The mis-regulation of gene transcription in the living cell can be the cause of complex human diseases like cancer. One challenge of the post-genomic era of biomedical research is the development of in vitro techniques for the rapid and cost-effective analysis of regulatory transcriptional patterns of disease. Two crucial points for this endeavour have to be considered: (1) Sensitivity, since biologically active transcription factors are expressed at low amounts in the nucleus of the living cell and (2) the as close as feasible reconstitution of the nuclear microenvironment in order to guarantee as close to natural conditions for the performance of experiments as possible. The first part of this thesis reports on the application of protein-binding microarrays (PBM) bearing long-stranded DNA molecules for the analysis of a human disease-related protein, the human tumor suppressor activating enhancer-binding protein 2 alpha (AP2α). The second part of this thesis describes how chromatin-immunoprecipitation combined with high-throughput sequencing (ChIP-seq) and subsequent data analysis led to the discovery of a novel AP2α-binding motif in a cancer cell line model. We first developed a setup and protocol to perform on-chip protein-DNA molecule interaction analyses. Following this, recombinant AP2α protein was produced and purified using an E.coli host system. AP2α was subsequently assessed for its binding specificity to an array of ∼6000 human promoter and intergenic sequences. These experiments confirmed previously established AP2α DNA binding sequences and allowed the identification of novel ones. High and low binder sequences were selected from the PBM data and analyzed for specific AP2α binding in vivo utilizing reporter transfection and chromatin-immunoprecipitation (ChIP) assays. In contrast to the lowest AP2α-bound sequences, the highest PBM-bound sequences had significant effects on reporter gene expression. ChIP-qPCR revealed these sequences were bound by AP2α in vivo. From these results Kallikrein 5, a member of the kallikrein family of extracellular proteases that includes the prostate-specific antigen (PSA), which is currently emerging as one of the most prominent biomarkers of tumor progression for various types of cancers, and the growth-arrest specific 2 (GAS2) protein, which modulates cell susceptibility to p53-dependent apoptosis, were identified as novel AP2α targets. Finally, the binding patterns of AP2α from nuclear extracts of breast cancer tissue biopsies were assessed on the 6k human promoter arrays and compared to the binding patterns of 'healthy' tissue extracts. Overall these experiments confirmed known targets of AP2α. Interestingly a discrepancy of 26% was revealed when assessing the correlation of binding data from healthy and tumor tissue biopsies. This finding suggested that depending on the source of the protein, that is of either healthy or tumor tissue origin, the DNA-binding specificity of the protein factor under study might be altered and most importantly this change in binding specificity can be monitored by PBM. The second part of this thesis describes the analysis of the binding specificity of AP2α by combining chromatin-immunoprecipitation with high-throughput sequencing (ChIP-seq). The binding specificity of the human tumor suppressor protein AP2α in the living cell was assessed in a colon cancer cell model. Analysis of the ChIP-seq enriched sequences resulted in the discovery of a novel recognition motif for the in vivo binding of AP2α. Interestingly, this sequence motif resembles the motifs discovered from data sets with recombinant protein alone. Further analysis of a previously described in vitro and the new ChIP-seq discovered binding motifs were performed by electrophoretic mobility shift assays, which demonstrated that the newly discovered motif shows the same effects with colon cancer and breast cancer nuclear extracts, thereby suggesting a general relevance of the motif independent of the cell type. In these DNA-binding competition experiments (EMSA), the previously computed, in vitro derived DNA recognition sequences does not abolish native AP2α protein (obtained from crude nuclear cell extracts) interaction with the ChIP-seq discovered motif. This observation indicates for a complex situation in vivo that might require protein co-factors in order to allow specific AP2α-DNA interaction. Therefore additional experiments will be required in order to assess the novel motif further. In conclusion, this thesis work demonstrates that protein-binding microarrays (PBM) can be used for the analysis of binding patterns of a human disease-relevant protein. It could be shown that the PBM setup developed was capable of identifying novel cancer-linked target genes for AP2α. It was also shown to be sensitive enough to directly probe nuclear extracts from tissue biopsies for specific DNA-binding. Finally, a novel DNA-recognition motif for AP2α was discovered from cellular assays. Additional experiments are required to assess whether this motif can be utilized for the reliable assignment of novel probes that may subsequently be integrated onto protein-binding microarrays. Together with the analyses for additional protein markers of disease, this avenue might serve as a platform for developing PBM technology further towards biotechnological applications such as diagnostics of regulatory transcriptional markers and patterns of cancer.


Parents' child-rearing behaviors have been identified as major sources of influence on the self-esteem of adolescents from Western societies and Chinese adolescents in Hong Kong. The pattern of relationships found in samples of Hong Kong adolescents has been similar to the pattern found among samples of U.S. adolescents, but contrary to what might be expected in collectivistic societies such as mainland China. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to test specific dimensions of parenting behaviors as possible predictors of adolescents' self-esteem in mainland China. Self-report data were acquired for this study from 480 adolescents who attended secondary schools located in Beijing. Results indicated that patterns of socialization between parents and adolescents in mainland China were similar to those found in the United States, although explanations for these results may differ from those characteristic of the United States and other Western societies. Reasoning, monitoring, and autonomy-granting behavior by Chinese parents were positive predictors, whereas punitiveness was a negative predictor of Chinese adolescents' self-esteem (both males and females). Contrasting with patterns commonly found in the United States was the finding that parental support was not a predictor of Chinese adolescents' self-esteem.


Substantially complete landslide inventories aid the accurate landslide modelling of a region’s susceptibility and landslide forecasting. Recording of landslides soon after they have occurred is important as their presence can be quickly erased (e.g., the landslide removed by people or through erosion/vegetation). In this paper, we present the technical software considerations that went into building a Landslide Tracker app to aid in the collection of landslide information by non-technical local citizens, trained volunteers, and experts to create more complete inventories on a real-time basis through the model of crowdsourcing. The tracked landslide information is available for anyone across the world to view. This app is available on Google Play Store for free, and at http://landslides.amrita.edu, with software conceived and developed by Amrita University in the context of the UK NERC/FCDO funded LANDSLIP research project (http://www.landslip.org/).

The three technical themes we discuss in this paper are the following: (i) security, (ii) performance, and (iii) network resilience. (i) Security considerations include authentication, authorization, and client/server-side enforcement. Authentication allows only the registered users to record and view the landslides, whereas authorization protects the data from illegal access. For example, landslides created by one user are not editable by others, and no user should be able to delete landslides. This validation is enforced at the client-side (mobile and web apps) and also at the server-side software to prevent unintentional and intentional illegal access. (ii) Performance considerations include designing high-performance data structures, mobile databases, client-side caching, server-side caching, cache synchronization, and push-notifications. The database is designed to ensure the best performance without sacrificing data integrity. Then the read-heavy data is cached in memory to get this data with very low latency. Similarly, the data, once fetched, is cached in memory on the app so that it can be re-used without making repeated calls to the server every time when the user visits a screen.  The data persists in the mobile database so the app can load faster while reopening. A cache-synchronization mechanism is implemented to prevent the caches' data from becoming stale as new data comes into the database. The synchronization mechanism consists of push-notifications and incremental data pulls. (iii) Network resiliency considerations are achieved with the help of local storage on the app. This allows recording the landslides even when there is no internet connection. The app automatically pushes the updates to the server as soon as the connectivity resumes. We have observed over 300% reduction in time taken to load 2000 landslides, between the no-cache mode to cache mode during the performance testing.

The Landslide tracker app was released during the 2020 monsoon season and more than 250 landslides were recorded through the app across India and the world.


Previous projection of climate change impacts on global food supply focuses solely on production from terrestrial biomes, ignoring the large contribution of animal protein from marine capture fisheries. Here, we project changes in global catch potential for 1066 species of exploited marine fish and invertebrates from 2005 to 2055 under climate change scenarios. We show that climate change may lead to large-scale redistribution of global catch potential, with an average of 30–70% increase in high-latitude regions and a drop of up to 40% in the tropics. Moreover, maximum catch potential declines considerably in the southward margins of semienclosed seas while it increases in poleward tips of continental shelf margins. Such changes are most apparent in the Pacific Ocean. Among the 20 most important fishing Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) regions in terms of their total landings, EEZ regions with the highest increase in catch potential by 2055 include Norway, Greenland, the United States (Alaska) and Russia (Asia). On the contrary, EEZ regions with the biggest loss in maximum catch potential include Indonesia, the United States (excluding Alaska and Hawaii), Chile and China. Many highly impacted regions, particularly those in the tropics, are socioeconomically vulnerable to these changes. Thus, our results indicate the need to develop adaptation policy that could minimize climate change impacts through fisheries. The study also provides information that may be useful to evaluate fisheries management options under climate change.


We present an approach for estimating the pose of an external camera with respect to a robot using a single RGB image of the robot. The image is processed by a deep neural network to detect 2D projections of keypoints (such as joints) associated with the robot. The network is trained entirely on simulated data using domain randomization to bridge the reality gap. Perspective-n-point (PnP) is then used to recover the camera extrinsics, assuming that the camera intrinsics and joint configuration of the robot manipulator are known. Unlike classic hand-eye calibration systems, our method does not require an off-line calibration step. Rather, it is capable of computing the camera extrinsics from a single frame, thus opening the possibility of on-line calibration. We show experimental results for three different robots and camera sensors, demonstrating that our approach is able to achieve accuracy with a single frame that is comparable to that of classic off-line hand-eye calibration using multiple frames. With additional frames from a static pose, accuracy improves even further. Code, datasets, and pretrained models for three widely-used robot manipulators are made available.1


Since television captioning first became available in Spain, advances have occurred on two fronts: a progressive increase in the number of programs with captions and improved captioning technology. The present study explores the effectiveness of captioning through analysis of deaf viewers' comprehension, taking into account the contribution of the program's verbal and visual information. The study participants, comprising two groups of deaf students at different educational stages, were asked to explain what they had understood after watching a film under two conditions: voice and sound but without captions; and voice, sound, and captions. Results indicate that deaf students have difficulty accessing the information even under the voice/sound/caption condition, not only due to their level of reading ability but also to the speed of caption presentation when oral content is literally transcribed on the screen in its entirety.


This paper aims at defining the specific negotiating subjectivity of a trickster that can be found in such bordering locales as the Caucasus and Central Asia, positioned in-between Europe and Asia on the one hand and Western modernity and Islam on the other hand. Being multiply colonized in an epistemic as well as economic and political sense, these regions have developed their specific strategies of survival, resistance to various regimes and, created hybrid, trans-cultural border models of thinking, that are still alive today and can constitute a way out of the contemporary dilemma—the Christian West versus Islam. The article traces the complex history of both locales in modernity, trying to understand the influence of those factors that turned them into the threatening images of paradigmatic anti-spaces, fallen out of time, for the West, and how Western modernization brought such foreign concepts to these territories as ethnic and linguistic nationalism, religious and linguistic purism and intolerance, that are the real threats today for the trans-cultural continuum of Central Asia and the Caucasus. A complicating factor in this case is that they were not directly colonized by the Western capitalist empires, but by the so called subaltern empires, like Russia, which was itself epistemically and culturally colonized by the West. Both the Caucasus and Central Asia were and are torn between the influences of the modernization via the Rus- sian empire, via the Ottoman empire and sporadically directly by the West, but also both refuse(d) to make a final choice—instead they resort to the age-old tactic of balancing, of mediation, of a trans-cultural trickster type sensi- bility that gives them a lot of potential for the future. Another problem that is addressed in the article is that of Islam in the Caucasus and Central Asia (vis-a-vis ethnicity and nationalism) and the evolution of its interpretation by the Russian and Soviet imperial ideologues from relative tolerance to ethnicization, politicization and often demonization of Islam. The revival of specific forms of ethnic and territorial nationalism and in many cases Islam- ism in Central Asian or the newly independent states of the Southern Caucasus after the collapse of the Soviet Union are also addressed. In addition, there is the opposition of official cultural and political models of ethnic "etatism," and the specific mediating border subjectivity of the people themselves which unexpectedly echoes the globalization flows of a rootless work force around the world, but which also presents a way out of the dead end of fundamentalism vs. neo-liberalism or the "clash of civilizations" model. These trans-cultural subjectivities and epistemologies can be expressed in many ways—from the "theology of liberation" to the 'progressive Muslims project', from other thinking to border thinking, but is always based on questioning the neo-liberal modernity from an in-between position. The Caucasus and Central Asia are close to this in the prevailing sensibility, being part of this global yet non-unified and lose movement of alternative critical and border thinking. What is needed is the development of coalitions and dialogue between such various border thinkers and trans-cultural multiply colonized locales on a global scale that would enable us to oppose both ethnic and religious fundamentalism and extremism of all shades and Western neo-liberal globalization as well.


Fuel cladding tubes in nuclear fuel assembly are held up by supporting grids because the tubes are long and slender. Fluid flows of high-pressure and high-temperature in the tubes cause oscillating motions between tubes and supports. This is called as FIV (flow induced vibration), which causes fretting wear in contact parts of tube and support. The fretting wear of tube and support can threaten the safety of nuclear power plant. Therefore, a research about the fretting wear characteristics of tube-support is required. The fretting wear tests were performed with supporting grids and cladding tubes, especially after corrosion treatment on tubes, in water. The tests were done using various applied loads with fixed amplitude. From the results of fretting tests, the wear amounts of tube materials can be predictable by obtaining the wear coefficient using the work rate model. Due to stick phenomena the wear depth was changed as increasing load and temperature. The maximum wear depth was decreased as increasing the water temperatures. At high temperatures there are the regions of some severe adhesion due to stick phenomena.


This thesis studies the viability of classes of modified gravity (MG) theories based on generalisations of the Einstein-Hilbert action. Particular emphasis is given to f(R) theories in both the metric and Palatini formalisms, scalar-tensor theories and generalised Gauss-Bonnet theories. An urgent task at present is to devise stringent tests in order to reduce the range of candidate models based on these theories. In this thesis a detailed study is made of the viability of these models using constraints from requirement of stability, background cosmological dynamics, local gravity constraints (LGC) and matter density perturbations. In each case the conditions required for stability and viability of the background dynamics are presented. In the case of generalised Gauss-Bonnet theories the circumstances leading to the existence and stability of cosmological scaling solutions are established. In the scalar-tensor theories considered here, which includes metric-f(R) theories as a special case, there is a strong coupling of the scalar field to matter in the Einstein frame which violates all LGC. It is shown that using a chameleon mechanism, models that are compatible with LGC may be constructed. It is found that such models, which are also consistent with background dynamics, are constrained to be close to the ΛCDM model during the radiation/matter epochs and can lead to the divergence of the equation of state of dark energy. In contrast, such constraints only impose mild restrictions on Palatini-f(R) models. Still more stringent constraints are provided by studying matter density perturbations. In particular, it is shown that the unconventional evolution of perturbations in the Palatini formalism leads to f(R) models in this case to be practically identical to the ΛCDM model. For each case it is also shown that (for viable models) matter perturbation equations derived under a sub-horizon approximation are reliable even for super-Hubble scales provided the oscillating mode does not dominate over the matter-induced mode. Such approximate equations are especially reliable in the Palatini formalism, where the oscillating mode is absent. In summary, the analyses carried out in this thesis suggest that subjecting MG theories to observational constraints confines the viable range of models to be very close to (and in some cases indistinguishable from) the ΛCDM model.


The behavior of mammalian cells on vertical nanowire (NW) arrays, including cell spreading and the dynamic distribution of focal adhesions and cytoskeletal proteins, has been intensively studied to extend the implications for cellular manipulations in vitro. Prompted by the result that cells on silicon (Si) NWs showed morphological changes and reduced migration rates, we have explored the transition of mesenchymal stem cells into a neuronal lineage by using SiNWs with varying lengths. When human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) were cultured on the longest SiNWs for 3 days, most of the cells exhibited elongated shapes with neurite-like extensions and dot-like focal adhesions that were prominently observed along with actin filaments. Under these circumstances, the cell motility analyzed by live cell imaging was found to decrease due to the presence of SiNWs. In addition, the slowed growth rate, as well as the reduced population of S phase cells, suggested that the cell cycle was likely arrested in response to the differentiation process. Furthermore, we measured the mRNA levels of several lineage-specific markers to confirm that the SiNWs actually induced neuron-like differentiation of the hMSCs while hampering their osteogenic differentiation. Taken together, our results implied that SiNWs were capable of inducing active reorganization of cellular behaviors, collectively guiding the fate of hMSCs into the neural lineage even in the absence of any inducing reagent.


We present the results of deep Chandra imaging of the central region of the Extended Groth Strip, the AEGIS-X Deep (AEGIS-XD) survey. When combined with previous Chandra observations of a wider area of the strip, AEGIS-X Wide (AEGIS-XW), these provide data to a nominal exposure depth of 800 ks in the three central ACIS-I fields, a region of approximately 0.29 deg2. This is currently the third deepest X-ray survey in existence; a factor ∼ 2 – 3 ?> shallower than the Chandra Deep Fields (CDFs), but over an area ∼3 times greater than each CDF. We present a catalog of 937 point sources detected in the deep Chandra observations, along with identifications of our X-ray sources from deep ground-based, Spitzer, GALEX, and Hubble Space Telescope imaging. Using a likelihood ratio analysis, we associate multiband counterparts for 929/937 of our X-ray sources, with an estimated 95% reliability, making the identification completeness approximately 94% in a statistical sense. Reliable spectroscopic redshifts for 353 of our X-ray sources are available predominantly from Keck (DEEP2/3) and MMT Hectospec, so the current spectroscopic completeness is ∼38%. For the remainder of the X-ray sources, we compute photometric redshifts based on multiband photometry in up to 35 bands from the UV to mid-IR. Particular attention is given to the fact that the vast majority the X-ray sources are active galactic nuclei and require hybrid templates. Our photometric redshifts have mean accuracy of &sgr; = 0.04 ?> and an outlier fraction of approximately 5%, reaching &sgr; = 0.03 ?> with less than 4% outliers in the area covered by CANDELS . The X-ray, multiwavelength photometry, and redshift catalogs are made publicly available.


Think first of the classic problem of redundant punitive damages: A defendant has caused a mass tort. Plaintiff 1 sues, winning punitive damages based on the overall reprehensibility of that original act. Plaintiff 2 also sues — and also wins punitive damages on the same grounds. So do Plaintiff 3, Plaintiff 4, and so forth.Next, consider a more subtle problem: Many statutes set the minimum award per claim at a super-compensatory level, based on the assumption that private suits may need extra inducement. But when enforcement turns out to be more vigorous than was assumed — most famously, when thousands or millions of claims are brought at once — then the damages in even a single case can stack up to surprisingly punishing effect.These problems share a conceptual feature that I analyze here: The damages in each context can be seen as encompassing two distinct components — a "variable" portion that properly varies with the number of claims, and a "fixed" portion that should be awarded only once. The crucial error that leads to surprisingly punitive damages is repeatedly awarding not only the variable but also the fixed component of damages, in cases with multiple claims.One natural solution for neutralizing such redundancy is to allow courts to run concurrently the fixed component of such repeated awards. This paper explores how a "concurrent damages" approach might be applied to variations of each problem; addresses its pros, cons, and complications; and explores how it relates to other procedural devices, including preclusion and aggregation.


A retrospective study was made on 195 institutionalized elderly people and was carried out between 2002-2006 in three social care centers from Galati county: "Sf. Spiridon" retirement home (A), "Stefan cel Mare" social care center (B) and Medicalsocial center (C). The aim of this study is to find out the real social life conditions of institutionalized elderly, the shortcomings and positive aspects of their existence, in order to design future measures to improve quality of elderly life in all aspects. Actual quality of life was assessed by, taking into account physical and psychosocial environment, quality of elderly social care, satisfaction degree of assisted persons in relation to living conditions and existing relationships, their health state, as well as to identify the causes that led institutionalization of such persons As working tools were used: individual questionnaire, training manual, sampling lists, summary tables. The study undertaken in Romania confirmed that elderly coming from "Sf. Spiridon "retirement home have the highest average age (up to 75 years old). Loneliness was the main reason which caused elderly admission for institutionalization in three nursing homes (49.6% among the elderly in the Sf. Spiridon retirement home (A), 43.2% for those from "Stefan cel Mare" social care center (B) and 38.1% of the elderly from Medical-social center (C). Other important reasons were represented by lack of housing and insufficient storage house space. The highest elderly percentage who came into social care centers A, B, C on their self will is 85.3%, 64.9% and 45.2%, respectively.


We consider the class of piecewise affine optimal state feedback control laws applied to discrete-time piecewise affine systems, motivated by recent work on the computation of closed-form MPC controllers. The storage demand and complexity of these optimal closed-form solutions limit their applicability in most real-life situations. In this paper we present a novel algorithm to a posteriori reduce the storage demand and complexity of the closed-form controller without losing closed-loop stability or all time feasibility while guaranteeing a bounded performance decay compared to the optimal solution. The algorithm combines simple polyhedral manipulations with (multi-parametric) linear programming and the effectiveness of the algorithm is demonstrated on a large numerical example.


When carboxyl-, carbonyl- or methyl-labelled pyruvates are supplied to darkened fragments of Kalanchoё crenata Haw. leaves, malate usually becomes the most heavily labelled metabolite. To help in elucidating the processes involved in the labelling, the distribution of 14C within the malate molecule has been determined. Investigations were made for leaves in which dark acidification led to a net synthesis of malate and for leaves in which dark deacidification led to a net consumption of malate. Some experiments were carried out in the presence of aerobic atmospheres containing 20 % CO2. The results are consistent with the oxidation of the pyruvate by pyruvic oxidase and enzymes associated with the conventional TCA cycle. In addition to such slight net synthesis of malate as may have occurred by this sequence there appeared to be two other distinct synthetic processes involving β-carboxylations. In one of these, 14CO2 that arose from pyruvate or a labelled product thereof was fixed into malate by the enzymic system responsible for the massive CO2fixation and resulting acidification in darkened Kalanchoё leaves. In this reaction, apparently, the carbon skeleton of pyruvate was not directly incorporated into the malate. In the other carboxylative synthesis the carbon skeleton of labelled pyruvate appeared to be incorporated as a whole into malic acid. Only a very small proportion of the total fixation of 14CO2 by the leaves was attributable to this synthesis. It is suggested that the first of these carboxylations involves phosphoenolpyruvic carboxylase acting in conjunction with other enzymes Support is provided for the concept that most of the malate synthesized when CO2 is fixed during dark acidification is transferred to a storage pool. The present analyses suggest that malate synthesized from the labelled pyruvate by action of malic enzymeor in oxidative reactions of the TCA cycle is relatively rapidly metabolized. The implications of the possible occurrence of the acids in Kalanchoё leaves partly in storage pools, where they are not subject to metabolic transformations, and partly in active pools, where they are rapidly transformed in metabolic reactions, are discussed briefly with respect to the interpretation of results observed when labelled metabolites are supplied to plant tissues.


This paper discusses differences between two popular curriculum approaches in early childhood education: the Project Approach developed in the United States and the Reggio Emilia Approach developed in Italy. Although they are similar in many ways, their differences are mainly due to their divergence in focus on domains of learning: one on science and social science, the other on art. In turn, differences in epistemology, ontology, the purpose of education, the learning process, and types of reasoning are conceptualized. We recommend an integrated approach that blends both approaches through systematic investigation and creativity, objective and subjective aspects of reality, science and social science–oriented and meaning-oriented lessons, planned and spontaneous learning, and deductive and inductive reasoning. We elaborate and term this integration as reflexive pedagogy–to support a child's learning in a dynamic and dialectical relationship. We then provide examples and suggestions of the successful use of this pedagogy.


The quinoxalinone skeleton is used as an intermediate in designing novel quinoxalinone derivatives with potential as novel anticancer, antimicrobial, antifungal, antithrombotic and antianxiolytic agents and glycogen phosphorlyase inhibitors, and also as fluoroionophores. The present paper describes the synthesis and antibacterial activity of some novel 3,4-dihydroquinoxalin-2H-(1H)-one derivatives 5a-5j (Scheme 1) from commercially available 1,2- phenylenediamine as starting material. The newly synthesized compounds were screened to evaluate their antibacterial activity. Most of the compounds were found to display good to moderate antibacterial activity against all the tested bacterial strains. It was observed that among all the compounds tested, compound 5i exhibited equipotent activity and 5j showed good activity (having fluorine substituent) against all the tested bacterial strains and the remaining compounds such as compounds 5a, 5b, 5c, 5d and 5e having methyl and methoxy substituents displayed moderate activity while the compounds 5f, 5g and 5h showed no activity.


Milk and dairy products constitute an important source of energy and nutrients for humans. Food preferences may significantly influence the actual consumption (and thus nutrition) of people at the population level. The objective of the present large-scale survey was to specify current preferences for milk and dairy products with regard to age and gender. The study was conducted across the Moravia region, Czech Republic, on a sample of 451 individuals divided into 4 age groups: children, adolescents, young adults, and elderly people. A graphic scale questionnaire was administered, with respondents rating their degree of preference for each food item by drawing a mark on a 35 mm line. Out of the 115 items in the questionnaire, 11 items represented dairy products. Data was analysed by means of a general linear model using IBM SPSS Statistics software. Preference for milk was lower in the elderly group than the other groups (p<0.01). In children, the most preferred dairy product was cream, which was in contrast with the elderly group. Significant gender differences were only found with low-fat yoghurt (p<0.01). The overall preference for dairy products (21.61) was lower than the average preference for all foods on the list (22.50). The cross-sectional study revealed intergenerational differences in preferences for specific dairy products, which were most marked in case of cream, processed cheese, blue cheese and buttermilk. The knowledge of these differences might help promote more focused action at the community level directed at increasing the overall consumption of dairy products in the population.


Various highly infective pathogens that are present in hospital wards can spread through the air and infect patients. To remove pathogens effectively in order to reduce infections, the efficient ventilation of hospital wards is critical. This study used age of air data to analyze the ventilation efficiency within hospital wards. The validity of the numerical analysis method was verified by comparison with the age of air data obtained from an experimental test on a four-bed hospital ward. The verified numerical analysis method was used to establish the airflow within a hospital ward in relation to the use of ventilation systems, air cleaners, and individual patient curtains. The efficiency of ventilation according to each factor was compared using age of air data. Considerable differences in the age of the air were identified, depending on the location of the patient with respect to both the air cleaner and the inlet/outlet duct of the ventilation system. Furthermore, individual curtains were found to interfere with air circulation, reducing ventilation efficiency and increasing the age of the air at the location of each patient.


On the basis of an extensive survey of primary and secondary sources from 19th-century central Sweden this article looks into the most neglected area of alcohol history, namely the role that alcohol played within the middle and upper classes. More specifically, it aims to analyze the relationship between drinking habits and 'respectability', as described by scholars such as George Mosse. The author identifies an aristocratic drinking culture with roots in the 18th century, in which respectability was not the governing structure of gendered behaviour. Among men belonging to the middle strata of society a different drinking culture existed, where the primary aim was to create a sense of brotherhood between men. The increasing insistence on respectability during the course of the period slowly eroded the old aristocratic drinking pattern, but also challenged the heavy drinking in middle-class male circles. The study thus adds detail and complexity to concepts such as 'respectability' and 'separate spheres'.


Our book Critical Tax Theory: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press 2009) highlights and explains the major themes and methodologies of a group of scholars who challenge the traditional claim that tax law is neutral and unbiased. The contributors to this volume include pioneers in the field of critical tax theory, as well as key thinkers who have sustained and expanded the investigation into why the tax laws are the way they are and what impact tax laws have on historically disempowered groups. This volume will provide an accessible introduction to this new and growing body of scholarship. It will be a resource not only for scholars and students in the fields of taxation and economics, but also for those who engage with critical race theory, feminist legal theory, queer theory, class-based analysis, and social justice generally.Included here a short abstract, the table of contents for the book, and our introduction to the book. Tax is the one area of law that affects everyone in our society, and we hope that you will find this book to be an important resource for understanding its impact on all of us.


Solid Dispersions greatly enhance the surface area and hence the dissolution rate and the bioavailability of poorly water-soluble drugs are raised. Thus solid dispersions of Lovastatin have been formulated to improve its solubility and dissolution characteristics, reduce dosing frequency and to improve its stability. METHODS: Lovastatin solid dispersions were prepared by solvent evaporation method. The prepared solid dispersions were characterized by Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy and evaluated for various parameters like drug content, solubility and dissolution studies and different physical properties. RESULTS: FTIR of the solid dispersion showed that the peaks of Lovastatin and polymers were distinguishable and hence there was no chemical interaction between drug and polymer after formation of solid dispersions. The data indicated that solubility increased in all cases. Dissolution data of all solid dispersions also indicated increase in dissolution as compared to pure drug and increase was due to wetting phenomenon of superdisintegrants used for preparation of solid dispersions. CONCLUSIONS: The solvent evaporation method was found to be a promising method for formulating uniform and stable lovastatin solid dispersions with enhanced surface area and dissolution rate. The bioavailability also increased due to increased wettability of the solid dispersions.


The urban soil environment is usually not conducive to healthy root growth and function, leading to problems with plant establishment, growth, and aesthetic quality. The objective of this study was to determine if the addition of compost with or without the application of shallow tillage or aeration will improve soil physical and chemical properties and plant growth compared with an unamended control in simulated new residential landscapes. Twenty-four mixed landscape plots were established in a randomized complete block design to simulate new residential landscapes. Each plot was constructed using 10 cm of subsoil fill material over a compacted field soil and planted with Stenotaphrum secundatum and mixed ornamental plant species. Composted dairy manure solids were applied as an organic soil amendment at a depth of 5 cm (≈256 Mg·ha ―1 ) in combination with two mechanical soil treatments (tillage to 15 cm and plug aeration) for a total of five soil management treatments plus an untreated control. Soil physical and chemical properties, plant growth, and quality and plant tissue nutrient concentrations were assessed periodically to determine the effect of soil treatment on soil and plant quality. Applications of compost to soils significantly reduced soil bulk density and pH and increased soil organic matter, electrical conductivity, and Mehlich-1 phosphorus and potassium concentrations. All ornamental plant species, with the exception of Raphiolepis indica (L.) Lindl. ex Ker Gawl., exhibited more growth when grown in soils amended with composted dairy manure solids. In most instances, plant tissue nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations were higher for plants grown in soils receiving compost. Results of our study suggested that the addition of composted dairy manure solids to soils can improve soil properties and enhance plant growth in residential landscapes when sandy fill soils are used. In contrast, shallow tillage and aeration had little effect on soil properties or plant growth.


In this article, the authors investigate the drivers of CLO equity return and how to identify a good CLO manager. Pre-crisis collateralized loan obligation (CLO) structures proved to be very robust in the end. Today's CLOs are structured more conservatively with generally more CLO debt subordination, cleaner asset pools, and less reinvestment flexibility. Looking at historical CLO equity performance, CLO 1.0 equity benefited from having cheap funding costs and opportunities to buy discounted loans during the financial crisis, ultimately achieving over 20% IRR. CLO 2.0 equity's returns have been running lower so far in a benign credit market. The authors note that top-quartile US CLO equity always delivered low-to-mid-teens' returns, regardless of market timing. It is also worth noting that CLO equity's deal-level and manager-level performance dispersion is evident across different vintages and even more pronounced today than before the Global Financial Crisis as the number of US CLO managers grew from 100 managers pre-crisis to more than 130 today, with the outstanding US CLO market having more than doubled in size. TOPICS: CLOs, CDOs, and other structured credit; project finance; legal and regulatory issues for structured finance; financial crises and financial market history; manager selection Key Findings • Any style could lead to good or bad CLO performance. Active trading and portfolio management are the key to outperform and differentiate from peers for CLO managers. • It is hard to balance principal and interest returns of CLO equity, because minimizing portfolio losses often hurts running excess spreads. We can tell if CLO manager is more "equity-friendly" or "debt-friendly" by comparing various performance metrics. • Manager tiering will continue to be a common theme in the CLO market during the next downturn and the subsequent recovery period.


Human rights offer a vision of international justice that today's idealistic millions hold dear. Yet the very concept on which the movement is based became familiar only a few decades ago when it profoundly reshaped our hopes for an improved humanity. In this pioneering book, Samuel Moyn elevates that extraordinary transformation to center stage and asks what it reveals about the ideal's troubled present and uncertain future. For some, human rights stretch back to the dawn of Western civilization, the age of the American and French Revolutions, or the post - World War II moment when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was framed. Revisiting these episodes in a dramatic tour of humanity's moral history, "The Last Utopia" shows that it was in the decade after 1968 that human rights began to make sense to broad communities of people as the proper cause of justice. Across eastern and western Europe, as well as throughout the United States and Latin America, human rights crystallized in a few short years as social activism and political rhetoric moved it from the hallways of the United Nations to the global forefront. It was on the ruins of earlier political utopias, Moyn argues, that human rights achieved contemporary prominence. The morality of individual rights substituted for the soiled political dreams of revolutionary communism and nationalism as international law became an alternative to popular struggle and bloody violence. But as the ideal of human rights enters into rival political agendas, it requires more vigilance and scrutiny than when it became the watchword of our hopes.


This thesis investigates the phenomenon of memoir competitions in communist-era Poland, focusing on contributions to them by Poles of rural origins inhabiting the lands – known as the Recovered Territories – acquired by the postwar Polish state from Germany in 1945. I explore the history of the memoir method in postwar Poland, the processes involved in producing published volumes of competition memoirs – including editing and censorship, and the use of these sources in communist-era and post-1989 sociological, historiographical and interdisciplinary studies. I focus on existing research both on the Recovered Territories, particularly Polish settlement of those lands and the development of new communities there, and also on postwar peasants' lives, particularly where theories of social advance are applied. In this respect, this investigation adds to existing literature in social history on early postwar Poland.
My study also contributes to work in censorship studies by considering Polish censors' approach to quite exceptional sources. Because in many cases original competition entries are available, it is possible to establish where editors, publishers and censors have intervened, something that is rarely possible with standard works of literature or academic scholarship produced under communism. I consider what strategies different scholars used in presenting published sources and circumventing restrictions imposed. Subaltern studies approaches to speaking and its critique of nation-centred historiography are, meanwhile, applied in investigating the intersection of peasant autobiographies, academic research, scholars and Party-state institutions and their discourses, as I consider how the published communist-era compilations of competition entries framed peasant writing, experience, culture and consciousness, and how these frames potentially conflicted with the authors' own interpretations of their experiences and social reality.
This investigation also contributes to memory studies, a discipline whose approach to communist and totalitarian states is particularly problematic as many studies assume significant restrictions were imposed not only on publication but also on autobiographical memory expressed in usually unrecorded private and local spheres. I explore whether memory studies' typical approach, based in notions of competing claims might also apply to Poland under state socialism. Bakhtin's theories of dialogism prove useful in exploring the history of memory under communism, rather than the memory of it – as is commonplace today in oral history-based studies, for example.
It is in respect of censorship studies and memory studies that this thesis makes its most substantial original contributions to research.
My research draws on substantial archival research conducted in Poland, where I explored censorship archives in Warsaw and Poznan, Party and ministerial archives, and the Polish Academy of Science archive, since numerous memoir sociologists and rural sociologists were based there. I also used archives housing original competition entries, the main locations being: The Institute of Western Affairs in Poznan (Instytut Zachodni – IZ), the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Science (Instytut Historyczny PAN – IH PAN) and the Museum of the History of the Polish Peasant Movement (MHRPL in Piaseczno, near Tczew). I consider published volumes alongside original sources where possible, although substantial losses have occurred to the store of popular autobiography.
Chapter 1 outlines the background of Polish memoir sociology and the main methods and theories used in this investigation, ranging from subaltern studies through Bakhtin to autobiography studies. Chapter 2 focuses on memory studies, including the field's approach to communist and postcommunist countries, before outlining aspects of censorship studies relevant to this investigation. I end Chapter 2 on a case study of the memoir compilation Miesiąc mojego zycia [A Month in my Life – MMŻ; (1964)] and its treatment by censors.
Chapter 3 explores recent English- and Polish-language historiography on the Recovered Territories, concentrating on, firstly, how historians have used the memoir resources in considering the early postwar years, and, secondly, how peasants are represented within the recent wave of works exploring Polish communism through nationalism and popular legitimation. I end on a case study of one particular memoir by a female settler to the new Polish lands, highlighting the value of the competition entries as thick descriptions.
Chapter 4 investigates the mainstream communist-era memoir movement where the leading analytical concept for approaching peasants and social change was 'social advance', developed from Jozef Chalasinski's prewar sociology. I explore how the nine-volume series Mlode pokolenie wsi Polski Ludowej [The Young Generation of Rural People's Poland – MPWPL; (1964-1980)] and other memoir-based studies approached peasants and the Recovered Territories, which were often framed as a site of quicker and more intensive social advance and urbanisation. I also explore the autobiographies of Poles who lost their homelands in the prewar eastern borderlands in the context of today's assumptions that 'repatriants', as the eastern Poles were known under communism, were largely absent from communist-era publications.
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Chapter 5 considers the academic sociology of the Western Territories, developed at IZ, and how materials from its 1956/57 memoir competition on settlers were used alongside fieldwork. I explore the sociological frameworks developed for analysing migration, settlement and community development, noting that some studies from the 1960s can today be considered forerunners of migration studies and memory studies. Chapter 6 specifically considers the publication Pamietniki osadnikow Ziem Odzyskanych [Memoirs of Recovered Territories Settlers – POZO; (1963)], investigating original entries alongside published materials to explore editors' and academics' role in censorship, while also investigating how the volume was received in the press.
Chapter 7 explores the production of the four-volume series Wieś polska 1939-1948 [Rural Poland 1939-1948; (1967-1971)] by historian-editors Krystyna Kersten and Tomasz Szarota, who treated these previously-unpublished texts written in 1948 explicitly as historical sources, thus contrasting with previously dominant sociological approaches while also posing specific problems for censors as the editors employed a unique method of summaries in an attempt to make the entire set of some 1700 texts available to readers.
Exploring different approaches to memoir publication, I aim to illustrate the diversity of the published sphere in People's Poland, while demonstrating the heterogeneity of ordinary Poles' memories submitted to different competitions between 1948 and 1970. While the value of the archived sources should be quite evident, exploration of censorship and editing processes should demonstrate the value of compilations and indeed communist-era scholarship, which is often overlooked today. By avoiding totalitarian schools of historiography and memory studies, I aim to demonstrate that competition memoirs illustrated ordinary Poles' agency within historical and social processes, while also stressing their agency over their memories and autobiographical narratives which at the same time were, as in any society, cultural and social constructs.


In a competitive environment reactive power management is an essential service provided by independent system operator taking into account the voltage security and transmission losses. The system operator adopts a transparent and non-dis-criminatory procedure to procure the reactive power supply for optimal deployment in the system. Since generators' are the main source of reactive power generation and the cost of the reactive power should be considered for their noticeable impact on both real and reactive power marginal prices. In this paper, a method based on marginal cost theory is presented for locational marginal prices calculation for real and reactive power considering different reactive power cost models of generators' reactive support. With the presence of FACTS controllers in the system for more flexible operation, their impact on nodal prices can not be ignored for wheeling cost determination and has also to be considered taking their cost function into account. The results have been obtained for hybrid electricity market model and results have also been computed for pool model for comparison. Mixed Integer Non-linear programming (MINLP) approach has been formulated for solving the complex problem with MATLAB and GAMS interfacing. The proposed approach has been tested on IEEE 24-bus Reliability Test System (RTS).


Compared with some other parts of arkansas, employment in the little rock-north little rock metro area has been slow to recover from the 2001 national recession. For example, from March 2001 through december 2005 (more than four years after the recession officially ended), private nonfarm payroll employment in the little rock area increased by 1.2 percent, compared with 17 percent in the Fayettevillespringdale-rogers metro area, in northwestern arkansas. after returning to pre-recession levels in June 2004, there has been virtually no change in little rock's employment. Yet there are reasons to be optimistic about arkansas' capital: above-average income growth and modest population growth. reflecting its role as a regional center serving a large and mostly rural hinterland, little rock has a diverse industry mix that emphasizes health care, construction and transportation. an important economic engine for little rock is the education and health services sector, which accounts for 16 percent of the regional economy. as shown in the figure, this sector has outperformed others, growing by 11 percent since the beginning of the 2001 recession. However, job growth was offset by weaknesses in the trade, transportation and utilities (ttu) sector, which since March 2001 has declined by 5 percent, an equivalent of 1,200 jobs. Given the relative importance of ttu in the regional economy (more than a quarter of the region's labor force), it is not surprising that total employment growth has been stagnant. Meanwhile, manufacturing in little rock stabilized during 2004 and 2005 after a long period of steady job losses (more than 20 percent since March 2001). the impact of declining manufacturing on the little rock economy is mitigated since the sector accounts for only 10 percent of employment, compared with 17 percent for arkansas as a whole. the down side, however, is the loss of high-technology employment in industries such as aerospace manufacturing; this loss may have detrimental impacts on the region's future. other sectors such as construction and leisure and hospitality have enjoyed steady, though not stellar, growth in recent years. From March 2001 through december 2005, the natural resources, mining and construction sector grew by 1.2 percent and the leisure and hospitality sector by 4.8 percent. despite some signs that the housing market is cooling in other parts of the united states, residential construction showed no sign of slowing during 2005 in little rock. this may be partly due to the emerging wave of housing in downtown in response to local revitalization efforts. in addition, the november 2004 opening of the Clinton presidential library in downtown little rock should not be discounted as a positive economic force; it is likely associated with increased nonresidential construction, as well as job creation in the leisure and hospitality sectors as tourists drive and fly to little rock. although little rock's overall job growth has lagged behind that in other parts of arkansas in the past few years, its unemployment rate of 4.5 percent (12-month average for 2005) is below the average for the state (5 percent) and the country (5 percent). in addition, per capita income has been growing faster than the national average. For example, during 2000-2003, nominal per capita income for little rock increased by 11 percent compared with 5.5 percent nationally. after adjusting for inflation, little rock per capita income increased by 3.9 percent while u.s. per capita income actually declined. this may suggest that local productivity growth is running at a faster pace in little rock than for the nation as a whole. Further, little rock has experienced slow population growth compared with booming northwestern arkansas. For example, the population in pulaski County, where the city of little rock lies, increased by 1.2 percent between 2000 and 2004, while Fayetteville County, the core county of the Fayetteville-springdale-rogers metro area, grew by more than 10 percent. However, one recent Brookings institution study ranked little rock the no. 12 "Wealth Builder" among the 100 largest metropolitan areas. (a "Wealth Builder" is defined as a region that can raise incomes without fast population growth.)


The aim of the present study was to determine the antibacterial properties against Helicobacter pylori and the anti-inflammatory and antioxidant activities of crude A. krervanh extracts. The minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of ethanolic and aqueous extracts were measured against standard strain H. pylori standard (ATCC 43504) and six clinical isolates by disc diffusion and agar dilution. Anti-inflammatory activities were evaluated by measuring the inhibition of nitric oxide (NO) production in LPS-activated RAW 264.7 macrophages using the Griess assay and the ELISA measurement of proinflammatory cytokines, tumour necrosis factor α (TNF-α), and interleukin 6 (IL-6). Their cytotoxic activities against macrophages were determined by the MTT assay. ABTS and DPPH scavenging assays measured the antioxidant activities. Only the ethanolic extract showed antibacterial activity with mean inhibition zones of 9.0–19.3 mm for a corresponding MIC of 250 μg/ml; the clarithromycin MICs ranged from 0.5–1 μg/ml. This extract also inhibited production of NO (mean IC50 98.99±0.39 μg/ml) and IL-6 (mean IC50 18.68±2.16 μg/ml) and exhibited moderate antioxidant activity using DPPH and ABTS scavenging assays: mean IC50s 95.92±1.26 and 90.35±2.25 μg/ml, respectively. Thus ethanolic extract showed a greater spectrum of activity that could be exploited further as adjunct treatments of H. pylori related gastrointestinal disease.


The increasing importance of the strategic role of information systems (IS) in a world of global markets, exemplified by the trend to international e-commerce, has placed even greater emphasis on the need for effective IS strategic planning (ISSP). A first step in empirically determining the effectiveness of a particular ISSP project is to establish how ISSP success (the dependent variable) is to be defined and operationalised. Various approaches have been discussed in the IS literature. This study contributes to that discussion by undertaking a review of that literature and proposing a four-part approach for operationalising the dependent variable, ISSP success.


Analysis of the variability of equatorial ozone profiles in the Satellite Aerosol and Gas Experiment-corrected Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet data set demonstrates a strong seasonal persistence of interannual ozone anomalies, revealing a seasonal dependence to equatorial ozone variability. In the lower stratosphere (40–25 hPa) and in the upper stratosphere (6–4 hPa), ozone anomalies persist from approximately November until June of the following year, while ozone anomalies in the layer between 16 and 10 hPa persist from June to December. Analysis of zonal wind fields in the lower stratosphere and temperature fields in the upper stratosphere reveals a similar seasonal persistence of the zonal wind and temperature anomalies associated with the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO). Thus, the persistence of interannual ozone anomalies in the lower and upper equatorial stratosphere, which are mainly associated with the well-known QBO ozone signal through the QBO-induced meridional circulation, is related to a newly identified seasonal persistence of the QBO itself. The upper stratospheric QBO ozone signal is argued to arise from a combination of QBO-induced temperature and NOx perturbations, with the former dominating at 5 hPa and the latter at 10 hPa. Ozone anomalies in the transition zone between dynamical and photochemical control of ozone (16–10 hPa) are less influenced by the QBO signal and show a quite different seasonal persistence compared to the regions above and below.


This book offers a detailed account of how the Chinese real estate market actually operates in practice, from both legal and business perspectives. My goals are twofold. First, I seek to establish and describe how the Chinese real estate market, with so few written laws, actually functions. How do real estate professionals operate on such a large scale when they are not sure what the applicable law is or how it will be applied? Second, I aim to address the broader question of how a huge nation can achieve such dramatic levels of economic development so rapidly while its legal system is still so unsettled. In what ways does China force us to reconsider the traditional model of economic growth and expansion, which assumes that legal and institutional development is a prerequisite to economic growth?Part I of the book, which includes this chapter and Chapter 2, offers introductory material and some background information, along with my preliminary observations and conclusions. Part II, encompassing Chapters 3 through 10, discusses specific sub-topics within Chinese real estate law and practice and examines each of these sub-topics in detail. These chapters are designed to provide a thorough analysis of how Chinese experts have been managing to function so successfully in a nation with a rapidly changing legal system. Part III, which consists of Chapters 11 and 12, shifts the focus considerably, by discussing conventional law and development theory and its application within China. The traditional theory holds that a firmly established legal structure is an essential precondition to significant economic development. These chapters ask how the theory can be reconciled with China's experience during the past quarter-century. Finally, Part IV offers some conclusions.


Involving the public in decision‐making has become a bureaucratic pre‐occupation for every health agency in the UK. In this paper we offer an innovative approach for local participation in health decision‐making through the development of a 'grounded' citizens' jury. We describe the process of one such jury commissioned by a Primary Care Group in the north‐west of England, which was located in an area suffering intractable health inequalities. Twelve local people aged between 17 and 70 were recruited to come together for a week to hear evidence, ask questions and debate what they felt would improve the health and well‐being of people living in the area. The jury process acted effectively as a grass‐roots health needs assessment and amongst other outcomes, resulted in the setting up of a community health centre run by a board consisting of members of the community (including two jurors) together with local agencies. The methodology described here contrasts with that practiced by what we term 'the consultation industry', which is primarily interested in the use of fixed models to generate the public view as a standardized output, a product, developed to serve the needs of an established policy process, with little interest in effecting change. We outline four principles underpinning our approach: deliberation, integration, sustainability and accountability. We argue that citizens' juries and other consultation initiatives need to be reclaimed from that which merely serves the policy process and become 'grounded', a tool for activism, in which local people are agents in the development of policies affecting their lives.


The Antigonish Highlands, Nova Scotia, are within the Avalon terrane of the northern Appalachians and contain four distinct episodes of rift-related magmatism: Neoproterozoic, Cambrian, Middle Ordovician, and Late Devonian. All four magmatic suites are composed of basalts and subordinate crustally derived felsic rocks. The mafic rocks of these suites, which do not appear to be significantly contaminated by continental crust, display similar geochemical and Sm-Nd isotopic characteristics consistent with an enriched mantle source that was metasomatically enriched prior to the oldest rifting event, probably between 0.8 and 1.1 Ga. These data also imply that the Avalonian crust and its subcontinental lithospheric mantle remained coupled during four magmatic events. Because the earliest phases of magmatism occurred when Avalonia was located along the Gondwanan margin, and the latest phases after Avalonia accreted to Laurentia, the coupling of crust and mantle in the Antigonish Highlands suggests that the migration of Avalonia did not completely detach its lithospheric mantle from its crustal cover. This study demonstrates the importance of comparing magmatism of different ages in the same terrane.


Distance education and e-learning in the field of information security is gaining popularity. An online information security programme is supposed to include plenty of hands-on exercises, but in most cases the lab experiments are unavailable to distance students that represent a challenge in online education. In information security education, virtual labs facilitate hands-on learning in distance education. An online information security lab is an artefact which involves a collection of systems and software used for teaching information security, and which is accessible through the Internet. However, the design, development and implementation of an online InfoSec lab has many challenges. This research is motivated from an on-going information security lab development initiative at Lulea University of Technology (LTU). Thus, the researcher focused on the question of how we can design a pedagogical online InfoSec lab which is flexible, usable and adapts to different educational contexts. The current literatureabout online InfoSec labs still lacks well-specified pedagogical approaches and concrete design principles. This hinders the accumulation of technical and pedagogical knowledge for the implementation and use of online educational InfoSec labs. Moreover, the literature focuses mainly on details of technical lab implementations, whereas the pedagogical elements of the curriculum and the rationale behind them were ignored. This leads to inadequate guidance about how the instructor and the learner can make use of the lab to pedagogically align the course objectives, teaching / learning activities and assessment methods. In order to design an online InfoSec lab to improve flexible hands-on education and security skills development the Action design research (ADR) approach was chosen. The ultimate goal is to design an ensemble IT artefact as a result of emerging design, use, and refinement in context through continuous interaction between technology and organization during the design process. Following the IT-dominant BIE process of ADR approach made it possible not only to develop the lab and instantiate it in different courses but also to formulate design principles and abstract the findings to a generalizable level. Furthermore, a framework for evaluation in design science research (FEDS) was adopted for evaluation purposes. The framework was used to conduct formative and summative evaluations. Feedback from all the stakeholders including teachers and students showed that the online InfoSec lab is a usable learning media for hands-on education from a distance. This research contributes by showing the design, development and implementation of an online InfoSec lab aimed at the improvement of hands-on education and evaluation of its use in context. Following technology as a development project perspective of an ensemble view, my research work at its current status contributes by serving two major purposes. First, this study proposed a conceptual design model of an online InfoSec lab comprising important building blocks or entities. The study conceptualizes the online InfoSec lab as an ensemble artefact. This study unfolded the black-box tools view of the lab so as to understand and explain the important building blocks (entities of the lab), and the interrelationships of the entities. This study provides conceptual clarity given the existing literature on online InfoSec labs, by recognizing the stakeholders and explaining their roles for each entity in the proposed conceptual model of an online InfoSec lab; this is a view which has not been recognized or discussed in similar earlier works. Second, the study suggests design principles for implementing a conceptual model of an online InfoSec lab in different educational contexts. The emerging design principles were shaped during this research work together with the other stakeholders. The design principles such as Contextualization based on programme goals, Contextualization based on course goals, Pedagogical alignment of lab activities, Flexible learning, Collaborationamong lab stakeholders, Scalability, User friendly interface with properly arranged resources and targets and Isolate the InfoSec lab incorporate the socio-technical perspective, which ensures that the resulting artefact developed using these principles should be an ensemble artefact. The design principles can provide support to practically construct, implement and test the online InfoSec lab. The study introduced a productive learning media (InfoSec lab) that is designed to meet the active learning preferences of distance learners of information security, such as support for flexible and individualized hands-on learning. Practitioners wishing to include lab activities in their courses and programmes can utilize this knowledge to understand fully how much human and technical resources are needed to design the lab and conduct exercises.


Between 1929 and 1935 Evelyn Waugh travelled widely and wrote four books about his experiences. In this collection he writes, with his customary wit and perception, about a cruise around the Mediterranean; a train trip from Djibouti to Abyssinia to attend Emperor Haile Selassie's coronation in 1930; his travels in Aden, Zanzibar, Kenya and the Congo, coping with unbearable heat and plagued by mosquitoes; a journey to Guyana and Brazil; and, his return to Addis Ababa in 1935 to report on the war between Abyssinia and Italy. Waugh's adventures on his travels gave him the ideas for such classic novels as "Scoop" and "Black Mischief".


Multiple rib fractures in trauma patients are associated with significant morbidity and mortality. Delayed morbidity for patients with rib fractures is often a result of hypoventilation leading to atelectasis, pneumonia, and respiratory failure. Pain management was first recognized as an important factor in preventing complications in these patients. Later, management of the respiratory system became more widely recognized as a major factor in patients' care. It is now known that patients with multiple rib fractures benefit most from adequate pain control, rapid mobilization, and meticulous respiratory care to prevent complications. A protocol based on a synthesis of the existing literature is developed. Development of such a protocol for decisions about rapid mobilization, respiratory support, and pain management is the first step in testing the hypothesis that these interventions will decrease the length of patients' stay in intensive care units.


Guanxi, a Chinese term that defines social networks of power and benefits, can be divided into inter-personal and inter-organizational relationships. Guanxi significantly influences construction innovation in China. Many studies have examined the relationship between guanxi and construction innovation at the project or organizational level. However, few of these studies explain how guanxi might affect an individual's innovative behaviour from a double-level perspective. This paper builds on social capital theory and social exchange theory to examine guanxi's role in motivating innovative behaviour in a China-specific construction context. It investigates the main effects of inter-personal relationships on innovative behaviour, the mediating effects of knowledge sharing, and the cross-level moderating effects of inter-organizational relationships. These elements were tested using a survey that received 178 responses from 35 different organizations. The results were analysed using Hierarchical Linear Modelling (HLM) and revealed that inter-personal relationships have positive influences on innovative behaviour, thus highlighting the partial mediating effects of knowledge sharing. In addition, the analyses showed that inter-organizational relationships augment inter-personal relationships and knowledge sharing on innovative behaviour by cross-level interaction. The research findings enhance an understanding of guanxi and innovative behaviour in China-specific construction project settings, as well as verifying the significance of guanxi in stimulating innovative behaviour.


In the anaerobic digestion of solid wastes, hydrolysis is the rate limiting step and physicochemical pretreatment is often required to promote solubilization of organic matter. As an illustration, anaerobic digestion was limited by the substrate solubilization step during continuous cultures performed with an industrial microbial biomass. In optimal operating conditions determined for the hydrolysis-acidogenesis step (T = 35 degrees C; pH = 8.5; OLR = 5.4 g COD/l.d) 50.6% COD solubilization was achieved. A thermochemical pretreatment based on sodium hydroxide addition, was used in order to enhance COD solubilization. Optimal conditions for COD solubilization were pH = 12, T = 140 degrees C for 30 minutes. In these conditions, 70% COD solubilization was achieved. However, anaerobic biodegradability of the pretreated substrate was not improved and remained near 40%. The poor anaerobic biodegradability performances were attributed to the soluble molecules generated during the thermochemical pretreatment that were refractory and/or inhibitory to anaerobic microorganisms. Fractionation of the soluble pretreated microbial biomass by two methods (treatment with adsorbent resins and precipitation by pH adjustment) demonstrated that high molecular weight compounds (> 100 kDa) are involved in the poor biodegradability and in the biotoxicity observed. Partial decolorization through resin use and acid precipitation remove these compounds. The consequence of their removal was an increase of the production of biogas.


Lek mating systems are characteristic of anurans that use oviposition sites that cannot be easily monopolized by individual males. The dynamics of the chorus structure in leks is not well known. Here, we examine the relationship between the movement activity of individual males during the breeding season and their size. According to our observations, the site fidelity of males is not completely random, with the larger males moving significantly shorter distances than smaller males. However, this difference applies only to the distance between the first and second captures. Whether higher site fidelity contributes to higher mating success needs further investigation.


The proliferation of contemporary interpretations of classic works throughout the history of dance is substantial, yet there is little scholarly acknowledgement of contemporary interpretations as a genre unto themselves. Unlike other art forms, there is a lack of academic research into contemporary interpretations within dance and their place in dance history. This thesis delves into the genre of contemporary interpretations of classic choreographies, uncovering their popular appeal, the various approaches, their role and contribution to dance history. The second part is a comparative Swan Lake case study, examining the works of Mats Ek, Matthew Bourne and Garry Stewart in reference to the Petipa/Ivanov version of Swan Lake (1895). The Swan Lake canon, perhaps the epitome of classical ballet, seems irresistible to choreographers. This classic ballet becomes the metaphoric mother Swan, while the myriad of contemporary interpretations are her gaggle of cygnets. Each cygnet is distinctively unique yet shaped by the same source. One work may reverently celebrate the Swan while another chooses to question their upbringing, preferring that a pastiche or a cheeky parody of the Swan suits them best. However regardless of the contemporary interpretation it is ultimately the voice of the classic work that will always prevail as the central figure of discourse and debate. Consequently the classics and their reinterpretations constructs a substantial and palpable history which confrrms that dance can no longer be seen as the immutable transient art form with which it is often labelled.


This review of the 2010 career counseling and development research presents the breadth and depth of topics published in the field ranging from children's conceptions of career to employee burnout. The review covers topics in the career literature on professional issues, career theory and concepts, career development, the world of work, career assessment and technology, and career interventions. The author summarizes the 2010 research to provide information and direction to career practitioners, theorists, and researchers. The incredible amount of reading, organizing, synthesizing, and integrating involved in an annual review is difficult to imagine before the fact and even more challenging to adequately explain after completion. The time and effort spent completing this review was gready rewarded by the quality of the articles I read and by all I learned from the 2010 research literature in career counseling and development. For this review, I chose, as have previous annual review authors of The Career Development Quarterly (CDQ) , to focus on the four primary U. S. -based career journals: CDQ, the Journal of Career Assessment, the Journal of Career Development, and the Journal of Vocational Behavior. I identified all articles that seemed relevant in the tables of contents for many of the American Counseling Association (ACA) division journals (i.e., Adultspan, Journal of College Counseling, Journal of Counseling & Development, Journal of Employment Counseling [JEC], Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, Rehabilitation Counseling Bulletin, and Professional School Counseling), for the American Psychological Association (APA) journals most likely to contain research articles in the career field (i.e., Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Counseling Psychology, and The Counseling Psychologist), and for several international journals (i.e., Australian Journal of Career Development, British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, and International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance). After identifying and downloading more than 350 articles, I read the articles in the four primary career journals and an additional 70 to 100 articles. I then had the enormously challenging task of choosing the articles most representative of the breadth and depth of topics addressed in this year's research. In the process, I may have omitted a critical piece of research in an area new to me or included articles that others may have excluded. Nonetheless, I hope that I have covered the major content areas and the key research in those areas. After choosing the articles to include in this review, I organized the review according to examples of previous annual reviews. I have included primary sections on professional issues, career theory and concepts, career development, the world of work, career assessment and technology, and career interventions. Within each of these broader categories, I have included subsections with as much breadth as seemed appropriate and synthesized the findings from that group of articles to provide focus for career practice. I have included international research in appropriate topical sections and identified sample nationality in my descriptions. In addition, I have included a Summary and Conclusion section for each of the primary sections. The purpose of my review is to provide the reader with a summarization of the career research of 2010, its primary implications, and some thoughts for practice based on this research. By far the most instructive and immediately practical article written during 2010 was Paul Hartung 's excellent 2009 annual review (Hartung). Professional Issues There were many research and conceptual articles in 2010 that focused on issues of professional importance to those in the fields of career development and counseling. A large number of these were related to diversity and multicultural aspects of career development. …


Author(s): Trivedi, Mahendra Kumar | Abstract: Soybean production in Iowa USA is among the most productive for rainfed regions in the world. Despite generally having excellent soils, growing season temperatures and rainfall, soybean yields are decreased by weed interference and inadequate available soil water at key stages of crop development. A field study was conducted at two locations in lowa in 2012 to determine if seed-applied fungicide or biofield treatments influenced weed community, soil volumetric water concentration and soybean yield and quality. Application of biofield treatment resulted in lower density of tall waterhemp density, greater soybean stand density at R8 stage and greater seed pod-1 compared to the absence of seed fungicide and biofield Soil volumetric water content varied by seed fungicide x biofield x date interaction but differences were not consistent among treatment combinations. Overall, seed fungicide and biofield treatments had similar effects on soybean productivity, however additional research is necessary to determine if biofield treatment is a suitable replacement for seed fungicide application.


Multicultural Riddle is a comprehensive exploration of all the issues that shape our search for a multicultural society. The book examines how we can establish a state of justice and equality between and among three groups: those who believe in a unified national culture, those who trace their culture to their ethnic identity, and those who view their religion as their culture. To solve the multicultural riddle, one must rethink national identity, ethnicity and the role of religion in the modern world.


Active control of sound can be employed globally to reduce noise levels in an entire enclosure, or locally around a listener's head. Recently, spherical loudspeaker arrays have been studied as multiple-channel sound sources capable of generating sound fields with high complexity. In this paper, several aspects of using a spherical loudspeaker array for local active control of sound are investigated. The first topic under investigation in this paper is the feasibility of creating sphere-shaped quiet zones away from the source. These can be useful in practice to cover the space around a listener's head. However, zones of quiet created away from the source tend to force the secondary source to produce zones of amplification away from the quiet zone. It is shown that by designing quiet zones in the form of a shell around the source, sound amplification can be significantly reduced. Finally, the combination of several spherical sources to enlarge the quiet zone will be demonstrated.


This paper introduces a hierarchical sequential arbitrary Lagrangian‐Eulerian (ALE) model for predicting the tire‐soil‐water interaction at finite deformations. Using the ALE framework, the interaction between a rolling pneumatic tire and the fluid‐infiltrated soil underneath will be captured numerically. The road is assumed to be a fully saturated two‐phase porous medium. The constitutive response of the tire and the solid skeleton of the porous medium is idealized as hyperelastic. Meanwhile, the interaction between tire, soil, and water will be simulated via a hierarchical operator‐split algorithm. A salient feature of the proposed framework is the steady state rolling framework. While the finite element mesh of the soil is fixed to a reference frame and moves with the tire, the solid and fluid constituents of the soil are flowing through the mesh in the ALE model according to the rolling speed of the tire. This treatment leads to an elegant and computationally efficient formulation to investigate the tire‐soil‐water interaction both close to the contact and in the far field. The presented ALE model for tire‐soil‐water interaction provides the essential basis for future applications, for example, to a path‐dependent frictional‐cohesive response of the consolidating soil and unsaturated soil, respectively. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Car design is the field involved in the improvement and development of the visual appearance of the physical form. In car design team, the task has been divided into 4 main aspects which is exterior design, interior design, CAS and Model. In this thesis, the focus has been given at the interior design through colour and trim. The colour and trim in car design consider the element of aesthetic, ergonomic and technical. Moreover, the aspect of colour and trim which is material, the designer and design team responsible in researching, designing and developing of the whole entire styling of the form. The aim of this study is focuses on understanding lifecycle trend of colour and trim for car interior design. Nowadays, car design is not only be attractive in exterior design, but design is able to comfort and pleasant feeling to the users while in interior aspects. However, some of interior designs have difficulty to provide comfort and pleasant feeling even emotion to its user while interacting with the car. In this context, colour refers to aspect that creates combination of intensity, and contrast to give the car a unique interior environment experience. Trim is known as material using in car design, therefore to create a good quality perception and a customer desire by the knowledge of material and surfaces treatments. This study analyze how the colour and trim can be used as a strategic tools to make car design stands out for it trends. To achieve the aim and objectives in this study, a mixed method has been chosen as the research method for the data collection. By using images and colours through survey questionnaires, data was collected among industrial design students at the Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) and practitioners in Proton and Perodua. The frequencies distribution and Pearson correlation analysis in SPSS software were used to analyze the survey data. Furthermore, content analysis was used to analyze the existing literatures and information. Consequently, it can be concluded that the information derived in this research can be used as a guideline for colour and trim, and strategic tools to predict the trends for car design. Additionally, the element of expression as interpreted by designer have a great ability to provide positive influence to the user. Also, results derived from this study answered the hypotheses made for this study which is "Understanding lifecycle trend of colour and trim for car interior design."


This thesis takes Discursive Psychology as its main theoretical influence. Drawing on the resources of Discursive Psychology and
utilising analytic tools provided by Conversation Analysis, these principles are applied to the study of addiction, and specifically alcohol problems. The data explored are telephone calls to an alcohol helpline. Four analytic chapters are presented. The first focuses on the concept of loss of control over drinking, identifying features of how this concept is constructed in talk and suggests possible functions of control talk for both callers and Advice Workers. The second analytic chapter examines how Advice Workers respond to callers' professed impaired control over
their drinking and I demonstrate that embedded in discursive sequences
of problem formulation and advice giving are issues of agency, accountability and responsibility. The thesis moves on to explore the role of knowledge in calls to an alcohol helpline and the analysis reveals
that both the expert status of the Advice Worker and the speciality of the
topic are co-constructed between the speakers on the helpline. The final
analytic chapter features just one telephone call and demonstrates the application of such an analysis for alcohol service providers. The thesis ends with a discussion of the main overall findings and the
implications of the research for clinical practice. I close by arguing that
initial agency contact is a very important site of study and recommend that this should be explored utilising naturally-occurring talk.


"The War Against the Terror Masters" is a must-read guide to the terrorist crisis. Michael A. Ledeen explains in startling detail how and why the United States was so unprepared for the September 11th catastrophe; the nature of the terror network we are fighting--including the state sponsors of that network; the role of radical Islam; and the enemy collaboration of some of our traditional Middle Eastern "allies";--and, most convincingly, what we must do to win the war. "The War Against the Terror Masters" examines the two sides of the war: the rise of the international terror network, and the past and current efforts of our intelligence services to destroy the terror masters in the U.S. and overseas. Ledeen's new book also visits every country in the Near East and describes the terrorist cancers in each. Among many revelations that will attract wide attention: *How the terror network survived the loss of its main sponsor, the Soviet Union. *How the FBI learned from a KGB defector--twenty years before Osama's bin Laden's murderous assault--of the existance of Arab terrorist sleeper networks inside the United States. *How moralistic guidelines straight-jacketed the FBI from even collecting a file of newspaper clippings on known terror groups operating in America. *How the internal culture of the CIA, and severe limitations on its ability to operate, blinded us to the growth of terror networks. And much more.


Have you ever seen a fish that could do a handstand?

This is the story of a quirky and primitive little fish that is famous for two reasons: walking on its 'hands' (pectoral fins), and being one of the first marine fish in the world to be listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

The Spotted Handfish has survived since the time of the dinosaurs – until now. Invasive seastars, pollution and climate change mean that this unique Australian is in serious trouble – hands up if you want to know more!

Hold On! Saving the Spotted Handfish is perfect for primary aged readers.


The aim of this report is to identify the role of academics as entrepreneurs. Education and a highly educated staff is a growth factor in companies and in this report we will highlight the characteristics of companies established by academics and which factors are crucial for these companies to grow. A special focus has been whether academics organise their companies in a particular way – a way that we may expect will become more common in our knowledge society.

Comparing the three Nordic countries has been challenging. In spite of the differences of size between the three Nordic countries the number of entrepreneurs is remarkably similar, with a slight overweight of entrepreneurs in Norway.

In the report we focus on entrepreneurs and growth entrepreneurs with a tertiary education.

In Denmark we define tertiary education as a university master degree, based on five years of university study.

In Norway we define tertiary education as a master degree or equivalent, based on more than four years of university study.

In Sweden we define a tertiary education as three years of university study or more than three years. The university studies vary depending on the study subject.

In order to be able to compare the data from the three countries we use the definition four years or more in the chapter comparing data from the three national studies. The statistic data in the report is based on figures on academic entrepreneurs starting their company in 2004 and following the development in the number of entrepreneurs until 2008.

Growth entrepreneurs are defined as entrepreneurs starting a company in 2004 and having experienced an average yearly growth of 20 pct in the number of employees from ultimo November until ultimo November 2008.


This paper examines the cultural influences on IT usage amongst industrial workers in Malaysia. It explores the relationship between the workers' cultural attributes and IT usage. It also examines the factors that influence IT usage, their innovativeness and barriers that hinder IT application. This study reveals that the workers' capability in IT is partly nurtured by cultural attributes such as their love for knowledge, perception towards IT and their willingness to take risks; and external factors such as management's support and government's encouragement. Competition is one factor which is found to influence workers' innovativeness. The inability to own a computer, low English proficiency and the difficulty in understanding knowledge in IT are the major barriers in IT usage. Finally, we observe that a large majority of industrial workers use low capacity network services, mainly the e-mail, electronic newspaper and electronic classified advertisements


In this paper, we present combustor acoustics in a high-pressure liquid-fueled Rich burn - Quick quench - Lean burn (RQL) styled swirl combustor with two separate fuel circuits. The fuel circuits are the primary fuel (which has a pressure atomizer nozzle) and secondary fuel (which has an air blast type nozzle) circuits. The data were acquired during two dynamical regimes — combustion noise, where there is an absence of large amplitude oscillations during the unsteady combustion process, and intermittency, where there are intermittent bursts of high amplitude oscillations that appear in a near-random fashion amidst regions of aperiodic low amplitude fluctuations. This dynamic transition from combustion noise to combustion intermittency is investigated experimentally by systematically varying the fuel equivalence ratio and primary-secondary fuel splits. Typical measures such as the amplitude of oscillations cannot serve as a measure of change in the dynamics from combustion noise to intermittency due to the highly turbulent nature. Hence, recurrence plots and complex networks are used to understand the differences in the combustor acoustics and velocity data during the two different regimes. We observe that the combustor transitions from stable operation to intermittency when the equivalence ratio is increased for a given primary fuel flow rate and conversely, when the percentage secondary fuel flow rate is increased for a given equivalence ratio. The contribution of this work is to demonstrate methodologies to detect combustion instability boundaries when approaching them from the stable side in highly turbulent, noisy combustors.


This thesis is concerned with play, particularly the role of social play in a co-located context and its ability to bring people together. Participation in social play can have significant effects on an individual, group, community and culture, and thus, through practice-based research, this thesis documents the exploration of the design of "playful interventions" which may be artefacts or events which seek to bring people together through play. In play, individuals form shared meanings, understanding and values, as determined by the rules of the play situation. In the play experience, they become temporary communities, who, through play, can experiment, explore and redefine their relationships with one another, the play context and potentially the world beyond. The experimental nature of play leads it to be naturally imbued with transformative potential for everyone involved; whether that be small in scale, such as forming a new way of looking at a space through playing within it, or on a larger scale, through forming new concepts around a local area or governmental policy. Play is, however, very unpredictable, being led by player interaction, and always pushes up against the rules of the play situation. In play, the particular output (if there is one) is never certain, and no two play experiences will be the same. This unpredictability means that its transformational power is always a potential but never guaranteed. Designers, when working with play as a medium must embrace this unpredictability and explore approaches to design playful experiences which are satisfying in themselves for the participants whilst also trying to find methods to unlock the potential for individual (and group) transformation through play. The thesis is a narrative account of sustained academic research, based upon eight academic publications and practice works, produced between 2013 and 2018. Six of these publications document practical exploration of the creation of playful interventions, in the form of video games, performances and events. Two further publications explore design approaches to enhance participation drawing from expert interview analysis and theoretical engagement with institutional approaches to promotion of participation in the museum and gallery. The body of work thus explores the design of participation from two perspectives: the artist/designer of an artefact and as a "context provider" who designs events and spaces within which play, and participation can take place amongst participants. Within this thesis, the body of publications are contextualised in relation to theories of play, game design and art practice and also drawing from theories around communities of practice and communities of play. A series of expert practitioner interviews underpin both the academic and practical framing of this research, drawing from key practitioners in the UK and Europe working in play, game design, event curation and community work. The thesis formalises the design methods used to create playful interventions by the author and expert practitioners in the field of social play as presented both across the academic publications and within interview content. The formalisation of these design techniques is presented as two social play frameworks, one for designing participation around artefacts and one which focusses upon designing participation around events. Each framework aims to aid a designer and/or context provider in helping participants to unlock the unpredictable yet transformative potential of play as individuals and as communities whilst acknowledging the complex interrelations which occur in designed social contexts.