The 2003 reform represents a significant shift in the EU policy, particularly in its movement to decoupled support. The potential impact of the reform depends on a range of factors including the modalities of its implementation and the structure of farming sectors in different countries. The then acceding countries had the flexibility to choose to implement the Single Payment Scheme (SPS) or to opt for the simplified Single Area Payment Scheme (SAPS). This paper attempts to provide a comparative overview of the level and distributional aspects of direct payments across seven New Member States (NMS) covering different sub-regions, the Baltics, Central and Eastern Europe, and the two most recent Member States from the Balkans – Bulgaria and Romania. Although the choice of 10 out of 12 NMS was similar – to implement SAPS – the preaccession policies, the structure of agricultural output and the distribution of farm sizes have created substantial differences in the distribution of support and the choices between decoupled and coupled Complementary National Direct Payments (CNDP) or 'top-ups'. As expected, due to the phasing-in process there has been a tendency of increased payments per hectare over time; however this increase has not been uniformly manifested. The differences in the output structure and labour intensity, as well as the large differences in farm structures and farm size distribution have brought about substantial differences in amounts of direct payments per beneficiary and AWU. One of the countries with the most concentrated land use in large farms, some of them corporate farms (companies or co-operatives), are the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Hungary and Bulgaria occupy the middle ground, whilst the Baltic States, Poland and Romania are characterised by small size farms almost across the board. This variety across the NMS has substantial implications for several aspects of SAPS implementation and its beneficiaries, including the amount of direct payments per beneficiary, the average size of beneficiary and the share of holdings benefitting from the scheme. The share of beneficiaries varies from a small segment of the holdings covered by the Farm Structure Survey (FSS), as for example in Bulgaria and Slovakia, to covering almost all holdings included in FSS (Lithuania). One of the positive signals is that in some NMS the concentration of SAP on a small segment has been decreasing (although slowly) in parallel with the increasing farmers and administration experiences. All these structural and distributional differences mean that setting payments limitations or including (eventually) the NMS in a system of progressive modulation may have widely different effects on different NMS and thus may generate substantially different political positions. Analytical survey results are presented concerning the change (or the lack of) of farmers strategic plans as a result of the implementation of SAPS in two of the above NMS with contrasting farm structures and payment distribution. The results indicate that as the implementation of SAPS means more predictable and increasing payments in comparison to the pre-accession policy the main change in the strategic farmers' plans is their increased willingness to stay longer in farming and increase the farm area operated. The expected response to 2003 CAP reform, namely lower incentives to produce and increased drive to diversification to non-farm activities was not detected in this early survey in NMS. However, it is difficult to disentangle the changes induced by SAPS from the general expectations due to accession to the EU.


Summary In three experiments, musicians and non-musicians were compared with regard to auditory interference effects, while the kind of material (timbre, speech, and tones) and presentation rate were manipulated. The leading question is whether the musicians' familiarity with the processing of tonal pitch generalizes to a superiority in analyzing auditory features of other kinds of materials. By the manipulation of the presentation rate it is attempted to obtain interference effects at early vs. later stages of auditory processing. Results show that different materials cause different effects of presentation rate. For timbre, the effect was "linear", meaning the slower the presentation rate the better the performance, with the musicians outperforming the non-musicians. For speech, an effect of presentation rate could only be obtained with a very short stimulus duration. At a critical point, musicians were better than non-musicians in the identification of speech sounds. For tones, there was no effect of the presentation rate, but musicians were far better than non-musicians if the stimulus duration was sufficiently long. Key words: auditory processing, encoding, musicians, timbre, speech, tones Introduction What do musicians learn regarding auditory processing while undergoing extensive training in performing music? Musicians develop a high familiarity with some auditory features. In particular, they are very experienced in the processing of tonal pitch. It might be asked whether there are advantages in the analysis for other auditory features as well (for instance, auditory features of speech or timbre). Second, it might be asked at which stages of processing such advantage will show up. According to Cowan (1984), a distinction can be made between short vs. long auditory storage, the former reflecting an initial encoding process, and the latter consisting of memory traces for auditory features. The present work examines interference effects for short vs. long auditory storage by a manipulation of the presentation rate and stimulus duration. To test for the specificity of possible advantages for the musicians as compared to non-musicians, interference effects for timbre, speech, and tonal materials are tested. The interference paradigm that is used in the present experiments was first established by Deutsch (1970, 1975). The paradigm requires the comparison of two tones separated by a 5 sec interval containing 6 intervening tones. The purpose of her research was to demonstrate the specificity and systematicity in auditory short term storage with nonverbal materials (see Deutsch, 1975, for a review). In one of the first experiments with this paradigm, Deutsch (1970) used tones and speech (numbers) as distractors. She found that the intervening tones affected the tone comparison performance whereas speech distractors had no effect at all. Deutsch (1970) pointed out that this pattern of interference effects was highly specific in nature and could not be explained by the existence of an amodal short term memory for all kinds of materials. Pechmann and Mohr (1992) compared the performance of musicians and non-musicians using the single tone comparison paradigm Tones, speech and visual matrices served as intervening stimuli. Whereas the performance was equally poor in musicians and nonmusicians when tones were presented during the inter-stimulus interval, musicians outperformed the non-musicians with speech distractors as well as with visual distractors. Thus, interference effects occurred between different (or dissimilar) materials, but these interference effects were modulated by the musicians' familiarity with the primary tonal comparison task. The original paradigm of Deutsch (1970) presumably examines interferences effects in working memory. The time skeleton (200 ms stimulus duration plus 300 ms pause for each of the tones) leaves sufficient time to form an internal representation of S1 before the intervening stimuli occur. …


Expansion of urban areas has profound effects on land surface characteristics. As such, the land surface can exert influence on atmospheric parameters that might alter precipitation amounts or patterns. In this study, precipitation observations near urban areas along the West coast of the Netherlands are investigated throughout the 1951–2010 period. An innovative analysis methodology is used to deal with the small and fragmented urban areas in the Netherlands. The results show that daily precipitation totals downwind of urban areas are, on average, about 7% higher than precipitation in the rest of the Dutch West coast. Precipitation enhancements up to 20% are found depending on wind direction and time period. These results are comparable with studies from around the globe and show that the influence of relatively small fragmented urban areas, as are present in the Netherlands, can be similar to the influence of large metropolitan areas on precipitation.


As the nature of work changes into team-based knowledge work, the social capital among team members becomes more and more critical. This study applies social capital theory to IT service team environment. The research model of this study includes emotional, cognitive, and social intelligence competencies of project managers (PM) as they lead to the project performance, while team social capital is posited as a mediator between these leadership competencies and team project performance. A PLS analysis of 285 data points collected via a validated questionnaire revealed the followings: (1) emotional intelligence competencies of PM directly influence the project performance, (2) social intelligence competencies of PM indirectly influence project performance only via team social capital, and (3) cognitive intelligence competencies of PM maintains direct influence on project performance in shorter term projects, but indirect influence only via the accumulated team social capital in longer term projects. The analysis also reveals that it takes time to grow team social capital. Implications of the findings are discussed, and further studies are suggested.


This study provides novel evidence on the effects of emigration on pro-environmental behaviour back home. Focusing on the seven successor states of former Yugoslavia, I explore the relationship between people's present-day pro-environmental action and the local-level intensity of a major guestworker emigration wave that occurred four decades earlier. I find that more intense local-level emigration is associated with a lower likelihood of pro-environmental action; the instrumental variable analysis supports the causal nature of this relationship. This finding supports the conjecture that emigration contributes to greater consumerism at home and therefore reduces pro-environmental behaviour. At the same time, controlling for the intensity of local-level emigration, a higher proportion of women in the local migrant population is associated with a greater likelihood of pro-environmental action. As women are generally more likely to undertake pro-environmental behaviour as well as transfer new norms and practices across borders, this finding supports the hypothesis that migration contributes to a cross-border transmission of pro-environmental norms and practices.


The interaction between retinoids and transforming growth factor-beta1 (TGF-beta1) leading to regulation of proliferation, differentiation and apoptosis is not still fully understood. In this study, we demonstrated that a combination treatment with all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) and TGF-beta1 led to the enhancement of ATRA-induced suppression of cell proliferation, which is accompanied by inhibition of ATRA-induced apoptosis in human leukemia HL-60 cells. This effect was preceded by the arrest of cells in G0/G1 cell cycle phase linked with pRb protein dephosphorylation, continuous accumulation of p21 and transiently increased level of p27, inhibitors of cyclin-dependent kinases. Inhibition of ATRA-induced apoptosis by TGF-beta1 was associated with an increased level of Mcl-1 protein, an anti-apoptotic member of Bcl-2 family, but not with inhibition of mitochondrial membrane depolarization. Levels of other Bcl-2 family proteins (Bcl-2, Bcl-X(L), Bad, Bak, Bax) were unaffected by simultaneous ATRA and TGF-beta1 treatment, when compared to ATRA alone. Upregulation of c-FLIP(L) protein, an inhibitor of apoptosis induced by tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL), correspond with inhibition of ATRA-induced (autocrine TRAIL-mediated) caspase-8 activation and apoptosis. These results suggest that apoptosis inhibition associated with proliferation block could depend on modulation of the TRAIL apoptotic pathway and regulation of the Mcl-1 protein level. In summary, we demonstrate that the balance of processes leading to regulation of proliferation and differentiation of myeloid cells can modulate cell sensitivity to apoptosis-inducing stimuli.


Economists have traditionally treated preferences as exogenously given. Preferences are assumed to be influenced by neither beliefs nor the constraints people face. As a consequence, changes in behaviour are explained exclusively in terms of changes in the set of feasible alternatives. Here, we argue that the opposition to explaining behavioural changes in terms of preference changes is ill-founded, that the psychological properties of preferences render them susceptible to direct social influences and that the impact of 'society' on preferences is likely to have important economic and social consequences.


There has been a growing recognition among scholars in childhood studies that childhood is a social construction. Several historical and cross-cultural studies conducted across the world validate this argument, and whereby explains the variability that exist in the descriptions of childhood. These constructions not only differ at the cultural or temporal level, they also differ at the individual or institutional level. In a contemporary society, individuals, professionals, service institutions and policy communities – all construct their own version of childhood based on their subjective understandings, experiences and theoretical perspectives. At the policy level, therefore, these constructions have a significant role to play in the designing of services, institutions and pedagogy for early childhood intervention. This paper critically examines the model of early childhood constructed in the policy provisioning of early childhood care and development (ECCD) in India. Drawing on literatures mostly from the Euro-American context, at the outset, the paper elaborates the shift that took place in the ontology of children. The distinctions between child development theories, which chiefly inform the policy community, and the social constructionist approach, which is considered as an alternative, are then analyzed as central to early childhood service provisioning. The paper problematizes the policy documents, while doing so, it picks up few key issues and (re)open up the debates on 'developmentally appropriate practices' and 'play-based education'. The paper concludes by suggesting that oversubscription of child development theories or total obscurity of social constructionist perspectives not augurs well for policy formulation. Further it stresses that there is a need to understand what children's lived experiences are in the early childhood institutions, what parental constructions are on early childhood service provisioning and, how that can be incorporated to establish clear policy goals.


The paper introduces the notion of Riemannian submersion for the modeling and control of certain types of redundant robotic chains. In the robotics literature, the redundant case is normally treated only in numerical terms, as the need to resort to pseudoinversion techniques is usually considered a barrier to the use of analytic or geometric methods. Using Riemannian submersions, however, we can single out a particular type of inverse, the horizontal lift, with distinguished properties with respect to the infinitely many possible others. Quite remarkably, for a wide class of robotic chains, characterized by the vanishing of the curvature tensor, such horizontal lift coincides with the curve obtained from the Moore-Penrose pseudoinverse of the Jacobian.


Width-based planning has shown promising results on Atari 2600 games using pixel input, while using substantially fewer environment interactions than reinforcement learning. Recent width-based approaches have computed feature vectors for each screen using a hand designed feature set (Rollout-IW) or a variational autoencoder trained on game screens (VAE-IW), and prune screens that do not have novel features during the search. We propose Olive (Online-VAE-IW), which updates the VAE features online using active learning to maximize the utility of screens observed during planning. Experimental results across 55 Atari games demonstrate that it outperforms Rollout-IW by 42-to-11 and VAE-IW by 32-to-20. Moreover, Olive outperforms existing work based on policy-learning (π-IW, DQN) trained with 100 times the training budget by 30-to-22 and 31-to-17, and a state of the art data-efficient reinforcement learning (EfficientZero) trained with the same training budget and ran with 1.8 times the planning budget by 18-to-7 in the Atari 100k benchmark, without any policy learning. The source code and the appendix are available at github.com/ibm/atari-active-learning and arxiv.org/abs/2109.15310 .


Data in the economic and financial spheres often exhibit dynamic patterns characterized by a long lasting response to past shocks. The correct modelling of such long range dependence is of paramount importance, both in the production of accurate forecasts over long term horizons and in the isolation of long run equilibrium relationships. While the convention in the area has been to adopt complete parametric specifications for the dynamics in the time series, semi-parametric approaches have also featured. This thesis contributes to both of these lines of research, exploring the consequences for parametric estimation of mis-specification of the short memory dynamics and developing a bias-corrected semi-parametric estimator of the long memory parameter.


State pension age is due to rise to 68 years in the UK for both men and women by 2046 and the statutory retirement age has been removed. Organisations need to better adapt to the needs of their older employees. Research suggests that a growing number of people want to remain employed past traditional retirement age if the correct conditions are in place such as flexible working arrangements or measures to improve employees' enjoyment of their work. Health is a key predictor of retirement. Good health acts as an enabler to extending working life. This research aims to explore the factors that enable or inhibit people to work for longer, post traditional retirement age, in a large UK based private sector retail organisation. There are two phases to the study: Phase One is the descriptive and inferential secondary data analysis of existing human resource data in relation to the health and wellbeing of the work force. This is based on a cohort of the employee work force in the retail sector taken over a three-year period from 2011-2013 (2013 data N=76,379) with a focus on workers aged ≥ 50 (n=19,244). The second phase is a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of 30 participants: 15 employees aged ≥ 60 and 15 supervisors supporting these employees. The aim of phase two is to explore employee experiences of nearing or working beyond state pensionable age, as well as the factors enabling and inhibiting people to work for longer. Phase Two also explores the organisational and store level factors that enable and inhibit people to work for longer. Findings from Phase One show that 76% of workers aged ≥ 50 in the study population (n=14,596) are female. Specific needs associated with female older workers are reflected in the rates of mental ill-health, whereby the largest increases in proportion of 'mental ill health' cases across three years were found in the older female worker group. Older workers represent 25% of employees, but account for 39% of all long-term sickness. Although men had fewer instances of time off for mental ill health issues, for long-term absence males had significantly higher recovery time (M=63days, SD=54 days) than females (M=57 days, SD=47 days). Female older employees and those in the north of England had a significantly higher probability of retirement during 2-years follow-up. Older workers showed gendered workplace sickness absence trends and ill health was been found to be a key predictor of retirement. In Phase Two the majority of older workers and supervisors reported that facilitators to extending their working lives were: the values of the organisation in respect of its ethos and long history within the community; good health; the social aspects of work, which were considered to be beneficial for health; good support from supervisors; good team dynamics; positive self-perceptions of ageing; and a choice in shift patterns with a preference for morning shifts. Perceived barriers to extended working life included poor health, negative impacts of work on health, for example due to issues such as prolonged standing, and a lack of respect and support from management and colleagues, specifically in respect of:
• Intergenerational (across the generations from young to old) barriers.
• The majority of older females interviewed experienced a lack of choice to EWL e.g. caring responsibilities acted as a barrier to EWL.

To address these barriers, it is suggested that flexible working practices and choice of shift patterns should be considered as well as practices harnessing the social and community aspects of work. Further, it is recommended that an organisational approach to championing age and EWL as part of an overall life-course approach to diversity management should be implemented.


Background Mesothelial cell injury plays an important role in peritoneal fibrosis. Present clinical therapies aimed at alleviating peritoneal fibrosis have been largely inadequate. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are efficient for repairing injuries and reducing fibrosis. This study was designed to investigate the effects of MSCs on injured mesothelial cells and peritoneal fibrosis. Methodology/Principal Findings Rat bone marrow-derived MSCs (5 ×106) were injected into Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats via tail vein 24 h after peritoneal scraping. Distinct reductions in adhesion formation; infiltration of neutrophils, macrophage cells; number of fibroblasts; and level of transforming growth factor (TGF)-β1 were found in MSCs-treated rats. The proliferation and repair of peritoneal mesothelial cells in MSCs-treated rats were stimulated. Mechanically injured mesothelial cells co-cultured with MSCs in transwells showed distinct increases in migration and proliferation. In vivo imaging showed that MSCs injected intravenously mainly accumulated in the lungs which persisted for at least seven days. No apparent MSCs were observed in the injured peritoneum even when MSCs were injected intraperitoneally. The injection of serum-starved MSCs-conditioned medium (CM) intravenously reduced adhesions similar to MSCs. Antibody based protein array of MSCs-CM showed that the releasing of TNFα-stimulating gene (TSG)-6 increased most dramatically. Promotion of mesothelial cell repair and reduction of peritoneal adhesion were produced by the administration of recombinant mouse (rm) TSG-6, and were weakened by TSG-6-RNA interfering. Conclusions/Significance Collectively, these results indicate that MSCs may attenuate peritoneal injury by repairing mesothelial cells, reducing inflammation and fibrosis. Rather than the engraftment, the secretion of TSG-6 by MSCs makes a major contribution to the therapeutic benefits of MSCs.


Dialogue State Tracking (DST) forms a core component of automated chatbot based systems designed for specific goals like hotel, taxi reservation, tourist information etc. With the increasing need to deploy such systems in new domains, solving the problem of zero/few-shot DST has become necessary. There has been a rising trend for learning to transfer knowledge from resource-rich domains to unknown domains with minimal need for additional data. In this work, we explore the merits of meta-learning algorithms for this transfer and hence, propose a meta-learner D-REPTILE specific to the DST problem. With extensive experimentation, we provide clear evidence of benefits over conventional approaches across different domains, methods, base models and datasets with significant (5-25%) improvement over the baseline in a low-data setting. Our proposed meta-learner is agnostic of the underlying model and hence any existing state-of-the-art DST system can improve its performance on unknown domains using our training strategy.


Resilience in Aboriginal communities is a long process of healing that allows to supersede the multiple trauma and the loss of culture experienced during the colonization and after. The presence of social capital is central to this process in building bridges between persons, families and social groups with the aim of developing a spirit of civic culture. The process usually relies in the first stage on the vision of a few leaders whose example brings forward a larger segment of their community. Characteristics specific to the notion of resilience in Aboriginal cultures are: spirituality, holism, resistance and forgiveness. The main obstacle to overcome in the process of resilience is the phenomenon of codependency which leads to superficial attachment, lack of trust, and refusal of authority. The concept of cultural identity is central to resilience in this context and there is a need to create a new cultural ethos in continuity with the traditions. Each community has to undergo its own course and cannot copy success stories, mainly be inspired through a process of lateral knowledge transfer. Finally, community resilience has to rely on the capacity of families to be resilient themselves which involves breaking the law of silence, naming problems and coping with them with the support of networks and institutions.


Context. The globular clusters of our Galaxy have been found to lie close to a plane in the logRe ,l ogσ, SBe space, on the continuation of the Fundamental Plane that is known to characterize the global properties of early-type galaxies. There is no apparent reason why such physically different self-gravitating systems should follow the same scaling law. Aims. We reexamine the issue by focusing on a sample of 48 globular clusters selected with homogeneity criteria for the photometric data available from the literature. Methods. We perform a model-independent analysis of surface brightness profiles and distance moduli, estimating error bars and studying selection effects with robust non-parametric statistical tests. Results. We determine the values of the coefficients that define the Fundamental Plane and their error bars and show that the scatter from the Fundamental Plane relation is likely to be intrinsic, i.e. not due to measurement errors only. Curiously, we find that in the standard Fundamental Plane coordinates the set of points for our sample occupies a rather slim, axisymmetric, cylindrical region of parameter space, which suggests that the relevant scaling relation might be around a line, rather than a plane, confirming results noted earlier. This is likely to be the origin of the difficulties in the fit by a plane, often mentioned in previous investigations. In addition, such a Fundamental Line relation would imply a pure photometric scaling law relating luminosity to the effective radius which might be tested on wider samples and on extra-galactic globular cluster systems. As to the residuals from the Fundamental Plane relation, we find a correlation of the deviations from the plane with the central slope of the surface brightness profile. No other statistically significant correlations are identified. Finally, given the constraint imposed by the virial theorem, we study the distribution of the values of the quantity KV /(M/L) (virial coefficient divided by the relevant mass-to-light ratio); the distribution of the logarithms, reconstructed through kernel density estimation methods, shows evidence for bimodality, which suggests that the galactic globular cluster system may be composed of at least two dynamically different populations. Yet, these populations do not appear to reflect the standard dichotomy between disk and halo clusters.


This dissertation examines the meanings and significance of the African American freedom movement for the French and Francophone Africans at the momentous juncture of decolonization. By analyzing the French and Francophone African press, as well as the writings of French and Francophone African intellectuals, this project demonstrates that American racial events of the 1950s and 1960s allowed both communities to begin a reflection on the phenomenon of French racism. In particular, the French historical traditions of universalism and egalitarianism, important pillars of French colonial discourse, shaped the French and Francophone African responses to American racism. French and Francophone Africans' frequent comparisons between the American racial context and the French colonial and national contexts reveal that while American racial events were evocative of French racial prejudice, a deep attachment to the France of 1789 precluded the two groups from assessing French racism fairly. Marxism, a political theory that found its way in French colonies in the late 1930s and a major intellectual current in postwar France, largely influenced French and Francophone African reactions to the African American freedom movement. The French and Francophone Africans' adherence to a Marxian metanarrative of oppression especially allowed them to build parallels between American racism and French colonial and racial oppression. However, the global and systematic dimensions of a Marxian, if not Marxist, analysis of these phenomena also precluded the French and Francophone Africans from engaging in a particularistic evaluation of French racial prejudices. By highlighting the ways in which the French nation-state shaped both the French and Francophone African responses to American racial events and reflections on French racism, this dissertation adds a line in the scholarly story of the "French imperial nation-state." In addition to offering a revisionist take on French popular and academic narratives regarding the rise of French racial awareness, which those narratives locate at the turn of the 21 century, my analyses and conclusions shatter the mythical, and still widely held, assumption that the global "race war" of the 1950s and 1960s had created a powerful sense of racial identification among blacks of Africa and the African diaspora. INDEX WORDS: African American civil rights movement, Black Power Movement, Racism, French colonialism, Francophone African decolonization, Black diaspora TRIANGULATING RACISM: FRENCH AND FRANCOPHONE AFRICAN REACTIONS TO THE AFRICAN AMERICAN FREEDOM MOVEMENT (1954-1968)


Scarlett of Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell and Sethe from Toni Morrison's Beloved at first seem like two starkly different characters, aside from living during the same period. Scarlett is a white Southern belle, while Sethe, a black woman, is a slave, but both women live in a society that restricts them because of their gender. And both are judged by their peers for their mothering choices. Although they both have three children and mother outside their society's ideas on how to raise them, Sethe's act of infanticide receives attention from both her peers and critics, while Scarlett's quiet, reserved love towards her children is judged harshly by society but receives little attention from critics. Exploration of their mothering in these novels reveals that what is criticized in both cases is actually the kind of mothering that both women have been taught by their own mothers. / Even though they come from opposite social standings, both of these characters struggle to raise their children in response to the maternal influences in their own lives. Although Scarlett is born into a wealthy family, she has fewer choices as a mother than one may think a member of the Southern aristocracy would. Conversely, Sethe, who is born into slavery, seeks freedom in order to mother her children on her terms. Both women are also influenced by external maternal influences upon their own mothering roles, and their maternal guides are not positive. Scarlett learns to reserve her love from her mother and shows her love for her children through hard work and feeding her family. Sethe has various maternal models that all teach her violence as a form of love, which she goes on to use against her own children in an attempt to save them from slavery. /


The construction industry's productivity has stagnated since the 1960s while in the same period, manufacturing and technology industries have seen vast improvements. The construction industry is coming under increased pressure to provide better value through improved quality and performance and as a result developers and constructors are looking to alternative forms of construction. In a process that borrows concepts from the manufacturing and technology sectors, such as automation and 3D modelling, Prefabricated Volumetric Construction (modular construction) is a highly versatile approach with the potential to deliver substantial cost savings, faster project delivery times, higher quality construction with less waste and emissions, and an increase in worker safety. This paper will explore the integration of computational design into the design workflow of modular construction through several project examples. The following topics will be covered: creation and assembly of parametric modules in the Revit Building Information Model (BIM) software, using the visual programming tool Dynamo; the linkage of the BIM to the analytical model; and the extraction of results and the manipulation and display of data using Grasshopper, a visual programming language and environment plugin, for Rhinoceros a 3D modeler. This integration has been found to reduce the time required to develop the building model, the drawings, the analytical model and complete the design while improving the consistency and accuracy of all.


We propose a simple and efficient light launch scheme for a helical-core fiber (HCF) by using an adiabatically tapered splice technique, through which we overcome its inherent difficulty with light launch owing to the large lateral offset and angular tilt of its core. We experimentally demonstrate single-mode excitation in the HCF in this configuration, which yields the coupling efficiency of around -5.9 dB (26%) for a ~1.1-μm light input when the splice joint is tapered down to 30 μm in diameter. To our knowledge, this is the first proof-of-principle report on the fusion-splice coupling between an HCF and a conventional single-mode fiber.


In this study, a SYBR Green based real-time PCR assay using primers specific to IS711 of Brucella melitensis was developed and its diagnostic utility was evaluated by comparing it with conventional PCR method for detection of Brucella DNA from cultured bacteria and experimentally infected mice samples. The study was first undertaken with cultured bacteria, B. melitensis 16M as a reference and two B. melitensis Malysian isolates. Brucella abortus 544 and Yersinia enterocolitica O:9 were also used for cross reactivity testing. Three of the B. melitensis were successfully detected using both optimized SYBR Green I real-time and conventional PCR. No amplification products were produced with these primers from strains of B. abortus and Y. enterocolitica O:9 indicating that the primer sets are specific only for B. melitensis. The specificity of the PCR products amplified by the primers from Malysian strains of B. melitensis were confirmed by sequence analysis. The detection limit of the real-time PCR was compared with conventional PCR by preparing serially ten-fold dilutions of B.melitensis DNA. The real-time PCR was found to be 10-fold more sensitive than the conventional PCR, detecting up to 50 fg of genomic DNA.
The viability of using conventional and real-time PCR assays together with culture methods as potential diagnostic tools for the detection of B. melitensis in experimentally infected mice was also assessed over an 8-week period of infection. It was evident from our result that regardless of duration of infection and sample type (liver, lymph node, blood, spleen and serum) the diagnostic yield (sensitivity) was 100%, 96.7% and 62.5% for real-time PCR, conventional PCR and culture methods respectively. This indicated that the sensitivity of the PCR assays was far higher than that of the culture method. The specificity of both conventional and real-time PCR was 100%. When serum was used as PCR template, B. melitensis specific amplicon was detected only until day 45 post inoculation (p.i) using conventional PCR unlike the real-time PCR method whereby positive results were detected through out the study period. In all samples with positive real-time PCR results, B. melitensis specific amplicons were distinguished by their characteristic melting temperature ranged between 86.4 oC to 87.4 oC in melting curve analysis.
Analytical sensitivities of the different tissue types used in the study were also compared using threshold cycle (Ct) values of the real-time PCR. For this purpose, samples collected at day 30 p.i. were used and the most sensitive tissue sample amongst the tested samples was estimated from the standard curve obtained from cloned B. melitensis 16M. Accordingly, the most sensitive tissue was found to be serum (mean Ct=15.07) followed by lymph node (mean Ct=19.50), spleen (mean Ct= 24.2), liver (mean Ct=26.4) and whole blood (mean Ct=26.2). These results indicate that serum samples followed by lymph node are more sensitive for the real-time PCR assay than the other samples tested in this study.
In conclusion, this present results suggest that the diagnostic yield of real-time PCR that uses serum samples was at least as sensitive as a similar PCR protocol that uses other tested tissue samples. The speed and technical simplicity of real-time PCR coupled with minimal risk of handling serum samples make it a useful alternative to blood / other tested tissue PCR for animals with suspected brucellosis and negative or doubtful serological test results. However, although the use of this real-time PCR assay as a supplemental diagnostic tool for detection and identification of Brucella organisms in clinical specimens could be recommended, the need for the assay to be validated with confirmed positive and negative clinical samples of its primary host animals, and verify its ability to differentiate the vaccinal strains from field strains, is desirable to achieve the utmost benefits from the SYBR Green I based real-time PCR assay.


Branch banking has gone through significant changes in response to a more competitive financial services market. The main objective of this study is to investigate whether branch restrictions are favorable or not as compared to branch expansions for AIB. The collected data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics and linear regression analysis. In the study it was found out that about 58% of branches of AIB incurred a loss as at December 31, 2012. Few branches such as Head office, Legehar, Gofa Sefer, and Merkato helped the bank to be profitable at large. Specifically, out of the 49 city branches, 49% were loss making branches. Besides, out of 43 outlying branches, 67% incurred a loss. Moreover, out of 31 new branches of AIB under study, 84% were at loss as at December 31, 2012. On the other hand, we found that branch expansion drive may not help the bank rise up deposit mobilization as deposits and loans out standings will continue to be concentrated in big branches. However, as opposed to the operational inefficiencies of the new branches, the bank is moving aggressively towards expanding branches. But the expansions of new branches imply the creation of additional losses and which is adversely affecting the profitability of the bank. Therefore, the bank should restrict its branches particularly in the face of growing inefficient branches. In line with this, the existing branches should be strengthened with new banking technologies rather than distributing resources everywhere in a way to expand branches which proved to be inefficient.


The marketing and policy research on rice of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) is described, and the conclusions and recommendations are discussed in the context of the decisionmaking processes in Viet Nam. The role of IFPRI's publication and communications in informing the policy environment are discussed. The author describes the perceptions of partners and stakeholders of the influence of the outcomes of the IFPRI project. They show that the research was regarded as being of high quality, independent, rigorous, and timely. A strong foundation of primary and secondary data gathering and analysis from Viet Nam gave the modeling work on policy options a high degree of credibility among key policymakers. Linking the spatial equilibrium model with income distribution analysis based on national household surveys allowed IFPRI to satisfy policymakers that relaxing rice export quotas and internal trade restrictions on rice would not adversely impact on regional disparities and food security and would have beneficial effects on farm pricesand poverty, giving a degree of confidence to policymakers that relaxing the controls would be in Viet Nam's national interest. They made these decisions earlier than would have been the case without the IFPRI research. A framework for the evaluation of policy research and advice is described, which explicitly recognizes the possibility of alternative suppliers of these two components to IFPRI. The framework is used to assess the impact of IFPRI's research with Viet Nam on alternative internal and external trade policies for rice in that country. The policy assessment framework is used to measure the economic impact of the policy changes, and the contribution of IFPRI's work with Viet Nam on the policies from 1995–97. Around 40 percent of the contribution of IFPRI is estimated to have accrued to the rest of the world as Viet Nam is now a major player in world rice trade.


Background and objectives: Acute kidney injury (AKI) may occur in the setting of COVID-19 infection and associated with worse outcome. We aimed to estimate the incidence of AKI among hospitalized patients with COVID-19 infection. Methods: We conducted an observational study on 339 hospitalized patients with COVID-19 infection at Basra teaching hospital for two months. We studied the rate of AKI, requirement for renal replacement therapy (RRT) and in-hospital mortality. Results: Among 339 hospitalized patients, AKI was reported in 54 (16%). The peak stages of AKI were stage 1 in 42.6%, stage 2 in 22.2% and stage 3 in 35.2%. AKI was primarily seen in patients with shock on vasopressors in 64.8% and in patients on mechanical ventilation in 25.9%. Increased age, obesity, hypertension, vasopressors and mechanical ventilation were independent risk factors for development of AKI. Among the 54 patients with AKI, 20 patients (37%) required renal replacement therapy (RRT). Sixteen out of 20 patients (80%) of those who required RRT died and only 5 out of 34 patients (15%) of those not required RRT died with a totally mortality in AKI patients of 21 patients (39%). Conclusions: AKI occurs in patients with COVID-19 disease especially in ICU in association with vasopressors use and mechanical ventilation and is associated with poor prognosis.


A sudden change in investment environment shifts objective uncertainty (characterized by parameters that determine the distribution of returns) and at the same time heightens subjective uncertainty (about the data generating parameters) unevenly across investors. For a given state of economy, the uncertainty facing the investor is the sum of the uncertainty in the data and the uncertainty of the investors assessment of the expected return distribution. In this model the option value of waiting to invest depends not only on the objective uncertainty as in the traditional theory but varies systematically with investor information and Bayesian updating of outlook for the project. Simulation of the model suggests that during a state characterized by greater uncertainty and higher potential expected return investment will be by an abnormally high percentage of informed investors and may increase overall. For over 10,000 instances of firm-level FDI data for Korea from 1996 to 2001, regression results are consistent with the hypothesis that disproportionably more FDI is made by experienced (hence more informed) investors during heightened uncertainty.


Physician assistant (PA) programs were often early adopters or initiators of innovative models of teaching, learning, and assessment. Examples of these influences include interprofessional education, competency-based education, objective-structured clinical examinations, problem-based learning, evidence-based medicine, team-based learning, and the multiple mini-interviews. In addition, the contributions and presence of PAs in the academic health center teaching environment have also fostered appreciation from other health professionals for the skill level and capacity of PAs on the care team. This directly led to the increased utilization of PAs in a growing number of specialties in both inpatient and outpatient settings. However, the rapid expansion of PA educational programs has strained the profession's ability to meet critical student clinical placement needs, and PA educators must adopt or develop innovative ways to reconfigure how clinical education is delivered and assessed, including the use of advanced technology and simulation.


This paper explores a model of wage adjustment based on the assumption that information disseminates slowly throughout the population of wage setters. This informational frictional yields interesting and plausible dynamics for employment and inflation in response to exogenous movements in monetary policy and productivity. In this model, disinflations and productivity slowdowns have a parallel effect: They both cause the path of employment to fall below the level that would prevail under full information. The model implies that, in the face of productivity change, a policy of targeting either nominal income or the nominal wage leads to more stable employment than does a policy of targeting the price of goods and services. Finally, we examine U.S. time series and find that, as the model predicts, unemployment fluctuations are associated with both inflation and productivity surprises.


With central densities as high as 5-10 times the nuclear saturation density, neutron stars exhibit extreme conditions that cannot be observed elsewhere. They are ideal astrophysical laboratories for probing the composition and properties of cold, ultra-dense matter. We shall discuss taking into account currently available data from observation, how to reveal possible sharp phase transitions in dense neutron star cores.


Landfill remains the predominant means of waste disposal throughout the globe. Numerous landfills exist in developed and underdeveloped countries, engineered with contrasting degrees of effectiveness. Modern landfill closure in developed countries involves the conventional capping of waste with materials such as compacted clay or geosynthetic clay liners, typically overlain with other soil materials. Conventional capping technologies are now accepted to be increasingly ineffective in reducing percolation into waste. Cost-effective alternative systems are of increasing interest, including the use of plants to control and limit water entry into waste, otherwise known as "Phytocapping". Phytocapping reduces percolation through three main mechanisms: (a) canopy interception of rainfall, (b) storage of moisture in the soil layers, and (c) evapotranspiration (i.e., hydraulic lift) of stored water. Phytocapping has been shown to be at least as effective as clay capping in reducing percolation through landfill cover materials, provided site specific conditions are factored into design, and providing many additional benefits, including increased cap stability, reduced erosion of capping materials, reduction of wind-blown dust, enhanced biological diversity, increased opportunity to establish commercial plants, carbon sequestration, and enhanced methane oxidation from microbial communities. Phytocapping has been suggested as having potential in phytoremediation of landfill leachate. The most common phytocapping approach to date is the construction of vegetation assemblages for the purposes of creating natural vegetation nodes. Phytocapping technology can be enhanced by appropriate selection of soil amendments such as biosolids, biochar, compost, or other materials. Appropriate selection of plant species and soil amendment products can enhance methane oxidation in capping soils. There is considerable potential for the use of high biomass energy plants but further work is needed in choosing appropriate plant species that will serve both purposes of site water balance as well as commercial (e.g., timber, bioenergy) and biodiversity needs of the community.


Purpose: To explore whether it is worthwhile to launch a
routine gallstone disease screening for cholecystectomy prevention
among Chinese population from different perspective in Taiwan.
 Methods: The study cohort was conducted with a total of
2,386 healthy adults voluntarily admitted to a teaching hospital
for a physical check-up in 2002 in Taiwan. Annual follow-up
screenings of gallstone disease then were until 31 December, 2007.
The cost-benefit analysis tool of screening for gallstone disease
is based on TreeAge software for medical decision analysis. A
decision analysis using the Markov Decision Model was constructed
to compare different screening regimes for gallstone disease.
 Results: In terms of benefit-cost ratio, the different
screening programs for gallstone disease could save New Taiwan
Dollars (NTD) from 19.61 to 63.41 in discounted costs for each
dollar incurred in different screening years from the societal
viewpoint for Taiwan and save NTD from 2.89 to 4.71 in different
screening years from health care payer's perspective. The average
estimate of willingness-to-pay to translate into benefit yields
NTD from 807.8 to 4,039 benefits per case due to gallstone disease
screening in different screening years during 10-year follow-up.
The net present value of the gallstone disease screening were NTD
from −133,736 to −217,689.2 in different screening years.
 Conclusion: It is worthwhile to initial a routine
gallstone disease screening of Chinese population for
cholecystectomy prevention from the societal perspective but not
from consumer decision based on the willingness-to-pay
perspective.


More than the document of a remarkable project: "Buy Me A Mercedes-Benz" shows how various forms of expert knowledge have been combined and interwoven to finally generate an unconventional, breakthrough museum design. Providing insight into the various ideas, experiences and ambitions behind the project, this book allows visitors to take the museum home. Through photographs, diagrams, text, and drawings, this book explains the unique Mercedes museum design model, developed by UN Studio: the digitally programmed, three-dimensional, cross-connected trefoil. Implementing this model has resulted in a building that radically breaks with many of today's architectural conventions, a building that is highly complex, but still maintains a strongly directional structure, which provides many surprising perceptual experiences.


Forensic science has made significant strides in elevating the standards for forensic analysis, reporting and testimony over the last few years. Yet, lawyers and judges lag far behind in understanding the significance of these strides. There is an attempt to educate law students in the law schools and to educate lawyers and judges through continuing legal and judicial education but it is slow in finding its way into the actual courtroom. Therefore, while there is progress at the highest levels of forensic science, a lot of "junk" science competes for the attention of jurors.
Forensic scientists can help educate the lawyers and judges on a case by case basis. They can not only educate, as they routinely do, on the substance of their opinions, they can also educate on the scientific foundation for those opinions in accordance with Daubert, Kumho Tire and related modern rules. By doing so, they can help establish the grounds for their testimony but can also set the bar for the admissibility of the other "expert" testimony in the case. To do this, the article suggests a modest checklist of factors under Daubert and Kumho Tire as well as suggested by the National Academy of Sciences 2009 Report, NIST and DOJ standards and the PCAST Report.


The aim of this project was the development of a questionnaire to measure retrospectively the relating of parents towards their children, from the perspective of the child. The two main dimensions of parenting agreed upon in the literature are support and control, and the present thesis proposes that these can be conceptualised as composites of proximity and power, which are considered the main constructs underlying interpersonal transactions. The design of the Adult Recollection of Parental Relating Questionnaire (ARPRQ) was governed by the principles of Birtchnell's relating theory (1987, 1993), the distinguishing features of which are the difference between positive and negative relating, and the absence of construct bipolarity. The ARPRQ comprises of 48 items distributed evenly over eight scales, and has a separate version for each parent. The items were generated and refined through an iterative process consisting of repeated piloting, item analysis and item rephrasing. The psychometric properties of the instrument were established in three main studies. Study One assessed the internal consistency reliability (N=117) and the concurrent validity (N=75) with the comparable Parental Bonding Instrument (PBIParker, Tupling & Brown, 1979). As anticipated, the scales of the ARPRQ correlated positively with the Overprotection scale and negatively with the Care scale of the PBI. Study Two assessed the internal consistency reliability (N=104) and the construct validity (N=8) of the revised version of the measure. Content analysis of interviews revealed patterns of parental relating similar to those obtained using the ARPRQ. The factorial configuration of the instrument was established in Study Three (N=601). The results of the principal component analysis showed the presence of four factors, corresponding with closeness, distance, upperness and lowerness, as defined in relating theory. It was concluded that the ARPRQ has good internal consistency reliability, as demonstrated by Cronbach's Alpha coefficients, and compared favourably with the PBI and with interviews. Results are discussed with reference to implications for parenting research and potential applications of the instrument.


A detailed review of the present knowledge of gaseous optical masers is given. The paper is divided into four main sections: The first section contains a summary of basic general considerations, ranging from properties of the normal cavity modes through methods of measurement and interpretation in gas systems. The second contains a review of the dominant excitation mechanisms which have been used to produce population inversions in gas lasers. The third and main section considers various aspects of the numerous gas systems in which continuous oscillation has been achieved, and the last section deals with spectral characteristics and mode pulling effects. Where appropriate new material has been introduced, and an attempt has also been made to include a number of small engineering details which should be of help in the construction and operation of gaseous optical masers.


Policy‐relevant results of Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) are sensitive to a number of uncertain assumptions that govern model simulation of the climate, society, and the policy response to climate change. Uncertainties remain in understanding of the rate and magnitude of climate change, the nature and severity of climate impacts, and the ability to cope with those impacts. Methods for quantifying and comparing climate damages across different regions and different time periods are fiercely debated. This paper examines assumptions that are central to model estimates of the benefits of climate policy in three well‐known IAMs, and discusses their consistency with current natural and social scientific research. Different IAMs take different approaches to dealing with these uncertainties, and understanding their assumptions is critical to interpreting their results, since those results can hange dramatically when assumptions are varied. c


A single even harmonic added to an odd‐harmonic complex may be judged as more salient than its odd neighbors in a clarity rating task [Roberts and Bregman, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 90, 3050–3060 (1991)]. For a fundamental frequency (F0) of 100 Hz, this even–odd difference was evident for the highest even harmonic tested (harmonic 8) despite its marginal resolution. This study used similar complexes in a 2IFC procedure. Each interval consisted of a complex tone followed by a pure tone. The frequency of the pure tone matched that of a harmonic in the complex in one interval and was changed by ±0.5*F0 in the other. Subjects were instructed to identify the matching interval. Since the pure tone was heard after the complex tone, it could not cue listening to a particular frequency region. Cross‐interval cuing was prevented by changing F0 between the intervals. The procedure used was intended to maximize the effects on performance of differences in immediate perceptual salience between the harmonics. The added even ...


Abstract. A statistical method was developed to extract baseline levels of ground level ozone in Canada and the US, and to quantify the temporal changes of baseline ozone levels on annual, seasonal, diurnal and decadal scales for the period 1997 to 2006 based on ground-level observations from 97 non-urban monitoring sites. Baseline ozone is defined here as ozone measured at a given site in the absence of strong local influences. The quantification of baseline levels involved using a Principal Component Analyses (PCA) to derive groups of commonly-varying sites in contiguous regions by season, followed by using backward air parcel trajectories to systematically select ozone mixing ratios associated with the baseline condition in each of the PCA-derived regions. Decadal trends were estimated by season for each of the regions using a generalized linear mixed model (GLMM). Baseline ozone mixing ratios determined by this method were found to vary geographically and seasonally. For the 1997–2006 period, baseline mixing ratios were calculated for annual and seasonal periods in seven regions of North America based on multi-site multi-year averages of the baseline data sets. The annual average (±1 standard deviation) baseline mixing ratios for the regions are as follows: Continental Eastern Canada=30±9 ppb, Continental Eastern US=30±10 ppb, Coastal Eastern Canada=27±9 ppb, Coastal Western Canada=19±10 ppb; Coastal Western US=39±10 ppb, Continental Western Canada=28±10 ppb and Continental Western US=46±7 ppb. Trends in the baseline mixing ratios were also found to vary by season and by geographical region. On a decadal scale, increasing baseline ozone trends (temperature-adjusted) were observed in all seasons along the Pacific coasts of Canada and the US, although the trends in California were not statistically significant. In the coastal zone of Pacific Canada, positive trends were found with a rate of increase of 0.28±0.26, 0.72±0.55, and 0.93±0.41 ppb/a in spring (MAM), summer (JJA) and winter (DJF), respectively. In the Atlantic coastal region, the trends were also positive in 3 of the 4 seasons (but only significantly so in MAM). In the high ozone precursor emission areas of the Eastern United States, decadal trends in baseline ozone are, in general, negative in the spring, summer and fall and appear to be controlled by the strong within-region changes induced by decreasing ozone precursor emissions.


Abstract Terminal Ediacaran metazoan reefs (c. 548–541 Ma) can be locally substantial and the skeletal metazoans Cloudina riemkeae, C. hartmannae, Namacalathus and Namapoikia produced diverse reef types with complex ecologies in association with varied microbialite support or influence. In the Nama Group, Namibia, metazoan reefs grew in three associations with differing dominant frameworks: (1) monospecific aggregations of Cloudina; (2) Cloudina–Namacalathus–thrombolite assemblages; and (3) thrombolite-dominated metazoan communities. Cloudina hartmannae formed monospecific reefs up to 7 m wide and 3 m high with no microbialite component. The synoptic relief was probably <1 m. Cloudina riemkeae formed densely aggregating assemblages associated with microbialites and thrombolites, each from 30 to 100 mm high, which successively colonized former generations. Isolated Namacalathus either intergrew with C. riemkeae or formed dense, low-relief, monospecific aggregations succeeding C. riemkeae frameworks. Thrombolite-dominated metazoan reefs reached up to 20 m in height and width, with a synoptic relief of up to several metres. Cloudina and Namacalathus grew closely associated with these framework thrombolites and Namapoikia, which was encrusting and modular, reached up to 1 m in size and occupied neptunian dykes and fissures. Cloudina and Namacalathus also grow cryptically, either as pendent aggregations from laminar crypt ceilings in microbial framework reefs, or as clusters associated with thrombolite attached to neptunian dyke walls.


Aims: The study aims, in infertile men, (i) to assess oxidative stress parameters in semen plasma and (ii) to study the effect of antioxidants in those with abnormal semen parameters. Settings and Design: This was an interventional study. Population: Ninety men attending and infertility clinic in a tertiary center were enrolled in the study. Materials and Methods: The present study was conducted in the departments of obstetrics and gynecology and biochemistry in a tertiary center. Ethical approval was obtained from the institute ethics subcommittee, and the study was conducted between July 2014 and July 2016. The study was conducted on two groups of 45 men with normal semen parameters in group 1 and 45 men with abnormal semen parameters in group 2. Results: Malondialdehyde (MDA) value was higher in men with abnormal semen parameters, which was statistically significant. The total antioxidant assay was higher in men with abnormal semen parameters, which was not statistically significant. Oxidative stress index (OSI) value was higher in men with normal semen parameters, which was not statistically significant. After 90 days of antioxidants therapy to men with abnormal semen parameters, MDA value decreased, total antioxidant assay increased, and OSI value decreased, which were statistically significant. Semen parameters such as sperm concentration, motility, and normal morphology improved after 90 days of antioxidant therapy, which were statistically significant. Conclusions: Oxidative stress is increased in men with abnormal semen parameters. Antioxidant therapy improves sperm concentration and motility and decreases oxidative stress in the semen plasma.


We conducted a meta-analysis of randomized controlled clinical trials on steroid treatment for multiple sclerosis and optic neuritis. Of the 25 trials comparing steroids and controls without steroid treatment that we identified 12 were selected for this review. A meta-analysis was conducted to calculate the overall odds ratio across the studies for the numbers of patients without functional improvement and with new relapses. The trials included a total of 1714 patients: 998 with multiple sclerosis and 716 with optic neuritis. Any type of corticosteroids or adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) treatment was considered, as was any dosage, route of administration, and length of treatment. Main outcome measures were: (a) number of multiple sclerosis patients who did not improve by at least one point on the EDSS or equivalent scale, or number of optic neuritis patients without complete recovery of visual acuity at 8 or 30 days and at longer follow-up; (b) number of multiple sclerosis patients with at least one new relapse, or number of optic neuritis patients in whom definite multiple sclerosis was diagnosed at longer follow-up. We found that corticosteroids or ACTH produced a significant improvement in disability or visual acuity at 30 days (odds ratio 0.49; 95% CI 0.37-0.64). The improvement was not statistically significant at longer follow-up (0.85; 95% CI 0.67-1.09). The treatment did not significantly reduce the number of patients with relapses (0.74; 95% CI 0.54-1.01). Both low and high doses were effective for 30-day improvement, but only high-dose and short-term therapy were factors that identified subgroups with some reduction in the risk of new relapse. However, the power of the statistical analysis to detect a reliable difference in the subgroups was low. Steroid treatment is therefore effective in accelerating short-term recovery in patients with multiple sclerosis or optic neuritis. Whether steroids are also effective in reducing the risk of relapse, and the optimal dose and length of treatment must still be determined.


The bullwhip effect describes the tendency for the variance of orders in supply chains to increase as one moves upstream from consumer demand. Previous research attributes this phenomenon to both operational and behavioral causes. Operational causes are features of the institutional setting that lead rational agents to amplify changes in demand, while behavioral causes arise from suboptimal decisionmaking. This paper examines causes of the bullwhip through experiments with a serial supply chain, using the Beer Distribution Game. Unlike prior studies, we control all four commonly cited operational causes of the bullwhip, including uncertainty about customer demand. We eliminate demand uncertainty completely by making customer demand constant and known to all participants. Despite these controls, order amplification, instability, and supply line underweighting remain pervasive. We propose a new behavioral cause of the bullwhip, coordination risk, that arises when players place excessive orders to address the perceived risk that others will not behave optimally. We test two strategies to mitigate coordination risk: (1) holding additional on-hand inventory, and (2) creating common knowledge by informing participants of the optimal policy. Both strategies reduce, but not eliminate, the bullwhip effect. Holding excess inventory reduces order amplification by providing a buffer against the endogenous risk of coordination failure. Such coordination stock differs from traditional safety stock, which buffers against exogenous demand uncertainty. Surprisingly, neither strategy reduces supply-line underweighting. We conclude that the bullwhip can be mitigated but its behavioral causes appear robust.


ABSTRACT Coral reefs are globally threatened by climate change-related ocean warming and ocean acidification (OA). To date, slow-response mechanisms such as genetic adaptation have been considered the major determinant of coral reef persistence, with little consideration of rapid-response acclimatization mechanisms. These rapid mechanisms such as parental effects that can contribute to trans-generational acclimatization (e.g. epigenetics) have, however, been identified as important contributors to offspring response in other systems. We present the first evidence of parental effects in a cross-generational exposure to temperature and OA in reef-building corals. Here, we exposed adults to high (28.9°C, 805 µatm PCO2) or ambient (26.5°C, 417 µatm PCO2) temperature and OA treatments during the larval brooding period. Exposure to high treatment negatively affected adult performance, but their larvae exhibited size differences and metabolic acclimation when subsequently re-exposed, unlike larvae from parents exposed to ambient conditions. Understanding the innate capacity corals possess to respond to current and future climatic conditions is essential to reef protection and maintenance. Our results identify that parental effects may have an important role through (1) ameliorating the effects of stress through preconditioning and adaptive plasticity, and/or (2) amplifying the negative parental response through latent effects on future life stages. Whether the consequences of parental effects and the potential for trans-generational acclimatization are beneficial or maladaptive, our work identifies a critical need to expand currently proposed climate change outcomes for corals to further assess rapid response mechanisms that include non-genetic inheritance through parental contributions and classical epigenetic mechanisms. Highlighted Article: Preconditioning and trans-generational acclimatization may provide a buffer for reef-building corals against the stress of rapidly changing climate.


Solid state fermentation (SSF) has been used as a model for the study of metabolism and physiology of microorganisms. The aim of the present study was to enhance 6-PP production by Trichoderma harzianum 4040 in solid state fermentation using sugarcane bagasse as a residue. A fractional factorial design was used to select the components of the nutrient solution. The fermentation was carried out during 9 days, and the aroma extraction was done on the third, fifth, seventh, and ninth days using organic solvent. On the seventh day the major concentration of 6-PP was found. The variables glucose, sucrose, and MgSO4 were found to be significant statistically (p> 0.05) as components of the nutrient solution used in the production of 6-PP by filamentous fungi in SSF using sugarcane bagasse as a residue. GC-MS was used for quantification of 6-PP aroma.


ABSTRACT Although it is obvious that research regarding Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) is context specific and developed over time, not many research papers yet intended to investigate these changes. As a matter of fact, the number of scientific publications addressing SFM is relatively high. Hence, such a wide field cannot be sufficiently covered by traditional literature review approaches. With this paper, we aim at identifying the most convergent narratives within the SFM-research landscape by applying a text mining methodology to recent scientific literature. By doing so, we generated results that indicate that there may have been three phases in the evolution of SFM-research: the early phase covers in particular issues regarding land use in tropical and developing countries. Furthermore, papers in this phase tend to focus on general concepts or policy issues. In contrast, the second phase is characterized by a larger share of publications in forestry focused journals. This process is seemingly connected with issues like forest management, certification, forest stand management and the development of sustainability indicators. A third phase can be observed by the relative downturn of publications in forest-focused journals between 2005 and 2010. A new focus in this period is climate change.


For the past decade Montana State University (MSU) researchers have been developing a Radiation Tolerant Computing System (RTCS) to support the National Aeronautics and Space Administrations (NASA) technology road map for space technology. The next iteration of this effort is a free flying CubeSat being developed in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department named RadSat-g. This thesis addresses the Electrical Power System (EPS) of the satellite avionics in support of RTCS for RadSat-g. One of the main problems that CubeSat developers face is the small amount of solar power generated due to available space for solar cell placement on the small frame of a CubeSat. Charging the battery from the solar panels generally employ one of two types of energy transfer methods, direct energy transfer and power point tracking. Direct energy transfer's disadvantage is the strings of solar cells need to be tuned to the battery and as such has the potential to leave valuable space on the solar panel unused. Power point tracking has the advantage of the ability to utilize variable string lengths, this allows each solar panel to have the maximum number of cells and therefore exploit the maximum available power. In terms of CubeSat power availability, the RTCS has a substantial power requirement, so power point tracking is required for the satellite to be power positive. To accommodate this requirement, a new EPS needed to be researched, designed and built. This new EPS, named Phoenix v2.3 EPS, meets the needs of the RadSat-g mission while leveraging components with flight heritage from past MSU Space Science Engineering and Laboratory missions.


A theory is presented showing that cloaking of objects from antiplane elastic waves can be achieved by employing nonlinear elastic pre-stress in a neo-Hookean elastomeric material. This approach would appear to eliminate the requirement of metamaterials with inhomogeneous anisotropic shear moduli and density. Waves in the pre-stressed medium are bent around the cloaked (cavity) region by inducing inhomogeneous stress fields via pre-stress. The equation governing antiplane waves in the pre-stressed medium is equivalent to the antiplane equation in an unstressed medium with inhomogeneous and anisotropic shear modulus and isotropic scalar mass density. Note however that these properties are induced naturally by the pre-stress. As the magnitude of pre-stress can be altered at will, this enables objects of varying size and shape to be cloaked by placing them inside the fluid-filled deformed cavity region.


This article introduces Gigamapping as a toolkit to help architects undertake analysis and design. Due to globalization, many architectural design companies have expanded into the international market. Gigamapping is a beneficial tool for analysis and design, since it can help designers to display the relationships that affect designs in-context, thereby helping architects to analyse problems and settings. At the same time, it can be used for the integration of all parts of a project through the coherent connection of conceptual ideas and responses to the context. Additionally, it constitutes a powerful tool for supporting teamwork. MA AD is the design research Masters of the Welsh School of Architecture (WSA) of Cardiff University, and Analysis of Precedents is one of the core modules of it. The authors will use training from the Analysis of Precedent module and design-led research in MA AD to illustrate the role of Gigamapping for analysis and design.


An idealized view of the lifestyle of a Buddhist monk might be described according to the doctrinal demand for emotional detachment and, ultimately, the cessation of all desire. Yet monks are also enjoined to practice compassion, a powerful emotion and equally lofty ideal, and live with every other human feeling - love, hate, jealousy, ambition - as they relate to other monks and the lay community. In this important ethnography of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, Jeffrey Samuels takes an unprecedented look at how emotion determines and influences the commitments that laypeople and monastics make to each other and to the Buddhist religion in general. By focusing on 'multimoment' histories, Samuels highlights specific junctures in which ideas about recruitment, vocation, patronage, and institution-building are dynamically negotiated and refined. Positing a nexus between aesthetics and affect, he illustrates not only how aesthetic responses trigger certain emotions, but also how personal and shared emotions, at the local level, shape notions of beauty. Samuels uses the voices of informants to reveal the delicately negotiated character of laymonastic relations and temple management. In the fields of religion and Buddhist studies there has been a growing recognition of the need to examine affective dimensions of religion. His work breaks new ground in that it answers questions about Buddhist emotions and the constitutive roles they play in social life and religious practice through a close, poignant look at small-scale temple and social networks. Throughout, Samuels makes the case for the need to account for emotions in making the behavior of religious participants and practitioners intelligible. Drawing on a decade of fieldwork that includes numerous interviews as well as an examination of written and visual sources, "Attracting the Heart" conveys the manner in which Buddhists describe their own histories, experiences, and encounters as they relate to the formation and continuation of Buddhist monastic culture in contemporary Sri Lanka.


Seedling establishment is a critical step that may ultimately govern tree species' distribution shifts under environmental change. Annual variation in the location of seed rain and microclimates results in transient "windows of opportunity" for tree seedling establishment across the landscape. These establishment windows vary at fine spatiotemporal scales that are not considered in most assessments of climate change impacts on tree species range dynamics and habitat displacement. We integrate field seedling establishment trials conducted in the southern Sierra Nevada and western Tehachapi Mountains of southern California with spatially downscaled grids of modeled water-year climatic water deficit (CWDwy) and mean August maximum daily temperature (Tmax) to map historical and projected future microclimates suitable for establishment windows of opportunity for Quercus douglasii, a dominant tree species of warm, dry foothill woodlands, and Q. kelloggii, a dominant of cooler, more mesic montane woodlands and forests. Based on quasi-binomial regression models, Q. douglasii seedling establishment is significantly associated with modeled CWDwy and to a lesser degree with modeled Tmax. Q. kelloggii seedling establishment is most strongly associated with Tmax and best predicted by a two-factor model including CWDwy and Tmax. Establishment niche models are applied to explore recruitment window dynamics in the western Tehachapi Mountains, where these species are currently widespread canopy dominants. Establishment windows are projected to decrease by 50–95%, shrinking locally to higher elevations and north-facing slopes by the end of this century depending on the species and climate scenario. These decreases in establishment windows suggest the potential for longer-term regional population declines of the species. While many additional processes regulate seedling establishment and growth, this study highlights the need to account for topoclimatic controls and interannual climatic variation when assessing how seedling establishment and colonization processes could be affected by climate change.


This essay sets out to explore a range of issues that arise from the notion of 'bad painting', which was a term that came to have some currency within art practice and art criticism from the late seventies onwards. The term Bad Painting in this research was used to describe a certain category of painting from the late seventies onwards. This essay asks, does a reliance on category definition of good or bad in painting offer a meaningful discussion of our experience of painting? Through the use of aesthetic experience as outlined by Richard Shusterman in Pragmatist Aesthetics, category definitions as a means of describing what is beautiful or good becomes more and more redundant. The potential use of conscious learned incompetence and gaucheness within the making of a bad painting might provide correctives to normal habits of aesthetic evaluation which are purist and disembodied and have become orthodoxies within art practices and art criticism.


Summary
Stream food webs are connected with their riparian zones through cross-ecosystem movements of energy and nutrients. The use and impact of terrestrial subsidies on aquatic consumers is determined in part by in situ biomass of aquatic prey. Thus, stressors such as aquatic pollutants that greatly reduce aquatic secondary production could increase the need for and reliance of stream consumers on terrestrial resource subsidies.
To test this hypothesis, we surveyed stream fish, their diets and resource availability in 16 subalpine streams over a regional gradient of trace metals known to strongly impact aquatic insect communities (i.e. fish prey) in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, USA.
Fish increased their reliance on terrestrial insect prey as stream metals increased. Relative biomass of terrestrial insects in stomach contents of Brook and Brown Trout increased with respect to aquatic insect biomass and total stomach contents. Drifting insect biomass showed a declining trend for aquatic, but not terrestrial insects, over the metal gradient. Trout densities were unrelated to metal concentrations in streams where we found fish.
Synthesis and applications. Our results indicate that diets of aquatic consumers can become more terrestrial as aquatic stressors that limit in situ food production increase and that these subsidies may compensate for loss of aquatic resources. This work implies an important connection between preserving aquatic–terrestrial linkages and management of fish populations in stressed watersheds. Specifically, intact riparian zones and aquatic–terrestrial linkages are likely to be important for maintaining trout production in streams with moderate metal contamination.


This study examined the contribution of instructional self-talk and observational learning on the development of long jump technique. Sixty-nine beginner athletes were randomly assigned to four groups: 'self-talk', 'video', 'self-talk + video' and control group. All groups performed 24 practice sessions, consisting of a cognitive intervention program in the form of either instructional self-talk or observational learning, or a combination of both, and the practice of specific drills. A significantly higher performance improvement was recorded for the self-talk group in post test, whereas when kinematic variables of the motor skill (center of mass displacement) were assessed, "observational learning" proved to be more effective. The findings of the current study suggest that young, beginner athletes, participating in complicated tasks, may benefit from cognitive intervention techniques, through enhanced attentional focus on the most critical elements of the motor skill.


"Principles of Tropical Horticulture" leads the reader through a background of environmental influences and plant physiology to an understanding of production and post-harvest systems, environmental adaptation techniques and marketing strategies. Focusing on the principles behind production practices and their scientific basis, rather than detailed biological traits of each crop, this text outlines successes and failures in practices to date and sets out how the quantity and quality of horticultural produce can improve in the future. Case studies are frequently used and chapters cover the production of vegetables, fruit and ornamental crops, including temperate zone crops adapted to grow in the tropics.


A product of creative thinking, inspiration is a sudden moment of clarity. Many
students lack clarity when asked to write in school–particularly those whose
color, gender and economic class place them on the outside looking into the
classroom. Language differences are primary concerns, and I don't mean just
English as a Second Language. Those who grow up female, poor, or nonwhite
may find their ways with words at odds with expectations on how to write in
school. They need affirmations to inspire them to sweat over a draft, not to
mention face the fear of writing in school. Think about it. If you were a student
who struggled to write, regardless of the reason, all through school, what would
help you to write and want to do it? Positive feedback is my guess.


In this paper we present a classification of network security techniques such as: secrecy, authentication, non-repudiation and integrity control. The secrecy techniques are two categories: cryptography and steganography. Steganography like cryptography is a very useful technique to achieve secrecy in communication. If both cryptography and steganography are used then the communication becomes two fold secured. All the major techniques on image steganography proposed by different researchers are discussed very briefly. The techniques on audio steganography are also briefly discussed. Finally a hybrid model is shown using both cryptography and steganography.


We present a framework that makes space for multiple perspectives and ways of thinking about complex trade-off problems in conservation and development. At the core of the framework are three "integrative lenses" designed to facilitate lines of inquiry according to three unique ways of perceiving complexity. The aim of the framework is not to produce a unified theory or a model that justifies one choice over another to all audiences; rather, its purpose is to yield a more integrative and context-sensitive set of problem definitions that can open the way to a variety of pathways for action and research. The approach we present is particularly relevant in the context of highly complex problems – those involving complicated and uncertain dynamics, a multiplicity of values, a multiplicity of perspectives, and the exercise of multiple forms of power (including the power to frame the problem). We argue that setting aside the urge for synthesis—and thereby preserving enough of the complexity of the problem—can serve as a starting point for fertile and productive engagements between researchers working across disciplines, and between researchers and practitioners.


The effects of aperture modulation are investigated in a Korean binocular objective lens in isolation from the rest of the system. The axial aberration characteristics are derived through computation from the design data. The MTF is measured for modulated apertures in the presence of axial aberration. The aperture modulation is carried out by providing a mask which has an opaque annulus on an optical flat and is in contact with the lens under test. The MTF varies with the area and the position of the opaque annulus. The MTF of the lens is improved by properly positioning the opaque annulus. The MTF curves with the modulated aperture are also compared with the constricted circular aperture having the same area as the modulated one. The performance of many optical systems can be improved by proper aperture modulation.


There is a great deal of interest in the sunlight readability of displays. How to quantify this, particularly on a numerical scale rather than pass/fail is an important consideration. Some military standards exist e.g. MIL-L-85762A but are these appropriate to non-military products? We report the use of a method developed by BAE SYSTEMS, the model is based on our ability to see things by virtue of a difference in either luminance or chrominance, or both. The model uses a method called PJND (Perceptible Just Noticeable Difference), based on LJND (Luminance Just Noticeable Difference) and CJND (Chrominance Just Noticeable Difference) thresholds. The basis of this model is a series of acceptance criteria established by subjects in a realistic environment; BAE SYSTEMS have an Ambient Lighting Facility (ALF) which simulates many lighting scenarios that are likely to be encountered in real life. Product mock-ups were taken into this environment and subjects were asked to choose levels of acceptance for differing screen presentations and various lighting geometries. The method results in a single figure of readability, which in effect summarizes the task and environment. This figure can then form the basis of a specification between display supplier and vendor. We plan to develop the model such that it should be possible to predict the best combination of treatments to apply to the display surface to give the optimum and most cost effective sunlight readable display for a given application and product.


When open or direct surveys are about sensitive matters (e.g. gambling habits, addiction to drug and others intoxicants, alcoholism, proneness to tax invasion, induced abortions, drunken driving, history of past involvement in crimes, and homosexuality), non-response bias and response bias become serious problems because people oftentimes do not wish to give correct information. To reduce non-response and response bias, various alternative approaches have been proposed, for example a randomized response survey technique, or a mixed randomized response model using simple random sampling with a replacement sampling scheme that improves the privacy of respondents, proposed by authors Kim and Warde. In this paper we have suggested an alternative to Kim and Warde's mixed randomized response model to estimate the proportion of qualitative sensitive variable under the conditions presented in both the cases of completely truthful reporting and less than completely truthful reporting by the respondents. Properties of the proposed randomized response model have been studied along with recommendations. We have also extended the proposed model to stratified random sampling. Numerical illustrations and graphs are also given in support of the present study.


The Toroidal field coils (TFC) of the EUROFusion DEMO reactor call for Nb3Sn conductor with high field and high current. Another major requirement is cost-effectiveness, to keep the ratio of investment to electric power in the same range of the competing energy sources (fission, hydro, coal, gas, etc.). The TFC proposed by the Swiss Plasma Center (SPC) is based on a double-layer Nb3Sn/NbTi winding. A react-and-wind flat cable is the core of the Nb3Sn conductor, with six grades to minimize the cost and maintain a roughly constant temperature margin of 1.5 K over the winding cross section. A short length section of the high grade Nb3Sn conductor has been manufactured using relevant industrial cabling equipment. One hundred kilograms of 1.5-mm Nb3Sn strand has been procured at WST with average Jc up to 15% higher than specified (Jc ≥ 1000 A/mm2 at 12 T/4.2 K). A dedicated cabling line has been set up at TRATOS cavi (Italy), producing over 350 m of dummy cable and about 13 m of superconducting cable. The assembly of the cable into a conduit by longitudinal laser welding of two steel profiles is demonstrated, including the QA procedures. A test sample has been prepared at SPC by heat treating straight sections of the cable and encasing it into a steel jacket after the heat treatment to minimize the thermal strain. The test was carried out in three test campaigns at the EDIPO facility at SPC. The test program includes Dc performance at the relevant operating conditions. An assessment of the conductor test results in terms of strand performance suggests that the applicable thermal strain is less than -0.33%. The performance is stable upon load cycles.


This study attempts to trace and examine the economic conditions of Ceylon during the period c. A.D. 1070 to 1344. The geographical area of the new capitals that were chosen by the Sinhalese kings after the abandonment of Polonnaruwa as the seat of authority resulted in some changes in the economic pattern and organization of the Sinhalese kingdom. By examining the nature of such changes where relevant, the author has primarily attempted to delineate the main features of economic organization of the Polonnaruwa period and the immediately following period which saw the gradual decline of the Rajarata reservoir system. The introductory chapter outlines the political history of the period and examines the social framework of the Sinhalese. Chapter II analyses the patterns of land tenure and includes a close examination of the popularly accepted view that the king was the sole owner of land. This is followed by a chapter on irrigation which attempts to survey certain problems such as labour organization for irrigation works and methods of distribution of water. The fourth chapter outlines the agricultural practices of the Island. In this chapter an attempt is also made to estimate the area of paddy cultivation in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The nature of the internal trade and monetary transactions are being dealt with in the next chapter, while the sixth chapter is devoted mainly to foreign trade. The last chapter examines the revenue terms and principles and methods of taxation, and the conclusion brings out the main results of this study.


The financial crisis that erupted in 2007 highlighted how important trust is for the global system and how fragile it can be. The 2016 Bangladesh central bank cyber incident exposed a new threat to financial stability and the unprecedented scale of the risk that malicious cyber actors pose to financial institutions. Beyond theft, using cyber operations to manipulate the integrity of data, in particular, poses a distinct and greater set of systemic risks than other forms of financial coercion. The complex and interdependent character of the financial system and its transcendence of physical and national boundaries mean that manipulating the integrity of financial institutions' data can, intentionally and/or unintentionally, threaten financial stability and the stability of the international system. Importantly, unlike the 2007-2008 global crisis, this risk exists independent of the underlying economic fundamentals and will only increase as more and more governments make cashless economies an explicit goal. The G20 finance ministers and central bank governors should be commended for urging improvements in the resilience of the global financial system in their March 2017 communique. In a next step, the G20 member states could commit their countries explicitly to refrain from using offensive cybertools to corrupt the integrity of data in the financial system and to cooperate when such attacks do occur.


Research on Information Systems (IS) habit formation has been focused mostly on IS habit's effect on IS continuance. Antecedents of IS habit formation, as reported in the literature, are primarily on users' prior behavior and comprehensiveness of usage. Most of the literature focus on analyzing the relationship between users' IS usage behavior and IS habit. Limited work has been reported to investigate genuine and practical ways to develop IS habit, as well as to address the issue of sporadic IS usage, which leads to different interpretations on IS habit and continuance. This study purports to address the theoretical gap on issues related to IS habit antecedents and sporadic IS usage habit in the educational context. Adopting an empirical survey in universities' (sub-degree and postgraduate settings) learning systems usage, data from cross-sectional survey on learning systems usage on percourse basis is analyzed. Theoretically, our results suggest that IT functionality design (personalization) and social factor (peer effect) have strong and positive relationship on IS habit with respect to the sporadic usage nature of course based learning systems. Practically, we suggest some dimensions for teachers on curriculum design that facilitate IS habit development, e.g., maintaining an online community with substantial student peer input at the early stage of a course.


An important ability of a robot that interacts with the environment and manipulates objects is to deal with the uncertainty in sensory data. Sensory information is necessary to, for example, perform online assessment of grasp stability. We present methods to assess grasp stability based on haptic data and machine-learning methods, including AdaBoost, support vector machines (SVMs), and hidden Markov models (HMMs). In particular, we study the effect of different sensory streams to grasp stability. This includes object information such as shape; grasp information such as approach vector; tactile measurements from fingertips; and joint configuration of the hand. Sensory knowledge affects the success of the grasping process both in the planning stage (before a grasp is executed) and during the execution of the grasp (closed-loop online control). In this paper, we study both of these aspects. We propose a probabilistic learning framework to assess grasp stability and demonstrate that knowledge about grasp stability can be inferred using information from tactile sensors. Experiments on both simulated and real data are shown. The results indicate that the idea to exploit the learning approach is applicable in realistic scenarios, which opens a number of interesting venues for the future research.


This paper presents a framework that supports the implementation of parallel solutions for the widespread parametric maximum flow computational routines used in image segmentation algorithms. The framework is based on supergraphs, a special construction combining several image graphs into a larger one, and works on various architectures (multi-core or GPU), either locally or remotely in a cluster of computing nodes. The framework can also be used for performance evaluation of parallel implementations of maximum flow algorithms. We present the case study of a state-of-the-art image segmentation algorithm based on graph cuts, Constrained Parametric Min-Cut (CPMC), that uses the parallel framework to solve parametric maximum flow problems, based on a GPU implementation of the well-known push-relabel algorithm. Our results indicate that real-time implementations based on the proposed techniques are possible.