Interconnect technologies between ICs and packages or boards have a significant impact on the IC performance and packaging density. Today, the interconnections are typically accomplished with either wire bonding or flip-chip solders. While both of these technologies are incremental, they also run into either electrical or mechanical barriers as they are extended to higher density of interconnections. Downscaling traditional solder bump interconnect might not satisfy the thermomechanical reliability requirements at very fine-pitches. Alternate interconnection approaches such as compliant interconnects typically require lengthy connections and are therefore limited in terms of electrical properties, although expected to meet the mechanical requirements. This paper reports fine-pitch interconnection technologies using nano-structured nickel as primary interconnection material. The nano-grained nickels are produced by electroplating process. The primary nano-structured interconnects are assembled with different bonding methods to provide organic compatible low-temperature fabrication. Au-Sn and Sn-Cu are used for solder-based assembly of nano-nickel interconnections. Low modulus anisotropic conductive films (ACFs) are also used as an alternate bonding route of the solders. No underfilling is used in all the interconnect structures evaluated in this paper. Assembly are accomplished on different coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) substrates including FR-4 with 18 ppm/degC, advanced organic substrates with 10 ppm/degC, novel low CTE (3 ppm/degC) substrates based on carbon-silicon carbide (C-SiC). The thermomechanical reliability of all the nano-interconnects assembled on different CTE substrates with different bonding approaches is evaluated by thermal shock testing and finite-element analysis. Nano-nickel interconnects bonded with the ACF showed the highest reliability withstanding 1500 cycles. In all cases, no apparent failure was observed in the primary nano-nickel metal interconnects. This technology is expected to be easily downscaled to submicrometer and nano-scale unlike the current solder technologies leading to true nano-interconnections.


A 64-year-old male was referred to our hospital for evaluation of proteinuria. His medical history and physical examination were unremarkable. Laboratory findings revealed a white blood cell count of 4,900/mm3, hemoglobin level of 12.9 g/dL, platelet count of 157,000/mm3, blood urea nitrogen level of 18 mg/dL, and serum creatinine level of 0.77 mg/dL. Urinalysis showed 2+ proteinuria without hematuria. His 24-hour urine protein level was 920 mg/day. Serum protein electrophoresis showed a small M peak, and serum protein immunofixation showed monoclonal gammopathy with an immunoglobulin G (IgG) κ-light chain. A bone marrow biopsy revealed normocellular marrow with minor monoclonal plasma cell infiltration (< 5%). The patient subsequently underwent a renal biopsy. Histologically, the size and cellularity of the glomeruli were normal with patent capillary lumina (Fig. 1A). Immunofluorescence staining was positive for κ-light chains in the tubular cytoplasm, but there was no staining for IgG, IgM, IgA, λ-light chain, C3, or C1q (Fig. 1B). Under electron microscopic examination, the proximal tubules contained sparsely scattered or abundantly packed rhomboid and rod-shaped medium electron-dense crystals in the cytoplasm with segmental loss of microvillus surfaces (Fig. 1C). These findings are consistent with light chain proximal tubulopathy (LCPT) with crystal formation. Despite significant crystalline deposition in the proximal tubules, there was no evidence of Fanconi syndrome, and the patient had no metabolic or bone abnormalities. One year after diagnosis, the patient's hematologic and renal functions were stable without treatment.

Figure 1

Renal histology. (A) Light microscopic findings showed that the glomeruli appeared normal in size and cellularity (×400). (B) Immunofluorescence findings showed positive staining for κ-light chain in the proximal tubules (×400). ...

Diagnosis of light chain crystal deposition may be challenging because the clinical and pathological manifestations are uncommon and poorly characterized, sometimes resulting in an incorrect or missed diagnosis. Although this patient presented with clinically asymptomatic proteinuria, a high index of suspicion was necessary to achieve an accurate diagnosis of LCPT without Fanconi syndrome. Diagnostic work-up for asymptomatic proteinuria should include protein electrophoresis and ultrastructural examination of renal biopsy specimens.


In the past year, local governments have made a foray into the hotly debated arena of immigration law and policy by adopting laws to address illegal immigration in their respective jurisdictions. Courts have struck down many of these laws on the grounds that they are preempted pursuant to a traditional view of federalism. From a localist perspective, however, this is troubling for two reasons. First, traditional federalism fails to recognize local control and autonomy by insisting on treating local governments as mere arms of the state. Instead of the traditional two-tier, federal-state federalism model, localists favor a more modern view of federalism that envisions a third tier of an empowered, if not sovereign, local government. Second, even if localists accept the traditional model, local governments may be required by the federal government to enforce its immigration laws. This requirement would constitute an unfunded mandate that undermines local control and self-government. This paper will explore these tensions and argue that empowering local governments will stimulate more innovative policy-making in the immigration arena that may generate macro-level solutions for what is seen as an intractable problem.


Introduction: Many opioid analgesics share common structural elements; however, minor differences in structure can result in major differences in pharmacological activity, pharmacokinetic profile, and clinical efficacy and tolerability. Areas covered: This review compares and contrasts the chemistry, pharmacodynamics, pharmacokinetics, and CNS 'functional activity' of tapentadol and tramadol, responsible for their individual clinical utilities. Expert opinion: The distinct properties of tapentadol and tramadol generate different CNS functional activities, making each drug the prototype of different classes of opioid/nonopioid analgesics. Tramadol's analgesia derives from relatively weak µ-opioid receptor (MOR) agonism, plus norepinephrine and serotonin reuptake inhibition, provided collectively by the enantiomers of the parent drug and a metabolite that is a stronger MOR agonist, but has lower CNS penetration. Tapentadol's MOR agonist activity is several-fold greater than tramadol's, with prominent norepinephrine reuptake inhibition and minimal serotonin effect. Accordingly, tramadol is well-suited for pain conditions for which a strong opioid component is not needed—and it has the benefit of a low abuse potential; whereas tapentadol, a schedule-II controlled substance, is well-suited for pain conditions requiring a strong opioid component—and it has the benefit of greater gastrointestinal tolerability compared to classical strong opioids. Both drugs offer distinct and complementary clinical options.


RD F100 The University Experience (a) 3 Credits Designed to serve as an academic, cultural, and social transition to the UAF campus. Through learner-centered education and emphasis on positive self-concept theories, RD F100 will provide an opportunity to build on personal strengths and skills, as well as learning to take advantage of those resources and support programs which will serve rural and Alaska Native students and aid in a successful transition to college life. Lecture + Lab + Other: 3 + 0 + 0


Matricaria recutita L. (Asteraceae), better known as chamomile, has been used due to its pharmacological properties. Laboratory-manufactured gels with chamomile extract were developed with the evaluation of the physical-chemical stability, as well as the study of its toxicity. The extractive solution was prepared by maceration with ethyl alcohol 95%. Part of the chamomile extractive ethanolic solution (CEES) was concentrated in rotoevaporator, obtaining a raw chamomile extract (RCE). For the preparation of gels, carbopol 940P, hydroxyethyl cellulose and hydroxypropyl methylcellulose were used with the addition of 3% and 5% chamomile extracts. The stability tests applied to the gels were as such: thermal stress, pH evaluation, viscosity and storage at different temperatures. In the end of the tests it was observed that the carbopol gel was the most stable. The Draize Test was employed as the toxicity test, with no irritation observed; however, on skin that underwent abrasion, some gels caused a little irritation.


We develop a model where a firm has an optimal exposure to cyber risk. With rational, fully informed agents and with no hysteresis, a successful cyberattack should have no impact on a financially unconstrained target's reputation and post-attack policies. In contrast, when a successful attack involves the loss of personal financial information, there is a significant shareholder wealth loss, which is much larger than the attack's out-of-pocket costs. This excess loss is higher when the attack decreases sales growth more and lower when the board pays more attention to risk management before the attack. Further, an attack decreases a firm's risk appetite as it beefs up its risk management and information technology and decreases the risk-taking incentives of management. Finally, successful cyberattacks adversely affect the stock price of firms in the target's industry. These results imply that successful attacks with personal financial information loss provide adverse information about cyber risk to target firms, their stakeholders, and their competitors.


OBJECTIVES
Measurement of outcomes is increasingly employed as an indicator of the quality of clinical care. The most commonly measured outcome in many clinical studies, especially in oncology, still remains the overall survival rate. Sultan Qaboos University Hospital (SQUH), Oman, is striving for excellence through quality management. In seeking continual improvement, quality measurement exercises have been initiated throughout the Hospital. We present the overall survival rate of four of the ten most common cancers diagnosed in Oman.

METHODS
The cancers included non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL), Hodgkin's lymphoma (HL), breast cancer, and stomach cancer. The studies were all retrospective and had been conducted previously. For present purposes, only the overall survival was compared with studies both from the region, and with bench-mark studies.

RESULTS
For NHL, with a median follow-up of 8 months, the 2-year overall survival rate was 64%; 90% for low risk, 55% for intermediate risk, and 15% for high risk groups. For HL, the 5-year overall survival rate was 64%; 76% for low risk and 42% for high risk. For breast cancer, the 5-year survival rate was 67%; percentages were 88%, 75% and 59% for Groups I, II, and III respectively. For gastric cancer, the 5-year survival rate was 16.5 %; 24% for the non-metastatic group.

CONCLUSION
The outcome of patients with early stages and fewer adverse prognostic factors is comparable to what has been reported in the international literature; however, the outcome is inferior for patients presenting with advanced stage disease and several adverse prognostic factors.


THE ISSUE is a project within the Regions of Knowledge scheme funded through the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme. THE ISSUE focuses on Traffic, Health and Environment to achieve Intelligent Solutions for Sustaining Urban Economies by bringing together innovative research-driven clusters to coordinate European research and technology development in six areas. These areas are Intelligent Transportation Systems; transport impacts on urban mobility; transport greening; intermodal regional transport; safety and security of citizens; and associated economic, health and environmental impacts. THE ISSUE project particularly addresses the use of space technologies from satellite remote sensing and navigation, as well as GIS and computer intelligence technologies in transport-related sectors. This paper looks into the general presentation of the project and the first results.


We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,-- This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, And mouth with myriad subtleties.--Paul Laurence Dunbar, "We Wear the Mask" (1896) False face must hide what the false heart doth know.--William Shakespeare, Macbeth (c.1603-1607) In 1843, as African American writers engaged in a fiery quest to banish the mask of servility and reveal the humanity beneath, activist Henry Highland Garnet encouraged both free and enslaved blacks to build their solidarity with the rallying cry "RESISTANCE! RESISTANCE! RESISTANCE!" (96). Twelve years earlier, Maria Stewart, America's first black female political writer and lecturer, asked: "How long shall the fair daughters of Africa be compelled to bury their minds and talents beneath a load of iron pots and kettles?" (38). These sentiments, articulated in antebellum America, were echoed later in the century in the literary and professional projects of several writers who would see their work published in the Colored American Magazine (CAM). As described on its frontispiece, CAM was an "Illustrated Monthly, devoted to Literature, Science, Music, Art, Religion, Facts, Fiction, and Traditions of the Negro Race" that stood at the vanguard of African American social and intellectual achievement at the turn of the century. Contemporary scholars have recognized the importance of CAM, particularly the literary achievements of its first editor, Pauline Hopkins. (1) Within CAM's pages, writers dedicated to the production of a "high class monthly" (Carter 143) sought to "create a literary and political climate for a black renaissance" that anticipated the efforts of the now-celebrated Harlem Renaissance (Carby xxxi). Extolling the virtue and character of America's black citizens, CAM demanded that blacks have a chance to prove their right to citizenship through excellence in the arts, politics, and education. Its mission, which focused on "replac[ing] the politics of compromise with political demands for changes in social relations," recognized the social, educational, and economic limitations that had been imposed on many newly freed blacks (Carby xxxii), and sought to teach the growing body of free, educated blacks the modes of speech, writing, and behavior that might grant them access to the American Dream. This proved especially tricky, however, given the white backlash against black social and economic advancements during the "nadir." The violence that ran rampant at this time necessitated a political and literary stance that was direct, yet nonconfrontational, inclusive, yet highbrow. Consequently, Shakespeare emerged as a symbol large enough to satisfy the philosophical goals and social limits of this progressive black periodical at the turn of the twentieth century. Several CAM writers alluded to and signified on Shakespearean texts in their articles, essays, and stories to help substantiate the right of African Americans to assume their place as rightful heirs to American democracy. (2) For example, in 1900 CAM published M. E Hunter's "For Freedman's Rights," an essay that includes a poem recasting Hamlet's "To be, or not to be" soliloquy through the lens of black disenfranchisement. Likewise, Bob Cole's "The Negro and the Stage," published in 1902, alludes to Shakespeare as a symbol of artistic excellence and references Shakespearean passages that support Cole's quest for nonstereotypical roles for blacks in a theatrical sphere dominated by whites. That same year Pauline Hopkins's novel Hagar's Daughter, serialized in CAM under Hopkins's pseudonym Sarah A. Allen, signified on Macbeth's theme of "false face[s]" to denounce de facto and de jure segregation. (3) This essay will show how these writers engaged issues of black aesthetics and politics in order to lay claim to full citizenship through their distinctive repetitions and revisions of Shakespeare. …


During the last year, the Executive Board (EB) endeavoured to meet on a regular basis, and to hold meetings with the Operational Board (OB); fewer meetings were held with the full EMBnet constituency. Aside from the usual issues involved in organising large meetings online (regardless of the chosen technology), the principal obstacle to holding more frequent meetings related to personnel: above all, i) Andreas Gisel (EB Secretary) was seconded to a post in Nigeria, where his Internet connection proved to be extremely unreliable, and maintaining contact with him was often very difficult; and ii) Goran Neshich stepped down as a member of the EB on 15 December 2014. Despite these hurdles, it's been another busy year, and we've worked hard to try to keep the momentum going. This report gives a brief overview of our efforts to move EMBnet, and our affiliated projects and initiatives, forward.


After experiencing riots involving police and a Roma village, a community in north-eastern Slovenia hosted the million-dollar production of a major motion picture, Shanghai Gypsy (2012), which focuses on Roma and criminal justice themes. Several current Slovenian police officers played the role of police while local Roma were 'extras' as Roma villagers. This research explored the meaning of cooperating on production of the film for participants from two groups formerly in conflict. The current study consisted of semi-structured interviews conducted approximately 18 months after the film was produced with a sample of participants. We hypothesized that the film participants were able to interact with each other in ways that opened up new modes of communication, improved interpersonal relationships, and aided mutual understanding. Participants indicated that the film was regarded as a powerful means of generating Roma cultural awareness. Both police and Roma tended to downplay the intensity of the original conflict, yet often offered stories and anecdotes that seemed to indicate that relations between the groups had indeed improved as a result of their participation in the film.


A rigorous spectral analysis is given for the nonspecular reflection of a three-dimensional Gaussian beam at a dielectric isotropic planar structure. For the first time all independent nonspecular effects are derived in a self-consistent manner for the three-dimensional case. It is shown that the longitudinal nonspecular effects in the incidence plane, that is, the lateral and focal shifts of the beam waist position, the angular rotation of the reflected-beam axis, and the modifications of the beam waist width and complex amplitude, have their direct analogies in the plane transverse to the incidence and interface planes that gives transverse nonspecular effects. Moreover, the existence of the other, not yet reported, effect of nonspecular modification of the beam polarization is also proved. A role for TM and TE polarizations in reflected-beam formation is indicated. The results show that, up to the symmetric second-order terms in approximation of Fresnel coefficients, each of the longitudinal and transverse beam factors independently preserves its shape under reflection at the expense of changes of the beam reference frame, width, amplitude, and polarization parameters.


Yortan is a prehistoric burial site in the valley of Bakir Cai
(Kaikos) in western Turkey. It was found and excavated by a French
engineer, Paul Gaudin, some eighty years ago, but results have never
been properly published. The finds which constitute the material
offerings to the dead are now widely dispersed between some seven
European museums. The research aims at bringing, for the first time,
this well known but improperly understood material of prehistoric
Anatolia into one single body of finds, and in that sense it could
be considered as the long overdue publication of the site. Two site
plans which belong to the archives of the British Museum, Western
Asiatic Department, are also brought to light for the first time and
make an important addition to the understanding of the burial customs
of Yortan and Bronze Age western Anatolia in general.
Large pithoi, up to 2m in height, were used as coffins, where
dead adults lay in a contracted position on, one side. Infants and
children were put in smaller jars. The tomb furniture consists
mostly of pottery in the form of jugs and jars, and, less frequently,
bowls. Out of 107 burials, over 250 individual pots could be traced
and illustrated. Yortan itself is without any absolute date or
stratigraphy. Thus the only possible way to bring the site into the
established sequence of Anatolian and Aegean prehistory is by a comparative
and to a lesser degree typological analysis. Three major
Anatolian sites, Troy/Hisarlik, Thermi and Beycesultan, are the major
source of the parallel material. In conclusion, Yortan appears to
belong to a pottery culture of Early Bronze Age date that geographically
occupies the north-west corner of Turkey, perhaps with its main
centre lying in the Balikesir region. Its westward extension reaches
the Aegean caost and the off-shore islands, ie. Lesbos, Chios. The
Gediz (Hermos) valley might define the immediate southern boundaries,
while in the North the celebrated site of Hisarlik, better known as
Troy, might well be a part of this inland culture, representing a
rather poor and coastal variant.


For nearly four years, the Indian government has been unable to bring into force the substantive provisions of the Competition Act passed by Parliament in December 2002. The implementation of the Act, and the appointment of the chairman and all but one of the ten members of the proposed Competition Commission of India (CCI), was stalled by a writ petition in the Indian Supreme Court which contended that the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers required that the CCI be headed by a judge chosen by the judiciary and not a bureaucrat chosen by the executive. The Competition (Amendment) Bill, 2006, contains provisions designed to address the Supreme Court's concerns. It also proposes to make several other changes in sections of the Act dealing with anti-competitive practices. This paper offers a critical assessment of the Bill. Some proposed amendments are quite sensible, while others (notably a modified leniency programme for firms that provide information about their participation in a cartel) have been inadequately thought out. The amendments designed to placate the Supreme Court will also have some negative consequences. Several weaknesses in the original Act, pointed out by this author in an earlier paper, remain unaddressed. Finally, the scarcity of the kind of economic expertise required to interpret the Act's multifarious technical clauses also remains a matter of concern. Intensive capacity building and a reassessment of the Act itself are urgently required.


Optical constants and fabrication parameters are investigated using surface plasmon resonance (SPR) studies on spun films of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) derivatives in contact with two different dielectric media. A value of 1.503 for the refractive index of PMMA films produced from a solution having concentration of 1?mg?ml?1 at the speed of 3000?rpm is in close agreement with the data obtained from ellipsometric measurements. The film thickness shows a power-law dependence on the spin speed but the thickness increases almost linearly with the concentration of the spreading solution. These results are in good agreement with the hydrodynamic theory for a low-viscosity and highly volatile liquid. On the basis of SPR measurements under dynamic conditions, room temperature response of PMMA films to benzene vapours is found to be fast, highly sensitive and reversible. The sensitivity of detection of toluene, ethyl benzene and m-xylene is much smaller than that of benzene.


Urbanization, changing forest landowner values, and restructuring forest industry are creating challenges for the active management of small parcels of forestland. Many traditional service providers are reluctant to service small acreage parcels due to economies of scale, shrinking profit margins for unprocessed stumpage, and changing landowner expectations. They do not understand traditional forestry operations and do not know where to look for service providers. A gap in our nation's forest system has emerged. A new market opportunity exists for service providers willing to work with smallscale forest landowners. In this study, over sixty forest service providers working with small acreage or amenity oriented clients were interviewed to determine how their business is structured, how they charge for the services they provide, what reactions they get from their clients, and how successful they perceive themselves to be. Informants came from a wide variety of professional backgrounds, including forestry, logging, arboriculture, landscaping, and woodworking. In addition, about 20 public-forest professionals were interviewed to determine how they and their programs are changing in response to emerging conditions. Successful service providers generally charge by some measure of time and materials rather than by commission. They exhibit a willingness to diversify their business to offer a bundle of services, and to cooperate with professionals in related industries. Value-added processing and creative marketing assist service providers in achieving a profit from small-scale tracts with traditionally low-value products. Lessons learned from these early adopters will assist other service providers interested in working with small acreage private landowners.


In this thesis, metal-ammonia reduction is used to induce the spontaneous dissolution of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) in polar aprotic solvents. The aim of the project is to quantify the dissolution of SWCNTs and to characterise the solutions by purity compared to the starting material as well as by separation based on the geometry and electronic structure of the nanotubes. The work focuses on an improvement of the dissolution process by careful stoichiometric control of the reduction chemistry to obtain a yields of >90 %, and a quantitative analysis using complementary techniques of UV-Vis-NIR, Raman spectroscopy and photoluminescence to show that the population of metallic SWCNT species can be enriched from 26.3 % to 55.9 % of the overall SWCNT species. An enhancement of larger diameter tubes in the dissolved fraction is also observed within the semiconducting species. A low charge regime is used to show the preferential dissolution of the impurities over that of the SWCNTs to leave a cleaner material with an enhanced sp2 electronic structure. In the highest charge regime, it is shown the salt phase becomes favourable and that the favourable dissolution of smaller diameter nanotubes can be achieved. The dissolution of longer and larger diameter SWCNTs is also characterised, showing the power of this method to achieve tailored, high quality and high concentration solutions of nanotubes. Monte Carlo simulations are used to calculate the enthalpy to explain the selectivity. The simulations show the favourable enthalpy of dissolution for the lesser charged nanotubes and the unfavourable dissolution for both high charge and zero charge regimes. The larger diameter nanotubes are shown to be more favourable to dissolve at lower charge and less favourable at higher charge than smaller diameter nanotubes, in agreement with the experimental data.


The study was carried out on fifty sheep and fifty goats, forty (40) sheep and forty (40) goats were suspected clinically as diseased cases while other ten animals of each type were apparently healthy and were kept as a control groups. All animals (Sheep and Goats) were belonged to the villages scattered in the Qena Governorate Egypt.
Blood samples were taken from the external jugular vein, and then centrifuged and stored until analyses.
The blood was taken aseptically from all the animals and transported to laboratory for biochemical analysis for estimation of copper and zinc in diseased and controls animal Fecal samples was taken aseptically from all the animals and transported to laboratory for the presence of internal parasites. The results showed a highly significant effect of copper and zinc (P<0.0001). The aim of this work was to follow the changes, during the early diagnosis of foreign body formation in the rumen of sheep and goats.


Why do rational politicians choose inefficient policy instruments? Environmental regulation, for example, often takes the form of technology standards and quotas even when cost‐effective Pigou taxes are available. To shed light on this puzzle, we present a stochastic game with multiple legislative veto players and show that inefficient policy instruments are politically easier to repeal than efficient instruments. Anticipating this, heterogeneous legislators agree more readily on an inefficient policy instrument. We describe when inefficient instruments are likely to be chosen, and predict that they are used more frequently in (moderately) polarized political environments and in volatile economic environments. We show conditions under which players strictly benefit from the availability of the inefficient instrument.


This paper presents two data models for storing multiple thesauri in a single integrated database to be used as an aid to searchers in multi-database searching, for the construction of conversion tables between thesauri, and as a tool for constructing and maintaining individual thesauri. The paper first describes the nature of thesaurus data and a relational data structure for such data, which is flexible and — through its use of term numbers in recording relationships — economical in storage. It then describes two data models for structuring an integrated thesaurus database. In both models, general data on terms and relationships are stored once, with indication of one or more sources, resulting in storage economy. The term-based model stores all relationships as relationships between terms. This is flexible but redundant: If the same concept relationship is expressed through different terms in different thesauri, it is stored multiple times in the integrated database. The concept-based model identifies concepts by concept numbers and uses these concept numbers to record concept relationships, thus bringing together all occurrences of the same concept relationship regardless of the terms used to express the related concepts. This results in more compact storage but is less flexible.


Training very deep networks is an important open problem in machine learning. One of many difficulties is that the norm of the back-propagated error gradient can grow or decay exponentially. Here we show that training very deep feed-forward networks (FFNs) is not as difficult as previously thought. Unlike when back-propagation is applied to a recurrent network, application to an FFN amounts to multiplying the error gradient by a different random matrix at each layer. We show that the successive application of correctly scaled random matrices to an initial vector results in a random walk of the log of the norm of the resulting vectors, and we compute the scaling that makes this walk unbiased. The variance of the random walk grows only linearly with network depth and is inversely proportional to the size of each layer. Practically, this implies a gradient whose log-norm scales with the square root of the network depth and shows that the vanishing gradient problem can be mitigated by increasing the width of the layers. Mathematical analyses and experimental results using stochastic gradient descent to optimize tasks related to the MNIST and TIMIT datasets are provided to support these claims. Equations for the optimal matrix scaling are provided for the linear and ReLU cases.


Policy makers have an increasing interest in designing appropriate public R&D policy programs to stimulate national innovativeness and competitiveness. First, this study investigates the effects of public R&D subsidies on firms' R&D investments accounting for the collaboration pattern of the subsidized firms. Second, this representative analysis further puts light on the effectiveness of the publicly induced R&D investment, and examines if the policy-induced investments translate into higher innovation performance, thereby disentangling between radical and incremental innovation. The treatment effects analysis uses firm level data from five waves (1999, 2002, 2005, 2008, and 2011) of the Swiss innovation survey. The findings show that on average the receipt of an R&D subsidy translate into higher firm R&D investments. While the results do not exhibit any additional systemic positive support for collaboration in the presence of a subsidy, the publicly induced R&D investment mainly foster radical innovation output.


Imitation learning has been widely used to speed up learning in novice agents, by allowing them to leverage existing data from experts. Allowing an agent to be influenced by external observations can benefit to the learning process, but it also puts the agent at risk of following sub-optimal behaviours. In this paper, we study this problem in the context of bandits. More specifically, we consider that an agent (learner) is interacting with a bandit-style decision task, but can also observe a target policy interacting with the same environment. The learner observes only the target's actions, not the rewards obtained. We introduce a new bandit optimism modifier that uses conditional optimism contingent on the actions of the target in order to guide the agent's exploration. We analyze the effect of this modification on the well-known Upper Confidence Bound algorithm by proving that it preserves a regret upper-bound of order O(lnT), even in the presence of a very poor target, and we derive the dependency of the expected regret on the general target policy. We provide empirical results showing both great benefits as well as certain limitations inherent to observational learning in the multi-armed bandit setting. Experiments are conducted using targets satisfying theoretical assumptions with high probability, thus narrowing the gap between theory and application.


Introduction Civilizationalists have never agreed on how to categorize "civilizations." They even have difficulty with defining the word. In the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations (ISCSC), the primary scholarly society for ongoing studies of civilizations (past, present, and future), roundtable discussions are held at annual meetings debating which cultures to include in the list of civilizations. For example, the issue was raised about where Persia/Iran falls: within "Islamic Civilization" or uniquely a civilization itself. A case was made by our Persian specialist that rather than being part of Islamic Civilization, Persia, a much older culture, is much more than Islamic and can be said to have been the shaper of Islamic Civilization, not the reverse. Another of our members made a case for seeing Ethiopia, that most ancient culture in East Africa, as a civilization unique in the world. He convinced us. What can one do with Jewish Civilization? Arnold Toynbee dismissed it as a fossil, but with the creation of the state of Israel, the fossil designation is patently wrong. I am a member of this society who has made a case for American Civilization with roots in Europe, but with an increasingly independent identity. I am not alone in this; other scholars have noted this too - but the issue is not permanently resolved yet. It is still a designation in transition. When Max Lerner in his book America as a Civilization (1957) proposed that America had created its own civilization distinct from the European, he met with resistance from macro-historian Arnold Toynbee and others. In 2007 it was 50 years since Lerner's book was first published (it was republished in 1987 with an appendix covering the period from 1957 to 1987). I follow his lead. How people see themselves is also part of the identification of a civilization. The thesis of this article is that there is an East Slavic Civilization that includes Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. This paper will make a case for recognizing an East Slavic civilization - which can be validated by events on the ground. The choice of the designation East Slavic is based on linguistic and cultural criteria, including religion. The West Slavic Civilization (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia) has characteristics far more in line with the Western European Civilization. Slavic is too broad a designation; I believe that it needs to be subdivided - just as America is separate in major respects from Europe. Russia has long been a major concern of the West - and with the collapse of the USSR, the big question geopolitically is: will Russia turn West or East? Although Russia has had a long history of wanting to be among Western powers, there are signs that it is looking to China, once an enemy but now a potential ally. Currently the West's attention is focused on Russia and on America's need for Russia to help in the war against radical Islam (an internal Russian problem, too). Yet, the question is: are we paying enough attention to another problem - Russia's relationship with the other East Slavic states such as Ukraine, with attendant consequences for the United States and the rest of Europe? Since 1991, there have been extensive changes in the borderlands of Western civilization. In this paper, Western civilization will be regarded as two civilizations with the same roots but somewhat different characteristics: American and European. With the Soviet Union collapsing, the United States remained as the hegemon, the only superpower in the world. America has finally earned the right to be characterized as a civilization of its own. It is no longer, as Toynbee said in 1958, in an exchange with Lerner, a "tag-end" of Western civilization. America's vitality, ingenuity, and freedom from the constraints of hereditary rule (aristocracy) have sent it into a trajectory that differs a great deal from its ancestral roots as a British offspring. …


Return to work (RTW) can be a challenging occupational health (OH) issue among previously-employed colorectal cancer survivors. This study aimed to explore the various perceived barriers and facilitators encountered during the RTW process in cancer survivorship, from the perception of healthcare professionals (HCP). Face to face, semistructured interviews were carried out on twelve HCP (government and private sectors) from various disciplines. Data collected were transcribed verbatim and data management was aided by NVivo software 8.0. A new theory from contextual data was generated using open coding, axial coding and selective coding. The HCP shared numerous barriers and facilitators associated with RTW, under four categories. The key barriers were disturbing side effects, psychological barriers (personal factor), compensation (financial factor), poor ability to multitask (work-related factor), long paid medical leaves policy, employer's lackadaisical attitude, lack of knowledge and awareness of RTW (environmental factor). Key facilitators identified were desire to resume working life and to contribute to society (personal factor), financial pressure, maintain organizational health insurance (financial factor), less physically demanding job (work-related factor), supportive workplace and strict organizational policy on medical leaves (environmental factor). While not all HCP were trained in RTW, they all agreed that RTW is important for survivors and workplace. Occupational health doctors have a direct role in helping survivors RTW. Early Intervention on RTW during survivorship should involve occupational health doctors and employers, targeting the modifiable factors (environmental and work-related) to improve RTW after cancer.


Random-access algorithms such as the CSMA protocol provide a popular mechanism for distributed medium access control in large-scale wireless networks. Mean-field analysis has emerged as a convenient approach to obtain tractable performance estimates in such networks, but a critical limitation of the classical set-up is that all nodes are assumed to belong to a finite number of classes. We consider spatial mean-field limits which do not involve such a requirement, characterized in terms of a set of partial-differential equations, and in particular examine the fixed points of these equations for some specific network configurations. We discuss how the fixed points can be used to obtain estimates for key performance metrics, and present simulation experiments to demonstrate the accuracy of these estimates.


This paper demonstrates the use of large scale tomographic PIV to study the wake region of a Windsor model. This forms part of a larger study intending to understand the mechanisms that drive drag force changes when rear end optimizations are applied. For the first time, tomographic PIV has been applied to a large airflow volume (0.125m3, 500 x 500 x 500mm), which is of sufficient size to capture the near wake of a 25% scale Windsor model in a single measurement. The measurement volume is illuminated using a 200mJ double pulsed Nd:Yag laser fitted with a volume optic and seeded with 300μm helium filled soap bubbles generated by a novel high output seeder. Images were captured using four 4M Pixel LaVision cameras. The tomographic results are shown to produce high quality data with the setup used, but further improvements and tests at higher Reynolds number could be conducted if an additional seeding rake was used to increase seeding density. Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) was applied to both the 2D and tomographic data to show the presence of a bi-stable wake structure


Deep learning (DL) algorithms rely on massive amounts of labeled data. Semi-supervised learning (SSL) and active learning (AL) aim to reduce this label complexity by leveraging unlabeled data or carefully acquiring labels, respectively. In this work, we primarily focus on designing an AL algorithm but first argue for a change in how AL algorithms should be evaluated. Although unlabeled data is readily available in pool-based AL, AL algorithms are usually evaluated by measuring the increase in supervised learning (SL) performance at consecutive acquisition steps. Because this measures performance gains from both newly acquired instances and newly acquired labels, we propose to instead evaluate the label efficiency of AL algorithms by measuring the increase in SSL performance at consecutive acquisition steps. After surveying tools that can be used to this end, we propose our neural pre-conditioning (NPC) algorithm inspired by a Neural Tangent Kernel (NTK) analysis. Our algorithm incorporates the classifier's uncertainty on unlabeled data and penalizes redundant samples within candidate batches to efficiently acquire a diverse set of informative labels. Furthermore, we prove that NPC improves downstream training in the large-width regime in a manner previously observed to correlate with generalization. Comparisons with other AL algorithms show that a state-of-the-art SSL algorithm coupled with NPC can achieve high performance using very few labeled data.


This Classroom Action Research was conducted to solve classroom problems experienced by the teacher and the students of class VII-C, SMPN 9 Malang. Based on the result of the preliminary study, it was found that the students of VII-C class had problem in writing, especially in writing descriptive texts. Students have problem in organizing ideas, developing their ideas, and using grammar and vocabulary. The researcher also found that the students had never been taught using media, especially picture puzzles. Thus, the researcher conducted this research by implementing the use of picture puzzles as the media to overcome students'problem in writing descriptive texts. Picture puzzles are jumbled pictures which had to be arranged into complete set. By using picture puzzles, students could make description based on the picture that they have arranged. These media were used to lead the students' visualization of object in the picture This Classroom Action Research was conducted in one cycle that consisted of four meetings. This research consisted of four steps: planning the action, implementing the action, observing the action, and reflecting the action. The subjects of this study were VII-C class students of SMPN 9 Malang who were in the second semester of 2015/2016 academic year. There were 32 students involved in this study. The research instruments used in this research were interview guides, field notes, observation checklist, questionnaire, and writing task. The English teacher and the researcher's colleague took role as the observers. The researcher's colleague was taking role both, as the observer and the rater. The reason why the researcher needed the rater since the researcher wanted to minimize bias in assessing the students' work. In the end of the cycle, the researcher found that the research has already achieved the criteria of success. The steps in implementing the strategy is as follows: (1) Asking the students to arrange pictures puzzles on a paper into a right arrangement. (2) Asking the students to find vocabulary which might be used to describe the picture and (3) Asking the students to write based on the picture. This study proposes a solution for teacher who have the same or similar problems related to the students' poor writing ability. The researcher gave suggestion for English teacher to use picture puzzle as media for improving students' ability in writing descriptive texts. For the further researcher, the researcher gave suggestion to consider the number of the picture puzzle used with the time allotment. This research can also be used as reference for the further researcher. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */
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Graphic designers possess an essential responsibility to use their skills to offer better solutions to social and informational design problems. This responsibility in shaping information flow has become even more pressing given the evolving historical nature of the digital environment. The digital age started to create its culture, which frequently grew first from traditional roots. Mass media like newspapers and magazines were transformed into the digital environment in the form of the Web. Millions of websites have been created since the beginning of the Internet; however one of the most critical issues has grown more urgent. The digital culture started to demand new approaches to its problems. Websites are mostly created with methods derived from traditional media approaches, which can lead to complicated and incorrect design problems. Many newspaper websites that are the main provider for delivering information cannot transfer messages directly, efficiently and easily, and they cannot provide accurate responses to the new demands of the digital environment. In these circumstances, graphic designers should focus on the requirements of the digital environment in order to provide optimum solutions to those new demands like interface, usability, and information architecture. To propose a solution according to the demands that come from new and unfamiliar conditions of the digital era, the Hurriyet newspaper has been selected as a case study. The principal aims of this study are to explore the conventions of the digital environment, usability, information architecture, typography, and to propose new approaches to the digital environment.


The Marquis de Sade as a Key Figure of Enlightenment: How His Crystal Genius Still Speaks to Today's World and Its Major Problems discusses how the Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) stretched the dimensions of reputation and notoriety nearly obscuring his mastery in literature and philosophy while braving the Ancien Regime and Revolutionary France's «age of iron [hell]» with unheard-of determination to be read and taken seriously as not just a writer and a contributing citizen but as an engaged educator, a committed philosopher, and an uncompromisingly fierce moralist. Sade has been a strange combination of what society dreads and what it needs most for its salvation: mature enlightenment that is not afraid to see and face real problems so that there can be solutions. This book stresses how the literary and intellectual public needs to reconnect with the moral gems of this demon(ized) man, nowadays more so than ever, to explain our most critical issues and to reiterate the long-standing solutions Sade professed from the 1780s through the early nineteenth century. This work not only reestablishes the creative, literary, and intellectual Sade, it critically stages and highlights the philosophical Marquis as a world citizen trapped between theories of social classes and a loose-fitting messianism. It is evident throughout the work how Sade's deep concerns for humanity flatly contradict the popular rhetoric (of wickedness and perversion) recycled and amplified since his first writing days. The Marquis de Sade as a Key Figure of Enlightenment offers a new perspective on this complex writer and on the intimate workings of our human world. It is a valuable resource for courses on French literature, eighteenth-century studies, the Enlightenment, literary criticism, and gender and sexuality studies.


The detection of broken-rotor-bar faults based on common steady-state-analysis techniques, such as the fast Fourier transform (FFT), is known to be significantly dependent on the loading conditions of the induction motor. At light load, it is difficult to distinguish between healthy and faulty rotors because the characteristic broken-rotor-bar fault frequencies in the stator current are very close to the fundamental-frequency component and their amplitudes are small in comparison. As a result, detection of broken bar faults and classification of the fault severity under light load is very difficult. To overcome this problem, the analysis of the envelope of the transient starting-current waveform using the wavelet-transform has been investigated. The envelope extraction is used to remove the strong fundamental-frequency component, which would otherwise overshadow the characteristic differences between a healthy motor and a faulty motor with broken rotor bars. The wavelet-transform results are processed to develop a normalised parameter called the `wavelet indicator' which is sensitive to the presence of broken-rotor-bar faults. The results are verified using tests on machines with a varying number of broken bars, as well as partially broken rotor bars, over a wide range of loading conditions. The effects of initial rotor position and supply imbalance are also investigated


The goal-gradient hypothesis denotes the classic finding from behaviorism that animals expend more effort as they approach a reward. Building on this hypothesis, the authors generate new propositions for the human psychology of rewards. They test these propositions using field experiments, secondary customer data, paper-and-pencil problems, and Tobit and logit models. The key findings indicate that (1) participants in a real café reward program purchase coffee more frequently the closer they are to earning a free coffee; (2) Internet users who rate songs in return for reward certificates visit the rating Web site more often, rate more songs per visit, and persist longer in the rating effort as they approach the reward goal; (3) the illusion of progress toward the goal induces purchase acceleration (e.g., customers who receive a 12-stamp coffee card with 2 preexisting "bonus" stamps complete the 10 required purchases faster than customers who receive a "regular" 10-stamp card); and (4) a stronger tendency to accelerate toward the goal predicts greater retention and faster reengagement in the program. The conceptualization and empirical findings are captured by a parsimonious goal-distance model, in which effort investment is a function of the proportion of original distance remaining to the goal. In addition, using statistical and experimental controls, the authors rule out alternative explanations for the observed goal gradients. They discuss the theoretical significance of their findings and the managerial implications for incentive systems, promotions, and customer retention.


Abstract. The microphysical properties of clouds play a significant role in determining their radiative effect; one of these properties is the orientation of ice crystals. A source of error in current microphysical retrievals and model simulations is the assumption that clouds are composed of only randomly oriented ice crystals (ROIC). This assumption is frequently not true, as evidenced by optical phenomena such as parhelia (commonly referred to as sundogs). Here, observations from the Cloud, Aerosol and Polarization Backscatter Lidar (CAPABL) at Summit, Greenland are utilized along with instruments that are part of the Integrated Characterization of Energy, Clouds, Atmospheric state and Precipitation at Summit (ICECAPS) project in order to determine when, where and under what conditions horizontally oriented ice crystals (HOIC) occur at Summit, Greenland. Between July 2015 and May 2016, HOIC are observed on 86 days of the 335-day study. HOIC occurred within stratiform clouds on 48 days, in precipitation on 32 days and in cirrus clouds on 14 days. Analysis of all of the cases found that, on average, in comparison to ROIC, HOIC occur at higher temperatures, higher wind speeds and lower heights above ground level. Differences were also present in the relative humidities (RHs) at which HOIC and ROIC occurred in stratiform clouds and precipitation but not in cirrus clouds. Analysis over the whole study period revealed monthly variations in the abundance of HOIC with the number of detections peaking in April and October. Monthly changes were also present in the number of days containing HOIC. The results presented here aim to be the first step towards a comprehensive climatology and understanding of the microphysical processes that lead to the formation of HOIC at Summit, Greenland.


OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study is to determine and comparatively evaluate the effects of three different non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs on the levels of metalloproteinases MMP-1, MMP-3 and MMP-8, as well as on their tissue inhibitor TIMP-1, in patients suffering from idiopathic osteoarthritis. The effect of these drugs on the articular cartilage and the probable use of MMPs and TIMP-1 as markers of disease and treatment was also investigated. METHODS: Thirty-six patients with OA were selected and allocated to three groups on the basis of their disease location. All patients received anti-inflammatory treatment with special selective COX-2 inhibitors, i.e. celecoxib, meloxicam, aceclofenac. Each drug was given to every patient for three months following a randomized order of administration. Serum levels of MMP-1, MMP-3, MMP-8 and TIMP-1, and ratios MMP-1/TIMP-1, MMP-3/TIMP-1, MMP-8/TIMP-1 were measured before and after treatment. RESULTS: The use of aceclofenac resulted in no significant variation in either MMPs concentration and MMPs/TIMP-1 ratio. This outcome concerns the three groups and the 36 patients that form them. After all patients had received all three NSAIDs, MMPs and TIMP-1, these parameters were compared to their initial and final median values. A significant reduction in MMP-3 was found so in all OA patients as in the group of knee OA patients. CONCLUSIONS: 1. Of the MMPs studied, MMP-3 levels were found to be significantly reduced after NSAIDs treatment. Therefore, serum MMP-3 levels in OA patients could be proven to be a useful evaluating marker of treatment on the cartilage level. 2. No significant differences were observed among NSAIDs administered with regards to their effect on MMPs and TIMP-1 concentration.


The temporal structure of behavior provides information that allows the tracking of temporal regularity in the sensory and sensorimotor domains. In turn, temporal regularity allows the generation of predictions about upcoming events and to adjust behavior accordingly. These mechanisms are essential to ensure behavior beyond the level of mere reaction. However, efficient temporal processing is required to establish adequate internal representations of temporal structure. The current study used two simple paradigms, namely, finger-tapping at a regular self-chosen rate (spontaneous motor tempo) and ERPs of the EEG (EEG/ERP) recorded during attentive listening to temporally regular and irregular "oddball" sequences to explore the capacity to encode and use temporal regularity in production and perception. The results show that specific aspects of the ability to time a regular sequence of events in production covary with the ability to time a regular sequence in perception, probably pointing toward the engagement of domain-general mechanisms.


Current advances in roof support automation require a fast and effective skin reinforcement of underground mine roadways. To satisfy these needs a strong and tough fibre reinforced polymeric alternative is emerging as a logical substitute to the old steel mesh support system. Differences between steel mesh and polymer skin behaviour are investigated. Computational models are utilised to compare these two skin support systems with a view to optimising the performance needed for effective roadway skin reinforcement. In particular, development of a strong and resistant shell that minimises movement along the fractured rock and coal surfaces found between the roof bolt anchors is recommended. A strong surface adhesion and the strength of a reinforced polymer skin can provide the necessary toughening mechanism required to enhance roadway surface support by forming a reinforced polymer/rock surface layer. The fractured rock mass in its undisturbed phase is relatively stiff while confinement stresses exist. However, any dilation that occurs due to displacement along the rough surfaces of the fractured rock causes strata softening, bulking and movement into the mine opening. The polymer skin can provide active resistance to any movement along the fractured rock surface as soon as any movement begins to occur. Even partial de-bonding of the polymer from the rock surface may not significantly disturb this mechanism.


This experiment evaluated different strategies for allocating first-cut grass silages to dry dairy cows that had low body-condition score (BCS) at drying off. A total of 48 moderately yielding Holstein-Friesian cows were used, receiving one of three dietary treatments in the dry period and a single lactation diet based on a flat-rate of concentrates and grass silage ad libitum. Throughout the dry period, one group received a low-digestibility silage (harvested 15 June 1998; LL; metabolisable energy (ME) = 10.3 MJ/kg dry matter (DM)) and a second group received a high-digestibility silage (harvested 9 May 1998, HH; ME = 11.7 MJ/kg DM). A third strategy (LH) offered the low-digestibility silage in the early dry period and the high-digestibility silage in the final 3 weeks before calving. The silages had very different crude protein concentrations (144 and 201 g/kg DM) and intakes were widely divergent (10.1 v. 13.5 kg DM/day) across the dry period. No concentrates were fed during the dry period. Silage quality had a very large effect on liveweight change, with treatment means of 0.32 and 1.75 kg/day for LL and HH, respectively. BCS changes followed a similar pattern, though no cows became over-conditioned and blood metabolites were within normal ranges. Increased silage digestibility in the late dry period led to a substantial increase in milk fat concentration and a smaller increase in milk protein concentration, the latter confined to the first full week of lactation. Depression of milk fat appears related to low blood glucose when dry cows in low body condition are fed at a low level. The LH strategy avoided the tendency for lower milk yields and fat concentration that resulted from feeding the low-digestibility silage until calving. This strategy also avoided the higher calf weights that resulted from feeding the high-digestibility silage in the early dry period.


The aim of this study was to describe the association between GIP gene polymorphism with obese adults in Babil, Iraq who do not suffer from chronic diseases. This study was performed on (50) Samples, for age ranged (19-40 year). The results of the sequences showed there was only one mutations in nucleotide position 110 stretches for comparisons of SSCP variants of Homo sapiens in exon 3 in GIP gene, there is no association between AB and BB polymorphisms in genotypes obese with control group, and also no association between A and B allele in obese with control group. Finally absence any significant differences in the mean of CW, TG, Insulin and FBG levels between AB and BB polymorphisms in GIP genotypes of obese.


Observations of the mesospheric semi-annual oscillation (MSAO) in the equatorial region have been reported dating back several decades. Seasonal variations in both species densities and airglow emissions are well documented. The extensive observations available offer an excellent case study for comparison with model simulations. A broad range of MSAO measurements is summarised with emphasis on the 80–100 km region. The objective here is not to address directly the complicated driving forces of the MSAO, but rather to employ a combination of observations and model simulations to estimate the limits of some of the underlying dynamical processes. Photochemical model simulations are included for near-equinox and near-solstice conditions, the two times with notable differences in the observed MSAO parameters. Diurnal tides are incorporated in the model to facilitate comparisons of observations made at different local times. The roles of water vapour as the "driver" species and ozone as the "response" species are examined to test for consistency between the model results and observations. The simulations suggest the interactions between vertical eddy diffusion and background vertical advection play a significant role in the MSAO phenomenon. Further, the simulations imply there are rigid limits on vertical advection rates and eddy diffusion rates. For August at the Equator, 90 km altitude, the derived eddy diffusion rate is approximately 1 × 106 cm2 s−1 and the vertical advection is upwards at 0.8 cm s −1. For April the corresponding values are 4× 105 cm2 s−1 and 0.1 cm s −1. These results from the current 1-D model simulations will need to be verified by a full 3-D simulation. Exactly how vertical advection and eddy diffusion are related to gravity wave momentum as discussed by Dunkerton (1982) three decades ago remains to be addressed.


The case-system of Māori is often disputed. Through Role and Reference Grammar, this analysis examines give and take verbs where both accusative and ergative elements of the grammar intersect in argument realisation. Give verbs hoatu and homai pattern accusatively. There are two verbal forms which lexicalise directionality. With preposition choice, the semantic role of the 'recipient' is elucidated. The sense and logical structure of the verb will be altered. The prepositions provide insight into possession in Māori. Take in Māori is realised with two verbal forms. Tango exhibits accusative marking, riro exhibits ergative marking. An examination of the give and take verbs in the marked voice, the actor-emphatic and nominalizations underscore some of the challenges in categorizing the Māori case-system.


Combining the academic rigor that has won the respect of his peers with an accessible style that has made him a favorite with readers and students alike, he lays out each mystery, evaluates all available evidence-from established fact to arguable assumption to far-fetched leap of faith-and proposes an explanation that reconciles Scripture, science, and history. Numerous amateur archaeologists have sought some trace of Noah's Ark to meet only with failure. But, though no serious scholar would undertake such a literal search, many agree that the Flood was no myth but the cultural memory of a real, catastrophic inundation, retold and reshaped over countless generations. Likewise, some experts suggest that Joshua's storied victory at Jericho is the distant echo of an earthquake instead of Israel's sacred trumpets-a fascinating, geologically plausible theory that remains unproven despite the best efforts of scientific research. Cline places these and other Biblical stories in solid archaeological and historical context, debunks more than a few lunatic-fringe fantasies, and reserves judgment on ideas that cannot yet be confirmed or denied. Along the way, our most informed understanding of ancient Israel comes alive with dramatic but accurate detail in this groundbreaking, engrossing, entertaining book by one of the rising stars in the field.


Background/Aims: Recent evidence shows that early dementia patients have deficits in manual reaching tasks. It is important to understand the impact of these functional disabilities on their quality of life. The aim of this study was to investigate if there is an association between manual reaching and measures of (instrumental) activities of daily living (IADL) in a group of patients with cognitive complaints. Methods: The manual reaching performance of 27 patients was assessed in detail with eye and hand tracking devices. Patients were divided into three groups based on self-reported loss of IADL function. Parameters describing hand response and movement times were compared between groups. Results: Patients with loss of IADL function in ≥1 domain had delayed hand response and hand movement times towards visible targets compared to patients with no loss of IADL function. Conclusion: Delays in manual reaching movements are related to the degree of loss of IADL function in early dementia patients.


Digital-Twins simulate physical world objects by creating 'as-is' virtual images in a cyberspace. In order to create a well synchronized digital-twin simulator in manufacturing, information and activities of a physical machine need to be virtualized. Many existing digital-twins stream read-only data of machine sensors and do not incorporate operations of manufacturing machines through Internet. In this paper, a new method of virtualization is proposed to integrate machining data and operations into the digital-twins using Internet scale machine tool communication method. A fully functional digital-twin is implemented in CPMC testbed using MTComm and several manufacturing application scenarios are developed to evaluate the proposed method and system. Performance analysis shows that it is capable of providing data-driven visual monitoring of a manufacturing process and performing manufacturing operations through digital twins over the Internet. Results of the experiments also shows that the MTComm based digital twins have an excellent efficiency.


Objective: To increase understanding of traditional Hmong health and prenatal care beliefs, practices,
utilization and needs and their perceptions toward the utilization of Western health care.

Specific Aims: The aims of this project are: 1) Collect primary quantitative and qualitative data on the
prenatal health care beliefs, practices, utilization, and needs of the Hmong men and women from three
of the highest Hmong populated counties in Central California; 2) Better understanding of traditional
Hmong prenatal and health care practices; 3) Highlight barriers to prenatal care for Hmong; and 4) Use
findings to inform next steps.

Setting: California's Central Valley Hmong American Communities: Fresno, Merced, and San Joaquin
counties.

Methods: A convenience sample of 99 Hmong women of child-bearing age (18-35) and 74 Hmong
men of child-bearing age (18-45) were recruited through partnership with a Hmong health collaborative
and within communities by word of mouth and snowball sampling. Hmong, bilingual graduate students
obtained informed consent and conducted 45-60 minute face-to-face interviews including structured
and other questions. Descriptive bivariate analysis and multivariate modeling explored how receipt of
appropriate prenatal care is related to Hmong respondent demographics, cultural perspectives and health
care experiences

Findings: Hmong residents utilize both Western and traditional medicines due to lack of complete trust
in Western medicine. Respondents reported using over the counter pregnancy tests and more than half
(52%) sought prenatal care six weeks after confirming pregnancy. Almost half (45%) are not satisfied with
their experience using Western medicine. About 60% report a disconnect between Western and Hmong
medicine. Language access and lack of cultural competence training were also at the forefront of the
concerns.

Conclusion: Hmong residents utilize and rely on Western health care, yet they cannot abandon their
cultural and traditional health care practices due to new cultural setting. In order to provide equitable and
effective health care, clinicians need to be able to function effectively within the context of the cultural
beliefs, behaviors, and needs of consumers and their communities. Failing to provide culturally supportive
and respectable health care for Hmong residents can increase costs for individuals and society through
increased hospitalizations and complications.


Increasing attention has been focused on developing professionalism in medical school graduates. Unfortunately, the culture of academic medical centers and the behaviors that faculty model are often incongruent with our image of professionalism. The need for improved role modeling, better assessment of student behavior, and focused faculty development is reviewed. We propose that the incentive structure be adjusted to reward professional behavior in both students and faculty. The third-year medicine clerkship provides an ideal opportunity for clinician-educators to play a leading role in evaluating, rewarding, and ultimately fostering professionalism in medical school graduates.


Recognition of depositional sequences in Upper Cretaceous strata in the Kaiparowits Plateau allows examination of facies-tract geometries within coeval shoreface, alluvial, and coal-bearing strata. Changes in depositional architecture, sandstone-connectedness, sand-shale ratios, coal-bed geometry, and degree of shoreface and foreshore preservation are related to position within a depositional sequence. Base-level falls produced regionally extensive sequence boundary unconformities and a basinward shift in facies tracts. Slow rates of base-level rise resulted in amalgamated fluvial channel complexes, thin discontinuous coal beds, and progradational shoreface parasequence sets. More rapid rates of base-level rise produced vertically isolated meander-belt sandstones, thick extensive coal beds, and aggradational shoreface parasequence sets. The highest rates of base-level rise resulted in retrogradational shoreface parasequences and tidally influenced fluvial systems at least 60 km inland of coeval shoreface deposits.


This is a post-print of an article published in Victorian Bar News 1997 published by The Victorian Bar. This version is reproduced with permission from Victorian Bar News. http://www.vicbar.com.au/d.2.aspx


Aims. In the context of the core instability model, we present calculations of in situ giant planet formation. The oligarchic growth regime of solid protoplanets is the model adopted for the growth of the core. This growth regime for the core has not been considered before in full evolutionary calculations of this kind. Methods. The full differential equations of giant planet formation were numerically solved with an adaptation of a Henyey-type code. The planetesimals accretion rate was coupled in a self-consistent way to the envelope's evolution. Results. We performed several simulations for the formation of a Jupiter-like object by assuming various surface densities for the protoplanetary disc and two different sizes for the accreted planetesimals. We first focus our study on the atmospheric gas drag that the incoming planetesimals suffer. We find that this effect gives rise to a major enhancement on the effective capture radius of the protoplanet, thus leading to an average timescale reduction of ∼30%–55% and ultimately to an increase by a factor of 2 of the final mass of solids accreted as compared to the situation in which drag effects are neglected. In addition, we also examine the importance of the size of accreted planetesimals on the whole formation process. With regard to this second point, we find that for a swarm of planetesimals having a radius of 10 km, the formation time is a factor 2 to 3 shorter than that of planetesimals of 100 km, the factor depending on the surface density of the nebula. Moreover, planetesimal size does not seem to have a significant impact on the final mass of the core.


Border security has been high on public-policy agendas in Europe and North America since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York City and on the headquarters of the American military in Washington DC. Governments are now confronted with managing secure borders, a policy objective that in this era of increased free trade and globalization must compete with intense cross-border flows of people and goods. Border-security policies must enable security personnel to identify, or filter out, dangerous individuals and substances from among the millions of travelers and tons of goods that cross borders daily, particularly in large cross-border urban regions. This book addresses this gap between security needs and an understanding of borders and borderlands. Specifically, the chapters in this volume ask policy-makers to recognize that two fundamental elements define borders and borderlands: first, human activities (the agency and agent power of individual ties and forces spanning a border), and second, the broader social processes that frame individual action, such as market forces, government activities (law, regulations, and policies), and the regional culture and politics of a borderland. Borders emerge as the historically and geographically variable expression of human ties exercised within social structures of varying force and influence, and it is the interplay and interdependence between people's incentives to act and the surrounding structures (i.e. constructed social processes that contain and constrain individual action) that determine the effectiveness of border security policies. This book argues that the nature of borders is to be porous, which is a problem for security policy makers. It shows that when for economic, cultural, or political reasons human activities increase across a border and borderland, governments need to increase cooperation and collaboration with regard to security policies, if only to avoid implementing mismatched security policies.


De Meulder, Maartje The power of language policy: The legal recognition of sign languages and the aspirations of deaf communities Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä, 2016, 134 p. (+ included articles) (Jyväskylä Studies in Humanities) ISSN 1459-4323; 301 (nid.) ISSN 1459-4331; 301 (PDF) ISBN 978-951-39-6875-5 (nid.) ISBN 978-951-39-6876-2 (PDF) This thesis explores Sign Language Peoples' aspirations for the legal recognition of sign languages, with specific focus on Finland and Scotland. It highlights the timely need to strengthen (in practice) and scrutinize (academically) the legal measures that have been achieved as well as their implementation – and to measure all this against the challenges of endangerment and sustaining vitality. The theoretical framework for this study is centred in language policy and planning and political theory. The research methodology draws on principles of the ethnography of language policy and uses two traditional qualitative research methods, that is, interviews and participant observation, plus desk research. Sign Language Peoples' campaigns for recognition seek a differentiated citizenship – a form of group representation rights which can accommodate their communities' particular needs and practices. The study identifies five categories of recognition legislation and demonstrates that most legislation remains symbolic: while some legislation grants instrumental rights to sign languages, legislation establishing or protecting educational linguistic and language acquisition rights remains scarce. This is especially problematic given the complex combination of demographic, political, economic, social and educational pressures facing Sign Language Peoples' communities. The study further identifies both common ground with other linguistic and cultural minorities and one significant difference – that Sign Language Peoples are also perceived and administered as people with disabilities and, as such, manifest dual category membership. While this should not in theory be problematic, in fact the policies which govern their lives traditionally frame them within only one category – as people with disabilities. The study demonstrates how this has negatively impacted the recognition of sign languages and signing communities. It goes on to analyse the highly politicized nature of sign language planning, especially in relation to discourses around the linguistic rights of deaf children. It also critically evaluates the mixed rationales for sign language rights and the justifications on which these rights are based. The evidence suggests that sign language legislation and the arguments for sign language rights are subject to a very particular set of discourses, which expose them to a degree of scrutiny not experienced by discourses for spoken minority language rights and legislation. Comparison of these discourses leads the author of this thesis to argue that it is essential that the protection and promotion of sign languages should include recognition of the multilingual practices of signing communities, and of their group rights. To conclude, it is argued that recognition legislation should specifically address the issue of vitality and the factors and strategies needed to ensure this vitality, including ways in which sign languages can create new generations of users without relying solely on intergenerational transmission.


Choline metabolism was examined in spinach (Spinacia oleracea L.) plants growing under nonsaline and saline conditions. In spinach, choline is required for phosphatidylcholine synthesis and as a precursor for the compatible osmolyte glycine betaine (betaine). When control (nonsalinized) leaf discs were incubated for up to 2 h with [1,2–14C]ethanolamine, label appeared in the N-methylated derivatives of phosphoethanolamine including phosphomono-, phosphodi-, and phosphotri- (i.e. phosphocholine) methyl-ethanolamine, as well as in choline and betaine, whereas no radioactivity could be detected in the mono- and dimethylated derivatives of the free base ethanolamine. Leaf discs from salinized plants showed the same pattern of labeling, although the proportion of label that accumulated in betaine was almost 3-fold higher in the salinized leaf discs. Enzymes involved in choline metabolism were assayed in crude leaf extracts of plants. The activites of ethanolamine kinase and of the three S-adenosylmethionine:phospho-base N-methyltransferase enzymes responsible for N-methylating phosphoethanolamine to phosphocholine were all higher in extracts of plants salinized step-wise to 100, 200, or 300 mM NaCI compared with controls. In contrast, choline kinase, phosphocholine phosphatase, and cytidine 5[prime]-triphosphate: phosphocholine cytidylyltransferase activities showed little variation with salt stress. Thus, the increased diversion of choline to betaine in salt-stressed spinach appears to be mediated by the increased activity of several key enzymes involved in choline biosynthesis.


Decriminalizing an illegal market may be a useful strategy for reducing crime. It is also necessary, however, to have a clear understanding of the nature of the illegal market before undertaking such an endeavor. Experiences in the Netherlands show that decriminalizing illegal markets may indeed result in a substantial reduction of organized crime and other criminal activities, if the regulatory system is designed adequately. These experiences also show that such systems inherently lack flexibility and that criminals are usually quick to re-enter the market when unforeseen developments, particularly technical innovations and internationalization, create new illegal business opportunities.


This study describes the fabrication procedure of hybrid porous silicon-based solar cells. Porous silicon was synthesized by electrochemical anodization (EA) of polysilicon under an etching time of 6, 8, and 10 min, using HF/EtOH solution. The fabricated template was employed as an active substrate to undertake an n-type semiconductor. TiO2 nanoparticles (NPs), as emitter, were immobilized over the porous substrate using an electrophoretic deposition (EPD) method. Indium-tin oxide (ITO), as the front electrode, was sputtered to extract the carriers using a DC magnetron sputtering technique. The surface morphology was studied by observing the FESEM images. Optical properties of the proposed system were investigated by reflection and absorption spectra. Finally, photovoltaic measurements of the fabricated cells were studied for different samples. The measurements were accomplished under AM 1.5 illumination using a solar simulator. It was demonstrated that the 6 min anodized sample showed the highest performance; the efficiency was 1.57 and 2.73 times higher than that of the 8 and 10 min samples, respectively. The preferential 6 min sample showed lowest reflection as well as a more appropriate band gap. The competitive efficiency could be attributed to the coherent and compact p–n junctions as well as to the qualified immobilization of the hole-barrier layer (metal oxide).


With respect to deterring police misconduct, federal remedies are almost as good as they are ever going to get. Federal remedies for police misconduct, and most other remedies for misconduct, promote change by making misconduct costly for police departments and municipalities. Improving federal remedies would encourage some additional departments to seek the positive expected return on reform measures likely to reduce misconduct. But existing federal remedies all focus on either increasing the cost of misconduct or reducing its benefits. The problem is that even if existing federal remedies are altered to maximize deterrence, they cannot be employed to impose a substantially greater price for misconduct because, by their nature, the costs imposed by existing remedies are relatively fixed. As a result, federal remedies for misconduct will never prevent bad policing much more than they do now. While existing federal remedies are constrained in their capacity to deter much more than they do, there are alternative means of inspiring reform. Most notably, federal actors could foster reform by lowering the costs of adopting policies that prevent misconduct and by shoring up rewards for police chiefs and departments that pursue reform. Some Justice Department programs already likely modify the expected costs of reform, but the Department of Justice's undertakings appear both piecemeal and limited. Although discouraging police misconduct by reducing the costs of reform and increasing its benefits poses some risks, the limits of existing federal remedies suggest these risks may be well worth taking.


The complete disappearance of energetic electrons was observed by CRRES in the near geosynchronous region in 7.5% of the orbits examined. These total flux dropouts were defined by the fluxes rapidly dropping to levels below the sensitivity of the MEA energetic electron spectrometer on the CRRES satellite. They were separated into those that were only energetic electron dropouts and those that were associated with energetic ion and plasma dropouts. Approximately 20% of the events showed dropouts of all panicle fluxes, and these were usually coincident with large increases in the local magnetic intensity and signatures of strong current systems. The energetic particle instruments and magnetometer on CRRES provide a detailed picture of the particle and field responses to these unusual conditions. Both the local morning and dusk events were associated with strong azimuthal (eastward) and radial changes in the magnetic field indicative of a strong current system approaching and sometimes crossing the CRRES position at the time of the flux dropouts. The direction of the field changes and the details of particle observations are consistent with CRRES passing through the plasma sheet boundary layer and entering the tail lobe for a significant number of the events.


Abstract Purpose: To compare chronic health and mental health conditions between mid-to-older deaf lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) and mid-to-older non-LGBTQ adults who are 45 years or older. Methods: Medical conditions and mental health disorders data were gathered from 981 mid-to-older deaf adults (178 LGBTQ and 803 non-LGBTQ) who took the Health Information National Trends Survey in American Sign Language between 2015 and 2019. Modified Poisson regression with robust standard errors was used to calculate relative risk estimates and 95% confidence intervals for all medical conditions and mental health disorders with self-reported LGBTQ status as the main predictor, adjusting for known health correlates. Results: Consistent with the LGBTQ health disparity in the general population, our study findings indicated health disparities for certain medical conditions (e.g., lung disease, arthritis, and comorbidity) and mental health disorders (e.g., depression and anxiety) among mid-to-older deaf LGBTQ compared with non-LGBTQ deaf adults. Conclusion: Like the LGBTQ counterparts in the general population, deaf LGBTQ adults may require more frequent and comprehensive health care services. Culturally and linguistically competent care by providers may be invaluable in reducing such health inequities, particularly when provider education and training is undertaken through an intersectional framework that considers the interaction and context of multiple patient and provider social identities.


The rise of fundamentalism in the sphere of teacher education points to a swing back towards teachers as service workers for State agendas. Increasingly, teachers are expected to account for the outcomes of their practices. This article traces the trajectory of trends in teacher education over the past five decades arguing that this "new conservative trend" is but one of the many forces that characterise present interpretations of the goals of teacher education and development. A de-professionalisation of teaching as a career looms on the horizon. Each era has progressively provided new insights into what the goals for teacher education could and should be. These have become increasingly layered into expanding roles and responsibilities being foisted on teachers. The article argues that this could threaten teaching as a career and fewer individuals now willingly choose the teaching profession. If they do, their accountability is seldom to quality teaching and learning as professional teachers find themselves threatened on a number of fronts by contradictory and often competing forces. The article presents a model for understanding the complexity of forces influencing teachers' identities, and shows why there is a need for creative discursive spaces for the coexistence of these many forces. Rather than capitulate to the forces of conservatism, the article argues that teacher professional growth can flourish when it is able to understand deeply the biographical, contextual, institutional and programmatic forces that impinge on teacher identity. The Force Field Model of Teacher Development thus provides stimulus for creative dialogue and renewal.


Background Low back pain (LBP) in young athletes is increasing. Understanding spinal pathology related to sports may enhance design of prevention programs. Objective To test the hypothesis that rowing athletes with LBP have a higher likelihood of degenerative disc disease than athletes from other sports. Design Retrospective case series of 199 athletes (14–25 years.) with LBP. Setting Clinical assessment of interscholastic, intercollegiate and elite athletes presenting to a sports medicine physician complaining of LBP. Patients The medical records of athletes (14–25 years) seen from 2003 to 2008 with the complaint of LBP were reviewed and included. 23 sports were represented and 32% of the athletes were rowers. Interventions Athletes had a thorough history and physical examination, MRI and/or bone scan. Results in the rowing athletes were compared to other athletes. Main outcome measurements Results of the history, physical examination and radiographic studies were evaluated and the data analyzed by t-test or chi square. Results Demographically, the rowers and non-rowers were similar. The incidence of disc injury, involved disc levels, and physical findings were similar between the male and female rowers. Female rowers had a higher likelihood of disc herniation and a higher incidence of multiple disc level involvement than other female athletes (p<0.05). Male rowers and American football players had a higher incidence of disc herniation and multiple disc level involvement (p<0.05). Male rowers were more likely to present with positive physical findings compared to other male athletes (p<05). Overall, 89.5% of the males and 76.9% of the females had positive MRI findings affecting up to three lumbar levels. Conclusion Complaints of LBP in young athletes are highly correlated with lumbar spinal abnormalities. This is especially true for the young rowing athlete. Rowing techniques and training methods must be re-evaluated to decrease stresses on the lumbar spine and allow development of injury prevention programs.


Countless chemical compounds and their derivatives are present in wastewater (WW) systems and other environments due to anthropogenic inputs from a vast array of product ingredients. In streams and WW treatment plants (WWTPs), microbial communities thrive and can interact with these compounds in a variety of ways. Triclosan is an example of a synthetic chemical with expansive use which has, in half a century, become nearly ubiquitous in the environment. Investigating triclosan mitigation by periphyton from a WW-associated and a forested stream, the WW-associated periphyton showed evidence of mitigation. Similar triclosan levels were observed in both streams, in most samples of periphyton and water. Among water samples, higher triclosan concentrations were measured in samples collected nearest the WWTP. In microcosms, periphyton were exposed to an environmentally-relevant level (10 µg/L) of triclosan. Bacterial isolates were purified from the unexposed and triclosan exposed periphyton from each stream. Isolates were assayed for susceptibility to triclosan and five antibiotics using broth microdilution and identified to genus level via 16S rRNA sequence analysis. Pseudomonas was the dominant genus among identified isolates from all treatment groups and exposed groups had lower genus richness than unexposed. Multidrug-resistant (MDRt) bacteria were detected in both streams, with more incidences of multidrug resistance (MDR) in the WW-associated stream. The environmentally-relevant triclosan exposure appeared to increase antibiotic resistance and MDR in the forested-stream periphyton community but not the WW-associated community. Due to the growing global challenge of MDR, the added contribution of triclosan is a noteworthy risk to human and environmental health.


"Principle contractors have a number of delivery options to allow them to execute their works; this decision will be made based on a number of factors and considerations. This dissertation investigates the different delivery methods, and the considerations involved. This will further go on to investigate industry perceptions and how the decision is made.
The methodology used was qualitative research in the form of semi-structured interviews; this was used to investigate; (1) industry perceptions within the highways sector. (2) How the decision was made, to select the delivery method to be implemented. This research was analysed by the manual content analysis method, which allowed for the identification and consideration of key findings and trends.
The author would like to investigate the "self-delivery" method and compare this against the alternative delivery methods such as subcontracting. For this the author will investigate the considerations and advantages and disadvantages of both delivery methods such as "skills", "commercial" and "risk", and look at key drivers within the decisions made. "


Preparations of intestinal villus and crypt cells were isolated from jejunal segments of suckling (14-day-old) and adult (6- to 7-wk-old) rats. These cell preparations were incubated with 125I-labeled epidermal growth factor (EGF) at 37 degrees C to determine the extent of cellular processing of 125I-EGF in vitro. 125I-EGF bound specifically to both crypt and villus cells of suckling rats and was internalized and degraded to similar extents in both cell preparations. Analysis of the 125I radioactivity in the medium and cellular extract by gel filtration on Sephadex G-25 columns demonstrated the presence of [125I]iodotyrosine (24-31%) following 30 min of incubation. This degradation of EGF was accompanied by a loss in the capacity to bind to anti-EGF antibodies (34-52%) and A431 cells (28-48%). Binding, internalization, and processing of 125I-EGF by crypt cell preparations of adult rats was similar to that of suckling rats. In contrast, little degradation of 125I-EGF to iodotyrosine and loss of cell binding capability occurred following incubation with adult villus cells. However, a considerable loss in binding to anti-EGF antibody was detected (48%). The results indicate that isolated intestinal cells are capable of degrading 125I-EGF in vitro in a manner similar to that seen after oral feeding in vivo. They also indicate differences in the processing of 125I-EGF by isolated villus cells of adult compared with suckling rat.


Trie is fundamental to many applications, such as natural language processing, string similarity search and join, but it suffers from a high space overhead. Double array (DA) provides a new way to reduce the space overhead but suffers from low construction efficiency. There is an urgent demand to promote the construction efficiency of DA while maintaining a low memory overhead. To address this problem, we reveal that the collisions generated during DA construction process mainly contribute to the low construction efficiency. Based on this analysis, a partition double array (PDA) is proposed in this paper. PDA can reduce the number of collisions as well as the cost of handling collisions in DA, so higher construction efficiency is guaranteed. Experiments on real dataset indicates that PDAs have a construction efficiency 15x higher than DA. We also obtain a bonus 2.7x higher retrieval efficiency compared with DA.


A certain amount of crude palm oil (CPO) still remained in the palm pressed fibre (PPF) after going through the conventional milling processes. The use of aqueous enzymatic oil extraction (AEOE) was to recover the oil, hence, leading to the increase in oil extraction rate. With regards to the oil quality, the extracted PPF oil was analysed and compared to CPO using the MPOB Test Methods. From the results, the extracted oil contained high concentration of carotenoid (2750-2800 ppm) and vitamin E (930-950 ppm). Ironically, the quality was slightly lower than CPO, of which the values of deterioration of bleachability index (DOBI), free fatty acid (FFA) content and peroxide value (PV) were 1.12±0.12, 8.51±0.64% and 4.73±0.16 meq kg-1, respectively. With the exception of linolenic acid (C18:3), the fatty acid composition (FAC) of extracted oil was similar to CPO. Despite the oil quality, the use of an enzymatic route has the potential for the extraction of phytonutrient-rich oil from PPF.


Portfolio managers change investment styles for various reasons. This is called "style drift." Although the motivations behind changing styles vary and are difficult to quantify, it is possible to determine the relative impact on peer rankings and the subsequent impact on net fund flows for mutual funds that drift. If style drift was not motivated by relative peer group comparisons, we should expect to see little consistency in rankings for funds that drift or the types of funds that drift. This study suggests, however, that actively managed mutual funds that change Morningstar category tend to materially improve their relative performance rankings against their peers, were average or below-average funds in their previous category and become average or below-average funds in their new category, and that they move into categories that tend to underperform their previous category in the future. Funds that drift tend to improve their performance relative to their previous category by approximately 50 bps and, on average, receive increases in fund flows that are 10 times greater over the 12-month period following the change than for the 12 months preceding the change.