Object recognition using image-set or video sequence as input tends to be more robust since image-set or video sequence provides much more information than single snap-shot about the variability in the appearance of the target subject. Constrained Mutual Subspace Method (CMSM) is one of the state-of-the-art algorithms for imageset based object recognition by first projecting the image-set patterns onto the so-called generalized difference subspace then classifying based on the principal angle based mutual subspace distance. By treating the subspace bases for each image-set patterns as basic elements in the grassmann manifold, this paper presents a framework for robust image-set based recognition by CMSM-based ensemble learning in a boosting way. The proposed Boosting Constrained Mutual Subspace Method(BCMSM) improves the original CMSM in the following ways: a) The proposed BCMSM algorithm is insensitive to the dimension of the generalized differnce subspace while the performance of the original CMSM algorithm is quite dependent on the dimension and the selecting of optimum choice is quite empirical and case-dependent; b) By taking advantage of both boosting and CMSM techniques, the generalization ability is improved and much higher classification performance can be achieved. Extensive experiments on real-life data sets (two face recognition tasks and one 3D object category classification task) show that the proposed method outperforms the previous state-of-the-art algorithms greatly in terms of classification accuracy.


Reliability block diagram (RBD) is a well-known, high-level abstract modeling method for calculating systems reliability. Increasing redundancy is the most important way for increasing Fault-tolerance and reliability of dependable systems. K-out-of-N (KooN) is one of the known redundancy models. The redundancy causes repeated events and increases the complexity of the computing system's reliability, and researchers use techniques like factorization to overcome it. Current methods lead to the cumbersome formula that needs a lot of simplification to change in the form of Sum of the Products (SoP) in terms of reliabilities of its constituting components. In This paper, a technique for extracting simple formula for calculating the KooN system's reliability in SoP form using the Venn diagram is presented. Then, the shortcoming of using the Venn diagram that is masking some joints events in the case of a large number of independent components is explained. We proposed the replacement of Lattice instead of Venn diagrams to overcome this weakness. Then, the Lattice of reliabilities that is dual of power set Lattice of components is introduced. Using the basic properties of Lattice of reliabilities and their inclusion relationships, we propose an algorithm for driving a general formula of the KooN system's reliability in SoP form. The proposed algorithm gives the SoP formula coefficients by computing elements of the main diagonal and elements below it in a squared matrix. The computational and space complexity of the proposed algorithm is <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\theta (\left ({n-k }\right)^{2}/2)$ </tex-math></inline-formula> that <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$n$ </tex-math></inline-formula> is the number of different components and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$k$ </tex-math></inline-formula> denotes the number of functioning components. A lemma and a theorem are defined and proved as a basis of the proposed general formula for computing coefficients of the SoP formula of the KooN system. Computational and space complexity of computing all of the coefficients of reliability formula of KooN system using this formula reduced to <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\theta (n-k)$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. The proposed formula is simple and is in the form of SoP, and its computation is less error-prone.


Foldios are foldable interactive objects with embedded input sensing and output capabilities. Foldios combine the advantages of folding for thin, lightweight and shape-changing objects with the strengths of thin-film printed electronics for embedded sensing and output. To enable designers and end-users to create highly custom interactive foldable objects, we contribute a new design and fabrication approach. It makes it possible to design the foldable object in a standard 3D environment and to easily add interactive high-level controls, eliminating the need to manually design a fold pattern and low-level circuits for printed electronics. Second, we contribute a set of printable user interface controls for touch input and display output on folded objects. Moreover, we contribute controls for sensing and actuation of shape-changeable objects. We demonstrate the versatility of the approach with a variety of interactive objects that have been fabricated with this framework.


Impact of Economic Growth on Income Inequality: A Regional Perspective Shibalee Majumdar and Mark Partridge Egalitarianism refers to the doctrine of the equality of mankind and the desirability of political, economic and social equality. In this paper, we are going to refer to the concept of economic equality. Theory shows that income inequality is a condition that prevails along with economic growth. According to the utilitarian view, income inequality must exist along with economic growth in order to maximize social welfare. This is in sharp contrast to the egalitarian view according to which, all members of the society should have equal access to all economic resources in terms of economic power, wealth and contribution. Kuznets (1955) introduced the inverted U-shaped Kuznets curve that showed that in an economic system, at the initial level of low economic growth, income inequality is low and as growth occurs, income inequality increases till a threshold, after which, income inequality decreases with increased economic growth. In the United States, income inequality remained stable till the 1970s but then began to increase as earnings increased. This has been called the great U-turn by Harris, et. al (1986). Partridge et. al (1996) notes that while Kuznets held the manufacturing sector as the main driver of the economic growth, the current economic growth is being spearheaded by the services sector. While one school of research shows how income inequality might harm economic growth, empirical studies show that in the United States, a positive linkage between economic growth and income inequality has existed since the 1970s. The causality between economic growth and income inequality is an important one. The relationship may differ depending on regions or size of an economy. Fallah and Partridge (2007) show that the impact of inequality on economic growth is opposite in rural and urban settings. Most of the research dealing with the inequality-growth relationship has either looked at the impact of inequality on economic growth (Fallah and Partridge, 2007) or the impact of various socio-economic variables on inequality. Though there has been some research on finding out the causality between economic growth and wage inequality, research assessing whether economic growth affects income inequality, and that too whether the degree of the impact varies between rural and urban regions, are few. The aim of this paper is to see how economic growth affects income inequality. Does improved economic growth lead to a more redistributive system of social welfare or does the polarization become more acute? Does the impact of economic growth on income inequality differ between metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas? Does inequality vary depending on the nature of the agglomeration or the demographic composition of a region? The empirical equation is: ginicsy = gcsy-1 + educsy + popcsy + lcsy + ethcsy + immigcsy + strcsy + σcs + σy + e where, gini denotes the gini coefficient, g denotes per capita income, edu denotes educational attainment, pop denotes population density, l denotes labour market size, eth denotes ethnic diversity, immig denotes international immigration, str denotes the structural change index, σcs denotes state fixed effects and σy denotes time fixed effects. The subscripts c, s and y denotes county, state and year, respectively. A lagged value of the per capita income is used in order to avoid any endogeneity issues. The analysis for this paper will be done at the county-level. For the dependant variable and all explanatory variables except the per capita income, a panel will be constructed using county-level data for two decades, 1990 and 2000. The gini coefficient will be calculated using the income data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Data on per capita income, educational attainment, population density and international migration can be obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau. The ethnic diversity measure will be calculated using the population data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The structural change index will be calculated by using data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Regional Economic Information System. The aim of the paper is to find out whether per capita income (representing economic growth) has an impact on the gini coefficient (representing income inequality), and to show whether this impact varies between rural and urban areas. The expected results are as follows. Economic growth may have a negative impact on income inequality since economic growth is often positively associated with higher investments, higher employment-generating processes and higher employment, hence giving greater access to jobs and income to a larger number of people. The degree of the impact may vary between rural and urban areas because of the following reasons. A higher population density in the urban area may lead to greater job competition and hence lead to lower access to jobs than in rural areas. International immigration is usually higher in urban areas than in rural areas. The greater influx of immigrants, as well as often seen, the willingness of the immigrants to work at lower wages may lead to lower access to jobs for the locals. This should hold true for the low-skilled jobs. For the high-skilled jobs on the other hand, educational attainment of the people will play a more important role on their ability to get jobs in the urban areas than in the rural areas. However, growth may reduce income inequality in the urban areas because higher population density results in more personal contacts, better networking and access to information, and hence more opportunities to access more and better jobs. If the results show that economic growth has a negative impact on income inequality, it will be possible to comment on the causality of the inequality-growth relationship. More so, if it is seen that economic growth has a stronger impact in decreasing income inequality in the urban areas than in the rural areas, it will show that the higher wages and more diverse job opportunities in the urban areas have a greater spillover effect than in the rural areas. The policy implication such a result may have is that higher investments will have to be made in educational and vocational training in order to generate a stream of skilled labourers, which in turn will add to economic growth and thus will lead to lower income inequality and better social cohesion.


Throughout history, societies have been predicated on ready access to sources of drinking water, whether in the cisterns of Masada high above the Dead Sea, the graceful aqueducts carrying water into Rome, or the sacred Aboriginal water holes in Australia's outback. But access is not enough. The water has to be safe to drink. And this presupposes a deceptively simple question - how do we know what "safe" water is? In 21st century America, the answer seems simple - government experts and scientists tell us. We take for granted that our tap water is subject to exacting chemical and biological analyzes. The name of the relevant federal law - The Safe Drinking Water Act - says it all. Yet, in historical terms, the very idea of the need to conduct detailed chemical and biological analyzes, much less even appreciating why we should care about drinking water's invisible contents, is still stunningly novel. The germ theory of disease has only been around for about 150 years, a recent development compared to the history of human settlement. And, even today, legitimate questions are being asked about our drinking water. Are the standards stringent enough? Does the infrastructure delivering our water meet these standards? How can we be sure we are even regulating the right substances? This article explores how societies through history have answered the timeless question, "Is it safe to drink the water?" Our technical understanding of water safety is more sophisticated than ever before, but a society's understanding and regulation of drinking water has never been a purely technical matter. While the Safe Drinking Water Act may look dramatically different than the laws and norms relied on by other societies and in other times, they share far more similarities than differences. Norms and values shape our management of safe drinking water just as surely as do chemical assays. The fundamental problem, as we shall see, is that no source of water can ever be safe in completely objective terms, either today or two hundred years from now. Because of the universality of this challenge, because safety is an eternally moving target, one can take valuable lessons from the historical record. The article explores how societies have changed their conception of safe drinking water through time, shifting their behavior, governance and laws as a result, and what this means for us today.


Objective: To explore the possible ameliorative effect of valproic acid on the experimental model of skin fibrosis induced by bleomycin. Materials and Methods: Forty male BALB/c mice were divided into four equal groups as follows: control group, bleomycin group, bleomycin + Valproic acid group, and Valproic acid group. Mice were assessed for their body weight every 3 days throughout the whole study. Skin tissues were used to evaluate the oxidative stress parameters, transforming growth factor beta 1 (TGF-β1), tumor necrosis factor alpha, interleukin 15, and mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR). Skin fibrosis was evaluated by measuring dermal thickness and staining the skin tissues with Masson trichrome stain. Furthermore, the skin tissues were immunostained with alpha smooth muscle actin (α-SMA). Results: Administration of Valproic acid to bleomycin-treated mice resulted in the restoration of the body weight with significant decrease in the dermal thickness, amelioration of oxidative stress, suppression of TGF-β1 and mTOR expression, and significant reduction of the percentage of α-SMA immunostaining and the proinflammatory cytokine levels compared to mice treated with bleomycin alone. Conclusion: Valproic acid has an antifibrotic effect on skin fibrosis which may represent a beneficial therapeutic modality for the management of scleroderma.


This is the second of a two-part report on the the key findings and conclusions of a joint fact-finding mission by PANAP and APN in May 2016 in the Occupied West Bank on the human rights implications of the Israeli illegal production, trade and dumping of pesticides. This report explains how human rights violations and threats to Palestinian food sovereignty are perpetrated in the context of the Israeli military border control and illegal occupation, in which Palestinian agriculture is embedded.

To access the first part of this report, please go to http://library.ipamglobal.org/jspui/handle/ipamlibrary/889


Gold farming and real money trade refer to a set of illicit practices in massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) whereby players accumulate virtual resources to sell for "real world" money. Prior work has examined trade relationships formed by gold farmers but not the trust relationships which exist between members of these organizations. We adopt a hypergraph approach to model the multi-modal relationships of gold farmers granting other players permission to use and modify objects they own. We argue these permissions reflect underlying trust relationships which can be analyzed using network analysis methods. We compare farmers' trust networks to the trust networks of both unidentified farmers and typical players. Our results demonstrate that gold farmers' networks are different from trust networks of normal players whereby farmers trust highly-central non-farmer players but not each other. These findings have implications for augmenting detection methods and re-evaluating theories of clandestine behavior.


Summary SonarQube in Action shows developers how to use the SonarQube platform to help them continuously improve their source code. The book presents SonarQube's core Seven Axes of Quality: design/architecture, duplications, comments, unit tests, complexity, potential bugs, and coding rules. You'll find simple, easy-to-follow discussion and examples as you learn to integrate SonarQube into your development process. About the Technology SonarQube is a powerful open source tool for continuous inspection, a process that makes code quality analysis and reporting an integral part of the development lifecycle. Its unique dashboards, rule-based defect analysis, and tight build integration result in improved code quality without disruption to developer workflow. It supports many languages, including Java, C, C++, C#, PHP, and JavaScript. About the Book SonarQube in Action teaches you how to effectively use SonarQube following the continuous inspection model. This practical book systematically explores SonarQube's core Seven Axes of Quality (design, duplications, comments, unit tests, complexity, potential bugs, and coding rules). With well-chosen examples, it helps you learn to use SonarQube's review functionality and IDE integration to implement continuous inspection best practices in your own quality management process. The book's Java-based examples translate easily to other development languages. No prior experience with SonarQube or continuous delivery practice is assumed Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. What's InsideGather meaningful quality metrics Integrate with Ant, Maven, and Jenkins Write your own plugins Master the art of continuous inspectionAbout the Authors Ann Campbellb and Patroklos Papapetrou are experienced developers and team leaders. Both actively contribute to the SonarQube community. Table of ContentsPART 1 WHAT THE NUMBERS ARE TELLING YOU An introduction to SonarQubeIssues and coding standardsEnsuring that your code is doing things rightWorking with duplicate codeOptimizing source code documentationKeeping your source code files elegantImproving your application designPART 2 SETTLING IN WITH SONARQUBE Planning a strategy and expanding your insightContinuous Inspection with SonarQubeLetting SonarQube drive code reviewsIDE integrationPART 3 ADMINISTERING AND EXTENDING Security: users, groups, and roles Rule profile administration Making SonarQube fit your needsManaging your projectsWriting your own plugins


High-resolution infrared absorption spectroscopy of acetylene gas is demonstrated in dispersion-engineered photonic crystal waveguides under slow light propagation. Individual absorption profiles are obtained for both TE and TM polarizations for group indices ranging from 1.5 to 6.7. Experimental enhancement factors of 0.31 and 1.00 are obtained for TE and TM polarization, respectively, and are confirmed by time-domain simulations. We experimentally demonstrate that molecular absorption is a function of the electric field distribution outside the photonic crystal slab and the group index under structural slow-light illumination.


On the scaffold: Grafting protein epitopes onto conformationally designed scaffolds represents a very promising approach to protein ligand design, with potential applications in many areas of chemical biology and molecular medicine. The highlighted article describes the design and anticancer activity of novel p53/MDM2 inhibitors built upon a scorpion toxin scaffold. Other approaches to protein epitope mimetics are also briefly discussed.


Background: Pre-eclampsia (PE) is an idiopathic specific syndrome that affects every organ system during pregnancy . It is a leading cause of both fetal and maternal morbidity and mortality worldwide. Duration: From April - December 2017. Patients and methods: The study included 90 pregnant women, who were divided into three groups. 30 normotensive women (control), 30 women with mild pre-eclampsia and last 30 were with severe pre-eclampsia. Results: Plasma level of Copeptin were 6.87 pmol/l in normotensive pregnant group, 51.70 pmol/l in mild pre-eclamptic group and 54.17 pmol/l in severe pre-eclamptic group (p-value<0.05). Copeptin was significantly elevated in pre-eclamptic subjects compared with controls and in severe pre-eclamptic group compared with mild ones. Assessing the diagnostic property of Copeptin for PE, (2) still births were recorded in severe PE, while no still births in mild PE and controls. Copeptin levels in pre-eclamptic patients with adverse neonatal outcomes as low birth weight, admission to NICU were significantly higher than the normotensive group. Conclusion: This research suggest that increased maternal levels of Copeptin may be involved in the pathogenesis of pre-eclampsia and it may be useful in the assessment of the severity of the disease in the third trimester and this associated with adverse perinatal outcomes.


Coupling of local chemical processes over the globe by atmospheric transport leads to the existence of chemical modes that are a fundamental characterization of global atmospheric chemistry and provide a true description of the atmospheric response to small changes in trace-gas emissions. Such coupled chemistry-transport modes in global tropospheric chemistry are an inherent feature of three-dimensional chemical transport models (CTMs). In CTMs these modes cannot be solved for explicitly, as they have been for the case of low-order, fully linearized systems, but they are investigated here through a series of perturbation experiments. When using meteorological fields that recycle every year, the long-lived modes are readily seen as seasonal decay patterns that e-fold each year. An important application of chemical modes is the study of how emissions of CO and NO excite perturbations to the CH4-1ike mode, the longest-lived (primary) mode found in tropospheric hemistry (i.e., with fixed stratospheric omposition). Perturbation experiments are conducted with the University of California, Irvine, three-dimensional tropospheric CTM to identify this primary tropospheric mode and to determine its five-dimensional structure. The previous demonstrations of a long-lived chemical mode with 1.5 times the lifetime of CH4 are corroborated. The ability of emissions of CO and NO to excite this mode is then demonstrated, and a quantitative evaluation of the indirect effect of CO emissions on the greenhouse gases CH4 and tropospheric O• is made, showing that 100 kg of CO is equivalent to 5-6 kg of CH4 emissions.


Countries across the world attend to the phenomenon of teen motherhood in varying ways and from varying points of emphases. My research focused on teen motherhood in the Jamaican context, where teen pregnancy is perceived to be a social problem. In 1978, the Jamaican Government initiated the Women's Centre Programme for Adolescent Mothers. The Programme intervention seeks to provide continued education for teen mothers during their pregnancy, and to return them to the formal school system, subsequent to the birth of their babies. Previous research found that a significant number of teen mothers in Jamaica do not complete their secondary education after their return to school. My research contended that, with the high cost of executing the Programme, and with the benefits to be derived from secondary education, every effort should be made to ensure that the teen mothers complete their secondary education. My research therefore sought to identify the factors that facilitate or frustrate the completion of secondary education for teen mothers who enroll in the Programme and return to the formal school system. My research found that completion was facilitated by: preparation to return to school, internal fortitude, post-placement monitoring, familial support, as well as institutional support. Completion was frustrated by: inadequate preparation to return to school, insufficient post-placement monitoring, inadequate coping skills, little or no familial support, financial constraints, domestic challenges, and a second pregnancy. My research also found a disparity between the 'pre-placement' and 'post-placement' components of the intervention. In a timely way, my research will help to meet national and international objectives: in particular, the Millennium Development Goals; Vision 2030 Jamaica. My research amplifies the voice of teen mothers in Jamaica; it provides a platform from which teen mothers may tell their own stories; it should reconfigure the national posture toward teen mothers. The findings of my research should: offer helpful insights into the experiences of teen mothers who are returned to school; add to the body of knowledge surrounding teen motherhood; and provoke further study into the phenomenon, not just in Jamaica but also in the Caribbean at large.


Between 1948 and 1955, nearly two-thirds of all American families bought a television set--and a revolution in social life and popular culture was launched. In this fascinating book, Lynn Spigel chronicles the enormous impact of television in the formative years of the new medium: how, over the course of a single decade, television became an intimate part of everyday life. What did Americans expect from it? What effects did the new daily ritual of watching television have on children? Was television welcomed as an unprecedented "window on the world, " or as a "one-eyed monster" that would disrupt households and corrupt children? Drawing on an ambitious array of unconventional sources, from sitcom scripts to articles and advertisements in women's magazines, Spigel offers the fullest available account of the popular response to television in the postwar years. She chronicles the role of television as a focus for evolving debates on issues ranging from the ideal of the perfect family and changes in women's role within the household to new uses of domestic space. The arrival of television did more than turn the living room into a private theater: it offered a national stage on which to play out and resolve conflicts about the way Americans should live. Spigel chronicles this lively and contentious debate as it took place in the popular media. Of particular interest is her treatment of the way in which the phenomenon of television itself was constantly deliberated--from how programs should be watched to where the set was placed to whether Mom, Dad, or kids should control the dial. "Make Room for TV" combines a powerful analysis of the growth of electronic culture with a nuancedsocial history of family life in postwar America, offering a provocative glimpse of the way television became the mirror of so many of America's hopes and fears and dreams.


In recent years, a broad academic consensus has arisen around the use of rational expectations sticky-price models to capture inflation dynamics. These models are seen as providing an empirically reasonable characterization of observed inflation behavior once suitable measures of the output gap are chosen; and, moreover, are perceived to be robust to the Lucas critique in a way that earlier econometric models of inflation are not. We review the principal conclusions of this literature concerning: 1) the ability of these models to fit the data; 2) the importance of rational forward-looking expectations in price setting; and 3) the appropriate measure of inflationary pressures. We argue that existing rational expectations sticky-price models fail to provide a useful empirical description of the inflation process, especially relative to traditional econometric Phillips curves of the sort commonly employed for policy analysis and forecasting.


The wide diffusion of cheap, small, and portable sensors integrated in an unprecedented large variety of devices and the availability of almost ubiquitous Internet connectivity make it possible to collect an unprecedented amount of real time information about the environment we live in. These data streams, if properly and timely analyzed, can be exploited to build new intelligent and pervasive services that have the potential of improving people's quality of life in a variety of cross concerning domains such as entertainment, health-care, or energy management. The large heterogeneity of application domains, however, calls for a middleware-level infrastructure that can effectively support their different quality requirements.

In this thesis we study the challenges related to the provisioning of differentiated quality-of-service (QoS) during the processing of data streams produced in pervasive environments. We analyze the trade-offs between guaranteed quality, cost, and scalability in streams distribution and processing by surveying existing state-of-the-art solutions and identifying and exploring their weaknesses. We propose an original model for QoS-centric distributed stream processing in data centers and we present Quasit, its prototype implementation offering a scalable and extensible platform that can be used by researchers to implement and validate novel QoS-enforcement mechanisms. To support our study, we also explore an original class of weaker quality guarantees that can reduce costs when application semantics do not require strict quality enforcement. We validate the effectiveness of this idea in a practical use-case scenario that investigates partial fault-tolerance policies in stream processing by performing a large experimental study on the prototype of our novel LAAR dynamic replication technique.

Our modeling, prototyping, and experimental work demonstrates that, by providing data distribution and processing middleware with application-level knowledge of the different quality requirements associated to different pervasive data flows, it is possible to improve system scalability while reducing costs.


Lying on the border between eastern and western Christendom, Orthodox Karelia preserved its unique religious culture into the 19th and 20th centuries, when it was described and recorded by Finnish and Karelian folklore collectors. This colorful array of ritulas and beliefs involving nature spirits, saints, the dead, and pilgrimage to monasteries represented a unigue fusion of official Church ritual and doctrine and pre-Christian ethnic folk belief. This book undertakes a fascinating exploration into many aspects of Orthodox Karelian ritual life: beliefs in supernatural forces, folk models of illness, body concepts, divination, holy icons, the role of the ritual specialist and healer, the divide between nature and culture, images of forest, the cult of the dead, and the popular image of monasteries and holy hermits. It will appeal to anyone interested in popular religion, the cognitive study of religion, ritual studies, medical anthropology, and the folk traditions and symbolism of the Balto-Finnic peoples.


We study theoretically the effects of disorder on Bose–Einstein condensates (BEC) of bosonic triplon quasiparticles in doped dimerized quantum magnets. The condensation occurs in a magnetic field, where the concentration of bosons in the random potential is sufficient to form the condensate. The effect of doping is partly modeled by a δ-correlated distribution of impurities, which (i) leads to a uniform renormalization of the system parameters and (ii) produces disorder in the system with renormalized parameters. This approach can explain qualitatively the available magnetization data on the Tl1−xKxCuCl3 compound taken as an example. In addition to the magnetization, we found that the speed of the Bogoliubov mode has a maximum as a function of x. No evidence of the pure Bose glass phase has been found in the BEC regime.


Studies using arterial spin labelling (ASL) have shown that individuals with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) have decreased regional cerebral blood flow, which may be associated with changes in functional neural networks. Indeed, recent studies indicate disruptions in functional connectivity (FC) at rest in chronically fatigued patients including perturbations in static FC (sFC), that is average FC at rest between several brain regions subserving neurocognitive, motor and affect‐related networks. Whereas sFC often provides information of functional network reorganization in chronic illnesses, investigations of temporal changes in functional connectivity between multiple brain areas may shed light on the dynamic characteristics of brain network activation associated with such maladies. We used ASL fMRI in 19 patients with CFS and 15 healthy controls (HC) to examine both static and dynamic changes in FC among several a priori selected brain regions during a fatiguing cognitive task. HC showed greater increases than CFS in static FC (sFC) between insula and temporo‐occipital structures and between precuneus and thalamus/striatum. Furthermore, inferior frontal gyrus connectivity to cerebellum, occipital and temporal structures declined in HC but increased in CFS. Patients also showed lower dynamic FC (dFC) between hippocampus and right superior parietal lobule. Both sFC and dFC correlated with task‐related fatigue increases. These data provide the first evidence that perturbations in static and dynamic FC may underlie chronically fatigued patients' report of task‐induced fatigue. Further research will determine whether such changes in sFC and dFC are also characteristic for other fatigued individuals, including patients with chronic pain, cancer and multiple sclerosis.


Available findings have indicated that indoor air is more polluted than outdoor air and major polluting activity has been attributed to household cooking with traditional fuels. Cooking with traditional fuels leads to high levels of indoor air pollution (IAP), exposure of which increases the risk of various health problems. The purpose of this study is to estimate various diseases attributable to IAP in adult women who are highly exposed because of their household roles. This study is based on primary sources of data collected through questionnaire interviews with women respondents belonging to different income categories from Aligarh city. The study investigates the major socio-economic factors. Exposure to indoor air pollutants was monitored with handy samplers. The major health problems and diseases associated with IAP as reported by respondents were skin burns/irritation, headache, lower respiratory infection, upper respiratory infection, asthma/tuberculosis, low birth weight, still birth, eye infection and lung cancer.


We experimentally investigate a repeated "inspection game" where, in the stage game, an employee can either work or shirk and an employer simultaneously chooses to inspect or not inspect. The unique equilibrium of the stage game is in mixed strategies with positive probabilities of shirking/inspecting while combined payoffs are maximized when the employee works and the employer does not inspect. We examine the effects of allowing the employer discretion to sanction or reward the employee after observing stage game payoffs. When employers have limited discretion, and can only apply sanctions and/or rewards following an inspection, we find that both instruments are equally effective in reducing shirking and increasing joint earnings. When employers have discretion to reward and/or sanction independently of whether they inspect we find that rewards are more effective than sanctions. In treatments where employers can combine sanctions and rewards employers rely mainly on rewards and outcomes closely resemble those of treatments where only rewards are possible.


On the generation of intrinsic electric dipole fields as the basis for the understanding of the morphogenesis of fluoroapatite-gelatine nano-composites Systems of ordered fractal aggregates of fluoroapatite-gelatine composites were chosen to mimic the growth of the biosystem apatite-collagen, which plays an important role in the human body as functional material of teeth and bones. The morphogenesis of these particles starts with elongated hexagonal prismatic seeds, followed by fractal branching and the development of growing dump-bell states. In order to gain insight into structure formation a lot of experimental investigations were performed [1]. High resolution TEM micrograph of the [001] zone of a composite seed showed also the presence of triple-helical macromolecules oriented along the c-axis [2]. The general principles of the dramatic selforganization process are not yet understood. It is proposed that they should be manifested already in the structure of the seed. Molecular dynamics simulations on the basis of atomistic resolution models offer some ideas for the organisation principle. However, the effort is typically immense and unacceptable for systems with increasing size. The simulation scenario has to be drastically simplified. Our approach starts from the assumption of the formation of an intrinsic electric field-built by the permanent dipoles contained in each individual composite crystal [3]-which takes over control of the aggregate-growth. This assumption is consistent with the observation of the biological significance of electric fields (pyro-piezo electricity) during bones formation. The simulation strategy can be described as follows. Adopting a coarse grained model, the first main task is the calculation of the electric field [4] (on the basis of given dipole arrangements). Each collagen molecule, is represented by two beads with opposite charges, in the hypothesis that all the C-termini and N-termini are completely deprotonated and protonated, respectively. All the beads are arranged in the seed according to the experimental geometrical parameters. A Monte Carlo simulation is performed in order to optimise the still missing geometrical parameters. According to the resulting force field lines, the orientation of the seeds belonging to the following generations can be predicted.


Deforestation and conversion of native habitats to exotic pasture and crops, plus inefficient agricultural and cattle management practices, are placing great pressures on natural resources in the Pantanal and Cerrado. To prevent further deforestation and protect biodiversity, areas already developed for farming and ranching need to be managed more efficiently and profitably, so that economic incentives for additional deforestation are minimized. To that end, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has been working with rural community partners to promote best-management practices that optimize profitability and efficient use of developed lands, while minimizing pressures on natural resources. To improve pasture conditions and reduce cattle impacts, we evaluated the use of rotational grazing as a management tool by monitoring native pasture and cattle within continuous and rotational grazing areas on a southern Pantanal ranch. Monthly comparisons of the grazing systems showed that forage dry mass in the rotational area was greater compared to that of continuously grazed areas. After 17 months, mean cattle weights were 15% heavier and pregnancy rates 22% higher for the herd using the rotational system. Based on forage allowance estimates, the potential stocking rates of the rotational system were 2 to 6 times higher than rates typical of continuously grazed areas in the Pantanal. Results support the use of rotational grazing in native pasture areas of the Pantanal.


In the last years, a large number of sport and fitness applications for smartphones were developed for supporting a healthy lifestyle by not only encouraging people to follow a balanced diet but also to motivate them to engage in physical activities. In particular running applications received increasing attention in research in recent years. In this paper, we analyze fourteen commercial running tracking applications concerning their functionalities to identify which motivation strategies are supported and also to identify possible directions for future research. For this purpose we concentrate on the three most popular motivation strategies that are usually used for sport and fitness applications: music and audio feedback, visualization, as well as competition and comparison with others.


The level of trust inherent in a society is important for a wide range of microeconomic and macroeconomic outcomes. This paper investigates how individuals' attitudes toward social and institutional trust are shaped by the political regime in which they live. The German reunification is a unique natural experiment that allows us to conduct such a study. Using data from the German General Social Survey (ALLBUS) and from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), we obtain two sets of results. On one side, we find that, shortly after reunification, East Germans displayed a significantly less trusting attitude than West Germans. This suggests a negative effect of communism in East Germany versus democracy in West Germany on social and institutional trust. However, the experience of democracy by East Germans since re- unification did not serve to increase levels of social trust significantly. In fact, we cannot reject the hypothesis that East Germans, after more than a decade of democracy, have the same levels of social distrust as shortly after the collapse of communism. In trying to understand the underlying causes, we show that the persistence of social distrust in the East can be explained by negative economic outcomes that many East Germans experienced in the post-reunification period. Our main conclusion is that democracy can foster trust in post-communist societies only when citizens' economic outcomes are right.


Available as a five-volume print set or online, The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration provides a complete exploration of the prominent themes, events, and theoretical underpinnings of the movements of human populations from prehistory to the present day. * The first comprehensive reference work on migration with over 500 entries arranged in a convenient A-Z format, and a prehistory section with over 50 thematically organized essays * Features contributions from a global and multi-disciplinary group of scholars in the field, including historians, classicists, anthropologists, social scientists, political scientists, economists, archaeologists, linguists, and geneticists * Provides thematic discussions of key topics, detailed migration histories, biographies, and more * Examines migration through world history, rather than from a western perspective * Includes illustrations, images, and charts, as well as 50 maps * Additional materials include a lexicon In addition, the online version will be hosted on Wiley Online Library with its intuitive navigation, enhanced discoverability, expanded functionalities, and a range of personalization and alerting options that will add value to your research. Features include: * Clean New Interface: A new design offers intuitive navigation and easy access to highly structured articles, references and supporting information * Intuitive Navigation: Offers browsing by table of contents or articles by topic, as well as the ability to expand and follow references and view author indexes * Enhanced Discoverability: An improved search engine delivers relevant and immediate results. Search for a keyword or phrase across the full text of a reference work, use wildcards and Boolean operators * Improved Alerting Tools: Email alerts and RSS feeds keep users updated with the latest published research


Objective Gestational Diabetes Mellitus (GDM) increases the risk of type 2 diabetes. A register can be used to follow-up high risk women for early intervention to prevent progression to type 2 diabetes. We evaluate the performance of the world's first national gestational diabetes register. Research design and methods Observational study that used data linkage to merge: (1) pathology data from the Australian states of Victoria (VIC) and South Australia (SA); (2) birth records from the Consultative Council on Obstetric and Paediatric Mortality and Morbidity (CCOPMM, VIC) and the South Australian Perinatal Statistics Collection (SAPSC, SA); (3) GDM and type 2 diabetes register data from the National Gestational Diabetes Register (NGDR). All pregnancies registered on CCOPMM and SAPSC for 2012 and 2013 were included–other data back to 2008 were used to support the analyses. Rates of screening for GDM, rates of registration on the NGDR, and rates of follow-up laboratory screening for type 2 diabetes are reported. Results Estimated GDM screening rates were 86% in SA and 97% in VIC. Rates of registration on the NGDR ranged from 73% in SA (2013) to 91% in VIC (2013). During the study period rates of screening at six weeks postpartum ranged from 43% in SA (2012) to 58% in VIC (2013). There was little evidence of recall letters resulting in screening 12 months follow-up. Conclusions GDM Screening and NGDR registration was effective in Australia. Recall by mail-out to young mothers and their GP's for type 2 diabetes follow-up testing proved ineffective.


On the web, media tend to be encoded in declarative formats, which facilitate accessibility, reuse, and transformation. Web applications, on the other hand, are created with more procedural technology and do not enjoy these benefits. In this thesis we examine how this can be fixed. We examine a small part of the problem space, adaptive time based applications, and investigate how we can extend existing declarative languages to facilitate these. We develop a mechanism, SMIL State, which enables SMIL to be used to create such applications, either by itself or integrated with other declarative components. The mechanism is then evaluated in its target application area. We then return to the larger problem area, and show that there are opportunities for applying similar techniques. This should eventually enable the creation of web applications that are more integrated in the web as a whole, by being searchable, accessible, transformable and reusable.


Abstract Since the early 1950s, the number of international measurement standards for anchoring stable isotope delta scales has mushroomed from 3 to more than 30, expanding to more than 25 chemical elements. With the development of new instrumentation, along with new and improved measurement procedures for studying naturally occurring isotopic abundance variations in natural and technical samples, the number of internationally distributed, secondary isotopic reference materials with a specified delta value has blossomed in the last six decades to more than 150 materials. More than half of these isotopic reference materials were produced for isotope-delta measurements of seven elements: H, Li, B, C, N, O, and S. The number of isotopic reference materials for other, heavier elements has grown considerably over the last decade. Nevertheless, even primary international measurement standards for isotope-delta measurements are still needed for some elements, including Mg, Fe, Te, Sb, Mo, and Ge. It is recommended that authors publish the delta values of internationally distributed, secondary isotopic reference materials that were used for anchoring their measurement results to the respective primary stable isotope scale.


This research investigated that do management styles have any significant effect over employee performance with HR being an intervening variable, a trend setter or culture molder in the organization and judging its impact over employee performance of Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) limited, which is an organization with diversified backgrounds and cultures of working people having different norms and values. Keeping the problem statement in the mind four hypotheses were proposed including autocratic and MBWA management styles. Culture has significant effect over employee performance with respect to autocratic and MBWA management styles. There is significant difference between employee perceived performance and HRIS employee performance record. The target population with sample size of 158 E-grade officer as respondents were provided questionnaire. Tests of Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) and Paired Sample T-test showed that two of proposed hypotheses were accepted and two were rejected. Hence, autocratic management styles do affect employee performance while management has to work hard to establish a good governing norms and values. This helpsto mold its new management styles and culture and set new image of the organization and generate productive results.


Abstract New acid-base polymer blends based on sulfonated poly(phenylene oxide) (SPPO) as the proton-conducting component and poly(ether imide) (PEI) as the basic component were considered for use as proton-exchange membranes (PEM). The obtained blend membranes had a higher thermal stability and a higher glass transition temperature (Tg) than the pure SPPO, as revealed by TGA and DSC. The morphology of blend membranes indicated that PEI was highly compatible with SPPO polymers because of the formation of hydrogen bonds between the sulfonated acid and PEI. Although the blend membranes exhibited a lower water uptake and lower proton conductivity than the pure SPPO membrane, the PEI component improved the dimensional stability, mechanic properties, and especially inhibited methanol permeation. The methanol permeability coefficient of the blend membrane with 30 wt.% PEI content was 9.68×10-8 cm2/s, which is lower than that of the pure SPPO and just one tenth of that of Nafion® 112. This considerable reduction in methanol crossover revealed the feasibility of the blend membranes as promising electrolytes for direct methanol fuel cells.


This study examines the effects of a home visiting program for first-time disadvantaged mothers on mother-child interactions. A sample of 109 dyads participating in the Pro Kind trial was videotaped during a 3-min typical play situation at the participants' homes when the child was aged 25 months, and assessed for orientation and contingency. The results show a significant improvement of the interactions between girls and their mothers, by increasing both the persistence of girls' positive behaviors (even in the absence of mothers' positive behaviors). No positive impacts were detected for the boys. These results have important implications for the analysis of mother-child interactions data and the design of home visiting programs.


This paper looks at the use of spectral evidence during the Salem witch trials and examines whether its use was legitimate and in accordance with the evidential standards of the time (1692). Ultimately this paper finds that the use of spectral evidence was legitimate as it followed the slim guidelines available at the time. The court followed a strong precedent and the limited statutory guidance and instructions that were available. However there was acknowledgement at the time that spectral evidence was limiting the rights of those accused and was leading to unjust convictions. As such these trials invoked an acknowledgement of more modern standards of evidence. Therefore spectral evidence was legitimately used given the guidelines of the time despite the unjust effect that it had.


SPSS 12 Made Simple provides a step-by-step coverage of every aspect of data analysis with SPSS from data entry to interpretation of the output. As well as advice on data entry and checking, there is guidance on the best ways of describing a data set and the choice of an appropriate statistical technique. Finally, the output is fully explained, with reference to fully annotated SPSS output. Extensive illustrations show exactly what is on the screen at every stage of the process, helping the reader to avoid common pitfalls and check their progress along the way. Most chapters end with practical exercises to illustrate the main points raised and allow the reader to test their understanding; but there is a final general revision section with further exercises on a range of topics. In view of the recommendations of the American Psychological Association, the book now contains advice on strength of effect, power and sample size. There is also guidance on how to report the results of statistical tests in journal articles. This new edition is written with the same clarity that has made the book such a success in the past. The initial chapters provide an introduction to the basics of SPSS, such as data entry, followed by more advanced techniques, such as sorting, case selection, aggregation and file merging. In these early chapters, the emphasis is upon checking the accuracy of data entry and exploring the data thoroughly before making any formal statistical tests. There is also extensive coverage of the powerful new graphics capabilities of SPSS 12. Each of the later chapters is devoted to a particular statistical technique. SPSS 12 Made Simple: *Covers a wide range of statistical tests including t-tests, ANOVA, correlation, regression, multi-way frequency analysis, discriminant analysis, logistic regression and factor analysis. *Shows you how to get as much out of your data as possible. *Gives advice (with appropriate cautions and caveats) on choosing a statistical test. *Makes extensive use of annotated screen snapshots of SPSS output, windows and dialog boxes. *Includes both chapter-specific and general exercises. *Has a comprehensive index.


Recent findings shed light on the steps underlying the evolution of vertebrate photoreceptors and retina. Vertebrate ciliary photoreceptors are not as wholly distinct from invertebrate rhabdomeric photoreceptors as is sometimes thought. Recent information on the phylogenies of ciliary and rhabdomeric opsins has helped in constructing the likely routes followed during evolution. Clues to the factors that led the early vertebrate retina to become invaginated can be obtained by combining recent knowledge about the origin of the pathway for dark re-isomerization of retinoids with knowledge of the inability of ciliary opsins to undergo photoreversal, along with consideration of the constraints imposed under the very low light levels in the deep ocean. Investigation of the origin of cell classes in the vertebrate retina provides support for the notion that cones, rods and bipolar cells all originated from a primordial ciliary photoreceptor, whereas ganglion cells, amacrine cells and horizontal cells all originated from rhabdomeric photoreceptors. Knowledge of the molecular differences between cones and rods, together with knowledge of the scotopic signalling pathway, provides an understanding of the evolution of rods and of the rods' retinal circuitry. Accordingly, it has been possible to propose a plausible scenario for the sequence of evolutionary steps that led to the emergence of vertebrate photoreceptors and retina.


The notion that high levels of psychopathic trait leads to career success in the business sector has become a popular point of theorising in recent years, with research providing support for the alleged overrepresentation of psychopathy in the financial sector, and the existence of a relationship between psychopathy and professional success. A cross-sectional design was employed to compare psychopathy scores of business and psychology students, as well as to examine the psychopathy-academic success relationship. Participates were 263 participants recruited from a UK university. Results revealed greater psychopathic traits in business students relative to psychology students on all four factors of psychopathy. Furthermore, hierarchical multiple regression indicated that the four psychopathy factors, gender, age, study hours, and course explain 14% of variance in grade outcome. Two variables made unique statistic contributions to the model with Antisocial Behaviour and gender (male) negatively related to grade outcome. Theoretical and practical implications of our findings are discussed.


Abstract Direct numerical simulations are performed to investigate the transient upstream propagation (flashback) of premixed hydrogen–air flames in the boundary layer of a fully developed turbulent channel flow. Results show that the well-known near-wall velocity fluctuations pattern found in turbulent boundary layers triggers wrinkling of the initially flat flame sheet as it starts propagating against the main flow direction, and that the structure of the characteristic streaks of the turbulent boundary layer ultimately has an important impact on the resulting flame shape and on its propagation mechanism. It is observed that the leading edges of the upstream-propagating premixed flame are always located in the near-wall region of the channel and assume the shape of several smooth, curved bulges propagating upstream side by side in the spanwise direction and convex towards the reactant side of the flame. These leading-edge flame bulges are separated by thin regions of spiky flame cusps pointing towards the product side at the trailing edges of the flame. Analysis of the instantaneous velocity fields clearly reveals the existence, on the reactant side of the flame sheet, of backflow pockets that extend well above the wall-quenching distance. There is a strong correspondence between each of the backflow pockets and a leading edge convex flame bulge. Likewise, high-speed streaks of fast flowing fluid are found to be always colocated with the spiky flame cusps pointing towards the product side of the flame. It is suggested that the origin of the formation of the backflow pockets, along with the subsequent mutual feedback mechanism, is due to the interaction of the approaching streaky turbulent flow pattern with the Darrieus–Landau hydrodynamic instability and pressure fluctuations triggered by the flame sheet. Moreover, the presence of the backflow pockets, coupled with the associated hydrodynamic instability and pressure–flow field interaction, greatly facilitate flame propagation in turbulent boundary layers and ultimately results in high flashback velocities that increase proportionately with pressure.


A 12-YEAR-OLD BOY WITH NONVERBAL AUtism developed a 2-month history of petechiae and bruising followed by worsening musculoskeletal pain and refusal to walk. There was no preceding history of trauma, fever, or visible joint swelling. On physical examination he was pale and agitated. His lower limb range of motion was limited, and he maintained 90° flexion of both knees and external rotation of his left hip with refusal to ambulate. Petechiae and bruising were noted on his lower extremities (Figure 1), and gingival bleeding (Figure 2) and alopecia were noted. Investigations revealed microcytic anemia (hemoglobin level, 9.0 g/dL; reference range, 12.0-16.0 g/dL; to convert to grams per liter, multiply by 10.0), a low serum iron level, and normal white blood cell and platelet counts. The peripheral blood smear was normal apart from features suggestive of iron deficiency, and the erythrocyte sedimentation rate was elevated (46 mm/h; reference range, 1-10 mm/h). Radiographs of the legs demonstrated only soft-tissue swelling and osteopenia. Dietary history revealed longstanding restricted food preferences limited to yogurt, pasta, oatmeal, and water. Figure 1. Bruising (large arrow) and perifollicular petechiae (small arrow) on the lower leg.


This study evaluated the effect of binder choice in mixing ceramic powder on the chemical and morphological features between the margin ceramic-framework interfaces. Titanium and zirconia frameworks (15 x 5 x 0.5 mm3) were veneered with margin ceramics prepared with two different binders, namely a) water/conventional or b) wax-based. For each zirconia framework material, four different margin ceramics were used: a- Creation Zi (Creation Willi Geller International); b- GC Initial Zr (GC America); Triceram (Dentaurum); and d- IPS emax (voclar Vivadent). For the titanium framework, three different margin ceramics were used: a- Creation Ti (Creation Willi Geller International); b- Triceram (Dentaurum); and c- VITA Titaniumkeramik (Vita Zahnfabrik). The chemical composition of the framework-margin ceramic interface was analyzed using Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDS) and porosity level was quantified within the margin ceramic using an image program (ImageJ) from four random areas (100 x 100 pixels) on each SEM image. EDS analysis showed the presence of Carbon at the margin ceramic-framework interface in the groups where wax-based binder technique was used with the concentration being the highest for the IPS emax ZirCAD group. While IPS system (IPS ZirCAD and IPS Emax) presented higher porosity concentration using wax binder, in the other groups wax-based binder reduced the porosity of margin ceramic, except for Titanium - Triceram combination.


Dinosaurs were ubiquitous in terrestrial ecosystems through most of the Mesozoic and are still diversely represented in the modern fauna in the form of birds. Recent efforts to better understand the origins of the group have resulted in the discovery of many new species of early dinosaur and their closest relatives (dinosauromorphs). In addition, recent re‐examinations of early dinosaur phylogeny have highlighted uncertainties regarding the interrelationships of the main dinosaur lineages (Sauropodomorpha, Theropoda and Ornithischia), and questioned the traditional hypothesis that the group originated in South Gondwana and gradually dispersed over Pangaea. Here, we use an historical approach to examine the impact of new fossil discoveries and changing phylogenetic hypotheses on biogeographical scenarios for dinosaur origins over 20 years of research time, and analyse the results in the light of different fossil record sampling regimes. Our results consistently optimize South Gondwana as the ancestral area for Dinosauria, as well as for more inclusive clades including Dinosauromorpha, and show that this hypothesis is robust to increased taxonomic and geographic sampling and divergent phylogenetic results. Our results do not find any support for the recently proposed Laurasian origin of dinosaurs and suggest that a southern Gondwanan origin is by far the most plausible given our current knowledge of the diversity of early dinosaurs and non‐dinosaurian dinosauromorphs.


The hope with this study series is to provide a valuable tool for each and every disciple of Jesus. In the spirit of Ephesians 4:12 this manual helps to "equip the saints," bringing confidence as we strive to seek and save the lost world around us. These studies were designed to provide the disciples of the Chicago Church of Christ with a modern and thorough guide to help others come to know Christ. Let us all pray that the gospel message rings out far and wide to the glory of God and that many choose to enter into a relationship with Him!


The microsystem is an organizing design construct in which social systems cut across traditional discipline boundaries. Because of its interdisciplinary focus, the clinical microsystem provides a conceptual and practical framework for simplifying complex organizations that deliver care. It also provides an important opportunity for organizational learning. Process mapping and microworld simulation may be especially useful for redesigning care around the microsystem concept. Process mapping, in which the core processes of the microsystem are delineated and assessed from the perspective of how the individual interacts with the system, is an important element of the continuous learning cycle of the microsystem and the healthcare organization. Microworld simulations are interactive computer based models that can be used as an experimental platform to test basic questions about decision making misperceptions, cause-effect inferences, and learning within the clinical microsystem. Together these tools offer the user and organization the ability to understand the complexity of healthcare systems and to facilitate the redesign of optimal outcomes.


The paper is devoted to formation of the modern corporate governance system in Kyrgyz Republic. The main factors that influence this process have been studied, e.g., legal background and practice of privatization; corporate and antimonopoly law; financial markets; stakeholders activities, etc. The authors conclude that there were significant positive changes in the sphere of corporate governance in Kyrgyzstan. First of all it should be marked that in the country that had no previous experience of private property and market, institutions of corporate governance were formed, there was a process of learning of both owners and managers how to govern the company using the available set of laws and regulations. But this process is far from being complete, since the real corporate relations are still very dysfunctional. In the authors' opinion, improvement of corporate governance in the country requires a complex approach: upgrading of legislation must be accompanied by active measures aimed at improving the situation in all spheres that influence the quality of corporate governance. The main task in this sphere is creation of favorable legal and institutional climate which would lead to improvement of common norms of corporate governance and to attraction of external investments.


One measure that is commonly used to assess a species' mental complexity is its gesturefollowing ability, or the ability to follow a human gesture (such as a gaze or a point) to choose between potential food sources. Animals that have demonstrated this ability include dogs and primates. The high-level explanation of gesture following is that it signifies an animal's ability to understand the human's knowledge of where the food is and his intent to communicate that knowledge. However, gesture following could also be explained as being a low-level mechanism relying on directional bias. Looking at the eyes of another individual is an extremely adaptive instinct; even if no perspective taking is involved one is still more likely to find objects of universal interest such as food or threats. For my senior project, I investigated the phenomenon of gaze following in black and white ruffed lemurs at the Trevor Zoo in Millbrook, NY. Specifically, I tested the legitimacy of the gaze following paradigm as a measure of social cognition by comparing lemurs' gaze following of a live person versus a photograph of a person versus a photograph of another lemur. The live person is a more reliable social partner reacting to the environment as it changes. The photo, on the other hand, is a static, abstract representation of a social partner and an indirect communicative gesture made by the true social partner, but that happens to correspond visually with the live gaze cue. The photograph of the other lemur is meant to control for possible differences in response to faces of same and other species, as well as to replicate previous findings that lemurs were able to find hidden food based on gaze information from a photograph of a conspecific. I hypothesized that the lemurs would be able to follow gaze to find hidden food, and that this gaze following would be due to perspective taking. Therefore I expected the lemurs to find the food more often than chance in all conditions, and to find food most often in the live gaze condition. My subjects were not able to find the hidden food more often than chance in any of the three conditions, instead favoring the container to their left. This result indicates that black and white ruffed lemurs may not be capable of following gaze


The tobacco industry is a major political and legal force in Florida through campaign contributions, public relations efforts, lobbying and litigation, which at least from the late 1970s, has had a centralized political organization in Florida that defends and promotes its political and economic interests at the local and state levels of government. Although the industry has operated in the open in some political campaigns, it has also operated quietly behind the scenes, often through front groups, in various other state and local political campaigns. In Dade County in 1979, GASP of Miami ran a clean indoor air initiative without the active support of the local affiliates of the American Cancer Society, American Lung Association, and American Heart Association. Despite being outspent by the tobacco industry 90 to 1, GASP only lost by 820 votes. Had the health groups provided public and political support, the initiative may well have won, substantially increasing the momentum for clean indoor air ordinances in Florida and elsewhere. Prior to 1985, there were numerous ongoing local efforts to pass and enact a wide variety of local clean indoor ordinances. These efforts subsided considerably after the passage of the preemption clause in the weak Florida Clean Indoor Air Act (FCIAA) of 1985 which, at first, was supported by the American Cancer Society, American Lung Association, and American Heart Association. Since the passage of FCIAA, the tobacco industry has been able to stop all efforts by the three health groups and sympathetic politicians to repeal the preemption clause. After the passage of campaign contribution limit laws in 1991 in Florida, tobacco industry campaign contributions have been redirected away from individual candidates and to the two major political parties. In the 1993-1994 election cycle, the industry gave the largest amount of contributions with $475,000 given to the parties compared to $95,856 to political candidates. The largest contribution to a political party came from Philip Morris, which gave $382,500 to the Republican Party. These contributions in conjunction with others has reinvigorated the two major parties as political power brokers who provide their candidates with advertising, technical assistance, and paid staff. During the 1997-1998 electoral cycle, the tobacco industry's total campaign contributions were $398,194, with $310,250 given to the two major political parties in comparison to $84,194 for legislators. The Republican Party received $227,250 compared to the Democratic Party which received $82,500. The largest contribution to a political party came from Philip Morris, which contributed $125,000 to the Republican Party. In August 1997, Florida and the industry settled a Medicaid fraud lawsuit. Under the terms of the settlement, the industry agreed to pay Florida $11.3 billion, end outdoor billboards, pay for public anti-tobacco campaigns, remove vending machines from places accessible to children, end tobacco advertising on buses and trains, complete an anti-tobacco youth campaign within two years of the settlement, and not name the industry in anti-tobacco ads. Due to further negotiations with the industry, on September 11, 1998, the amount paid to Florida was increased to $13 billion and restrictions on the two year time limit regarding the youth anti-smoking campaign and specifically naming the industry in anti-tobacco advertisements were lifted. After February 1998, Florida began an effort to establish a $200 million youth anti-smoking campaign called the Tobacco Pilot Program in an effort to meet the two year deadline. The Tobacco Pilot Program has engaged in an extensive media campaign known as the "Truth Campaign" which began in late April 1998 and included tough in-your-face print, billboard, and media advertisements which ran throughout Florida. The major theme of this campaign is that Florida youth should choose "Truth" rather than use tobacco and be targets of industry advertising manipulation in the use of tobacco. A report released on March 17, 1999 by the Florida Department of Health, Office of Tobacco Control regarding the progress of the Tobacco Pilot Program indicated that the Tobacco Pilot Program and its anti-tobacco media advertising campaign, in less than a year, had a substantial impact on influencing a significant number of Florida teens not to smoke. From February 1998 to 1999, the number of teens who were current smokers (smoked in the last 30 days) dropped from 23.3% to 20.9%. This represented 31,000 fewer Florida teenagers who were current smokers. These results represent the best results ever obtained in a large scale primary prevention program. Although new Republican Governor Jeb Bush publicly called for the continuation of the Tobacco Pilot Program and the Truth Campaign, the program's funding was reduced from $70.5 million to $45.2 million (-36%) for the 1999-2000 Fiscal Year due to legislative votes by Republican colleagues in the House and the Senate to substantially reduce the funding of the program. These cuts were made despite public opinion polls showing that 49% of the public supported the program without any cuts and 30% supported the program with the $8.5 million cut proposed by Governor Bush. Two projects of the Tobacco Pilot Program which are crucial to maintaining the viability of the program including the Truth Campaign and administrative support for the Students Working Against Tobacco (SWAT) also received large budgetary reductions. While the Tobacco Pilot Program received substantial funding cuts in the 1999 Legislative Session, funding for the American Heart Association's Youth Fitness Program of $3 million and $1 million for the Just The Facts program which was derived from the $45.2 million Tobacco Pilot Program budget, would have reduced the amount of funding for projects directly oriented towards tobacco control efforts to $41.2 million for 1999-2000. On May 27, 1999, Governor Bush vetoed these two diversionary projects, as well as the $2.5 million Sports for Life project which was related to tobacco control, further reducing the program's funding of projects directly related to tobacco control efforts from $70.5 million to $38.7 million (-45.1%). For the past twenty years, a consistent pattern has emerged with respect to the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, and the American Lung Association missing key political opportunities that would have significantly advanced anti-tobacco efforts and public health in Florida. These lost opportunities included failing to support GASP of Miami in its 1979 Dade County clean indoor air initiative, supporting the preemption clause in the Florida Clean Indoor Air Act of 1985 which essentially quashed a blossoming grassroots anti-tobacco movement, and failing to forcefully advocate for the Tobacco Pilot Program by holding specific legislators directly and publicly accountable for the substantial funding cuts that occurred in the 1999 Legislative Session.


This study is an attempt to capture visions of churchyards and cemeteries in the future from young people's perspective. The background for the study is the radical change that has already taken place in Swedish society regarding the Church and churchyards and the further changes that have been proposed. One such change is the relationship between the Church of Sweden and the State. A reform introduced in 2000 means that the Church of Sweden no longer has the status of State Church. Another important change is that due to immigration, the religious map of Sweden has changed rather dramatically. The focus for this study was the churchyard as a physical and social location. In order to obtain the opinions of young people on this question, it was necessary to seek information from different angles. A combination of qualitative and quantitative methods was used, comprising a questionnaire, descriptive writing and group discussions. A churchyard tour was also included. Fifty-one young people participated in the study, 17 girls and 34 boys, from an upper secondary school in Landskrona. Of these, 71 % were members of the Church of Sweden and 20 % were members of other religions (Muslim, Catholic, Orthodox, etc). The remainder were not members of any religious body at all or did not know. As regards attitudes, these young people believed that the churchyard as a place has cultural values, has the spirit of togetherness with family roots and is an agent for memories. However, they did not think that the churchyard is a place to go to in difficult times or to experience nature, or that the giant trees at the churchyard contribute to fresher air in the city. They want to feel reverence and respect for the churchyard and some consider it holy. It is a place they seek to feel close to their ancestors and "talk" to them, a place where they entertain specific feelings. The place must have quality, content and experience. It may be what Norberg-Schultz describes as Genius loci, the spirit of the place, where the site holds memories and feelings as well as concrete phenomena. It is also obvious that the young people experience the place by their senses. They believe that every place has its individual function and thus that parks and churchyards have different functions. At the churchyard, nothing should be allowed to disturb the visitor: no noise, no pictures. To use the churchyard as a park, as a museum or for art exhibitions would be strange to the young people interviewed here. A concept of virtual churchyards was proposed as an appealing idea for young people of today, who have a positive approach to IT and many of whom are globetrotters and have a lifestyle involving living abroad. However this turned out to be a wholly unpopular idea and was totally rejected. Young people want to experience very specific feelings and they believe that these feelings can only be mediated by a real churchyard, where they can go and "talk" to their ancestors. For these young people, the emotional ties to the physical environment are important. A proposal to locate churchyards in residential blocks was greeted with ambivalence. On the one hand, it could bring another quality to the area. The young people pointed out that places for peace, reflection and contemplation will be needed in the future and that churchyards could be such places. In this regard, a churchyard in a residential block would bring a peaceful place closer to people's everyday life, as well as providing access to another green outdoor space. On the other hand, however, it could bring a sad atmosphere, while noise from playgrounds would disturb the peace of the churchyard. When it came to the maintenance of the individual graves in the churchyard, 65 % of the young people believed that the people concerned should have to pay for the maintenance or do it themselves. The remainder of the interviewees preferred solutions involving collective maintenance. Only 8 % were interested in contributing to the maintenance of the churchyard and very few were interested in a role in churchyard administration. The view of nature plays an important role in both people's actions and their views of the future. The young people in this study regarded nature as "the wild". On the other hand, they wanted churchyards to look well kept. They could scarcely contemplate a transformation of the churchyard from garden to meadow. They considered a meadow to be an area which is not looked after and thus perceived a risk for churchyard decline. This can be interpreted as an expression of appreciation of the cultural heritage represented by churchyards, but it can also be a expression of "topophilia". Anonymous graves did not appeal to these young people. This may be a manifestation of the desire of this generation to create individual solutions in combination with a wish to identity, even after their death. It can also be an expression for ties between their identity and the place. However the picture is divided, since 33 % of the overall group of young people studied expressed a preference for having their final resting place in nature, i.e. they are prepared to give up their identity and their ties to the place. It is obvious that they are aware of their free choice - tradition or not. A grave in nature is in line with these young people's view of nature, with a preferences for "the wild", assuming that their choice of burial place reflects their ethos. The young people in this study stressed that they highly value tradition, but they also demonstrated that this is a free choice for them. This freedom to choose also applies to the question of integrated churchyards. Some of those interviewees who are members of Church of Sweden are in favour of fully integrated churchyards and are prepared to give up the traditional appearance of the churchyard for the possibility of creating new traditions. Others advocate separate churchyards for each religion, or at least separate areas of the churchyard. This may be a wish to manifest their own culture. This study shows that young people have unexpectedly clear visions and ideas about churchyards and what these should be like in the future. Although the statistical basis of the study was too small to allow generalisations, the limited quantitative part together with the qualitative part can provide a more general picture. In order to obtain sufficient data, the study needs to be repeated at other locations within or outside Sweden. Some questions need deeper investigation and illumination, especially those concerning integrated churchyards and the connection between view of nature and choice of final resting place. In addition, the question of the importance of the view of nature and the vision of the future churchyard needs further study.


THEMIS represents the most ambitious coordinated multi-spacecraft and ground-based programme ever attempted. It is expected that this mission will dramatically increase our understanding of the substorm process. In the years leading up to the launch of the five THEMIS probes, the four-spacecraft Cluster mission has defined the state of the art in the field of multi-spacecraft/ground-based investigations of the geospace environment. Hitherto unprecedented coordination of space- and ground-based experiments have yielded multi-point (in situ and remotely sensed) measurements of magnetospheric structure and dynamics. The overlap of the Cluster and THEMIS missions presents an excellent opportunity to move the multi-point measurement technique to the next stage. Since the apogees of the Cluster and THEMIS satellites orbits are separated by nearly 12 hour of local time, the synergy of these two missions and ground- based experiments will allow the detailed observation of solar wind-magnetosphere-ionosphere on both the day and nightside of the Earth. Several experimental scenarios will be presented.


An insulinoma was diagnosed in a fifty-seven-year-old woman suffering from frequent hypoglycemic attacks. Propranolol—a beta-adrenergic blocker—in a dose of 80 mg. per day effectively prevented recurrent hypoglycemic attacks. It also corrected the basal hyperinsulinemia as well as the increased insulin secretion which results from stimulation with glucose or arginine.


Experiments were performed to investigate the transient undrained pore water pressure response of a shock-loaded saturated carbonate sand (Enewetak coral sand). Specimens were dynamically loaded using an experimental laboratory facility capable of generating compressive shock pulses with millisecond rise times to peak stress. Boundary conditions were for one-dimensional confined compressive loadings without drainage. Pore water pressure increases of 50% or more were observed at compressive strains above about 0.01%. For most tests, liquefaction was observed at peak compressive strains in excess of about 0.10%. An empirical equation for estimating pore water pressure increases from transient compressional shock loadings was developed from a statistical analysis of the data. A silica sand, Monterey No. 0/30, has also been previously tested in this apparatus and a comparison is made. The residual excess pore water pressure equations for Enewetak coral and Monterey No. 0/30 sands are presented. Test results indicate that the response of these two sands is markedly different. Residual excess pore water pressures are proportional to approximately the square root of peak compressive strain for Enewetak coral sand and approximately the cube root of peak compressive strain for Monterey No. 0/30 silica sand. Measured static C parameter values were consistently less than unity for all saturated specimens of Enewetak coral sand tested. The C parameter decreased with increasing specimen density and effective stress.


This study was undertaken to explore children ' s experiences in the aftermath of rape disclosure. A qualitative, exploratory, and descriptive study was conducted at a Durban Treatment Centre. Clinical interviews were conducted with 20 rape survivors by a Psychologist in the participants ' language, namely isiZulu or isiXhosa. Data were analyzed using thematic content analysis. Most children disclosed their rape initially to their mothers and received supportive reactions from their mothers and family as well as from the community in general. The data revealed some key points which highlighted the type of support received by children in the aftermath of rape disclosure. It seems as though the children received largely supportive reactions from mothers, families and the community. However, children described their experiences with the police, social worker or other helping professions as being mostly negative. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for policy and practice.


Typical complex software and systems engineering projects involve a set of different engineering disciplines and therefore heavily rely on systems integration approaches. Service-oriented architecture and Enterprise Service Bus provide a valuable basis for systems integration; however often depend on tedious manual work or invasive and therefore inflexible adaptations in case of even minimal changes to engineering processes or engineering tools. In this paper we describe the Engineering Service Bus (EngSB), an integration platform which not only integrates tools and systems, but also provides a bridge between engineering processes and existing engineering tools. We evaluate the EngSB by implementing a standard software engineering process for multi-engineering environments. Major results were that the EngSB allows for non-invasive and flexible integration of well-established tools in multi-engineering environments, while enabling the integration to take place on the level of engineering


World War I was a watershed, a defining moment, in Armenian history. Its effects were unprecedented in that it resulted in what no other war, invasion, or occupation had achieved in three thousand years of identifiable Armenian existence. This calamity was the physical elimination of the Armenian people and most of the evidence of their ever having lived on the great Armenian Plateau, to which the perpetrator side soon gave the new name of Eastern Anatolia. The bearers of an impressive martial and cultural history, the Armenians had also known repeated trials and tribulations, waves of massacre, captivity, and exile, but even in the darkest of times there had always been enough remaining to revive, rebuild, and go forward. This third volume in a series edited by Richard Hovannisian, the dean of Armenian historians, provides a unique fusion of the history, philosophy, literature, art, music, and educational aspects of the Armenian experience. It further provides a rich storehouse of information on comparative dimensions of the Armenian genocide in relation to the Assyrian, Greek and Jewish situations, and beyond that, paradoxes in American and French policy responses to the Armenian genocides. The volume concludes with a trio of essays concerning fundamental questions of historiography and politics that either make possible or can inhibit reconciliation of ancient truths and righting ancient wrongs.


We present a parameter analysis of the integral Fourier hologram that is generated from multiple orthographic view images of a three-dimensional object. The maximum view angle, the lens array pitch, and the projection angle step are analyzed to reveal their effects on the maximum size of the reconstructed object and its maximum spatial frequency. With these analyses, we propose a lens array shift method to enhance the resolution of the reconstructed object from the Fourier hologram. The principles are verified by computational and optical experiment.


There is an increasing interest in eliciting feedback from patients to highlight aspects of care that need improvement and to monitor performance and quality of care. Hospitals increasingly need to adopt a patient-centred attitude. Traditionally, assessments have ignored the reports of patients in preference to technical and physiological reports of outcome. Healthcare systems have sought to achieve a balance in services that offer not only clinically effective and evidence based care, but which are also judged by patients as acceptable and beneficial. Questionnaires that ask patients to rate their care in terms of how satisfied they are tend to elicit very positive ratings, which are not sensitive to problems with the specific processes that affect the quality of care delivery. A more valid approach is to ask patients to report in detail on their


How can we understand the processes and outcomes that arise from frictional encounters in peacebuilding? This special issue contributes to ongoing debates on the precariousness of peacebuilding, by introducing the term friction as a way to capture and analyse the conflictual dimensions of global–local encounters. We envisage six responses – compliance, adoption, adaptation, co-option, resistance and rejection – which arise as a result of meetings between actors, ideas and practice in global–local relationships. These responses create new realities as they alter power relations, transform agency and mediate practices related to peacebuilding. Thus, the conceptual framework and insights drawn from the articles in the special issue contribute to a discussion about transforming the boundaries between the international and local, and cast new light on agency in peacebuilding processes while challenging aspects of the hybridisation of peace.


In this paper we provide an explanation for why the Chapter 11 reorganization process cannot accurately value and reorganize an insolvent firm. Due to the information and incentive vacuum of the reorganization process, Chapter 11 places the bankruptcy judge in the same institutional setting as a central planner. Therefore, the bankruptcy judge is given the impossible task of economic calculation without the relevant market data to calculate the same. Given the inability to make market allocations, Chapter 11 allocations are prone to rent-seeking and interest group capture.


The stator winding insulation in petrochemical plant motors and generators have been assessed using routine on-line partial discharge (PD) testing for at least 20 years, starting in chemical plants in the US Gulf Coast. PD are small electrical sparks that can occur in the winding insulation system due to poor manufacturing of the stator winding; or due to aging of the stator. In on-line PD monitoring the PD current pulses are detected by either capacitive sensors or high frequency current transformers that are mounted in the motor terminal boxes. To ensure reliable results, attention must be paid to reducing the risk of false positive indications due to electrical noise. The methods that are most successfully used employ time-of-pulse arrival, pulse shape analysis and the optimal selection of the measurement frequency range. Since the early days, great progress has been made with interpretation. Case studies from petrochemical industry machines are presented to show how machines with insulation problems can be identified using both the trend in PD over time and the absolute magnitude of the PD. However, experience shows that the trend itself, as well as the absolute magnitude can sometimes give a misleading indication of the stator winding insulation condition.


The paper sets out how corporate environmental management techniques have become dominated by environmental management systems and the concept of eco-efficiency and how this leads to some rather restrictive outcomes. In a world of globalisation, with an emphasis on free trade, there are many new environmental challenges that need to be addressed. Not least, it is argued that globalisation leads to an increase in the "weightlessness" of corporations as companies externalise more of their production activities. Since systems are essentially an internal management tool, this externalisation means that they cannot manage many of the environmental impacts of the modern corporation. In order to survive in the globalised environment and achieve business performance consistent with sustainable development, it is argued that a new emphasis must be placed on environmental supply chain management and extended producer responsibility running in parallel with new initiatives on social responsibility and fairer trading relationships. In effect, the paper calls for a switch in emphasis away from systems and towards product stewardship along the whole supply chain. This should form the basis of a new competitive advantage through a new emphasis on differentiation of products and company image.


The authors compared involvement in educational planning and use of self-determination strategies reported by two groups of students attending a high-poverty, predominately Black high school: 19 students with severe intellectual disabilities and 20 general education seniors who were identified as successful. Findings revealed that special education students participated in few activities (e.g., general or career education classes, transition activities, or employment) on a daily basis outside their self-contained special education classes. Special education students were significantly less likely than their general education peers to report involvement in educational planning activities or use of self-determination strategies. Although successful general education peers did take an active and self-determined role in their high school education, they represented only 20 of 114 members of their graduating senior class. Findings are discussed in relation to increasing efforts to promote self-determination and resilience among students with severe intellectual disabilities and their general education peers who are attending high-poverty high schools.


This is an expanded second edition of Nicholas Mercuro and Steven Medema's influential book Economics and the Law, whose publication in
1998 marked the most comprehensive overview of the various schools of thought in the burgeoning field of Law and Economics. Each of these competing yet complementary traditions has both redefined the study of law and exposed the key economic implications of the legal environment. The book remains true to the scope and aims of the first edition, but also takes account of the field's evolution. At the book's core is an expanded discussion of the Chicago school, Public Choice Theory, Institutional Law and Economics, and New Institutional Economics. A new chapter explores the Law and Economics literature on social norms, today an integral part of each of the schools of thought. The chapter on the New Haven and Modern Civic Republican approaches has likewise been expanded. These chapters are complemented by a discussion of the Austrian school of Law and Economics. Each chapter now includes an "At Work" section presenting applications of that particular school of thought. By providing readers with a concise, noncritical description of the broad contours of each school, this book illuminates the fundamental insights of a field with important implications not only for economics and the law, but also for political science, philosophy, public administration, and sociology.


We expand on a 1997 study of the amount and distribution of near-duplicate pages on the World Wide Web. We downloaded a set of 150 million Web pages on a weekly basis over the span of 11 weeks. We then determined which of these pages are near-duplicates of one another, and tracked how clusters of near-duplicate documents evolved over time. We found that 29.2% of all Web pages are very similar to other pages, and that 22.2% are virtually identical to other pages. We also found that clusters of near-duplicate documents are fairly stable: Two documents that are near-duplicates of one another are very likely to still be near-duplicates 10 weeks later. This result is of significant relevance to search engines: Web crawlers can be fairly confident that two pages that have been found to be near-duplicates of one another will continue to be so for the foreseeable future, and may thus decide to recrawl only one version of that page, or at least to lower the download priority of the other versions, thereby freeing up crawling resources that can be brought to bear more productively somewhere else.


Can the same numbers and letters which are the life blood of modern business and government computer systems be harnessed to protect computers from attack against known information security risks? For the past seven years, Foreign Service officers and technicians of the US Government have sought to maintain diplomatic operations in the face of rising cyber attacks and test the hypothesis that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. As eight out of ten attacks leverage known computer security vulnerabilities or configuration setting weaknesses, a pound of cure would seem to be easy to come by. Yet modern security tools present an unusually consequential threat to business continuity - too much rather than too little information on cyber problems is presented, harking back to a phenomenon cited by social scientists in the 1960s called 'information overload'. Experience indicates that the longer the most serious cyber problems go untreated, the wider the attack surface adversaries can find. One technique used at the Department of State, called 'risk scoring', resulted in an 89 per cent overall reduction in measured risk over 12 months for the Department of State's servers and personal computers. Later refinements of risk scoring enabled technicians to correct unique security threats with unprecedented speed. This paper explores how the use of metrics, special care in presenting information to technicians and executives alike, as well as tactical use of organisational incentives can result in stronger cyber defences protecting modern organisations.