The communication of the results of scientific research, and in many ways, research itself have changed in recent years as digital means of information production, distribution and access have become widespread. Paper preprints have been replaced by electronic archives, mail and phone calls by e-mail, typewriters and hand drawing by text and graphics software programs, cabinet files by saved directories on hard disks. These new tools, together with multimedia presentations and conference websites, constitute the growing digital network of information that is taking over many aspects of the working place of research. It is a system in which the information flow is regulated, integrated and made available by the software and the network.
This digital network of research is currently organized in three layers:
- Repositories of information: open archives and databases. This first level is the analogous of library and publishers stacks.
- Services over and for information: e.g. review journal, cross-citation. They are the analogous of, for instance, library desks and paper journals.
- Digital communities: synergic union of services and information. Ideally, they replace your desktop environment by giving access to the tools you use in your everyday work.
In this talk we will present Torii, a system that gives direct access to the digital research community. All tools and documents the user need are collected under an unified access point, organized according to his needs and ready for him everywhere he is are and at any time he may need them. An intuitive user interface helps the user to navigate. All the tools the user need are at his finger tips. Choice of archives and subjects are easily costumized to fit his interests. This platform grows as the digital community grows. New features will be added as they become available in the future.
The personal folder is the hub of the system. The user can store his documents here for future reference or to be printed or sent to others. The personal folder is easy to use by means of its drag-and-drop interface. It ideally replaces the cabinet filer where paper documents used to be stored. Stored documents can be ranked according to his profiles, impact factors or evaluation tools. The user will find in his personal folder new documents suggested by the social filtering engine and he can attach to any documents comments for himself or to be shared by the community.
Documents to be manipulated can be organised in a multi-layered stack. It could be an entry in a database, and as a new layer is added so is the entry column modified in the database, or it could be a collection of documents managed by a web server that keeps track of their relationships and modifications. The access to a multi-layered document is dynamical. According to who the user is at a given moment---reader, author, referee, editor---he has access to different layers. Dynamical access requires an appropriate interface between the multi-layered documents and the users. It also requires intelligent agents to sift through the increasingly large amount of information to shape it into some hierarchy and thus making it usable.
Key features for the integration of dynamic access to the informationinto the portal are the XML language and the Open Archive Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). The XML language is used to encapsulate in a common structure the exchanged information, originally stored in a variety of formats. This XML metadata structure represents the semantic aspects related to the data.
The OAI-PMH defines a HTTP-based mechanism for harvesting XML files containing metadata from repositories. This is the basic communication protocol between Torii and the underlying services, operating in a location-transparent way. Through the use of the OAI-PMH, Torii will be easily extensible to any archive implementing the protocol.
In a user-friendly information society, the information overload is limited and the information delivery is personalized: the broad-casting of information is replaced by a more effective narrow-casting and mass-media are replaced by personal media tailored to each user's needs. These aims can be reached by more effective systems for information access. Torii provides a filtering component to skim too large a set of retrieved information and thus providing the user only with the information nearest to his interests.
In Torii the user defines his research interest profiles by filling in a form;from this a user profile is derived, based on a semantic network. The profile is automatically updated every time the user provides explicit relevance feedback on some new documents. Documents to be evaluated by the cognitive filtering module are processed through information extraction techniques aimed at capturing the meaning of the document content. These techniques exploit linguistic processing and statistical analysis. Every day the filtering module filters the submissions to the archives accordingly to the user profiles and the graphical user interface provides tools to rank displayed documents accordingly to the user's profiles. Out of the 30-50 daily submissions, the user is able to see the 3-4 most relevant at the top of the list.
Social filtering circulates interesting documents among users who share interests. It automatically feeds in the personal folder those documents that are potentially relevant for the user. The relevance of the documents is evaluated for similarity with the selections done by other users with similar interests. The process is the digital analogous of sharing paper among colleagues. It fosters the growth of the digital community.
Quality control tools memorize and exploit human evaluation of documents. They provide users with the possibility to express their evaluation of a document by filling in a predefined form and writing free textual comments. The form results are used to statistically evaluate numerical scores about the scientific quality of the document, the comments are general, each user can choose whether his comment will be public or for himself. Users can read all public comments on a document. These tools embody a first instance of open peer review in which the community as a whole participate in the review process.
A search engine, Okapi, is accessed directly from Torii. It offers a sophisticated search environment where you can look and search among the more than 150,000 documents currently stored in the archives. Okapi offers advanced retrieval mechanisms based on the probabilistic model of retrieval and relevance feedback. It runs on both the document metadata and their full text. It is fast and accurate.
An assistant monitors the user search and helps him with helpful hints and terminological and contextual suggestions. It alerts the user for dead-end searches leading to hundreds of documents or no document at all. The user is made aware of strategic aspects of searching that allow him to fully exploit all information resources and services. The assistant comes fully integrated into the Okapi search engine of Torii.
Torii integrates also iCite. This tool extracts all citations from all the documents submitted to the archives. These are used to rank documents in Torii so that you can order them according to their impact factors. It is a completely automatic system that creates a net of cross-references inside the archives. It is an instance of service, the second level of the three-layer structure, that can also be accessed independently at icite.sissa.it to search for citations patterns and ranking.
Torii is ready to move on into the future of digital networking. As the next generation of wireless systems comes into production, Torii will be accessible from the user mobile phone. The user can connect already and use it via WAP at \texttt{torii.sissa.it/wml/ia.wml} but the full potentiality of the system must wait for the 3G broad bandwidth to come into being. At that point, the user will be able to browse documents use his personal folder and any other of the features of Torii as he travel.
More information about Torii can be found at: http://tips.sissa.it/docs/booklet.pdf


Here we investigate the mechanism by which shrinkage reducing admixture (SRA) affects hardened cement paste (hcp). The first desorption process for hcp is always accompanied by irreversible shrinkage. Initially we demonstrate the well-known mechanism of SRA acting on capillary force using Vycor glass. Additionally, sorption isotherms and length-change isotherms are measured for both saturated hcp as well as hcp aged at 11% RH for two years. SRA was concluded to be present on the surface of the concave meniscus of the pore solution in Vycor glass, and that the inclusion of SRA reduces the surface tension of the pore solution, the equilibrium Kelvin radius, and the shrinkage due to capillary force. However, a comparison of long-term and short-term length-change isotherms and water vapor sorption isotherms of hcp suggests the possibility of partial evaporation of SRA molecules during the 2-year drying process, as well as the presence of immobile SRA in cement paste. Moreover, the immobile SRA is still active, and is found to reduce the amount of water sorption and shrinkage strain. It is thought that the secondary role of the SRA, which is related to immobile SRA in the cement paste, becomes active at room temperature, at below 80% RH, and only occurs in the irreversible shrinkage component of hcp produced by the initial desorption process.


An overview of maximally superintegrable classical Hamitonians on spherically symmetric spaces is presented. It turns out that each of these systems can be considered either as an oscillator or as a Kepler-Coulomb Hamiltonian. We show that two possible quantization prescriptions for all these curved systems arise if we impose that superintegrability is preserved after quantization, and we prove that both possibilities are gauge equivalent.


Vocal cord paralysis is a voice disorder that occurs when one or both the vocal cords don't open or don't close properly. This often determines difficulty in swallowing and coughing by the patient, because food or liquids slip into the trachea and the lungs. Vocal cord paralysis may be caused by trauma, cancer, surgery, or intubation and it has been sometimes described to follow vinca alkaloid treatment. Myasthenia gravis is an autoimmune disorder that can represent a paraneoplastic syndrome in cancer patients. We report a 55-years-old male with an advanced squamous cell lung carcinoma, presenting a unilateral vocal cord paralysis immediately after the treatment with gemcitabine, and myasthenia gravis one week after. To date, there aren't any data in the literature describing causal relationship between non small cell lung cancer and myasthenia gravis; here we suggest that myasthenia gravis simultaneous to lung cancer might be a rare form of paraneoplastic syndrome. It is impossible to find a single cause for our patient vocal cord paralysis: it could in fact have a multifactorial pathogenesis, not excluding the possibility of a single rare paraneoplastic syndrome, which includes both myasthenia gravis and vocal cord paralysis.


OBJECTIVE Asian populations are documenting rapid increases in the rates of diabetes and hip fracture, but there are no prospective data linking both diseases in Asian studies. We investigated this association among a cohort of Chinese in Singapore. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS A prospective cohort of 63,257 Chinese in the Singapore Chinese Health Study, established between 1993 and 1998, was followed up for a mean duration of 12 years. Diabetes status was ascertained by baseline interviews, and incidence of hip fracture post-enrollment was identified through a nationwide hospital discharge database. RESULTS The risk of hip fracture, after adjustment for other risk factors, was almost double among people with diabetes compared with people without diabetes (relative risk 1.98, 95% CI 1.71–2.29). When stratified by BMI, the increase in risk of hip fracture among people with diabetes relative to people without diabetes was similar in all four strata. There was a very strong dose-dependent relationship between duration of diabetes and risk of hip fracture (P for trend <0.0001). Compared with people without diabetes, the relative risk (95% CI) among subjects with diabetes for <5 years at recruitment was 1.40 (1.08–1.82), and this risk increased to 2.66 (2.04–3.47) among individuals with diabetes for ≥15 years. CONCLUSIONS Asians with diabetes, like their Western counterparts, experience an increased risk of hip fracture. Early assessment for osteoporosis and increased fracture risk, as well as prevention of falls, should be part of the management of diabetes.


We present a compilation of properties of the 105,783 quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 (DR7) quasar catalog. In this product, we compile continuum and emission line measurements around the Hα, Hβ, Mg ii, and C iv regions, as well as other quantities such as radio properties, and flags indicating broad absorption line quasars, disk emitters, etc. We also compile virial black hole mass estimates based on various calibrations. For the fiducial virial mass estimates we use the Vestergaard & Peterson (VP06) calibrations for Hβ and C iv, and our own calibration for Mg ii which matches the VP06 Hβ masses on average. We describe the construction of this catalog and discuss its limitations. The catalog and its future updates will be made publicly available online.


IMPORTANCE
As of March 2015, 23 states and the District of Columbia had medical marijuana laws in place. Physicians should know both the scientific rationale and the practical implications for medical marijuana laws.

OBJECTIVE
To review the pharmacology, indications, and laws related to medical marijuana use.

EVIDENCE REVIEW
The medical literature on medical marijuana was reviewed from 1948 to March 2015 via MEDLINE with an emphasis on 28 randomized clinical trials of cannabinoids as pharmacotherapy for indications other than those for which there are 2 US Food and Drug Administration-approved cannabinoids (dronabinol and nabilone), which include nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy and appetite stimulation in wasting illnesses.

FINDINGS
Use of marijuana for chronic pain, neuropathic pain, and spasticity due to multiple sclerosis is supported by high-quality evidence. Six trials that included 325 patients examined chronic pain, 6 trials that included 396 patients investigated neuropathic pain, and 12 trials that included 1600 patients focused on multiple sclerosis. Several of these trials had positive results, suggesting that marijuana or cannabinoids may be efficacious for these indications.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
Medical marijuana is used to treat a host of indications, a few of which have evidence to support treatment with marijuana and many that do not. Physicians should educate patients about medical marijuana to ensure that it is used appropriately and that patients will benefit from its use.


Separation of independent sources using independent component analysis (ICA) requires prior knowledge of the number of independent sources. Performing ICA when the number of recordings is greater than the number of sources can give erroneous results. To improve the quality of separation, the most suitable recordings have to be identified before performing ICA. Techniques employed to estimate suitable recordings require estimation of number of independent sources or require repeated iterations. However there is no objective measure of the number of independent sources in a given mixture. Here, a technique has been developed to determine the number of independent sources in a given mixture. This paper demonstrates that normalised determinant of the global matrix is a measure of the number of independent sources, N, in a mixture of M recordings. It has also been shown that performing ICA on N randomly selected recordings out of M recordings gives good quality of separation.


Fashion has a significant relationship with its social, political, and economic context, and is able to trigger, reflect, and respond to wider changes. When such changes involve violence, horror, or trauma, this process has particular ramifications due to fashion's deep intertwinement with the body, both physically and conceptually. From depictions in luxury fashion magazines of headless women after World War I, to ghostly interpretations of death as the Internet took hold in the 2000s, fashion and violence have shared a unique connection. Violence can be found, implicitly and explicitly, across fashion's multiple layers: object, body, and image. The forms that violence manifests itself within include notions of physical assault, fragmentation, psychological violence, sexual violence, the abject, and deathliness, which will be explored in chronological order across the twentieth century, and into the twenty-first. The eruption of violence onto the surface of fashion—which itself serves as an external surface to the body—exposes important revelations about the individual and society from which it is spawned.


Far from being at the forefront of Art History/Theory curricula, Indigenous art is frequently missing or relegated to the margins. Kleinert explores this fact through looking at the results of a recent report by Gregory Leong, Bronwyn Power, Penny Mason and Belinda Wright into the percentage of indigenous art material taught in Australian art schools. Furthermore this text focuses on a few recent initiatives which have attempted to strengthen the content of local art education in Australia.


Northern Africa underwent widespread inundation during the Late Cretaceous. Changes in eustasy do not explain the absence of this inundation across the remainder of Africa, and the timing and location of documented tectonic deformation do not explain the large‐scale paleogeographic evolution. We investigate the combined effects of vertical surface displacements predicted by a series of mantle flow models and eustasy on northern African paleoenvironmental change. We compare changes in base level computed as the difference between eustasy and long‐wavelength dynamic topography arising from sources of buoyancy deeper than 350 km to the evolution of paleoshorelines derived from two interpolated global data sets since the mid‐Cretaceous. We also compare the predicted mantle temperature field of these mantle flow models at present‐day to several seismic tomography models. This approach reveals that dynamic subsidence, related to Africa's northward motion away from the buoyant regions overlying the African large low shear velocity province, amplified sea level rise, resulting in maximum inundation of northern Africa during the Cenomanian and Turonian. By the Cenozoic, decreased magnitudes of dynamic subsidence, reflecting the reduced drawdown effects of slab material beneath northern Africa associated with the impact of the Africa‐Eurasia collision, combined with a comparatively pronounced progressive sea level fall resulted in ongoing region‐wide regression along coastal regions. The temporal match between our preferred model and the paleoshoreline data sets suggests that the paleogeographic evolution of this region since the Late Cretaceous has mainly been influenced by the interplay between eustasy and long‐wavelength dynamic topography arising from large‐scale, subduction‐driven, lower mantle convection.


Weapons of Mass Destruction and Terrorism, Second Edition Foreword Michael A. Sheehan Preface Unit One-Conceptual Frameworks Introduction 1.1 Definitions, Trends, and the Concept of "New Terrorism" Russell D. Howard and Margaret J. Nencheck The New Terrorism Brian Michael Jenkins The New Age of Terrorism 1.2 The Nature of the Post-9/11 WMD Terrorism Threat Bruce Hoffman CBRN Terrorism Post-9/11 James J. F. Forest Opportunities and Limitations for WMD Terrorism Leonard A. Cole WMD and Lessons from the Anthrax Attacks Unit Two-Weapons and Motivations Introduction 2.1 Chemical Weapons National Academies and Department of Homeland Security Fact Sheet: Chemical Warfare Agents, Industrial Chemicals, and Toxins Jonathan B. Tucker Chemical Terrorism: Assessing Threats and Responses 2.2 Biological Weapons National Academies and Department of Homeland Security Fact Sheet: Human Pathogens, Biotoxins, and Agricultural Threats James W. Martin, George W. Christopher, and Edward M. Eitzen History of Biological Weapons: From Poisoned Darts to Intentional Epidemics Brian Finlay The Bioterror Pipeline: Big Pharma, Patent Expirations, and New Challenges to Global Security Benjamin Wittes Innovation's Darker Future: Biosecurity, Technologies of Mass Empowerment, and the Constitution 2.3 Radiological Weapons National Academies and Department of Homeland Security Fact Sheet: Dirty Bombs and Other Devices Charles D. Ferguson and Michelle M. Smith Assessing Radiological Weapons: Attack Methods and Estimated Effects 2.4 Nuclear Weapons National Academies and Department of Homeland Security Fact Sheet: Nuclear Weapons Morten Bremer Maerli, Annette Schaper, and Frank Barnaby The Characteristics of Nuclear Terrorist Weapons Matthew Bunn and Anthony Wier The Seven Myths of Nuclear Terrorism John Mueller The Atomic Terrorist? 2.5 Case Studies David Albright and Corey Hinderstein Unraveling the A.Q. Khan and Future Proliferation Networks Jeffrey M. Bale The North Caucasus Conflict and the Potential for Radiological Terrorism Robert Jones, Brandon Wills, and Christopher Kang Chlorine Gas: An Evolving Hazardous Material Threat and Unconventional Weapon Unit Three-Critical Infrastructure Dimensions Introduction 3.1 Public Spaces, Transportation Networks, and Other Critical Infrastructure Gary A. Ackerman, Jeffrey M. Bale, and Kevin S. Moran Assessing the Threat to Critical Infrastructure Homeland Security & Defense Business Council Mass Transit Security 3.2 Chemical and Biological Threats John McNabb Chemical and Biological Threats against Public Water Systems Mark Wheelis, Rocco Casagrande, and Laurence V. Madden Biological Attack on Agriculture: Low-Tech, High-Impact Bioterrorism 3.3 Nuclear Reactors Gavin Cameron Nuclear Terrorism: Reactors & Radiological Attacks after September 11 George Bunn and Chaim Braun Terrorism Potential for Research Reactors Compared with Power Reactors: Nuclear Weapons, "Dirty Bombs," and Truck Bombs Unit Four-Responding to the Threat Introduction 4.1 Strategy and Policy Mary Beth Nikitin, Paul K. Kerr, and Steven A. Hildreth Proliferation Control Regimes: Background and Status Albert J. Mauroni A Counter-WMD Strategy for the Future Russell D. Howard Preemptive Military Doctrine: No Other Choice 4.2 Intelligence Matthew C. Waxman Self-Defense and the Limits of WMD Intelligence Brian Finlay Minding Our Business: The Role of the Private Sector in Managing the WMD Supply Chain 4.3 Response and Resilience Ashton B. Carter, Michael M. May, and William J. Perry The Day After: Action Following a Nuclear Blast in a U.S. City Ronald W. Perry and Michael K. Lindell Understanding Citizen Response to Disasters with Implications for Terrorism 4.4 Unique Challenges of Responding to Bioterrorism Threats and Attacks Lea Ann Fracasso Developing Immunity: The Challenges of Mandating Vaccinations in the Wake of a Biological Terrorist Attack Crystal Franco and Nidhi Bouri Environmental Decontamination Efforts Following a Large-Scale Bioterrorism Attack: Federal Progress and Remaining Gaps Gregory D. Koblentz and Jonathan B. Tucker Tracing an Attack: The Promise and Pitfalls of Microbial Forensics Sam Berger and Jonathan D. Moreno Public Trust, Public Health, and Public Safety: A Progressive Response to Bioterrorism 4.5 Case Studies David Albright, Paul Brannan, and Andrea Scheel Stricker Detecting and Disrupting Illicit Nuclear Trade after A.Q. Khan Elin Gursky, Thomas V. Inglesby, and Tara O'Toole Anthrax 2001: Observations on the Medical and Public Health Response Robyn Pangi Consequence Management in the 1995 Sarin Attacks on the Japanese Subway System Xavier Stewart An All-Hazards Training Center for a Catastrophic Emergency Unit Five-Assessing the Future WMD Threat Introduction 5.1 Gregory D. Koblentz Predicting Peril or the Peril of Prediction? Assessing the Risk of CBRN Terrorism 5.2 Joshua Sinai and James J.F. Forest Threat Convergence: A Framework for Analyzing the Potential for WMD Terrorism 5.3 Forrest E. Waller, Jr. and Michael A. George Emerging WMD Technologies 5.4 Adam Dolnik and James J.F. Forest Conclusion: Appreciating the Past and Present, Anticipating the Future Appendix A.1 Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism Report Card (January 2010) A.2 National Strategy for Counterterrorism (June 2011) A.3 A National Strategy for CBRNE Standards (May 2011) Credits Index


Judith Butler's Gender Trouble has the reputation of being a difficult book to read and teach. This project shows how compositionists may help theory teachers approach Butler from a rhetorical lens. This lens calls attention to the conversational moves in Butler's writing and how those create productive dialogue among scholars.


In Digital era sharing of images have become very common and raises the risk of using it for unethical and fraudulent purposes with the help of manipulation tools. Digital image watermarking is one way to protect the digital information (text, images, audio, and video) from fraudulent manipulations. Digital Image Watermarking is a process of implanting data in the original image for authentication. In this paper we are providing one such watermarking scheme for color images. The proposed method is designed to be robust for common attacks with the aid of redundant discrete wavelet transform (RDWT) and discrete cosine transform (DCT) properties. After applying two levels RDWT decomposition to the blue channel of cover image, we apply DCT to HH_LL subband i.e. 2 nd level decomposed coefficient of HH band and to the watermark. Divided the HH_LL sub band into 4x4 subblocks and DCT coefficients of the last subblock of the cover image are replaced with the DCT coefficients of watermark. Inverse DCT and inverse RDWT is performed to get watermarked image. The performance of the proposed technique is measured using the parameters PSNR and NCC.


Many everyday discomforts and tensions arise from the fact that we are alianated from our bodies. With the help of BODY MIND BALANCING, readers will learn to talk to and reconnect with their bodies. After just a short time, readers will begin to appreciate how much the body has been working for them and supporting them, and from this new perspective one can find new ways to work with the body and create a more harmonious balance of body and mind. The guided meditation and relaxation process, "reminding yourself of the forgotten language of talking to your mind and body" is a CD that accompanies the text. Developed by Osho, this meditative therapy guides the listener in reconnecting with his or her body.


Objective To characterise current safety practices for the use of oral chemotherapy. Design Written questionnaire survey of pharmacy directors of cancer centres. Setting Comprehensive cancer centres in the United States. Results Respondents from 42 (78%) of 54 eligible centres completed the survey, after consulting with 89 colleagues. Clinicians at 29 centres used handwritten prescriptions, two used preprinted paper prescriptions, and six used electronic systems for most oral chemotherapy prescribing. For six commonly used oral chemotherapies, on average 10 centres required a diagnosis on the prescription, 11 required the protocol number, four required the cycle number, nine required double checking by a second clinician, 14 required a calculation of body surface area, and 14 required a calculation of dose per square metre of body surface area. Only a third of centres requested patients' written informed consent when oral chemotherapy was given off protocol. Nearly a quarter (10) of centres had no formal process for monitoring patients' adherence. In the past year respondents at 10 centres reported at least one serious adverse drug event related to oral chemotherapy, and respondents at 13 centres reported a serious near miss. Conclusion Few of the safeguards routinely used for infusion chemotherapy have been adopted for oral chemotherapy at US cancer centres. There is currently no consensus at these centres about safe medication practices for oral chemotherapy.


Government Neutrality in Contracting Act - Directs the head of any federal agency that awards or obligates funds for any construction contract, or that awards grants, provides financial assistance, or enters into cooperative agreements for construction projects, to ensure that bid specifications, project agreements, or other controlling documents do not: (1) require or prohibit a bidder, offeror, contractor, or subcontractor from entering into, or adhering to, agreements with a labor organization, with respect to that construction project or another related construction project; or (2) otherwise discriminate against or give preference to such a party because it did or did not become a signatory or otherwise adhere to such an agreement. Allows exemptions to avert an imminent threat to public health or safety or to serve national security. Allows additional exemptions for certain projects. Directs the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council to amend the Federal Acquisition Regulation to implement this Act with respect to the applicable federal contracts.


Global textile production chains are currently under pressure to become more sustainable. The Nordic Council of Ministers Working Group on Sustainable Consumption and Production has initiated a pilot project in order to understand how stakeholders in global textile production chains can support the pace of change, through the application of Eco-labels and environmental management systems in Tirupur, India where Zero Liquid Discharge norms for dye factories have been implemented, as well as improved labour practices and social and human rights. Nordic textile companies can benefit more from this development and encourage producers to continue on this track. This project conducted capacity building programs on ecolabelling, seminars in Norway, Finland and Denmark and a Buyer Seller Meet in Denmark. It´s recommended that the NCM supports further needed efforts for sustainable textiles.


We investigate the impact of statistical and systematic errors on measurements of linear redshift-space distortions (RSD) in future cosmological surveys by analysing large catalogues of dark matter haloes from the baryonic acoustic oscillation simulations at the Institute for Computational Cosmology. These allow us to estimate the dependence of errors on typical survey properties, as volume, galaxy density and mass (i.e. bias factor) of the adopted tracer. We find that measures of the specific growth rate β = f/b using the Hamilton/Kaiser harmonic expansion of the redshift-space correlation function ξ(rp, π) on scales larger than 3 h−1 Mpc are typically underestimated by up to 10 per cent for galaxy-sized haloes. This is significantly larger than the corresponding statistical errors, which amount to a few per cent, indicating the importance of non-linear improvements to the Kaiser model, to obtain accurate measurements of the growth rate. The systematic error shows a diminishing trend with increasing bias value (i.e. mass) of the haloes considered. We compare the amplitude and trends of statistical errors as a function of survey parameters to predictions obtained with the Fisher information matrix technique. This is what is usually adopted to produce RSD forecasts, based on the Feldman–Kaiser–Peacock prescription for the errors on the power spectrum. We show that this produces parameter errors fairly similar to the standard deviations from the halo catalogues, provided it is applied to strictly linear scales in Fourier space (k<0.2 h Mpc−1). Finally, we combine our measurements to define and calibrate an accurate scaling formula for the relative error on β as a function of the same parameters, which closely matches the simulation results in all explored regimes. This provides a handy and plausibly more realistic alternative to the Fisher matrix approach, to quickly and accurately predict statistical errors on RSD expected from future surveys.


Methane seeps in shallow waters In the northern Kattegat off the Danish coast form spectacular submarine landscapes the 'bubbling reefs' due to carbonate-cemented sandstone structures which are colonized by brightly coloured animals and plants. These structures may be 100 m2 in area and consist of pavements, complex formations of overlying slab-type layers, and pillars up to 4 m high. The carbonate cement (high-magnesium calcite, dolomite or aragonite) is 13C-depleted, indicating that it originated as a result of microbial methane oxidation. It is believed that the cementation occurred in the subsurface and that the rocks were exposed by subsequent erosion of the surrounding unconsolidated sediment. The formations are interspersed with gas vents that intermittently release gas, primarily methane, at up to 25 1 h-' The methane most likely originated from the microbial decomposition of plant material deposited during the Eemian and early Weichselian periods, i.e. l00 000 to 125 000 years B.P. Aerobic methane oxidation in the sediment was restricted Lo the upper 4 cm in muddy sand and to the upper 13 cm In coarse sand. Maximum aerobic methane oxidation rates ranged from 4.8 to 45.6 pm01 dm-3 d". The rock surfaces and epifauna around the seeps were also sites of methane-oxidizing activity. Integrated sulphate reduction rates for the upper 10 cm of muddy sand gave 4.2 to 26.6 mm01 m-2 d-' These rates are higher than those previously reported from similar water depths in the Kattegat but did not relate to the sediment methane content. Since gas venting occurs over several km2 of the sea floor in the Kattegat it is likely to make a significant local contribution to the cycling of elements in the sediment and the water column. The rocks support a diverse ecosystem ranging from bacteria to macroalgae and anthozoans. Many animals live within the rocks in holes bored by sponges, polychaetes and bivalves. Stable carbon isotope composition (6'") of tissues of invertebrates from the rocks were in the range -17 to -24 'A, indicating that methane-derived carbon makes little direct contribution to their nutrition. Within the sediments surrounding the seeps there is a poor metazoan fauna, in terms of abundance, diversity and biomass. This may be a result of toxicity due to hydrogen sulphide input from the gas.


Fragmentation equations occur naturally in many real world problems, see [ZM85, ZM86, HEL91,

CEH91, HGEL96, SLLM00, Ban02, BL03, Ban04, BA06] and references therein. Mathematical

study of these equations is mostly concentrated on building existence and uniqueness theories

and on qualitative analysis of solutions (shattering), some effort has be done in finding solutions

analytically. In this project, we deal with numerical analysis of fragmentation equation with

transport. First, we provide some existence results in Banach and Hilbert settings, then we turn

to numerical analysis. For this approximation and interpolation theory for generalized Laguerre

functions is derived. Using these results we formulate Laguerre pseudospectral method and

provide its stability and convergence analysis. The project is concluded with several numerical

experiments.


Wadensjo (1993) indicates that a crucial element of interpreters' work is to maintain relationships and interactional dynamics. The present study explores how these dynamics are developed and maintained in clinical settings as perceived by healthcare professionals. Discussion of interpreter involvement in this process is framed by theoretical models on social networks (Watts, 2003) and rapport-management (Spencer-Oatey, 2008). Quantitative and qualitative data were generated through questionnaire responses and semi-structured interviews with a range of healthcare providers in both primary care and specialist hospital settings. These data indicate that both continuity of interpreter provision and collaborative working are highly valued by clinicians. Healthcare professionals expressed how the development of interpreter/provider trust (Hsieh et al. 2010) afforded by continuity of interpreter provision may lead to improved interactional dynamics, thereby reducing interpreter intrusiveness and enhancing the quality of healthcare provision.


ABSTRACT Although women in both Iraq and Afghanistan have taken part in ground combat and although restrictions have been lifted officially, there remains a strong resistance to the policy that now allows women to work in officially designated combat-related jobs. This resistance is especially strong among online comments to military media coverage. This study examines narratives of masculinity and resistance to women's presence in combat through online commentary by mostly men who self-identify as military past and present. Using narrative analysis as technique we examine the hegemonic conditions of military culture that render women's participation problematic. We identify a melodrama, an emotional, simplified, persuasive, and morally laden narrative surrounding the battle between 'good' and 'evil',one that results in what we term masculinity under attack, complete with prototypical plots, characters, and moral evaluations, such as blameless victims, evil villains, and (blocked) heroes. Because narratives are strategic, persuasive, and deeply ideological, this work offers a unique examination that connects the local narratives of this online community to a broader cultural narrative, one that has material implications for women and all things feminine in the military.


Introduction: This paper presents a prospective and descriptive study discussing the outpatient care plan in a public hospital in Bogotá for patients with stable COPD according with the GOLD recommendations. The paper presents as well the influence of factors such as education, pharmacological treatment, pulmonary rehabilitation and oxygen-therapy. A survey was carried out among patients, and the results were evaluated and validated by a group of experts; a personal data card for the review of clinical records was considered. Materials and methods: This is a three-phase study. On the first phase, selected patients from outpatient care visits were included with a primary diagnosis of COPD on the stable condition stage; these patients had no evident exacerbation in at least one month before the survey. Clinical records, demographic data (gender, age), previous control dates, required examinations, prescribed medicines, referral to pulmonary rehabilitation programs, exercises and domiciliary oxygentherapy were recorded. On the second phase, the survey was carried out among 61 adult patients who met the inclusion criteria and the clinical record register. On the third phase, the analysis and interpretation of the results were carried out with a statistic processing of the information, which considers multivariate and univariate data analysis using the software SPSS version 11.5 for Windows. Results: The number of patients with COPD diagnosis studied during the research period of time in our hospital outpatient service was 69, however only 61 of them fulfilled all the inclusion criteria. Sixty-one patients were interviewed, average age, 73. Seventy percent were female. Fifty percent of the participants were from low schooling, social and economic segments of the population; 50% had no formal education and 93% were family dependent. The major risk factor reported (84%) was wood fire smoke, with an average exposure of more than 20 years (72%). Thirty percent considered that they had been educated about their disease by a physician, 47% used inhaled bronchodilators, 48% of whom had difficulties to obtain them. Although 56% of all patients were using home oxygen therapy, and 93% suffered some degree of dyspnea, only one patient had undergone pulmonary rehabilitation. Conclusions: Our study revealed that non pharmacological therapy and patient education do not meet GOLD recommendations at a Colombian public hospital; this is due, in part, to inadequacies of the public health system and accessibility to it, lack of clinical guidelines, scant medical referral and heavy patients load. It is necessary to implement an improvement plan that will enhance COPD patient treatment and expand heath care professionals participation in it.


The private provider Harmoni was given until 18 May to spell out how it will increase recruitment to its out of hours service in north London after failing to meet the level of staffing demanded by the health regulator, the Care Quality Commission.1

The out of hours service provided by Harmoni covers 250 general practitioners in the London boroughs of Camden, Islington, Haringey, City, and Hackney—who serve a population of 1.2 million people.

The latest inspections, which took place on 11 and 12 March, followed claims by doctors in December 2012 that the service was so understaffed that it was unsafe.2 The death of a 7 week old baby from a suspected respiratory infection is being investigated after …


Glimpse of fish as perishable staple was reviewed. Fish is an important animal protein as it supplies good quality protein, vitamins and minerals. It is however highly perishable and spoils quickly, bad fish handling after harvesting, inadequate storage and processing facilities also contributes to fish spoilage in developing countries thus causing a lacuna between fish demand and supply, thus posing a great challenge to food security. Processing of fish facilitates its maximal use as for value-added fish products. Smoking is the preservation method most adopted in many developing countries to extend fish shelf life. Fish post-harvest loss come in different faces including: physical loss, quality loss and market forces loss all of which will lead to reduction in fish shelf life. Antimicrobial properties of plant extracts and proper packaging can extend fish shelf life. There in need to encourage women participation in fisheries subsector as their active role is essential to fighting poverty and ensuring food security within many households.


The standard measures of economic inequality seem not to be in accordance with the way people tend to think about inequality. Rather than considering all economic inequality unfair, people seem to accept inequalities arising from some sources of income, while rejecting those arising from other sources. Following and extending the framework of Almås et al. (2011), this thesis sheds light on the difference between actual, unfair, and believed unfair inequality. The notion of an unfair outcome is captured by evaluating whether an individual should be held responsible for that particular outcome. We ask a representative sample in Germany which factors they think should play an important role in determining a person's income, and which factors they think do play an important role in determining a person's income. These statements identify fairness views and beliefs about the income generating process. To our knowledge, this is the first time that surveyed fairness views are applied in the generalised Gini framework developed by Almås et al. (2011). This framework allows responsibility-sensitive fairness theories distinguish between actual and unfair inequality. We expand this model to allow for the measurement of believed unfairness, and suggest a principle of evidence-based beliefs to address unexplained variation. We argue that the prevailing "responsibility cut" in the representative sample may correspond to the luck egalitarian fairness theory. Our results show that the level of unfair income inequality is greater than the actual income inequality in Germany. The believed unfair inequality is considerably lower than both actual and unfair inequality. Unfair inequality has increased more than actual inequality from 1984 to 2013, and believed unfairness has decreased since 1984. Furthermore, redistribution reduces more actual inequality than unfair inequality, a gap that has increased over the last thirty years.


ABSTRACT The genome sequence of the oral pathogen Streptococcus mutans predicts the presence of two putative polysaccharide deacetylases. The first, designated PgdA in this paper, shows homology to the catalytic domains of peptidoglycan deacetylases from Streptococcus pneumoniae and Listeria monocytogenes, which are both thought to be involved in the bacterial defense mechanism against human mucosal lysozyme and are part of the CAZY family 4 carbohydrate esterases. S. mutans cells in which the pgdA gene was deleted displayed a different colony texture and a slightly increased cell surface hydrophobicity and yet did not become hypersensitive to lysozyme as shown previously for S. pneumoniae. To understand this apparent lack of activity, the high-resolution X-ray structure of S. mutans PgdA was determined; it showed the typical carbohydrate esterase 4 fold, with metal bound in a His-His-Asp triad. Analysis of the protein surface showed that an extended groove lined with aromatic residues is orientated toward the active-site residues. The protein exhibited metal-dependent de-N-acetylase activity toward a hexamer of N-acetylglucosamine. No activity was observed toward shorter chitooligosaccharides or a synthetic peptidoglycan tetrasaccharide. In agreement with the lysozyme data this would suggest that S. mutans PgdA does not act on peptidoglycan but on an as-yet-unidentified polysaccharide within the bacterial cell surface. Strikingly, the pgdA-knockout strain showed a significant increase in aggregation/agglutination by salivary agglutinin, in agreement with this gene acting as a deacetylase of a cell surface glycan.


The paper presents a novel three-dimensional shape acquisition and reconstruction method based on the well-known Archimedes equality between fluid displacement and the submerged volume. By repeatedly dipping a shape in liquid in different orientations and measuring its volume displacement, we generate the dip transform: a novel volumetric shape representation that characterizes the object's surface. The key feature of our method is that it employs fluid displacements as the shape sensor. Unlike optical sensors, the liquid has no line-of-sight requirements, it penetrates cavities and hidden parts of the object, as well as transparent and glossy materials, thus bypassing all visibility and optical limitations of conventional scanning devices. Our new scanning approach is implemented using a dipping robot arm and a bath of water, via which it measures the water elevation. We show results of reconstructing complex 3D shapes and evaluate the quality of the reconstruction with respect to the number of dips.


The three paradigms of explanation under consideration - the Islamic, the Liberal, and the Neo-Marxist - may all be said to be embodiments of definite assumptions about the world. Arising as we know from various cultural settings and intellectual traditions, each of these paradigms defines a problem and suggests its own solution. It follows that each also has its own group of practitioners who, through their textbooks and pronouncements, assert the validity of their paradigm's solution over that of others. In the process, each claims universality of its explanation and seeks to convince others that it is so. Numerous problems have preoccupied these paradigms, but one problem, in particular, has been of intense concern to all three. This concerns what appears to them as the definition, description, and attainment of that group, organization, or community where human beings become attached or identified with. in Islam, this has been called Ummah (or islamic community); among scholars of the liberal tradition, the term "nation" or "ethnicity" easily comes to mind; and in neo-Marxist literature, the term "class" is prevalent. This essay attempts to examine the way each of these paradigms elaborate on their definition of this particular phenomenon and the manner in which it (i.e., this phenomenon) evolves. The paper then tackles the matter of commensurability - the agreement of paradigms in the definition of and solution to a problem, assuming that the categories they use are the same or comparable. On the other hand, the term incommensurability will be used to refer to the opposite condition, i.e., the absence of the same or comparable categories used by the paradigms.


Radioactivation of sulfur is a common technique used to measure fast neutron fluences in test and research reactors. Elemental sulfur can be pressed into pellets and used as monitors. The 32S(n, p)32P reaction has a practical threshold of about 3 MeV and its cross section and associated uncertainties are well characterized [1]. The product 32P emits a beta particle with a maximum energy of 1710 keV [2]. This energetic beta particle allows pellets to be counted intact. ASTM Standard Test Method for Measuring Reaction Rates and Fast-Neutron Fluences by Radioactivation of Sulfur-32 (E265) [3] details a method of calibration for counting systems and subsequent analysis of results. This method requires irradiation of sulfur monitors in a fast-neutron field whose spectrum and intensity are well known. The resultant decay-corrected count rate is then correlated to the known fast neutron fluence. The Radiation Metrology Laboratory (RML) at Sandia has traditionally performed calibration irradiations of sulfur pellets using the 252Cf spontaneous fission neutron source at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) [4] as a transfer standard. However, decay has reduced the intensity of NIST's source; thus lowering the practical upper limits of available fluence. As of May 2010, neutron emission rates have decayed to approximately 3e8 n/s. In practice, this degradation of capabilities precludes calibrations at the highest fluence levels produced at test reactors and limits the useful range of count rates that can be measured. Furthermore, the reduced availability of replacement 252Cf threatens the long-term viability of the NIST 252Cf facility for sulfur pellet calibrations. In lieu of correlating count rate to neutron fluence in a reference field the total quantity of 32P produced in a pellet can be determined by absolute counting methods. This offers an attractive alternative to extended 252Cf exposures because it can be performed regardless of the characterization of the exposure environment. Count rates produced by sulfur pellets are correlated to the measured quantity of separated 32P. A posteriori spectral and cross section determination can be used to correlate the quantity of phosphorus back to a neutron fluence in a reference field. This paper outlines a method for the setup, calibration, and use of the detector systems, 32P sample preparation, and analysis of the beta spectrum. An uncertainty analysis and comparison to ASTM E265 is also included.


Sauna bathing has been linked with numerous health benefits. Sauna bathing may reduce the risk of respiratory diseases; however, no prospective evidence exists to support this hypothesis. We aimed to assess the association of frequency of sauna bathing with risk of respiratory diseases (defined as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, or pneumonia). Baseline sauna bathing habits were assessed in a prospective cohort of 1,935 Caucasian men aged 42-61 years. During a median follow-up of 25.6 years, 379 hospital diagnosed incident cases of respiratory diseases were recorded. In adjustment for several major risk factors for respiratory conditions and other potential confounders, the hazard ratios (HRs) 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of respiratory diseases were 0.73 (0.58-0.92) and 0.59 (0.37-0.94) for participants who had 2-3 and ≥ 4 sauna sessions per week respectively compared with participants who had ≤ 1 sauna session per week. The multivariate adjusted HR (95% CI) for pneumonia was 0.72 (0.57-0.90) and 0.63 (0.39-1.00) for participants who had 2-3 and ≥ 4 sauna sessions per week respectively. Frequent sauna baths may be associated with a reduced risk of acute and chronic respiratory conditions in a middle-aged male Caucasian population.


In wall-flower (Cheiranthus cheiri, L.) a curious floral
abnormality has long been known. The plant is quite normal
until it blooms. In the flower, however, while the sepals
are normal the petals are reduced to narrow strips equal in
length to the sepals or slightly shorter. The stamens are as
usual six in number, but adhere together, forming a closed
ring round about the normal ovary.
De Candolle describes the abnormal as a distinct
variety under the name Cheiranthus; cheiri gynanthus. How
far this is valid may be questioned, as the abnormal can only
set seed when pollinated from the normal hermaphrodite, and
is, therefore, not self perpetuating. A number of somewhat similar aberrations are known in
other species, such as The Opium Poppy (Papaver somniferum).
Includes plates.


The recent past has witnessed a huge investment in computer education in schools, colleges, and universities around the world. Research from developed countries indicates that the introduction of computers into school system came about as a result of the government policy pronouncement. Most of the policy statements were written documents and others were not documented for circulation to schools but were contained in the existing educational policies. Norway among others, have already put technology policies in place and already reaping the benefits. Kenya had not had an ICT policy until 2005 when the government came with an ICT policy in the Sessional Paper No 1 of 2005. All Principals of secondary schools were expected to implement the policy and at the same time formulate own school ICT policy. The purpose of this study was to find out if Principals of secondary schools in Nyanza Province implemented ICT policy by formulating their own school ICT policy for the use of computers in teaching and learning. The study was based on mixed method research design that used both qualitative and quantitative approaches design and was carried out in 80 Public secondary schools that had computers at the time of this research. The schools represented rural, urban and suburban areas. The participants included 44 male and 36 female principals. Data was collected by use of questionnaire, semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis. Data analysis combined qualitative and quantitative methods. The main research findings indicated that the Ministry of Education policy on the use of computers was being implemented by public secondary schools since the Ministry of Education policy automatically becomes the school policy. Most of the Principals 76% had a policy for the use of computers in teaching and learning but 24% were in the process of formulating computer education policy. The study suggested that all teachers, students and the school community should be informed about the policy and the importance of its implementation.


A feasibility study was carried out in two places in Wiltshire of a method of ascertaining the morbidity of the population. Traditional medical history taking and examination of the individuals were completed in a random sample of the population, of whom 89 per cent were contacted. The method appears feasible for a survey of sufficient size to measure morbidity and the study gave useful preliminary indications of unmet health care need. The cost of such a larger survey would be small in relation to the sums involved in health care planning.


While today, engineers can choose from a wide range of rheology modifying admixtures, in some parts of the world, these are difficult to access, due to their complex processing. However, alternatives can be bio-based polymers such as polysaccharides from various sources. These are easily accessible all over the world, do not demand for complicated processing, and typically they are more sustainable than many established materials, which are crude oil-based.
The paper presents the effects of acacia gum, cassava starch and the gum of triumfetta pendrata A. Rich on the rheological performance of cementitious systems. It is shown that acacia gum can be as efficient as polycarboxylate based superplasticisers, cassava starch can reduce the yield stress slightly with little effect on the plastic viscosity, and the gum of triumfetta pendrata A. Rich increases the thixotropy of cement pastes with plasticizing polymers significantly.


OBJECTIVES
The quality of integrated diabetes care is important for reducing the burden of diabetes. Therefore, we have evaluated the effect of a supervision program on the quality of integrated diabetes care in the Netherlands in the 2011-2012 period.

METHODS
In this cluster RCT, the supervision program was assigned to randomly selected care groups providing care to diabetes patients. The supervision program included announcements of inspections, site visits, and sending individualized reports. Indicators of effectiveness were derived from the structures, processes, and outcomes of care. These indicators were collected from patients' files, before and after the supervision program. Hierarchical linear and logistic regression models were used to analyze data from 356 patients of 10 intervention and 8 control care groups.

RESULTS
Structures and processes of care did not improve more in the intervention groups than in the control care groups. Moreover, health outcomes did not improve more in the intervention groups than in the control care groups. Although structures of care improved over time in the total population of intervention and control care groups, there were no changes in process of care or health outcomes.

CONCLUSIONS
In this cluster RCT, we could not demonstrate improvements in quality of integrated diabetes care resulting from the supervision program. Although structures of care did improve over time, other quality-improvement initiatives are necessary to substantially strengthen integrated care for diabetes patients.


This paper presents a color interpolation algorithm for a single sensor color camera. The proposed algorithm is especially designed to solve the problem of pixel crosstalk among the pixels of different color channels. Interchannel cross-talk gives rise to blocking effects on the interpolated green plane, and also spreading of false colors into detailed structures. The proposed algorithm separates the green channel into two planes, one highly correlated with the red channel and the other with the blue channel. These separate planes are used for red and blue channel interpolation. Experiments conducted on McBeth color chart and natural images have shown that the proposed algorithm can eliminate or suppress blocking and color artifacts to produce better quality images.


Air conditioner operation was studied in order to understand how energy consumption and peak power are determined by user behavior, equipment operation and building characteristics. In a multi-family building, thirteen room air conditioners were instrumented in eight apartments, and interviews were conducted with the residents about their operation of the units. The predominant mode of operation was to switch the unit on and off manually; only one resident consistently let it operate thermostatically, and many residents were not aware that the unit had a thermostat. Ambient temperature and time of day were observed to have major effects on the occupant's decision to turn the unit on or off. Even though residents did not pay for electricity, numerous noneconomic factors were found to limit their use of air conditioning. Across apartments, seasonal air conditioner energy consumption varies by two orders of magnitude while interior July temperature varies by 3.7O~.


Kīlauea Volcano (Hawaiʻi, USA) is underlain by a complex, laterally extensive magmatic plumbing system. Although in recent decades it has mainly erupted through vents along the middle East Rift Zone and summit caldera, eruptions can occur anywhere along its laterally extensive rift zones, as demonstrated by the dramatic eruptive activity of 2018. Forecasting eruptive activity requires an understanding of whether an episode of volcano-seismic unrest at Kīlauea and similar volcanoes is caused directly at the edges of an active intrusion or reservoir, or in a volume of wall rock at a distance from the intrusion. Seismic unrest in Kīlauea's upper East Rift Zone (UERZ) has to date been interpreted as the result either of magma intrusion in this region of the volcano or of stresses due to seaward flank migration. However, recent observations suggest that UERZ seismicity may result from variable pressurization of Kīlauea's summit magma system. We analyze seismic and deformation (multi-temporal interferometric synthetic aperture radar [InSAR] and GPS) data during a period of variable summit deformation and UERZ seismicity in mid- to late 2007 and calculate Coulomb stress changes on UERZ faults due to modeled summit inflation or deflation. UERZ seismicity during our study period can be explained entirely by stresses arising from pressure changes within Kīlauea's summit reservoirs. Furthermore, a comparison of UERZ fault plane solutions (FPSs) calculated for this study to published UERZ FPSs for previous periods suggests that the UERZ has undergone a transition from a mechanically strong, discontinuous, and immature magma transport system to a mature, mechanically weak, and fully connected transport system over the course of the 1983–2018 eruption.


Abstract The efficacy of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)-derived vegetation productivity was tested in the grasslands of western North Dakota in terms of its ability to characterize fluctuations in aboveground green biomass and provide regional perspectives of interannual vegetation dynamics. To accomplish this task, we scaled plot-level observations of grassland biomass throughout the growing seasons of 2001 and 2002 using high-resolution satellite imagery and meteorological observations. Regionally scaled biomass measurements were compared with MODIS net photosynthesis (PSNnet) estimates at 3 times during the growing seasons of 2001 and 2002. The relationships between MODIS PSNnet estimates and scaled aboveground green biomass improved steadily during the progression of each growing season, and reached a maximum (r2 = 0.77 and 0.57 in 2001 and 2002, respectively) near peak greenness. Aboveground green biomass was more tightly coupled in 2001 because of the relative abundance of green biomass compared with standing dead from the previous year. We characterized interannual variability in grassland vegetation through analysis of MODIS-derived net primary productivity (NPP) for the years 2001–2003. MODIS NPP estimates showed a significant decline (P ≤ 0.05) from 2001 to 2003, partly induced by a significant decline (P ≤ 0.05) in growing-season precipitation. The results indicate the reliability of productivity estimates for monitoring grassland biomass fluctuations is improved during years where plant growth conditions are more favorable. Additionally, MODIS data may be more useful for addressing administrative, rather than managerial, needs given the coarse resolution and regional perspective of the vegetation products.


Speciation usually proceeds in a continuum from intensively hybridizing populations until the formation of irreversibly isolated species. Restriction of interspecific gene flow may often be achieved by gradual accumulation of intrinsic postzygotic incompatibilities with hybrid infertility typically evolving more rapidly than inviability. A reconstructed history of speciation in European loaches (Cobitis) reveals that accumulation of postzygotic reproductive incompatibilities may take an alternative, in the literature largely neglected, pathway through initiation of hybrids' asexuality rather than through a decrease in hybrids' fitness. Combined evidence shows that contemporary Cobitis species readily hybridize in hybrid zones, but their gene pools are isolated as hybridization produces infertile males and fertile but clonally reproducing females that cannot mediate introgressions. Nevertheless, coalescent analyses indicated intensive historical gene flow during earlier stages of Cobitis diversification, suggesting that non-clonal hybrids must have existed in the past. The revealed patterns imply that during the initial stages of speciation, hybridization between little diverged species produced recombinant hybrids mediating gene flow, but growing divergence among species caused disrupted meiosis in hybrids resulting in their clonality, which acts as a barrier to gene flow. Comparative analysis of published data on other fish hybrids corroborated the generality of our findings; the species pairs producing asexual hybrids were more genetically diverged than those pairs producing fertile sexual hybrids but less diverged than species pairs producing infertile hybrids. Hybrid asexuality therefore appears to evolve at lower divergence than other types of postzygotic barriers and might thus represent a primary reproductive barrier in many taxa.


Early modern Spain has long been viewed as having a culture obsessed with honor, where a man resorted to violence when his or his wife's honor was threatened, especially through sexual disgrace. This book--the first to closely examine honor and interpersonal violence in the era--overturns this idea, arguing that the way Spanish men and women actually behaved was very different from the behavior depicted in dueling manuals, law books, and "honor plays" of the period. Drawing on criminal and other records to assess the character of violence among non-elite Spaniards, historian Scott K. Taylor finds that appealing to honor was a rhetorical strategy, and that insults, gestures, and violence were all part of a varied repertoire that allowed both men and women to decide how to dispute issues of truth and reputation.


Humanitarian and development organizations working in conflict-affected settings have a particular responsibility to do no harm and contribute to the wellbeing of the population without bias. The highly complex, politicized realities of work in conflict- and post-conflict settings often require quick, pragmatic and results-oriented decisions, the foundations of which remain frequently implicit. Such decisions might follow an intrinsic logic or situational pragmatism rather than intensive deliberation. This paper reflects on the realities of working on land governance in post-conflict settings shaped by migration, ethnic division, power struggles and limited statehood. Using case examples from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Burundi, this paper reflects on the drivers of decisions around land governance in such contexts in a structured, theoretically informed way. Drawing on the author's own experience with supporting land rights work and utilizing Giddens' concept of the Duality of Structure, this article provides an analysis of actors and structures that sheds light on the factors that affect the decision-making of practitioners relating to land rights in post-conflict areas of limited statehood.


This study analyses the process of urban class formation among Muslim workers in Kano, Northern Nigeria. it examines the interaction between Islamic nationalism and new forms of class consciousness and culture generated by industrialisation and the petroleum boom during the seventies. Paul Lubeck argues that, when industralisation is introduced from the West, Islamic nationalism supports class consciousness. The book begins with a review of the theoretical orientation and the historical background to both Islamisation and capitalist development, and goes on to discuss the impact of the Nigerian civil war and the oil boom on Kano's traders, craftsmen, hawkers and wage workers, the relationship between wage workers and informal sector producers, who together form the class base of the popular alliance, and the interaction between Islamic institutions and industrial processes and timing. In the later chapters the focus is on industrial workers - their recruitment, adjustment to industrial labour and social mobility, trade union organisation and strikes.


This Article offers a proposal for WTO countries to adopt global IP rights for a special class of trademarks: famous or well-known marks. Well-known marks are well-suited for greater departure from the territoriality principle, given the transnational protections for well-known marks that already exist under the Paris Convention and TRIPS Agreement. This Article proposes creating a Global Trademark (GTM) for well-known marks, to be governed by one, uniform international law. The GTM will span all countries in the WTO. The GTM is inspired, in part, by the Community Trade Mark (CTM) in the European Union, the first truly transnational IP form. While the CTM is regional in scope, the GTM will be international. This Article proceeds in five Parts. Part I discusses the theory behind the Global Trade Mark (GTM) and why it is worth adopting today. Part II discusses the outlines of the proposed Global Trade Mark Treaty, whose signal feature will be to establish a uniform body of international law to govern the GTM and an International Court of the GTM to resolve conflicts over its interpretation. Part III discusses the two Pathways by which a trademark can be registered as a GTM: (1) international registration of an existing famous mark that is famous in a certain threshold number of countries (here under a proposed Rule of 7 countries, the formula of which is discussed below), or (2) an "intent-to-develop" registration of a mark an owner intends to make famous under the Rule of 7 countries within a prescribed time of 10 years. Part IV discusses enforcement of GTMs in national courts and post-registration issues, including abandonment and genericide. Part V addresses objections.


The Nigde volcanic province in central Turkey comprises four separate stratovolcanoes (Tepekoy, Cinarli, Melendiz and Keciboyduran) of Mio-Pliocene age (MPv) and several monogenetic cones of Pleistocene age (Pv). The MPv rocks are composed of large volume of andesitic lavas and pyroclastics with medium to high-K calc-alkaline character. They are strongly porphyritic with phenocryst assemblages of plag + opx + cpx + Fe-Ti oxides + bio ± amph ± quartz, and commonly exhibit disequilibrium textures such as complexly zoned plagioclases, reversely zoned pyroxenes, and reacted amphiboles and biotites. Geothermobaro-metric studies based on mineral chemistry data suggest that the MPv calc-alkaline magmas underwent a complex evolutionary history of cooling, crystallisation and mixing within two distinct magma chambers sited in the lower and in the upper crust, respectively. The rocks of Pv include small volumes of alkaline basalts showing poorly porphyritic textures and equilibrated phenocryst assemblages of ol +cpx +lesser plag and Fe-Ti oxides. Textural features, and strong compositional variations in single phenocrysts from andesites clearly reflect magma mixing-mingling and open-system modifications. Major and trace element evidence also argues against dominant fractional crystallisation processes and supports magma mixing for andesitic magmas. In contrast, textural, mineral chemical and geochemical evidence for Pv alkaline rocks indicate that magmas had a relatively simple evolutionary history dominated by small degrees of fractional crystallisation of mafic minerals along volcanic conduits. MPv show typical island-arc trace element signatures, such as negative anomalies in high-field strength element (HFSE) and high ratios between HFSE and large ion lithophile elements (LILE). Slight HFSE negative anomalies are also observed in Pliocene alkaline basalt, suggesting contamination by arc component, either in the source or during alkaline magma ascent.


Identity has become the watchword of our times. In sub-Saharan Africa, this certainly appears to be true and for particular reasons. Africa is urbanising rapidly, cross-border migration streams are swelling and globalising influences sweep across the continent. Africa is also facing up to the challenge of nurturing emergent democracies in which citizens often feel torn between older traditional and newer national loyalties. Accordingly, collective identities are deeply coloured by recent urban as well as international experience and are squarely located within identity politics where reconciliation is required between state nation-building strategies and sub-national affiliations. They are also fundamentally shaped by the growing inequality and the poverty found on this continent. These themes are explored by an international set of scholars in two South African and two Francophone cities. The relative importance to urban residents of race, class and ethnicity but also of work, space and language are compared in these cities. This volume also includes a chapter investigating the emergence of a continental African identity. A recent report of the Office of the South African President claims that a strong national identity is emerging among its citizens, and that race and ethnicity are waning whilst a class identity is in the ascendance. The evidence and analyses within this volume serve to gauge the extent to which such claims ring true, in what everyone knows is a much more complex and shifting terrain of shared meanings than can ever be captured by such generalisations.


Community-based question-answering (CQA) services contribute to solving many difficult questions we have. For each question in such services, one best answer can be designated, among all answers, often by the asker. However, many questions on typical CQA sites are left without a best answer even if when good candidates are available. In this paper, we attempt to address the problem of predicting if an answer may be selected as the best answer, based on learning from labeled data. The key tasks include designing features measuring important aspects of an answer and identifying the most importance features. Experiments with a Stack Overflow dataset show that the contextual information among the answers should be the most important factor to consider.


Existing algorithms for improving speech intelligibility in a noisy environment generally focus on modifying the acoustic features of live, recorded or synthesized speech while preserving the phonetic composition (the message). In this paper, we present an algorithm for text-to-speech systems that operates at a higher level of abstraction, the message-level. We use a paraphrasing system to adjust the linguistic content of the intended message such that the speech intelligibility improves under noisy conditions. To distinguish the intelligibility among paraphrases, we use the numerical integration of a normalized log-likelihood function over different signal-to-noise conditions. Objective evaluation results show that the developed measure is able to distinguish the intelligibility among paraphrases. Results from subjective evaluation confirm the effectiveness of our objective measure.


Fast and uniform seedling emergence increases yield potential of spring wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) in short-season areas. An accurate method of quantifying rate of seedling emergence is needed. In this study, we compared the relative effectiveness of the Gompertz, Logistic, and Weibull models in quantifying emergence rate of spring wheat. 'Roblin' wheat was grown in a growth room under five soil water potential : - 0.002, - 0.165, - 0.41, - 1.00, and - 1.45 MPa. Daily-recorded emergence data were fitted to each of the models. The analyses of stability and accuracy functions, residual sum of squares, and variance showed that the Weibull model was not appropriate in quantifying rate of emergence. The Gompertz and Logistic models functioned in a similar way with great stability and accuracy in most cases. The Gompertz predictions most closely fitted the observed set of responses with residual points scattered around zero. For lognormally distributed emergence patterns common under field conditions, the Gompertz model provided the most appropriate characterization of emergence.


Burns are among the most common and devastating forms of trauma. Increased morbidity and mortality accompany thermal injury, and survival is dependent on the correct assessment and management. Although acute treatment regimens and dressing selection have evolved to improve outcomes, deep burn injuries often leave patients with considerable cosmetic and functional disabilities, which may lead to a lifetime of challenges. Patients with major burns should be referred to a burn unit or multidisciplinary centre where the primary objective is to care for burn patients and to optimise their outcomes. Such centres comprise teams of specialist burn surgeons, plastic and reconstructive surgeons, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, dietitians, social workers and nursing staff, as well as other consultants, who all strive to obtain rapid wound closure and return burn survivors to a functional and well adapted life.


Investors in financial markets are faced with an abundance of potentially value-relevant information from a wide variety of different sources. In such data-rich, high-dimensional environments, techniques from the rapidly advancing field of machine learning (ML) are well-suited for solving prediction problems. Accordingly, ML methods are quickly becoming part of the toolkit in asset pricing research and quantitative investing. This book examines the promises and challenges of ML applications in asset pricing. Asset pricing problems are substantially different from the settings for which ML tools were developed originally. To realize the potential of ML methods, they must be adapted for the specific conditions in asset pricing applications. Economic considerations, such as portfolio optimization, absence of near arbitrage, and investor learning can guide the selection and modification of ML tools. Beginning with a brief survey of basic supervised ML methods, the book discusses the application of these techniques in empirical research in asset pricing and shows how they promise to advance the theoretical modeling of financial markets. The book presents the exciting possibilities of using cutting-edge methods in research on financial asset valuation.


In western Europe and the United States women are nearing equality in the professions, in business, and in politics. Most enjoy access to education, reproductive rights, and autonomy in financial affairs. Issues vital to women are on the public agenda: equal pay, child care, domestic abuse, breast cancer research, and curricular revision with an eye to the inclusion of women. These recent achievements have their origins in things women (and some male supporters) said for the first time about six hundred years ago. Theirs is the "other voice," in contradistinction to the "first voice," the voice of the educated men who created western culture. Coincident with a general reshaping of European culture in the period 1300-1700 (called the Renaissance or early modern period), questions of female equality and opportunity were raised that still resound and are still unresolved. The other voice emerged against the backdrop of a three-thousand-year history of the derogation of women rooted in the civilizations related to Western culture: Hebrew, Greek, Roman, and Christian. Negative attitudes toward women inherited from these traditions pervaded the intellectual, medical, legal, religious, and social systems that developed during the European Middle Ages. The following pages describe the traditional, overwhelmingly male views of women's nature inherited by early modern Europeans, and the new tradition that the "other voice" called into being to begin to challenge reigning assumptions. This review should serve as a framework for understanding the texts published in the Other Voice in Early Modern Europe series.


Predicting regional climate variability is a key goal of initialised decadal predictions and the North Atlantic has been a major focus due to its high level of predictability and potential impact on European climate. These predictions often focus on decadal variability in sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the North Atlantic subpolar gyre (NA SPG). In order to understand the value of initialisation, and justify the high costs of such systems, predictions are routinely measured against technologically simpler benchmarks. Here, we present a new model-analogue benchmark that aims to leverage the latent information in uninitialised climate model simulations to make decadal predictions of NA SPG SSTs. This system searches through more than one hundred thousand simulated years in Coupled Model Intercomparison Project archives and yields skilful predictions in its target region comparable to initialised systems. Analysis of the underlying behaviour of the system suggests the origins of this skill are physically plausible. Such a system can provide a useful benchmark for initialised systems within the NA SPG and also suggests that the limits in initialised decadal prediction skill in this region have not yet been reached.


Recently becoming the sixth largest economy in the world, Brazil has relied, in large part, on its comparative advantages of resource extraction and agriculture. Sustained long-term growth will require Brazil moves into higher value industries that build of off its comparative advantage. Biotechnology has surfaced as a sector of strategic importance, and government involvement in finance, education and research and development has created an industry on the cusp of global significance. By examining sources of finance, human capital accumulation, research and development, intellectual property rights and supporting institutions, we seek to provide a broad overview of Brazil's nascent biotechnology sector. Spotlights of the agriculture, human health and reagent industries as well as an analysis of the Minas Gerais biotechnology cluster flesh out biotechnology's place in Brazil's economy. An antiquated intellectual property rights regime, an insufficient number of qualified researchers and dearth of venture capital firms and private sources of finance are key bottlenecks that must be addressed in order to promote industry growth and consolidation.


I propose a task structure for design by analyzing a general class of methods that I call propose-critique-modify methods. The task structure is constructed by identifying a range of methods for each task. For each method, the knowledge needed and the subtasks that it sets up are identified. This recursive style of analysis provides a framework in which we can understand a number of particular proposals for design problem solving as specific combinations of tasks, methods, and subtasks. Most of the subtasks are not really specific to design as such. The analysis shows that there is no one ideal method for design, and good design problem solving is a result of recursively selecting methods based on a number of criteria, including knowledge availability. How the task analysis can help in knowledge acquisition and system design is discussed.


Over eighty-five thousand Americans are currently on the national waitlist to receive kidneys, livers, hearts or other human organs due to the failure of their own. Sadly, over half of these people will die while waiting for the miracle of life to arrive. Some will travel to other countries to purchase organs on the black market in a last ditch effort to save their lives. All of those involved wish that finding an organ would be far easier than it is today. Since the passage of Al Gore's National Organ Transplant Act, it has been illegal in the United States to sell human organs, although the same cannot be said for human tissues, blood plasma, ova, and sperm. Morality and distributive justice concerns form the backbone of traditional arguments opposing organ sales, as many Americans find it unacceptable to "purchase life." The poor would be exploited and pressured into selling organs to escape debt, often with little knowledge of the risks they incurred and the costs that they might later impose on society's health care system. Hence, if conscience dictates that living-donor organ sales must never occur, it is incumbent upon society to focus on other methods of incentivizing organ availability. Basing waiting list priority on the patient's own willingness to donate may inspire millions of Americans who have previously not taken the trouble to sign up to instead choose to opt in to donation. This concept has been put into practice by LifeSharers, a nonprofit organization formed just over two years ago that aims to utilize a person's internal motivation to save their own life to save the lives of others. LifeSharers incentivizes people to become organ donors (and to become a LifeSharers member) by giving them the return promise that all members of the organization agree to donate their organs first to other members before they go into the nationwide waiting pool. In this manner, people are encouraged to opt in to donation who otherwise might not, if only from a selfish desire to increase the likelihood that they will be able to find a suitable organ should their own organs fail sometime in the future. LifeSharers' concept is an appealing one from an intuitive and distributive justice perspective: it seems only fair that people who agree to donate organs should receive priority if they ever need one.


Genome-wide selection (GWS) is based on a large number of markers widely distributed throughout the genome. Genome-wide selection provides for the estimation of the effect of each molecular marker on the phenotype, thereby allowing for the capture of all genes affecting the quantitative traits of interest. The main statistical tools applied to GWS are based on random regression or dimensionality reduction methods. In this study a new non-parametric method, called Delta-p was proposed, which was then compared to the Genomic Best Linear Unbiased Predictor (G-BLUP) method. Furthermore, a new selection index combining the genetic values obtained by the G-BLUP and Delta-p, named Delta-p/G-BLUP methods, was proposed. The efficiency of the proposed methods was evaluated through both simulation and real studies. The simulated data consisted of eight scenarios comprising a combination of two levels of heritability, two genetic architectures and two dominance status (absence and complete dominance). Each scenario was simulated ten times. All methods were applied to a real dataset of Asian rice (Oryza sativa) aiming to increase the efficiency of a current breeding program. The methods were compared as regards accuracy of prediction (simulation data) or predictive ability (real dataset), bias and recovery of the true genomic heritability. The results indicated that the proposed Delta-p/G-BLUP index outperformed the other methods in both prediction accuracy and predictive ability.


The Handbook on Tax Administration provides a complete, systematic overview of modern Tax Administration. The book includes chapters on taxation; core business of a Tax Administration; developments in society; organizational structures; risk management, primary processes of Tax Administration, staff and support processes; planning and control; performance management; and change management. In this second edition a new chapter is included on the design and implementation of a diagnostic tool for Tax Administrations. It is an international Handbook in the sense that it aims to provide insight into the administration of taxes based on the experiences in various countries, by identifying examples of good practices of effective and efficient tax administration. The Handbook does not, however, aim to provide a blueprint for Tax Administrations, as legal, institutional, economic, social and cultural differences between countries prevent such an exercise.

The Handbook on Tax Administration is a valuable reference tool for tax policymakers, tax administrators and tax students, as well as for those interested in trends and developments in the structure and management of large public organizations


Background: Phenolic compounds are ubiquitous in dietary fruits and vegetables and have been proposed to have antioxidant, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, and anticancer effects. Voltage gated K+ channels (IK) contribute to various cellular mechanisms involved in the tumor cell progression. Therefore, the modulation of IK current may be a potential target for cancer therapy. In this study, we electrophysiologically characterized four phenolic compounds for their modulatory activities on IK currents. Materials and Methods: The whole cell configuration of the patch clamp recording technique was used to record the IK currents from human prostate cancer line (LNCaP). In addition, 200 μM of phenolic compounds (curcumin, resveratrol, rutin, and troxerutin) were externally perfused to the cells. Results: Obtained results provide evidence that resveratrol at 200 μM inhibited more than half of the IK current amplitude. On the other hand, curcumin, rutin, and troxerutin did not show any modulatory effect on IK current in LNCaP cells. Conclusion: This study demonstrates that not all the anticancer compounds are effective inhibitors of IK current, but only few of them. The IK current inhibitors might exhibit effective antimetastatic properties.


Prepared at the request of the Task Force to Modernize Securities Legislation in Canada, this study describes and evaluates evaluate a new capital markets insurance concept: securities misinformation insurance. This new insurance would compensate investors for losses caused by securities law violations. The most powerful objection to this new concept is that investors do not need a new insurance program for securities misinformation losses. Individual and institutional investors already can spread securities misinformation losses by holding a diversified portfolio. Nevertheless, a securities misinformation insurance program has the potential to provide systemic benefits: improved compliance with securities laws (resulting from cost internalization by issuers and governance efforts by the securities misinformation insurance program) and enhanced investor confidence (resulting from the signaling effect of what amounts to a warranty of compliance with disclosure requirements). Whether a new insurance program would in fact produce these benefits would depend in significant part on the design of the program. An excess insurance approach would be cheaper and less intrusive, but it would be unlikely to enhance securities law compliance. A primary insurance approach would be more likely to enhance securities law compliance and, possibly, investor confidence, but it would be more expensive and intrusive. Under the latter, primary insurance approach, the securities misinformation insurance program could become a strong securities market regulator. The "regulation" would come in the form of underwriting requirements and other requirements imposed through litigation against the responsible parties. This study addresses these and other important insurance design questions by outlining three different securities misinformation insurance scenarios. The first scenario presents a government sponsored, primary insurance program. The second scenario presents an industry sponsored excess insurance program. The third scenario presents a private market excess insurance approach.


A perfect storm of new technologies and new business models is transforming not only our vehicles, but everything about how we get around, and how we live our lives. The JRC report "The future of road transport - Implications of automated, connected, low-carbon and shared mobility" looks at some main enablers of the transformation of road transport, such as data governance, infrastructures, communication technologies and cybersecurity, and legislation. It discusses the potential impacts on the economy, employment and skills, energy use and emissions, the sustainability of raw materials, democracy, privacy and social fairness, as well as on the urban context. It shows how the massive changes on the horizon represent an opportunity to move towards a transport system that is more efficient, safer, less polluting and more accessible to larger parts of society than the current one centred on car ownership. However, new transport technologies, on their own, won't spontaneously make our lives better without upgrading our transport systems and policies to the 21st century. The improvement of governance and the development of innovative mobility solutions will be crucial to ensure that the future of transport is cleaner and more equitable than its car-centred present.


In early March, the first cases of COVID-19 were reported in my city, Boston. Suddenly, our university inundated us with emails encouraging good hygiene practices and social distancing. Then, a few days later, we were informed that all noncritical research should stop and that mandatory work-from-home policies would be implemented. Anxiety spread like wildfire. I had not expected my work life on campus to stop so suddenly. My lab mates and I think of our workspace as a home away from home, where we enjoy interacting at lab meetings and over coffee. I felt a pit in my stomach as I realized all that was over for now. I was afraid of feeling isolated.

> "My sense of isolation has faded, and … I feel more connected than ever."

What worried me even more was the extent of the isolation. Within a few days of learning that I'd be working at home for at least 6 weeks, I found out that a conference I was planning to attend in June was canceled. Not only was I going to miss my work environment, but I was also going to lose a great opportunity to meet researchers from around the world, share ideas, and present my work.

On the last day we were all in the lab together, my postdoc adviser mentioned he wanted to start an online seminar series. At first I felt relieved, thinking that virtual seminars would at least provide some respite from isolation. But I doubted they would measure up to the experience of in-person seminars.

Together with another lab head, my adviser spread the word that they were starting a Slack group, where researchers in our field—the science of aging—could have discussions and sign up to give seminars. The group quickly amassed roughly 600 members, and the speaker list filled up. That seemed promising, but I still wondered how many scientists would actually tune in to the seminars, which were slated to take place once every workday.

One week after our university closed, I settled into my makeshift work-from-home desk and logged on to my first virtual seminar. I was pleasantly surprised to see some familiar names online, some from as far away as Brazil and China. Midway through the talk, I noticed that more than 250 researchers were watching. As I took notes, jotting down intriguing experiments and impressive techniques, the unfamiliarity of the experience faded. I realized that despite being alone in my apartment, I was taking part in an event with researchers from around the world, some probably motivated by the same fear of isolation I had felt.

We have continued the daily seminars in the weeks since then, hearing from senior scientists, Ph.D. students, postdocs, and others in our field. After each seminar, we ask the speaker questions on Slack and take part in a group discussion about their research. I've found the talks helpful for learning about new lab techniques and identifying researchers whom I might be able to collaborate with in the future.

We've also used our Slack group to connect in more personal ways, such as by sharing updates on COVID-19 cases in our respective countries and commiserating about struggles that we're going through. I have been able to reconnect with colleagues whom I met at conferences years ago but had since lost touch with. My sense of isolation has faded, and—perhaps counterintuitively—I feel more connected than ever.

I began my work-at-home experience worried about losing the opportunity to connect with my colleagues. But I now realize that I am part of a global research community that can thrive online. I plan to continue my conversations with colleagues via our Slack group long after the pandemic is quelled. That will allow us to connect year-round, not just during our field's annual conference, and to include researchers for whom travel is difficult.

If you find yourself lonely working from home, I'd recommend starting your own online community with colleagues in your field. We're facing tough times and an uncertain future. But it's also an opportunity to rethink how we interact with one another, in ways that will benefit the scientific community in the long term.


Winter cover crops potentially have a number of positive production and environmental benefits on subsequent maize (Zea mays) crops. A field study was undertaken in 2016/17 to evaluate the effects of winter cover crop residues on the emergence and growth of weeds, required herbicide inputs, and yields of maize in comparison to a winter fallow. Weed ground cover at maize canopy closure was 81—85% less than the winter fallow in plots with ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum), oats (Avena sativa) and gland clover (Trifolium glanduliferum) residues and 57% less in faba bean (Vicia faba). Ryegrass and oats residues maintained ground coverage of >70%, while clover had only 6% at canopy closure, but suppressed weeds similarly. In the absence of herbicides maize silage yields in plots with cover crop residues were similar to those in herbicide treatments, although maize establishment and growth was slower in oats and ryegrass.


The research areas of plan recognition and natural language parsing share many common features and even algorithms. However, the dialog between these two disciplines has not been effective. Specifically, significant recent results in parsing mildly context sensitive grammars have not been leveraged in the state of the art plan recognition systems. This paper will outline the relations between natural language processing(NLP) and plan recognition(PR), argue that each of them can effectively inform the other, and then focus on key recent research results in NLP and argue for their applicability to PR.