This resource kit presents a compilation of information on critical climate-stress moments in the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region. The information is based on a literature review on critical-climate stress moments in agriculture and health due to heat stress and discusses critical moments emerging from downstream and upstream floods. The literature study was carried out by the Himalayan Adaptation, Water and Resilience (HI-AWARE) research project under the Collaborative Adaptation Research Initiative in Africa and Asia with financial support from the UK Government's Department for International Development and the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada.


In the 1980s, Japan was viewed as the world leader in high technology. Its superiority in electronics and other manufacturing sectors created the enigma of the Japanese management system and trade friction with the USA. Today, the sharp decline in Japan's competitiveness has become another enigma and even a trouble in the world economy. This paper addresses the contrast between Japan's high-tech industry in the 1980s and that in the 1990s. The ascendance of Japanese high-tech industry up until the 1980s has been attributed to tacit knowledge and the organisation of Japanese firms based on shared knowledge. The competitive decline during the 1990s has been viewed as a failure of the Japanese assembly industry to adapt to the change in explicit knowledge embodied in the digital revolution. In this paper, the author produces a more comprehensive explanation for the decline in the competitiveness of the Japanese high-tech industry by introducing a comparison between science-driven sectors, which rely on the sharing of tacit knowledge, and engineering-driven sectors, which should rely more on explicit knowledge such as is found in strategic components. The author argues that different forms of organisation are appropriate to different types of knowledge exchange. He concludes that current changes in the organisation of Japanese firms and research will stimulate the science-driven sector of the country's high-tech industry.


This review study synthesizes available literature in epidemiology, economics and wildfirerelated studies to provide essential information for the valuation of health costs associated with wildfire events. We review three areas within these literatures: key health outcomes to be evaluated, association between wildfire smoke and health outcomes, and valuation of health effects. We find that the key health outcomes are mortality, restricted activity days (including work days lost), hospital admissions, respiratory symptoms, and self-treatment. Our review shows somewhat inconsistent results between the conventional and wildfire-related PM epidemiology studies. We summarize the recent estimates of per unit cost of mortality and morbidity and present recommendations for evaluators.


This thesis reviews some of the methodologies utilised by Local Authority Fire and Rescue Services and driven in part by the British Government, to reduce fire deaths and injuries.
The reasoning behind this thesis is introduced along with an outline of its objectives. An historical examination of arson is presented along with an analysis as to how it impacts upon our society, and in particular, the financial pressures impinging on the insurance industry.
An exploration of the term 'arson' as well as its legal definition and roots is examined. The increasing number of deliberate fires started by young people in the UK is also highlighted.
Local intervention programmes emerge as a model as well as recommendations for reducing the crime of arson. The deployment of information technology as a tool with which to identilS' problem areas is seen as fundamental to any significant reduction whilst an examination of the financial implications and provision of funding from various sources in order to assist in this reduction is discussed in some detail.
A detailed description of the way that fire and its effluent gases impact upon the human body is presented along with a discussion of the effects of illness, alcohol and drugs.
An exploration and examination of how various professional groups and organisations can become involved in the investigative process is provided and suggestions are made to encourage closer cooperation between all interested parties. A comprehensive appreciation of organisational roles is presented with a view to improving understanding.
Physiological aspects of fire death are examined including an introduction into how bodies burn.
The methodology selected for carrying out the experimental test bums and an explanation of how the final selection of manikins was made is described in some detail. Legislative controls to harmonise with these test bums are then evaluated.
A comparative analysis between homicidal cases involving the use of fire and selfimmolation is presented. They also include a discussion of the difficulties of distinguishing between them and introduce racial and cultural influences.
The main tenet of this thesis is the difficulties of distinguishing between cases of homicide and suicide and how they can sometimes be overlooked or confused. The consequence of this is that perpetrators of this type of crime can remain undetected unless a 'team' approach is utilised by the investigators. Research carried out for this thesis highlights the
difficulties in both the statistical gathering and legal processes.
Case histories set the scene for the proposed test burns in order to provide a benchmark by which to measure findings. The preparation and practical work is also detailed.
Six separate bum tests were carried out using dressed manikins under experimental conditions, details of which were recorded and presented. Comparisons were made between these test bums and actual case histories and similarities between the resulting 'injuries' and case history bums are discussed. Heat sensors recorded temperatures attained during two of these tests and observations showed that clothing type influenced both heat and bum damage to the skin as well as providing an insulating and protective barrier. An analysis of test data is presented.
The experimental results together with a discussion on the practical implications resulting from the thesis are presented. It is hoped that this will assist investigators to analyse and distinguish between homicidal and suicidal cases, which have used fire as a weapon.
It is suggested that fhture research should include more sophisticated versions of manikins used in this thesis. It is further suggested that a mechanism could be incorporated for drawing fire gases into the 'airway' so that further analysis could expand upon the findings presented in this thesis.


This paper considers what is at stake in defining and mapping protected areas for conservation. We link issues of power in cartography to themes from political ecology, social natures, and conservation biology literatures to extend our understanding of maps as reflective of, and productive of, power. Reviewing insights from these literatures to consider power asymmetries common to conservation practice, we highlight ways that mapping practices and products reinforce and contribute to such dynamics. Doing so enriches consideration of the power geometries of conservation cartographies by inviting fuller consideration of diverse species and landscapes, as well as enabling discussion of other representational and productive effects of conservation mappings. Once determined, how might conservation maps serve to naturalize certain spaces or boundaries as fixed, or contribute to certain socio-psychological understandings of conservation possibilities or outcomes? In the closing sections, we invoke the idea of 'counter-mapping' to explore strategies that might redress these concerns. Possibilities range from efforts to adapt the form of protected areas to more critical approaches that question the appropriateness of territorial focus and mapping practices for conservation goals. In conclusion, we argue that theorizing power in human, other-than-human, and inter-species contexts is essential to understanding the power geometries of conservation mapping.


Background: Research in aphasia has focused on acquired dyslexias at the single word level, with a paucity of assessment techniques and rehabilitation approaches for individuals with difficulty at the text level. A rich literature from research with paediatric populations and healthy non-brain damaged, skilled adult readers allows the component processes that are important for text reading to be defined and more appropriate assessments to be devised. Aims: To assess the component processes of text reading in a small group of individuals with aphasia who report difficulties in reading at the text level. Do assessments of component processes in reading comprehension reveal distinct profiles of text comprehension? To what extent are text comprehension difficulties caused by underlying linguistic and/or cognitive deficits? Methods & Procedures: Four individuals with mild aphasia who reported difficulties in reading at the text level took part in a case-series study. Published assessments were used to confirm the presence of text comprehension impairment. Participants completed a range of assessments to provide a profile of their linguistic and cognitive skills, focusing on processes known to be important for text comprehension. We identified the following areas for assessment: reading speed, language skills (single word and sentence), inferencing, working memory and metacognitive skills (monitoring and strategy use). Outcomes & Results: Performance was compared against age-matched adult control data. One participant presented with a trend for impaired abilities in inferencing, with all other assessed skills being within normal limits. The other three had identified linguistic and working memory difficulties. One presented with a residual deficit in accessing single word meaning that affected text comprehension. The other two showed no clear link between sentence processing difficulties and text comprehension impairments. Across these three, data suggested a link between verbal working memory (VWM) capacity and specific inferencing skills. Conclusions: Successful text reading relies on a number of component processes. In this paper we have made a start in defining those component processes and devising tasks suitable to assess them. From our results, assessment of VWM and inferencing appears to be critical for understanding text comprehension impairments in aphasia. It is possible that rehabilitation input can capitalise on key meta-cognitive skills (monitoring, strategy use) to support functional reading in the face of existing linguistic, text comprehension and memory impairments.


Grime's CSR species life-strategy theory (competition-stress-ruderality) provides a conceptual framework to classify species into competitive (growing under high productivity, low disturbance), stress-tolerant (low productivity, low disturbance) and ruderal (high productivity, high disturbance). Importantly, this classification is based on the assumption that the niche space of disturbance and productivity is filled unevenly: while in productive habitats species can adapt to different disturbance regimes, species of low-productivity and disturbed habitats do not exist, resulting in a triangular distribution of species optima along axes of disturbance and productivity. This assumption has often been criticised, but it has not yet been put under a rigorous test. Here we use existing data on niche positions of central European plant species to test this hypothesis, namely its prediction that species adapted to jointly stressed (low-productive) and disturbed habitats do not exist. We use Ellenberg indicator values and newly developed indicator values for disturbance as proxies of species positions in the space of productivity and disturbance. We found that positions of species optima along the gradients of productivity and disturbance severity are not independent of each other, with very few species adapted to low-productive and severely disturbed habitats. In contrast, there is no relationship between productivity and disturbance frequency; a number of species occur in low-productive and frequently disturbed habitats. The relationship between productivity and disturbance severity can be either due to tradeoffs between life history traits responsible for response to disturbance and productivity (as originally assumed by Grime) or due to historical rarity of severely disturbed habitats in unproductive conditions and consequent absence of evolution of species adapted to them. Our data are based on one specific flora, shaped by glaciations and early introduction of agriculture, but the question of what causes this pattern can be resolved by future analyses of floras with different evolutionary and ecological histories.


The central question addressed in this research is: "How do practicing management consultants cope with the duality of their role?" Management consultants are often responsible for internal business leadership roles as well as developing business, people and knowledge alongside client delivery (Richter et al., 2008). The research sought to understand the nature of the potentially conflicting demands of their client-facing and consultancy-facing roles on management consultants, how conflicts arise and how they are managed.

The substantive aim was to build on and extend existing studies of duality and bring a new perspective to academic knowledge relating to management consultancy. Data collection was through semi-structured interviews, observations and a limited number of documents. Grounded analysis was used to construct the data and develop a framework linking data categories and themes to existing theory. The research found that the main conflict between the consultancy-facing and client-facing demands on management consultants centred on the requirement for the physical presence of the management consultant and the incompatibility of performing consultancy related tasks on client site. Management consultants managed the conflict by performing consultancy related tasks in the evenings at weekends as far as possible. This resulted in further conflicts with achieving a work-life balance and the demands of family.

The research focused on a practice within a single mainstream global consultancy and findings cannot therefore be generalised to other management consultancies (Tsang, 2014). However, the findings may provide the basis for further research across a range of management consultancies (Kanter, 1977 cited in Bryman and Bell, 2015).


A new method for the reconstruction of a one-dimensional profile of a perfectly conducting rough surface illuminated by a plane wave at a fixed frequency is addressed. By a special representation of the scattered electric field, the total field in the half-space over the surface is obtained from the measured data, which leads to a nonlinear equation with a surface function as unknown. The nonlinear equation is solved iteratively via the Newton method and a regularization in the least square sense. Numerical simulations show that the method yields satisfactory reconstructions for slightly rough surface profiles.


New York City bases admissions to its eight "specialized" high schools entirely upon scores on a single standardized test. This policy, hotly contested when it was codified by state law in 1971, faces renewed political and legal attacks today. Single-test admissions consistently result in alarmingly low levels of African-American and Hispanic enrollment at the most sought-after specialized schools. This brief essay compares today's debate to that of 1971. It notes two major developments since then. The City now has eight test-only high schools, not three. Moreover, the eight schools now function in the larger context of New York's system of city-wide high school choice. Given city-wide choice, and notwithstanding the dramatic demographic inequities associated with the exam, the availability of a small number of test-only, academically elite high schools arguably increases the diversity of the City's high school system taken as a whole.


Background. Absent adaptive, individualized dose-finding in early-phase oncology trials, subsequent 'confirmatory' Phase III trials risk suboptimal dosing, with resulting loss of statistical power and reduced probability of technical success for the investigational drug. While progress has been made toward explicitly adaptive dose-finding and quantitative modeling of dose-response relationships, most such work continues to be organized around a concept of 'the' maximum tolerated dose (MTD). The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate concretely how the aim of early-phase trials might be conceived of, not as 'dose-finding', but as dosing algorithm-finding. Methods. A Phase I dosing study is simulated, for a notional cytotoxic chemotherapy drug, with neutropenia constituting the critical dose-limiting toxicity. The drug's population pharmacokinetics and myelosuppression dynamics are simulated using published parameter estimates for docetaxel. The amenability of this model to linearization is explored empirically. The properties of a simple dose titration algorithm targeting neutrophil nadir of 500 cells/mm 3 using a Newton-Raphson heuristic are explored through simulation in 25 simulated study subjects. Results. Individual-level myelosuppression dynamics in the simulation model approximately linearize under simple transformations of neutrophil concentration and drug dose. The simulated dose titration exhibits largely satisfactory convergence, with great variance in individualized optimal dosing. Some titration courses exhibit overshooting. Conclusions. The large inter-individual variability in simulated optimal dosing underscores the need to replace 'the' MTD with an individualized concept of MTD i . To illustrate this principle, the simplest possible dose titration algorithm capable of realizing such a concept is demonstrated. Qualitative phenomena observed in this demonstration support discussion of the notion of tuning such algorithms. The individual-level linearization of myelosuppression dynamics demonstrated for the simulation model used here suggest that a titration algorithm specified in the more general terms of the linear Kalman filter will be worth exploring.


I. Introduction After writing "The Classical Economic Model and the Nature of Property in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries" (1) Adam Smith's ideas have never left my thinking. Upon reading Coase's 1937 article, "The Nature of the Firm," (2) I was impressed with Coase's knowledge of Adam Smith's classical model and with his realistic analysis of the modern firm. However, I was not pushed into asking the big question and jolting issue, "What is Adam Smith's ethic?" Then I read, "The Problem of Social Cost," Coase's 1960 article. (3,4) That article forced me to think even more what a deep and powerful thinker this Nobel Laureate is. When asked to write a paper for The Oxford Round Table, I thought, why not write on Adam Smith's ethic compared to Coase's ethic? However, I had never read The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith because no one had ever mentioned that it was worth reading. As a matter of fact, I had never met anyone who had read the book. I decided to read it and in that way try to understand the Adam Smith ethic. After reading it, I have been able to hopefully understand the Adam Smith ethic and compare it to the Coase ethic. This paper is divided into six parts: Part I Introduction; Part II The Ethic of The Theory of Moral Sentiments; Part III The Ethic of The Wealth of Nations; Part IV The Ethic of "The Nature of the Firm;" Part V The Ethic of "The Problem of Social Cost;" Part VI Analyses and Conclusions. II. The Ethic of The Theory of Moral Sentiments A. The Doctrine of Sympathy An analysis of The Theory of Moral Sentiments (5) written in 1759 by Adam Smith is best begun by following the design that Adam Smith has created. For Adam Smith, the concept of ethic has to do with a moral judgment. A detailed analysis would be very informative but a more meaningful analysis is to set a limitation by dealing with the two most important doctrines of Adam Smith's system. They are: (1) the doctrine of moral judgment which is centered on sympathy; and (2) the dualism of virtues which is based on the contrast between justice and benevolence. The reason for this is to understand the relation of his ethical theory to his economics and perhaps then see the overall implications. For Adam Smith, sympathy is a principle of communication whereby the sentiments of an individual influence and are influenced by the sentiments of his fellow men. This does not mean that sympathy is the essential content of morality but, on the other hand, sympathy is the communicating factor between individuals from which arises or which allows the moral judgment. The doctrine of sympathy, pertaining to the moral experience, is presented in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. The key to Adam Smith's ethical theory is fundamentally an imaginary change of situation. That is, the person making the judgment places himself in the position of the individual being judged and thus he feels somewhat as if his sentiments and passions are the sentiments and passions of that judged individual. Sympathy then is the participation in the feelings of others. Adam Smith's own words show the nature of sympathy: "When we see a stroke aimed and ready to fall upon the leg or arm of another person, we naturally shrink and draw back our own leg or our own arm; and when it does fall, we feel it in some measure, and are hurt by it as well as the sufferer." "The mob when they are gazing at the dancer on the slack rope, naturally writhe and twist and balance their own bodies as they see him do, and as they feel that they themselves must do if in his situation." "Persons ... that in looking on the sores and ulcers which are exposed by beggars in the streets, they are apt to feel an itching or uneasy sensation in the correspondent part of their own bodies." (6) A pleasure arises when the sentiments are in accord. And when this imaginary change of situation has happened and we sense that the other's emotions are in agreement with our own in the particular situation, we approve and call them good. …


Twelve phages isolated from sewage and active on lactobacilli were examined by electron microscopy with a negative-staining technique. Those phages active on Lactobacillus fermenti (heterofermentative) possess icosahedral heads and sheathed tails which end in base-plates and pins. Those phages active on Lactobacillus casei (homofermentative) differ in that their heads are octahedral or icosahedral and they possess collars. The overall length of all the phages is similar and their base-plates remain attached to the sheaths when these contract. No tail fibres were seen. A temperate Lactobacillus fermenti phage was also examined. It has a small hexagonal head and a long unsheathed tail which ends in a star-shaped structure.


We have developed a portable and easily configurable genome annotation pipeline called MAKER. Its purpose is to allow investigators to independently annotate eukaryotic genomes and create genome databases. MAKER identifies repeats, aligns ESTs and proteins to a genome, produces ab initio gene predictions, and automatically synthesizes these data into gene annotations having evidence-based quality indices. MAKER is also easily trainable: Outputs of preliminary runs are used to automatically retrain its gene-prediction algorithm, producing higher-quality gene-models on subsequent runs. MAKER's inputs are minimal, and its outputs can be used to create a GMOD database. Its outputs can also be viewed in the Apollo Genome browser; this feature of MAKER provides an easy means to annotate, view, and edit individual contigs and BACs without the overhead of a database. As proof of principle, we have used MAKER to annotate the genome of the planarian Schmidtea mediterranea and to create a new genome database, SmedGD. We have also compared MAKER's performance to other published annotation pipelines. Our results demonstrate that MAKER provides a simple and effective means to convert a genome sequence into a community-accessible genome database. MAKER should prove especially useful for emerging model organism genome projects for which extensive bioinformatics resources may not be readily available.


There is an upper limit to the vulnerability (ULV) of the ventricles to fibrillation (VF) induced by T-wave stimuli. Across species, disease states, and pharmacological treatments, the ULV is correlated to the defibrillation threshold (DF50). However, one factor known to increase the ULV far above the DF50 is rapid pacing. In this article we test the hypothesis that this increase is owing to an accompanying hemodynamic collapse or geometric change. In 18 dogs, T-wave stimuli were delivered from transvenous defibrillating electrodes. The T-wave shock strength that induced VF 50% of the time (the ULV50) was measured using a 10-step Bayesian up-down protocol. T-wave stimuli were delivered after 15 paced beats at one of several rates: normal (80% of the R-R interval), rapid (the interval just fast enough to cause hemodynamic collapse), or 10 milliseconds greater than rapid (which did not cause hypotension). We measured the geometry of the left ventricle at the moment of T-wave stimulation using linear ultrasound. Rapid pacing significantly increased the ULV50 above the normal rate ULV (507 +/- 62.9 vs 379 +/- 70.6 V, P < .005, n = 18), even in the subset without hemodynamic collapse (505 +/- 84.4 vs 394 +/- 66.5 V, P < .005, n = 6). No significant geometric changes were noted between rapid (19.8 mm) and normal (20.6 mm, n = 6, P < NS) pacing, but QT interval reduction appears to correlate with the ULV50 (QT vs ULV50, r > 0, P < .01). Rapid pacing can dramatically increase the measured ULV50. The most likely cause is a concurrent change in the electrophysiology, eg, QT or APD, of the myocardium. As the only known factor to consistently alter the relationship between ULV and the DF50, rapid pacing offers a unique opportunity for the study of the link between defibrillation and ULV testing.


The author of a much-loved two volume Matthew commentary (1990 ) that he greatly revised and expanded fourteen years later, Frederick Dale Bruner now offers "The Gospel of John: A Commentary" -- more rich fruit of his lifetime of study and teaching. Rather than relying primarily on recent scholarship, Bruner honors and draws from the church's major John commentators throughout history, including Augustine, Chrysostom, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Bultmann, Barrett, and many more. Alongside this "historical interpretation" is Bruner's own contemporary interpretation, which incorporates a lucid translation of the text, references to recent scholarship, and his pastoral application of the Gospel to present-day experience. Like Bruner's other work, this commentary is rich in biblical insights, broadly historical, and deeply theological. Here is what Eugene Peterson said about Bruner's earlier work on Matthew: "This is the kind of commentary I most want -- a theological wrestling with Scripture. Frederick Dale Bruner grapples with the text not only as a technical exegete (although he does that very well) but as a church theologian, caring passionately about what these words tell us about God and ourselves. His Matthew commentary is in the grand traditions of Augustine, Calvin, and Luther -- expansive and leisurely, loving the text, the people in it, and the Christians who read it." The same could well be said about the present John commentary, which promises to be another invaluable resource for pastors, teachers, and laypeople alike.


PURPOSE
The purpose of this work is to evaluate the accuracy of a three-dimensional surface based optical imaging device for treatment setup of breast patients. A commercial system has been used to acquire live surface contour data, which are registered with a reference surface contour for setup corrections. This work is to investigate the accuracy of this system when compared with conventional portal images.

METHODS
The system was clinically applied to twenty breast cancer patients receiving radiotherapy treatment. For each patient, conventional portal imaging before the first fraction was acquired and approved by clinicians. After approval of portal images, a reference surface contour was acquired. This reference contour was subsequently used to guide daily patient setup followed by weekly portal images. A total of 89 sets of portal images were acquired for these patients. On days when portal images were taken, optical images were used to guide for initial patient setup, then portal images were taken and evaluated in order to make direct comparison between the optical imaging system and the conventional portal images.

RESULTS
Among 89 sets of portal images taken after optical imaging guidance, 11 (12%) sets of portal images required further adjustments in order to achieve clinically acceptable criteria. The average vector adjustments for these 11 fractions were 0.65 cm ± 0.30 cm. Average vector shifts made according to the optical imaging for all fractions of 20 patients was 0.66 ± 0.33 cm.

CONCLUSIONS
Our data show that the commercial optical system can improve the accuracy of treatment setup for breast patients without additional radiation exposure. The observed discrepancy between the portal images and optimal images requires further investigation. The optical imaging guidance can be routinely used between normally scheduled portal imaging.


Skew angle detection and correction an integral part of any OCR system. Without proper skew correction, the performance of an OCR will simply not be acceptable for most scanned images. We propose an innovative method for skew angle detection and correction for Bangla scripts using the Radon Transform. The basic idea is to identify the upper envelope by detecting the headline that accompanies most of the letters in the Bangla script, and then apply the Radon Transform to this upper envelope to get the skew angle. Once the angle is known, the correction is quite trivial to perform. While the current implementation handles only a single skew angle per text image, it can be extended to handle multiple skew angles by partitioning the document image.


Multimotor drive systems have been widely used in many modern industries. It is a nonlinear, multi-input, multi-output (MIMO) and strong-coupling complicated system, including the effect of friction, elastic, and backlash. The control law for this drive system much depends on the determining of the tension. However, it is hard to obtain this tension in practice by using a load cell or a pressure meter due to the accuracy of sensors or external disturbance. In order to solve this problem, a high-gain observer is proposed to estimate the state variables in this drive system, such as speeds and tension. An emer- ging proposed technique in the control law is the use of high-gain observers together with adaptive sliding mode control scheme to obtain a separation principle for the stabilization of whole system. The theory analysis and simulation results point out the good effectiveness of the proposed output feedback for the drive system.


The central endocannabinoid system (ECS) and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal-axis mediate individual responses to emotionally salient stimuli. Their altered developmental adjustment may relate to the emergence of emotional disturbances. Although environmental influences regulate the individual phenotype throughout the entire lifespan, their effects may result particularly persistent during plastic developmental stages (e.g. prenatal life and adolescence). Here, we investigated whether prenatal stress – in the form of gestational exposure to corticosterone supplemented in the maternal drinking water (100 mg/l) during the last week of pregnancy – combined with a pharmacological stimulation of the ECS during adolescence (daily fatty acid amide hydrolase URB597 i.p. administration - 0.4 mg/kg - between postnatal days 29–38), influenced adult mouse emotional behaviour and brain metabolism measured through in vivo quantitative magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Compared to control mice, URB597-treated subjects showed, in the short-term, reduced locomotion and, in the long term, reduced motivation to execute operant responses to obtain palatable rewards paralleled by reduced levels of inositol and taurine in the prefrontal cortex. Adult mice exposed to prenatal corticosterone showed increased behavioural anxiety and reduced locomotion in the elevated zero maze, and altered brain metabolism (increased glutamate and reduced taurine in the hippocampus; reduced inositol and N-Acetyl-Aspartate in the hypothalamus). Present data further corroborate the view that prenatal stress and pharmacological ECS stimulation during adolescence persistently regulate emotional responses in adulthood. Yet, whilst we hypothesized these factors to be interactive in nature, we observed that the consequences of prenatal corticosterone administration were independent from those of ECS drug-induced stimulation during adolescence.


The demand for reproducibility of research is on the rise in disciplines concerned with data analysis and computational methods. In this work existing recommendations for reproducible research are reviewed and translated into criteria for assessing reproducibility of articles in the field of geographic information science (GIScience). Using a sample of GIScience research from the Association of Geographic Information Laboratories in Europe (AGILE) conference series, we assess the current state of reproducibility of publications in this field. Feedback on the assessment was collected by surveying the authors of the sample papers. The results show the reproducibility levels are low. Although authors support the ideals, the incentives are too small. Therefore we propose concrete actions for individual researchers and GIScience conference series to improve transparency and reproducibility, such as imparting data and software skills, an award, paper badges, author guidelines for computational research, and Open Access publications.


The dramatic story of five key turning points in a thousand years of Western music - discoveries that changed the course of history. Who first invented 'Doh Re Mi...'? What do we mean by "in tune"? Looking back down the corridor of a thousand years, Howard Goodall guides us through the stories of five seismic developments in the history of Western music. His "big bangs" may not be the ones we expect - some are surprising and some are so obvious we overlook them - but all have had an extraordinary impact. Goodall starts with the invention of notation by an 11th-century Italian monk, which removed the creation of music from the hands of the players to the pens of the composers; moves on to the first opera; then to the invention of the piano, and ends with the story of the first recording made in history. Howard Goodall has the gift of making these complicated musical advances both clear and utterly fascinating. Racy and vivid in a narrative full of colourful characters and graphic illustrations of technical processes, he also gives a wonderful sense of the culture of trial and error and competition, be it in 11th-century Italy or 19th-century America, in which all progress takes place. Big Bangs opens a window on the crucial moments in our musical culture - discoveries that made possible everything from Bach to the Beatles - and tells us a riveting story of a millennium of endeavour.


This report tracks the status of ongoing legislative action and debate related to Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reauthorization. It is organized into six major program areas: aviation system finance; airport financing; FAA management and organizational issues; system capacity and safety; environmental issues; and airline industry issues. In several cases, provisions that appear in various unrelated sections of proposed legislation have been rearranged in this report in an effort to group and discuss related items in an issue-driven or programmatic context. Since this report is primarily written as a means of communicating key legislative provisions under consideration in the ongoing FAA reauthorization process, it does not go into detail regarding the specific policy issues behind these legislative proposals.


The length-weight relationship for both sexes of 21 fish species caught in Argolikos Gulf (central Aegean Sea, eastern Mediterranean), using a variety of fishing gear, was estimated for the first time. Fishing took place between August 2007 and August 2008, and the fishing gear used included gill and trammel nets, long lines, and beach seines from 58 inshore fishing vessels. Individuals caught by trammel nets were usually longer and heavier than those collected by other fishing gear. The allometric coefficient (b) for the majority of species (59%) was statistically significantly higher than 3.0, indicating positive allometry between length and weight in most species. The data obtained in the present study could serve as a useful tool in future studies in the wider study area and as a future reference for comparisons of similar parameters estimated in other Mediterranean areas.


ABSTRACT:Peoples Temple achieved impressive objectives as an organization, the most impressive of which was establishing and maintaining an agricultural community—the Promised Land—in the remote jungle of Guyana. An activity theory analysis of work oriented to the Promised Land reveals that texts—everyday genres such as forms and lists—were important tools used by the group to achieve this objective. A study of these textual tools helps us to understand how Peoples Temple was able to meet its collective organizational goals and how individual members achieved personal transformations within the organization. Examining the group's textual practices adds depth to existing studies of Temple history by showcasing the efficacy of organizational labor that members themselves might have taken for granted. In addition, this methodological approach provides a view of Peoples Temple work unencumbered by the social problems paradigm, offering instead an approach that is compatible with a social possibilities paradigm.


1,2,4-Triazine and pyrrolidin-2-one derivatives with 1,4 substituted Salicyaldehydes were designed and synthesized in order to obtain new compounds with potential anti-proliferative activity. The structures of all synthesized compounds were confirmed by means of various spectroscopic analytical techniques. The two dimensional chemical structures of compounds were submitted to National Cancer Institute (NCI), under the Developmental Therapeutic Program (DTP). The compounds were selected for screening based on novelty, size and their physicochemical properties like log P, number of rotatable bonds, molecular weight etc. The selected samples were synthesized and send to NCI. The experimental drugs were analyzed at a single dose of 10-5 M against 60 different human tumor cancers of the lung, colon, brain, ovary, breast, prostate and kidney. Compounds TP24, PTM6 and PTM8 showed maximum activity out of all synthesized compounds. Molecular docking studies of most active compounds were also performed and revealed that they bind to podophyllotoxin binding pocket of the gamma tubulin protein.


ALLER SIMPLE (ONE-WAY TICKET): CORPORATE ACCOUNTABILITY FOR MASS ATROCITY-A STUDY OF THE FRENCH NATIONAL RAILROADS Sarah Federman, PhD George Mason University, 2015 Dissertation Chair: Dr. Leslie Dwyer Transitional justice employs a variety of mechanisms, including compensation, apologies, trials, commemoration, and truth seeking, to guide societies through violations and to more inclusively protect the rights of all people. This dissertation argues that including market actors and embracing open-ended processes enhances this post-conflict work. This research examines this intersection of corporate accountability and transitional justice through the battle between the SNCF (French National Railroad) and a group arguing the company made insufficient amends for transporting over 75,000 deportees, in horrific conditions, from France towards Auschwitz during WWII. The group voices its discontent through lawsuits and proposed legislation. The company responded with apologies and commemorative efforts—not direct compensation. As of 2015, the conflict continues in various locations. Archival work, site visits and over 120 interviews with senior officials, religious leaders, railway executives, historians, lawyers, ambassadors, survivors, and others make visible the contours of this multi-decade debate. The dissertation considers the SNCF's role in the transport of deportees and the post-war engagement with transitional justice practices. The case study reveals the importance of including corporate actors in postconflict work and addressing the conundrums raised by their participation. Complicit corporations, like the SNCF, benefit from legal lacunae but can also be caught in blame cycles and double binds that make their productive participation challenging. Politics and semiotics can amplify these challenges especially in this case which involves a company whose business – rail transport – resides at the symbolic heart of the atrocity. The interviews provide access to the wide-range of responses both in the United States and France; reasons victims offered for holding on or letting go to the company's responsibility suggested that open-ended approaches create the best environment in which to address power dynamics, changing victim needs, and locality differences. Approaches seeking closure only found themselves upended and often further harmed victims. The dissertation concludes by considering non-legal discursive spaces that may be useful for including corporate actors in ways that speak to victim needs.


Cypermethrin, quinalphos, endosulfan and methomyl were bioassayed against strains of Helicoverpa armigera collected from field crops in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, South India, during the 1989-90 and 1990-91 cropping seasons. In 1989, high levels of resistance to cypermethrin were recorded in strains from cotton in the cotton-growing regions of Guntur, Andhra Pradesh and Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, and from pigeon pea near Hyderabad. There was no evidence for resistance to quinalphos or methomyl at that time. In 1990-91 sampling was more extensive and although tolerance to cypermethrin was lower than the previous season, the survey indicated that pyrethroid-resistant populations were present throughout much of Andhra Pradesh. Tolerance to quinalphos had increased slightly in 1990-91, while resistance to methomyl had increased substantially, particularly in the cotton-growing area of Guntur. Endosulfan tolerance had increased slightly compared to strains tested in 1986-88 in an earlier study. The geographic and temporal variations in severity of pyrethroid resistance in H. armigera in Andhra Pradesh are believed to arise because of dynamic interactions between local selection pressure and immigration of resistant and susceptible moths at certain times of the year.


The Court's docket last Term included five cases directly presenting questions of international law. Republic of Austria v. Altmann raised issues of the international law of expropriation and the immunity of foreign sovereigns. Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain concerned a statute authorizing suits to redress "a tort . . . committed in violation of the law of nations." Rumsfeld v. Padilla, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, and Rasul v. Bush concerned the status of individuals taken prisoner in the war on terror, thereby raising the subject of that best known of all international agreements, the Geneva Convention. The thesis of this Article is that, despite the direct relevance of international law to these cases, the Court repeatedly ignored international law and, when faced with no plausible way to ignore international law, took a highly constricted approach to its application. The Article argues that the Court decided three of the five cases - Altmann, Padilla, and Hamdi - without resolving any substantive international legal questions. In Rasul, the Article asserts, the Court ignored the Geneva Convention, although it did take a pragmatic, control-oriented view of what constituted "sovereignty." Even in Sosa, where the statute's plain language - giving federal courts jurisdiction over suits for a "tort, committed in violation of the law of nations" - unavoidably required some attention to international law, the Court repeatedly took a constricted reading of the meaning and relevance of international law, both by ignoring the importance of treaties to the statutory scheme (and history) and by repeatedly limiting the scope of the customary "law of nations." In all five cases, the Court focused on purely procedural issues and on statutory interpretation instead of on international law. A concluding section of the Article speculates that the Court downplayed international legal issues not for fear of public, legislative, or executive backlash, but rather because the Court is simply more comfortable with traditional methods of statutory and originalist interpretation than it is with the unfamiliar, decentralized world of international law.


Purpose. The most common methods of delivering assistive technology in developing countries are charitable donation and workshops. This describes a new approach to solving the problem, a collaboration undertaken by a US-based lab and a manufacturer in India to produce quality wheelchairs. One goal is to publicize the design free of charge to manufacturers and interested parties world-wide. The process, a demonstration of a new technology transfer method, and the product, an adult manual wheelchair, are described. Method. An iterative process occurred over four years to design and produce the wheelchair. This consisted of prototypes, small production runs, ANSI/RESNA testing, hardness and tensile testing and informal user testing. Results. The design is a manual folding cross-brace design with several points of adjustability. Final pre-production prototypes experienced fastener failures during durability testing. Higher grade bolts were specified. Trial-run production has begun. An ANSI/RESNA wheelchair test lab was constructed in India. Subsequent projects include power and pediatric tilt-in-space wheelchairs. Conclusions. The approach seems promising as a method to improve the quality of assistive technology available in India and begin to meet the vast need in India. Pitfalls encountered throughout the collaboration are described in this paper along with solutions to remedy these problems for future projects.


On December 13, 2006, the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities ("CRPD"). Widely touted as the "first comprehensive human rights treaty of the 21st century," and effusively praised for its open negotiation process, the CRPD was opened for signature on March 30, 2007. The CRPD quickly entered into force on May 3, 2008. As it rapidly amassed signatories, the CRPD inspired great hope that its comprehensive approach would do much to overcome the consistent failure to promote the dignity of those with disabilities in meaningfully concrete ways.The CRPD has garnered much recent and renewed attention as the Senate debates American ratification of the Convention and the United Nations studies the relationship of the CRPD to the Millenium Development goals. This recent attention — which is both ongoing and new — offers an opportunity to reexamine the CRPD, its promise, and its limitations. This brief reflection does not seek to explore the legal strengths and weaknesses of the CRPD — a task that has been ably and often undertaken by others. It also does not purport to analyze the pros and cons of U.S. ratification of the CRPD — an issue that is, in many respects, distinct from questions about the merits of the CRPD itself. Instead, these reflections suggest that there are four fundamental flaws in the philosophical and anthropological foundations of the CRPD that need to be addressed or, at least, fully appreciated, before the CRPD can truly live up to the high ideals that it sets for itself. The CRPD is now an important part of international law, and the likelihood of solving these four problems seems slim. However, as the world community moves forward under the framework of the CRPD, acknowledging that these four weaknesses exist may better equip advocates and policy-makers to remedy them in ways that will allow the CRPD to achieve its potential to advance and protect the rights of those with disabilities.


In most of existing deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for classification, global average (first-order) pooling (GAP) has become a standard module to summarize activations of the last convolution layer as final representation for prediction. Recent researches show integration of higher-order pooling (HOP) methods clearly improves performance of deep CNNs. However, both GAP and existing HOP methods assume unimodal distributions, which cannot fully capture statistics of convolutional activations, limiting representation ability of deep CNNs, especially for samples with complex contents. To overcome the above limitation, this paper proposes a global Gated Mixture of Second-order Pooling (GM-SOP) method to further improve representation ability of deep CNNs. To this end, we introduce a sparsity-constrained gating mechanism and propose a novel parametric SOP as component of mixture model. Given a bank of SOP candidates, our method can adaptively choose Top-K (K > 1) candidates for each input sample through the sparsity-constrained gating module, and performs weighted sum of outputs of K selected candidates as representation of the sample. The proposed GM-SOP can flexibly accommodate a large number of personalized SOP candidates in an efficient way, leading to richer representations. The deep networks with our GM-SOP can be end-to-end trained, having potential to characterize complex, multi-modal distributions. The proposed method is evaluated on two large scale image benchmarks (i.e., downsampled ImageNet-1K and Places365), and experimental results show our GM-SOP is superior to its counterparts and achieves very competitive performance. The source code will be available at http://www.peihuali.org/GM-SOP.


For decades, the Asian security environment has been characterized by multiple strategic rivalries with cascading effects. Due to its competition with China, India modernizes its armed forces, thus reinforcing its conventional advantage over Pakistan. In the subcontinent, geography, military imbalance, the legacy of past conflicts and infiltration of extremist groups considerably weaken strategic stability. To strengthen its deterrent capability against its stronger neighbour, Pakistan faces significant challenges in developing a conventional response to perceived threats from India. Islamabad thus committed to a "full spectrum" build-up of its nuclear forces, which includes the development of tactical nuclear weapons. As Cold War experience informs, far from simply strengthening its deterrent vis-a-vis India, this move poses numerous operational dilemmas for Pakistan. The ongoing regional quantitative and qualitative arms race combines with continued political tensions between India and Pakistan to create a worrying strategic dynamic in South Asia.


Background: A glycolipopeptide biosurfactant produced by Pseudomonas aeruginosa strain IKW1 reduced the surface tension of fermentation broth from 71.31 to 24.62 dynes/cm at a critical micelle concentration of 20.80 mg/L. The compound proved suitable for applications in emulsion stabilization in food, as well as in cosmetic and pharmaceutical formulations. Methods: In the present study, Plackett-Burman design (PBD) and response surface method (RSM) were employed to screen and optimize concentrations of trace nutrients in the fermentation medium, to increase surfactant yield. Results: The PBD selected 5 significant trace nutrients out of the 12 screened. The RSM, on the other hand, resulted in the production of 84.44 g glycolipopeptide/L in the optimized medium containing 1.25 mg/L nickel, 0.125 mg/L zinc, 0.075 mg/L iron, 0.0104 mg/L boron, and 0.025 mg/L copper. Conclusion: Significant second-order quadratic models for biomass (P<0.05; adjusted R2=94.29%) and biosurfactant (R2=99.44%) responses suggest excellent goodness-of-fit of the models. However, their respective non-significant lack-of-fit (Biomass: F=1.28; P=0.418; Biosurfactant: F=1.20; P=0.446) test results indicate their adequacy to explain data variations in the experimental region. The glycolipopeptide is recommended for the formulation of inexpensive pharmaceutical products that require surface-active compounds.


This study aimed to demonstrate the oesophageal temperature changes with the time during general anaesthesia for the routine surgical work, and to see the effects of patient's gender or age, and the effects of neuromuscular blockade on these changes, also to compare oesophageal temperature changes with mean skin temperature changes during general anaesthesia, and to assess the problem of unintentional intraoperative hypothermia with its complications in the postanaesthetic recovery room. Fifty three ASA (I-II) unpremedicated randomly selected patients (26 males and 27 females) undergoing different routine elective surgical operations under general anaesthesia in the University Hospital Medical College in Baghdad between August -September 2001. Anaesthesia was induced by intravenous (iv) thiopentone 4-5 mg /kg and fentanyl 1-2 g/kg, and maintained with either 2-3 % halothane in oxygen without neuromuscular blockade in spontaneously ventilated by mask (4 patients)or manually assisted ventilation through a tube in 17 patients, while it was maintained by 0.5-1% halothane in oxygen and the muscle paralysis was done by either suxamethonium 1 mg/kg bolus iv followed by infusion of 4-10mg\min. of 0.1% suxamethonium solution to 16 patients, or by iv pancuronium 0.1 mg /kg (16patients), then endotracheal intubation was done and ventilation was mechanically controlled. Neostigmine 40g/kg and atropine 20 g/kg were given iv at the ends of operation to reverse residual blockade of pancuronium where it was given. Monitoring of the oesophageal and skin temperatures was started ten minutes after induction of anaesthesia as a baseline, repeated every ten minutes until the end of halothane administration and the last measurements were taken just before discharging the patient from the recovery room, other vital signs were also monitored like noninvasive blood pressure, ECG, and pulse oximetry at the perioperative periods. The means for the ambient temperature and the relative humidity of the operating theatre were also recorded. Postanaesthetic shivering when observed, was scored (0-3), pulse oximetry was used to assess oxygenation status. The postanaesthetic recovery time was measured from the moment of closing the halothane vaporizer at the end of the operation until the patient got 10 degrees according to Aldrete &Kronlik postanaesthetic recovery score. Oesophageal temperature increase above the baseline occurred in 7.54% (4/53) of the patients with mean increase was 1.035C  0.797 (SD) range was 0.2-3.4C, while the temperature decrease below the baseline occurred in 92.45 % ( 49/53) of the patients, with mean decrease was 1.7 C  0.67 (SD), the range was 1 - 3.4 C .The decrease became significant ( P < 0.05) at 20-150 minutes after induction in oesophageal temperature and at 30-140 minutes in mean skin temperature. At all time periods after induction the oesophageal temperature readings were significantly (P<0.05) above those of the mean skin temperature. Changes in oesophageal temperature showed no significant difference between males and females, but there was significant (P<0.05) difference between different age groups up to 90 minutes after induction, however significant differences were seen between patients who had spontaneous or assisted ventilation with 2-3% halothane in oxygen, and those who received muscle relaxants in addition to 0.5-1% halothane in oxygen with controlled ventilation


The phrase tryadhvavyavastithāḥ sarvabuddhāḥ "all the buddhas that appear in the three times" in the Sanskrit Heart Sutra is a hapax legomenon in Buddhist Sanskrit, but it is similar to the common Chinese idiom 三世諸佛 "buddhas of the three times". In every case where this Chinese phrase is used in a Prajnāpāramitā text, other than the Heart Sutra , the corresponding extant Sanskrit texts have atītānāgatapratyutpannā buddhāḥ "past, future, and present buddhas" instead. Additionally, where one translator has used the phrase 三世諸佛 another frequently prefers 過去未來現在諸佛 "buddhas of the past, future, and present", suggesting that their source texts also had this form with the three different times spelt out. The phrase tryadhvavyavastithāḥ sarvabuddhāḥ is unambiguously a Chinese idiom translated into Sanskrit in ignorance of Sanskrit Prajnāpāramitā conventions. This proves that the Heart Sutra was composed in Chinese.


Artists working with technology are frequently informed and inspired by exciting scientific innovations, and often turn to contemporary philosophical interpretations of these events, which positions them in between the Òtwo cultures,Ó a position that creates the potential for a ÒThird Culture,Ó as predicted by C.P. Snow himself. This emerging culture is not composed of the scientific elite as some propose, but will emerge out of triangulation of the arts, sciences and humanities. Although media artists are posed to play an important role in bridging the cultural and language gaps, this essay warns against adopting humanist interpretations of scientific work or taking for granted scientific assertions without active dialogue with both.


Based on the effect of fiber Bragg grating (FBG) pressure difference sensitivity enhancement by encapsulating the FBG with uniform strength beam and metal bellows, a FBG pressure difference sensor is proposed, and its mechanism is also discussed. The relationship between Bragg wavelength and the pressure difference is derived, and the expression of the pressure difference sensitivity coefficient is also given. It is indicated that there is good linear relation between the Bragg wavelength shift and the pressure difference of the sensor. The theoretical and experimental pressure difference sensitivity coefficients are 38.67 and 37.6nm/MPa, which are 12890 and 12533 times of that of the bare FBG, respectively. The pressure difference sensitivity and dynamic range can be easily changed by changing the size, Young's modulus, and Poisson's ratio of the beam and the bellows.


Social aggregations of fish are extremely common in nature. Pitcher (1983) defines a social aggregation of fish as a shoal, with a highly polarized shoal constituting a school. The ultimate causes of fish shoaling have been extensively studied and are well established, with the main causes being protection from predators and enhanced foraging ability. The proximate mechanisms by which groups are maintained are less well understood. Several models exist that examine these decision rules. A common theme to these models is the existence of a region at large nearest-neighbour distances (NND), where an individual will move towards its nearest neighbour, and a region of repulsion at small NND, where the individual will move away from its nearest neighbour. Recent models (Gueron et al., 1996; Couzin and Krause, 2003) suggest that shoaling decisions may not be instantaneous, instead being hierarchical as fish assess the presence or absence of one or more neighbours in zones of attraction, repulsion and neutrality. Here a mixed shoal of creek chubs (Semotilus atromaculatus) and blacknose dace (Rhinichthys atratulus) was examined in the field through video recording and digitization of images. Shoal dynamics were examined both under normal, undisturbed conditions, and in the presence of a simulated predator. By tracking the movements of individual fish over time, we find evidence for both attraction and repulsion zones. But three other novel features emerge as well. First, between regions where focal fish are attracted to, or are repulsed by, neighbours, there appears to be a 'neutral zone', where no consistent response occurs. Second, changes in NND at far distances, more so than at close distances, are affected not only by the position of nearest neighbours, but by the orientation of their velocity vectors as well. Third, the effect of increased fear level of fish induced by the appearance of simulated predators is a decrease in both the average NND and the sizes of the stress, attraction and neutral behavioural zones.


The thesis seeks to interrogate historically the relationship between multinational healthcare
service companies and states in the pursuit of market-oriented reforms for healthcare. It
constitutes a critical reading of the idea of globalisation as a concept with substantive
explanatory value to analyse the causal role of multinational service firms in a commercial
transformation in national healthcare service sectors. It analyses the development and expansion
of commercial (for-profit) healthcare service provision and financing in the healthcare systems
of OECD countries. The hospital and health insurance sectors in the US and UK are analysed as
case studies towards developing this critical reading from a more specific national setting.

The thesis contributes to developing a framework for analysing the emergence of an
international market for trade in healthcare services, which is a recently emerging area of
research in the social sciences. As such, it uses an interdisciplinary approach, utilising insights
from health policy and international political economy. The research entails a longitudinal study
of secondary and primary sources of qualitative data broadly covering the period 1975-2005. I
have also made extensive use of quantitative data to illustrate key economic trends that are
relevant to the changes in the particular healthcare services sectors analysed.

The research finds a substantive shift in the mixed economy of healthcare in which commercial
healthcare service provision and financing are increasing. However, while the
internationalisation of healthcare service firms is a key element in helping to drive some of this
change, the changes are ultimately highly dependent on state-level decision making and
regulation. In this context, the thesis argues that globalisation presents an inadequate and
potentially misleading conceptual framework for analysing these changes without a historical
grounding in the particular developments of national and international markets for healthcare
services.


Time preferences and risk preferences play an important role in a wide range of behavior, including financial decisions, entrepreneurship, and the proper incentivizing of agents. Numerous methods have been developed to measure these preferences hypothetically in surveys, but they have yielded inconsistent results. We analyze a panel data set in which subjects have collectively answered more than 400 surveys including 15 time-preference and 36 risk-preference elicitations. We evaluate the performance of these measures using the criteria of (1) ability to predict economically important behavior and (2) distinctness from other observables. We find substantial heterogeneity in the predictiveness of the measures. The best performing measure for time-preference is a titration method, in which a sequence of adaptive binary-choice questions narrows in on a subject's indifference point, and for risk-preference it is a self-report measure of risk aversion. Using factor analysis, we find that time preferences are well explained by a single factor, but risk preferences load on multiple factors. However, the first factor loads almost entirely on self-reported risk-preference measures, and this factor explains much of the variation. The evidence can help inform researchers about which elicitation methods to include in their surveys. This paper was accepted by Yan Chen, decision analysis.


The last few decades have seen dramatic changes affecting the institutions of family and parenthood. Today, the bionormative marriage has lost much of its strength with greater emphasis being placed on the individual's autonomy and wishes that separate marital relations from sexuality and fertility. In this article I examine how the emerging fertility treatments biotechnologies elicit the ethical question of how we should define parenthood in the modern era. I suggest abandoning the sacred genetic foundation as the sole factor in establishing legal parentage. Instead of sticking to genetic essentialism we should redefine legal parenthood. I suggest establishing it by mutual agreement while we have to assimilate that in the modern era the legal parentage should be reconceptualizated as intentional one. I try to implement my general theme in one test case - disputes over frozen embryos. The article tries to present for reassessment the legal dispute as dichotomy and binary as if we have to choose between two options, either full legal parentage or no legal parentage. It offers reconceptualization of parenthood and claims that the establishment of legal parentage is primarily by agreement due to the intention, wish and agreement which led to the birth of a child. The findings of the article provide tools for a better solution to the bitter quarrels in offering an additional legal option which may be a possible compromise in the case of the frozen embryos - granting non-parenthood status to the spouse who objects to the continued fertility treatments and to becoming a parent against his will.


The study of early actinopterygians (ray‐finned fishes) from the Devonian has been hampered by imperfect preservation in the majority of taxa. The Late Devonian (early Frasnian) Gogo Formation of north‐western Western Australia is notable in producing complete fossil actinopterygians with exceptional three‐dimensional preservation of both the dermal and endoskeletal anatomy. Four taxa have been described and have proved invaluable in understanding the anatomy of early representatives of this clade. Here, we present a fifth Gogo taxon, based on a single exceptionally preserved specimen and representing a new genus and species of early ray‐finned fish. The neurocranium was CT scanned, permitting a detailed examination of the endocast. The new taxon possesses unusual features including a greatly enlarged spiracular opening and extensive spinose ornamentation on the dermal skull bones, median ridge scutes and lepidotrichia. The endocast displays a mosaic of characters, some of which are similar to Mimipiscis and non‐actinopterygian outgroups, while other features are more akin to Raynerius from the Late Devonian of France as well as several stratigraphically younger taxa. A phylogenetic analysis resolves the new form as sister taxon to fishes from the Late Devonian of the northern hemisphere and all post‐Devonian actinopterygians, confirming that the assemblage of fossil ray fins from the Gogo Formation is part of the wider Devonian actinopterygian radiation.


All West Germanic languages have completed Jespersen's Cycle, replacing a preverbal negation marker (stage I) with a post-verbal one (stage III) after a period of transition during which the two could co-occur (stage II). Only the Flemish dialects have maintained the old preverbal marker to some extent. The present chapter addresses this apparent historical continuity, establishing that Flemish en was in fact saved from the fate of its West Germanic cognates by a morphosyntactic change. Based on an analysis of the contexts in which preverbal en is found in present-day Flemish dialects, it is argued that en has evolved into a marker of emphasis of polarity, and that contrary to appearances, the Flemish dialects have in fact reached stage III.


NOTE: Text or symbols not renderable in plain ASCII are indicated by [...].
Abstract is included in .pdf document.

Let X be a completely-regular topological space and let C*(X) denote the space of all bounded, real-valued continuous functions on X. For a positive linear functional [...] on C*(X), consider the following two continuity conditions. [...] is said to be a B-integral if whenever [...] and [...] for all [...], then [...]. [...] is said to be B-normal if whenever [...] is a directed system with [...] for all [...], then [...]. It is obvious that a B-normal functional is always a B-integral. The main concern of this paper is what can be said in the converse direction.

Methods are developed for discussing this question. Of particular importance is the representation of C*(X) as a space [...] of finitely-additive set functions on a certain algebra of subsets of X. This result was first announced by A. D. Alexandrov, but his proof was obscure. Since there seem to be no proofs readily available in the literature, a complete proof is given here. Supports of functionals are discussed and a relatively simple proof is given of the fact that every B-integral is B-normal if and only if every B-integral has a support.

The space X is said to be B-compact if every B-integral is B-normal. It is shown that B-compactness is a topological invariant and various topological properties of B-compact spaces are investigated. For instance, it is shown that B-compactness is permanent on the closed sets and the co-zero sets of a B-compact space. In the case that the spaces involved are locally-compact, it is shown that countable products and finite intersections of B-compact spaces are B-compact.

Also B-compactness is studied with reference to the classical compactness conditions. For instance, it is shown that if X is B-compact, then X is realcompact. Or that if X is paracompact and if the continuum hypothesis holds, then X is B-compact if and only if X is realcompact.

Finally, the methods and results developed in the paper are applied to formulate and prove a very general version of the classical Kolmogorov consistency theorem of probability theory. The result is as follows. If X is a locally-compact, B-compact space and if S is an abstract set, then a necessary and sufficient condition that a finitely-additive set function defined on the Baire (or the Borel) cylinder sets of X[superscript S] be a measure is that its projection on each of the finite coordinate spaces be Baire (or regular Borel) measures.


Today, we are living in the knowledge society. The rapid technological changes and developments in science obligate us to update nearly all knowledge, even if it was achieved just yesterday. This obligation is strongly emphasized itself, especially in educational environments, for delivering our educational materials to the learners. Communication is not a new concept in our daily lives, but it is an effective issue, and a concept used for designing our messages and up-to-date knowledge. As Robert S. McLean stated: "Knowledge building is a theory of learning, which emphasizes the collaborative construction of knowledge by a group of learners and teachers. Students [improve] their understanding through sustained inquiry that pursues collective goals of understanding; it is driven by student [and teacher] questions and explanations, in self-directed small groups" (McLean, 1999, p. 383). This paper suggests and defends the idea that the meta-communication concept could help the teachers and course developers better redesign and reconstruct knowledge for building educational materials, especially in the distance education field and its applications, according to daily developments in science and technology. The major objective of this paper is to discuss the structure of knowledge building, according to knowledge-building theory criteria and principles, and its relationship with communication concept, which surrounds its development. Graphical symbols that enable interaction between the user and computer (scroll bar, button, etc.), signs, symbols or small computer programs that define the action of graphical symbols, designed according to knowledge-building principles, may help facilitate and articulate meta-communication, and the components of knowledge building. This is particularly true in distance learning, where the communication usually cannot occur outside the system, as it could in a face-to-face environment.


BACKGROUND
Participation in physical activity during pregnancy may reduce the risk of gestational diabetes mellitus and preeclampsia and help prevent excess maternal weight gain. However, studies describing patterns and correlates of activity during pregnancy are sparse. The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to describe total physical activity (household/caregiving, occupational, leisure, sports/exercise, and transportation) and correlates of total physical activity in a racially and economically diverse sample of 233 prenatal care patients.

METHODS
Bilingual interviewers administered three 24-hour physical activity recalls among women in the first trimester (11%), second trimester (36%), and third trimester (53%) of pregnancy.

RESULTS
Median total energy expenditure (MET-hours/day) was similar among women in the first and second trimesters (33.4 and 33.8 MET-hours/day, respectively) and was slightly, but not statistically significantly, lower among women in the third trimester (32.6 MET-hours/day). Moderate intensity activity followed a similar pattern, being statistically significantly lower among women in the third trimester; vigorous intensity activity was low among women in each trimester of pregnancy. In terms of activity type, household/ caregiving activity was the largest contributor to both total and combined moderate and vigorous intensity energy expenditure among women in each trimester, constituting 24%-40% of total energy expenditure. Overall, total energy expenditure was highest in white non-Hispanic women and positively associated with increasing education and a history of previous live births (p < 0.01).

CONCLUSIONS
Results from this study highlight the importance of including household/caregiving and occupational activities in addition to sports/exercise activities in the assessment of total energy expenditure during pregnancy.


We propose an efficient kinematic position control for the center of mass of an articulated arm. The algorithm integrates the context of multiple joints reaching their limit value together with a singular configuration on the remaining joint space. We demonstrate the resulting fine control by interactively outlining the reachable area borders of the center of mass (in a 2D context for clarity). Moreover, the identification is also possible under any position or orientation constraint of an end effector. This tool can easily be integrated in the early conception stage of mobile articulated structures combining strong requirements on reachability and balance.


We present strategies for reasoning and combining temporal information of intelligent agents. The agents situated in a dynamic environment collaborate with other agents and interleave planning and acting. Our work, which is based on a formal model of collaborative planning, allows each agent to develop its timetable individually and to take into consideration various types of time constraints of its activities and of its collaborators. However, its individual timetable can be easily integrated with the activities of other agents. Thus, in contrast to other works on multi-agent systems, which suggest that either the team members maintain full synchronization by broadcasting messages or that a team leader determines the times of actions, our mechanism enables the individual agent to determine its time frame individually and to be integrated easily in the activities of other agents. We have developed a simulation of such environments and present simulation restilts comparing different methods of exchanging tem"poral information among team members.


Abstract A cloud-seeding experiment was conducted in the Snowy Mountains of Australia from 1955–1959 inclusive. The objective was to determine if silver-iodide smoke released from an aircraft into clouds could increase the precipitation over a selected area. The method involved a comparison of the precipitation in a target area and that in a control area during randomized periods of seeding and no seeding. Over the five years, the ratio of the precipitation in the target to that in the control area was higher in seeded than in unseeded periods. Three statistical tests are presented which show that the seeded periods are different from the unseeded periods at significance levels of 0.03, 0.09 and 0.03 (one sided). This supports a positive seeding effect. Other analyses both detract from and support this contention. The net result is that the experiment in inconclusive. Further, improved experiments are proposed.


Background Accessible, appropriate, and affordable housing is recognized as essential for the well-being of all Canadians. Securing and maintaining housing tenure for individuals living with chronic health and social challenges can be compromised without appropriate services. There has been limited research into the priorities to enhance supportive housing services from the perspective of individuals living with mental illness in smaller urban and rural communities. Purpose The purpose was to describe the priorities for supportive housing from the viewpoints of tenants recovering from mental illness in northeastern Ontario. Methods This descriptive study used Q methodology to engage 52 adults regarding their impressions about enhancing supportive housing services. Participants ranked 39 housing and support priority statements on a nine-point Likert-type scale. Results Four discrete viewpoints about priorities for supportive housing were building a home, letting others in, moving outside the walls, and accessing personalized services. Common across these viewpoints was the need to increase financial assistance offered through existing programs. Conclusions Fostering individual pathways to recovery involves mitigating health and social disparities, relative to supportive housing, one size does not fit all. Service providers and decision makers are compelled to situate each individual within an evidence-informed supportive housing system for citizenship.


Call them "boomers" or "baby boomers." They are the generation born just after the end of World War II (1946) through 1964, the year the Beatles were introduced on the Ed Sullivan Show. This is the Woodstock Generation, the age that marched against the establishment with the hopes of ending the Vietnam War. This defined generation has been seen as the group that would have everything that their parents and grandparents could provide for them. Unfortunately, many of their once-strong nest eggs have shrunk over the past few years because of the financial crisis precipitated by the mortgage collapse of 2008. In general, they are much healthier, better educated, and more financially secure than their parents or grandparents. This also is the "I can do anything" generation. Being a baby boomer myself, I can concur with all that. At the same time, the nature of what it means to grow older and the definition of what it means to be retired is being changed rapidly by this cohort. This is where libraries can play an essential role as they broaden their senior-based collection beyond traditional large-print books. Libraries around the country are developing innovative programs to make the retirement years productive, creative, and engaging. These include the Transforming Life After 50 program developed by the California State Library and the Senior Spaces: Pennsylvania Style project developed by Commonwealth Libraries. As these programs are being developed, libraries are faced with building relevant collections that address the myriad informational needs surrounding growing older as a baby boomer. The RUSA Guidelines for Library and Information Services for Older Adults (2008) suggest some key areas for collection development including: health, health care, social security, financial planning, housing, independent living, elder law, care giving (including grandparenting), lifelong learning (including adult literacy and computer skills), community service, civic engagement, and volunteering. It further states that "the Library's collections, programs, and informational services should reflect the diverse interests and needs of older adults." (1) This issue of the "The Alert Collector" is designed to assist you in developing and enhancing your physical and virtual library collections to better serve the boomer generation. It also addresses issues of the aging lifespan by including material for the "Silent Generation" and the "Greatest Generation" (the parents and grandparents of the boomers). Marketing your collection can be made easier throughout the year. For example, May is Older Americans Month, September includes National Grandparents Day and November is both Alzheimer's Disease Awareness Month and National Family Caregivers Month. These suggestions are intended for all types of libraries, especially public libraries. Titles of a more scholarly nature on aging, geriatrics, and gerontology haven been intentionally excluded from this collection list. Also not included in this article are titles that were self-published or are available in e-book (e.g., Kindle) editions only. BUILDING A BASIC COLLECTION Libraries should begin with an evaluation of which of these key books they already own. These titles are the standards that have been written by well-known authors and should be included in a library's basic collection. Some are updated on a regular and frequent basis. * Butler, Robert N. 2002. Why Survive? Growing Old in America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. 978-0-8018-7425-3. * Cohen, Gene D. 2006. The Mature Mind: The Positive Power of the Aging Brain. New York: Basic Books. 978-0465-01204-6. * Freedman, Marc. 2007. Encore Careers: Finding Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life. New York: PublicAffairs. 978-1-58648-634-1. (www.encore.org) * Friedan, Betty. 2006. The Fountain of Age. New York: Simon & Schuster. …


Quetiapine, one of the most prescribed atypical antipsychotics, has been associated with hyperlipidemia and an increased risk for cardiovascular disease in patients, but the underlying mechanisms remain unknown. Here, we identified quetiapine as a potent and selective agonist for pregnane X receptor (PXR), a key nuclear receptor that regulates xenobiotic metabolism in the liver and intestine. Recent studies have indicated that PXR also plays an important role in lipid homeostasis. We generated potentially novel tissue-specific PXR-KO mice and demonstrated that quetiapine induced hyperlipidemia by activating intestinal PXR signaling. Quetiapine-mediated PXR activation stimulated the intestinal expression of cholesterol transporter Niemann-Pick C1-Like 1 (NPC1L1) and microsomal triglyceride transfer protein (MTP), leading to increased intestinal lipid absorption. While NPC1L1 is a known PXR target gene, we identified a DR-1-type PXR-response element in the MTP promoter and established MTP as a potentially novel transcriptional target of PXR. Quetiapine's effects on PXR-mediated gene expression and cholesterol uptake were also confirmed in cultured murine enteroids and human intestinal cells. Our findings suggest a potential role of PXR in mediating adverse effects of quetiapine in humans and provide mechanistic insights for certain atypical antipsychotic-associated dyslipidemia.


Of the many of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) products, electronic games are considered as having great potential for improving health and social outcomes. This chapter considers the factors that may be involved in facilitating health and social outcomes and also those factors that might be considered risk factors by reviewing studies that have shown both positive and detrimental effects on people's physical and mental health. The authors also debate some research questions that remain unanswered and suggest guidelines for practitioners, researchers, and game designers.


SUMMARY The Texas Supreme Court has provided an example of why reforming personal jurisdiction jurisprudence for international defendants may be proper. In CMMC v. Salinas the Supreme Court reversed a court of appeals decision that extended long-arm jurisdiction to a French equipment manufacturer in a products liability suit.(1) The ruling purports to sidestep the debate regarding the minimum contacts test and the stream of commerce test in Asahi Metal Industry Co. v. Superior Court.(2) However, the Texas Supreme Court decision clearly favors Justice O'Connor's plurality opinion,(3) which recommends a "stream of commerce plus" test--that is, requiring the defendant to purposefully direct action toward the forum state.(4) The decision hinges on the limited nature of CMMC's contact with Texas, the forum state, and the State's fledgling wine industry.(5) It ignores, as it must, the likelihood of substantial sales by the manufacturer with other states(6) that may have large, well-established wine and juice industries. This Note reviews the Texas decision in light of the history of personal jurisdiction and the stream of commerce test. It argues that a revised minimum contacts test for international defendants based on national contacts would produce a fairer result for plaintiffs without violating defendants' due process rights. Part II outlines the facts in CMMC v. Salinas. Part III reviews the history of personal jurisdiction under International Shoe and its progeny, focusing on the stream of commerce test for minimum contacts as developed by the Supreme Court and applied in the Fifth Circuit and in Texas. Part IV analyzes the court of appeals' and the Supreme Court's application of the test in CMMC v. Salinas and suggests an alternative. I. BACKGROUND OF CMMC v. SALINAS The case arose as a products liability suit filed by Ambrocio Salinas, a worker at Hill Country Cellars, a small winery in Cedar Park, Texas.(7) Salinas was injured while cleaning an allegedly defective wine press manufactured by CMMC and purchased by Hill Country through KLR Machines, Inc., an independent distributor of wine- and juice-making equipment.(8) CMMC sold its equipment in the United States directly and through KLR; it did no direct U.S. advertising, but KLR advertised CMMC's products in national wine-making periodicals.(9) CMMC had no direct contact with Hill Country or Texas and had only a few isolated sales of equipment in Texas.(10) The deposition of KLR Vice President R. Ivan Linderman cites significant sales by KLR to wine and juice producers in western states, but did not provide detailed information on CMMC sales within the United States.(11) KLR sold the wine press to Hill Country and arranged for transport to Hill Country through the port of Houston.(12) CMMC knew KLR was sending the press to Hill Country for use in Texas.(13) CMMC rewound the press for use in the United States, and Hill Country made one warranty claim on the press, which KLR honored, billing CMMC.(14) CMMC entered a special appearance in the trial court contesting jurisdiction.(15) The trial court dismissed the case for want of personal jurisdiction.(16) The court of appeals reversed and remanded, finding that CMMC had sufficient minimum contacts with Texas to justify the exercise of personal jurisdiction in the case.(17) The court of appeals held that the Texas long-arm statute conferred jurisdiction over CMMC because CMMC delivered its product into the stream of commerce that carried the product into the State.(18) Although CMMC did not do business systematically with Texas customers, did not solicit buyers specifically in Texas through advertisements or a designated instate distributor, and had no direct contact with anyone in Texas, CMMC was aware of the ultimate destination of its wine press.(19) The court of appeals held that direct placement of a product into the stream of commerce establishes minimum contacts, but may not establish minimum contacts in instances where the unilateral activity of an entity in another state was the sole means of transporting it into the State. …


If you are a multimedia developer on Android platform you need USB for media transfer or playback audio. This book explores MTP and USB Audio in both USB device and USB host mode. If you are an core developer who work on charging you need to understand USB charging specification which is explained in the book, If you are a networking developer interested in tethering, USB plays a role using RNDIS specification which is explained in the book If you are an application developer interested in managing USB devices in from an Android platform, this book explores Android USB Service framework which manages USB functionalities Last not the least, Android Debug Bridge (ADB) the debugging tool of Android is over USB and knowledge of its internals is a define value add for any application or platform developer. This book details the internal of ABD till the kernel level. Thus this book covers everything about USB on Android from different USB Classes supported in device mode to the USB host framework that manages USB device connected to an Android platform. Each chapter will explain USB class specification before exploring how the functionality (class) is implemented in Android. This gives a clean perspective for you as a reader on what the USB specification demands and how it implemented in Android. What you'll learn Understand Android USB framework from APIs to the kernel layer and enable advance USB application development. Learn all major USB functionalities by exploring the USB Class specification not covered in any of the USB books Learn the newly introduced Android Open Accessory (AOA) Protocol and explore developing NFC reader using AOA protocol. Learn critical changes in the Android USB framework between different Android versions. Learn how USB charging works with explanation from the USB Battery Specification. Learn how to switch between MTP to Mass Storage and vice versa to share storage to host PC. Who this book is for The primary audiences of this book are application developers and engineers who do hands on work with Android. This book is for an application developer who has an APP idea with USB and wonders how to implement it. This book will be a definite guide for the developer and help him/her to manage USB on Android. With the book covering from APIs to the Linux kernel, core platform developers finds it easy to put data point to debug. Thus core Android platform developers working on USB, Audio, media and others are the next primary audiences of the book. Technical Managers or Architects or senior managers who look for eagle eye view of a system, are the secondary audiences of the book. The book will enable them to understand the different blocks of the Android USB subsystem and would help plan and estimate complexity involved. Student and engineers can use this book as a do it yourself reference book as the book explains different blocks the Android USB framework from application level to the kernel. Students can use similar study approach to similar Android framework.


Agriculture constitutes a very important sector in the Slovak economy that generates in addition to the basic food production also services, provides jobs, has a significant impact on regional development and provides nutrition of the population. One of decisive factors influencing the economic stability of agriculture is production efficiency which is strongly linked to support policy, through which partially is ensured the financial availability of enterprises. The use of subsidies by the EU is very important tool for ensuring economic sustainability of agriculture in the Slovak Republic conditions. The aim of this paper is economic evaluation of primary agricultural production in manufacturing and economic conditions in the Slovak Republic and their alternative comparison with selected EU Member States. The paper also refers to differences in level of subsidies in selected countries in the EU and their impact on possibilities of investing funds into the production development. Our calculations showed that without the intervention of the Common Agricultural Policy of the EU (especially subsidy policy) would be Slovak agriculture economically unprofitable, what could lead to its failure.


Using a novel database that tracks web traffic on the SEC's EDGAR server between 2004 and 2015, we show that institutional investors gather information on a very particular subset of firms and insiders, and their surveillance is very persistent over time. This tracking behavior has powerful implications for their portfolio choice, and its information content. An institution that downloaded an insider-trading filing by a given firm last quarter increases its likelihood of downloading an insider-trading filing on the same firm by more than 41.3% this quarter. Moreover, the average tracked stock that an institution buys generates annualized alphas of over 12% relative to the purchase of an average non-tracked stock. We find that institutional managers tend to track members of the top management teams of firms (CEOs, CFOs, Presidents, and Board Chairs), and tend to share educational and location-based commonalities with the specific insiders they choose to follow. Collectively, our results suggest that the information in tracked trades is important for fundamental firm value and is only revealed following the information-rich dual trading by insiders and linked institutions.


This paper introduces a systematic approach to synthesize linear parameter-varying (LPV) representations of nonlinear (NL) systems which are originally defined by control affine state-space representations. The conversion approach results in LPV state-space representations in the observable canonical form. Based on the relative degree concept of NL systems, the states of a given NL representation are transformed to new coordinates that provide its normal form. In the SISO case, all nonlinearities of the original system are embedded in one NL function which is factorized to construct the LPV form. An algorithms is proposed for this purpose. The resulting transformation yields an LPV model where the scheduling parameter depends on the derivatives of the inputs and outputs of the system. In addition, if the states of the NL model can be measured or estimated, then the procedure can be modified to provide LPV models scheduled by these states. Examples are included for illustration.


The American health care system embodies a complex amalgamation of fractured and conflicting parts. As such, any call to enhance quality or competition necessarily presupposes some ability to introduce greater harmony and coordination. But how does one make a complicated system work well? Dynamic theories of economics stress the significance of section mechanisms, learning, and adaptive modes of behavior in directing markets toward more efficient outcomes under conditions of uncertainty. Unfortunately, the American health care sector suffers from intense factional divisions. Policy makers need a more self-conscious understanding of the interactive and often conflicting effects of regulation if the health care system is to be reshaped in a manner that will generate more desired social outcomes. Evolutionary theories of economics can provide the conceptual framework in which such a restructuring could take place. This article examines how health care quality and competition can be improved through a better understanding of dynamic economic processes and evaluates the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice 2004 report Improving Health Care: A Dose of Competition in light of these perspectives.


Cellular stresses that disrupt the processing of proteins slated for the secretory pathway induce the unfolded protein response (UPR), a regulatory network involving both translational and transcriptional control mechanisms that is designed to expand the secretory pathway and alleviate cellular injury. PERK (PEK/EIF2AK3) mediates the translational control arm of the UPR by enhancing phosphorylation of eIF2. Phosphorylation of eIF2 reduces global protein synthesis, preventing further overload of the secretory pathway and allowing the cell to direct a new pattern of mRNA synthesis that enhances the processing capacity of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). PERK also directs preferential translation of stress-related transcripts, including that encoding ATF4, a transcriptional activator that contributes to the UPR. Reduced global translation also leads to reduced levels of key regulatory proteins that are subject to rapid turnover, facilitating activation of transcription factors such as NF-B during cellular stress. This review highlights the mechanisms by which PERK monitors and is activated by accumulated misfolded protein in the ER, the processes by which PERK regulates both general and gene-specific translation that is central for the UPR, and the role of PERK in the process of cellular adaptation to ER stress and its impact in disease.