In this paper a new approach to accurately classify ECG arrhythmias through a combination of the wavelet transform and artificial neural network is presented. Three kinds of features in a very computationally efficient manner are computed as follows: 1-Joint time-frequency features (discrete wavelet transform coefficients). 2-Time domain features (R-R intervals). 3-Statistical feature (form factor). Using these features, the limitations of other methods in classifying multiple kinds of arrhythmia with high accuracy for all of them at once are overcome. Finally, a cascade classifier including two ANNs has been designed. Considering the whole MIT-BIH arrhythmia database, 10 kinds of arrhythmia were classified. The overall accuracy of classification of the proposed approach is above 90%. (4 pages)


Current community attitudes towards genetically modified (GM) plants are quite negative, with the sugar industry having apparently accepted the view that sugar from genetically modified cane is regarded so badly by consumers at the present time that it could not be marketed successfully. In other industries, genetically modified cultivars that are environmentally friendly and not designed for human consumption (e.g., Bt cotton) have been accepted reasonably well. One of the main causes of public concern about genetic engineering has been the lack of information about the process and the types of products, particularly nonfood products, that can be developed. This paper describes exploratory research in the sugar industry in Queensland that attempted to determine the effect of providing information on gene technology on the attitudes of cane growers, their partners, and community members and the types of genetic modification that was most acceptable to them. Attitudes to genetic engineering of sugarcane, in general, were judged to become more positive, and the real concerns over introduction of the technology were revealed. Those applications that were most acceptable were also identified.


Hypertriglyceridemia, an important risk factor of atherosclerosis, is associated with increased circulating free fatty acids. Research to date indicates that linoleic acid (LA), the major fatty acid in the American diet, may be atherogenic by activating vascular endothelial cells. However, the exact signaling mechanisms involved in LA-mediated proinflammatory events in endothelial cells still remain unclear. We previously reported increased superoxide formation after LA exposure in endothelial cells. The objective of the present investigation is to determine the role of calcium and peroxynitrite in mediating the proinflammatory effect of LA in vascular endothelial cells. LA exposure increased intracellular calcium, nitric oxide, and tetrahydrodiopterin levels as well as the expression of E-selectin. Inhibiting calcium signaling using 1,2-bis(2-aminophenoxy)-ethane-N,N,N',N'-tetraacetic acid and heparin decreased the expression of E-selectin. Also, LA-mediated nuclear factor kappa B activation and E-selectin gene expression were suppressed by Mn (III) tetrakis (1-methyl-4-pyridyl) porphyrin pentachloride (a superoxide scavenger), N(G)-monomethyl-l-arginine (an endothelial nitric oxide synthase inhibitor), and 5,10,15,20-tetrakis (4-sulfonatophenyl) porphyrinato iron (III) chloride (a peroxynitrite scavenger). LA exposure resulted in increased nitrotyrosine levels, as observed by Western blotting and immunofluorescence. Our data suggest that the proinflammatory effects of LA can be mediated through calcium and peroxynitrite signaling.


The article deals with one of the most dangerous crimes-about terrorism, which is a factor considerably destabilizing life of the state and the world community in general. The author pays attention to the fact that different approaches to the definition of terrorism are known to the science, but they mainly deal with criminological and criminal law aspect with considerable ideological hue. For more detailed study of such social phenomenon as terrorism the author offers to pay attention to philosophic-ethical and international law aspects of this problem. The author believes that the struggle with terrorism should include wide range of measures of different character from social-economic and militarypolitical up to ethical and religious. That struggle should be carried out on international and regional levels as well as in the scale of separate states in purposeful and offensive way.


Objectives This study aimed to assess medication use in pregnant women in Malaysia by measuring use, knowledge, awareness, and beliefs about medications. Methods This was an observational, cross-sectional study involving a total of 447 pregnant women who attended the Obstetrics and Gynecology Clinic, Hospital Kuala Lumpur (HKL), Malaysia. A validated, self-administered questionnaire was used to collect participant data. Results Most of pregnant women had taken medication during pregnancy and more than half of them (52.8%) showed a poor level of knowledge about the medication use during pregnancy. Eighty-three percent had a poor level of awareness and 56.5% had negative beliefs. Age and education level were significantly associated with the level of knowledge regarding medication use during pregnancy. Multiparous pregnant women, and pregnant women from rural areas were observed to have a higher level of awareness compared with those who lived in urban areas. Use of medication during pregnancy was determined to be significantly associated with education level, and race. Conclusion Although there was prevalent use of medication among pregnant women, many had negative beliefs, and insufficient knowledge and awareness about the risks of taking medication during pregnancy. Several sociodemographic characteristics were significantly associated with the use (race and education level), level of knowledge (age and education level), awareness (parity and place of residence), and beliefs (race, education level, and occupation status) towards medication use during pregnancy.


The prosodic marking of Discourse Functions such as Focus presents a challenge to theories that seek to model grammar in a modular way because distinct components of linguistic structure must be permitted to interact but they must be neither conflated nor assumed to be isomorphic. We present an account of prosodic Focus marking within the modular grammatical architecture of Lexical-Functional Grammar, building on the model of the syntaxprosody interface developed by Dalrymple and Mycock (2011).


Deep neural networks are vulnerable to adversarial examples, even in the black-box setting, where the attacker is restricted solely to query access. Existing black-box approaches to generating adversarial examples typically require a significant number of queries, either for training a substitute network or performing gradient estimation. We introduce GenAttack, a gradient-free optimization technique that uses genetic algorithms for synthesizing adversarial examples in the black-box setting. Our experiments on different datasets (MNIST, CIFAR-10, and ImageNet) show that GenAttack can successfully generate visually imperceptible adversarial examples against state-of-the-art image recognition models with orders of magnitude fewer queries than previous approaches. Against MNIST and CIFAR-10 models, GenAttack required roughly 2,126 and 2,568 times fewer queries respectively, than ZOO, the prior state-of-the-art black-box attack. In order to scale up the attack to large-scale high-dimensional ImageNet models, we perform a series of optimizations that further improve the query efficiency of our attack leading to 237 times fewer queries against the Inception-v3 model than ZOO. Furthermore, we show that GenAttack can successfully attack some state-of-the-art ImageNet defenses, including ensemble adversarial training and non-differentiable or randomized input transformations. Our results suggest that evolutionary algorithms open up a promising area of research into effective black-box attacks.


Researchers and language practitioners have long been interested in the quest for theory-based, research-supported constructs that can adequately characterize L2 writing proficiency and development. The ongoing scholarly inquiry in this research area has led to the mounting recognition that complexity, accuracy and fluency (henceforth, CAF) constitute a conceptual framework capable of charting L2 writing proficiency and benchmarking development. Against this background, the present study aims to investigate four college-level semester-one students' L2 writing development over a time frame of twelve weeks. Couched within the constructivist paradigm, which advocates learner independence, meaningful learning and collaboration, the study examines the extent and nature of the progress that two highachieving L2 students made as compared with two struggling peers with regard to their written productions. On the basis of case study methodology, a thick description is provided for each student on account of his measurable progress as assessed by theoretically motivated indices of complexity and accuracy. The paper also explores the time spent on online Moodle activities by the four participants to ascertain whether or not a relationship existed with the progress made. Complexity was measured by mean length of t-unit, mean length of clause and number of clauses per t-unit; accuracy was measured by mean number of error-free t-units and the ratio of error-free t-units to total number of t-units. The writing program in which the participants were engaged was based on the use of Moodle as a platform where students have access to myriad supplementary materials including website links, videos, PowerPoint slides, book chapters and exercises handouts. They were also required to post their written assignments in the Moodle-hosted blog and to participate in forums designed for the exchange of feedback. The implications of the results for L2 writing instruction are discussed.


In early July 2019, Christian Sewing, the CEO of Deutsche Bank, proclaimed a fundamental shift of the bank's strategy after finally obtaining the approval of the Supervisory Board, which the management seems to have requested for quite some time. The essential point of the reorientation is a deep cut into the bank's investment banking activities. At the same time, those parts of the bank's activity portfolio that had been the mainstay of Deutsche Bank's business 20 to 25 years ago, in particular lending to large and mid-sized German and European corporate clients, shall be strengthened in spite of a simultaneous reduction of the bank's staff by 18,000 FTEs over the next three years. The bank's CEO, who has only been in office since about one year, was reported to have called this shift of strategy a "return to the roots of Deutsche Bank" at the press conference at which it was announced, without, however, making it clear to which roots he was referring: those of some 40 years ago, when Deutsche Bank was essentially a Germany-focused commercial bank, or even those from the late 19th century, when the bank had been founded with the mission to become an international bank with a strong capital market-orientation. In any event, the press was impressed and keeps repeating these words, that deserve to be taken seriously and irrespective of their vagueness may be justified. If it were successfully implemented, this change of strategy would indeed be fundamental and imply undoing what Deutsche Bank's former management teams had aspired to do in the last 20 or 25 years. The newly announced strategy shift raises two questions. Can it be successful, and what does it mean for the bank itself and its shareholders, for its staff and for its clients? And what does it imply for the German financial system? This note focuses on the latter question. What makes it interesting is the fact that the last fundamental change of Deutsche Bank's strategy of two decades ago, which aimed at transforming Deutsche Bank from a Germany-centered commercial bank into a leading international investment bank, had a profound - and in my view clearly negative - effect on the entire German financial system.


Permafrost, landscape and ecosystem responses to late Quaternary warm stages in
Northeast Siberia
S. Wetterich1, F. Kienast2, L. Schirrmeister1, M. Fritz1, A. Andreev3, P. Tarasov4
1Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Department of Periglacial Research,
Potsdam, Germany; 2Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum, Research
Station for Quaternary Palaeontology, Weimar, Germany; 3Institute of Geology and Mineralogy,
University of Cologne, Germany; 4Institute of Geological Sciences, Free University Berlin,
Germany
Perennially frozen ground is widely distributed in Arctic lowlands and beyond. Permafrost
responds sensitive to changes in climate conditions. Climate-driven dynamics of landscape,
sedimentation and ecology in periglacial regions are frequently recorded in permafrost deposits.
The study of late Quaternary permafrost can therefore reveal past glacial-interglacial and stadialinterstadial
environmental dynamics. One of the most striking processes under warming climate
conditions is the extensive thawing of permafrost (thermokarst) and subsequent surface
subsidence. Thermokarst basins promote the development of lakes, whose sedimentological and
paleontological records give insights into past interglacial and interstadial (warm).
In this paper we present results of qualitative and quantitative reconstructions of climate and
environmental conditions for the last Interglacial (MIS 5e, Kazantsevo; ca. 130 to 115 ka ago), the
lateglacial Allerod Interstadial (ca. 13 to 11 uncal. ka BP), and the early Holocene (ca. 10.5 to 8
uncal. ka BP). The study was performed in course of the IPY project #15 'Past Permafrost' with
permafrost deposits exposed at the coasts of the Dmitry Laptev Strait (East Siberian Sea, East
Siberia). The reconstruction based on fossil-rich findings of plants (pollen, macro-remains) and
invertebrates (beetles, chironomids, ostracods gastropods).
Interglacial vegetation dynamics are reflected in the pollen records by changes from early
interglacial grass-sedge-tundra to shrub-tundra during the interglacial thermal optimum followed
by grass-sedge-tundra vegetation at the end of the Kazantsevo warm period. Terrestrial beetle
and plant remains prove the former existence of open forest tundra with Dahurian larch, grey
alder and boreal shrubs interspersed with patches of steppes and meadows during the
interglacial thermal optimum. Mean temperature reconstructions of the warmest month (MTWA,
TJuly) for the interglacial thermal optimum are based on quantitative chironomid transfer functions
revealed a TJuly of 12.9 ± 0.9 °C. The TJuly reconstructed by plant macrofossils amounts to 13.2 ±
0.5 °C, and the pollen-based TJuly reaches 14.3 ± 3.3 °C. Low net precipitation is reflected by
steppe plants and beetles. The temperature reconstruction based on three independent
approaches. Nethertheless, all methods consistently indicate an interglacial TJuly about 10 °C
higher than today, which is interpreted as a result of a combination of increased insolation and
higher climatic continentality during the last Interglacial.
Grass-sedge dominated tundra vegetation occurred during the lateglacial to Holocene transition
which was replaced by shrub tundra during the early Holocene. The presence of Salix and Betula
pollen reflects temperatures about 4 °C higher than present between 12 to 11 uncal. ka BP,
during the Allerod Interstadial, but shrubs disappeared in the following Younger Dryas stadial,
reflecting a climate deterioration. Alnus fruticosa, Betula nana, Poaceae and Cyperaceae
dominate early Holocene pollen spectra. Pollen-based reconstructions point to TJuly 4 °C warmer
than present. Shrubs gradually disappeared from coastal areas after 7.6 uncal. ka BP when
vegetation cover became similar to modern wet tundra.
Thermokarst acted as response to warming conditions on landscape scale in permafrost regions.
Concurrent changes in relief, hydrology and ecosystems are obvious and detectable by analyses
of the paleontological record preserved in thermokarst deposits.


It was recently established that the pixel-wise ultra-small angle x-ray distribution can be retrieved with grating interferometry. However, in these one dimensional approaches the contrast was limited to the direction orthogonal to the structure of the line gratings. Here, we demonstrate that sensitivity in two contrast directions can be achieved by using two pairs of crossed line gratings and by adapting scan procedures and data analysis accordingly. We demonstrate the retrieval of two-dimensional scattering distributions with grating interferometry, thus overcoming the previously reported limit of seven obtainable, complementary contrasts. In addition, we give further evidence for the superiority of the signal-to-noise ratio for the dark-field contrast, if a deconvolution-based instead of the standard analysis is utilized.


This paper demonstrates that traders gain nothing by positioning their computer at the midpoint between two financial exchanges – for example on a ship in the middle of an ocean – contrary to the recommendation in the article Physics in finance: Trading at the speed of light (Mark Buchanan, Nature, 11 February 2015). We show that, in fact, a trading strategy using cooperating computers colocated with the two exchanges will perform much better than a single computer located at the midpoint. This advantage of distributed trading strategies is non-obvious and – to my knowledge – has never been explained as simply and convincingly as in this paper. In the final section I examine the reverse issue: using distributed exchange server architectures that eliminate the need for distributed arbitrage strategies.


In earlier research, the authors found that, on both a theoretical and historical basis, the typical diversified fund exhibits volatility characteristics that are strikingly similar to a traditional 60/40 allocation and, in severe market declines, should theoretically underperform the 60/40 portfolio. This latter and surprising result is due to the stress-beta effect that derives from diversification because the multiple asset classes are more vulnerable to correlation tightening than the two-asset 60/40 allocation. The year 2008 provided an (unwelcome) opportunity for the authors to test this stress effect. They found that in 2008 the diversified portfolio's correlation-based beta was, in fact, much higher than in normal times and that 2008 was the first period in which the diversified portfolio performed materially worse than the 60/40 portfolio. Thus, the typical model of institutional diversification should be viewed not as reducing risk in the short-term, but rather as a source of longer-term benefits in the form of greater return accumulation and wider divergence of outcomes.


Abstract: In this paper I will briefly outline how sociology has interpreted the French Canadian collectivity from the end of the last century to the present time. I argue that the French-speaking collectivity in Canada has been ascribed, both successively and simultaneously, the characters of race, ethnic group, society, and nation through the prism of sociology. The cultural specificity of this collectivity has been alternately perceived as either a stigma or as an element of pride. My paper has three parts: Leon Gerin and Marius Barbeau, or "the Quebec difference" as a handicap; the External perspectives of Horace Miner, Everett C. Hughes, and the Laval School; and what "Quebecitude" (the cultural specificity of the Quebec character) means. These three perspectives correspond to three periods in the history of Quebec sociology: The pioneers (before 1939); the institutionalization of (academic) sociology (1940-1969); and the "nationalization" of Quebec sociology (1970 until now). The 1960s and the 1970s are viewed herein as the "Golden Age" of sociology in Quebec. Resume: De la fin du siecle dernier a aujourd'hui, la sociologie quebecoise a fourni diverses interpreations de la collectivite francophone au Canada, lui attribuant, successivement et simultanement, differents statuts: ceux de race, de groupe ethnique, de societe et de nation. La specificite culturelle de cette collectivite a ete percue tantot comme un stigmate tantot comme un element de fierte. Mon article se divise en trois parties: 1) Leon Gerin, Marius Barbeauou la difference comme handicap, 2) Un point de vue de l'texterieur: Miner, Hughes et l'Ecole de Laval, 3) qu'et-ce que la [much less than] Quebecitude (ou la specificite culturelle du Quebec signifie ? Ces trois perspectives correspondent dans une certaine mesure a trois periodes dans Ia sociologie quebecoise : 1) les pionniers (avant 1939), t'institutionnalisation de la sociologie academique (1940-1969), et la [much less than] nationalisation [much greater than] de la sociologie quebecoise (1970 jusqu'a maintenant), avec les annees 1960 et 1970 co mme I' [much less than] Age d'or [much greater than] de la sociologie. What is specific to a group or a society? The social sciences, and particularly sociology, have a stake in this debate. It is impossible for these disciplines to escape the problem, because social scientists cannot define their field without constructing an object; that is, without defining the society in which they practice their profession. In Quebec, it certainly was not sociologists who invented the "Quebec Question." However, sociological studies have made significant contributions to the formation of national identity (Fournier and Houle, 1980), providing cognitive categories which have helped the French-speaking collectivity in thinking out its identity. As early as the beginning of the century, Marcel Mauss observed the significant contributions that human and social sciences have made to the creation of national identities in Europe. Referring to works devoted to the study of national character, he stated: "Le siecle dernier a vu la naissance d'un nouveau genre litteraire ... Mais ceci n'est que la manifestation litteraire d'un fait: la formation consciente des caracteres nationaux" (Mauss, 1967: 603). In other words, the recourse to human and social science is indispensable in that it ensures a cognitive basis for establishing clear social boundaries and specific political demands. This representation of identity not only rests on inherent characteristics, but it is also, and more importantly, a function of the balance of power within which the group or collectivity exists. In effect, this determines the ease in which it may transform these traits into a collective identity (Bourdieu, 1980: 63-72). Within the framework of this paper, I will briefly review how sociology has interpreted the French Canadian collectivity from the end of the last century until the present time. …


Studying Abroad and the Effect on International Labor Market Mobility: Evidence from the Introduction of ERASMUS We investigate the effect of studying abroad on international labor market mobility later in life for university graduates. As a source of identifying variation, we exploit the introduction and expansion of the European ERASMUS student exchange program, which significantly increases a student's probability of studying abroad. Using an Instrument Variable approach we control for unobserved heterogeneity between individuals who studied abroad and those who did not. Our results indicate that student exchange mobility is an important determinant of later international labor market mobility: We find that studying abroad increases an individual's probability of working in a foreign country by about 15 to 20 percentage points, suggesting that study abroad spells are an important channel to later migration. We investigate heterogeneity in returns and find that studying abroad has a stronger effect for credit constrained students. Furthermore, we suggest mechanisms through which the effect of studying abroad may operate. Our results are robust to a number of specification checks. JEL Classification: J61, I2, F22


Water borne diseases are alarmingly high in urban areas like Dar es Salaam. Hence the importance of chlorine-based water disinfectant solutions such as Waterguard® that consists of 0.75% sodium hypochlorite. Waterguard® has been in the market in Dar es Salaam for about 4 years. Despite this, prevalence of waterborne diseases like cholera, dysentery and typhoid are still high. The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of Waterguard® in disinfecting drinking water, and determine the level of fecal coliform contamination of water from four sources viz. taps, streams, shallow wells and deep wells located within Dar es Salaam city. The investigation on the efficacy of the agent was carried out in water samples collected in the city during a 4-month period.
Sixty-four water samples were randomly collected and analyzed by the Most Probable Number (MPN) technique based on coliform counts for both untreated and treated water samples. Negative (distilled water) and positive (distilled water contaminated with feces)
controls were also included. Results show that three out of the four water sources were heavily contaminated with the exception of deep wells. But appropriate use of Waterguard® reduces the level of microbial contamination significantly. In this study the assayed Waterguard® was found to be 100% efficacious in treating the samples to a level within the WHO safety standards, hence is fit for disinfecting water for human use.
 Keywords : Drinking water quality, Coliform Contamination, Waterguard. Tanzania Medical Journal Vol. 21 (1) 2006: pp. 22-24


A method is proposed for synthesizing Fresnel hologram projectors, based on breaking down the structure of an object into typical elements. The possibility provided by this method of substantially reducing the volume of required computations is pointed out as one of the main advantages of the proposal. A software package for synthesizing and reconstructing Fresnel hologram projectors is described that implements this method. The results of an experimental study of the package are presented, obtained in the process of a comparative analysis of the proposed method and a traditional method of synthesizing hologram projectors.


Organic compounds emitted in the atmosphere are oxidized in complex reaction sequences that produce a myriad of intermediates. Although the cumulative importance of these organic intermediates is widely acknowledged, there is still a critical lack of information concerning the detailed composition of the highly functionalized secondary 5 organics in the gas and condensed phases. The evaluation of their impacts on pollution episodes, climate, and the tropospheric oxidizing capacity requires modelling tools that track the identity and reactivity of organic carbon in the various phases down to the ultimate oxidation products, CO and CO 2. However, a fully detailed representation of the atmospheric transformations of organic compounds involves a very large 10 number of intermediate species, far in excess of the number that can be reasonably written manually. This paper describes (1) the development of a data processing tool to generate the explicit gas-phase oxidation schemes of organic compounds under tro-pospheric conditions and (2) the protocol used to select the reaction products and the rate constants. Results are presented using the fully explicit oxidation schemes gener-15 ated for two test species: n-heptane and isoprene. Comparisons with well-established mechanisms were performed to evaluate these generated schemes. Some preliminary results describing the gradual change of organic carbon during the oxidation of a given parent compound are presented.


Purpose
This paper aims to propose a quadruple bottom line approach for higher education leaders who must decide whether to accept sustainability initiatives that do have not have a business case. The authors describe a personal waste management program at a major university to illustrate how a quadruple bottom line framework may impact decisions to adopt a sustainability practice in higher education. The authors also demonstrate how opportunity costs can be applied to better understand the true costs of such waste management programs.

Design/methodology/approach
This exploratory research uses a case study approach with a unique accounting method to determine the costs of a personal waste management system. System costs are calculated for the entire university and for sample units within the university.

Findings
University leaders chose to continue the new waste management program in light of evidence showing higher than anticipated costs. The authors illustrate how this decision was driven by consideration of a fourth bottom line, that of the educational value of the sustainability initiative. It is discussed whether proposed sustainability initiatives such as these should be evaluated using a traditional triple bottom line framework, or, in the case of higher education, if equal consideration should also be given to factors related to the educational mission of the institution.

Originality/value
The authors develop a quadruple bottom line framework to explain the frequent implementation of economically costly sustainability programs in higher education contexts. This paper also reviews the rise of "personal waste management" programs at higher education institutions, demonstrates how the value of employee time can and should be considered as a cost of a comprehensive campus sustainability program (i.e. recycling and composting) and illustrates a novel means for using opportunity costs to determine those costs.


To compare Francis Mayes with D. H Lawrence seems pretty unfair, and I would not inflict the comparison except that I think it reveals something about the way in which western culture has changed for the worse since Lawrence's time, for Mayes's writing is rooted in exactly the sort of "poisonous" materialism that Lawrence detested and that he knew was taking over Europe and America. Published in 1996, Mayes's Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy was praised in a wide range of reviews. USA Today called it a "beautifully written memoir about taking chances, living in Italy, loving a house and, always, the pleasures of food." Booklist described it as "armchair travel at its most enticing." The Houston Chronicle called it "a model for the open, curious mind and the questing soul," while the Boston Globe, considerably more circumspect, referred to it as "a report from our dream Italy." As these reviews suggest, Mayes's books have gained a large popular audience, and they will certainly gain an even larger audience following the late 2003 release of the Disney/Touchstone film loosely based on Under the Tuscan Sun. What makes Mayes different from those of us who have only dreamed of moving to Italy or another land of our dreams is that she did actually purchase a country estate in Tuscany and, at least during breaks from teaching in San Francisco, supervise the remodeling of her villa. The true subject, however, of Under the Tuscan Sun and her less competent sequel, Bella Tuscany: The Sweet Life in Italy, is not remodeling, and certainly not "taking chances" or approaching the subject with "an open, curious mind," as Mayes's publishers and critics would have it. Rather, it is the way in which these books so accurately reflect the bourgeois dream of self-fulfillment, in this case the fantasy of escaping to a dream-world of charming expatriate experience--dinners on the veranda, shopping for local crafts, encounters with warm-hearted locals. Mayes's dream of Italy, like those of so many Roman Holiday admirers, evokes a contemporary myth of privilege, of "all the places MasterCard will take you," as the advertisement has it. It is about finding a place to live so far away that we don't have to face the monster of daily life. The sentimental treatment of the peasantry, hand-crafts, and ancient ruins masks the unresolved discontent of a consumer culture that nonetheless does not intend to forego its material advantages. At its heart, the relationship of Mayes's narrator to her subject is inauthentic because the speaker always has one eye cocked toward her potential audience, always with the suggestion that hers is the most enviable of possible experiences. In this sense, expatriation itself is a consumable intended for conspicuous display. How different it is with D. H. Lawrence, Rebecca West, and Lawrence Durrell--all of whom took on the Mediterranean for real, risking something of themselves in the course of doing so. The acquisition and renovation of an Italian villa is the framework on which Mayes's flimsy tale is assembled, but the egoistic compulsion to acquire forms its compelling motive. Unlike Lawrence, whose gaze is outwardly directed toward the living culture of Italy, and unlike Durrell, whose interest is both scholarly and social, Mayes's persona is on a sort of raiding expedition--the countryside is the site of forays in search of gourmet foods, wines, crafts, and decorative items to buttress her sense of personal gratification. This complacent dream is all the more insidious because of its pretense of a valorizing, nonjudgemental acceptance of cultural "others," all the while ruthlessly exploiting its own economic advantages. Interspersing recipes in the narrative confirms the extent to which consumption underlies Mayes's writing. Food is a fixation here, as it is in bourgeois culture in general, because it is an easily manipulated projection of narcissistic ego. It is the one thing in Mayes's world that can be controlled. …


The article explores water security from an international law point of view. The article argues that in order to better understand water security it is important to focus on the function of international water law. Even though water security is a relatively recent concept it was latent in the process of the evolution of international water law.  In addition, the article examines the relationship between man and water from the point of view of water security. The article seeks to answer the question: how does international water law deal with that relationship? Is water only an object to be utilized and protected or has the relationship become more complex and ambivalent through the occurrence of various extreme events. Furthermore, the article places the concept of water security into a historiographical and substantive context. It explores three broad approaches by international law to water issues: general international law, the regulatory approach and the management approach. The article argues that they are all relevant to water security. Finally, the article seeks to demonstrate that even though water security has emerged as a new notion, this does not mean that international law does not include rules and principles relevant for water security. Indeed, many general principles of international law are applicable in the context of water security. In addition, specific regulations dealing with water quantity and quality issues have been developed in international environmental law, although they are not necessarily labelled as water security rules. Moreover, various risk management methods have been elaborated to deal with water-related disasters and crises. Reciprocally, water security arguments are not necessarily new notions but rather reflect already existing concepts and principles.


SUMMARY Echinococcus granulosus sensu latu (s.l.) and Taenia hydatigena are common parasites of ruminant intermediate hosts in the Balkans. Transmission is linked mainly to home slaughtering and the feeding of infected organs to dogs. In Kosovo, many old sheep are slaughtered particularly during Eid al-Adha (Feast of Sacrifice). To determine whether this tradition could affect parasite transmission, we compared the probability of 504 dogs to contract taenid infections after deworming during one period before Eid al-Adha and a similar period beginning with this event. Initially, taeniid eggs were detected in 6·2% (CI 4·2–8·6) of the dogs. The prevalence before Eid al-Adha was significantly lower (1·2%, CI 0·4–2·6) as compared with the prevalence after the event (4·3%, CI 2·6–6·3). A comparable trend was apparent at species level for T. hydatigena and E. granulosus. These results indicate that the pronounced increase of taeniid infections, including E. granulosus s.l., after Eid al-Adha is linked to traditional home slaughtering that occurs during this celebration. This particular epidemiological situation provides an opportunity for implementing focussed control activities.


We use an innovative methodology to model the socioeconomic linkages between water, energy, and food in the East Nile Basin. Based upon a theoretical nexus framework, the methodology is expanded into a quantifiable modeling suite that under-lies the analysis of each of three country case studies. The advantages are that, despite resource shortages being a challenge, the modeling suite aids in devising policies and strategies that formulate these sectoral interdependencies and provide the evidence-based research results necessary for their design in a way that exploits synergies existing across sectors, countries, and regions (Al-Zubari n.d.). This paper lays out the methodology and gives an example of an application and scenarios by focusing on three countries in the East Nile Basin. This methodology paper will be followed by three individual country case studies that highlight the water, energy, and food nexus for each.


In automatic software verification, we have observed a theoretical convergence of model checking and program analysis. In practice, however, model checkers, on one hand, are still mostly concerned with precision, e.g., the removal of spurious counterexamples. Lattice-based program analyzers, on the other hand, are primarily concerned with efficiency. To achieve their respective goal, the former builds and refine reachability tress while the latter annotates location with abstract states and rely on overapproximation to accelerate convergence. In this thesis we focus on capturing within a framework existing approaches as well as new solutions with the objective of enabling a better understanding of the fundamental similarities and differences between approaches and with a strong accent on implementability. In a first step, we designed and implemented a framework and a corresponding algorithm for software verification called configurable program analysis. The algorithm can be configured to perform not only a purely tree-based or a purely lattice-based analysis, but offers many intermediate settings that have not been evaluated before. An instance of an analysis in the framework consists of one or more program analyses, such as a predicate abstraction or a shape analysis, and their execution and interaction is controlled using several parameters of our generic verification algorithm. Our experiments consider different configurations of combinations of symbolic analyses. By varying the value of parameters we were able to explore a continuous precision-efficiency spectrum and we showed that it can lead to dramatic improvements in efficiency. In a second step, we improved our framework and algorithm to enable the program analysis to dynamically (on-line) adjust its precision depending on the accumulated results. The framework of configurable program analysis offers flexible, but static, composition of program analyses. Our extension enables composite analyses to adjust the precision of each of their component analyses independently and dynamically. To illustrate, we can allow the explicit tracking of the values of a variable to be switched off in favor of a predicate abstraction when and where the number of different variable values that have been encountered has exceeded a specified threshold. We evaluated the dynamic precision adjustment mechanism by considering combinations of symbolic and explicit analyses. We analyzed code taken from an SSH client/server software as well as hand-crafted examples. We showed that the new approach offers significant gains compared with a purely symbolic, predicate-abstraction-based approach. In a third step, we consider the problem of refinement in addition to the dynamic adjustment of the precision. In contrast to precision adjustment, refinement only increases the precision of the analysis. Moreover, when a refinement occurs, states with a lower precision are discarded and replaced by states with a higher precision. Based on our framework, we present a novel refinement approach for shape analysis, a promising technique to prove program properties about recursive data structures. The challenge is to automatically determine the data-structure type, and to supply the shape analysis with the necessary information about the data structure. We present a stepwise approach to the selection of instrumentation predicates for a TVLA-based shape analysis, which takes us a step closer towards the fully automatic verification of data structure implementations. The approach uses two techniques to guide the refinement of shape abstractions. First, during program exploration, an explicit heap analysis collects sample instances of the heap structures. The samples are used to identify the data structures that are manipulated by the program. Second, during abstraction refinement along an infeasible error path, we consider different possible heap abstractions and choose the coarsest one that eliminates the infeasible path. We were able to successfully verify example programs from a data-structure library that manipulate doubly-linked lists and trees. The techniques presented in this thesis have been implemented as an extension to the BLAST model checker.


Damaged bases in DNA are known to lead to errors in replication and transcription, compromising the integrity of the genome. A molecular wire, DNA conducts charge with shallow distance dependence, yet mismatches and lesions attenuate this process. We have proposed a model where repair proteins, containing redox-active [4Fe4S] clusters, utilize DNA charge transport (CT) to scan the genome for lesions. Based on this model, proteins are predicted to redistribute onto strands where DNA CT is inhibited. Using single-molecule atomic force microscopy (AFM) we have probed the redistribution of EndoIII, a base excision repair protein that contains a [4Fe4S] cluster. Consistent with the model, we find a redistribution of EndoIII onto DNA strands (3.8 kbp) containing C:A mismatch, which is not a specific substrate of EndoIII but inhibits CT. Proteins with mutations making them deficient in DNA-mediated CT do not similarly redistribute onto mismatched strands. Various DNA-binding proteins, such as those involved in repair and pathways that maintain the integrity of DNA, have been found to contain FeS domains and other redox cofactors. We are discovering proteins from alternate repair pathways that may also utilize DNA CT to find damage. XPD, a 5′-3′ helicase involved in nucleotide excision repair, contains a conserved [4Fe4S] cluster and exhibits a DNA-bound redox potential that indicates it is able to carry out DNA CT. In AFM studies, we observe also the redistribution of XPD onto strands containing a mismatch. We further demonstrate that an XPD mutant, L325V, defective in carrying out DNA CT, does not redistribute onto mismatched strands. DNA CT between distinct repair proteins bound to DNA was also probed by AFM. When XPD and EndoIII are mixed together, they coordinate in relocalizing onto mismatched strands. However, when a CT-deficient mutant of either repair protein is combined with the CT-proficient repair partner, no relocalization occurs. These data not only indicate a general link between the ability of a repair protein to carry out DNA CT and its ability to redistribute onto DNA strands near lesions but also provide evidence for coordinated DNA CT between repair proteins in their search for damage in the genome.


Estonia has made relatively fast progress in developing its environmental policy and drafting legislation during the last decade. Strategic environmental documents and programmes have been elaborated, and Estonia has successfully started to implement the goals set in these documents. Implementation of agreed environmental policy goals requires significant financial resources as well as know-how, and international cooperation is one of the most important sources of them. Bilateral environmental cooperation with Northern and Central European countries, which is based on international regime-like arrangements and is well institutionalised, has been and still is an important source of know-how as well as financial assistance for the improvement of the state of the environment in Estonia. Experience acquired in this cooperation process has also helped Estonia to pave the way towards successful accession negotiations with the European Union.


Abstract: This article considers why the media industry has failed to promote democracy in post-Soviet Armenia. It attempts to explain why the media have been consistently unable to bring socially significant information into the public domain, and why they have failed to provide an intellectual space in which politically constructive ideas could take shape through exchange, negotiation, and confrontation. The core of the article gives a critical assessment of the factors that affect media operation in Armenia, such as the expectations of the audience, the reasons for the lack of demand for democratic media, the impact of the Soviet legacy on the normative framework affecting the media industry, the growing control of the political authorities over business activity in general, and a legal culture that marginalizes the rule of law. The analysis throughout is illustrated and underpinned by empirical data collected by the author during a series of research projects in Armenia. Key words: democracy, forms of dependency, freedom of the press, media consumption, rule of law ********** Although many social scientists recognize that democracy, free media, and the rule of law each have a life of their own, and do not necessarily come together as a package, (1) people still assume that the introduction of any one of these elements will strengthen the other two. (2) In the early 1990s, that assumption gave rise to the misleading expectation that if the media could be freed from Communist Party control, and placed under regulations that met international standards, it would become a powerful catalyst of the post-Soviet transition toward democracy. In pursuit of that vision, Western-sponsored programs emphasizing media reform were introduced in many of the new republics that emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union. The reforms were accompanied by an insistent rhetoric that stressed the importance of a free and independent media. But as time passed it became clear that this was not to be. The goal of an independent media bore little relationship to what was actually happening in Armenia. (3) Instead of taking a lead in promoting democracy, the press in Armenia and other post-Soviet countries quickly became involved in political and economic affairs, unashamedly violated the principles of integrity, and generally interpreted "freedom" as being free from every kind of restraint--including moral restraint. (4) Why was there such a failure of the media industry to promote reform in the post-Soviet independent states? Why did the industry not bring socially significant information into the public domain? Why did it not provide a climate in which constructive ideas could take shape? Why, well into the second decade after its formation, was it beholden to political and economic interests? And why did the media not succeed in building a working relationship with readers, viewers, and listeners? To answer some of these questions, it is necessary to place the media in social, economic, and political context. This requires examining all of the factors that affect media operation. Factors includes the audience's expectations, the reasons for the lack of demand for democratic media, the impact of the Soviet legacy on the framework of the media, the growing control of the political authorities over business, and a legal culture that marginalizes the rule of law. This article will examine some of the above issues in relation to the Armenian media. Although Armenia has some unique peculiarities, the general pattern of media-related processes in the country has a strong resemblance to the manner in which the media developed in the other post-Soviet republics. I will analyze the media's audience in Armenia, examining both the pattern of media use among ordinary people, and the much more intense attention paid to them by the political and economic elite. The findings will give an indication of what is expected of the media in Armenian society, and what is demanded of them. …


Conductivities of sodium dodecyl sulfate have been determined in water and in the presence of urea and acetamide at 298.15, 303.15, 308.15, 313.15 and 318.15 K. From the specific conductivity data, the critical micellar concentration, degree of counter ion association, degree of counter ion dissociation and standard free energy of micellization, standard enthalpy of micellization and standard entropy of micellization of sodium dodecyl sulfate have been computed. The thermodynamic parameters of micellization and effect of additives on these parameters have been used to study the interactions present in the micellar systems. Surfactants are found to enhance the diffusion significantly depending on hydrophobic/hydrophilic group lengths and the structure of the surfactant molecule. Aggregation properties of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) in the presence of additives like urea and acetamide at various temperatures have been measured by the conductometric study in aqueous solution. The experimental data of aqueous-urea and acetamide solutions as a function of SDS concentration ranging from 1 to 14 mM dm show the presence of inflexion points indicating micellization and interaction mechanisms. CMC of surfactant increases with increase in temperature in a narrows range of composition. Considering CMC as a function of temperature, various thermodynamic parameters have been evaluated viz: (a) the standard enthalpy change (∆H0m), (b) standard entropy change (∆S 0 m) and (c) standard Gibbs energy change (∆G 0 m), The variation in these parameters with the concentration of surfactant and with the change in temperature suggests the manifestation of hydrophobic interactions in the studied system.


The 2012 Dividend Tax Reform in China ties individual investors' dividend tax rates to the length of their shareholding period. We find that firms facing a reduction (increase) in their individual investors' dividend tax rates are more (less) likely to increase dividend payout. Such an effect is concentrated in firms where incentives of controlling shareholders and minority shareholders are aligned. Furthermore, investors respond to this tax law change by reducing trading activities before the cum-dividend day and successfully lower their dividend tax penalty. Overall, our evidence enhances the notion that individual investors' tax profiles shape firms' payout policies.


Combining GPS/INS/odometer data has been considered one of the most attractive methodologies for ground vehicle navigation. In the case of long GPS signal blockages inherent to complex urban environments, however, the accuracy of this approach is largely deteriorated. To overcome this limitation, this study proposes a novel ground vehicle navigation system that combines INS, odometer and omnidirectional vision sensor. Compared to traditional cameras, omnidirectional vision sensors can acquire much more information from the environment thanks to their wide field of view. The proposed system automatically extracts and tracks vanishing points in omnidirectional images to estimate the vehicle rotation. This scheme provides robust navigation information: specifically by combining the advantages of vision, odometer and INS, we estimate the attitude without error accumulation and at a fast running rate. The accurate rotational information is fed back into a Kalman filter to improve the quality of the INS bridging in harsh urban conditions. Extensive experiments have demonstrated that the proposed approach significantly reduces the accumulation of position, velocity and attitude errors during simulated GPS outages. Specifically, the position accuracy is improved by over 30% during simulated GPS outages.


The noise produced by low speed flows over cavities with and without plasma actuators were studied using experimental techniques. The acoustic and flow environments of open cavities with length-depth ratios of 0.5, 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 have been investigated. Measurements using oil flow, particle imaging velocimetry, boundary layer surveys and surface mounted microphone measurements were taken. Experiments were conducted in a low speed wind tunnel running at freestream velocities between
10 m/s and 20 m/s corresponding to Reynolds numbers, based on the depth of the cavity, of
3.6 x 104 to 7.1 x 104. An array of paraelectric plasma actuators were located on the approaching surface to the cavity, aligned with the direction of the oncoming flow. Results show that the paraelectric plasma actuators can produce a significant attenuation of the dominant cavity mode. The particle imaging velocimetry surveys around the electrode elements reveal vortical structures produced by the plasma actuators. It is shown that these structures convect downstream with the mean flow and produce disturbances similar to that of vortex generators. This affects the convection of spanwise discrete vortices in the cavity shear layer, disrupting the mechanisms that allow the cavity to produce tones. Results also show that for any given geometry and freestream flow speed the attenuation of the dominant mode reduced with increasing voltage to the actuators.


Translation and interpreting are always socially embedded practices. They present as practices of mediation, negotiating meaning between languages and discursive forms and cultures. Strategies involved are in a continuum from defamiliarisation to domestication: from deliberately translating so as to make the conceptual frame of the source text challenge received assumptions in the target language, to translating in ways which make the finished text indistinguishable from one originally conceived and socially framed in the target language. The choice of strategies always has a political dimension, whether conscious or unconscious, overt or hidden. This paper analyses the unusually full archival record of a nineteenth-century colonial trial as the nexus of a range of competing practices of translation and interpreting. Of particular interest is the ways in which translation practices in opposition to the rooted assumptions of the dominant culture—and so necessarily "against the grain"—serve to reveal the repressed polyphony of a nineteenth-century colonial society and open up new cultural and interactional possibilities.


The purpose of business is to employ capital factors in such a manner as to generate value for its customers and profits for its owners. To achieve these ends, management must make at least three distinct decisions – the operating, investment, and financing decisions. The purpose of this study is to formulate a modeling methodology that harmonically analyzes and explains how the investment decision and capital elasticity influence competitive advantage. The research explores the descriptive literature for the current states of computational modeling, accounting theory and practice, managerial finance, macroeconomics, capital theory, and harmonic analysis in order to provide evidence supporting the content validity of a proposed modeling framework, which encodes, modulates, and transforms raw financial data into waveforms suitable for harmonic analysis. The framework is operationalized algebraically, translated into a high-level computational language, and subsequently tested using simulation methods in order to analyze the computational robustness of the implementation. Finally, empirical testing shows a significant correlation exists between the model's reported results and the profitability of sole proprietorships in the U.S. providing initial evidence of the framework's construct validity. Additional empirical testing shows that the relationship between the model's reported results and net profitability is stronger than results returned from the use of raw capital magnitudes providing evidence of the model's positive capacity for recommending decisions. The study uses extant financial data obtained from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which maintains and releases Federal tax information extracted from its archives into the public domain through its Statistics of Income (SOI) programs. To my nieces and nephews... Ralph Matthew McKibbin Joanne Michele Stocker James Joseph McKibbin Michael Paul McKibbin Morgan Julia McKibbin Kyle Jeffrey McKibbin William Scott McKibbin Jacob Patrick McKibbin


This study examines population growth in Kenya since independence. In 1966, the Ministry of Health integrated the formerly private Family Planning Association of Kenya within its Family Planning Programme. The Programe's effect on reducing the birth rate is reviewed in conjunction with a demographic trends eliciting the conclusion that current growth rates cannot be sustained given land availability and resources; either human or natural forces will intervene to curtail population growth before the end of this century. Kenyan population policy is analyzed with respect to both formulation and implementation. This analysis indicates that full internalization of costs and benefits associated with such population increases requires a significant expansion and change in the methodology of the Family Planning Programme. Additional policy tools are presented and their feasibility within the present institutional framework discussed.


Background: Due to the human need for food, any change in the quality and quantity of food will affect the health of the community. It is important to remove microbial contaminants from food during the production, storage and supply phases. In this study, the antibacterial effects of nanoparticles of zinc oxide on two Escherichia coli and Listeria monocytogenes were investigated. Materials and Methods: In this study, zinc oxide nanoparticles were prepared from zeolite and quantified by X-ray fluorescence. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) of nanoparticles of zinc oxide were determined using a disc diffusion method. Graphpad prism statistical software was used for data analysis and ANOVA was used for analysis of variance. Significant limit was set at 0.05 (P≤0.05). Results: Based on the results of this study, the MIC value of nanoparticles of zinc oxide for all tested bacteria was 4 mg/ml, and the MBC values for standard strain and Escherichia coli isolates were 8 and 4 mg/ml, respectively. The standard strain and isolate of Listeria monocytogenes was calculated to be 4 mg/ml. Conclusion: The present study showed that zinc oxide nanoparticles can be used as a deterrent against the pathogens of the materials and avoid contamination.


Plant height is a key functional trait related to aboveground biomass, leaf photosynthesis and plant fitness. However, large-scale geographical patterns in community-average plant height (CAPH) of woody species and drivers of these patterns across different life forms remain hotly debated. Moreover, whether CAPH could be used as a predictor of ecosystem primary productivity is unknown.

 We compiled mature height and distributions of 11 422 woody species in eastern Eurasia, and estimated geographic patterns in CAPH for different taxonomic groups and life forms. Then we evaluated the effects of environmental (including current climate and historical climate change since the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM)) and evolutionary factors on CAPH. Lastly, we compared the predictive power of CAPH on primary productivity with that of LiDAR-derived canopy-height data from a global survey.

 Geographic patterns of CAPH and their drivers differed among taxonomic groups and life forms. The strongest predictor for CAPH of all woody species combined, angiosperms, all dicots and deciduous dicots was actual evapotranspiration, while temperature was the strongest predictor for CAPH of monocots and tree, shrub and evergreen dicots, and water availability for gymnosperms. Historical climate change since the LGM had only weak effects on CAPH. No phylogenetic signal was detected in family-wise average height, which was also unrelated to the tested environmental factors. Finally, we found a strong correlation between CAPH and ecosystem primary productivity. Primary productivity showed a weaker relationship with CAPH of the tallest species within a grid cell and no relationship with LiDAR-derived canopy height reported in the global survey. Our findings suggest that current climate rather than historical climate change and evolutionary history determine the geographical patterns in CAPH. However, the relative effects of climatic factors representing environmental energy and water availability on spatial variations of CAPH vary among plant life forms. Moreover, our results also suggest that CAPH can be used as a good predictor of ecosystem primary productivity.


Due to the scarcity of cross-cultural comparative studies in exploring students' self-efficacy in science learning, this study attempted to develop a multi-dimensional science learning self-efficacy (SLSE) instrument to measure 316 Singaporean and 303 Taiwanese eighth graders' SLSE and further to examine the differences between the two student groups. Moreover, within-culture comparisons were made in terms of gender. The results showed that, first, the SLSE instrument was valid and reliable for measuring the Singaporean and Taiwanese students' SLSE. Second, through a two-way multivariate analysis of variance analysis (nationality by gender), the main result indicated that the SLSE held by the Singaporean eighth graders was significantly higher than that of their Taiwanese counterparts in all dimensions, including 'conceptual understanding and higher-order cognitive skills', 'practical work (PW)', 'everyday application', and 'science communication'. In addition, the within-culture gender comparisons indicated that the male Singaporean students tended to possess higher SLSE than the female students did in all SLSE dimensions except for the 'PW' dimension. However, no gender differences were found in the Taiwanese sample. The findings unraveled in this study were interpreted from a socio-cultural perspective in terms of the curriculum differences, societal expectations of science education, and educational policies in Singapore and Taiwan.


About the book: The Unknown City takes its place in the emerging architectural literature that looks beyond design process and buildings to discover new ways of looking at the urban experience. A multistranded contemplation of the notion of "knowing a place," it is about both the existence and the possibilities of architecture and the city.

An important inspiration for the book is the work of Henri Lefebvre, in particular his ideas on space as a historical production. Many of the essays also draw on the social critique and tactics of the Situationist movement. The international gathering of contributors includes art, architectural, and urban historians and theorists; urban geographers; architects, artists, and filmmakers; and literary and cultural theorists. The essays range from abstract considerations of spatial production and representation to such concrete examples of urban domination as video surveillance and Regency London as the site of male pleasure.

Although many of the essays are driven by social, cultural, and urban theory, they also tell real stories about real places. Each piece is in some way a critique of capitalism and a thought experiment about how designers and city dwellers working together can shape the cities of tomorrow.


Unacceptable behaviour by learners in South African schools is a major concern for all stakeholders in the teaching profession. This explains the increased interest in the role and responsibility of teachers in managing problem behaviour and the effect of this behaviour on educators' quality of life in the workplace. This research posed the following questions: Does inappropriate student behaviour affect teachers' working life, and if so, to what extent? Is the prevalence of undisciplined behaviour higher amongst boys and in multicultural schools? What is the influence of learners' disruptive behaviour on teachers? How do teachers experience support from role-players? A questionnaire was used to obtain information for answering these questions. Although the findings of this research indicated that not all teachers experience excessive emotional reactions that may contribute to stress, it appeared that undisciplined behaviour was the source of irritation, made demands on teachers' temper and caused aggression. The majority of teachers reported that they enjoyed sufficient support from the school's governing body, but they were not satisfied with the support from parents and the department of education. In spite of the high percentage of teachers who indicated that undisciplined behaviour impacted on their job satisfaction, the majority do not consider leaving the teaching profession.


The storage industry is moving toward emerging non-volatile memories (NVMs), including the spin-transfer torque magnetoresistive random-access memory (STT-MRAM) and the phase-change memory (PCM), owing to their high density and low-power operation. In this paper, we demonstrate, for the first time, circuit models and performance benchmarking for the domain wall (DW) reversal-based magnetoelectric-antiferromagnetic random access memory (ME-AFMRAM) at cell-level and at array-level. We also provide perspectives for coherent rotation-based memory switching with topological insulator-driven anomalous Hall read-out. In the coherent rotation regime, the ultra-low power magnetoelectric switching coupled with the terahertz-range antiferromagnetic dynamics result in substantially lower energy-per-bit and latency metrics for the ME-AFMRAM compared to other NVMs including STTMRAM and PCM. After characterizing the novel ME-AFMRAM, we leverage its unique properties to build a dense, on-chip, secure NVM platform, called SMART: A Secure Magnetoelectric Antiferromagnet- Based Tamper-Proof Non-Volatile Memory. New NVM technologies open up challenges and opportunities from a data-security perspective. For example, their sensitivity to magnetic fields and temperature fluctuations, and their data remanence after power-down make NVMs vulnerable to data theft and tampering attacks. The proposed SMART memory is not only resilient against data confidentiality attacks seeking to leak sensitive information but also ensures data integrity and prevents Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks on the memory. It is impervious to particular power side-channel (PSC) attacks which exploit asymmetric read/write signatures for 0 and 1 logic levels, and photonic side-channel attacks which monitor photo-emission signatures from the chip backside.


Slip on the San Andreas fault was determined for three M ∼ 4.7 earthquakes using a tomographic inverse system [Beroza and Spudich, 1988] to invert seismic source time functions (STFs) from S waves. STFs were obtained by deconvolving mainshock accelerograms by those from collocated smaller earthquakes. Accelerograms were from the U.S. Geological Survey Parkfield Small Aperture Array (UPSAR) and from a distributed array of digital accelerometer stations at Parkfield. Eight or nine STFs are used in each of the three inversions. STFs are typically symmetrical pulses with a duration of about 0.3-0.5 s. In the inversion, mainshock rise time was set to 0.05 s, and we allowed the rupture time to vary slightly from a constant rupture velocity of approximately 0.85β. Rupture for all three events, which are located in or close to the Middle Mountain preparation zone or box (MMB), quickly reaches a local maximum in slip and then propagates outward to peaks, ridges, or plateaus in the slip distribution. Slip for the October 20, 1992, event (located just inside the southern edge of the MMB) propagates from an initial spike north and updip along a curving ridge for about 2 km. The initial spike continued to grow in the November 14, 1993, event (located north of the October 20, 1992, event just beneath the hypocenter of the 1966 Parkfield earthquake), which shows little directivity, although there is a smaller patch of slip updip and to the south. In contrast, rupture for the December 20, 1994, event (located just south of the October 20, 1992, event) propagated north and slightly updip, creating a rough plateau in slip a few kilometers wide on a side. Directivity for this event also is to the north. Directivity for all three events points in the approximate direction of the 1966 hypocenter. Small pulses, which comprise a coda, are found on the STFs for several seconds after the initial impulsive event. Several tests based on the assumption that the average of all STFs from UPSAR for each event is an estimate of the true slip at the source suggest that the codas in the STFs are S waves from a long-duration source rather than uncorrected site response. An initiation phase is found on the array average for the November 14, 1993, and December 20, 1994, events. These precursory phases are the result of a spike in slip at the hypocenter. A value of 2.4-4 mm is obtained for D c , the slip-weakening distance, by interpreting the initial spike as a critical patch. The few aftershocks for the October 20, 1992, event are distributed to the north and updip of the mainshock, but the November 14, 1993, event had a strong burst of aftershock activity that propagated to the north of its hypocenter at roughly the same depth. Aftershocks of the December 20, 1994, event are mostly updip. The November 14, 1993, event had the simplest slip distribution, appeared to be the most impulsive, and had the most active aftershock sequence and the greatest depth. If the eventual Parkfield earthquake initiates near the 1966 hypocenter, then the directivity of the three events studied here will have pointed to it. However, it is certainly possible that both the initiation of characteristic Parkfield shocks and the directivity of smaller events are controlled by fault properties on a larger scale such as by fault bends or jogs.


In order to better determine the physical properties of hot, massive stars as a function of metallicity, we obtained very high signal-to-noise ratio optical spectra of 26 O and early B stars in the Magellanic Clouds. These allow accurate modeling even in cases where the He i λ4471 line has an equivalent width of only a few tens of m Å. The spectra were modeled with FASTWIND, with good fits obtained for 18 stars; the remainder show signatures of being binaries. We include stars in common to recent studies to investigate possible systematic differences. The "automatic" FASTWIND modeling method of Mokiem and collaborators produced temperatures 1100 K hotter on average, presumably due to the different emphasis given to various temperature-sensitive lines. More significant, however, is that the automatic method always produced a "best" result for each star, even ones we identify as composite (binaries). The temperatures found by the TLUSTY/CMFGEN modeling of Bouret, Heap, and collaborators yielded temperatures 1000 K cooler than ours, on average. Significant outliers were due either to real differences in the data (some of the Bouret/Heap data were contaminated by moonlight continua) or the fact that we could detect the He i line needed to better constrain the temperature. Our new data agree well with the effective temperature scale we previously presented. We confirm that the "Of" emission characteristics do not track luminosity classes in exactly the same manner as in Milky Way stars. We revisit the issue of the "mass discrepancy," finding that some of the stars in our sample do have spectroscopic masses that are significantly smaller than those derived from stellar evolutionary models. We do not find that the size of the mass discrepancy is simply related to either effective temperature or surface gravity.


Purpose of reviewTo summarize recent findings that have examined dietary, genetic and gene–diet interactions that contribute to fat accumulation in the liver during growth and development, with particular focus on contributions relating to dietary carbohydrate and sugar consumption. In addition, this review highlights how some of these contributions to liver fat vary across the population in terms of ethnic-specific effects. Recent findingsDietary carbohydrate, and especially sugars contribute to increased liver fat accumulation due to the lipogenic potential of fructose during liver metabolism. In addition, recent genome-wide studies have identified several polymorphisms that contribute to increased liver fat accumulation, with some of these genes relating to dietary carbohydrate and sugar consumption. In particular, the patatin-like phospholipase domain-containing protein 3 (PNPLA3) gene, which is highly prevalent in Hispanics, contributes to excessive liver fat beginning at a young age, especially in the context of high sugar consumption. SummaryDietary sugar contributes to liver fat accumulation, with this being explained by de-novo lipogenesis from fructose in the liver. Certain genetic factors, including PNPLA3, glucokinase regulatory protein and APOC3 contribute to increased liver fat accumulation, with these effects being manifested at an early age. Hispanics in particular are at elevated risk for liver fat accumulation because of the higher frequency of genetic variants such as PNPLA3 and glucokinase regulatory protein as well as an interaction between the PNPLA3 and dietary sugar.


The isethionate salt form of palbociclib, an orally available cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) inhibitor with potential antineoplastic activity. Palbociclib selectively inhibits cyclin-dependent kinase 4 (CDK4) and 6 (CDK6), thereby inhibiting retinoblastoma (Rb) protein phosphorylation early in the G1 phase leading to cell cycle arrest. This suppresses DNA replication and decreases tumor cell proliferation. CDK4 and 6 are serine/threonine kinases that are upregulated in many tumor cell types and play a key role in the regulation of cell cycle progression.


Phytophagous insects that specialise on broadly distributed plant groups are exposed to host-species diversity gradients. The gall-inducing thrips genus Kladothrips (Froggatt) that specialise on Australian Acacia Mill. (Mimosoideae: Leguminosae, subgenus Phyllodineae DC.) is expected to exhibit variation in host range that is dependent on host ecology. Host Acacia species distributions show structuring between the arid Eremean and non-arid biomes of the monsoonal tropics and temperate south-western and south-eastern Australia. We investigate two aspects of host use in: (1) the Kladothrips rugosus species complex that specialises on hosts whose distributions overlap among sibling lineages on different Acacia species; and (2) Kladothrips nicolsoni that specialises on a species that is relatively isolated from hosts of sibling lineages. First, several approaches that use DNA sequence data are combined to infer putative species among K. rugosus lineages collected from multiple Acacia species using: phylogenetic inference; statistical parsimony; amova; maximum likelihood genetic distance relationships; and generalised mixed Yule coalescent likelihood test of lineage delimitation. Second, haplotype network analysis is used to estimate population structuring of K. nicolsoni that specialises on a geographically isolated Acacia host species. Analyses indicated below species-level relationships among lineages that each induces galls on different Acacia host species. In contrast, haplotype network analysis for a gall-thrips species that is largely allopatric with hosts of sibling species indicates isolation by distance and range expansion effects. Greater host-species richness enhances gall-thrips opportunity to host shift resulting in founder effects that lead to disruptive selection. Restricted gene flow among gall-thrips populations specialising on a relatively isolated host species implies genetic drift via allopatric mechanisms. The results suggest gall-thrips speciation is driven by the combined influence of ecologically based selection with genetic drift that is largely determined by variation in host-species richness between arid and non-arid Australia.


We present a descriptive and exploratory study of factors that can affect the success of COTS-based systems. Based on a review of the literature and industrial experience, the choice of life cycle model and the amount of glueware required were hypothesized as the main factors in predicting project success. In this study we examined the relationship between different life cycle models and COTS integration project success. Two life cycle models were studied: the sequential model and the iterative model. Seven subjects from six industrial organizations responded to a survey providing data on 23 COTS integration projects. While there was variability between iterative and sequential projects on a variety of organizational and product factors, little difference was found between the life cycle models on the success criteria of projects (i.e. being on time, meeting requirements and being within budget). We found that projects that met two or three of the success criteria had significantly higher scores on project characteristics (organizational plus product) than those meeting none or just one.


This project analyzes potential areas of environmental injustice on a census tract level throughout Florida. Data on race and median household income were compiled into ArcGIS 10.2.2 along with Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) locations to determine if communities with low income or large minority population are disproportionately exposed to sources of heavy pollution. Statistical tests found that high minority and low income census tracts were more likely to be within two miles of a TRI site and that census tracts containing two or more TRI sites had significantly lower median household incomes than census tracts with only one or fewer TRI sites. An examination of Gadsen county revealed that several high-minority population census tracts disproportionately contain or are located near TRI sites. Additional studies examining water and air quality, as well as examining exposure to hazardous chemicals from superfund sites or underwater storage tanks would be beneficial for the assessment of environmental injustice in Florida.


The frequency analysis of flood flows recommended in textbooks yields different results by the graphical method of plotting on probability paper using e.g. the Weibull plotting position formula and the analytical method assuming e.g. log-normal or log Pearson type III distributions. If both methods were correct, the results of the two methods should be identical. The plotting position formulas assume that the plotting position should coincide with the mean (or median) of the probabilities which the observation of a rank m has in a great number of samples, each of the same size N . A study of the problem by using synthetic samples shows that these positions do not coincide with the line of the population. A further study shows, however, that the positions of the probabilities of the expected – mean – values of the largest, next largest etc. observation coincide with the line of the population. Thus, it is not the mean value of p of a rank m , but the value of p of the mean value of log q of the rank m , which agrees with the line of population. Therefore, the author finds it essential that the logarithm of the annual peak flows obtain a plotting probability equal to the probability of the expected value of the logarithm of the observations. A new plotting position formula which corresponds to the probability of the expected values of log q is derived.


A Millennium of Culture Contact By Alistair Paterson Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, California, 2011 ISBN 978-1-59874-492-7 (hb), 978-1-59874-493-4 (pb). Pp.327. $A49.95, at email@example.com In this book Paterson addresses the evidence for culture contact between 'aboriginal Europeans and indigenous groups living outside Europe' during the second millennium AD, because 'it was at this time that a truly global network of societies in contact emerged' (9). Historical archaeologists have conducted much of the work Paterson refers to. He begins with some of the challenges for such a synthesis, namely the difficulty of characterizing collectivities such as 'cultures', culture survival and transformation, and geographic regions. He acknowledges that the conceptualization of 'Europe' as a coherent entity has its problems, but is justified because after AD1000 and increasingly from the fifteenth century, Europeans moved outwards to engage with other continents and cultures on an unprecedented and momentous scale. Paterson writes for both the general public and for students, and provides a reading list for each topic. He terms the book a 'guidebook for the intellectual tourist', that includes places he 'found good to visit' (14). Paterson adopts a friendly, graphic style that makes complex processes and debates easily accessible, and synthesizes a vast array of material to present a clear introduction to substantive issues and histories. For example, Chapter 1 explores the world after 1000 AD, through an interesting and effective conceit: as the sun rises on the first of January in the year 1000 AD, what does it see? This device allows Paterson to review regions and places as he follows the sun westwards, providing a baseline survey of world societies at this time. He maps a range of cultures and their complexity, with an emphasis on cross-cultural exchange, including Mesoamerica, South America, the Pacific and Australia. Chapter 2 reviews 'our attempts to understand culture contact', defining 'contact' as between cultures that had 'been basically unaware of each other' (27), emphasising colonialism and European contact. Paterson provides plentiful examples, and often unexpected and salutary connections between diverse themes, events, and places, which are thought-provoking and stimulating. His review of the literature is useful in historicizing and contextualizing concepts such as acculturation (37-9). Paterson also draws from Philip Curtin's 1984 definition of four types of cultural encounter, an approach that I find somewhat mechanistic; while in practice, Paterson's account is nuanced and complex, personally I blench at the sight of categorical schemas of this kind, extended and instantiated by tables (42-5)--however this is perhaps a merely stylistic quibble and does not undermine the value of his account. Chapter 3 addresses encounters in the Northwest Atlantic, tracing Norse domination of the region, who 'found occupied' Britain, Ireland, Scotland, the Orkneys, Shetland, Greenland and North America. It examines cultural contact after 1000 AD, considering especially Norse, Dorset people (palaeo-Eskimo) and Thule (ancestral Inuit)--in a clear and specific discussion of the archaeological evidence for successive encounters and their nature. Chapter 4 moves to consider European contacts during the Middle Ages up to the Italian Renaissance of the fourteenth century. …


This report provides data from the biological tests conducted in December 2004 and January 2005 by Battelle Pacific Northwest Division for the Washington State Department of Transportation at the Culvert Test Bed located at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Skookumchuck Hatchery near Tenino, Washington. The work reported here aimed to determine the leaping ability of juvenile hatchery coho salmon as the fish entered a perched culvert. Results of the trials showed that entry rate and passage success decreased as outfall drop increased. The dominant behavior used to accomplish entry varied with outfall drop. When Overcoming the 0-cm and 12-cm outfall-drop configurations, juvenile coho predominantly used swim-in behavior. For the greater outfall drops of 20 and 26 cm, juvenile coho used leaping behavior for culvert entry. Juvenile coho were not able to successfully overcome the 32-cm outfall drop, which was equivalent to approximately 3 body lengths for the 100-mm coho tested in this study.


Background: Acute otitis media (AOM) is one of the most common diseases in early infancy and childhood. Antibiotic use for AOM varies from 56% in the Netherlands to 95% in the USA and Australia. Objectives: To assess the effects of antibiotics for children with AOM. Search strategy: We searched the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) (The Cochrane Library, 2008, issue 2) which contains the Acute Respiratory Infections (ARI) Group's Specialized Register; MEDLINE (1966 to June week 4 2008); OLDMEDLINE (1958 to 1965); EMBASE (January 1990 to July 2008); and Current Contents (1966 to July 2008). Selection criteria: Randomised controlled trials comparing 1) antimicrobial drugs with placebo 2) immediate antibiotic treatment with observational treatment approaches in children with AOM. Data collection and analysis: Three review authors independently assessed trial quality and extracted data. Main results: We found 10 trials (2928 children) from high income countries with low risk of bias. Pain was not reduced by antibiotics at24 hours, but was at two to seven days, (relative risk (RR) 0.72; 95% confidence interval 0.62 to 0.83). However four trials (1271 children) comparing antibiotics prescribed immediately rather than initial observation found no difference at three to seven days. Antibiotics did not reduce tympanometry, perforation or recurrence. The only case of mastoiditis was in an antibiotic treated child. Vomiting, diarrhoea or rash was higher in children taking antibiotics (RR 1.37; 95% CI 1.09 to 1.76). Individual patient data meta-analysis of a subset of the included trials found antibiotics to be most beneficial in children: aged less than two; with bilateral AOM and with both AOM and otorrhoea. Authors' conclusions: Antibiotics slightly reduce the number of children with acute middle ear infection experiencing pain after a few days. However, most (78%) settle spontaneously in this time, meaning 16 children must be treated to prevent one suffering ear pain. This benefit must be weighed against the possible harms: 1 in 24 children experience symptoms caused by antibiotics. Antibiotics are most useful in children under two years of age, with bilateral AOM, and with both AOM and discharging ears. For most other children with mild disease, an expectant observational approach seems justified. We have no data on populations with higher risks of complications.


Manabu Yukawa, the physicist known as 'Detective Galileo,1 has traveled to Hari Cove, a once popular summer resort town that has fallen on hard times. He is there to speak at a conference on a planned underwater mining operation, which has sharply divided the town. One faction is against the proposed operation, concerned about the environmental impact on the area, known for its pristine waters. The other faction, seeing no future in the town as it is, believes its only hope lies in the development project. The night after the tense panel discussion, one of the resort's guests is found dead on the seashore at the base of the local cliffs. The local police at first believe it was a simple accident-that he wandered over the edge while walking on unfamiliar territory in the middle of the night. But when they discover that the victim was a former policeman and that the cause of death was carbon monoxide poisoning, they begin to suspect he was murdered, and his body tossed off the cliff to misdirect the police. As the police try to uncover where Tsukahara was killed and why, Yukawa finds himself enmeshed in yet another confounding case of murder. In a series of twists as complex and surprising as any in Higashino's brilliant, critically acclaimed work, Galileo uncovers the hidden relationship behind the tragic events that led to this murder.


Divide-and-conquer based methods for Bayesian inference provide a general approach for tractable posterior inference when the sample size is large. These methods divide the data into smaller subsets, sample from the posterior distribution of parameters in parallel on all the subsets, and combine posterior samples from all the subsets to approximate the full data posterior distribution. The smaller size of any subset compared to the full data implies that posterior sampling on any subset is computationally more efficient than sampling from the true posterior distribution. Since the combination step takes negligible time relative to sampling, posterior computations can be scaled to massive data by dividing the full data into a sufficiently large number of data subsets. One such approach relies on the geometry of posterior distributions estimated across different subsets and combines them through their barycenter in a Wasserstein space of probability measures. We provide theoretical guarantees on the accuracy of approximation that are valid in many applications. We show that the geometric method approximates the full data posterior distribution better than its competitors across diverse simulations and reproduces known results when applied to a movie ratings database.


This book explores the place of the sophists within the Greek wisdom tradition, and argues against their almost universal exclusion from serious intellectual traditions. By studying the sophists against the backdrop of the archaic Greek institutions of wisdom, it is possible to detect considerable intellectual overlap between them and their predecessors. This book explores the continuity of this tradition, suggesting that the sophists' intellectual balkanization in modern scholarship, particularly their low standing in comparison to the Presocratics, Platonists, and Aristotelians, is a direct result of Plato's condemnation of them and their practices. This book thus seeks to offer a revised history of the development of Greek philosophy, as well as of the potential - yet never realized - courses it might have followed.


Since the publication of DICOM standard part 10 about file format, DICOM leaves untouched 128 bytes in the beginning of each file for extra metadata accessed directly. This space can be used to declare the file as being a TIFF file, additionally to being a DICOM one. This article demonstrates how to create such hybrid file. TIFF allows for pixel depth of 16 bits-per-channel and may integrate an input ICC color management profile in order to represent the image correctly. We explain how to use this feature so that the TIFF representation automatically conforms to the result which would be expected if the picture data would pass through a DICOM graphical pipeline. Opening hybrid DICOM-TIFF16-ICC fastens the reopening of huge sets of files thanks to highly optimized TIFF and ICC libraries already embedded in the newest operating systems. It is also a very promising option for the transmission of medical image outside of DICOM networks (embedded within PDF documents, burnt on CD, sent by http wado to a web browser).


This study seeks to establish whether Kenyan education system is governed by a specific philosophy of education, and, if such a philosophy indeed exists, whether it is being implemented. In order to do this, it studies several relevant official government reports and documents on education in an attempt to elucidate the philosophical foundations of the Kenyan educational system Four philosophical postulates informed this study: Plato"s theory of education emphasizes the social role of education in preparing individuals to serve society in different capacities in accordance with their aptitudes. It also stresses the need to use instructional methods that befit a specific group, and to offer specialized education, (especially in higher levels) according to the natural abilities of individual learners. The Perennialist theory of education advocates for allegiance to certain principles, truths and facts that are considered to be absolute and binding to all people at all times and in all locations. Indeed, the perennialists argue that the educational ideals and values must not be transitory but permanent and universal. Such ideals and values are held to be essential for the well being of an individual as well as for social stability and prosperity. The Progressivist theory of education, on the other hand, advocates for a new kind of education based on social change. Education ought to be designed in such a way that it primarily caters for the needs and interests of the learner while it"s social role is relegated to a second position. Frankena"s theory of "the good life" holds that the ideals and values that are upheld by an educational system should be supportive of its theory of good life, and this theory of good life is, in turn, defined in terms of the aims of education. As such, therefore, a society"s conception of good life will inform its philosophy of education. The study employs the method of conceptual analysis in explaining the philosophical determinants of Kenya"s system of education. The core conception of analysis is breaking down a concept into simple parts so that its logical structure is displayed. This method is based on the proposition that human beings use language to express their reality. Several policy documents and reports on education in Kenya that were found relevant, were studied and critically analyzed. Certain ideals and values were considered as key ingredients for an appropriate philosophy of education for Kenya upon which educational objectives, practices, planning and reforms could be based. These include: social cohesion, moral integrity, happiness, national identity, national development, democracy, freedom, self-reliance, a sense of mutual social responsibility, good citizenship and the promotion of good life both for individuals and for the society. The study notes that education systems based on, say historical, sociological, or psychological theories alone are likely to be weak and unsatisfactory to the societies they are expected to serve. Therefore, the sociological, historical and psychological foundations of education should be supported by philosophical foundations. These philosophical foundations or principles are usually expressed in social statements that are based on metaphysical, epistemological, logical or axiological postulates. It concludes that the ingredients of a philosophy of education are available but have neither been formulated into a philosophy statement nor effectively implemented in the Kenyan education system.


Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a severe and often chronic anxiety disorder that can develop following exposure to an event involving actual or perceived threat to the life or physical integrity of oneself or another person. Epidemiological studies such as the National Comorbidity Survey1 estimate that more than half the population of the United States has experienced one or more traumatic events and that 8% of the population has met criteria for lifetime PTSD. Thus, trauma and PTSD are significant mental health problems.


Algorithms and integrated optoelectronic architectures for parallel image processing and adaptive optics applications are proposed and analyzed. Image processing is performed on the basis of an evolution equation with anisotropic gain that is introduced. The key components of the image-processing scheme are a coherent optical system for on-the-fly image-edge detection and an analog very large scale integration system for parallel implementation of the evolution equation with anisotropic gain. Examples of video data processing for edge enhancement, imaging through turbulent media, depth estimation from visual data, and motion tracking are presented.


The water industry used NR was selected for blending with SBR. A series of NR/SBR vulcanizates were prepared through three different vulcanization systems, conventional vulcanization (CV), effective vulcanization (EV) and semi-effective vulcanization (SEV) respectively, basing on each formulation and optimum curing time. We examined the mechanical properties of NR/SBR vulcanizates including tensile strength, tear strength, elongation at break, modulus, Shore A hardnessand and relative volume abrasion. The results indicated that NR/SBR vulcanizates prepared in different systems differed in mechanical properties. Vulcanizates prepared via CV showed higher tensile and tear strength; vulcanizates prepared via EV had high modulus and hardness, and vulcanizates prepared via SEV performed high abrasion resistance.