The webs of musical connection are essential to the harmony and cohesion of James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues." As a result, we must explore the spectrum of musical references Baldwin makes to unveil their delicate conjunctions. It is vital to probe the traditions of African-American music—Spirituals, Blues, Jazz, and Pop—to get a more comprehensive sense of how Baldwin makes use of music from the sacred and secular continuum in the African-American community. Looking more closely at the variety of African-American musical genres to which Baldwin refers in the story, we can discern even more the nuances of unity that Baldwin creates in his story through musical allusions, and shed greater light on Baldwin's exploration of the complexities of African-American life and music, all of which have as their core elements of human isolation, loneliness, and despair ameliorated by artistic expression, hope, and the search for familial ties. Through musical intertextuality, Baldwin demonstrates not only how closely related seemingly disparate (in the Western tradition) musical genres are, but also shows that the elements of the community that these genres flow from and represent are much more in synchronization than they sometimes seem or are allowed to be. To realize kinship across familial (Creole), socio-economic (the brother), and most importantly for this paper appreciation and meanings of musical genres advances to Sonny the communal cup of trembling that is both a mode and an instance of envisioning and treating music in its unifying terms, seeing how they coalesce through a holistic vision.


Autonomous agents optimize the reward function we give them. What they don't know is how hard it is for us to design a reward function that actually captures what we want. When designing the reward, we might think of some specific training scenarios, and make sure that the reward will lead to the right behavior in those scenarios. Inevitably, agents encounter new scenarios (e.g., new types of terrain) where optimizing that same reward may lead to undesired behavior. Our insight is that reward functions are merely observations about what the designer actually wants, and that they should be interpreted in the context in which they were designed. We introduce inverse reward design (IRD) as the problem of inferring the true objective based on the designed reward and the training MDP. We introduce approximate methods for solving IRD problems, and use their solution to plan risk-averse behavior in test MDPs. Empirical results suggest that this approach can help alleviate negative side effects of misspecified reward functions and mitigate reward hacking.


Summary
1.
Goldman (6) lists ten monkeys for the Republic of Panama. Four of these are included in this survey.
2.
Ateles geoffroyi, the red spider monkey, revealed tertian-like malaria parasites and microfilaria but none of the 24 monkeys showed a trypanosome.
3.
Cebus capucinus imitator, the Panama white-throated monkey of Chiriqui, revealed quartan-like malaria parasites, a large trypanosome and microfilaria.
4.
Saimiri orstedii orstedii, the Titi monkey of Chiriqui, revealed no malaria parasites but did show a large trypanosome and microfilaria.
5.
Alouatta palliata inconsonans, the black howling monkey, revealed trypanosomes but no other blood parasites in the 4 specimens examined.
6.
The autopsy examination of these monkeys (Howling monkey not subjected to this examination) revealed adult filaria in large numbers in the abdominal cavity of the red spider and white throated species but no adults were found in any of the cavities of the Titi monkeys.
7.
Macacus rhesus, an adult female monkey was inoculated with a total of 5.75 cc. of defibrinated blood from 60 monkeys, 7 red spider monkeys contained malaria parasites and 8 additional ones revealed phagocyted pigment, 3 white throated monkeys contained malaria parasites and 6 additional ones showed phagocyted pigment. This monkey (M. rhesus) has shown no sign of illness, no elevation of temperature and no parasites in the period of six weeks following her inoculations. No trypanosomes have been seen in her blood films although she was inoculated with positive blood from three species: red spider, white throated and Titi monkeys.
8.
Nearly all the monkeys showing malaria parasites in the blood or spleen films were infants, juveniles or adult females that were pregnant. No severe infections were found. The thick blood film and films from the spleen and rib marrow were the most valuable films used in this survey. Such films were not used in the Chagres River surveys and this, no doubt, accounts for the failure to find light infections in the adult monkeys.
9.
Guinea pigs inoculated with blood from the same three species of monkeys also failed to show a trypanosome infection during the six weeks following the inoculations.
10.
The hunters encountered the white throated monkeys 9 times, the red spider monkeys 7 times, the Titi monkeys 5 times and the black howling monkeys 2 times. Whether this represents as many separate colonies of monkeys one can not say, but the monkeys found positive for malaria, trypanosomes and microfilaria were not confined to the captures of any one or two days.
11.
The monkey should afford a better animal for research work in malaria than the bird since it supplies a larger volume of blood than the bird, a type of blood cell more closely resembling man and species of plasmodia that are difficult to distinguish from the benign species found in man.
12.
Some experiments in the transfer of monkey malaria to man have proven refractory in the Eastern hemisphere yet it would seem proper to repeat this work in our region if an infant monkey with an acute initial infection can be taken alive. Similar efforts with the trypanosomes should be made against the horse.


Pre-concentration of precious metal and base metal ore types is becoming more relevant with the discovery, development and operation of many lower grade deposits around the world. The fluctuations in metal prices expose many mines to risks especially dealing with low and variable ore grades. Pre-concentration, the process of concentrating the valuable metal into a smaller mass yield, effectively results in the introduction of higher feed grades to milling circuits. Gangue Rejection, the removal of lower S.G. waste rock from the circuit; not only results in higher downstream grades but also potentially removes harder, non-valuable mineral, providing significant power savings within the circuit. The pre-concentration or 'gangue rejection' process offers a number of benefits when considering the treatment of marginal ore deposits, especially if it can be performed at a coarse crush size; these benefits include a reduction of the operating costs and the feed of more metal units to the mill. Gekko Systems has effectively utilized the Inline Pressure Jig (IPJ) to pre-concentrate the valuable metal, achieving high primary recoveries into a range of mass yields resulting in upgrade ratios between 2 and 10 times. This paper explores: the benefits of pre-concentrating 'marginal' ore deposits prior to the milling circuit; the selective rejection of ore types that may affect either the recovery or comminution process; and also looks into the potential to effectively reduce the 'cut-off' grade when considering the mine planning process. Case studies of projects using the IPJ to pre-concentrate and reject gangue are also included. Pre-concentration and gangue rejection provide the potential to develop marginal ore deposits, thus providing higher grades, less gangue and more metal at a lower operating cost to producers.


Brachytherapy has proven to be an effective treatment option for prostate cancer. Initially, prostate brachytherapy was delivered through permanently implanted low dose rate (LDR) radioactive sources; however, high dose rate (HDR) temporary brachytherapy for prostate cancer is gaining popularity. Needle insertion during prostate brachytherapy is most commonly performed under ultrasound (U/S) guidance; however, treatment planning may be performed utilizing several imaging modalities either in an intra- or post-operative setting. During intra-operative prostate HDR, the needles are imaged during implantation, and planning may be performed in real time. At present, the most common imaging modality utilized for intra-operative prostate HDR is U/S. Alternatively, in the post-operative setting, following needle implantation, patients may be simulated with computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Each imaging modality and workflow provides its share of benefits and limitations. Prostate HDR has been adopted in a number of cancer centers across the nation. In this educational session, we will explore the role of U/S, CT, and MRI in HDR prostate brachytherapy. Example workflows and operational details will be shared, and we will discuss how to establish a prostate HDR program in a clinical setting.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1. Review prostate HDR techniques based on the imaging modality 2. Discuss the challenges and pitfalls introduced by the three imagebased options for prostate HDR brachytherapy 3. Review the QA process and learn about the development of clinical workflows for these imaging options at different institutions.


DMTF is a standards organization by major industry players in IT infrastructure including AMD, Alibaba, Broad-com, Cisco, Dell, Google, Huawei, IBM, Intel, Lenovo, and NVIDIA, which aims to enable interoperability, e.g., including cloud, virtualization, network, servers and storage. It is currently standardizing a security protocol called SPDM, which aims to secure communication over the wire and to enable device attestation, notably also explicitly catering for communicating hardware components. The SPDM protocol inherits requirements and design ideas from IETF's TLS 1.3. However, its state machines and transcript handling are substantially different and more complex. While architecture, specification, and open-source libraries of the current versions of SPDM are publicly available, these include no significant security analysis of any kind. In this work we develop the first formal models of the three modes of the SPDM protocol version 1.2.1, and formally analyze their main security properties.


OBJECTIVE
Both the magnitude of brain atrophy and premorbid brain size determine the volume of the brain affected by Alzheimer's disease. To examine the possibility that premorbid brain volume is a determinant of cognitive reserve in patients with Alzheimer's disease, the relation between diffuse brain atrophy and cognitive decline and the impact of premorbid brain size on cognitive decline were studied in patients with Alzheimer's disease.

METHOD
By measuring whole brain volume and intracranial volume in 60 patients with probable Alzheimer's disease, mild to moderate in severity, with the use of high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging and image processing, the authors studied the impact of premorbid brain volume and magnitude of diffuse brain atrophy on cognitive functions. On the basis of the normative brain-calvarium relationship derived from data an 28 healthy adults and the total intracranial volume measure of each patient, the magnitude of brain atrophy and premorbid brain volume were estimated.

RESULTS
After control for the effects of age, sex, and education as confounding factors, it was found that the Alzheimer's disease patients' intelligence was correlated both positively with premorbid brain volume and negatively with magnitude of brain atrophy, while impairments in language and memory were correlated with magnitude of brain atrophy but not with premorbid brain volume.

CONCLUSIONS
These findings partially support the hypothesis that premorbid brain volume is a determinant of reserves against intellectual decline in Alzheimer's disease.


Discussions are now starting in earnest in the Council and Parliament on a proposal for a Pan-European Pension Product (PEPP), which fills an important gap in the EU regulatory maze and also responds to the call in the CMU Action Plan for a long-term savings instrument for households in Europe. In this ECMI Commentary, Karel Lannoo appeals to legislators to ensure that the PEPP remains an attractive proposition, which he warns will not be easy because of the huge differences in the national administration of pension savings and the acute sensitivity to any changes in this domain.


We consider the problem of approximating partition functions for Ising models. We make use of recent tools in combinatorial optimization: the Sherali-Adams and Lasserre convex programming hierarchies, in combination with variational methods to get algorithms for calculating partition functions in these families. These techniques give new, non-trivial approximation guarantees for the partition function beyond the regime of correlation decay. They also generalize some classical results from statistical physics about the Curie-Weiss ferromagnetic Ising model, as well as provide a partition function counterpart of classical results about max-cut on dense graphs (Arora et al., 1995). With this, we connect techniques from two apparently disparate research areas – optimization and counting/partition function approximations. (i.e. #-P type of problems). Furthermore, we design to the best of our knowledge the first provable, convex variational methods. Though in the literature there are a host of convex versions of variational methods (Wainwright et al.; 2005; Heskes, 2006; Meshi et al., 2009), they come with no guarantees (apart from some extremely special cases, like e.g. the graph has a single cycle (Weiss, 2000)). We consider dense and low threshold rank graphs, and interestingly, the reason our approach works on these types of graphs is because local correlations propagate to global correlations – completely the opposite of algorithms based on correlation decay. In the process we design novel entropy approximations based on the low-order moments of a distribution. Our proof techniques are very simple and generic, and likely to be applicable to many other settings other than Ising models.


The traditional sport-based multiactivity approach that continues to dominate secondary physical education curricula is problematic on a number of levels. It is often not perceived as making a valuable contribution to the educational process by school administrators or as culturally relevant and interesting to many students. This paper highlights Catherine Ennis's work related to the shortcomings of this model and the need to move toward a more educational focus. Initially, Ennis described the curricular strife that developed as teachers clung to this approach in the face of a changing educational landscape. Her work evolved to include students' perspectives, and her writings gave voice to their disengagement and discontent. She continued her extensive writings related to this topic across her career, exploring alternatives and offering solutions to reconceptualize physical education programs to maximize their contribution to the school curriculum and to meet the needs of all students.


When the United Kingdom leaves the European Union, the status of its land border
with the Republic of Ireland will inevitably change. The steady growth of trade and
networks across this contested border over the past two decades have been
largely attributable to their common EU membership and the peace process they have
supported in Northern Ireland. Even aside from political sensitivities, any disruption to this
integration will have an economic effect that Northern Ireland and the Irish border region can
ill afford. As such, the European Council, European Commission and the UK government have
repeatedly expressed a desire to avoid the return of a 'hard border' across the island of
Ireland. Yet the practicalities of retaining such an open border after Brexit are highly complex,
particularly as it looks set to become a customs border once again.


This study extended previous research by Read and Harre (2001) and Dietrich and colleagues (2004) examining the relation between causality of mental illness and desire for social distance, as well as, the relationship between type of mental disorder and desires for social distance. Students read an information sheet describing mental illness as either biological or psychosocial in nature. Students then answered questions regarding social distance they would desire if they were in the presence of a person having either symptoms of schizophrenia or depression. Unlike previous research, no relationship was found between causality and desire for social distance. However, a relationship was found between desire for social distance and type of disorder described, with participants desiring greater social distance from the person described as having symptoms of schizophrenia. These results indicate that national campaigns to educate the public about a biological causality of mental illness in order to reduce stigma may not be an effective approach.


This study explored the effect of unplanned changes in disability and marital status on labor force participation for a sample of just under six thousand men and women born between 1931 and 1941. It was based on wave 1 (1992) through wave 4 (1998) of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) data. Binomial hierarchical linear models were used to evaluate the change in the probability of working. Unplanned changes in disability and marital status had effects on labor force participation over and above the effects of the statuses themselves. These findings highlight the need for employer and government policies that minimize the stress that exists with unplanned events. Such policies might encourage higher labor force participation among workers who experience unplanned events that prompt them to exit the labor force earlier than they otherwise would have, with potentially adverse consequences for their subsequent socioeconomic status.


The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has caused an unparalleled public health crisis, delivering an immense shock to humanity. With the virus's health consequences largely unknown, different health systems around the globe have pursued various avenues of crisis management. South Korea, troubled early by the virus, was once the second most affected nation in the world. Arrays of measures in South Korea, such as large-scale diagnostic testing and technology-based comprehensive contact tracing, have brought about debates among public health experts and medical professionals. This case study describes the major cluster transmissions in SARS-CoV-2 hotspots in South Korea (such as a religious sect, a call center, logistics facilities, and nightclubs) and offers early observations on how South Korean public health authorities acted in response to the initial outbreak of the virus and to the new waves prompted by re-opening economies. We then discuss the way in which South Korea's experience can act as a reference for shaping other countries' public health strategies in pandemic crisis management.


QuantuMDx is a medical company that combines its technology to deliver complex diagnostics in a simple, ergonomic and user friendly hand-held device. This will be used worldwide from hospitals and laboratories, to field working environments. Their portable device will revolutionise the way in which blood diagnosis is conducted, providing highly accurate fast readings without the necessity of a full laboratory.

The aim was to inform clinicians, doctors and users about the device, describing how the product works; from the initial drop of blood being presented on a slide, to the DNA diagnosis. From the success of the Bio Transformation and Mitochondria animations, I took the approach to deliver the process by exploiting a 3D animation and the advantages it brings. Due to the complexity of their product, I deemed it the best way of communication. Single still graphical images would become confusing, whereas moving elements flowing through the product was deemed to be a more visual and enlightening approach. I used video game techniques to clarify the user's viewing position in relation to their surroundings, and observing from a first person perspective gave the story a larger than life appeal, positioning the viewer right in the product. Combining visual effects employed by the film industry helped to isolate elements, focusing the user's attention on specific areas through the use of shallow depth of field, blurred background and foreground elements to lead the user through the 3D environment. These qualities would not have been possible with still imagery.

The animation evolved through meetings and reviews, the initial storyboards portrayed my own interpretation of their process, imagining the individual elements. These allowed QuantuMDx to comprehend the concept of the animation and became a starting point of negotiation to deliver an accurate story, while using my expertise to make the journey clearly understood.


This study aims to examine the variables that influenced the underpricing stock price when the company put its initial public offering in Indonesia Stock Exchange of the 2010-2015 period. The dependent variable in this study was underpricing measured by the value of initial returns, while the independent variables included ROA, DER, company age, company size, type of Industry, underwriter's reputation, exchange rate and inflation. The data used in this study were secondary data collected by using purposive sampling method. The samples of 135 companies from were taken from 137 population companies conducted IPOs from 2010-2015 in Indonesia Stock Exchange. This study used logistic regression for data analysis. The results of this study showed that ROA, DER, age and inflation influenced the level of underpricing is proven. Other variables influencing the level of underpricing is not proven. This research model showed that the independent variables explained the variation in the level of underpricing of 89.6%. Keywords: underpricing, internal and external factors, ROA, DER


Bekoff M. Why "Good Welfare" Isn't "Good Enough": Minding Animals and Increasing Our Compassionate Footprint. ARBS Annu Rev Biomed Sci 2008;10:T1-T14. In this brief essay I take a broad perspective on the notion of unraveling welfare and consider animals living in different conditions ranging from caged individuals in laboratories and zoos to free-living or almost free-living wildlife. I'll step outside of the laboratory because billions of animals are slaughtered for food in an industry that tortures them on the way to their reprehensible deaths and at the places at which they are slaughtered. Furthermore, government agencies around the world kill millions of free-living and wild animals because they're supposedly "pests". This is a different sort of essay but I hope it will stimulate people to rethink what we mean by the phrase "animal welfare" in a broad and constructive ways because the way people interact with animals in laboratories is influenced by how they see animals in other contexts including outside of caged environments. Unraveling animal welfare means unscrambling our interrelationships with other animals by asking difficult questions about who we think we are, who we think "they" are, what we think we know, what we actually know. I'll argue that "good welfare" isn't "good enough" because existing laws and regulations still allow animals to be subjected to enduring pain and suffering and death "in the name of science", which really means "in the name of humans". We must do better for all animals and we can do so by taking into account the perspective of the each and every individual who we use for research, education, amusement, and for food and clothing. We must also consider individuals who we house in zoos and move around as if they're pieces of furniture, for example, when zoos "redecorate" themselves because they need an "ambassador" for a given species or because an individual no longer brings in money. And we must also consider the fate of individuals when we "redecorate nature" by moving animals here and there for our and not their benefit; is it permissible to trade off the life of an individual for the "good of their species"? The emotional lives of animals are not all that private, hidden, or secret and animal emotions and sentience force us to care for them and to protect them from pain, suffering, and death. I conclude that everyone can do more to increase their "compassion footprint" and list ten reasons why animals are asking us to treat them better or leave them alone, and these reasons also bear on the unraveling of animal welfare. © by Sao Paulo State University – ISSN 1806-8774


This article analyses older adults' trajectories leading to membership in a gym, and the ways in which they negotiate their self-understanding, aging, and health in this context. Emanating from an ethnographic study, the arguments are based on a constructionist approach. The results show that older adults' decision to start going to a gym should be understood in relation to an individualized health care system in Swedish society and as a means of negotiating deteriorating health, retirement, lost body capacity, and the meaning of becoming old. The physical activities carried out and the social relationships developed in these contexts are used to construct an empowered self-understanding prepared to challenge the "stiffness" of the dying body.


This paper proposes a technique for expanding lateral-shearing interferograms, based on a representation of the desired wave-front function in the form of a finite expansion series in orthogonal Chebyshev polynomials. The information losses accompanying the recording and interpretation of the shearing interferograms are analyzed, along with a way of reducing them. An iteration procedure is considered for finding the wave-front function from known difference functions, using the genetic algorithm. Its efficiency is demonstrated, using test calculations as an example.


1. Hand blood flows in healthy young men and women and in patients with anorexia nervosa were measured in a warm environment by using venous occlusion plethysmography. The mean core temperature of each of the three groups was similar, but the male control subjects and the anorexic patients had significantly higher peripheral blood flows than the female control subjects. 2. Blood flows were determined in the hand after 6 min localized cooling of it at varying temperatures. The female control subjects and the majority of the anorexic patients had blood flows which were similar for a given temperature, and lay between the higher values of the male control subjects and the low values of the remaining anorexic patients. 3. Those patients whose vascular responses to cold were exaggerated were characterized clinically by severe and persistent signs of ischaemia of the extremities during subsequent rehabilitation, unlike the majority of patients whose peripheral circulation rapidly improved. 4. Cold thermal stimuli evoked marked falls in blood flow of the contralateral (non-cooled) hand in the male and female control subjects, but these responses were attenuated or absent in the anorexic patients. An altered set-point for vasomotor thermoregulation in anorexia nervosa could explain these findings. 5. Plasma and whole-blood viscosity and erythrocyte deformability measured in a sample of the patients studied were similar to the values obtained from a sample of the control subjects. 6. It was concluded that the cutaneous vasoconstrictor responses to cold in the majority of the anorexic patients studied were quantitatively normal. The mechanism of the response, however, was different in that the vessels themselves were unusually reactive to cold. Increased cuteneous vasoreactivity to cold could contribute to the severe peripheral hypoperfusion observed in some anorexic patients.


Compared with China's dominance in world trade, its expanding role in global finance is poorly documented and understood. Over the past decades, China has exported record amounts of capital to the rest of the world. Many of these financial flows are not reported to the IMF, the BIS or the World Bank. "Hidden debts" to China are especially significant for about three dozen developing countries, and distort the risk assessment in both policy surveillance and the market pricing of sovereign debt. We establish the size, destination, and characteristics of China's overseas lending. We identify three key distinguishing features. First, almost all of China's lending and investment abroad is official. As a result, the standard "push" and "pull" drivers of private cross-border flows do not play the same role in this case. Second, the documentation of China's capital exports is (at best) opaque. China does not report on its official lending and there is no comprehensive standardized data on Chinese overseas debt stocks and flows. Third, the type of flows is tailored by recipient. Advanced and higher middle-income countries tend to receive portfolio debt flows, via sovereign bond purchases of the People's Bank of China. Lower income developing economies mostly receive direct loans from China's state-owned banks, often at market rates and backed by collateral such as oil. Our new dataset covers a total of 1,974 Chinese loans and 2,947 Chinese grants to 152 countries from 1949 to 2017. We find that about one half of China's overseas loans to the developing world are "hidden". JEL: F21, F34, F42, F6, G15, H63, N25


The present article treats of the painter Joan Arnau Moret, catalan painter of the 17th century. Aspects treat each other as the order of the great picture preserved in the cathedral of Barcelona with the iconography The de live ry o f the ke ys of the city of Barcelona to the Immaculate, the biographical news it extracted of the process of canonization of santa Maria of Cervello or the professional relation that Joan Arnau joined with the prince Joan Josep d'Austria newly finished the Segadors war (The Reapers' War). Of them the study also announces a work – the Saint Cathe rine o f Ale xandria of the chapel of Saint Catherine of the cathedral of Girona – proposes to attribute four paintings more – the paintings of the altarpiece of The Saints fo ur Martyrs of the cathedral of Girona – and thinks about the controversial paintings of the altarpiece of the Castle of Vilassar and of the monastery of Sant Joan of the Abadesses. Finally, by means of the stylistic reading of the new works, which the author considers of the best of his catalogue, one tries to demonstrate that the
sources of your figurative culture and stylistic are in the painting of Madrid of the first decades of the 17th century


Purpose : Dynamic vessel analysis (DVA) with the Retinal Vessel Analyzer (Imedos Systems UG) is the Gold standard to measure alterations in vessel diameter in health and disease. However, vessel contrast is often reduced due to stray light caused by illumination of lash, lid, or pupil margin. We introduce and validate a new setup for DVA, that comprises a novel 12-fold segmented LED-based illuminating unit and a fundus camera. Methods : We studied 15 young volunteers (8m, 7f, 24.7±1.1 years) for two main reasons. First, to investigate the repeatability of the novel LED-equipped setup. Second, to compare the new setup with the Gold standard. In either case, the relative vaso-dilatation value was determined. We measured four primary vessels: one superior temporal artery and vein (STa/STv), and one inferior temporal artery and vein (ITa/ITv). All subjects were free of ocular and systemic diseases. The segmented LED-based illuminating unit was connected to a mydriatic fundus camera (Visucam, Carl Zeiss Meditec AG). We followed the DVA standard protocol. The beam geometry was annular (all segments on). Each volunteer was measured three times. One measurement with the Gold standard and two with the new setup, in a random order, and having a pause time of ten minutes between two measurements. Repeatability and comparison of the two setups were analyzed using the Bland-Altmann method. To value the differences among the group means we performed the ttest. For groups that did not meet the normality assumption we employed the Mann-Whitney U test. Results : The repeatability analysis showed the following mean differences (MD), Limits of Agreement (LoA) and p-values (p>0.05 means no significant difference) with n=15 for every type of vessel. STa: MD=0.89%, LoA=-6.05%/+7.83, p=0.424. ITa: MD=-1.51%, LoA=-5.04%/+2.02, p=0.014. STv: MD=-0.36%, LoA=-3.04%/+2.32, p=0.360. ITv: MD=-1.29%, LoA=-9.33%/+6.75, p=0.055. Comparing the two different setups the p-values were 0.315 (STa), 0.415 (ITa), 0.005 (STv), and 0.203 (ITv). Conclusions : We successfully performed a new approach of Dynamic Vessel Analysis using a LED-based illuminating system. Validation was realized in comparison to the Gold standard. The agreement between the two setups was predominantly good. Two times, but for different vessel segments, we could find statistically significant differences. However, most results show no significant differences between our new setup and the Gold standard. This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2016 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Seattle, Wash., May 1-5, 2016. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.


Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) and Generalized MPLS (GMPLS)
Traffic Engineering (TE) Label Switched Paths (LSPs) may be computed
by Path Computation Elements (PCEs). Where the TE LSP crosses multiple
domains, such as Autonomous Systems (ASes), the path may be computed
by multiple PCEs that cooperate, with each responsible for computing a
segment of the path. However, in some cases (e.g. when ASes are
administered by separate Service Providers), it would break
confidentiality rules for a PCE to supply a path segment to a PCE in
another domain, thus disclosing internal topology information. This
issue may be circumvented by returning a loose hop and by invoking a
new path computation from the domain boundary LSR during TE LSP setup
as the signaling message enters the second domain, but this technique
has several issues including the problem of maintaining path
diversity. This document defines a mechanism to hide the contents of
a segment of a path, called the Confidential Path Segment (CPS). The
CPS may be replaced by a path-key that can be conveyed in the PCE
Communication Protocol (PCEP) and signaled within in a Resource
Reservation Protocol TE (RSVP-TE) explicit route object.


Studying neural network loss landscapes provides insights into the nature of the underlying optimization problems. Unfortunately, loss landscapes are notoriously difficult to visualize in a human-comprehensible fashion. One common way to address this problem is to plot linear slices of the landscape, for example from the initial state of the network to the final state after optimization. On the basis of this analysis, prior work has drawn broader conclusions about the difficulty of the optimization problem. In this paper, we put inferences of this kind to the test, systematically evaluating how linear interpolation and final performance vary when altering the data, choice of initialization, and other optimizer and architecture design choices. Further, we use linear interpolation to study the role played by individual layers and substructures of the network. We find that certain layers are more sensitive to the choice of initialization, but that the shape of the linear path is not indicative of the changes in test accuracy of the model. Our results cast doubt on the broader intuition that the presence or absence of barriers when interpolating necessarily relates to the success of optimization.


The paper presents a set of experimental investigations related to the study of the dynamic behavior of supercapacitors. The experimentally-inferred results are then used as inputs for an improved version of one of the most common supercapacitor RC-circuit models. The key improvement concerns the accurate modeling of the redistribution phenomenon of the supercapacitor residual charge during charging/discharging and relaxation phases. The accuracy of the obtained model has been experimentally validated. Preliminary physical investigations concerning the temperature effects on the SC dynamic behavior are also presented and discussed.


Improved perovskite photovoltaic performance A recent entry in the solar cell race is perovskite cells, named for the structure adopted by salt made from metal halides and organic cations that absorb the light and generate charges. The charges generated have to be transferred to a metal oxide (typically titanium oxide), and some of these charge carriers are lost in the transfer. Mei et al. made this process more efficient by growing a more crystalline perovskite with fewer defects inside porous versions of titanium and zirconium oxide. They added a second organic cation that stuck to the pore walls and directed the growth of the perovskite crystals. The improved solar cells operated for more than 1000 hours under full sunlight. Science, this issue p. 295 A mixed organic phase perovskite grown in mesoporous templates boosts solar cell stability. We fabricated a perovskite solar cell that uses a double layer of mesoporous TiO2 and ZrO2 as a scaffold infiltrated with perovskite and does not require a hole-conducting layer. The perovskite was produced by drop-casting a solution of PbI2, methylammonium (MA) iodide, and 5-ammoniumvaleric acid (5-AVA) iodide through a porous carbon film. The 5-AVA templating created mixed-cation perovskite (5-AVA)x(MA)1-xPbI3 crystals with lower defect concentration and better pore filling as well as more complete contact with the TiO2 scaffold, resulting in a longer exciton lifetime and a higher quantum yield for photoinduced charge separation as compared to MAPbI3. The cell achieved a certified power conversion efficiency of 12.8% and was stable for >1000 hours in ambient air under full sunlight.


Electrospray microthrusters are a very promising micro-propulsion system which can potentially provide very high specific impulse (Isp 3000s). In this paper, we report on the development of a time-of-flight (ToF) measurement setup for characterization of the spray composition of the electrospray sources. This setup consists of an electrostatic ion-guide built with 13 cascaded single-stage Einzel lenses along with a 65 cm long flight tube to focus the emitted charges on a Faraday cup detector. The distributed lens ensures a large fraction of the emitted beam can be collected, even when the beam divergence is high. Simulations of the focusing capabilities of the ion guide have been performed and are compared with a single stage Einzel lens, with excellent agreement. The efficiency of the lens has been characterized with microfabricated capillary electrospray devices and with electrochemically etched tungsten needles.


To evaluate the possible role of endothelin in the development and/or maintenance of hypertension in Dahl rats, we examined the responsiveness of isolated vascular smooth muscle and glomerular mesangial cells, as well as deendothelialized vascular ring preparations to endothelin-1 (ET-1). Production of immunoreactive endothelin (ir-ET) was studied in freshly isolated glomeruli and renal medullary slices. Both glomerular mesangial cells and vascular smooth muscle cells obtained from prehypertensive Dahl-S rats exhibited an exaggerated [Ca2+]i response to ET-1, as compared with cells obtained from Dahl-R rats. This was paralleled by the enhanced isometric contraction of vascular rings obtained from prehypertensive Dahl-S rats. ir-ET production was doubled in response to 0.1 mM ouabain in tissue samples obtained from prehypertensive Dahl-S, but not Dahl-R rats. This effect was not observed in tissues obtained from animals fed a 4% NaCl diet (hypertensive). Immunocytochemistry of ET distribution in the outer medullary stripe showed approximately a 40% higher fluorescence intensity in sections obtained from Dahl-S rats fed 4% NaCl diet as compared with Dahl-R rats fed the same diet. Northern blot analysis of poly(A)+ RNA extracted from medullae of prehypertensive Dahl-S and -R rats using a full-length cDNA probe for rat ET-1 revealed a marginal induction of pre-pro-ET-1 message in Dahl-S samples after 30 and 60 min of incubation with 0.1 mM ouabain. In conclusion, increased responsiveness of target cells to ET-1 and inducibility of ir-ET production in prehypertensive Dahl-S rats are in favor of a possible role of this peptide in the pathogenesis of Dahl hypertension. We hypothesize that ouabain-like factor(s) may trigger production of ET, thus serving as a link between high-salt intake and the development of hypertension in Dahl-S rats.


Sprinklers are automatically activated fixed installation suppression devices. They have found extensive applications due to minimum protection they provide for a wide range of applications including residential and warehouses. Modelling sprinkler atomization is a challenging task, due to the stochastic nature in impingement of water jets and the added complexity of sprinkler configuration. In the literature, a spray initiation framework has been developed to address the
multidimensional stochastic complexity associated with fire sprinklers. The initial sprinkler spray is completely characterized in terms of the following main parameters: droplet spatial location (radius, elevation angle and azimuthal angle), droplet velocity, droplet diameter and the spatial volume flux. The present thesis aims to improve the prediction of the initial sprinkler spray characteristics through exploring different physics based modelling approaches. The sub-models for film flow and sheet trajectory adopted in the development of the fire sprinkler spray models are reviewed. Three new deterministic approaches for sprinkler atomization have been proposed by employing an existing film submodel and a detailed water sheet trajectory sub-model which has never been used for fire sprinkler applications. The developed methods simulate the orthogonal impingement of water jet to a deflecting disk, with the potential to be adapted for tilted deflectors. A comparative analysis is carried out between the three introduced methods and a reference model in terms of their predictions for droplet median diameter and initial droplet location for a range of ambient temperatures and water injection pressures. The developed methodologies have been further expanded by incorporating random behaviour to the spray formation procedure. The stochastically predicted
mean velocity and volume median diameter have been compared against robust experimental data and empirical correlations. The improvements obtained by the developed methodologies are promising. In further steps, a dimensionless formulation for predicting spray characteristics,
sheet breakup distance and droplet sizes, in impinging atomizers have been developed. The developed formulation is validated for impingements led the spray to occur in the rim breakup mode. Building on the proposed methodologies, a semi empirical model has been developed capable of predicting the near field spray characteristics such as spatial
distribution of droplet sizes, velocities and spray volume flux from local volume fraction measurements. The research outcome would benefit the computation fluid dynamic packages to initialize the spray in a more realistic manner. The study undertaken would lead to more efficient fire suppression and/or water and fire interaction studies. In addition to this, the methodology could reduce the cost of experiments in order to quantify new sprinkler sprays.


Abstract Since 2012, it is estimated that 2,000 French nationals have joined jihadist armed groups listed by the UN as terrorist organizations in Syria and in Iraq. Consequently, a new prosecution policy has been introduced in France. To date, more than 200 persons have been prosecuted and 1,600 persons have been placed under criminal investigation. In parallel, after the 13 November 2015 terror attacks in Paris, a State of emergency was declared. Persisting for two years, it introduced derogative administrative measures that slowly transgressed into regular criminal law. Consequently, French administrative and criminal courts, with ordinary judges and professional routines, find themselves involved in matters related to armed conflicts – a completely new phenomenon for them. What role has been performed by French criminal and administrative judges in the global fight against terrorism? This article takes a close look at France's fight against terrorism and the engagement of its domestic legal system in the context of foreign fighters and suspects of terrorism. It outlines the radicalization processes of French administrative and criminal law along with their hybridization and complementarity. While the armed conflict in Syria and Iraq and the complex geopolitical context are clearly present in French courtrooms, international humanitarian law and international criminal law frameworks are almost entirely absent. At the same time, by granting a growing power to the administration, the repressive and pre-emptive approaches introduced within criminal and administrative law transform liberal conceptions of law and justice.


An ideal optical imaging method must include a mechanism to reveal the structure of weakly scattering specimens and one to subdue the multiple scattering backgrounds for optically thick samples. Due to their label-free, low-illumination power capabilities, Quantitative Phase Imaging (QPI) methods are: 1) noninvasive and, thus, suitable for stable, long term investigation without photodamage; 2) provide simultaneous information from large fields of view and 3) allow submicron levels of resolution in 3D. Spatial Light Interference Microscopy (SLIM) is an established method for investigating thin, transparent samples, such as single cells. Gradient Light Interference Microscopy (GLIM) is a new QPI technique that provides label-free and quantitative 3D tomographic imaging of tissues, organoids, embryos, model multicellular organisms with high resolution and remarkable contrast. White light illumination provides speckle-free images, which convert to spatially sensitive optical path-length measurements of nanometers. The common path interferometry in GLIM enables temporally sensitive optical path-length measurement down to nanometers. Co-registration with the fluorescence channels of the microscope represents a significant feature which enables control and colocalization experiments based on fluorescence tags.


The blue crab, Callinectes sapidus Rathbun, 1896, was studied because of its high dollar value to Florida's commercial and recreational fisheries. The purpose of this study was to describe the structure of the ovary and oogenesis in the blue crab and the morphological changes in the female reproductive developmental stages over time. Histological techniques for high-resolution light microscopy were used to determine sexual maturity of female blue crabs. The ovarian morphology, oogenesis, and changes through the annual reproductive cycle of blue crabs in Tampa Bay were investigated for a period of two years, from January 2005 to January 2007. Ovarian structure was assessed by analyzing histological sections embedded in plastic epoxy resin, which provided a higher resolution than any other embedding material previously used in research on blue crab reproduction. Qualitative analyses of female gonads were made by describing the structure of the oocytes and determining the developmental stage of the oocytes from oogonia to full-grown oocytes. This study developed and introduced a new reproductive staging criteria for the species. Morphological characteristics of ovarian tissues and oocytes were determined to develop a classification for oocyte maturation stages. Morphological changes in the oocytes are well defined, and these were used to develop the staging schema. In this study, it was found that carapace width is not a good indicator of maturity or developmental stage. Examination of the annual reproductive cycle indicates that late secondary growth occurs from July to March, and gravid crabs were found during November and December. Histological examination of ovarian tissue is essential for determining maturity in female blue crabs. By observing ovarian characteristics and by establishing the length of secondary growth during oogenesis in blue crabs of Tampa Bay, a more thorough understanding of the cyclic reproductive aspects of this species was obtained and specifically that animals at a carapace width between 100 mm and 125 mm may have mature oocytes, yet external features may not indicate that they are mature.


This paper reports the thermodynamic optimization based on the maximum mean effective pressure, maximum power and maximum thermal efficiency criteria for an irreversible Otto heat engine model which includes internal irreversibility resulting from the adiabatic processes. The mean effective pressure, power output, and thermal efficiency are obtained by introducing the compression ratio, cycle temperature ratio, specific heat ratio and the compression and expansion efficiencies. Optimal performance and design parameters of the Otto cycle are obtained analytically for the maximum power and maximum thermal efficiency conditions and numerically for the maximum mean effective pressure conditions. The results at maximum mean effective pressure conditions are compared with those results obtained by using the maximum power and maximum thermal efficiency criteria. The effects of the cycle temperature ratio and cycle pressure ratio on the general and optimal performances are investigated.


My research represents an approach to integrating planning and execution in time-sensitive environments. The primary focus is on a problem called continual on-line planning. New goals arrive stochastically during execution, the agent issues actions for execution one at a time, and the environment is otherwise deterministic. My dissertation will address this setting in three stages: optimizing total goal achievement time, handling on-line goal arrival during planning or execution, and adapting to changes in state also during planning or execution. My current approach to this problem is based on incremental heuristic search. The two central issues are the decision of which partial plans to elaborate during search and the decision of when to issue an action for execution. I have proposed an extension of Russell and Wefald's decision-theoretic A* algorithm that is not limited by assumptions of an admissible heuristic like DTA*. This algorithm, Decision Theoretic On-line Continual Search (DTOCS), handles the complexities of the on-line setting by balancing deliberative planning and real-time response.


Despite demonstrated interest in designing for reflection, relatively little work provides a detailed explication of what exactly is meant by reflection or how to design around it. This paper fills that gap by reviewing and engaging with conceptual and theoretical models of reflection, organized by the disciplinary and epistemological perspectives each embodies. Synthesizing across this theoretical background, the paper identifies three dimensions of reflection: breakdown, inquiry, and transformation. Together, these dimensions serve as the foundation for reflective informatics, a conceptual approach that helps bring clarity and guidance to the discussion of designing for reflection. The paper distinguishes reflective informatics by demonstrating how it both differs from and complements existing related work. Finally, the paper provides a critically reflexive consideration of its own latent assumptions, especially about the value of reflection, and how they might impact work on designing for reflection.


For almost four hundred years, racism has plagued the personal development of African Americans. Since 1619, when a group of Europeans arrived on America's shores carrying a cargo of African slaves, racism has been responsible for the racial and ethnic disparities in many sectors of African Americans' lives (Utsey, Bolden, & Brown, 2001). These disparities are reflected in African Americans' inability to achieve a state of complete social, economic, biological, and psychological well-being. For example, African Americans continue to suffer disproportionately from health-related illnesses, community violence, environmental injustice, and inadequate education (Collins, Tenney, & Hughes, 2002; Smith, 1985; Randall, 1993). Each year in America, thousands of African American babies die due to improper nutrition, shelter, and inadequate access to medical facilities. Year after year, many African American children live in conditions of poverty and are physically, emotionally, and intellectually maimed (Randall, 1993). Furthermore, African Americans continue to be victims of racism through personal acts of discrimination directed towards them (Utsey et al., 2001; Broman, 1997; Simpson & Yinger, 1985; Smith, 1985; Hacker, 1992; Essed, 1990; Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1999) that consequentially affects their well-being (Utsey et al., 2001). In the social science literature, based on both quantitative (Dion & Earn, 1975; Dion, Dion, & Pak, 1992; Pak, Dion, & Dion, 1991) and qualitative (Essed, 1991; Barnes & Ephross, 1994; Feagin, 1991) studies, research has found that racism, in the form of discrimination, is negatively associated with African Americans' well-being and the psychological and physical consequences associated with racism are well supported and documented. Compared with other ethnic groups, African Americans tend to report significantly higher levels of discrimination (Sanders Thompson 2002). In Sigleman and Welch's (1991) study, 50% of African Americans reported that racism is the main source of their underemployment status and their reasons for living in substandard housing. Clark, Anderson, Clark, and Williams, (1999) found that African Americans are more likely than any other ethnic group to be exposed to environmental stressors related to racism. Klonoff, Landrine, and Ullman (1999) found that 83% of African Americans reported discrimination by waiters and store clerks, 55% reported racism by helping professionals, 50% reported that they were called racist names, and almost 50% reported being hit, shoved, harmed or threatened with physical harm. Furthermore, Broman, Mavaddat, and Hsu (2000) found that 60% of African American participants believed that they had been victims of racism in the last three years. Indeed, racism has been a pervasive and unique source of stress for African Americans that negatively affects their well-being. Results from national surveys (Jackson, Williams, & Torres, 1997; Pernice & Brook, 1996) and community surveys (Amaro, Russo, & Johnson, 1987; Salgado de Snyder, 1987) also support these findings, as research continues to indicate that there is an inverse relationship between African Americans' self-esteem and perceived racial discrimination (Fernando, 1984). Research has also found that racism negatively impacts African Americans' physical well-being and that chronic exposure to racism is associated with a host of acute racism reactions, such as race-related stress (Utsey, Ponterotto, Reynolds, & Cancelli, 2000; Moore, 2000; Fernando, 1988; Griffin, 1991; Landrine & Klonoff, 1996). Many psychologists and scholars have attempted to understand the psychological and physical effects of racism on African Americans' well-being (D'Andrea & Daniels, 2001; Hacker, 1992; Harrell, 2000; Jones, 1997; Pack-Brown, 1999; Utsey, Chae, Brown, & Kelly, 2002). A number of scholars have illuminated the physiological and psychological domains that are affected by the stress of racism (Clark et al. …


With his battered leather jacket, his trademark Fedora and his bullwhip, Indiana Jones has gone in search of adventure, confronted danger and unearthed an untold wealth of ancient treasures. In "Raiders of the Lost Ark", the fearless archaeologist journeys from Nepal to Cairo to the Mediterranean, dodging poisons, traps and snakes, battling rivals old and new - in pursuit of an ancient artifact that holds the key to dazzling, invincible power. Indiana Jones and the "Temple of Doom" finds our intrepid hero in a remote village in India, where a mysterious shaman tells him that his arrival has been foreseen - and that he must retrieve a stolen mystical stone. And finally, Indy faces the most challenging and personal endeavor of his life: to rescue his estranged father, the eminent professor Dr Henry Jones, from a Nazi's lair, and recover the legendary Holy Grail. Yet Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade doesn't mean the adventure is over.


A worldwide leading company in the cosmetic industry was dealing with great challenges regarding adapting its positioning strategy to the dynamically changing behaviors of the market. The company needed to decide where to invest its marketing budget to optimize its revenue and was using different traditional marketing mix models without any success. A marketing mix model was developed using agent-based modeling to predict the market's reaction to a given distribution of a certain budget among the different touchpoints available. This innovative model uses market information and consumer information collected from surveys to estimate the company's sales, level of awareness and level of consideration given its distributed investment. The tool was implemented as part of the marketing plan decision making process, providing the ability to test different scenarios and generate quantitative analysis of its results.


Summary
Personal protection is the most important single aspect of the control program against hemorrhagic fever and consists of personally applied insect repellent and impregnating the outer clothing by dipping it into a standard miticide, 1–17 dilution, at least once monthly or after every third washing, preferably at the time of laundering. Bulk laundry from line regiments and clothing from army shower points should be impregnated at quartermaster field laundries. When this service is not available to troops, impregnating should be done locally by hand dipping. It is obvious that the fewer the impregnating stations the more effective will be the program. The other phases of control—spraying outer covers of sleeping bags with 1–10 miticide, spraying 1% Lindane emulsion to tent and bunker floors and walls, and the rodent control program—all add to the completeness of the program.
Control of mites at best is difficult and, during military operations, personal protection against them plus limited environmental control against both mites and possible host reservoirs make a sound approach to reducing the number of non-effectives from this disease to a minimum.


In this article, we extend the concept of technology beyond the conventional understanding of systems and artifacts as embodiments of partic- ular functionalities that are variously enacted in local settings. Technological artifacts or systems epitomize operational couplings that extend beyond the human-technology interface. Such couplings entail multiple, unobtrusive, back- staged links that evade human interpretation yet are critically involved in the reproduction and control of social relations. Cast in this light, technologies emerge as complex rationalized embodiments for structuring social relationships and, in this quality, complement and occasionally compete with institutional modes of governance. We explore these ideas in the empirical context of cultural memory organizations (e.g., libraries, archives, museums). As the out- come of the technological developments that have marked the field over the last two decades, the operations of memory institutions increasingly mingle with those of information aggregators and search engines. These developments reframe longstanding professional practices of memory organizations and, in this process, challenge their institutional mandate.


textabstractLaw and economics' initial success has been under threat for some time now. Why is that? How has this threat been responded to? And how convincing are these responses? An important reason why law and economics is under threat is that empirical research has demonstrated that the functioning of the law cannot be well understood on the basis of the assumption of the rational actor and that policies based on this assumption are likely to be flawed. Since this criticism goes to the heart of law and economics, it has not gone unnoticed. Three responses can be distinguished. Whereas the first response maintains that the limitations attributed to the rational actor are grossly exaggerated and can easily be incorporated in rational choice theory, the second response welcomes the criticism and sees it as an opportunity to come up with an integrative theory of law and behavior. The third response also takes the criticism seriously but replaces the aspiration to come up with such an integrative theory with an approach that is sensitive to context-specific conceptions of rationality. It will be argued that the first two responses fall short, while the third response offers a promising way to go forward.


Anti-N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptor
encephalitis is a life-threatening disorder that often occurs as a
paraneoplastic encephalitis and usually begins with neuropsychological or
psychiatric symptoms. We report a case of NMDA receptor encephalitis due to an
ovarian teratoma, which began with severe and progressive amnesia and
behavioral changes, reversed after surgical treatment and plasmapheresis. Using
a battery of cognitive tests, its neuropsychological profile before treatment
showed a complete
alteration of the short and long term memory of both verbal and visual
fixation, with clear improvement with cues and with intrusions, and saving
other cognitive domains, such as working, episodic and semantic memory,
executive, visuospatial, praxical thinking and language functions. These
deficits reverted to normalcy with treatment. So, we can conclude that anti-NMDA
receptor encephalitis is a rare entity that can be potentially serious
depending on early management and diagnosis. We must suspect this entity in
children or young people presenting with behavioural disturbances and crisis,
with a cognitive pattern of complete alteration in short and long term memory
improving with cues, and respecting other cognitive domains.


Connecting with others increases happiness, but strangers in close proximity routinely ignore each other. Why? Two reasons seem likely: Either solitude is a more positive experience than interacting with strangers, or people misunderstand the consequences of distant social connections. To examine the experience of connecting to strangers, we instructed commuters on trains and buses to connect with a stranger near them, to remain disconnected, or to commute as normal (Experiments 1a and 2a). In both contexts, participants reported a more positive (and no less productive) experience when they connected than when they did not. Separate participants in each context, however, expected precisely the opposite outcome, predicting a more positive experience in solitude (Experiments 1b and 2b). This mistaken preference for solitude stems partly from underestimating others' interest in connecting (Experiments 3a and 3b), which in turn keeps people from learning the actual consequences of social interaction (Experiments 4a and 4b). The pleasure of connection seems contagious: In a laboratory waiting room, participants who were talked to had equally positive experiences as those instructed to talk (Experiment 5). Human beings are social animals. Those who misunderstand the consequences of social interactions may not, in at least some contexts, be social enough for their own well-being.


The Lisbon Treaty and the Early Warning System represent the
culmination of a long process of European treaties reform, among whose aims was to increase the EU democratic legitimacy. Which was not only undertaken through the enlargement of the European Parliament's functions, but also through a greater involvement of National Parliaments in the EU decision-making process. However, the
Treaty of Lisbon reaffirms the EU blindness toward the internal constitutional setting of its Member States and National Parliaments are treated equally, notwithstanding their powers and functions. Hence, the role of upper houses appears reinforced, because regardless of the internal constitutional setting of its Member States, the Early
Warning System establishes an equal distribution of votes between the two houses of the parliament. Hence, the 13 Member States with a bicameral system cannot liberally assign the two votes according to the internal repartition of competencies, but rather the houses must have
one vote each. The aim of this research is to explore the impact of the Europeanisation process on upper houses and to assess their value in the Europeanisation discourse. Scrutinising the Italian, the UK and the German upper houses, the research stresses on the differential impact
of Europeanisation and it elucidates that the diverse participation patterns reflect the profound heterogeneity of the institutional landscape of National Parliaments. In this respect, the research argues that the upper chambers which are more likely to promptly adapt to the impact of the Europeanisation process, both in terms of structural
and procedural organisation and of active involvement in the EU decision-making process, are those characterised by two basic features: the non-partisan membership and the territorial representation of interests. However, it goes without saying that formal powers and party affiliation remain two essential factors. Moreover, as for the issue
of executive accountability, the research, beyond the classical political cleavage, affirms the central role of upper chambers in taking the Government into account. In fact, the lack of the confidence vote assures the impartiality of the upper house, which is more likely to act
independently from the executive.


The spectroscopic ruler is a noninvasive technique exploiting fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) to determine intramolecular distances on the nm scale in proteins and other bio-molecules [1,2]. It is widely applied in the life sciences where it is used in vitro and in vivo to probe the separation between fluorescent markers attached to the molecules under investigation. Because FRET scales strongly with the separation distance and orientation between the optical dipole moments of the donor and acceptor molecules, the accuracy of the technique is limited when the molecules undergoes thermal fluctuations under physiological conditions and the orientation of the optical dipoles is not static.


There has been profuse development in the stock markets all over the world in the past decades. The 21st century has seen intriguing changes in the stock markets in both developed and emerging economies. This paper examines the weak-form efficiency of listed firms on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) by applying the Random Walk Hypothesis using weekly closing stock prices on the GSE from January, 2007 to June, 2012. The GSE financial market returns series exhibit volatility clustering that shows an indication of inefficiency on the GSE. The results of both the descriptive statistics of the weekly market returns and the normality tests show that returns from GSE did not follow the normal distribution. The study recommends that transaction cost should be reduced to improve the market activities of the GSE. Also, efforts should be intensified to get as many firms as possible to be listed on the stock market to enhance competition among stocks.


The move from student to nurse has been described as difficult for newly registered nurses. Newly registered nurses' feelings of lacking competence can reduce the opportunity to develop professional competence. Entering the nursing profession requires a high degree of adaptation. The difference between the professional competence conveyed during education and the competence demanded in working life is substantial and needs to be taken seriously. The aim of this paper is to propose a model for developing professional competence. The theoretical discussion starts with a model showing processes newly registered nurses must manage to achieve a sense of competence. These processes are highlighted by discussing how they relate to praxis in the Aristotelian tradition, situated learning and Work Integrated Learning (WIL). Learning Integrated Work (LIW) is a pedagogical approach aiming to integrate scientific knowledge with practical knowledge, and to provide an analytical perspective where students have the opportunity to develop metacognitive skills and praxis by learning in and by clinical practice experiences. One way to achieve this is to learn from the knowledge and skills used when performing practical work. The aims of WIL and LIW are to identify both practical knowledge generated by nurses in the course of their professional activities and theoretical knowledge generated in the academy, and to elaborate an understanding constituting the essence of both theoretical and practical knowledge. By integrating theoretical and practical vocational knowledge, one promotes professionalization, including the ability to perform the expected tasks and to have a critical and development-oriented attitude in daily work.


What limits ought there be on a state's ability to create a homogeneous society, to increase or perpetuate non-diversity, or to create hierarchies within existing diversity? This paper examines those questions with reference to the Lieberman Plan - which proposes to transfer populated territories from Israel to the Palestine in exchange for Jewish settlements on the West Bank - as an abstract exercise in demographic transformation by the state.First the article considers if the Lieberman plan would "work": Would it create the alterations it proposes, and would those changes achieve a stable, peaceful, even just settlement? It finds that though there is debate about the possible effects, there is little doubt that transfer would alter the state's demography; objections about feasibility are really based on a conviction that transfer is undesirable. Similarly, transfer is fundamentally different from ethnic cleansing or apartheid, since it leaves people where they are and moves borders around them.The article then turns to the international standards that might govern the transfer of territory and citizens, to see how they would characterize such a plan. It finds that there is no rule requiring states to condition transfer of territory on the consent of the affected population, and that norms protecting citizenship are considerably more complex than they first appear - even allowing ethnically targeted denaturalization in some cases.The article then analyzes the loyalty provisions of the Lieberman Plan, and notes, contrary to the usual normative assumption, that the foundations of citizenship are actually shared identity and values which derive from a habitual or formative link to a given territory, which in turn creates a right to citizenship not in any particular state, but in the one that incidentally is sovereign over that territory. This interaction of citizenship and territory, when considered together with equal protection norms, suggests that the polity has an interest in defining its own territorial scope and thereby its membership. Human rights do not dictate a particular political dispensation; they do not dictate the shape of any polity.The article proposes a neo-Wilsonian interpretation of self-determination to explain how transfer might be assimilated to existing norms. The present doctrinal regime is ambiguous, and deliberations about this question sound in the realm of politics. The right of Jews, as a self-defining group, to self-determination might entitle them to reassess their union with the Arab population of Israel and to in effect secede from the existing broader multi-ethnic state. In fact, all two-state solutions implicitly confirm the continued relevance of division of communities along ethnic lines in the Israeli-Palestinian context. Curiously, therefore, the Lieberman Plan is actually one of the more candid and more generous proposals, in that it acknowledges the logic underlying self-determination: that a self-defining community cannot extend its political dominion over another group, but rather must withdraw.Finally, the article notes that international law, though it polices excesses by states, is almost entirely silent about the most decisive factor in controlling demography: the fact of state sovereignty over territory.NB: Part II of this article is at SSRN Abstract No. 2037780.


In sport, deliberate practice theory has significantly impacted research on expertise and what has been known as talent/skill development. A wealth of data shows how practice volume distinguishes across groups that vary in their level of skill attained. This theory has led to models of skill development which vary in their emphasis on early or late engagement in deliberate practice and early engagement in play and diversified sport involvement as compared to practice. Deliberate practice theory has been widely studied in dynamic team sports, such as soccer. Here we review research from work we have conducted over the past six years, based on comparisons of highly elite male and female soccer players. We have evaluated prospectively and cross-sectionally, the developmental activities most related to successful transitions and adult success at the highest level of sport, as well as relations between these activities and technical and tactical skills development and indices of motivation. Our data show that successful, adult elite athletes, in the UK and Canada, are defined by what is termed the early engagement pathway. This is characterized by majority engagement in the chosen sport since early childhood, although not exclusive engagement, and engagement in relatively high volumes of self-directed play, in addition to high volumes of more formal, structured practice. We discuss issues with some of this research, including those related to measurement, and present ideas for future research based against the backdrop of the deliberate practice framework.


Existing methods for determining paleoprecipitation are subject to large errors (6350- 400 mm or more using mammalian proxies), or are restricted to wet climate systems due to their strong facies dependence (paleobotanical proxies). Here we describe a new paleo- precipitation tool based on an indexing of ecophysiological groups within herpetological communities. In recent communities these indices show a highly significant correlation to annual precipitation (r 2 5 0.88), and yield paleoprecipitation estimates with average errors of 6250-280 mm. The approach was validated by comparison with published paleopre- cipitation estimates from other methods. The method expands the application of paleo- precipitation tools to dry climate systems and in this way contributes to the establishment of a more comprehensive paleoprecipitation database. This method is applied to two high- resolution time intervals from the European Neogene: the early middle Miocene (early Langhian) and the early late Miocene (early Tortonian). The results indicate that both periods show significant meridional precipitation gradients in Europe, these being stronger in the early Langhian (threefold decrease toward the south) than in the early Tortonian (twofold decrease toward the south). This pattern indicates a strengthening of climatic belts during the middle Miocene climatic optimum due to Southern Hemisphere cooling and an increased contribution of Arctic low-pressure cells to the precipitation from the late Miocene onward due to Northern Hemisphere cooling.


Copyright © 2014 The Korean Neurocritical Care Society 145 A 23-year-old, previously healthy woman presented with a first-onset generalized tonic-clonic seizure. Neurological examination was unremarkable. Computed tomography of the brain showed extensive symmetric calcifications in the corticomedullary junctions, basal ganglia, thalami, and cerebellar hemispheres (Fig. 1). Serum laboratory studies revealed levels of calcium 5.7 mg/dL (8.6-10.2 mg/ dL), phosphorus 4.4 mg/dL (3.5-4.5 mg/dL), and parathyroid hormone 151 pg/mL (10-65 pg/mL) consistent with pseudohypoparathyroidism. Her clinical features of a round face, short stature, and short fourth and fifth metacarpals suggested pseudohypoparathyroidism type Ia, Albright's hereditary osteodystrophy. Pseudohypoparathyroidism is one of medical conditions which can be accompanied by brain calcifications, especially strio-pallido-dentate calcinosis.


This study examines the depiction of reward and punishment in the context of central female characters (CFCs) adherence to prescriptive gender norms in Bollywood films. One hundred top-grossing movies from 2003–4 to 2013–14 were content analyzed for the depiction of reward and punishment toward the CFCs. Irrespective of the year of release, all movies that included a CFC depicted that character following some form of prescriptive gender norms. CFCs in old as well as new movies were rewarded when they adhered to gender norms and punished when they violated gender norms. Instances of punishment were higher in old movies than in new movies; violation of prescriptive gender norms was not related to punishment in new movies, and new movies also lacked identifiable female protagonists on average compared with old movies. Findings are explained in context of Hindi mainstream cinema's role in promoting benevolent sexism.


This paper first considers the perception and dimensions of biodiversity. We suggest that biodiversity can be viewed as a biospatial, hierarchically distributed structure of variability among living organisms with five levels of complexity (and including agricultural systems). Loss of biodiversity, value of biodiversity and knowledge of aquatic biodiversity are reviewed briefly. Methods for measuring biodiversity, especially at the genetic level, are discussed and considerable emphasis is laid on effective population size as a controlling factor in biodiversity.

Finally, a range of impacts of aquaculture upon biodiversity are considered, including competitive and introgressive effects from farmed stocks. The development and use of reversibly sterile strains is seen as highly beneficial to both aquaculture and the maintenance of biodiversity.


This paper argues that two ideas – human development and results-based management – have been particularly significant in shaping the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). These are unlikely intellectual bedfellows, but by charting the evolution of the MDGs their many influences are demonstrated. However, ideas are only one of the factors shaping the MDGs and the interests of many different actors are revealed in this account. At times the ideas of human development and results-based management were pursued but, when they challenge the interests of powerful groups or nations, their principles are compromised or assiduously avoided.With the wisdom of hindsight the relative coherence of the MDGs seems remarkable, given the processes from which they emerged. Perhaps the 'Hiding Hand' that Albert Hirschman identified 40 years ago guides some elements of global public policy over the long term.


In this part of the 'Forum section' of this special edition of 'Ecquid Novi' on the media and racism, a number of original short articles, as well as statements and excerpts from publications and Internet authors are published to stimulate further debate on the issue.


In the recent developments taking place over past decades we have witnessed tremendous success in upgrading technology, the lifestyles of people, the degree of science intelligence and the environment around us. Root aspects of all such development lies with respect to the concept that involves the study of conversion of one form of energy to other desired forms. It's an endeavor to bring out the technology that are human beneficiary and it is achieved by the proper utilization of the energy from our surroundings such as the present developments includes energy conversion from sun(solar), wind, ocean, tides, biogas chemical energies and so on. Similarly we have brought up with an idea of new energy conversion which involves the utilization of sound energy, mainly those mechanical waves (sound waves), that are above the human audible range and which tend to be hazardous to humans. The attempt is done to convert the sound energy to any desired energy form; basically the output of this conversion is focused to get in form of electrical energy. This energy can then be utilized to many events such as for tube lights, charging the batteries, fans etc., The sources for the input sound can be from engines, horns in railways, the sonic sounds in airplanes and jet planes, the loud Mike systems, the speaker systems in large functions, the traffic sounds such sound waves are used to convert into electrical energy which will be tremendously beneficial to humans. The attempt is to achieve the aim of producing/supplying free electricity to the world.


This book describes how to write modules in C or C++ to extend the Python interpreter with new modules. Those modules can not only define new functions but also new object types and their methods. The document also describes how to embed the Python interpreter in another application, for use as an extension language. Finally, it shows how to compile and link extension modules so that they can be loaded dynamically (at run time) into the interpreter, if the underlying operating system supports this feature. This book assumes basic knowledge about Python. This book is a paper version of the freely available electronic documentation of the python project.


COMPARING NUTRIENT RECOVERY VIA RAPID (FLASH HYDROLYSIS) AND CONVENTIONAL HYDROTHERMAL LIQUEFACTION PROCESSES FOR MICROALGAE CULTIVATION Caleb Talbot Old Dominion University, 2015 Director: Dr. Sandeep Kumar Algal biofuels have the potential to provide a scalable source of renewable fuels in the near future. The high nutrient use in algae cultivation and its recovery and recycling is one of the challenges that may limit the scalability and sustainability of algal biofuels. The present study evaluates the use of Hydrolysate obtained after Flash Hydrolysis (FH) of Scenedesmus at 280 o C as a nutrient source for microalgae cultivation. FH Hydrolysate nutrient recycling was compared with low temperature batch Hydrothermal Liquefaction (HTL) nutrient recycling. Oocystis and Scenedesmus were cultivated using Hydrolysate as a partial phosphorous (P) and nitrogen (N) source. The study shows that 50% of the phosphorus required in the culture media could be replaced with Hydrolysate from FH; also, 50% nitrogen was provided from the same source. Ammonia toxicity is one limitation for the higher percentages of N replacement in this study. The HTL aqueous phase had a near continuous high soluble ammonia concentration in the media. The effect was significant for the 50% P HTL replacement treatment where almost no algae growth was observed in the first 11 days of the experiment.


Bruce A. McClelland. Slayers and Their Vampires: A Cultural History of Killing the Dead Ann Arbor, Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 2009 (© 2006). xviii, 260 pp. Index. Bibliography. Illustrations. Maps. $19.95, paper.Bruce McClelland' s monograph, now published in paperback, is a fascinating read for both specialists and fans of vampire folklore and fiction alike. Following in the footsteps of Jan L. Perkowski, McClelland' s mentor and academic advisor, he turns our attention yet again to the Slavic vampire. McClelland traces the manner in which this folkloric entity, who historically never rose above any other Slavic mythological daemon or spirit, achieved such enormous mass appeal when transported to the West European and later North American literary and pop cultures, becoming probably the most exotic and alluring incarnation of evil today (p. 87). What makes McClelland' s monograph significantly different from the works of other vampirologists (such as Perkowski, whose omnibus Vampire Lore was published by Slavica in 2006) is the fact that he does not limit his interest to vampires alone, but considers the vampire slayer who, together with the concept of the vampire, "migrated" from Slavic into Germanic and later Romanic lands, where he finally received his embodiment as Abraham Van Helsing in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula. McClelland argues quite persuasively that the slayer and the vampire, while presently situated far apart on the scale of good and evil, originally were not too different from each other. His research on South Slavic (especially Bulgarian) demonology shows that the vampire's mortal enemy may actually represent his mirror image because it possesses some of the vampire's typical characteristics and hence a capacity to become a vampire. McClelland further studies the vampire-slayer pair with regards to their shared connection to the world of the dead (p. 14) and, as a result, detects in them traces of an ancient shamanic figure (see pp. 6 and 120).Slayers and Their Vampires consists of a preface, ten chapters and an appendix. The latter is devoted completely to the linguistic exploration of the etymology of the Old Slavic term vampir/upir', which first appeared in written form around the eleventh century. As McClelland' s analysis asserts, it was unlikely that it originally had any links to the supernatural realm. Rather the scholar sees in it a reference to pagan groups: "the word vampire was a pejorative name for a group or a member of a group whose rituals or behavior were offensive to early Orthodox Christians" (p. 191). The meaning of the term was later extended also to include members of various heretical sects and Jews - traditional enemies of the church (pp. 31, 34).The appendix is also connected thematically with the historical chapters 3 and 4, both of which are linked by the subtitle "A Thousand Years of the Vampire." The two chapters investigate various processes out of which this Slavic folkloric entity emerged as well as the elements that over the years formed the underlying structure of the vampire motif. McClelland, for instance, notes that the blood sacrifice and feasting elements of Slavic paganism became ingrained into the concept of a vampire, hence the reference to blood drinking (pp. 36-41, 43, 64-66). Moreover, anathemas, which Orthodox theologians laid upon heretics and pagans over time, helped form the image of the vampire as an outsider, a cursed evil encroaching upon society (p. 49). Such a severe attack, exercised by the Church, led to the fact that the "unorthodox" behaviour and beliefs of the pagan groups, including heretic sects and Jews, were transferred from the sphere of something odd and "unnatural" to the sphere of "supernatural" (p. 5 1). Consequently, the meaning, associated with the term vampire, shifted "from a perverse violator of taboos (child sacrifice, incest) to a supernatural demon who rises from the dead and attacks the living and who tends to function as a scapegoat during inexplicable adversity" (p. …


Abstract During Late Paleocene–Early Eocene times, the modern Rosebank structure was located at the juxtaposition of the easterly advancing Flett volcanic system and the northerly prograding Flett delta. As a result, the Rosebank reservoir sandstones are interstratified with volcanic and volcaniclastic rocks, offering challenges for reservoir imaging, depth prediction and reservoir characterization. These challenges have driven the application of Ocean Bottom Node (OBN) seismic technology. OBN data have yielded improved velocity models for depth conversion, better reservoir definition and key insights to aid the modelling of sand distribution from seismic attributes. Spectral decomposition of the OBN seismic data has facilitated the extraction of distinct volcanic subunits, whilst spectral enhancement has enabled visualization of complex stacking patterns within individual igneous layers. To complement the seismic analysis, detailed geological analogue studies have been undertaken in volcanic provinces such as the Palaeogene volcanic district of SE Greenland and the Columbia River Flood Basalt Province, USA. No single outcrop provides a definitive analogy to Rosebank, but each offers insights that provide an important link to understanding and managing the main subsurface uncertainties associated with field development. Integration of these multiple workflows have improved the reservoir characterization and provided the foundation for the optimization of the field development plan.


Luckily, there's Series 7 Exam For Dummies-the perfect guide that not only shows you how to think like a financial advisor but also like the test designers. Rather than an all-encompassing, comprehensive textbook, this guide covers only what's on the test, offering formulas, tips, and basic info you need to study. It empowers you with the ability to think each problem through and get to the bottom of what's being asked, providing you with everything you need and want to know about: Distribution of profits Types of securities offerings Investing in all types of stock Bond types, prices, yields, and risks Handling margin accounts Characteristics of different investment companies Direct Participation Programs and other types of partnerships Option selling, buying, and trading Security analysis and security markets Packed with valuable information and know-how, this no-nonsense guide provides a full-length practice exam with answers and explanations. A bonus CD with another simulated practice test is also included. Whether you're preparing to take the test for the first time or the fourth time, Series 7 For Dummies is the book for you!Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.


Police forces in countries all over the world are using body cameras or considering the introduction of these small wearable devices. Most impact assessments are based on projects within one geographical area or jurisdiction. Yet, the results are sometimes seen as an answer to the general question: 'Do bodycams work: yes or no?' In the first part of this article, I present a meta-analysis aggregating nine impact assessments from three different countries. The average results are positive prompting the conclusion that bodycams work. However, the overwhelming majority of research on bodycams comes from the United States or the United Kingdom. As police forces in other countries try to copy successful projects from abroad, they quickly discover that bodycams are about much more than just the technology. All bodycam programs need careful preparation and attention to implementation to enable the devices to work as intended. By looking at effectiveness from this perspective, a different question appears from underneath the average results: 'How do bodycams work, under what conditions and for whom?' In the second part of the article, I sketch a framework to help science and practice to answer this much more relevant and realistic question. Central tenets within this framework are mechanisms, context and implementation. The final part of the article focuses on two topics that are often overlooked, but might prove essential in the quest for transferable lessons on bodycams: the visibility of the bodycam and the guidelines regulating the use of the bodycams.


The problem of mobile sequential recommendation is to suggest a route connecting a set of pick-up points for a taxi driver so that he/she is more likely to get passengers with less travel cost. Essentially, a key challenge of this problem is its high computational complexity. In this paper, we propose a novel dynamic programming based method to solve the mobile sequential recommendation problem consisting of two separate stages: an offline pre-processing stage and an online search stage. The offline stage pre-computes potential candidate sequences from a set of pick-up points. A backward incremental sequence generation algorithm is proposed based on the identified iterative property of the cost function. Simultaneously, an incremental pruning policy is adopted in the process of sequence generation to reduce the search space of the potential sequences effectively. In addition, a batch pruning algorithm is further applied to the generated potential sequences to remove some non-optimal sequences of a given length. Since the pruning effectiveness keeps growing with the increase of the sequence length, at the online stage, our method can efficiently find the optimal driving route for an unloaded taxi in the remaining candidate sequences. Moreover, our method can handle the problem of optimal route search with a maximum cruising distance or a destination constraint. Experimental results on real and synthetic data sets show that both the pruning ability and the efficiency of our method surpass the state-of-the-art methods. Our techniques can therefore be effectively employed to address the problem of mobile sequential recommendation with many pick-up points in real-world applications.


Bernard Rosner's FUNDAMENTALS OF BIOSTATISTICS is a practical introduction to the methods, techniques, and computation of statistics with human subjects. It prepares students for their future courses and careers by introducing the statistical methods most often used in medical literature. Rosner minimizes the amount of mathematical formulation (algebra-based) while still giving complete explanations of all the important concepts. As in previous editions, a major strength of this book is that every new concept is developed systematically through completely worked out examples from current medical research problems.


Market windows were examined in five wholesale markets for Oklahoma bell peppers, broccoli, cantaloupes, cauliflower, sweet potatoes and watermelons. "Market window" refers to a period of time when the prices received by producers for selected crops are greater than the production costs. The analysis is based on price-cost comparisons in major wholesale markets. Price risk associated with price variability and yield risk was incorporated into the analysis. The Denver and New Orleans wholesale markets provide excellent market windows for all six crops. The Chicago and Dallas wholesale markets show good market potential for most of the crops.


Impeller-stirred mixing is one of the most important processes employed throughout the chemical, metallurgical and allied industries. The research reported in this thesis is focused on impeller stirred mixing associated with the refining of lead bullion. The aim of this process is to sequentially remove contained impurities such as copper, antimony, silver and bismuth. This occurs in hemispherical vessels, called kettles, where reagents are initially added to the lead bath to form surface dross that contains both the required impurity and a large amount of lead oxide. This dross is then continuously mixed back into the bath to remove the lead oxide and capture more of the required impurity. A key requirement for this process is to obtain and remove dross that contains a high concentration of the impurity. Although this process has been in operation for many years, there is very little known on how the fluid dynamics associated with the mixing process affects final dross content.

The aim of this research is to fully investigate the lead refining process using scientific analysis methods that help understand the mixing process and provide design tools which can be used to optimise process conditions. The three methods of analysis used are: (1) Direct readings from a real kettle, (2) Physical modelling (using water), and finally (3) Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD).

The use of physical modelling, exploiting the techniques of similitude, to predict vortex was also validated. An Acoustic Doppler Velocimeter (ADV) probe was used for the velocity measurement at various locations inside the water model and this gave valuable insight about the flow phenomena occurring inside the refining kettle. A particular important finding was that when fluid is stirred above certain rotational speed the vortex depth becomes independent of the Reynolds number of the operation.

With regards CFD technology, the Volume of Fluid (VOF) method was used to capture the free surface and the Lagrangian Particle Tracking (LPT) and Algebraic Slip Model (ASM) to simulate the dross phase. Appropriate methods were also used to represent the moving impeller region. Validation of simulation results against experimental data was very encouraging. Computed vortex depth showed the similar trend as observed during the experiments on the physical model. A design strategy was developed that integrates results from both physical and computational modelling to allow optimal process conditions to be predicted at the kettle design stage.

The use of this integrated physical and computational modelling methodology successfully helped eliminate surface swirl by introducing baffles to the kettle. The design and introduction of these flow controllers was also validated to ensure that it optimised the dross mixing process and final impurity content in the dross.