Librarians' performance is getting tasks and duties assigned completed at the expected time, through an effective and efficient manner. Librarians' performance seems to be low in the libraries located in North-East Nigeria where they work. Motivational factors stimulate individuals to put in their best to see to the completion of an assigned duty/task. Literature has not being fully established on how motivational factors influence job performance of librarians in North-East Nigeria Federal University libraries. It is on this premise that this study aimed to find out the influence of motivational factors on job performance of librarians in Federal University libraries in North-East Nigeria. Survey research design was used in this research. The population of the study was 275 librarians from the six Federal University libraries in North-East Nigeria. Total enumeration technique was employed. A validated self-constructed structured questionnaire was used for data collection. A response rate of 61% was achieved. Data collected was analyzed using descriptive The findings revealed descriptively that librarians' job performance was moderate at an overall mean score of 2.80 on a five point Likert scale with quantity of work output being the least score of 2.69. The extent to which librarians were motivated had an overall mean score of 2.00 which showed a low extent of motivation on a five Likert type scale. The most prevalent motivational factor is compensation (Mean = 2.07) while recognition of librarians was X=1.87, which indicates that librarians in these institutions were not recognized. The study concluded that motivational factors in these federal university libraries in north-east Nigeria were low, therefore recommending that there should be an increase in the extent of motivation management of the library. Also, there be encouragement to improve performance of librarians in the libraries by the management of the libraries and the institution at large


The advent of x-ray free electron lasers offers new opportunities for x-ray scattering (XRS) studies of ultrafast molecular dynamics in liquids, which have so far been limited to the 100 ps resolution of synchrotrons. In particular, anisotropic XRS induced by photoselection, using a linearly polarized pump pulse, can enhance the contrast of the signal from excited molecules against the diffuse background and allows the probing of their vibrational and rotational dynamics. Here, we present a computational approach for calculating transient scattering intensities, based on molecular dynamics simulations. This is applied to the study of the excited state dynamics of molecular iodine dissolved in n-hexane. We report that at short times the transient XRS patterns reflect the evolving vibrational and rotational dynamics of I2, even when the disordered solvent environment is included. We then use these simulations to derive the anticipated signal-to-noise ratio for a large class of model diatomic systems in solution, indicating that an S/N ⩾1 will be possible from single-shot experiments in weakly scattering solvents.


CONTEXT
For practitioners deploying store-and-forward telepathology systems, optimization methods such as image compression need to be studied.

OBJECTIVE
To determine if Joint Photographic Expert Group (JPG or JPEG) compression, a glossy image compression algorithm, negatively affects the accuracy of diagnosis in telepathology.

DESIGN
Double-blind, randomized, controlled trial.

SETTING
University-based pathology departments.

PARTICIPANTS
Resident and staff pathologists at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio.

INTERVENTION
Compression of raw images using the JPEG algorithm.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Image acceptability, accuracy of diagnosis, confidence level of pathologist, image quality.

RESULTS
There was no statistically significant difference in the diagnostic accuracy between noncompressed (bit map) and compressed (JPG) images. There were also no differences in the acceptability, confidence level, and perception of image quality. Additionally, rater experience did not significantly correlate with degree of accuracy.

CONCLUSIONS
For providers practicing telepathology, JPG image compression does not negatively affect the accuracy and confidence level of diagnosis. The acceptability and quality of images were also not affected.


This paper focuses on the use of the principle of maximum entropy as an alternative technique for the parameter estimation of the Extreme Value Type – 1 (EV1) distribution or Gumbel distribution often used for the analysis and forecast of extreme events. A case study is made of storm rainfall analysis for Lagos metropolis using the available rainfall data for Ikeja, Oshodi and Lagos Mainland as obtained from Akanbi (1982).

For comparison purposes, the parameters of the EV1 distribution is also obtained using the Maximum Likelihood Method. The later being one of the most reliable techniques and perhaps the most widely used for parameter estimation of the EV1 distribution. This exercise has made it possible to demonstrate in some ways the superiority of the maximum entropy method over existing methods used for statistical simulation of extreme events.


The ISS-based Calorimetric Electron Telescope (CALET) is directly measuring the energy spectrum and direction distribution of electron+positron cosmic-rays up to 20 TeV. A main goal of CALET is to identify a signature of a nearby supernova remnant (SNR) in electron+positron cosmic-rays.
The Vela SNR has the highest potential to cause a spectral feature in the TeV region and/or a detectable anisotropy. Using the numerical cosmic-ray propagation code DRAGON, the spectrum and expected anisotropy of the Vela SNR together with background from more distant SNR was calculated depending on injection and propagation conditions. The results of these calculations were used to simulate CALET event sky-maps on which several analysis methods were employed to estimate the CALET sensitivity.
Assuming that there is no anisotropy, the expected limits on the dipole amplitude from an all-sky search were calculated as a function of the selected energy range and the shape of the predicted spectra.
However for the detection of a dipole anisotropy, the direction towards Vela is predetermined, and sensitivity is strongly boosted by a directed search. It is shown that with this method, CALET has a significant probability to identify an anisotropy signature from Vela. As it may disturb the Vela signature, the contribution to the local cosmic-ray anisotropy from several other nearby SNR and pulsars, as well as from the general source distribution in the galaxy was studied. It was found that Vela is expected to dominate and have a detectable signature, though there is some influence from other sources on direction and strength of the anisotropy. Furthermore, the implications of detecting an dipole anisotropy directed towards Vela for the local propagation parameters, such as the diffusion coefficient, are explained.


We present a model of the interaction of semantic and episodic memory in language processing. Our work shows how language processing can be understood in terms of memory retrieval. We point out that the perceived dichotomy between rule-based versus exemplar-based language modelling can be interpreted in a neuro-biological perspective in terms of the interaction between a semantic memory system that encodes linguistic knowledge in the form of abstract rules, and an episodic memory that stores concrete linguistic events. We implement the idea of a semantic-episodic memory integration in a probabilistic grammar, and evaluate its performance as a syntactic parser on corpora of natural language. Our labeled precision and recall results are competitive with state-of-the-art syntactic parsers, with F-scores up to 90.68 on section 22 of the Penn WSJ corpus.


Stalled fertility declines have been identified in several regions across the developing world, but the current conceptualization of a stalled fertility decline is poorly theorized and does not lend itself to objective measurement. We propose a more rigorous and statistically testable definition of stalled fertility decline that can be applied to time-series data. We then illustrate the utility of our definition through its application to data from rural South Africa for the period 1990-2005 collected from a demographic surveillance site. Application of the approach suggests that fertility decline has indeed stalled in rural KwaZulu-Natal, at about three children per woman. The stall, some 20 percent above the replacement fertility level, does not appear to be associated with a rise in wanted fertility or attenuated access to contraceptive methods. This identification of a stalled fertility decline provides the first evidence of such a stall in southern Africa, the region with the lowest fertility levels in sub-Saharan Africa.


The Correlation of Arab ELLs' Academic Reading Fluency in Arabic and English Jonathan McCollum Department of Linguistics and English Language Master of Arts Educational and economic developments in the Persian Gulf have increased the need for academic English reading fluency in the rising generation of college-bound students. A discussion of the literature on the linguistic properties of Arabic diglossia and orthography affirms the challenge that Arabs confront in L1 literacy. Because of the difficulties encountered in Arabic literacy, the transfer of L1 skills to L2 emerges as a salient issue for English instruction in the Arab world. The following study of Arab ELLs' academic reading fluency in Arabic and English investigates a hypothesized positive correlation between L1 and L2 reading abilities. Quantitative and qualitative data were obtained through the administration of academic reading fluency instruments in both Arabic and English and a survey of reading habits to a sample of 112 post-secondary Gulf Arab students in an English language program in Doha, Qatar. The analysis of the data reveals a correlation between Arabic and English reading fluency confirming previous research on transfer of reading skills between L1 and L2. The data further suggest the advisability of promoting reading fluency training in L1 as a facilitator of L2 fluency, especially in localities such as the Persian Gulf, where the professional environment requires young graduates to have fluency skills in both languages.


AbstractChildren with learning disabilities who are subjected to this study have problems in understanding the concept of integer multiplication. To overcome the problem, it needs an appropriate learning strategy that also accommodate students with disabilities in inclusion class.One is doing study with computer as a media.The problem in this research is to overcome the lack of mathematics achievement through study on Computerkid Learning Center to improve the understanding of the concept of multiplication in fourth grade children with learning disability in SDN Gedangan Sidoarjo. The approach in this study is action research, the steps: a) making action preparations, b) doing the action, c) observation, d) evaluating and reflecting. To obtain improved 65% learning outcomes in math it requires 3 cycles. The first cycle shows 67% of the success in learning outcomes. In the second cycle, students was trying to adjust and comprehend with friends in the group. Improvement of learning outcomes in this second cycle is 76%. To increase the expected results, then it's continued in the third cycle by providing guidance on optimizing each group, emphasized in the importance of working together and providing opportunities for students to develop their social skills. In the third cycle students seem familiar with the group, thus increase the learning outcomes to 65%. Research location was conducted in the fourth grade students at SDN inclusion Gedangan Sidoarjo with research subjects as much as 5 children with learning disability. Based on the research results, it can be said that the learning strategy on Computerkid Learning Center type TGT can be used as a strategy for children with learning disability to study mathematics.Kata kunci : Pembelajaran Matematika, TGT


Abstract African migration to Europe is commonly seen as a tidal wave of desperate people fleeing poverty and warfare at home trying to enter the elusive European el Dorado. Typical 'solutions' proposed by politicians include increasing border controls or boosting African 'stay-at-home' development. However, such apocalyptic views are based on fundamentally flawed assumptions about the (limited) magnitude, historicity, nature and causes of this migration. Dominant discourses obscure the fact that African migration to Europe and Libya is fuelled by a structural demand for cheap migrant labour in informal sectors. This explains why restrictive immigration policies have invariably failed to stop migration and have had various perverse effects. African development is also unlikely to curb migration as it will enable and inspire more people to migrate. Despite lip service being paid to 'combating illegal migration' for political and diplomatic reasons, neither European nor African states have much genuine inte...


Following the Great Depression, the federal government was the primary architect of the secondary residential mortgage market. The foremost pillars of this federal involvement were the twin government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In the public debate over the struggling American financial system, opponents of federal involvement in housing finance have persisted in asserting that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac caused the home foreclosure crisis. This symposium essay attempts to provide a brief rebuttal to this surprisingly persistent oversimplification. It begins with historical context necessary for understanding the debate over the GSEs' responsibility. Next it explains the development of the private, sub-prime home mortgage market, recounts the radical change in the GSEs' investment and underwriting policies in the mid-2000s, and traces the events leading to the collapse and nationalization of the two companies. Although the GSEs began to engage in unacceptably risky investment decisions, the two companies were only one part of a larger more complex commercial and regulatory pattern that also included monetary policy, regulatory dereliction, judicial passivity, ill-advised borrowing, and reckless (or dishonest) brokering, appraising, lending, servicing, and securitizing by private financial services companies.


Children's drawings have a wonderful inventiveness, creativity, and variety to them. We present a system that automatically animates children's drawings of the human figure, is robust to the variance inherent in these depictions, and is simple and straightforward enough for anyone to use. We demonstrate the value and broad appeal of our approach by building and releasing the Animated Drawings Demo, a freely available public website that has been used by millions of people around the world. We present a set of experiments exploring the amount of training data needed for fine-tuning, as well as a perceptual study demonstrating the appeal of a novel twisted perspective retargeting technique. Finally, we introduce the Amateur Drawings Dataset, a first-of-its-kind annotated dataset, collected via the public demo, containing over 178,000 amateur drawings and corresponding user-accepted character bounding boxes, segmentation masks, and joint location annotations.


This study examines how the research and development (R&D) investments of listed companies in Indonesia are influenced by the educational characteristics of their CEOs and CFOs. This study uses 368 observations from 150 listed companies on the Indonesian Stock Exchange for the period 2010 to 2015. We find that CEOs with higher educational levels invest more in research and development. This is consistent with more education instilling a longer-term perspective on corporate managers. We also find that CFOs with accounting certifications invest less in R&D, consistent with the risk-adverse nature of the accounting profession. For companies and shareholders, our findings indicate the need for a greater understanding of the factors associated with R&D investments in Indonesia and other developing markets. Particularly, factors related to the background experience of CEOs and other executives, whose characteristics can have a real impact on the R&D investment decisions of firms. Our results show that the education of CEOs and CFOs is associated with their investment decisions in research and development. Thus, different education backgrounds create a bias for or against R&D investment in Indonesian firms. 6


Culture and creativity have been promoted as the panacea to reversing urban decline in the knowledge age. The posited
benefits of becoming a 'creative city' cut across many aspects of policy, and evidence suggests that unlocking creative potential may well improve the prospects for successful urban regeneration. Such activity may be cultivated to attract economic gain in the form of investment, developing the creative industry sector, business start up locations, tourism spend and knowledge workers. Specific approaches include re-imaging through branding campaigns, flagship buildings and events
programming and developing the creative industries sector. There are some caveats to this approach. The unintended
consequences of policy can include gentrification, a loss of distinctiveness and the pricing out of creative sector pioneers.The benefits may be overstated and are often hard to measure. This paper presents a rationale for intervention, while cautioning against a sole focus on consumption-oriented strategies with their vulnerability to economic downturn. It is argued that policy should be sustainable and balanced, aiming to cultivate and protect indigenous production and be rooted in the local, distinctive attributes of place. Three principles are suggested to help embed the creative city: more workspace, fuller participation and better measurement


An algorithm based on human-computer interaction is put forward aiming at the disadvantages of low accuracy of image contour and low degree thinning of contour. First, to reduce image noise is necessary by filtering, the following thing is to change image into gray image. The gray image is segmented by fuzzy c-means clustering algorithm, In the algorithm, the edge is traversed at given initial vertex. According to neighbor relationship between the point on the contour with neighbor pixels, curve can be confirmed to remain or not. In the following, curve contour vertices can be concluded by the traversal order. Experimental results show that high contour accuracy can be obtained to detect image by the algorithm. In regional consistency, the algorithm is better than some traditional algorithms of image edge detection


Abstract. Two radar pulses sent at different frequencies near the 60 GHz O2 absorption band can be used to determine surface pressure by measuring the differential absorption on and off the band. Results of inverting synthetic data assuming an airborne radar are presented. The analysis includes the effects of temperature, water vapor, and hydrometeors, as well as particle size distributions and surface backscatter uncertainties. Results show that an airborne radar (with sensitivity of −20 and 0.05 dBZ speckle and relative calibration uncertainties) can estimate surface pressure with a precision of ~ 1.0 hPa and accuracy better than 1.0 hPa for clear-sky and cloudy conditions and better than 3.5 hPa for precipitating conditions. Generally, accuracy would be around 0.5 and 2 hPa for non-precipitating and precipitating conditions, respectively.


This article investigates direct-to-consumer advertising in Sweden for Gardasil, the HPV vaccine, as a contemporary gendered technology of the adolescent girl body. It explores how, by constructing girls as ideal users of the vaccine, advertising campaigns encourage adolescent girls to vaccinate themselves. Using a feminist visual discourse analysis, the article examines how different girl subjectivities are constructed through advertising, and presented as fit for Gardasil use and consumption. It highlights how, along with their parents, adolescent girls in Sweden are encouraged to assume responsibility for managing the risks of cervical cancer in order to help secure their future health, sexuality and normality. It argues that the Gardasil campaign, in being addressed to individual members of the population, serves to articulate global and national discourses of girlhood, sexuality, (sexual) health responsibility, risk management and consumption.


The pavement rehabilitation and reconstruction method with Cold In-Place Recycling (CIR) is an alternative that can effectively conserve materials and energy, preserve the environment and reduce the cost. An attempt was made to predict the performance, particularly low-temperature cracking resistance characteristics of CIR mixtures prepared with the mix design procedure developed at the University of Rhode Island (URI) for the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). The mix design procedure was developed to reduce wide variations in CIR mixture production and to develop a nation-wide standard. This standard was applied to a Rhode Island (RI) reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) to produce CIR mixtures with CSS-1h asphalt emulsion as the additive. By adjusting the number of gyrations of the Superpave Gyratory Compactor (SGC) for compaction, the field density of 130 pcf was achieved in the laboratory. To secure a base line, hot mix asphalt (HMA) samples were produced first according to the Superpave volumetric mix design procedure with an air void content of 4.0%. These were tested and analyzed parallel to the CIR specimens to compare the performances. The specimens were tested using the Indirect Tensile (IDT) tester at temperatures of -20, -10 and 0°C (-4, 14, and 32°F, respectively) in accordance with the AASHTO T 322 procedure. The creep compliance and tensile strength values were used as input data for the Mechanistic Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG) analysis. This software predicts the performance of roadways with different pavement structures, traffic, environmental conditions, and material properties using several mathematical models for different types of distresses. The analysis results indicated that no thermal or low-temperature cracking is expected over the entire analysis period of 20 years for both HMA and CIR mixtures. It confirms with the field performance in Arizona. Thus, it appears that CIR is a sustainable rehabilitation technique, and it justifies further research on and investigation of load-related distresses such as rutting and fatigue cracking.


2,3-O-Isopropylidene-D-erythrose (1) reacted with ethoxycarbonylmethylene(triphenyl)phosphorane in refluxing benzene to give the E and Z alkene esters (2a) and (2b). The ester (2a) was converted, via the 6-triflate (7a) and 6-azide (3a), into the dihydrotriazole (8) by 1,3-cycloaddition. Ring opening of compound (8) with sodium ethoxide gave the pyrrolidine diazo ester (9) which on hydrogenolysis gave (2R,3S,4R)-ethyl (3,4-isopropylidenedioxypyrrolidin-2-yl)acetate (5). A similar series of reactions from the Z-ester (2b) gave the pyrrolidine ester (6), the 2S-isomer of (5). Thermolysis of the diazo ester (10), the 2S-isomer of (9), gave(Z)-(3S,4R)-ethyl (3,4-isopropylidenedioxypyrrolidin-2-ylidene) acetate (12) which was reduced with sodium cyanoborohydride to give the ester (5). The esters (2a) and (2b) undergo rapid and quantitative cyclisation in the presence of ethoxide ion. Kinetically the β-isomer (18) is preferred [100% from (2b), 86% from (2a)]; at equilibrium the α-isomer (19) is favoured (82%).


In September 2009, Hansen Beverage Company sent Rock Art Brewery a letter demanding that Rock Art cease and desist its use of "VERMONSTER" as a trademark for beer. Hansen is a multi-million dollar beverage corporation and Rock Art Brewery is a small brewing company owned by a husband-and-wife team based in Vermont. Hansen's gravamen was that Rock Art's "VERMONSTER" beer allegedly infringed on Hansen's "MONSTER ENGERY" trademarks. Instead of capitulating, Rock Art Brewery fought back, taking to the virtual streets of the internet and galvanized public sentiment against Hansen's. The end result was an amicable settlement agreement that allowed Rock Art to continue its use of "VERMONSTER" as it had before. Rock Art's success highlights a growing phenomenon in trademark law: the use of shaming by small businesses to defend itself against a trademark bully. To date, most scholarly work on curtailing the over enforcement of trademarks has been focused on legal means, such as developing stronger defenses to infringement. While this is important and meaningful work, focusing on purely legal means may not assist small businesses or individuals who have no access to legal resources in the first instance. The goal of this Article is to complement the work being done by these scholars and suggest that shaming can be an effective, pre-litigation tool to combat trademark bullies. Since shaming is currently not guaranteed to be effective or available to all small businesses and individuals, this Article suggests a number of legal reforms that could be undertaken in order to maximize the availability of shaming, as well as assist in effective shaming.


Background Neural substrates of emotion dysregulation in adolescent suicide attempters remain unexamined. Method We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure neural activity to neutral, mild or intense (i.e. 0%, 50% or 100% intensity) emotion face morphs in two separate emotion-processing runs (angry and happy) in three adolescent groups: (1) history of suicide attempt and depression (ATT, n = 14); (2) history of depression alone (NAT, n = 15); and (3) healthy controls (HC, n = 15). Post-hoc analyses were conducted on interactions from 3 group × 3 condition (intensities) whole-brain analyses (p < 0.05, corrected) for each emotion run. Results To 50% intensity angry faces, ATT showed significantly greater activity than NAT in anterior cingulate gyral–dorsolateral prefrontal cortical attentional control circuitry, primary sensory and temporal cortices; and significantly greater activity than HC in the primary sensory cortex, while NAT had significantly lower activity than HC in the anterior cingulate gyrus and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. To neutral faces during the angry emotion-processing run, ATT had significantly lower activity than NAT in the fusiform gyrus. ATT also showed significantly lower activity than HC to 100% intensity happy faces in the primary sensory cortex, and to neutral faces in the happy run in the anterior cingulate and left medial frontal gyri (all p < 0.006,corrected). Psychophysiological interaction analyses revealed significantly reduced anterior cingulate gyral–insula functional connectivity to 50% intensity angry faces in ATT v. NAT or HC. Conclusions Elevated activity in attention control circuitry, and reduced anterior cingulate gyral–insula functional connectivity, to 50% intensity angry faces in ATT than other groups suggest that ATT may show inefficient recruitment of attentional control neural circuitry when regulating attention to mild intensity angry faces, which may represent a potential biological marker for suicide risk.


Leatherhead is about twelve miles from Maybury Hill. The scent of hay was in the air through the lush meadows beyond Pyrford, and the hedges on either side were sweet and gay with multitudes of dog-roses. The heavy firing that had broken out while we were driving down Maybury Hill ceased as abruptly as it began, leaving the evening very peaceful and still. We got to Leatherhead without misadventure about nine o'clock, and the horse had an hour's rest while I took supper with my cousins and commended my wife to their care.


This essay considers the appropriate conceptual framework for assessing the taxation of private transfers to individuals. Although it is conventional to emphasize the role of estate and gift taxation or inheritance taxation in redistributing income from the rich to the poor, the revenue effects of transfer taxation, and its distortionary effect on labor supply and savings, it is suggested in line with some recent work that the dominant focus should be on positive and negative externalities attributable to giving. The fundamental reason is that transfer tax reform can be combined with adjustments to other aspects of the fiscal system, notably the income tax, so as to keep constant most effects other than externalities.


The goal of database question answering is to enable natural language querying of real-life relational databases in diverse application domains. Recently, large-scale datasets such as Spider and WikiSQL facilitated novel modeling techniques for text-to-SQL parsing, improving zero-shot generalization to unseen databases. In this work, we examine the challenges that still prevent these techniques from practical deployment. First, we present KaggleDBQA, a new cross-domain evaluation dataset of real Web databases, with domain-specific data types, original formatting, and unrestricted questions. Second, we re-examine the choice of evaluation tasks for text-to-SQL parsers as applied in real-life settings. Finally, we augment our in-domain evaluation task with database documentation, a naturally occurring source of implicit domain knowledge. We show that KaggleDBQA presents a challenge to state-of-the-art zero-shot parsers but a more realistic evaluation setting and creative use of associated database documentation boosts their accuracy by over 13.2%, doubling their performance.


Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Medicare coverage expanded in 2011 to fully cover annual preventive care visits. We assessed the impact of coverage expansion, using 2007-13 data from primary care patients of Medicare-eligible age at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation (204,388 patient-years), which serves people in four counties near San Francisco, California. We compared trends in preventive visits and recommended preventive services among Medicare fee-for-service and Medicare health maintenance organization (HMO) patients as well as non-Medicare patients ages 65-75 who were covered by private fee-for-service and private HMO plans. Among Medicare fee-for-service patients, the annual use of preventive visits rose from 1.4 percent before the implementation of the ACA to 27.5 percent afterward. This increase was significantly larger than was seen for patients in the other insurance groups. Nevertheless, rates of annual preventive care visit use among Medicare fee-for-service patients remained 10-20 percentage points lower than was the case for people with private coverage (43-44 percent) or those in a Medicare HMO (53 percent). ACA policy changes led to increased preventive service use by Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries, which suggests that Medicare coverage expansion is an effective way to increase seniors' use of preventive services.


A methodology is proposed for the appraisal of the data to confront with air quality limits. The methodology assesses air quality levels on the basis of mean values calculated as an average of all data collected in homogeneous areas, from monitoring stations located in sites not conditioned from local sources emissions. The resulting value represents the air quality of the area better than a value obtained from a single station and could be a measure of the efficacy of actions implemented to improve or preserve air quality levels in that area.


Excess sediment and nutrient runoff from land-based human activities are considered serious threats to coastal and marine ecosystems by most conservation practitioners, resource managers, fishers, and other "downstream" resource users. Deleterious consequences of coastal runoff, including eutrophication and hypoxia, have been observed worldwide. Literature on integrated coastal management offers numerous methods to address land-based activities that generate runoff, but many of these approaches are time- and resource-intensive. Often, high-level conservation managers have few tools to aid in decisions about whether land-based threats that generate runoff are of sufficient concern to warrant further investment in planning and management interventions. To address this decision-making process, we present a decision tree that uses geophysical and ecological characteristics to sort any marine coastal ecosystem into a category of high, moderate, low, or minimal risk from the land-based threats of nutrient and sediment runoff. By identifying situations where runoff could influence biodiversity or ecosystem services, the decision tree assists managers in making informed and standardized decisions about when and where to invest further efforts in integrated land-sea planning. We ground-truth the decision tree by evaluating it in five very different regions and conclude the tree classifies regions similarly to the existing literature that is available, but based on less information. Recognizing that the decision tree only encompasses environmental variables, we also discuss approaches for interpreting the decision tree's outputs in local social and economic contexts. The tree provides a tool for conservation managers to decide whether the scope of their work should include land-sea planning.


This essay is conceived as a contribution to the academic debate on the ethical status of mystical traditions with regard to Jain asceticism in particular and—through comparison of Jain with Advaita Vedanta asceticism—to ideologies of radical quietism more generally. For both Jain and Advaita Vedantic ascetic traditions, the material world, and particularly the body, are the primary obstacles to spiritual development. We deal with the social, physical, and environmental implications of such a worldview, rather than with the practice or the phenomenology or the doctrine of mysticism, which we grant to be an accurate reflection of a particular kind of cosmic experience. We address ethical issues, not metaphysical ones. In our discussion of Jain asceticism, we demonstrate that the basic problem (and promise) of quietism, in almost any cultural form, is the shocking realization it can occasion that the Real has absolutely nothing to do with the social or with any sort of ethical action. We argue that Jain asceticism cannot function as an adequate resource for contemporary ethics. Our normative concerns lie exclusively with the adequacy of Jain quietism in supporting a stable global community and a sustainable natural environment. One can be mystical without being ethical, and ethical without being a mystic. We conclude that the truths of quietism are both very profound and profoundly nonethical.


OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the relative effectiveness of two self-help smoking interventions as adjuncts to a self-help manual and telephone support service (hotline) for older smokers. DESIGN: Subjects were stratified on baseline variables and randomised to one of two treatment conditions in a methods development study. SUBJECTS: 177 community-dwelling smokers aged 60 years and older. INTERVENTIONS: All subjects received a self-help manual and access to a smokers' telephone hotline. Subjects also received either mailings (Letters condition) or counselling telephone calls (Proactive condition) at four and eight weeks after enrollment. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Use of the hotline and prevalence of abstinence lasting at least 48 hours (verified by a "significant other") were assessed at three and six months for the full sample. Seven-day abstinence was calculated for comparison with previous research. A subsample of 91 subjects was followed up at 12 months. RESULTS: Overall abstinence rates for the two conditions were in the range of typical self-help interventions. Men were more likely to be abstinent than women at follow up at three and six months. A significant gender x treatment interaction was found, with abstinence rates higher for men in the Letters condition, and women in the Proactive condition. Hotline use was high, with nearly half of subjects calling by 12 months. CONCLUSION: Both interventions appear promising for older smokers, but may be differentially effective for men and women. Older smokers will use a hotline; whether Letters and Proactive interventions can improve on manual and hotline effectiveness rates alone is being tested in a subsequent controlled trial.


This article is an attempt to extend the intuition of Schneeweis and Spurgin by showing the "market based" factors that could be driving the value of α. To motivate this discussion, the author used a simple problem that is frequently discussed in introductory investment classes. Because Schneeweis and Spurgin have fully discussed the statistical characteristics, the approach taken herein is to examine the nonstatistical factors that could lead to being an inconsistent evaluator of performance. Although the conclusion is consistent with Schneeweis and Spurgin, it is argued that the mere existence of α suggests that it should not be used. That is, economic agents should behave rationally and eliminate mispricing so that it should not exist. In a way, it's like the "Salem witch-hunt": the discovery of its innocence inevitably kills it.


Ethical issues are becoming more commonplace in society today and while most industries are taking steps to improve poor ethical decisions through ethics education, aviation is lagging behind in both understanding of ethical issues inherent to the industry and ethics education. In this study three groups of pilots (students, instructors, and faculty) at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University are examined in an effort to determine moral development level in terms of P score on the Defining Issues Test 2 (DIT2) and two domain specific additional questions. It was hypothesized that differences would be found between the groups and that the moral development score would increase from students, through instructor pilots to faculty. This was found to be the case, with significance shown (p<0.10) with the Student and Faculty groups. The Instructor pilots scored marginally lower than expected in the DIT2 questions and this may be due to the lack of formal ethics training and/or the more technical/regulatory focus in aviation. The Instructor pilots scored higher than expected in the additional questions and this may be due to the dilemmas being directed towards topics directly related to their jobs.


Agility, a modem management concept, is the ability to thrive and prosper in a
continuous changing and competitive environment. Currently, agile theories are still
very much general and mainly covering manufacturing. Business processes that are
focusing on the administrative and supporting processes, are said to be the heart of any
enterprise and the major cost factor in most companies. Therefore, improving business
processes is becoming a major competitive weapon in the 21 st century. In an attempt to
link agility and business processes within a real business environment, this research was
designed to identify the factors that affect the development of agility in the business
process improvement (BPI) in a UK luxury car manufacturing context.
A theoretical agile BPI framework was developed to guide the author through the
research from an extensive literature review on the existing agile and BPI theories to
help identify the major agile constructs and BPI methodology and their
interrelationships. The case study was undertaken in a UK luxury car manufacturer
during 2005, and the data were collected and triangulated through document and archive
checking, non-participated observation and mainly 35 semi-structured interviews with
people from different business processes in the case study company.
The results suggest that the existing agile theories need to be further strengthened in the
areas of communication, motivation, the scope of empowerment, people's training and
development and the flattening of management structure which are the major factors
limiting the development of agility in this unique business environment. These unique
findings have made a major contribution to the study of agility by identifying the
barriers of agility within the business processes in a UK luxury car-manufacturing
context. Based on that, the unique agile BPI framework was further modified to
demonstrate the inter-relationships between agility and BPI for further academic studies
or industrial practices.


In cats air embolism of the brain was produced by injecting 0.6 ml blood foam into the innominate artery proximal to the origin of both common carotid arteries. Air embolism caused transient ischemia of the brain, reaching a maximum within 1 min after injection. Resolution of the air embolism began a few minutes later and was completed within 15 min in the center and within 30 min in the border zone of the main supplying arteries. During this phase tissue perfusion was inhomogenous with reduced flow rates in some areas and reactive hyperemia up to 300% in others. This resulted in venous hyperoxia and a decrease of arteriovenous oxygen difference to as low as 2 ml/100 ml blood. Reactive hyperemia was accompanied by brain swelling and an increase in intracranial pressure from 3.6 ± 1.2 to 12.3 ± 2.0 mm Hg. The reason for hyperemia was a decrease of cortical pH which fell from 7.33 ± 0.03 to 7.03 ± 0.05, and which caused a dilation of pial arteries up to 260%. Immediately after embolism, the EEG flattened and oxygen consumption decreased. After normalization of flow, oxygen consumption returned to normal, but EEG only partially recovered. Air embolism had little effect on the water and electrolyte content of the brain, and produced very little damage to the blood-brain barrier.


Brown dwarfs and giant gas extrasolar planets have cold atmospheres with rich chemical compositions from which mineral cloud particles form. Their properties, like particle sizes and material composition, vary with height, and the mineral cloud particles are charged due to triboelectric processes in such dynamic atmospheres. The dynamics of the atmospheric gas is driven by the irradiating host star and/or by the rotation of the objects that changes during its lifetime. Thermal gas ionisation in these ultra-cool but dense atmospheres allows electrostatic interactions and magnetic coupling of a substantial atmosphere volume. Combined with a strong magnetic field ≫BEarth, a chromosphere and aurorae might form as suggested by radio and x-ray observations of brown dwarfs. Non-equilibrium processes like cosmic ray ionisation and discharge processes in clouds will increase the local pool of free electrons in the gas. Cosmic rays and lighting discharges also alter the composition of the local atmospheric gas such that tracer molecules might be identified. Cosmic rays affect the atmosphere through air showers in a certain volume which was modelled with a 3D Monte Carlo radiative transfer code to be able to visualise their spacial extent. Given a certain degree of thermal ionisation of the atmospheric gas, we suggest that electron attachment to charge mineral cloud particles is too inefficient to cause an electrostatic disruption of the cloud particles. Cloud particles will therefore not be destroyed by Coulomb explosion for the local temperature in the collisional dominated brown dwarf and giant gas planet atmospheres. However, the cloud particles are destroyed electrostatically in regions with strong gas ionisation. The potential size of such cloud holes would, however, be too small and might occur too far inside the cloud to mimic the effect of, e.g. magnetic field induced star spots.


The ability to efficient selection and integration of inter-organizational heterogeneous Web services at runtime becomes an important requirement to the Web service provision. In an Web service application, if no single existing Web service can satisfy the functionality required by the user, there should be a program or an agent to automated combine existing services together in order to fulfill the request.The aim of this thesis is to consider the Web service composition problem from the viewpoint of logic-based program synthesis, and to propose an agent-based framework for supporting the composition process in scalable and flexible manner. The approach described in this thesis uses Linear Logic-based theorem proving to assist and automate composition of Semantic Web services. The approach uses a Semantic Web service language (DAML-S) for external presentation of Web services, while, internally, the services are presented by extralogical axioms and proofs in Linear Logic. Linear Logic, as a resource conscious logic, enables us to capture the concurrent features of Web services formally (including parameters, states and non-functional attributes). The approach uses a process calculus to present the process model of the composite service. The process calculus is attached to the Linear Logic inference rules in the style of type theory. Thus the process model for a composite service can be generated directly from the complete proof. We introduce a set of subtyping rules that defines a valid dataflow for composite services.The subtyping rules that are used for semantic reasoning are presented with Linear Logic inference figures. The composition system has been implemented based on a multi-agent architecture, AGORA. The agent-based design enables the different components for Web service composition system, such as the theorem prover, semantic reasoner and translator to integrated to each other in a loosely coupled manner.We conclude with discussing how this approach has been directed to meet the main challenges in Web service composition. First, it is autonomous so that the users do not required to analyze the huge amount of available services manually. Second, it has good scalability and flexibility so that the composition is better performed in a dynamic environment. Third, it solves the heterogeneous problem because the Semantic Web information is used for matching and composing Web services.We argue that LL theorem proving, combined with semantic reasoning offers a practical approach to the success to the composition of Web services. LL, as a logic for specifying concurrent programming, provides higher expressive powers in the modeling of Web services than classical logic. Further, the agent-based design enables the different components for Web service composition system to integrated to each other in a loosely coupled manner.The main contributions of this thesis is summarized as follows. First, an generic framework is developed for the purpose of presenting an abstract process of the automated Semantic Web service composition. Second, a specific system based on the generic platform has been developed. The system focuses on the translation between the internal and external languages together with the process extraction from the proof. Third, applications of the subtyping inference rules that are used for semantic reasoning is discussed. Fourth, an agent architecture is developed as the platform for Web service provision and composition.


Failed states pose one of the deepest challenges to American national security and international peace and stability. Finding a comprehensive and effective solution to the challenges of terrorism, human rights violations, or poverty and economic development requires some understanding of how to restore failed states. The response of the United States and its allies has remained the same: to rebuild the institutions of state control, and, if lucky, to plant a working democracy and a market economy within existing state borders. But many international law scholars remain openly dubious about the ability of states to rebuild – the problem is not failed states but the nation-state as the primary actor in international relations. This paper argues that both American and U.N policy on the one hand, and the conventional academic wisdom on the other hand, are mistaken. Building a normal nation-state with full sovereignty on every territory in the world, without changing any borders, fails to understand why some states are failing in the first place. Viable states simply do not align with the borders recognized by the United Nations or created during the period of rapid decolonization in the decades after World War II. Academics who see in failed states the rise of alternatives to the nation-state have no practical solutions that do not depend on the political, economic, and military resources of strong nation-states. Without them, supra-national governments, trusteeships, or non-governmental organizations have shown little ability to fix failed states. This paper argues that powerful nations can help by performing the more modest role of promoting and guaranteeing power-sharing agreements between competing groups within failed states. It concludes by illustrating the thesis with the outcome of the surge in Iraq.


Summary Taxonomic relationships: Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) is the type member of the Cucumovirus genus, in the family Bromoviridae. Additional members of the genus are Peanut stunt virus (PSV) and Tomato aspermy virus (TAV). The RNAs 3 of all members of the genus can be exchanged and still yield a viable virus, while the RNAs 1 and 2 can only be exchanged within a species. Physical properties: The virus particles are about 29 nm in diameter, and are composed of 180 subunits (T = 3 icosahedral symmetry). The particles sediment with an s value of approximately 98. The virions contain 18% RNA, and are highly labile, relying on RNA-protein interactions for their integrity. The three genomic RNAs, designated RNA 1 (3.3 kb in length), RNA 2 (3.0 kb) and RNA 3 (2.2 kb) are packaged in individual particles; a subgenomic RNA, RNA 4 (1.0 kb), is packaged with the genomic RNA 3, making all the particles roughly equivalent in composition. In some strains an additional subgenomic RNA, RNA 4A is also encapsidated at low levels. The genomic RNAs are single stranded, plus sense RNAs with 5' cap structures, and 3' conserved regions that can be folded into tRNA-like structures. Satellite RNAs: CMV can harbour molecular parasites known as satellite RNAs (satRNAs) that can dramatically alter the symptom phenotype induced by the virus. The CMV satRNAs do not encode any proteins but rely on the RNA for their biological activity. Hosts: CMV infects over 1000 species of hosts, including members of 85 plant families, making it the broadest host range virus known. The virus is transmitted from host to host by aphid vectors, in a nonpersistent manner. Useful web sites: http://mmtsb.scripps.edu/viper/1f15.html (structure); http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ICTVdb/ICTVdB/10040001.htm (general information).


Organizations in South Africa (SA) and other economically developing countries are not maximizing the use of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems. While the costs associated with an ERP system implementation have always been a major factor to many organizations, Open Source Software (OSS) ERP systems are available offering the benefits of an ERP system at a reduced cost to organizations. This paper investigates the adoption factors of Open Source Software Enterprise Resource Planning Systems in economically developing countries by focusing on South African organizations. Using online surveys and a focus group discussion, this empirical study found that knowledge barriers, the lack of sizable providers (or vendors), and ironically low costs, are the adoption barriers that apply to OSS ERP systems for South African organizations. The research further suggests that many of the adoption barriers traditionally associated with OSS might be inherent to all software. The possibility of low costs being a barrier is a novel idea that was identified in this research, and further research to explore this idea is suggested. Understanding the dynamics of the market requirements is crucial for OSS ERP vendors to be able to develop effective strategies. OSS ERP vendors and OSS vendors in general can use this study as a starting point to question some traditionally held notions regarding the OSS business model.


Residential projects represent the largest section of the construction industry in Oman. It is widely claimed that designers in Oman tend to unnecessarily overdesign structures, thereby aggravating construction costs. The aim of this research was to investigate the existence and extent of structural overdesign through the investigation of 31 villas which were approved by Muscat Municipality between 2000–2010. The specified villas were structurally redesigned based on the British Code of Practice using the same geometry and material strengths recorded in the drawings. The required reinforcement resulting from the redesign work was compared with the provided reinforcement as per the drawings. The results showed clear cases of extra reinforcement in almost all villas. The difference between required and provided reinforcements in the villas ranged from 2.3– 104.8%, with an average of 48.5% and a standard deviation of 24.0. The required and provided weights of reinforcement per square meter of the built-up area ranged from 25.7–71 and 40.9–87.9 kg/m 2 , respectively. The largest differences between the required and provided reinforcement were in the slabs, followed by the footings. A field survey of consultants and municipality engineers indicated that the most notable reasons for overdesign are the absence of authorized agents specialized in reviewing structural design, a lack of an engineering licensing system in Oman, and the phenomenon of experienced engineers leaving design offices for better paying jobs elsewhere. Finally, the cost implication of overdesign is minor compared to the overall cost of building.


Ikhlaq Sidhu is the Chief Scientist and Founding Director of UC Berkeley's Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology. Prof. Sidhu also developed and founded the Fung Institute for Engineering Leadership. He received the IEOR Emerging Area Professor Award from his department at Berkeley. He has been granted over 60 US Patents in networking technology, IP telephony, and mobile computing. He was awarded 3Com Corporation's "Inventor of the Year" in 1999. Dr. Sidhu also serves as a Senior Fellow of the Applied Innovation Institute and as a Venture Advisor at Onset Ventures, a leading Silicon Valley investment firm.


The publication in 1941 of Stefan Zweig's Brazil. A Land of the Future (Brasilien. Ein Land der Zukunft) was met both with great enthusiasm and harsh criticisms. Many reviewers thought that Zweig's view of the country was too exotic, naive, idealistic, utopian, and even the result of the propaganda efforts carried out by the Vargas administration. In an attempt to understand and bridge the gap between Zweig's idea of Brazil and the country's «reality», this article analyzes the text hand in hand with Zweig's memoirs and other of his non-fiction works from the perspective of his utopian thinking and ethical commitment to the notions of freedom, peace, cosmopolitanism, tolerance, and common understanding.


This Focus Issue of Science's STKE complements a Special Issue of Science, which features a collection of Perspectives that describe obstacles to attaining a more complete understanding of the immune system. Taking stock of where the field now stands, the authors identify areas that warrant further investigation and speculate on the likely clinical benefits of achieving a deeper understanding of immune function. Articles in Science's STKE highlight molecular challenges that immunologists have overcome, new questions that have arisen from their studies, and cutting-edge techniques that will enable immunologists to tackle these problems.


This paper explored the history of education, including how the focus has evolved into the current demand for a qualified workforce, and the practices of retention and social promotion. Grade level retention research examined the positive and negative impacts on students, as well as alternative intervention approaches. An in-depth study of an early intervention program, KinderQuest, was conducted to determine the relationship between students' reading and math achievement. Data was analyzed by comparing students that participated in the KinderQuest program and students that progressed through the traditional progression of kindergarten through Grade 6. Additionally, reading and math scores of KinderQuest participants were compared to non-participants who were retained to determine how each intervention affected achievement. Student achievement was measured both in the short-term, as observed in Grade 1 to Grade 3, and long-term, as observed in Grade 4 to Grade 6. Overall findings indicated there was no significant difference in the achievement of students in KinderQuest and those who traditionally progressed from grade to grade, suggesting the program was a successful intervention for students at risk of performing below grade level peers in reading and math. Additionally, the impact of KinderQuest and the traditional program showed similar results in both short-term and long-term achievement. Finally, there was no significant difference between the reading and math achievement of students who participated in KinderQuest and those that were retained.


Established in 1884 and operative for nearly a century, the Chilocco Indian School in Oklahoma was one of a series of off-reservation boarding schools intended to assimilate American Indian children into mainstream American life. Critics have characterized the schools as destroyers of Indian communities and cultures, but the reality that K. Tsianina Lomawaima discloses was much more complex. Lomawaima allows the Chilocco students to speak for themselves. In recollections juxtaposed against the official records of racist ideology and repressive practice, students from the 1920s and 1930s recall their loneliness and demoralization but also remember with pride the love and mutual support binding them together-the forging of new pan-Indian identities and reinforcement of old tribal ones.


Using advanced hydrogeological and geomechanical finite element modelling, it has been possible to model the mechanical behaviour of a large slope movement, the Triesenberg landslide. This slope is located along the Rhine valley in the Principality of Liechtenstein and covers an area of around 5 km 2 , which includes two villages. Pore-water pressure fields calculated by the hydrogeological model were used as input for the geomechanical model. The results obtained through numerical simulation agree fairly well with field measurements of peak velocity, spatial and temporal distribution of velocity, and total displacements. Such results were obtained using a modified Cam-Clay elastoplastic constitutive model for which the required material parameters were obtained through careful geotechnical tests. These finite element models were carried out in two and three dimensions to gradually improve the understanding of the physical phenomena governing the hydrogeological conditions and the movements of the slope.


Abstract: In this paper we study of collocation method with Radial Basis Function to solve one dimensional time dependent Schrodinger equation in an unbounded domain. To this end, we introduce artificial boundaries and reduce the original problem to an initial boundary value problem in a bounded domain with transparent boundary conditions that involves half order fractional derivative in t. Then in three stages we use the Laplace Transform method, the collocation method and finally the Legender expansion method. Numerical examples are given to show the effectiveness of the scheme.


This study identified the ecological characteristics of an exotic fish species,
Pterygoplicthys pardalis that have successfully occupied Malaysian rivers. The
objectives of the study were to investigate the existing environment of Langat River
where this species were found which included the water quality, food availability
and habitat types, and to understand the basic ecology of the fish species including
feeding, growth, reproduction that have contributed to the successful colonisation.
The prediction was if the existing environment is suitable for the species, then the
survival of the species will be enhanced due to favorable growth and reproduction.
The study was conducted in Langat River between January 2003 and December
2004, and seven sampling sites (S-1 to S-7) were established. Statistical inference
was used to estimate certain parameters (physical and biological) that are important
in hypothesis testing. The physicochemical parameters of the water except
dissolved oxygen ( 400 mg/l), chemical oxygen
demand (> 50 mg/l) and ammonia-nitrogen (> 0.2 mg/l) were within the tolerance levels to most indigenous fish species. In the existing environment, the P. pardalis
showed a negative allometric growth dimension (b = 2.538 ± 0.039). The influence
of seasonal rainfall (water level) on the condition of P. pardalis was not evident.
Good structure and function of its digestive tract has enabled the consumption of
many and various kinds of food materials. Small size food particles (< 500 μm) were
preferred and detritus from sediment was its major diet composition. The percentage
of the food items identified both in the stomach and on the river bottom was almost
similar, indicating that this fish fed on the food available in the habitat. The
reproductive performance of this species was based on the male-female ratio of 1:1.7
and continuously reproduced that peaked during the rainy season between
September and January. The number of eggs (fecundity) varied from 1,297 to 18,791
per brood and they were asynchronic batch spawner. Eggs were deposited deep
(about 1 m) in the burrow to hide them from predators. Pterygoplichthys pardalis is
a hardy species and exhibited typical characteristics of an invasive species where it
has successfully survived in the Langat River.


With the growing complexity in consumer embedded products and the improvements in process technology, Multi-Processor System-On-Chip (MPSoC) architectures have become widespread. These new systems are very complex to design as they must execute multiple complex real-time applications (e.g. video processing, or videogames), while meeting several additional design constraints (e.g. energy consumption or time-to-market). Thus, in order to explore all the possible HW-SW configurations in a MPSoC, simulation is not practical anymore due to the large overhead in time of cycle-accurate simulators, which is the desired level for the extraction of statistics. New methods to extract such fine-grained statistics in a faster way are needed. In this paper, we present a new FPGA-based emulation framework that allows designers to rapidly explore a large range of MPSoC design alternatives at the cycle-accurate level. Our experimients using this platform yield a speed-up of three orders of magnitud compared to cycle-accurate MPSoC simulators, while achieving the same level of accuracy as cycle-accurate MPSoC simulation frameworks.


Almost daily we hear news stories, advertisements and scientific reports that promise genetic medicine will make us live longer, enable doctors to identify and treat diseases before they start, and individualize our medical care. But surprisingly, a century ago eugenicists were making the same promises. The Science of Human Perfection traces the history of the promises of medical genetics and of the medical dimension of eugenics. The book also considers social and ethical issues that cast troublesome shadows over these fields. Keeping his focus on America, science historian Nathaniel Comfort introduces the community of scientists, physicians and public health workers who have contributed to the development of medical genetics from the nineteenth century to today. He argues that medical genetics is closely related to eugenics, and indeed the two cannot be fully understood separately. He also carefully examines how the desire to relieve suffering and to improve ourselves genetically, though noble, may be subverted. History makes clear that as patients and consumers we must take ownership of genetic medicine, using it intelligently, knowledgeably and sceptically, lest pernicious interests trump our own.


A parallel manipulator is naturally associated with a set of constraint functions defined by its closure constraints. The differential forms arising from these constraint functions completely characterize the geometric properties of the manipulator. In this paper, using the language of differential forms, we provide a thorough geometric study on the various types of singularities of a parallel manipulator, their relations with the kinematic parameters and the configuration spaces of the manipulator, and the role redundant actuation plays in reshaping the singularities and improving the performance of the manipulator. First, we analyze configuration space singularities by constructing a Morse function on some appropriately defined spaces. By varying key parameters of the manipulator, we obtain homotopic classes of the configuration spaces. This allows us to gain insight on configuration space singularities and understand how to choose design parameters for the manipulator. Second, we define parametrization singularities which include actuator and end-effector singularities (or other equivalent definitions) as their special cases. This definition naturally contains the closure constraints in addition to the coordinates of the actuators and the end-effector and can be used to search a complete set of actuator or end-effector singularities including some singularities that may be missed by the usual kinematics methods. We give an intrinsic classification of parametrization singularities and define their topological orders. While a nondegenerate singularity poses no problems in general, a degenerate singularity can sometimes be a source of danger and should be avoided if possible.


The effective implementation of socio-economic rights not only requires the recognition of these rights as justiciable or enforceable rights and the development and implementation of policies to give effect to them at the national level. It also necessitates the ratification and implementation of international treaties. This underlines the need to consider the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 1966 (ICESCR), and its Optional Protocol, 2008 (OP-ICESCR), in augmenting domestic efforts. The United Nations (UN) Committee on the Rights of the Child, for instance, has stated that the ratification of the ICESCR would strengthen the efforts of South Africa to meet its obligations in guaranteeing the rights of all children under its jurisdiction (Concluding observations on the initial report of South Africa, UN doc. CRC/C/15/Add.122, para 11).


Mechanisms of animal learning and memory were traditionally studied without reference to niche-specific functional considerations. More recently, ecological demands have informed such investigations, most notably with respect to foraging in birds. In parallel, behavioural ecologists, primarily concerned with functional optimization, have begun to consider the role of mechanistic factors, including cognition, to explain apparent deviations from optimal predictions. In the present paper we discuss the application of laboratory-based constructs and paradigms of cognition to the real-world challenges faced by avian foragers. We argue that such applications have been handicapped by what we term the 'paradigmatic assumption' - the assumption that a given laboratory paradigm maps well enough onto a congruent cognitive mechanism (or cognitive ability) to justify conflation of the two. We present evidence against the paradigmatic assumption and suggest that to achieve a profitable integration between function and mechanism, with respect to animal cognition, a new conceptualization of cognitive mechanisms - functional cogni- tion - is required. This new conceptualization should define cognitive mechanisms based on the informational properties of the animal's environment and the adaptive challenges faced. Cognitive mechanisms must be examined in settings that mimic the im- portant aspects of the natural environment, using customized tasks designed to probe defined aspects of the mechanisms' opera- tion. We suggest that this approach will facilitate investigations of the functional and evolutionary relevance of cognitive mecha- nisms, as well as the patterns of divergence, convergence and specialization of cognitive mechanisms within and between species (Current Zoology 61 (2): 328-340, 2015).


The Government of Botswana has, and continues to promote local government as an instrument of decentralization and public participation for local level governance and service delivery. Local authorities (LAs) are at the forefront of the provision of basic services to the local communities. The LAs are also a major channel for the use of public resources as exemplified by the significant budget allocations committed to them. It is, therefore, important that they conduct their business in the most effective and efficient manner. In order for public sector systems to deliver effective localized services, LAs in Botswana should be gradually transformed from bodies that are mainly concerned with pushing services but to proactively engage their citizens and represent their communities' interests. Considering the extent of responsibilities of the local government authorities, there is a need to set clear expectations and have structures to ensure that local bodies respond to local needs by conducting local development in a timely, inclusive, open, honest and accountable manner. As some of the many efforts required to improve governance and service delivery in the country this paper proposes the establishment and operationalisation of an Open Local Government Framework, within which local bodies will be supported to make extensive local government information available online as part of an online LA notice board. This paper also recommends for the production of a Local Authority Data Book as a foundation for evidence-based policy-making and policy implementation.


Cohabitation is a reality for a majority of Americans. Non-monogamous relationships are increasing over time, yet having a sexual relationship outside of marriage is illegal in a surprising number of states. Conservative groups or politicians also occasionally champion these laws, ensuring their longevity. This enduring conflict of values between the majority and a vocal minority is part of a cultural trend that has existed for centuries. From colonial times to the present, adultery and fornication laws have gone from being the most prolifically enforced to being virtually ignored by prosecutors and held to be unconstitutional invasions of privacy by judges. This Article traces that progression by looking at how American culture has changed over time, including judicial views on and changing evidentiary standards for the crimes of adultery and fornication, both of which have led to fewer prosecutions. The resulting picture indicates why these laws are no longer regularly enforced and why they still remain part of the criminal codes in several states, regardless of their uncertain constitutional pedigree.


The use of SAGE III multiwavelength aerosol extinction coefficient measurements to infer PSC type is contingent on the robustness of both the extinction magnitude and its spectral variation. Past validation with SAGE II and other similar measurements has shown that the SAGE III extinction coefficient measurements are reliable though the comparisons have been greatly weighted toward measurements made at mid-latitudes. Some aerosol comparisons made in the Arctic winter as a part of SOLVE II suggested that SAGE III values, particularly at longer wavelengths, are too small with the implication that both the magnitude and the wavelength dependence are not reliable. Comparisons with POAM III have also suggested a similar discrepancy. Herein, we use SAGE II data as a common standard for comparison of SAGE III and POAM III measurements in the Arctic winters of 2002/2003 through 2004/2005. During the winter, SAGE II measurements are made infrequently at the same latitudes as these instruments. We have mitigated this problem through the use of potential vorticity as a spatial coordinate and thus greatly increased of the number of coincident events. We find that SAGE II and III extinction coefficient measurements show a high degree of compatibility at both 1020 nm and 450 nm except a 10–20% bias at both wavelengths. In addition, the 452 to 1020 nm extinction ratio shows a consistent bias of ∼30% throughout the lower stratosphere. We also find that SAGE II and POAM III are on average consistent though the comparisons show a much higher variability and larger bias than SAGE II/III comparisons. In addition, we find that SAGE II and POAM III data sets are not well correlated at and below 18 km. Overall, we find both the extinction values and the spectral dependence from SAGE III are robust and we find no evidence of a significant defect within the Arctic vortex. Correspondence to: L. W. Thomason (email@example.com)


Object detection is a significant challenge in Computer Vision and has received a lot of attention in the field. One such challenge addressed in this thesis is the detection of polygonal objects, which are prevalent in man-made environments. Shape analysis is an important cue to detect these objects. We propose a contour-based object detection framework to deal with the related challenges, including how to efficiently detect polygonal shapes and how to exploit them for object detection. First, we propose an efficient component tree segmentation framework for stable region extraction and a multi-resolution line segment detection algorithm, which form the bases of our detection framework. Our component tree segmentation algorithm explores the optimal threshold for each branch of the component tree, and achieves a significant improvement over image thresholding segmentation, and comparable performance to more sophisticated methods but only at a fraction of computation time. Our line segment detector overcomes several inherent limitations of the Hough transform, and achieves a comparable performance to the state-of-the-art line segment detectors. However, our approach can better capture dominant structures and is more stable against low-quality imaging conditions. Second, we propose a global shape analysis measurement for simple polygon detection and use it to develop an approach for real-time landing site detection in unconstrained man-made environments. Since the task of detecting landing sites must be performed in a few seconds or less, existing methods are often limited to simple local intensity and edge variation cues. By contrast, we show how to efficiently take into account the potential sites' global shape, which is a critical cue in man-made scenes. Our method relies on component tree segmentation algorithm and a new shape regularity measure to look for polygonal regions in video sequences. In this way we enforce both temporal consistency and geometric regularity, resulting in reliable and consistent detections. Third, we propose a generic contour grouping based object detection approach by exploring promising cycles in a line fragment graph. Previous contour-based methods are limited to use additive scoring functions. In this thesis, we propose an approximate search approach that eliminates this restriction. Given a weighted line fragment graph, we prune its cycle space by removing cycles containing weak nodes or weak edges, until the upper bound of the cycle space is less than the threshold defined by the cyclomatic number. Object contours are then detected as maximally scoring elementary circuits in the pruned cycle space. Furthermore, we propose another more efficient algorithm, which reconstructs the graph by grouping the strongest edges iteratively until the number of the cycles reaches the upper bound. Our approximate search approaches can be used with any cycle scoring function. Moreover, unlike other contour grouping based approaches, our approach does not rely on a greedy strategy for finding multiple candidates and is capable of finding multiple candidates sharing common line fragments. We demonstrate that our approach significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art.


This paper is based on a pilot study of local artists based at the Artist Open House Fremantle (AOHF), Western Australia. The study was conducted to test the interview questions that were developed for a Masters research degree, which is investigating the information seeking behaviour of higher degree by research students in art and design courses in Perth, Western Australia.

A work of art is a reflection of the artist who creates it. Artistic skills and talent form fundamental components of the unique research perspective possessed by the artists and are important considerations to be included when attempts are made to understand artists' information seeking behaviour. Studies on artists' information needs are relatively limited, but what distinguishes this group of information users from other professions is the nature of resources and information services required by this community.

This paper focuses how the artists meet their information needs for art and design resources; incorporating the findings from the pilot interview sessions. It also discusses the existing library and information science research literature that has explored creative artists' information needs, and how this group of information users gather information to be utilised in the production of their creative works.


The physical properties of a hologram written in a photorefractive polymer composite are predicted from a macroscopic model based on ellipsometry. An electric poling field increases the birefringence of the composite. The way that the bulk birefringence changes with the electric field is used to predict the holographic index contrast, and, by comparison with experiment, accurate deductions of the holographic space-charge field are made. A photorefractive polymer composite was used that contained 47.5 wt. % 1-(2′-Ethylhexyloxy)2,5-dimethyl-4-(4″ nitrophenylazo)benzene electro-optic dye. When sinusoidal modulation in optical intensity is used with high contrast, the higher spatial harmonics of the modulation of the holographic space-charge field become important. The amplitude of the first-order modulation in the space-charge field is accordingly reduced by 13% relative to the predictions of the standard model of photorefractivity in the case of a high-saturation field.


Using oil-sands petroleum coke as the raw material and sulfur dioxide as the activating agent at 700 °C, the process of pore development in dense carbonaceous materials was studied. The time dependence of porosity was established from measured values of specific surface area (SSA), which could not be explained using conventional porous layer theories. Incorporating the Random Pore Model with measurements of particle size and porous layer thickness, a model was developed based on the existence of a porous layer of constant thickness. The model was found to accurately reproduce experimental time dependence of SSA. The results confirm a constant thickness of the porous layer for the activation conditions studied, which results from competing effects of carbon gasification reaction and penetration of the activating agent into the carbon particle interior. The model predicts a higher achievable SSA for a greater constant porous layer thickness, smaller initial particle size, and lower inorganic ash content. This model was found to be useful in predicting the maximum porous layer thickness of a dense material undergoing activation or gasification using only measured values of SSA, pore size distribution, and particle size as inputs.


Abstract. In situ measurements of ozone, photochemically active bromine compounds, and other trace gases over the Arctic Ocean in April 2008 are used to examine the chemistry and geographical extent of ozone depletion in the arctic marine boundary layer (MBL). Data were obtained from the NOAA WP-3D aircraft during the Aerosol, Radiation, and Cloud Processes affecting Arctic Climate (ARCPAC) study and the NASA DC-8 aircraft during the Arctic Research of the Composition of the Troposphere from Aircraft and Satellites (ARCTAS) study. Fast (1 s) and sensitive (detection limits at the low pptv level) measurements of BrCl and BrO were obtained from three different chemical ionization mass spectrometer (CIMS) instruments, and soluble bromide was measured with a mist chamber. The CIMS instruments also detected Br2. Subsequent laboratory studies showed that HOBr rapidly converts to Br2 on the Teflon instrument inlets. This detected Br2 is identified as active bromine and represents a lower limit of the sum HOBr + Br2. The measured active bromine is shown to likely be HOBr during daytime flights in the arctic. In the MBL over the Arctic Ocean, soluble bromide and active bromine were consistently elevated and ozone was depleted. Ozone depletion and active bromine enhancement were confined to the MBL that was capped by a temperature inversion at 200–500 m altitude. In ozone-depleted air, BrO rarely exceeded 10 pptv and was always substantially lower than soluble bromide that was as high as 40 pptv. BrCl was rarely enhanced above the 2 pptv detection limit, either in the MBL, over Alaska, or in the arctic free troposphere.


This paper presents the experiences of three regional universities - one public and two private - that have established academic partnerships in business with Chinese institutions of higher education. The paper briefly highlights the process used by three universities to establish linkages with their Chinese partners, the relative success of these alliances, and the lessons learned in the process. Although many Western Universities have established partnerships with Chinese Universities, there remains an enormous unmet demand for Western business education in China. However, Western business schools must prepare themselves for the many challenges in establishing these partnerships.


We present Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA) Cycle-2 observations of the HBC 494 molecular outflow and envelope. HBC 494 is an FU Ori-like object embedded in the Orion A cloud and is associated with the reflection nebulae Re50 and Re50N. We use $^{12}$CO, $^{13}$CO and C$^{18}$O spectral line data to independently describe the outflow and envelope structures associated with HBC 494. The moment-1 map of the $^{12}$CO emission shows the widest outflow cavities in a Class I object known to date (opening angle $\sim$ 150$^{^{\circ}}$). The morphology of the wide outflow is likely to be due to the interaction between winds originating in the inner disc and the surrounding envelope. The low-velocity blue- and red-shifted $^{13}$CO and C$^{18}$O emission trace the rotation and infall motion of the circumstellar envelope. Using molecular line data and adopting standard methods for correcting optical depth effects, we estimate its kinematic properties, including an outflow mass on the order of 10$^{-1}$ M$_{\odot}$. Considering the large estimated outflow mass for HBC 494, our results support recent theoretical work suggesting that wind-driven processes might dominate the evolution of protoplanetary discs via energetic outflows.


Propylenedioxythiophene (ProDOT) polymers are synthesized using an oxidative polymerization route that results in methacrylate substituted poly(ProDOTs) having a Mn of 10–20 kDa wherein the methacrylate functionality constitutes from 6 to 60% of the total monomer units. Solutions of these polymers show excellent film forming abilities, with thin films prepared using both spray‐casting and spin‐coating. These polymers are demonstrated to crosslink upon UV irradiation at 350 nm, in the presence of an appropriate photoinitiator, to render the films insoluble to common organic solvents. Electrochemical, spectroelectrochemical, and colorimetric analyses of the crosslinked polymer films are performed to establish that they retain the same electrochromic qualities as the parent polymers with no detriment to the observed properties. To demonstrate applicability for multi‐film processing and patterning, photolithographic patterning is shown, as is desired for fully solution processed and patterned devices.


Abstract : This report describes the development of a real-time hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) power system simulation platform to evaluate commercial microgrid controllers. The effort resulted in the successful demonstration of HIL simulation technology at a Technical Symposium organized by the Mass Clean Energy Center (CEC) for utility distribution system engineers, project developers, systems integrators, equipment vendors, academia, regulators, City of Boston officials, and Commonwealth officials. Actual microgrid controller hardware was integrated along with actual, commercial genset controller hardware in a particular microgrid configuration, which included dynamic loads, distributed energy resources (DERs), and conventional power sources. The end product provides the ability to quickly and cost-effectively assess the performance of different microgrid controllers as quantified by certain metrics, such as fuel consumption, power flow management precision at the point of common coupling, load-not-served (LNS) while islanded, peak-shaving kWh, and voltage stability. Additional applications include protection system testing and evaluation, distributed generation prime mover controller testing, integration and testing of distribution control systems, behavior testing and studies of DER controls, detailed power systems analysis, communications testing and integration, and implementation and evaluation of smart grid concepts. Microgrids and these additional applications promise to improve the reliability, resiliency, and efficiency of the nation's aging but critical power distribution systems. This achievement was a collaborative effort between MIT Lincoln Laboratory and industry microgrid controller manufacturers. This work was sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) and the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability.


Abstract Leading accounts of tort law split cleanly into two seams. Some trace its foundations to a deontic form of morality; others to an instrumental, policy-oriented system of efficient loss allocation. An increasingly prominent alternative to both seams, Civil Recourse Theory (CRT) resists this binary by arguing that tort comprises a basic legal category, and that its directives constitute reasons for action with robust normative force. Using the familiar question whether tort's directives are guidance rules or liability rules as a lens, or prism, this essay shows how considerations of practical reasoning undermine one of CRT's core commitments. If tort directives exert robust normative force, we must account for its grounds—for where it comes from, and why it obtains. CRT tries to do so by co-opting H.L.A. Hart's notion of the internal point of view, but this leveraging strategy cannot succeed: while the internal point of view sees legal directives as guides to action, tort law merely demands conformity. To be guided by a directive is to comply with it, not conform to it, so tort's structure blocks the shortcut to normativity CRT attempts to navigate. Given the fine-grained distinctions the theory makes, and with the connection between its claims and tort's requirements thus severed, CRT faces a dilemma: it's either unresponsive to tort's normative grounds, or it's inattentive to tort's extensional structure.


Stability represents a fundamental concept in developmental theory and research. In this article we give an overview of recent work on personality traits and their stability in adulthood. First, we define personality traits and stability. Second, we present empirical evidence supporting change and stability of personality traits across the adult years with respect to conceptually and statistically different forms of stability. Third, we describe mechanisms and processes that enable trait stability. Finally, we discuss implications of trait stability for theory, research, and application.


Attacks on humans by Australian magpies (Gymnorhina tibicen) cause a significant human-wildlife conflict in suburban environments throughout Australia. Community opposition to lethal control methods generally has, in part, led to an increase in the use of translocation as an alternative. We assessed the effectiveness and implications of using this approach in the management of aggressive magpie in south-eastern Queensland during 1999 and 2000. A total of 968 (1999) and 707 (2000) magpies were reported by the public, of which 39-45% were able to be investigated by a two-person team working three days per week. A total of 141 magpies were translocated, 31.7% of all birds investigated. Of these, only five (3.5%) returned to the place of capture, and 22 (15.6%) were resighted elsewhere; there was no evidence of 'homing'. Only three translocated birds were subsequently reported as being aggressive towards humans. While extremely effective in reducing the conflict locally, we caution against the indiscriminate use of this method, and suggest that it be seen as one of many options available to wildlife managers.


Demands for broadband wireless access services are expected to outstrip the spectrum capacity in the near-term "spectrum crunch." Deploying additional femtocells to address this challenge is cost-inefficient due to the backhaul challenge and the exorbitant system maintenance. According to an Alcatel-Lucent report, most mobile Internet access traffic happens indoors. Leveraging power line communication and the available indoor infrastructure, visible light communication (VLC) can be utilized with a small one-time cost. VLC also facilitates the great advantage of being able to jointly perform illumination and communications, and little extra power beyond illumination is required to empower communications, thus rendering wireless access with small power consumption. In this study, we investigate the problem of minimizing total power consumption of a general multiuser VLC indoor network while satisfying users' traffic demands and maintaining an acceptable level of illumination. We utilize the column-generation method to obtain an ε-bounded solution. Several practical implementation issues are integrated with the proposed algorithm, including different configurations of light source and ways of resolving the interference among VLC links. Through extensive simulations, we show that our approach reduces the power consumption of the state-of-the-art VLC-based scheduling algorithms by more than 60% while maintaining the required illumination.


Abstract In the next decades, many public infrastructure assets will reach the end of their life that they were originally designed for. Replacement costs are high, and therefore increasing effort is put into lifetime-extending maintenance, including major overhauls and renovations. A key question is whether the investments in lifetime-extending maintenance justify the postponement of a full replacement. This question becomes more complicated when future life cycle cash flows are non-repeatable. Differential inflation and technological change, including multiple intervention strategies to maintain a desired functionality, cause such non-repeatability. In this case, classic replacement analysis techniques will not suffice in answering this question. Literature demonstrates that case-specific modelling with dynamic or linear programming techniques is required to find economic optimisation. However, such literature primarily addresses replacement interval optimisation of new investments within relative short time horizons, whereas the current research develops a nested dynamic programming (DP) approach for typical ageing infrastructure assets over long service life periods. The model can deal with multiple and various successive intervention strategies and addresses differential inflation and age-related cost increases. Finally, it is shown in an infrastructure case study that this DP approach leads to a better decision in comparison to the application of classical replacement techniques.


Neodymium isotope data on exhalites and tuffs from the Cambrian Lemarchant volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) deposit provide insights into the tectonic environment of the Tally Pond group, Canada. New data from exhalites from the Lemarchant area show evolved values of εNd513 = −6.0 to −1.8, whereas the associated volcanic rocks have εNd513 of +0.4 to +1.4. The Lemarchant exhalite εNd compositions overlap the underlying Ganderian Neoproterozoic Sandy Brook Group (εNdt = −6.5 to −1.9) and Crippleback Intrusive Suite (εNdt = −5.9 to −5.2). The evolved Nd isotopic signatures suggest that the volcanic rocks of the Tally Pond group were formed upon Ganderian arc basement, which itself was possibly built upon, or proximal to, the Gondwanan Amazonian margin. Erosion of older crustal material and Tally Pond group volcanic rocks, together with coeval eruption of the volcanic rocks, released Nd-rich detritus into the water column. Uptake of eroded detrital and scavenged Nd resulted in mixed Nd sources (juvenile and evolved), which are archived in the exhalites. The results of this study are not only of significance for occurrences of exhalites within the Tally Pond group, but also have exploration implications for VMS districts globally.


Discounts and premiums for wheat quality factors at a specific location can be affected by the quality of wheat at other locations. We estimate the effects of protein and test weight levels of Kansas hard red winter and North Dakota dark northern spring wheat on the protein and test weight premiums of each other. Additionally, we determine the effect on premiums of protein and test weight and discounts of shrunken/broken and damaged kernels at different locations within each region from changes in wheat qualities at other locations within the same region. Results indicate that spatial competition was important for protein and test weight, both between the two wheat regions and within the same region.


"Operative Techniques in Orthopaedic Surgical Oncology" provides full-color, step-by-step explanations of all operative procedures in orthopaedic oncology. This text contains the chapters from the oncology section in Sam W. Wiesel's "Operative Techniques in Orthopaedic Surgery". Written by experts from leading institutions around the world, this superbly illustrated volume focuses on mastery of operative techniques and also provides a thorough understanding of how to select the best procedure, how to avoid complications, and what outcomes to expect. Accompanying the book is a companion website with the fully searchable text and procedural videos. The user-friendly format is ideal for quick preoperative review of the steps of a procedure. Each procedure is broken down step by step, with full-color intraoperative photographs and drawings that demonstrate how to perform each technique. Extensive use of bulleted points and tables allows quick and easy reference. Each clinical problem is discussed in the same format: definition, anatomy, physical exams, pathogenesis, natural history, physical findings, imaging and diagnostic studies, differential diagnosis, non-operative management, surgical management, pearls and pitfalls, postoperative care, outcomes, and complications.


This is the ninth year the Biochemical Society has run the Science Communication Competition. The competition aims to give talented young science communicators the opportunity to have their work published in The Biochemist. This year's competition attracted entries from around the world covering a wide variety of topics, in both the written and video categories. The entries were judged by our expert panel of judges. In this issue we are proud to present the third place entry from the written category by Katie Ember.


This paper examines the relationship between immigrant occupational composition and wages in Sweden. Effects of changes in proportion of immigrant workers in different occupations on the wage levels of both natives and immigrants are estimated. Our results suggest that increases in immigrant density have only small effects on wages and that the negative relationship between wages and the proportion of immigrant workers in an occupation, observed in data, is almost entirely accounted for by measured and unmeasured worker skills. These results suggest that wage differences across occupations with different densities of immigrants are mainly due to quality sorting and to a lesser extent due to the existence of discrimination.


Within process mining, we can identify conformance checking as the task of computing the extent to which executions of a process model are in line with the reference behavior. Most approaches currently available in the literature (for imperative models, such as Petri nets) perform just a-posteriori analyses. This means that the amount of nonconformant behavior is quantified after the completion of the current execution. The tool presented in this paper, instead, proposes an approach for online conformance checking : not only it is capable of quantifying the deviating behavior on the fly, but the computation complexity is also restricted to a constant complexity per event analyzed. This enables the online analysis of an infinite stream of events. The tool is implemented as a package of the ProM framework and promising results have been obtained and are presented in this paper.


KinectFusion enables a user holding and moving a standard Kinect camera to rapidly create detailed 3D reconstructions of an indoor scene. Only the depth data from Kinect is used to track the 3D pose of the sensor and reconstruct, geometrically precise, 3D models of the physical scene in real-time. The capabilities of KinectFusion, as well as the novel GPU-based pipeline are described in full. Uses of the core system for low-cost handheld scanning, and geometry-aware augmented reality and physics-based interactions are shown. Novel extensions to the core GPU pipeline demonstrate object segmentation and user interaction directly in front of the sensor, without degrading camera tracking or reconstruction. These extensions are used to enable real-time multi-touch interactions anywhere, allowing any planar or non-planar reconstructed physical surface to be appropriated for touch.