This Article examines the role played by different enacted legislation on California's Indian tribes criminal justice system. For centuries, tribal governments were the only entities with criminal jurisdiction in Indian Country. In 1883, the Supreme Court in Ex parte Kan-Gi-Shun-Ka (Ex parte Crow Dog) confirmed that a crime committed by an Indian against another Indian did not give rise to federal jurisdiction. In response, Congress passed the Major Crimes Act, granting federal authorities the power to investigate, enforce, and prosecute certain crimes occurring in Indian Country. The federal statutes creating federal jurisdiction did not preclude tribal jurisdiction, but states lacked jurisdictional authority. This all changed in 1953 with the enactment of Public Law 280. Affecting only five mandatory states, including California, Public Law 280 precluded federal jurisdiction and conferred jurisdictional authority on the state government to enforce and prosecute crimes occurring in Indian Country, thereby flipping the general rules regarding criminal jurisdiction. In 2010, Congress amended Public Law 280. In the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010 ("TLOA"), Congress allowed Indian tribes located in mandatory Public Law 280 states to request the Department of Justice to re-assert criminal jurisdiction. However, there is much more to Public Law 280 and its long-running consequences in California than the simple question of which government has the authority to enforce and prosecute crimes.


Nasal haemorrhage or nosebleed, is the most common of haemorrhages due to the intense vasculization of the nose, the fragility of the nasal mucous membrane and its vulnerability to traumas and irritant agents. The aim of this study is to report on a reduction of episodes of nosebleed in two patients with the use of amnophtone. A 34-year-old male patient and a 44- year-old female patient presented with histories of two or more nosebleeds per week, despite treatment during the acute phase. They both sought medical assistance for other vascular complaints, which were suggestive of vascular insufficiency as, during the physical examination petechia lesions in the lower limbs were detected. They were treated with 75 mg of amnaphtone three times daily. One week after, at the follow-up, they reported an improvement of the vascular symptoms, however, more markedly was the significant improvement in relation to the nosebleeds which were frequent but had not been reported in the first consultation. In conclusion, amnaphtone demonstrated to be efficient in the prevention of recurrence of nosebleed in these patients.


Summary Understanding the spread and evolution of pathogens is important for effective public health measures and surveillance. Nextstrain consists of a database of viral genomes, a bioinformatics pipeline for phylodynamics analysis, and an interactive visualisation platform. Together these present a real-time view into the evolution and spread of a range of viral pathogens of high public health importance. The visualization integrates sequence data with other data types such as geographic information, serology, or host species. Nextstrain compiles our current understanding into a single accessible location, publicly available for use by health professionals, epidemiologists, virologists and the public alike. Availability and implementation All code (predominantly JavaScript and Python) is freely available from github.com/nextstrain and the web-application is available at nextstrain.org.


China is the world's most populous country and in the last few decades has had the fastest growing economy. In order to meet China's large population's needs and to sustain its economic growth, Beijing has pursued a multi-dimensional strategy. The goal is to ensure sustainable and affordable energy supplies. The rise of China as a major player on the global energy scene has significant geo-political and geo-economic ramifications. This study examines China's efforts to diversify its energy mix and geographical suppliers. Key words: Oil; Natural gas; Coal; Nuclear power; Strategic petroleum reserve; China's energy policies. The People's Republic of China (henceforth China) is a major energy consumer. The International Energy Agency highlights some of the main themes of the country's energy outlook. China's primary energy demand is projected to more than double from 1.742 million ton oil equivalent (toe) in 2005 to 3.819 toe in 2030 - an average annual rate of growth of 3.2 percent. China has become the world's largest energy consumer (overtaking the United States) since the beginning of the second decade in the twenty-first century. Oil imports are projected to jump from 3.5 million barrels per day (b/d) in 2006 to 13.1 million b/d in 2030, while the share of imports in demand rises from 50 percent to 80 percent. Natural gas imports also increase quickly, as production growth lags demand. Similarly, China became a net coal importer in 2007. By 2030 coal imports will reach 3 percent of its demand.1 Figures from the British Petroleum's BP Statistical Review of World Energy draw a similar picture. In 2009 proven reserves were 15.5 billion barrels (1.2 percent of world's total), production volume was 3,795 million b/d (4.8 percent) , and consumption level was 7,999 million b/d (9.6 percent). The numbers for natural gas were: proven reserves 2.46 trillion cubic meters (1.3 percent of world's total), production 76.1 billion cubic meters (2.5 percent), and consumption 80.7 billion cubic meters (2.7 percent). The figures for coal were 114,500 million tons (13.9 percent of world's total), 1,414.5 million tons (42.5 percent of world's total) and 1,406.3 million tons (42.6 percent of world's total).2 Finally, the Energy Information Administration sums up China's main energy characteristics: China has emerged from being a net oil exporter in the early 1990s to become the world's third-largest net importer of oil in 2006. Natural gas usage has also increased rapidly in recent years, and China has looked to raise natural gas imports via pipeline and liquefied natural gas (LNG). China is also the world's largest producer and consumer of coal.3 China's huge energy consumption volume can be explained by two major factors - population and economic growth. With a population of approximately 1.4 billion people, China is the most populous country in the world. This population is not only the largest in the world, but equally important, economically China is the fastest growing. Since the late 1970s China's economy has changed from a centrally planned system that was largely closed to international trade to a more market-oriented economy. Reforms started with the phasing out of collectivized agriculture and expanded to include the gradual liberalization of prices, fiscal decentralization, increased autonomy for state enterprises, the foundation of a diversified banking system, the development of stock markets, the rapid growth of the non-state sector, and the opening to foreign trade and investment. As a result, in the last three decades China's economy has been the fastest growing economy in the world and the nation has become the chief economic driver of Asia. This large and more affluent population, by comparison with earlier, consumes more electricity, lives in bigger homes, buys more appliances, and drives larger cars longer distances. Despite this steady rise in energy consumption, it is important to point out that Chinese energy consumption per capita is considerably lower than that of the United States or Europe. …


Clusters of workstations have become a cost-effective means of performing scientific computations. However, large network latencies, resource sharing, and heterogeneity found in networks of clusters and Grids can impede the performance of applications not specifically tailored for use in such environments. A typical example is the traditional fine grain implementations of Krylov-like iterative methods, a central component in many scientific applications. To exploit the potential of these environments, advances in networking technology must be complemented by advances in parallel algorithmic design. In this paper, we present an algorithmic technique that increases the granularity of parallel block iterative methods by inducing additional work during the preconditioning (inexact solution) phase of the iteration. During this phase, each vector in the block is preconditioned by a different subgroup of processors, yielding a much coarser granularity. The rest of the method comprises a small portion of the total time and is still implemented in fine grain. We call this combination of fine and coarse grain parallelism multigrain. We apply this idea to the block Jacobi-Davidson eigensolver, and present experimental data that shows the significant reduction of latency effects on networks of clusters of roughly equal capacity and size. We conclude with a discussion on how multigrain can be applied dynamically based on runtime network performance monitoring.


Organic agriculture world-wide allows farmers to produce healthy food with low levels of external inputs, and often shortens the value chains, giving farmers a higher share of the consumer dollar. This book reports on long-term comparative organic farming systems research trials carried out over the last four years in South Africa's Southern Cape, as well as research on the organic sector and the technical tools it requires in South Africa, Zambia, Uganda and Tanzania. The trials show how the yield gap between organic and conventional crops was closed over 3 years. Water use efficiency was also greater in the organic farming system, and pests and diseases were effectively controlled using biological products. Farmer training approaches, soil carbon analysis, participatory guarantee systems, the Zambian organic farming sector (agronomy) and Ugandan organic farmer training support, and a sector plan for southern African organic farming are examined.


This study investigated the self-reported effects of Internet use on faculty at small Christian colleges and universities by age, years of Internet use, academic field, and on faculty communication style, teaching style, personal pr oductivity, fulfillment of the organization's mission, social networks, research, and professional development. Findings: Faculty believed that their communication had changed and that they can communicate with others more quickly, get faster replies to questions, and obtain more relevant data. Faculty disagreed that their teaching style had changed and that they had changed the way they c onduct a class. Fac- ulty believe that their productivity has changed. Most faculty disagreed that the Internet has made them more comfortable sharing their feelings about God. Faculty believe that the Internet has changed the type of jobs and the way students look for jobs; that there are fewer barriers to joining an electronic group, and that the volume of people they keep in frequent touch with has increased. Most faculty agreed that the way they do research has changed and that the Internet makes it easier to get information about advances in their fields. Faculty disagreed that the Internet could be substituted for conferences and that the Internet has made it possible for them to serve on boards.


Bayesian inference is intractable for many interesting models, making deterministic algorithms for approximate inference highly desirable. Unlike stochastic methods, which are exact in the limit, the accuracy of these approaches cannot be reasonably judged. In this paper we show how low order perturbation corrections to an expectation-consistent (EC) approximation can provide the necessary tools to ameliorate inference accuracy, and to give an indication of the quality of approximation without having to resort to Monte Carlo methods. Further comparisons are given with variational Bayes and parallel tempering (PT) combined with thermodynamic integration on a Gaussian mixture model. To obtain practical results we further generalize PT to temper from arbitrary distributions rather than a prior in Bayesian inference.


Asbestos remains one of the greatest man made industrial disasters ever that will eventually claim over 10 million lives through asbestos related disease. This silent killer still lurks within millions of domestic and commercial orbits across the globe. The pro-asbestos industry has both formally used and currently still uses myth as an agent to disguise this A1 grade carcinogen as being safe. The industry and its allies were, and in some nations still are, successful in suppressing the dangers of this deceptive 'magic mineral' using a range of furtive strategies. For much of the 20th century information about the dangers of asbestos overwhelmingly remained in the genres of non-fiction and documentary. While this research does not serve to discredit the incredible work that has halted much of the world's use of asbestos and raise consciousness about its culture, it does however aim to liberate the issue from its literal textual and visual paradigm. This research investigates how myth can be used to actually dispel myth, a kind of counter-mything process. Mythology has been an expressive language that has evolved to tell the story of humanity from its darkest to its most glorious times. Comic books too have been an expressive medium using verbal-textual languages that have both recorded and popularized some of the greatest and gravest issues in history. I will examine the use of mythology and comics as a powerful combination in dispelling those pro-industry myths about asbestos that have led to this global crisis. The complementary trio of mythology, visual art, and literature could in fact be a formula that finally resurrects this somewhat misunderstood and anomalistic catastrophe from its deadly secretive abyss.


This book explores for the first time the broad range of ways in which Christian thought intersects with American legal theory. Eminent legal scholars-including Stephen Carter, Thomas Shaffer, Elizabeth Mensch, Gerard Bradley, and Marci Hamilton-describe how various Christian traditions, including the Catholic, Calvinist, Anabaptist, and Lutheran traditions, understand law and justice, society and the state, and human nature and human striving. The book reveals not only the diversity among Christian legal thinkers but also the richness of the Christian tradition as a source for intellectual and ethical approaches to legal inquiry. The contributors bring various perspectives to the subject. Some engage the prominent schools of legal thought: liberalism, legal realism, critical legal studies, feminism, critical race theory, and law and economics. Others address substantive areas, including environmental, criminal, contract, torts, and family law, as well as professional responsibility. Together the essays introduce a new school of legal thought that will make a signal contribution to contemporary discussions of law.


Rather than attempt to write a balanced or complete overview of the application of GIS to archaeology (which would inevitably end up being didactic and uncritical) this article sets out to present a discursive and contentious position with the deliberate aim of stimulating further debate about the future role of GIS within our discipline. To this end, existing applications of GIS to archaeology are reviewed, concentrating on two areas of application, predictive modelling and visibility analyses, and on their wider disciplinary context. It is argued that GIS cannot be simplistically held to have been a 'good thing' or a 'bad thing' for archaeology, but rather that these different application areas may be analysed separately and found to have quite different qualities. Although they are in no sense alternatives to one another, the areas of predictive modelling and visibility analysis can be seen to represent quite different agendas for the development of an archaeology of space and/or place. The development of correlative predictive models is considered first, both from the perspective of explanation and of cultural resource management. The arguments against predictive modelling as a means of explanation are rehearsed and it is found to be over-generalising, deterministic and de-humanised. As a consequence, it is argued that predictive modelling is now essentially detached from contemporary theoretical archaeological concerns. Moreover, it is argued to be an area with significant unresolved methodological problems and, far more seriously, that it presents very real dangers for the future representativity of archaeological records. Second, the development of GIS-based visibility analysis is reviewed. This is also found to be methodologically problematic and incomplete. However, it is argued that visibility studies — in direct contrast to predictive modelling — have remained firmly situated within contemporary theoretical debates, notably about how human actors experience places (phenomenology) and perceive their surroundings (cognition). As such, it is argued that visibility analysis has the potential to continue to contribute positively to the wider development of archaeological thinking, notably through laying the foundations of a human-centred archaeology of space. The paper concludes by qualifying the claim that there is a 'hidden agenda' for archaeological applications of GIS (Wheatley 1993), particularly by making it clear that this does not imply an attempt to distort the discipline. Instead, this is explained in terms of institutional and disciplinary inertia that should be addressed through greater debate and communication over these issues.


Humans can perform parkour by traversing obstacles in a highly dynamic fashion requiring precise eye-muscle coordination and movement. Getting robots to do the same task requires overcoming similar challenges. Classically, this is done by independently engineering perception, actuation, and control systems to very low tolerances. This restricts them to tightly controlled settings such as a predetermined obstacle course in labs. In contrast, humans are able to learn parkour through practice without significantly changing their underlying biology. In this paper, we take a similar approach to developing robot parkour on a small low-cost robot with imprecise actuation and a single front-facing depth camera for perception which is low-frequency, jittery, and prone to artifacts. We show how a single neural net policy operating directly from a camera image, trained in simulation with large-scale RL, can overcome imprecise sensing and actuation to output highly precise control behavior end-to-end. We show our robot can perform a high jump on obstacles 2x its height, long jump across gaps 2x its length, do a handstand and run across tilted ramps, and generalize to novel obstacle courses with different physical properties. Parkour videos at https://extreme-parkour.github.io/


OJ 287 is a BL Lac object at redshift z = 0.306 that has shown double-peaked bursts at regular intervals of similar to 12 yr during the last similar to 40 yr. We analyse optical photopolarimetric monitoring data from 2005 to 2009, during which the latest double-peaked outburst occurred. The aim of this study is twofold: firstly, we aim to analyse variability patterns and statistical properties of the optical polarization light curve. We find a strong preferred position angle in optical polarization. The preferred position angle can be explained by separating the jet emission into two components: an optical polarization core and chaotic jet emission. The optical polarization core is stable on time-scales of years and can be explained as emission from an underlying quiescent jet component. The chaotic jet emission sometimes exhibits a circular movement in the Stokes plane. We find six such events, all on the time-scales of 10-20 d. We interpret these events as a shock front moving forwards and backwards in the jet, swiping through a helical magnetic field. Secondly, we use our data to assess different binary black hole models proposed to explain the regularly appearing double-peaked bursts in OJ 287. We compose a list of requirements a model has to fulfil to explain the mysterious behaviour observed in OJ 287. The list includes not only characteristics of the light curve but also other properties of OJ 287, such as the black hole mass and restrictions on accretion flow properties. We rate all existing models using this list and conclude that none of the models is able to explain all observations. We discuss possible new explanations and propose a new approach to understanding OJ 287. We suggest that both the double-peaked bursts and the evolution of the optical polarization position angle could be explained as a sign of resonant accretion of magnetic field lines, a 'magnetic breathing' of the disc.


The paper discusses introduction of artificial intelligence into structural engineering practice. The necessity of this paper is accelerated by the information base (IB) and decision support systems exigency, as some standards are not completely designed and there is no statistical information on faults, defects and damage to various buildings. The article suggests creating a decision support system for the optimal structural design of buildings that takes into account a risk of a propagating rupture. The article describes possibilities of a decision support system, the stages of its development and structure. Conceptual solution of the proposed decision support system for the analysis of structures is illustrated by designing trade and business centre high-rise building. The system is based on a knowledge base, which is created during its development and can be updated and expanded with the advent of new codes of practice and new structural design recommendations. Expert system will be built on the basis of clear rules and recommendations from foreign and Russian codes of practice, as well as European standards, and international occurrences of buildings accidents. Optimization of structural elements is performed on the basis of a genetic algorithm. The effect of various genetic operators on the performance of the algorithm is investigated. A model of a genetic algorithm for optimization of steel structural elements is developed. The work is the attempt to create a complex approach to the structural design: the user can not only study the normative documentation, get advice, study the examples of calculation, but also take advantage of the proposed programs for the optimization of the design decisions. It is expected that expert's knowledge on the analysis of buildings incorporated in expert system will improve the quality of the design, and as a consequence, the reliability of structures.


One aim in animal behaviour is to explain why and when animals live in groups. The main approach has been to compare closely related gregarious and solitary species. Here, I discuss data of a medium sized, diurnal muroid rodent, the striped mouse, which demonstrates a high level of intraspecific variability of its social system. In the arid Succulent Karoo, the social structure of the striped mouse is best described as a territorial group living sol- itary forager with communal breeding and helpers at the nest. Groups can consist of up to 30 adult mice, i.e. four breeding females, one breeding male and their adult offspring. In contrast, the striped mouse is solitary in the mesic grasslands of South Africa, with females inhabiting intrasexually exclusive territories and male territories overlap- ping those of several females. Association between the sexes is limited to mating, and offspring leave their mother's territory as juveniles. Home ranges in the grasslands are much larger than in the Succulent Karoo. I suggest that the main ecological reasons for these differences in social organization are food abundance, the availability of suitable nesting sites, and the possibility of sun-basking. Whether these ecological differences acted as selection pressures in the past that caused genetic differences and finally speciation (as proposed by a recent study), or whether these eco- logical differences lead to behavioural differences via an ontogenetic pathway, remains a topic for further research.


This is a survey of some theories of property rights, prepared for the Handbook of Organizational Economics, Princeton University Press, edited by R. Gibbons and J. Roberts. A central feature of property rights is that they influence economic efficiency not (only) directly, but (also) through their effect on subsequent decisions made by agents, either unilaterally or in negotiation with each other. We examine models in which property rights affect incentives for agents' non-contractible unilateral actions (such as the static "Tragedy of the Commons," "adaptation" models, and hold-up models) as well as models in which property rights affect the efficiency of bargaining (such as private-information "partnership dissolution" models and bilateral contracting with externalities models). For incentive theories, we relate optimal property rights allocations to the nature of externalities arising from agents' actions. First, we show that when there exist property rights that eliminate harmful externalities at a first-best outcome, these property rights ensure the first best. When harmful externalities cannot be eliminated, second-best property rights are chosen with the view of reducing distortions in agents' actions. We examine how the sign of externalities determines the nature of distortions and the resulting second-best property rights allocations. This analysis applies not just to static incentive models but also to hold-up models, in which a prominent role is played by bargaining externalities (through agents sharing renegotiation surplus) in addition to possible direct externalities (from cooperative investments). The analysis unifies a number of theories of incentive contracts and property rights, including Hart and Moore's (1990) theory, and highlights the role of various assumptions in the specific results. We also discuss the possibility of using mechanism design or renegotiation design for improving upon simple property rights. Next, we discuss how the efficiency of bargaining under private information is affected by property rights ("status quo allocation"). We describe a general class of situations in which efficient bargaining is impossible (which includes Myerson and Satterthwaite's famous setting), and also demonstrate property rights that permit efficient bargaining in a wide class of situations. Finally, we consider the role of property rights on the efficiency of bilateral bargaining with externalities.


The vast majority of studies on urban travel demand focus on the effect on the demand of one travel mode given a change in the characteristics of that same transport mode, for example, own-elasticities. comparatively little is known about cross-elasticities of demand. In particular, there is a need for a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms of modal substitution, that is a better understanding of cross-modal diversion factors (Dfs) defined as the proportion of people who leave mode a and switch to mode b. The purpose of this article is to investigate what factors explain variations in Dfs across transport modes, submarkets and policy measures. using a recently developed empirical travel mode choice model for the Oslo area, we simulate over 10,000 different Dfs by systematically changing the underlying transport modes, submarkets and policies (size, direction and type of change). With descriptive statistics, we show how the Dfs vary on a general level. most results are immediately intuitive, for example that car drivers mostly substitute to walk for short-distance trips but that those Dfs diminish rapidly with increasing distance. Interestingly, we find rather high Dfs across different forms of public transportation. With successive regression analyses we show that the number of available alternatives and relative market shares significantly affect Dfs.


In this paper, we consider a spectrum sharing cognitive radio network where a secondary user (SU) transmitter (SU-Tx) communicates with multiple SU receivers (SU-Rxs). There exist multiple eavesdroppers (EAVs) who illegally listen to the secondary network communication. Further, the primary network consists of a primary user (PU) transmitter serving multiple PU receivers. In particular, the SU-Tx transmit power is subject to the joint constraint of PU outage and SU maximum transmit power limit. Moreover, we investigate the secondary network physical layer security in terms of average secrecy capacity for both cases of known and unknown channel information of the EAV at the SU-Tx. Numerical results are provided to evaluate the impact of the number of PU-Rxs, number of EAVs, number of SU-Rxs, and channel mean powers among users on the SU average secrecy capacity.


The aim of this paper is to undertake a comprehensive review of literature in order to develop a conceptual framework that reflects the antecedents of an effective game-based learning environment for the Net generation; that is students who prefer to learn using games as a tool. The paper draws from theory on information systems effectiveness to conceptualise game-based learning effectiveness. Two key antecedents of effectiveness are identified – Game-Task Fit and Game Quality. Game-Task fit reflects the fit between the task that an instructor aims to teach and the game that will be used as the teaching tool. Game Quality is recognised through characteristics of Playability and Flow. The developed conceptual framework could be used as an evaluation tool for effective game learning environments for the Net generation.


Information has brought about a new way of thinking and trading and a new concept of what is really valuable. In the present article the author explores whether efforts to catch up in various areas of law have kept pace with these developments. In the process some nice distinctions have to be made between data, information and intelligence and the various senses in which these terms are being used, depending on the context. In the end, one has to turn to legal philosophy and concepts such as post-modernism and empiricism in order to try to find a satisfying answer.


Bicycling has grown in popularity over the past decade, but the gap in rates of bicycling between men and women in the United States (US) persists. This paper uses regional travel behavior study data from the Minneapolis-St. Paul Metropolitan Region in 2000 and 2010 to measure and model the gender gap in bicycling over time. Findings from a series of statistical tests show that in aggregate, women bike less than men, and that growth in bicycling has been slower for women than for men over the past decade. However, stratifying the sample shows that women who live with at least one other adult bicyclist participate in bicycling at an equal rate as men. Similarly, frequency of bicycle trips among people who participate in bicycling differed by gender only slightly in 2000, and not at all in 2010. Binary logistic modeling results show that several factors, such as age and trip purpose, are associated with different bicycling outcomes for men and women, but some commonly hypothesized explanations, such as having children, were declining in effect or altogether insignificant. These findings and conclusions are important for practice and research because understanding the nuances of the gender gap, such as the apparent gap in participation but not in frequency or the contagion effect of living with a cyclist, is essential for targeting programs effectively. This paper also identifies several travel behavior data collection limitations that complicate studying the gender gap, and offers recommendations for further study.


A global monthly‐mean climatology of the air‐sea oxygen flux is presented and discussed. The climatology is based on the ocean oxygen climatology of Najjar and Keeling [1997] and wind speeds derived from a meteorological analysis center. Seasonal variations are characterized by outgassing of oxygen during spring and summer and ingassing of oxygen during fall and winter, a pattern consistent with thermal and biological forcing of the air‐sea oxygen flux. The annual mean flux pattern is characterized by ingassing at high latitudes and the tropics and outgassing in middle latitudes. The air‐sea oxygen flux is shown to exhibit patterns that agree well with patterns seen in a marine primary productivity climatology, in model generated air‐sea O2 fluxes, in estimates of remineralization in the shallow aphotic zone based on seasonal oxygen variations, in observed seasonal nutrient‐temperature relationships, and in independent estimates of meridional oxygen transport in the Atlantic ocean. We also find that extratropical mixed layer new production during the spring‐summer period, computed from biological seasonal net outgassing of oxygen, is equivalent to the production of 4.5–5.6 Gt C, much lower than previous estimates based on atmospheric O2/N2 measurements.


Abstract:  The rate at which ear recognition system is been explored by computer vision authors and its acceptability as a biometric traits has increased. Ear classification scheme has become necessary due to anticipated exponential growth of the ear database which would run to millions in the nearest future. Thus, in this paper, we proposed automatic ear classification scheme so that the ear can be classified into two distinct groups; lobed ear and lobeless ear using geometric structure of lobule. The ear image is cropped and its contrast normalized to produce more quality image. Ear contour image is localized since it can reveal the shape of the ear image. Due to the rumpling nature of the ear, the ear contour harbours many contour images, some which are noisy contours. The ear contour image is enhanced to remove the outer ear contour from the ear contour for feature selection. Using chain code element, ear outer shape is encoded and lobule code signature extracted. Forming a lobule feature code bag, a threshold for the class partition of the ear is established. Experimental result is carried out with University of Science and Technology Beijing (USTB) ear image, which is divided into three samples; 77, 154 and 308 samples respectively. The proposed method achieved an ear classification accuracy of 96.1%, 92.20% and 88.96% under these respective samples.


Neutron strain scanning has been used to determine residual and applied stresses along the plane of a fatigue crack in a metal matrix composite. The specimens were studied in two conditions: one was as heat treated, and the other was plastically deformed in tension before fatigue cracking. Neutron diffraction was used to measure the three principal strains as a function of position along the crack growth direction, ahead of and in the wake of the crack, and these measurements were used to calculate the stress variation along the crack line, An Eshelby based model was used to separate the individual components of the stress. It was found that the thermal misfit stress between matrix and reinforcement was changed significantly by the plastic deformation and was effectively reduced to near zero in both phases. This changes the crack tip strains in the material, decreasing the strains in the matrix and increasing those in the reinforcement. Possible implications of this for fatigue crack propagation are discussed.


Democracy in the States offers a 21st century agenda for election reform in America based on lessons learned in the fifty states. Combining accessibility and rigor, leading scholars of U.S. politics and elections examine the impact of reforms intended to increase the integrity, fairness, and responsiveness of the electoral system. While some of these reforms focus on election administration, which has been the subject of much controversy since the 2000 presidential election, others seek more broadly to increase political participation and improve representation. For example, Paul Gronke (Reed College) and his colleagues study the relationship between early voting and turnout. Barry Burden (University of Wisconsin-Madison) examines the hurdles that third-party candidates must clear to get on the ballot in different states. Michael McDonald (George Mason University) analyzes the leading strategies for redistricting reform. And Todd Donovan (Western Washington University) focuses on how the spread of "safe" legislative seats affects both representation and participation. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously observed that "a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country." Nowhere is this function more essential than in the sphere of election reform, as this important book shows.


2013 Upfreezing is an important geomorphic process in the periglacial environment. It is a product of cold climate and thus an important part of the cryospheric processes. Based on the long-term positioning observations in the source area of the Urumqi River, this article represents an in-depth discussion of the characteristics of sorted circles and upfreezing mechanisms in the Tianshan Mountains. In the source area of the Urumqi River, the intensity of upfreezing is the highest within the top 25 cm near the surface, while targets with a diameter of 3 cm are least affected by upfreezing. There is no distinct difference between the centre with fine grains and the margin with coarse debris within the same sorted circle in terms of the intensity of upfreezing. The correlation analysis demonstrates that temperature plays an important role in upfreezing and the development of sorted circles. A long-time positioning observation of sorted circles reveals that periglacial landforms are sensitive to regional climate change and respond quickly to the temperature increase of the recent two decades. Enhanced upfreezing was found to be due to increased soil moisture


The later medieval English church is invariably viewed through the lens of the Reformation that transformed it. But in this bold and provocative book historian George Bernard examines it on its own terms, revealing a church with vibrant faith and great energy, but also with weaknesses that reforming bishops worked to overcome. Bernard emphasizes royal control over the church. He examines the challenges facing bishops and clergy, and assesses the depth of lay knowledge and understanding of the teachings of the church, highlighting the practice of pilgrimage. He reconsiders anti-clerical sentiment and the extent and significance of heresy. He shows that the Reformation was not inevitable: the late medieval church was much too full of vitality. But Bernard also argues that alongside that vitality, and often closely linked to it, were vulnerabilities that made the break with Rome and the dissolution of the monasteries possible. The result is a thought-provoking study of a church and society in transformation.


This study obtained the views of a random sample of 164 healthcare practitioners on their attitudes to older adults with HIV and AIDS. It shows that although the knowledge of protective measures to avoid HIV infection, mode of transmission and stigmatization are high among the healthcare providers (HCPs), yet the majority of them (76.2% of medical officers, 80.4% of nurses and 93.3% of others) are aware of discrimination against people living with HIV (PLHIV). Attitudes of HCPs to older adults with HIV with respect to quality of life, tolerance, education and training, support and treatment of PLHIV are positive, but they significantly differ on issues of blame and sexual attitude of the PLHIV. There is very little engagement between the HCPs and the older adults on their sexual characteristics which can be attributed to the low literacy of the PLHIV. The study recommends appropriate education and counselling, more awareness creation of HIV, its mode of infection, prevention and treatment among HCPs, to eliminate the fears associated with HIV and AIDS. Health facility policies and stringent laws against discrimination need to be put in place.

 Key words: People living with HIV (PLHIV), healthcare providers, attitude, older adults, HIV, AIDS


How would the policy rule of forecast targeting work for the Federal Reserve? To what extent is the Federal Reserve already practicing forecast targeting? Forecast targeting means selecting a policy rate and policy-rate path so that the forecasts of inflation and employment "look good," in the sense of best fulfilling the dual mandate of price stability and maximum employment, that is, best stabilize inflation around the inflation target and employment around its maximum level. It also means publishing the policy-rate path and the forecasts of inflation and employment forecasts and, importantly, explaining and justifying them. This justification may involve demonstrations that other policy-rate paths would lead to worse mandate fulfillment. Publication and justification will contribute to making the policy-rate path and the forecasts credible with the financial market and other economic agents and thereby more effectively implement the Federal Reserve's policy. With such information made public, external observers can review Federal Reserve policy, both in real time and after the outcomes for inflation and employment have been observed, and the Federal Reserve can be held accountable for fulfilling its mandate. In contrast to simple policy rules that rely on very partial information in a rigid way, such as Taylor-type rules, forecast targeting allows all relevant information to be taken into account and has the flexibility and robustness to adapt to new circumstances. Forecast targeting can also handle issues of time consistency and determinacy. The Federal Reserve is arguably to a considerable extent already practicing forecast targeting.


Lotus corniculatus L. is the most important agricultural species in the genus Lotus and is the most widely distributed Lotus species worldwide. L. corniculatus genotypes form complex groups that are difficult to recognize both morphologically and biochemically. Given the extensive and expensive process of isolating Simple Sequence Repeats (SSR, also called microsatellites), the possibility of using microsatellites already identified in related species is highly attractive. The aim of this work was the identification and validation of transferable microsatellite markers in L. corniculatus , and using those markers to study the genetic variability among four cultivars. Each cultivar of L. corniculatus was represented by 15 genotypes. Ten microsatellite markers were evaluated, and from those, four were selected based on their discriminative values observed among cultivars. We detected 29 alleles for the four markers, and there was an average of 7.25 alleles per locus. The marker TM0197 had the fewest number of alleles (5) and TM0083 had the highest number of alleles (10). The polymorphic information content (PIC) for the selected markers varied from 0.19 to 0.35, and the markers were therefore classified as highly informative. Based on the markers, we found high variability between individuals of the same cultivar. The use of transferable microsatellite markers could be useful to differentiate individuals at a relatively low cost, showing a great potential for use in breeding programs


We examine how foreign ownership of a firm affects the variety of goods that the firm exports and the number of countries it trades with. We construct a simple theoretical model of how foreign ownership may affect these extensive margins of exports and take this model to data from Germany, one of the leading actors on the world market for goods. In line with theoretical predictions we find that foreign-owned firms do export more goods to more countries after controlling for firm size, productivity and industry affiliation. These differences between foreign-owned firms and domestically controlled firms are highly statistically significant, and they are large from an economic point of view, with foreign-owned firms exporting up to 39 per cent more goods to up to 31 per cent more countries.


Tropical Legumes II (TL II) is a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation sponsored project implemented
by three International Agricultural Research Centers – International Crops Research Institute
for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and
International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA). The project aims to improve the livelihoods
of smallholder farmers in the drought-prone areas of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and South Asia
(SA) through improved productivity and production of six major grain legumes – chickpea,
common bean, cowpea, groundnut, pigeonpea and soybean. The project activities were
implemented in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi,
Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe in SSA, and India and Bangladesh in SA.
The project has been running for the past two phases: Phase I (2007 – 2011) and Phase II
(2012 – 2014).
The project is designed to help the smallholder farmers to overcome constraints, such as
drought, pests, diseases and lack of improved seed varieties. TL II is expected to enhance
the productivity by at least 20% through increased adoption covering 30% of legume area,
strengthening national breeding programs and generating at least $1.3 billion in added value.
This has resulted in significant achievements. The active breeding programs are now in place
in all 15 countries. New seed varieties (163) have been released and are fast replacing the
old ruling seed varieties. Thirty seven national partners were trained at MSc and PhD levels.
As a result of the enhanced skills and knowledge of seed value chain actors, seed production
significantly increased by 221% (from 139,048 to 446,359 tons) over the project period. The
program adopted an inclusive approach for the poor, especially women, through promotion
of various innovative approaches, such as small seed packs, seed loans and decentralized
production schemes.
Since 2007, dissemination of improved varieties has been adopted on at least 2 million hectares
and more than $448 million has been generated from the project funding and nearly $976
million from the project and investment partners. Even when using the adoption rates data from
adoption and expert opinion surveys, the aggregate gross benefits from TL II-related modern
legume varieties is estimated at about $978 million, which is still far above the total
TL II investment grossly compounded at $48 million. In effect, for each dollar invested, the
project generated $9 with direct project investment or $20 with partnership's investment and
again $20 when using adoption rate based estimate.
These successes and associated challenges will be discussed in detail in subsequent chapters of
this book.


In The Century of Sex James R. Petersen presents a sweeping history that argues that the "sexual revolution" of the sixties and seventies was part of a larger social evolution. This evolution began generations before the advent of penicillin, Playboy, or the pill -- and produced seismic cultural shifts that have changed the way Americans live forever.Beginning at the turn of the century with the pioneering efforts of free love radicals and progressive reformers, The Century of Sex chronicles the ensuing struggles of activists for sexual liberation against the agents of repression. Petersen weaves a decade-by-decade narrative filled with colorful characters, a panoply of causes, and unforgettable events. He profiles activities of censors like Anthony Comstock, head of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, and other agencies such as the Legion of Decency and the Moral Majority, and culminates with the prosecutorial inquisitions of Kenneth Starr. He introduces heroines such as Ida Craddock, who wrote one of the nation's first marriage manuals (and paid for the act with her life), and Margaret Sanger, who fought with Comstock over birth control -- and won. The book covers America's periodic moral panics, from the white slave hysteria of 1910 to the child porn scare of the 1980s, as well as the scandals, from film star Fatty Arbuckle's trial for rape and murder to the impeachment proceedings of President Clinton.Throughout the narrative, The Century of Sex explores the ways in which historical tumults of the 1900s affected sex -- and vice versa -- through the Jazz Age, the Great Depression, two world wars, the Cold War, the sixties, the disco era, and the age of AIDS. Italso traces the changes wrought by medical science, social science, and technology, from the vibrator to home video to Viagra.The Century of Sex is a trenchant chronicle of a turbulent era that proves the truth behind the song lyrics from the 1944 movie Pin-Up Girl: "Battles are won in the day time / But history is made at night."


This paper examines the effectiveness of allocating funds to the nation's police departments for the prevention of domestic terrorism, as is done annually through the Department of Homeland Security's Homeland Security Grants Program. The program, administered by the Federal Emergency Management Administration, has distributed billions of dollars since its 2003 inception in equipment, software, and technology services based on the recipient police agencies' own risk assessments of local terrorism. Much of the technology desired by police consists of systems of mass surveillance; this thesis focuses on implementations of surveillance video cameras or CCTV, license plate readers, and unmanned aerial vehicles. Drawing on academic studies, government watchdog reports, media coverage, police manuals, nonprofit publications, and sociological texts, research is guided by the hypotheses that mass surveillance is not suited for the prevention of terrorism and that grant recipients are requesting and implementing technology for purposes other than terrorism prevention. Using the Technology Policy Framework issued by the International Association of Chiefs of Police in 2014 to assess these implementations, findings include that an approach of surveillance policing is at odds with both the fundamental policy of policing as crime prevention and the principal tenet of maintaining citizens' trust in the police. This thesis reveals a lack of empirical research on anti-terrorism measures and insufficient evidence that current surveillance methods prevent crime. Furthermore, due to the recognized low probability of terrorism, police departments are utilizing grant funds for investigative purposes as well as the everyday pursuits of retrieving stolen vehicles and monitoring traffic accidents.


Abstract The paper observes that scholars have not written much on the need for professionalism in the teaching of religious Studies as it is done in several professions such as medicine, nursing, computer, accountancy financial management, information systems among others This, is the vacuum that the work intends to fill. Within the context of functionalism as research methodology coupled with interview and observations, the paper examines rationale for the call for code of ethics in Religious Studies Scholarship, connections between Ethics and Scholarship. Added to the above, the paper proposes some codes of ethics for religious Studies Scholarship as they relate to teaching and research and with attention paid benefits of the code and its attendant grey areas. The paper concludes that, meaningful Religious Studies Scholarship in Nigeria today cannot be done without concern for ethics or code of ethics guiding the profession. This becomes imperative in the light of global desire for integrity in scholarly activity Introduction The need for professional ethics in several professions such as medicine, nursing, computer, accountancy financial management, information systems among others (Chadwick, 1998) has received much attention in scholarly and non -scholarly world across the globe but with little or nothing said or written about Religious Studies scholarship. Thus, as many people (trained, untrained and semi trained) are taking much interest in Religious Studies today thus expanding the horizon of the field in general, there is an urgent need for appropriate professional ethics in Religious Studies scholarship enterprise. This is imperative because within the context of millennial goals development, one of the outstanding issues deserving attention is the quest for professionalism in all aspects of human endeavour. Professionalism in all its form and context is an effort geared towards perfection, dedication to duty and enhancement of competency so that proper things (duties) are done in a proper manner not only for the benefit of the doers but also for the advantage of individuals, group of individuals and the entire community who are always at the receiving ends of what everybody does at one time or the other. It is in light of this, that people talk of professional ethics, which simply concerns one's conduct of behaviour and practices when carrying out professional work. Such work includes lecturing or teaching, researching and writing. In other words, code of ethics guiding the above are concerned with a range of issues such as academic honesty, data privacy professional accountability, impartiality in data analysis and professional consulting among others. Scope and Methodology The work is strictly restricted to discussion about the essence, benefit and implications of designing and implementing Codes of ethics for Religious Studies scholarship The method of approach is both descriptive and argumentative and these would be done within the ambit of functionalism theory propounded by Talcot Parson and expanded by Emile Durkheim. This theory suggests that society is an organic whole each of its constituent parts working to maintain the others and the body as a whole. This theory is relevant to our examination of the relevance of code of ethics for Religious Studies scholarship because it would help scholars of religion make meaningful the phenomenon of religion as an institution with capacity to enhancing, preserving and maintaining a stable social whole. To make sense of this desire before our readers, precisely the target audiences- scholars of Religious Studies, we also advance more argument from the viewpoint of Immanuel Kant's theory of categorical imperative, which suggests, "Do unto others what we expect others to do unto us"(http://www.animalfreedom.org/english/column/kantcategorical- imperative.html) The merits of Kant's categorical imperative to scholars of Religious Studies is that it would help them overcome egoism, which manifest in seeing sense only in the religions they practice as against other religions different from theirs. …


Environmental refugees, not included in the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees or in the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, are in fact becoming a pressing problem. The continual rise in migration for environmental reasons has led governments to acknowledge a new category of refugees: environmental refugees. The number of environmental refugees, as estimated by the IOM, could reach 200-250 millions of people by 2050; it is therefore absolutely necessary to redefine the notion of refugee to provide the same international protection as is granted to "traditional" refugees (as defined by the Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees).


Effective antibiotic treatment for lung infections requires an amount of drug at the site of infection sufficient to achieve or exceed the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) for that antibiotic against the pathogen. Recent developments in methodology have enabled concentrations of many antibiotics to be measured in small samples of tissue. The two main assay techniques are either a microbiological assay system where inhibition of growth of an indicator organism exposed to a sample of tissue is quantified, or high performance liquid chromatography. The sensitivity and reproducibility of these assay systems are remarkably high. The bioassay technique has the advantage of only measuring active amounts of the antibiotic, but has the disadvantage with some antibiotics such as clarithromycin of not differentiating between parent compound and active metabolites.' As well as sputum, other sites in the lung that have been investigated for concentrations of antibiotic include the bronchial mucosa, alveolar macrophages, and epithelial lining fluid.2 Mucosal concentrations have been measured by taking several biopsies during bronchoscopy; the samples are then ultrasonicated and assayed. Using the technique of bronchoalveolar lavage macrophages and epithelial lining fluid may be obtained. The epithelial lining fluid often requires freeze drying to concentrate the samples about 10 times before assay. Rapid separation of cells and epithelial lining fluid is achieved by immediate centrifugation of the lavage aspirate to prevent efflux of some antibiotics such as quinolones or macrolides from macrophages. These techniques are extensively reviewed elsewhere.' Quantification of concentrations in the epithelial lining fluid remains problematical because of movement of solute and solvent across the alveolar-capillary barrier during the lavage procedure.4


An oscillating universe model is discussed, in which the singularity of the initial state of the universe is avoided by postulating an upper limit on spacetime curvature. This also results in the devising of the simplest possible structure - a primitive particle (usually called preon), which can be considered as the basic constituent of matter that have no properties except for the property of carrying a unit chromoelectric charge. The SU(3)xU(1)-symmetry of its field results in the emergence of a unique set of structures reproducing exactly the observed variety of the fundamental fermions and gauge bosons. The discussed scheme allows finding answers to many fundamental questions of the standard particle physics and cosmology based on a very few primary constituents.


EPSTEIN, EDMUND LLOYD. A Guide through Finnegans Wake. The Florida James Joyce Series. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2009. Pp. xiii + 314. $29.95. With A Guide through Finnegans Wake Edmund Epstein has given us a great handbook to the Wake for the novice and expert alike. The explicit goal of the book is namely "to explicate the Wake for the benefit of readers common and uncommon" (2). This goal is to a large degree achieved--yet not without serious omissions of important aspects of the text (especially the linguistic aspect). A Guide through Finnegans Wake is the result of Epstein's many decades spent working and living with the Wake; as a consequence, it is impressively knowledgeable and erudite--yes, highly competent, reliable, and concise. Nonetheless, it maintains a light tone that is quite engaging and sympathetic; and even though the style is personal, it is never idiosyncratic or private, but rather hospitable, patient, and modest. The author's clarity and enthusiasm is, indeed, enjoyable and recommendable. Epstein's point of departure, thematically speaking, is that the book "has a profound human meaning. It is about the centered line of the life of man and woman--the creation of the family and the shift of power when the children grow up" (2). This is not a controversial claim, but highly sympathetic--particularly when Epstein's appreciation of the humour of the book is added to this. Epstein contests that Joyce's magnum opus "is extremely funny ... and there is indeed a laugh on every page of the Wake" (1). It is a great quality of Epstein's book that this appreciation of the deeply human--as well as funny--aspects of the Wake dictates his book from cover to cover. This is furthermore, I think, mirrored in Epstein's recognition of the theme of love in the Wake: "A complete act of love takes place in the blank space between the end and the beginning of the Wake ... Every day, twice a day, forever, the great act of love, the embrace and withdrawal of Anna Livia and the ocean, acts out an eternal love affair in SPACE and TIME, in enumeration and narration, the two modes of presentation in Finnegans Wake" (13-14). Epstein's cognizance of this theme is also very much to be prized as is his assertion that the work is not a narcissistic, sterile, and cerebral gesture of an absent author-divinity, but a funny, compassionate, and comic story of the follies, imperfections, and dignity of human beings. Epstein--the grand old man of Joyce criticism (the first generation of critics working after Joyce's death)--writes in continuation of the 'traditional' book aids to Joyce's "book of the dark" (Finnegans Wake [1975 ed.] 251), such as, for example, Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson's Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake (1944), William York Tindall's A Reader's Guide to Finnegans Wake (1959), and John Gordon's Finnegans Wake: A Plot Summary (1987). Perhaps, to some degree, with the exception of Tindall's work, these books share the same tendency to mollify the radicality of the text, which they 'domesticate' in order to get a more traditional novel with identifiable plot, characters, and viewpoints that are to be found behind the veil of the obscuring language. Epstein operates with the Wake as being doubled in the sense that there first and foremost is (1) a narrative line (belonging to the realm of the traditional novel), which, however, is clouded by and enveloped in (2) linguistic buffoonery and form-experimentation. What Epstein offers is consequently a distillation of the proper narrative essence of the work that is extracted from the opaque foil of the text. This is clear, for example, from a passage like this: "Despite the Wake's radical experimentation in language and form, it is a giant hymn of praise to the imperfect world of fallen human beings" (3). In other words, in spite of its expression the Wake offers a thematic content to be enjoyed, if the reader--with the help of Epstein--manages to look away from the linguistic blur. …


Abstract Neutron energy spectra penetrated through concrete shields were measured using three types of high-energy neutron detectors: the Self-TOF detector, an NE213 organic liquid scintillator, and Bi and C activation detectors, which have been newly developed by a group at the Heavy-Ion Medical Accelerator in Chiba (HIMAC) facility of the National Institute of Radiological Sciences, Japan. Neutrons were generated by bombarding 400 MeV/nucleon C ions on a thick (stopping-length) copper target. The neutron spectra were obtained through an unfolding code with their response functions and compared with LAHET and MCNPX calculations combined with the LA150 cross-section library. The calculations tend to overestimate with increasing the shielding thickness compared to the experimental results. The neutron fluence measured by the NE213 detector was simulated by the track length estimator in the MCNPX code, and the contribution of the room-scattered neutrons was evaluated. The neutron fluence attenuation length was obtained from the experiment for each detector and the calculation in the energy range of 20 to 800 MeV.


Manasseh Hill Country Survey Volume 4 presents the results of a complete archaeological survey of large parts of the Jordan Valley. This territory is one of the most important in the country from archaeological, Biblical and other points of view.


Two cases of hepatic fascioliasis which simulated hepatic tumors are presented: Patient 1. (42-year-old woman), presented pain in the epigastric and right hypochondrium. US, CAT and MNR suggested a cholangiocarcinoma. She was operated on by practicing hepatic segmentectomy, cholecystectomy and closign of a cholecystogastric fistula. The extirpated hepatic segment presented a tumoral aspect, but its histopathological study revealed numerous granulomas, some of them with F. hepatica eggs and others with Charcot - Leyden crystals. ELISA and complement fixation reaction for fascioliasis resulted positive. Search of F. hepatica eggs in stools was negative. The patient was treated with triclabendazole. Patient 2. (58-year-old woman) also presented pains in the upper hemiabdomen. Hypereosinophilia (32%). Abdominal CAT showed multiple hipondense irregular zones suggesting infiltrative processes in the liver right lobe. The hepatic biopsy, under CAT, eventhough lead to think in a hamartoma, a diagnosis of chronic cholangitis compatible with a parasitic etiology raised. ELISA and complement fixation reaction for fascioliasis were positive. Coproparasitological exams for F. Hapatica resulted negative. She was successfully treated with triclabendazole. Hapatic fascioliasis simulates numerous diseases, among them hepatic tumors.


At present, more powerful tools for numerical modelling and structural analysis are available for the use in fatigue design and assessment of complex structures. Taking advantage of these tools, structural hot spot stress approach (SHSS) can predict the fatigue life with more accuracy than the nominal stress method. It incorporates the effect of structural geometry into the local stress ranges at the welds and predicts the fatigue life based on these local stress ranges. In this study, application of the method on a joint available in the orthotropic bridge decks was investigated. Fatigue tests were carried out on full-scale specimens. In the analytical part, various finite element models were made. Different modelling techniques to incorporate the weld itself into shell element models were also investigated and compared to the results from the experiments and to those obtained from solid element models.


BACKGROUND
The American College of Rheumatology has defined 19 neuropsychiatric syndromes associated with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) involving the central, peripheral, and autonomic nervous systems. Neuropsychiatric manifestations of lupus (NPSLE) have been shown to occur in up to 95% of pediatric patients with SLE.

OBJECTIVE
The authors describe a 15-year-old African American young woman with a family history positive for bipolar I disorder and schizophrenia, who presented with symptoms consistent with an affective disorder.

METHOD
The patient was diagnosed with Bipolar I disorder with catatonic features and required multiple hospitalizations for mood disturbance. Two years after her initial presentation, the patient was noted to have a malar rash and subsequently underwent a full rheumatologic work-up, which revealed cerebral vasculitis.

RESULTS
NPSLE was diagnosed and, after treatment with steroids, the patient improved substantially and no longer required further psychiatric medication or therapy.

CONCLUSION
Given the especially high prevalence of NPSLE in pediatric patients with lupus, it is important for clinicians to recognize that neuropsychiatric symptoms in an adolescent patient may indeed be the initial manifestations of SLE, as opposed to a primary affective disorder.


We investigated the response of mesozooplankton to low dissolved oxygen (DO) concentrations in Hood Canal, Washington, a seasonally hypoxic sub‐estuary of Puget Sound. Depth‐stratified zooplankton net tows were conducted above and below the oxycline during day and night in midsummer (July), late summer (September), and early winter (December) 2008 using closing nets. Bottom DO concentrations declined slowly through summer. In July, DO at most stations was low but not hypoxic. By late summer, bottom waters throughout the study area were hypoxic (≤ 2 mg L−1) and were severely hypoxic (< 1 mg L−1) at some stations. In winter, water‐column mixing and lower surface primary production resulted in higher DO, although sub‐pycnocline hypoxia persisted through December at some locations. Zooplankton abundance decreased from midsummer to winter. The community was dominated by gelatinous zooplankton and copepods. A shift in community structure towards a higher dominance of polychaetes and the cyclopoid copepod Oithona similis occurred over the season. Temporal and spatial patterns in zooplankton communities were primarily structured by month and bottom depth. DO played a lesser role in structuring the species composition, but vertical distributions of several taxa changed in response to hypoxia, with a greater proportion of their populations found above the oxycline during both day and night where bottom oxygen was low. However, some taxa were abundant below the oxycline, even at oxygen levels < 0.5 mg L−1; these taxa may have a high tolerance to hypoxia, use low‐oxygen regions as a predation refuge, and be useful indicators of poor water‐quality conditions.


In this prospective study we analyzed pretransplant interferon‐γ secretion by cytomegalovirus (CMV)‐specific CD8+ T cells to assess its possible utility in determining the risk of CMV replication after solid organ transplantation. A total of 113 lung and kidney transplant patients were enrolled in the study but only 55 were evaluable. All CMV‐seronegative recipients were pretransplant "nonreactive" (IFNγ <0.2 IU/mL) (11/11), whereas 30/44 (68.2%) CMV‐seropositive (R+) recipients were "reactive" (IFNγ ≥0.2 IU/mL) and 14/44 (31.8%) were "nonreactive". In the R(+) "nonreactive" group, 7/14 (50%) developed posttransplant CMV replication, whereas the virus replicated only in 4/30 (13.3%) of the R(+) "reactive" patients (p = 0.021). According to the best multivariate model, pretransplant "nonreactive" recipients receiving an organ from a CMV‐seropositive donor had a 10‐fold increased risk of CMV replication compared to pretransplant "reactive" recipients (adjusted OR 10.49, 95% CI 1.88–58.46). This model displayed good discrimination ability (AUC 0.80) and calibration (Hosmer–Lemeshow test, p = 0.92). Negative and positive predictive values were 83.7% and 75%, respectively. The accuracy of the model was 82%. Therefore, assessment of interferon‐γ secretion by cytomegalovirus (CMV)‐specific CD8+ T cells prior to transplantation is useful in informing the risk of posttransplant CMV replication in solid organ transplant patients.


Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify changes in formal and informal institutions that influence the sharing economy development. Design/methodology/approach: An approach to the analysis of sharing economy based on institutional economics has been proposed. It considers both formal and informal institutions vital for the sharing economy's development. However, it focuses on the latter as the nature, role and design of informal institutions remain undiscovered while for sharing economy they seem crucial. Findings: Based on the findings it can be argued that informal institutions are of great importance for the sharing economy development. Despite the often-stressed role of regulations, it becomes clear that in this case, informal institutions may evolve more quickly and fill the gaps left by formal norms. It is of great importance than to support trust growth between the users and strengthen the evolution of property's perception – from owning to sharing. Practical implications: The results may be useful for the sharing platforms as they stress the importance of their regulations and role in building trust between the users and providers of goods or services. They may contribute to a better design of the platforms and further development. The findings are important also for the users as they need an encouraging environment to operate effectively. Originality/value: The research is original because of the adopted perspective – rarely is the institutional economics base for sharing economy analysis, still, it offers important insights. The analysis indicates important changes in institutions connected with sharing economy and points which of them are crucial for its further development. Moreover, it stresses the role of informal institutions which despite growing importance are often excluded from the analysis.


Placement of regenerators in optical networks has attracted the attention of recent research works in optical networks. In this problem, we are given a network with an underlying topology of a graph G and with a set of requests that correspond to paths in G. There is a need to put a regenerator every certain distance, because of a decrease in the power of the signal. In this paper, we investigate the problem of minimizing the number of locations to place the regenerators. We present analytical results regarding the complexity of this problem, in four cases, depending on whether or not there is a bound on the number of regenerators at each node, and depending on whether or not the routing is given or only the requests are given (and part of the solution is also to determine the actual routing). These results include polynomial time algorithms, NP-completeness results, approximation algorithms, and inapproximability results.


One hundred and twenty Bos indicus cross steers were allocated to 3 treatments (good, mixed and poor) on the basis of flight speed, as a measure of cattle temperament. The cattle were lot-fed for 100 days and data collected at intervals on their temperament (flight speeds) and productivity (liveweight changes, body condition, pen feed intakes) during this time. After slaughter, data were collected on carcass traits and meat quality. Eating-quality attributes were measured in meat samples from 22 carcasses from each treatment. Flight speeds were highly correlated across animals and within treatments, showed little change in variability over time and were highly repeatable. Flight speed indicated a slight deterioration in temperament with time in the feedlot until day 70, suggesting an increasing fearfulness in the steers. Differences in flight speeds between treatments were maintained throughout the feedlotting period; poor-temperament animals retained poor temperaments and good retained good. Flight speed was correlated with measures of production, and flight speed measured at feedlot induction was a predictor of performance. Correlations and treatment effects showed that cattle with poor temperaments had poorer average daily gains, feed conversion efficiencies, body conditions and dressing percentages compared with those with good temperaments. Reduced performance in the poor-temperament animals may have resulted from their fearfulness and state of high arousal. Treatment (temperament grouping) did not influence carcass traits, but there was evidence of lower initial pH levels and indicators of 'heat-shortening' in the meat of steers with poor temperament compared with those with good temperament. These findings suggest that the poor temperament steers were more susceptible to pre-slaughter stressors than the good temperament animals. However, the meat quality differences were not detected in eating-quality measurements.


A gender revolution has transformed the institution of asylum in the United States. The introduction of gender-based persecution laws and policies in the past decade ushered in a new era of politics in asylum decisions. Facilitated by recent laws and policies, immigrant women may gain asylum and legal entry into the U.S. by claiming they are persecuted based on factors such as female circumcision, honor killings, domestic violence, coercive family planning, forced marriage, or repressive social norms. Immigrant advocates have championed these laws and policies as reflecting the canonical feminist declaration that women's rights are human rights. The legal recognition that certain human rights abuses are gendered because they overwhelmingly happen to women has emerged as the benchmark for gendered equality in asylum adjudication. However, legal recognition of gender-related persecution is only half the story. A study of the implementation of gender-based persecution laws and policies makes visible certain assumptions about femininity, masculinity, sexuality, race, class, and nation in which asylum seekers, immigration attorneys, service providers, immigration judges, and asylum officers engage when making, preparing, and adjudicating asylum claims. In this dissertation, I offer empirical evidence of how gender structures the legal institution of asylum in the United States.


The Chinese complementary schools for overseas-born ethnic Chinese children provide an interesting, complex and forever changing context where the teaching and learning of the Chinese language, especially literacy, is intertwined with the teaching and learning of Chinese cultural values and ideologies. These values and ideologies, however, are not static but changing across the generations and with the on-going process of transnational movement and globalization. This article focuses on classroom interactions in Chinese complementary schools in Britain and aims to show how the teachers use the opportunity of language and literacy teaching to pass on cultural values and ideologies to the pupils, how the pupils react to this kind of socializational teaching and how the teachers and the pupils negotiate identities through the process of language and literacy learning. The findings of the study have implications for both policy and practice regarding the education and development of multilingual children.


In this study, the etherification reaction of glycerol (G) with tert-butyl alcohol (TBA) was investigated for the production of high quality transportation fuel additives. The reaction was carried out in liquid phase, in a continuous flow reactor in the presence of various solid acid catalysts. Activities of acidic resin catalysts, such as Amberlyst-15 (A-15), Amberlyst-16 (A-16) and Amberlyst-35 (A-35), Nafion-SAC-13 and ?-alumina were compared. Significant increase in conversion was observed with an increase in temperature. Amberlyst 15 showed the highest activity at about 110°C, giving glycerol conversion values of about 0.5 at a space time of 18 g cm-3 s. However, A-16 gave higher di-ether selectivity values. Nafion-SAC-13 showed activity at higher temperatures, while the activity of ?-alumina was very low, even at 400°C.


Athletes sometimes become disenchanted with sport participation and stop competing at what might have been the pinnacle of their sport careers. Prior research has determined that athletes are likely to burnout if they are participating in sport for reasons other than sport attraction. However, prior research has not studied female athletes' comparative levels of burnout among various sports. The purpose of this study was to determine the level of burnout in female collegiate athletes based on their sport of choice. Participants were 108 female collegiate athletes at a Division I university in the Southeastern United States. Ages ranged from 19 to 24 (M= 19.8). Burnout was assessed by the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI). The instrument is divided into three subscales that include: Emotional Exhaustion (EE), Depersonalization (DP), and Personal Accomplishment (PA). MBI scores on the subscales were used to classify participants as (1) low burnout (2) moderate burnout, or (3) high level of burnout. Results indicated female basketball athletes had the highest level of burnout in the areas of EE (M=27.2) and DP (M=8.5) which are classified as high (1) for EE and moderate (2) for DP. The volleyball players had the lowest sense of PA (M= 37.5) from their sport which correlates with a high (3) level of burnout. Participants on the track and field team experienced the lowest level of EE (M=12.7) which is classified as low burnout (1). Softball experienced the lowest level of DP (M=3.4) which is also classified as low (1), and tennis had the highest sense of PA (M=26.3) which means they were classified as having a low (1) level of burnout. Potential and current student athletes must be better educated in the area of stress and stress management. Further, they need to be better prepared for the demands of Division I collegiate athletics. Moreover, collegiate athletic departments should examine the programs offered to freshman athletes to include a course(s)/presentation(s) on stress and stress management to reduce the potential effects of burnout and avoid athletes quitting their sport. Finally, these efforts might be more intense in those sports where athletes indicated higher levels of burnout.


Bayes' theorem is 250 years old this year. But did the Rev. Thomas Bayes actually devise it? Martyn Hooper presents the case for the extraordinary Richard Price, friend of US presidents, mentor, pamphleteer, economist, and above all preacher. And did Price develop Bayes' theorem in order to prove the existence of God?


Most speech analysis/synthesis systems are based on the basic physical model of speech production the acoustic tube model. There are two main drawbacks with current speech analysis methods. First, a common design paradigm seems to build a special-purpose signal-processing front-end followed by (when appropriate) a back-end based on probabilistic models. A difficulty is that most features are nonlinear operators of the speech waveform, whose statistical behavior is hard to be modeled. Second, different tasks of speech analysis are carried out separately. These practices are admittedly useful but not optimal due to the incomplete use of available information. These examinations motivate us to directly model the spectrogram and to integrate together the three fundamental speech parameters the pitch, energy and spectral envelope. We successfully devise such a model called probabilistic acoustic tube (PAT) model. The integration is performed in a principled manner with explicit physical meaning. We demonstrate the capability of PAT for a number of speech analysis/synthesis tasks, such as pitch tracking under both clean and additive noise conditions, speech synthesis, and phoneme clustering.


textabstractIn this overview chapter, we will discuss the use of exponentially converging option pricing techniques for option valuation. We will focus on the pricing of European options, and they are the basic instruments within a calibration procedure when fitting the parameters in asset dynamics. The numerical solution is governed by the solution of the discounted expectation of the pay-off function. For the computation of the expectation, we require knowledge about the corresponding probability density function, which is typically not available for relevant stochastic asset price processes. Many publications regarding highly efficient pricing of these contracts are available, where computation often takes place in the Fourier space. Methods based on quadrature and the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) [1-3] and methods based on Fourier cosine expansions [4,5] have therefore been developed because for relevant log-asset price processes, the characteristic function appears to be available. The characteristic function is defined as the Fourier transform of the density function. Here, we wish to extend the overview by discussing the recently presented highly promising class of wavelet option pricing techniques, based on either B-splines or Shannon wavelets.


Abstract. Reliable estimates of extreme rainfall events are necessary for an accurate prediction of floods. Most of the global rainfall products are available at a coarse resolution, rendering them less desirable for extreme rainfall analysis. Therefore, regional mesoscale models such as the advanced research version of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model are often used to provide rainfall estimates at fine grid spacing. Modelling heavy rainfall events is an enduring challenge, as such events depend on multi-scale interactions, and the model configurations such as grid spacing, physical parameterization and initialization. With this background, the WRF model is implemented in this study to investigate the impact of different processes on extreme rainfall simulation, by considering a representative event that occurred during 15–18 June 2013 over the Ganga Basin in India, which is located at the foothills of the Himalayas. This event is simulated with ensembles involving four different microphysics (MP), two cumulus (CU) parameterizations, two planetary boundary layers (PBLs) and two land surface physics options, as well as different resolutions (grid spacing) within the WRF model. The simulated rainfall is evaluated against the observations from 18 rain gauges and the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission Multi-Satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA) 3B42RT version 7 data. From the analysis, it should be noted that the choice of MP scheme influences the spatial pattern of rainfall, while the choice of PBL and CU parameterizations influences the magnitude of rainfall in the model simulations. Further, the WRF run with Goddard MP, Mellor–Yamada–Janjic PBL and Betts–Miller–Janjic CU scheme is found to perform best in simulating this heavy rain event. The selected configuration is evaluated for several heavy to extremely heavy rainfall events that occurred across different months of the monsoon season in the region. The model performance improved through incorporation of detailed land surface processes involving prognostic soil moisture evolution in Noah scheme compared to the simple Slab model. To analyse the effect of model grid spacing, two sets of downscaling ratios – (i) 1 : 3, global to regional (G2R) scale and (ii) 1 : 9, global to convection-permitting scale (G2C) – are employed. Results indicate that a higher downscaling ratio (G2C) causes higher variability and consequently large errors in the simulations. Therefore, G2R is adopted as a suitable choice for simulating heavy rainfall event in the present case study. Further, the WRF-simulated rainfall is found to exhibit less bias when compared with the NCEP FiNaL (FNL) reanalysis data.


Metabolic modeling has proven to be a valuable tool in the investigation of cellular physiology, especially in the post-genomic era. However, the sheer complexity of even the simplest metabolic networks obstructs the exact determination of intracellular states, despite the ample supply of –omics data. To overcome this difficulty we attempt to postulate simplifying assumptions, relevant to the conditions and available data. Identifying the gamut of possible feasible states allows us to query for factors that are crucial in interpreting the observed physiology or in developing metabolic engineering strategies. Towards this end, we developed a framework called Flux Directionality Profile Analysis (FDPA) that enables both the complete enumeration and the characterization of all possible intracellular flux states. The proposed methodology allows for the seamless incorporation of available experimental data, when available, such as reaction fluxes, uptake rates, intra- and extra-cellular metabolite concentration measurements and splitting ratios at metabolic branching points. Additionally, FDPA employs a set of speculative metabolic objectives in order to rank the thermodynamically feasible intracellular flux states based on their performance against one (or more) of these objectives. We are therefore able to isolate internal flux states that are both thermodynamically consistent and relevant to the observed physiology.


An algorithm for parallel volume rendering on general-purpose workstations connected to a local area network (LAN) is presented. The algorithm is based on an efficient scan-line algorithm for volume rendering of irregular meshes. This algorithm computes images by intersecting the mesh with successive planes defined through each scan line and perpendicular to the screen. These planes are called scan planes. Image coherency from one scan plane to the next, and within each scan plane, speeds up image computation. The proposed algorithm is a modified version of the scan-line algorithm, suitable for parallelization and for handling large data sets efficiently. Based on an efficiency analysis of this version, it is concluded that minimal additional computing and communication are required if each processor is given the task of computing sequences of successive lines in the image. Ways of achieving good load balancing on a group of heterogeneous workstations that have arbitrary loads by other users are suggested.<<ETX>>


This book re-examines the rationale for public policy, concluding that the prevailing 'public knowledge' model is evolving towards a networked or distributed model of knowledge production and use in which public and private institutions play complementary roles. It provides a set of tools and models to assess the impact of the new network model of funding and governance, and argues that governments need to adapt their funding and administrative priorities and procedures to support the emergence and healthy growth of research networks. The book goes on to explain that interdependencies and complementarities in the production and distribution of knowledge require a new and more contextual, flexible and complex approach to government funding, monitoring and assessment.


Solanum betaceum is a crop of great economic importance in Ecuador. Unfortunately, it is susceptible to diverse pathologies caused by bacteria, fungi, insects and nematodes. Several pesticides are currently used to prevent the plagues but their intensive and/or incorrect use can affect the development of the plants as well as the local environment. The aim of this paper is to investigate the morphological changes on both the internal and external structure of the of Solanum betaceum pollen grains caused by three types of pesticides: chemical, biological and ecological. By using Transmission and Scanning Electron Microscopy, we have studied over 140 pollen grains exposed to these different pesticides. The results demonstrate that the pesticides influence the morphology and structure of the pollen grains, thus probably affecting the plant reproductive process.


The meaning of broadband connection is in continuous evolution. FTTH and ever-improving ADSL technologies are capable of offering to the final residential user a very-high-performance access network connection to the main door of our homes. At the same time, high-definition and interactive video will require higher and higher bit rates inside the home. Both drivers lead to the requirement for high-quality networking also inside homes, to avoid a somehow ironic, but indeed possible situation in which the home area network becomes the actual bottleneck of the full system. In this article we review the requirements for next-generation HANs and show that this environment may end up taking advantage of optical cabling solutions as an alternative to more traditional copper or pure wireless approaches.


Several binuclear cobalt(III) complexes that mimic Ru-based water oxidation catalysts have been prepared. The initial complexes exhibited thermodynamic instability and kinetic lability that complicated efforts to use these cobalt complexes as electrocatalysts for water oxidation. Binuclear cobalt(III) complexes supported by a bridging bispyridylpyrazolate (bpp) ligand overcome these limitations. Two bpp-ligated dicobalt(III)-peroxo complexes were prepared and structurally characterized, and electrochemical investigation of these complexes supports their ability to serve as molecular electrocatalysts for water oxidation under acidic conditions (pH 2.1).


Introduction Evidence to guide the selection of techniques for colonoscopic polypectomy remains limited and confusing. Limited evidence suggests that monopolar hot biopsy is associated with an increased risk of postpolypectomy bleeding1 and an increased risk of perforation when used in the right colon.2 Although no clear consensus exists on this topic, a guidance statement endorsed by the British Society of Gastroenterology3 recommended the use of cold snare for small sessile polyps in the right colon, with hot snare used only for larger sessile polyps or pedunculated polyps. The American Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy and the American College of Gastroenterologists have also advised caution in the use of hot biopsy in the right colon.4 5 Nevertheless, clinical practice remains varied and inconsistent.6 Methods The authors interrogated the electronic endoscopy database in our large teaching hospital for information about all colonoscopies performed during a 12-month period. Whenever a polypectomy was recorded, information regarding polyp size, location and method of removal was correlated with histological results and records of complications. Hot biopsies were performed using standardised diathermy settings (Erbe ICC 200, forced coagulation 30 W). Results A total of 3925 colonoscopies were performed during the 12-month period by 44 endoscopists, including 31 trainees. At least one polypectomy was performed in 1399 patients (36%), and a total of 1463 adenomas were removed from 851 patients (overall adenoma detection rate 21.6%). 1255 polypectomies were performed using hot biopsy; 422 (34%) of these were in the right colon, of which 235 were adenomas and 187 hyperplastic polyps. Removal by hot biopsy accounted for 38% of all right sided adenomas. A single perforation occurred in this series, during resection of an 18 mm pedunculated sigmoid polyp. There were no complications with hot biopsy, giving a perforation rate for hot biopsy in the right colon of 0% (95% CI 0% to 0.66%). Conclusion Despite fears about safety, hot biopsy in the right colon continues to be frequently practiced. This was associated with no perforations in this large series. However, 44% of lesions removed from the right colon by this technique were hyperplastic polyps. With such a high rate of non-neoplastic lesions, any technique associated with even a small increased risk of perforation requires careful justification. Further data are required to define the safety and role of hot biopsy in the right colon.