with the patient' s mother, clinical symptoms began at the age of 9 years old by the occurrence of a voluminous cutaneous erythema following multiple tick bites. One month later the patient presented with subacute lymphocytic meningitis, which was treated as tuberculosis meningitis without relevant bacteriological evidence.

On the same day, the patient's two sisters were also bitten by ticks. A few weeks later on, one of them developed osteomyelitis of the tibia, which was operated on. The bacteriological examination result was negative, the histological examination showed non-specific osteomyelitis. Subsequently, she developed various multiple functional complaints that led to the diagnosis of fibromyalgia. Her other sister concomitantly developed seronegative rheumatoid arthritis.

The diagnosis of chronic post-tick bite syndrome was suspected despite the negativity of the Lyme serology. The patient significantly improved thanks to high-dose of intravenous penicillin G, despite an initial exacerbation during the first month of treatment, which could be interpreted as confirmation of an infectious process (Jarisch-Herxheimer reaction).

Corticosteroids and colchicine were discontinued ; the patient was given doxycycline for a total duration of 18 months. Antibiotic therapy was associated with hydroxychloroquine, the same way as reported for therapy of chronic Q fever and some types of Lyme disease [1]. In 2004, the patient was in complete remission of Behcet's disease. Ten years later, no recurrence has been observed.


In its first report card on corporate governance, Business Week (Byrne and Melcher, 1996) ranked U.S. firms based on recommended best practices for independence, accountability, and board quality. Apple Computer, ATT Dayton, 1984; Waldo, 1985). The Business Week criteria fo r independence is "no more than two inside directors, no insiders on the board's audit, nominating, and compensation committees, no outside directors who directly or indirectly draw consulting, legal, or other fees from the company, and no interlocking directorships" (Byrne and Melcher, 1996: 98). Arguably, improvements in corporate board functioning ought to ultimately yield improvements in financial performance. Empirical research findings to date, however, have been inconsistent and conflicting. Studies of outsider ratios and firm performance have produced correlations ranging from a positive .33 (Pearce and Zahra, 1992) to a negative .15 and larger (Beatty and Zajac, 1994; Kaufman and Taylor, 1993; Zahra and Stanton, 1988). Some studies have found zero or near-zero effects (Buchholz and Ribbens, 1994; Rechner and Dalton, 1986). Moreover, other research has reported that a higher ratio of inside, not outside directors, is associated with higher R&D expenditures (Baysinger et al., 1991), greater likelihood of CEO dismissal in times of financial crises (Ocasio, 1994), and higher firm performance (Pearce, 1983). These studies argue that inside directors who have access to richer, fuller information about their firms are in a better position than outside directors to make decisions about many critical a reas of firm operation and performance. The purpose of this study was to (1) apply the quantitative technique of meta-analysis to the area of insider/outsider ratios on corporate boards and calculated composites of financial performance to arrive at a robust estimate of this relationship, and (2) examine the potential moderating effects of different operational definitions of monitoring and performance. In so doing, we hope to be able to uncover the reasons for the inconsistent results in this research stream, and test which theoretical framework holds with regards to board composition and firm performance. In the following sections we generate hypotheses based on the presumed link between director independence and performance, describe our methodology and analyses, summarize our results, and discuss the implications of our findings. MONITORING AND PERFORMANCE The separation of ownership and control first discussed by Berle and Means (1932) creates many situations in which the interests of managers and owners may not coincide. Agency theory is based on the notion that the delegation of managerial responsibilities by principals (owners) to agents (managers) requires the presence of mechanisms that either align the interests of principals and agents (such as stock ownership plans and performance contingent compensation) or monitor the performance of managers to insure that they use their knowledge and the firm's resources to generate the highest possible return for principles. More specifically, agency theory suggests that the best option for owners is to design contracts that align manager/owner interests. …


Need to extract data from a text file or a web page? Or do you want to make your application more flexible with user-defined commands or search strings? Do regular expressions and lex/yacc make your eyes blur and your brain hurt? Pyparsing could be the solution. Pyparsing is a pure-Python class library that makes it easy to build recursive-descent parsers quickly. There is no need to handcraft your own parsing state machine. With pyparsing, you can quickly create HTML page scrapers, logfile data extractors, or complex data structure or command processors. This Short Cut shows you how!


Integrating contradictory and mutually exclusive positions is a challenge in building a metatheory. In this paper, I examine how advaita (non-dualism) philosophy is a metatheory. Based on a holistic, non-dualistic ontology, discovery based epistemology, and personal accountability-action-reflection oriented praxis, it provides a useful metatheory for embracing, learning from, and transcending the paradoxes of social life. I use the example of Gandhi as a practitioner of this approach to action and knowledge.


This study examines whether Criminology's Routine Activities Theory (RAT) and related Lifestyle Theory (LST) can account for variation between the attributes of victims of fatal ideologically motivated attacks (akin to terrorism) and the victims of non-ideologically motivated homicide incidents committed by far-Right extremists in the United States. This article makes four contributions. First, we empirically test Criminology theory in the context of terrorism by using routine activities to devise four core hypotheses to explain differences between the two types of victims. Second, our investigation uniquely includes a non-terrorist comparison group (i.e., victims of homicides committed by extremists for personal reasons like greed). Third, our study focuses on ideological victimization. Terrorism researchers have usually ignored victims because of the difficulty in accessing the necessary data. Finally, we also make a methodological contribution by showing that criminology can build upon the terrorism literature by utilizing open-sources. Using data from the Extremist Crime Database (ECDB), the results of a multivariate analysis partially supported the hypotheses, showing that RAT and LST offer empirically supported theoretical constructs that have the ability to differentiate between ideological and non-ideological homicides.


In this paper, we propose a cognitive transmission scheme with the best relay selection in a multiple-relay cognitive radio network to improve the secondary transmission performance while guaranteeing the quality-of-service (QoS) of the primary transmissions. We derive the closed-form expressions of outage probability for the secondary transmissions, called secondary outage probability, with the constraint of ensuring a target outage probability of primary transmissions (primary outage probability) for both the traditional non-relay and proposed best-relay selection based cognitive transmission schemes. Numerical results illustrate that, under a primary outage probability constraint, a secondary outage probability floor of the cognitive transmission occurs in high signal-to-noise ratio regions. Besides, the secondary outage probability floor of the proposed scheme is lower than that of the non-relay transmission, which is further reduced with an increasing number of cognitive relays.