The development and rapid spread of the electric telegraph in the mid-nineteenth century were profoundly entangled with music in ways that are seldom if ever acknowledged. Particular emphasis is often placed on sound recording as enacting what Attali describes as "the moment when everything suddenly changed." In fact, the telegraph anticipated several key premises of recording by decades. Its language is heard, on the one hand, in the direct imitation of Strauss Jr.9s Telegraphische Depeschen, and on the other, in Francois Sudre9s development of a "universal musical language" to communicate across distance. Works by Berlioz and Georges Kastner reveal how the telegraph fed into conceptions of musical transcendence via Spiritualists and the Aeolian harp. The attendant emphasis on mind over body was extended through the employment by conductors of telegraph technology to control musicians across ever-greater distances. This apparent disembodiment of the telegraph carried threatening implications for those social or ethnic groups aligned with the body, including performers. However, as Marshall McLuhan suggests, electricity was also primarily a "tactile" medium, and sensitivity to the telegraphic signals in art music therefore also entailed a new appreciation of the powerful role of embodied performers. Listening for the sounds of the telegraph in music of the mid-nineteenth century thus both enriches our appreciation of the historicity of these works and offers new perspectives on the negotiations between embodiment and transcendence that continue to underpin this repertoire.


Abstract There has been an unprecedented inclusion of Indigenous peoples in environmental governance instruments like free, prior, and informed consent; reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) projects; climate adaptation initiatives; and environmental impact assessment. We draw on theories of participatory governance to show how locally implemented processes have been shaped by their interactions with invited, closed, and indigenous-led spaces at multiple scales. Empirically, our article is based on field research in Latin America, semistructured interviews, and a systematic literature review. We find four main barriers that have (re-)produced environmental injustices in environmental governance: first, a lack of influence over the institutional design of governance instruments; second, the exclusion of Indigenous peoples in the domestication of global instruments; third, policy incoherencies constraining the scope for decision-making; and fourth, weak cross-scale linkages between Indigenous-led spaces. This article helps to elucidate constraints of participatory spaces and identify leeway for transformation toward environmental justice.


Introduction
Adults with intellectual disabilities account for a minor proportion of the population, with reported prevalence rates in developed countries in the range of 3-6 per 1000 adults (Beange & Taplin, 1996; McGrother et al, 2002; McConkey et al, 2006) but have very high health needs and thus make up a proportionally larger section of the population with illness. Although it has been demonstrated that adults with intellectual disabilities have a higher prevalence of mental ill-health when compared to that reported for the general population (Bailey, 2008; Hassiotis et al, 2008; Cooper et al, 2007; Cooper & Bailey, 2001; Lund, 1985a; Corbett,1979), and some studies have shown a degree of persistence of behavioural problems and affective symptoms over time (Thompson & Reid, 2002; Collishaw et al, 2003), there is insufficient evidence to answer the question of whether this high prevalence is due to a high level of enduring mental ill-health or a high incidence of mental health, or indeed a combination of the two. To date, three studies (Holland et al, 2000; Zigman et al, 2004; van Schrojenstein Lantman-de Valk et al, 1997) have measured the incidence of dementia and only one study (van Schrojenstein Lantman-de Valk et al, 1997) has attempted to measure the incidence of affective disorder. No study has measured the overall incidence of mental ill-health in this population.

Similarly, although the population based prevalence studies by Deb et al (2001a), Cooper et al (2007) and Bailey (2008) have identified some associations with mental ill-health (female gender, severe intellectual disabilities, past psychiatric history, not living with a family carer, smoking, life events, urinary incontinence and not having immobility), it is unknown whether some of these factors are cause or effect. No study to date has identified any adult risk factors for the onset of all types of mental-ill health in adults with all levels and causes of intellectual disabilities. As a consequence, our current knowledge of the epidemiology of mental ill-health in this population is limited and almost non-existent with regard to incidence and predictive factors of mental ill-health. The aim of this study was to measure the 2 year incidence rate of all types of mental ill-health in a population based sample of adults with intellectual disabilities with sufficient numbers to allow investigation of possible predictive factors for the onset of mental ill-health and examine the 2 year chronicity of mental-ill health in this population.

Methods
A large scale population based study of the prevalence of mental ill-health in adults with intellectual disabilities living in Glasgow, undertaken during 2002-2003 (Cooper et al, 2007), provided the opportunity to carry out a prospective longitudinal cohort design study, with the prevalence study providing the sample and baseline data. The sample size was 651 with a cohort retention rate of 70%. All participants were assessed using a two stage process (screening then detailed psychiatric assessment of potential cases) at baseline and at the 2 year follow-up interview. A modified version of the PAS-ADD checklist (Moss et al, 1998), with a reduced threshold for caseness to increase sensitivity, plus a problem behaviour checklist, pervasive developmental disorders checklist, and past 2 years mental health needs questionnaire was used to screen for mental ill-health occurring at any point during the two year follow up. All participants with identified episodes of mental ill-health were referred to the Glasgow University Centre for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities for detailed psychiatric assessment using PPS-LD (Cooper, 1997), checklists for problem behaviour, ADHD and pervasive developmental disorders and the Test for Severe Impairment (Albert & Cohen, 1992) (for possible dementia) and consensus diagnosis according to clinician, DC-LD, ICD-10-DCR and DSM-IV–TR criteria. Incidence and recovery rates were calculated. Standardised incident ratios were calculated by comparing the findings with reported rates for the general population. Stepwise binary logistic regression was used to examine factors independently related to the incidence and chronicity of mental ill-health.

Key results
The two year incidence of episodes of mental ill-health in adults with intellectual disabilities according to clinical diagnosis was 16.3%. This incidence rate is similar to the incidence rate of mental disorders in the general population but the type and proportion of individual disorders that accounted for this rate was different. Approximately 20% of this incidence rate was accounted for by problem behaviour, the incidence of psychosis, bipolar affective disorder and early onset dementia was very much higher than that reported for the general population with standardised incident ratios of 9.93 (95% CI 2.05-29.02), 100.20 (95% CI 12.14-361.96) and 66.67 (95% CI 18.16-170.69) respectively. The incidence of substance misuse and anxiety disorders was lower than that reported for the general population with standardised incident ratios of 0.04 (95% CI 0.00-0.24) and 0.17 (95% CI 0.06-0.37) respectively, although the lowered rate of anxiety disorders might be due to the methodological limitations of this study. Factors found to be predictive of episodes of mental ill-health (excluding problem behaviour, dementia, and delirium) were, in order of decreasing strength of association: not living with a family carer, not having immobility, mental ill-health in the past, more severe intellectual disabilities, abuse/adversity in adulthood, and urinary incontinence.

A high level of chronic mental ill-health was found with a 2 year recovery rate of only 32.5%. Factors identified as associated with the endurance of mental ill-health (excluding problem behaviours) in adults with intellectual disabilities were, in decreasing order of strength of association: problem behaviour, not having Down's syndrome, not having immobility and smoking.

Conclusions
The overall incidence of mental ill-health in adults with intellectual disabilities is similar to that reported for the general population but the type and proportion of disorders accounting for this is different. There is high level of enduring mental ill-health in adults with intellectual disabilities. It appears that the high point prevalence of mental ill-health in adults with intellectual disabilities compared to the general population is accounted for more by a higher level of endurance of mental ill-health than by a higher incidence. The identification of risk factors for the onset of mental ill-health means that hypothesis based studies, leading on to the development of interventions and then randomised controlled trials are now possible.


A computational model is presented for the steady state prediction of currents, waves, and sea surface elevations in a coastal region outside the surf zone. Irrotational flow of surface gravity waves on large-scale steady currents over a gently sloping sea bed is considered. A second order Stokian approach is used, and all dynamic quantities are integrated over depth and averaged over time, in that order. The flow equations and the boundary conditions are presented. A method is developed for the solution of the non-linear steady model by introducing a sequence of two-level calculations, viz. a 'wave level' and a 'current level'. The variables are split on the two levels. The wave field is found, using that the flux of wave action is constant between adjacent wave rays. The current field and the mean sea surface elevation are determined using a Galerkin finite element method. The current field is approximated by triangular elements with linear interpolation functions, and the mean sea surface elevation is approximated by a triangular element with quadratic (parabolic) interpolation functions. A quasi-twodimensional test solution is tabulated.


Abstract The taphonomy of a newly discovered petrified forest in the Two Medicine Formation, south of Choteau, Montana, provides new constraints on the pre-thrusting position of the Boulder batholith and Elkhorn Mountains Volcanics. The petrified forest consists of more than 200 charcoalified, subaligned trees encased in an ash flow tuff and an immediately overlying bentonite. The ash flow tuff has been dated at 80.002± 0.114Ma (39Ar/40Ar on plagioclase). The ash flow and bentonite are interpreted to record a single catastrophic eruptive event that toppled and entombed the forest. The mean azimuth of the prostrate trunks, which are interpreted as the direction of travel of the ash flow, is 037° (2σ = 35°). Based upon age, mineralogy, and the absence of other contemporaneous volcanic centers, it is concluded that the Late Cretaceous Elkhorn Mountains Volcanics were the most likely source of the tuff and bentonite that encase the trees. The mean azimuth of the tree trunks is consistent with palinspastic restorations of the northern Rocky Mountain fold-thrust belt that place the Elkhorn Mountains Volcanics and their plutonic equivalent, the Boulder batholith, ∼65–110 km northwest of their present position during Campanian time. This restored position is ∼150–200 km from the petrified forest, making the ash flow one of the farthest-traveled documented flows with enough power to topple mature trees.


We report the development of a tuneable plasmonic nanochain immunoassay with increased sensitivity over traditional monodisperse nanoparticle lateral flow tests. Our approach takes advantage of the unique self-assembling properties of polyamidoamine dendrimers with gold nanoparticles in aqueous media to create one-dimensional nanochains, with a distinct red to blue colour change, attributable to a longitudinal plasmon resonance, which can be readily detected by eye and a digital camera. We optimise and characterise nanochain formation and stability using UV-visible spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy and dynamic light scattering. As a proof-of-principle we focus on the application of nanochains for point-of-care diagnostics for p24, an important biomarker of early HIV infections and successfully detect p24 with a limit of detection of 5 ng ml-1 in pseudo-serum, 4 fold more sensitive than comparable studies with gold nanoparticles. These findings and underlying concepts highlight the potential of advanced functional organic-inorganic composite nanomaterials to diagnose infections, with broad applicability to non-communicable diseases.


The origin of "supersolidity" of solid 4He, which was reported by Kim and Chan, has not yet been clarified. Although Bose-Einstein condensation of zero-point vacancies (ZPVs) was initially considered to be a possible origin, recent studies imply that crystal imperfections in the solid samples are strongly associated with the observed supersolid behaviors. In two-dimensional (2D) 3He system on graphite, on the other hand, a novel phase due to quantum hopping of ZPVs has been found. This suggests that ZPVs form also in 2D 4He solid systems and their quantum hopping results in superfluidity of ZPVs, namely, supersolidity. In order to search for the possible 2D supersolid state, we perform torsional oscillator studies for 4He films adsorbed on graphite. At the 4He coverage of 18.7 nm-2 a positive frequency shift was observed below 300 mK. The size of the shift decreases with increasing the oscillation velocity. This behavior closely resembles to the supersolid behavior of bulk solid 4He.


A new simple chemical route was used to synthesis ATH nanoparticles; using sorbic acid, Sodiumaluminate (SA) and Cetyl TrimethylAmmonium Bromide (CTAB) as surfactant at room temperature with ultrasonication and vigorous stirring. This paper mainly discussed on effects of Sodium Aluminates concentration, Type of surfactants, pH and temperature of reaction mixture while precipitation Lowering of precipitation temperature from40 °C to 30 °C shows sharp reduction in particle size from 200 to 100 nm. Increase in molarity of SA solution increases products yield with increase in particle size. Lightweight and de agglomerated particles appeared in presences of surfactant (CTAB). High yield with reduced particle size was optimized at precipitation pH 12 and in 1.3- 2 mol/Lof Sodium Aluminate concentration. The reported method is new, cheap and fast which will make it suitable for large scale production. Particle size and product yield changes on changing any of the parameter. Fourier Transformed Infra red Spectroscopy analysis (FTIR), XRD, Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), Particle Sizing System(PSS), Braunauer-Emmet-Teller (BET) Surface area and Thermo gravimetric analyzer (TGA), were used to characterized ATH nano particles.


A reliable method, combining raster scan process and real-time damage event imaging, has been developed to accurately determine the initiator inducing low-density laser damage at 1064 nm in large aperture solgel coatings. It is revealed that there were two distinct initiators, the visible surface defect and the invisible defect. Online detection and offline morphology analysis demonstrated that ∼96% of low-density damage sites were initiated by surface defects. All types of surface defects were investigated to find their reaction during exposure to laser irradiation. A kind of surface defect consisting of a central spot and a circle of microvariation was admitted as the main initiator. Its size and hidden depth revealed the characteristics of a laser damage initiator. The morphology and depth profile of the laser damage site consisted of a central point and surrounding delamination area, reconfirming our judgment of initiator property and disclosed laser damage mechanism. A high temperature, generated by initiator absorption, induced a change of phase and produced a huge local pressure. This pressure could hump the surrounding solgel coating, break off the humped coating with a shearing stress, and finally remove it from the sample surface.


In this paper, we compare and contrast two techniques to improve capacity/conflict miss traffic in CC-NUMA DSM clusters. Page migration/replication optimizes read-write accesses to a page used by a single processor by migrating the page to that processor and replicates all read-shared pages in the sharers' local memories. R-NUMA optimizes read-write accesses to any page by allowing a processor to cache that page in its main memory. Page migration/replication requires less hardware complexity as compared to R-NUMA, but has limited applicability and incurs much higher overheads even with tuned hardware/software support.
In this paper, we compare and contrast page migration/replication and R-NUMA on simulated clusters of symmetric multiprocessors executing shared-memory applications. Our results show that: (1) both page migration/replication and R-NUMA significantly improve the system performance over "first-touch" migration in many applications, (2) page migration/replication has limited opportunity and can not eliminate all the capacity/conflict misses even with fast hardware support and unlimited amount of memory, (3) R-NUMA always performs best given a page cache large enough to fit an application's primary working set and subsumes page migration/replication, (4) R-NUMA benefits more from hardware support to accelerate page operations than page migration/replication, and (5) integrating page migration/replication into R-NUMA to help reduce the hardware cost requires sophisticated mechanisms and policies to select candidates for page migration/replication.


An infosuasive web application is mainly intended to be at the same time informative and persuasive, i.e., it aims at supporting knowledge needs and it has also the (declared or not declared) goal of influencing user's opinions, attitudes and behaviors. Most web applications, in fact, are infosuasive (except those whose aim is mainly operational). In this paper, we investigate the complex set of elements that informs the very early design of infosuasive web applications. We propose a conceptual framework aimed at supporting the actors involved in this process to integrate their different viewpoints, to organize the variety of issues that need to be analyzed, to find a direction in the numerous design options, and to represent the results of this activity in an effective way.
 Our approach is value-driven since it is centered around the concept of communication value, regarded as a vehicle to fulfill communication goals on specific communication targets. We place the analysis of these aspects in the wider context of web requirements analysis, highlighting their relationships with business values analysis and user needs analysis. We pinpoint how values and communication goals impact on various design dimensions of infosuasive web application - contents, information architecture, interaction, operations, and lay-out. Our approach is multidisciplinary, and was inspired to goal-based and value-based requirements engineering (often used in web engineering), to brand design (often used in marketing), and to value-centered design "frameworks"(as proposed by the HCI community). A case study exemplifies our methodological proposal, discussing a large project in which we are currently involved.


Towards the development of drug carriers that are capable of crossing the Blood Brain Barrier, the techniques of emulsion polymerisation and nanoprecipitation have been utilised to produce nanoparticulate carriers from a systematic series of alkylglyceryl dextrans (of two different average molecular weights, 6 kDa and 100 kDa) that had been functionalised with ethyl and butyl cyanoacrylates. Also, zero length grafting of polylactic acid to butyl, octyl and hexadecylglyceryl dextrans has allowed the preparation of polylactic acid-functionalised nanoparticles. All materials and derived nanoparticles have been characterised by a combination of spectroscopic and analytical techniques. The average size of nanoparticles has been found to be in the range 100-500 nm. Tagging or loading of the nanoparticles with fluorophores or model drugs allowed the preliminary investigation of their capability to act as controlled-release devices. The effects of an esterase on the degradation of one such nanoparticulate carrier have been studied. Testing against bend3 cells revealed that all materials display dose-dependent cytotoxicity profiles, and allowed the selection of nanocarriers that may be potentially useful for further testing as therapeutic delivery vehicles for conditions of the brain.


Bioassays of 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) in fifth-instar Rhodnius prolixus haemolymph using Calliphora salivary glands indicate that: (1) biologically active 5-HT is present, (2) in unfed animals there is not enough 5-HT to stimulate Malpighian tubule fluid secretion, and (3) there is enough 5-HT soon after the initiation of feeding to stimulate rapid tubule secretion. The 5-HT receptor antagonists ketanserin and spiperone reversibly and selectively inhibit 5-HT-induced fluid secretion, indicating the presence of specific 5-HT receptors on Rhodnius Malpighian tubules. The data provide evidence that 5-HT is a naturally occurring hormone acting with a previously described peptide hormone to regulate diuresis in this species.


This work examines skeletal muscle catabolism in cancer and its attenuation by Eicosapentaenoic Acid (EPA). In vivo studies in mice bearing a cachexia inducing murine colon adenocarcinoma - MAC16, demonstrated an elevation in the gastrocnemius muscle in the activity and expression of regulatory components of the ubiquitin-proteasome proteolytic pathway. This was accompanied by an accelerated loss of muscle tissue correlating with an increase in overall weight loss, all of which were attenuated by prior daily dosing with EPA. Recently a proteolysis inducing factor (PIF) has been isolated from the MAC16 tumour, and from the serum and urine of cachectic cancer patients. Previous studies have shown that PIF induces protein degradation in vitro, and that this is possibly mediated through 15-hydroxyeicosatetraenoic acid (15-HETE), a metabolite of the n-6 polyunsaturated fatty acid- arachidonate. Employing the murine myoblast cell line C2C12, it was shown that both PIF and 15-HETE increased protein degradation and expression of proteasome subunits, processes which were again attenuated by prior incubation in EPA. Similarly, in NMRI mice which had been fasted for 24hours, EPA and the lipoxygenase inhibitor CV-6504 (but not structurally related fatty acids) inhibited skeletal muscle proteolysis and expression of various proteasome subunits, showing that firstly, EPA may be anti-cachexic partly through its ability to influence 15-HETE production; and secondly that the effect is specific for EPA as other fatty acids had no effect. Previous studies have suggested the involvement of the signal transduction family NFKB in response to PIF in the liver. It has been demonstrated here that both PIF and 15-HETE increased nuclear translocation of NFKB in the skeletal muscle of tumour bearing mice and that EPA inhibited this process by its ability to prevent the degradation of the NFKB inhibitor protein IKB. When an NFKB inhibitor was added to C2C12 myotubes, prior to the addition of PIF, proteasome activity and protein degradation was inhibited, showing that NFKB is responsible for the increased proteasome activity and muscle catabolism induced by PIF. Taken together this work suggests that 15-hydroxyeicosatetraenoic acid is the intracellular mediator for PIF induced protein degradation in skeletal muscle and that elevated muscle catabolism is accomplished through an increased functioning of the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway, a process possibly mediated through an NFKB dependent mechanism. The anticachectic (and possibly the anti-tumourigenic) effects of EPA appear to be achieved in part by its ability to inhibit the degradation of IKB and possibly by its ability to interfere with 15-HETE production.


This paper presents the results of a qualitative survey of commercial owners, managers, and occupants in the City of Berkeley who have invested in on-site bicycle facilities such as secure parking, showers, changing rooms, and clothing lockers, what we are calling "bicycle-oriented design†(BOD). The sites represent a selection of building types common in the commercial building stock in U.S. cities. The research is designed to answer three questions about the use of BOD: (1) what were motivations behind the decision to invest in BOD (2) what are the challenges and rewards for investing in BOD? and (3) what types of BOD were chosen? The survey was carried out through structured interviews and by site visits. This research builds on the growing literature on bicycle facilities by exploring the concept that bicycle infrastructure does not stop at the door. We find a number of motivations and challenges shared across a variety of settings, and the insights derived from the study can be applied to broader situations. Operational needs and a desire for "green†image-building and marketing are important contributors. Space costs, especially the cost of interior space, posed challenges. Solutions at some sites suggest strategies that could be applied in other settings. The results also indicate that many decisions on specific BOD components were made on an ad hoc basis, indicating a potential need for an authoritative source of information and guidelines about BOD because much of the information is scattered across different agencies and sources.


Each year, agencies issue thousands of pages of regulations through the notice and comment process. Given the extensive involvement of the federal government, the health and human services field is particularly affected by this kind of policymaking. Over the past decade, this process has drawn significant scholarly attention. However, policy creation via its close cousin—the agency guidance document development process—is largely unexplored within the fields of public administration and policy. Yet, over time, the utilization and importance of agency guidance has grown enormously. Indeed, in some areas, such as food and drug regulation, agency guidances are now the policy tool of choice for government regulators. This article provides an overview of agency guidance and its important role in the policymaking process. Additionally, it details an October 2019 U.S. presidential executive order on the subject, while also contextualizing the existing literature. The article then reviews select survey results drawn from a study of 41 U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations—20 of which were promulgated using the notice and comment process and 21 via the guidance process—to further illustrate the topic. The results imply a clear need for additional quantitative scholarship to better understand the political and policy underpinnings attached to regulating via agency guidance documents, particularly as they related to health and human services.


Gas turbine engines for propulsion operate under harsh conditions including gas temperatures that exceed the melting point of the metal, high mechanical stresses, and particulate ingestion such as sand. To maintain a low and uniform metal temperature to extend the life of a turbine component, a complex scheme of internal convective cooling and external film-cooling is required. Gas turbine engines operated in sandy or dusty environments can ingest a large quantity of sand into the mainstream and, more importantly, into the cooling system. Sand ingested into the coolant system has the potential to reduce or block off the flow intended to cool the turbine blades or vanes. If the source of coolant air to a critical region of a turbine blade were partially blocked, it would result in a substantial reduction in component life. This study includes establishing a methodology for testing sand ingestion characteristics on a simulated turbine component with film-cooling holes at room temperature and engine temperatures. The study evaluates a simple array of laser drilled film-cooling holes, similar to a showerhead on the leading edge of an airfoil. The blocking characteristics of this design indicate that increasing the airflow or decreasing the sand amount results in a decreased blockage. It was also determined that as the metal temperature increases, the blockage from a given amount of sand increases. The methodology used in the primary portion of this thesis was modified to test sand ingestion characteristics on actual turbine blades with film-cooling holes at room temperature and engine temperatures. The study evaluated the blockage performance of several different turbine blades including the F-100-229-full, F-100-229-TE, and the F119 with a new trailing edge cooling methodology know as a microcircuit. It was shown that increasing the airflow or pressure ratio, or decreasing the sand amount would result in decreased blockage. It was also shown that over a certain metal and coolant temperature, the blockage is significantly worsened. However, it was also shown on the F-119 turbine blade that below a given metal temperature, there is no impact of metal or coolant temperature on sand blockage.


ABSTRACT Physical force has emerged as a key regulator of tissue homeostasis, and plays an important role in embryogenesis, tissue regeneration, and disease progression. Currently, the details of protein interactions under elevated physical stress are largely missing, therefore, preventing the fundamental, molecular understanding of mechano-transduction. This is in part due to the difficulty isolating large quantities of cell lysates exposed to force-bearing conditions for biochemical analysis. We designed a simple, easy-to-fabricate, large-scale cell stretch device for the analysis of force-sensitive cell responses. Using proximal biotinylation (BioID) analysis or phospho-specific antibodies, we detected force-sensitive biochemical changes in cells exposed to prolonged cyclic substrate stretch. For example, using promiscuous biotin ligase BirA* tagged α-catenin, the biotinylation of myosin IIA increased with stretch, suggesting the close proximity of myosin IIA to α-catenin under a force bearing condition. Furthermore, using phospho-specific antibodies, Akt phosphorylation was reduced upon stretch while Src phosphorylation was unchanged. Interestingly, phosphorylation of GSK3β, a downstream effector of Akt pathway, was also reduced with stretch, while the phosphorylation of other Akt effectors was unchanged. These data suggest that the Akt-GSK3β pathway is force-sensitive. This simple cell stretch device enables biochemical analysis of force-sensitive responses and has potential to uncover molecules underlying mechano-transduction.


Abstract We used satellite transmitters (platform transmitting terminals or PTTs) during 2002 and 2003 to document spring migration timing, routes, stopover sites, and nesting sites of adult female Northern Pintails (Anas acuta) from major wintering areas of the Gulf Coast (N = 20) and Playa Lakes Regions (PLR, N = 20) in Texas, and the Middle Rio Grande Valley, New Mexico (MRGV, N = 15). Some Pintails tagged in the MRGV continued movements into Mexico. Poor winter survival or PTT failure reduced sample size to 15 for PLR Pintails, 5 for Gulf Coast Pintails, and 11 for MRGV Pintails. Apparent winter survival was 66% lower for Texas Gulf Coast PTT-tagged Pintails than for those from the PLR and MRGV. Pintails from each area used different routes to their respective breeding grounds. PTT-tagged Pintails from the MRGV followed the Rio Grande Valley north to southern Colorado, before traveling on to the Dakotas and Canada or traveled northeast and joined the migration of PLR Pintails in Texas or Kansas. The latter made initial stops in Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, or the Dakotas. Gulf Coast Pintails traveled through north-central Oklahoma or central Kansas. Pintails that had stopped first in Kansas or Nebraska tended to settle to nest in the United States. Wetland availability in the Prairie Pothole Region of the Northern Great Plains influenced nesting destinations of PTT-tagged Pintails, but individuals settled across a wide swath of northern North America. We did not detect any consistently-used spring staging areas. Therefore, negative impacts to any of the marked populations, or their wetland habitats, may have continental implications.


Literally hundreds of thousands of users of 2D computer-aided design (CAD) tools are in the difficult process of transitioning to 3D CAD tools. A common problem for these users is disorientation in the abstract virtual 3D environments that occur while developing new 3D scenes. To help address this problem, we present a novel in-scene 3D widget called the ViewCube as a 3D orientation indicator and controller. The ViewCube is a cube-shaped widget placed in a corner of the window. When acting as an orientation indicator, the ViewCube turns to reflect the current view direction as the user re-orients the scene using other tools. When used as an orientation controller, the ViewCube can be dragged, or the faces, edges, or corners can be clicked on, to easily orient the scene to the corresponding view. We conducted a formal experiment to measure the performance of the ViewCube comparing: (1) ArcBall-style dragging using the ViewCube for manual view switching, (2) clicking on face/edge/corner elements of the ViewCube for automated view switching and (3) clicking on a dedicated row of buttons for automated view switching. The results indicate that users prefer and are almost twice as fast at using the ViewCube with dragging compared to clicking techniques, independent of a number of ViewCube representations that we examined.


Cosmological parameter estimation is traditionally performed in the Bayesian context. By adopting an "agnostic" statistical point of view, we show the interest of confronting the Bayesian results to a frequentist approach based on profile-likelihoods. To this purpose, we have developed the Cosmological Analysis with a Minuit Exploration of the Likelihood ("CAMEL") software. Written from scratch in pure C++, emphasis was put in building a clean and carefully-designed project where new data and/or cosmological computations can be easily included.
CAMEL incorporates the latest cosmological likelihoods and gives access from the very same input file to several estimation methods: (i) A high quality Maximum Likelihood Estimate (a.k.a "best fit") using MINUIT ; (ii) profile likelihoods, (iii) a new implementation of an Adaptive Metropolis MCMC algorithm that relieves the burden of reconstructing the proposal distribution.
We present here those various statistical techniques and roll out a full use-case that can then used as a tutorial. We revisit the $\Lambda$CDM parameters determination with the latest Planck data and give results with both methodologies. Furthermore, by comparing the Bayesian and frequentist approaches, we discuss a "likelihood volume effect" that affects the optical reionization depth when analyzing the high multipoles part of the Planck data.
The software, used in several Planck data analyzes, is available from this http URL. Using it does not require advanced C++ skills.


Politics reflects a seemingly incontrovertible condition—any imaginable human population is diverse across multiple, overlapping dimensions including material interests, moral and ethical commitments, and cultural attachments. Such diversity means, in turn, that disagreement and conflict are unavoidable. Under these circumstances politics largely consists in contests over the contours of shared institutional arrangements. Given that there almost always are a number of ways to institutionalize social interaction, any population occupying the circumstances of politics must determine which institutional form or arrangement to rely on in any particular domain. The "priority" of democracy, on our account, derives from its usefulness in approaching this crucial task. This priority derives from features that are, in our view, unique to democracy, namely a level of reflexivity that distinguishes it from other ways of coordinating ongoing social interaction. As we demonstrate, much of the literature on social institutions tacitly and improperly privileges a quite different component of our institutional arrangements, namely markets. We show that once one clarifies the premises and argumentative strategies common to this literature, it simply is not possible to sustain the privilege it accords to markets. In fact, we argue that the analytical models and explanatory strategies that institutionalists deploy actually sustain our case for the priority of democracy.


The paper introduces a monitoring tool that was designed for an existing network of Wi-Fi hotspots. This was done by adding data collection and visualization components to the existing network. Syslog protocol was used for data collection and left running for two months monitoring network's performance. Google Maps was used for Visualizing overall network's performance. The tool was tested with experts and it was compared to existing monitoring tools and It was found that the monitoring tool was more scalable and effective than traditional monitoring tools.


Despite a history of extremism and unconventional political developments in Kenya, relatively little empirical research has been done to determine why and how individuals join al-Shabaab and the Mombasa Republican Council (MRC). This paper is based on interviews with Kenyan and Somali-Kenyan individuals associated with al-Shabaab and the MRC. These organisations have very different profiles. Al-Shabaab pursues an Islamist terrorist agenda while the MRC pursues a secessionist agenda; the latter has not carried out terrorist attacks. Muslim youth have joined extremist groups as a counter-reaction to what they see as government-imposed 'collective punishment' driven by the misguided perception that all Somali and Kenyan-Somali nationals are potential terrorists. As long as Kenyan citizens exclusively identify with an ethnic/religious identity that is perceived to be under threat, radicalisation will increase.


J ockocracy: Queering Masculinity in Sport is a book which is in itself revolutionary and innovative. It is novel because it provides insights into the Queering of male homosocial sporting environments and the relationship to masculinity and the body in sporting contexts. It provides chapters which cover multidimensional under-researched areas of knowledge and highlights particular Queered epistemological challenges. This book considers the relationship that men have with their bodies in homosocial sporting environments and as such acknowledgement is given to the bonds that men make in defining their masculinity; this includes the role of the body and the environment in which this body exists. This book provides chapters which cover specialist areas such as: the origins of masculinity and sport, queer theory, sexuality and masculinity, metrosexulaity, sport and queer theory and finally provides a theory of masculinity in the context of queered sport. It is instrumental in developing the constructs of Masculine Capital in sport and as such this book should have an impact on sports sociology and sports management but also provide significant ideas for gender, masculinity, and sexuality studies courses  The book was a monograph of my PhD, which was selected for publication. This was published with my PhD supervisor as co-author, but I led the editing, and publication process of this book.


This guide outlines the process of organizing and financing a cooperative business. Rather than being a complete handbook, this publication represents the most important elements to consider when forming a cooperative. It lists what special expertise is necessary, and where to look for help. Earlier versions of this publication emphasized working with groups of agricultural producers to develop markets and sources of supply for farm operators. This version has been broadened to also include nonfarm cooperative applications. The cooperative business structure, already shown to be successful in agriculture, also has been useful in helping others obtain desired benefits or provide needed services in areas like housing, utilities, finance, health care, child care, and small business support.


As digital technology thrusts complexity upon copyright law, conflict has escalated between copyright holders desperate to institute a vigorous enforcement mechanism against copying in order to protect their ownership and others who underscore the importance of public interests in accessing and using copyrighted works. This study explores whether Creative Commons CC licenses are a viable solution for copyright protection in the digital era. Through a mixed-methods approach involving a web-based survey of CC licensors, a content analysis of CC-licensed works, and interviews, the study characterizes CC licensors, the ways that CC licensors produce creative works, the private interests that CC licenses serve, and the public interests that CC licenses serve. The findings suggest that the Creative Commons can alleviate some of the problems caused by the copyright conflict.


Model fusion is an emerging study in collective learning where heterogeneous experts with private data and learning architectures need to combine their black-box knowledge for better performance. Existing literature achieves this via a local knowledge distillation scheme that transfuses the predictive patterns of each pre-trained expert onto a white-box imitator model, which can be incorporated efficiently into a global model. This scheme however does not extend to multi-task scenarios where different experts were trained to solve different tasks and only part of their distilled knowledge is relevant to a new task. To address this multi-task challenge, we develop a new fusion paradigm that represents each expert as a distribution over a spectrum of predictive prototypes, which are isolated from task-specific information encoded within the prototype distribution. The task-agnostic prototypes can then be reintegrated to generate a new model that solves a new task encoded with a different prototype distribution. The fusion and adaptation performance of the proposed framework is demonstrated empirically on several real-world benchmark datasets.


BACKGROUND
Physical activity is important for maintaining healthy weight. The time of day when exercise is performed-a highly discretionary aspect of behavior-may impact weight control, but evidence is limited. Thus, we examined the association between the timing of physical activity and obesity risk in women.

METHODS
A cross-sectional analysis was conducted among 7157 Women's Health Study participants who participated in an ancillary study begun in 2011 that is measuring physical activity using accelerometers. The exposure was percentage of total accelerometer counts accumulated before 12:00 noon and the outcome was obesity.

RESULTS
Mean (±SD) BMI among participants was 26.1 (±4.9) kg/m2 and 1322 women were obese. The mean activity counts per day was 203,870 (±95,811) of which a mean 47.1% (±11.5%) were recorded in the morning. In multivariable-adjusted models, women who recorded < 39% (lowest quartile) of accelerometer counts before 12:00 noon had a 26% higher odds of being obese, compared with those recording ≥ 54% (highest quartile) of counts before noon (Ptrend = 0.02).

CONCLUSIONS
These study findings-that women who are less active during morning hours may be at higher risk of obesity-if confirmed can provide a novel strategy to help combat the important health problem of obesity.


Beginning with a startling endorsement of the patristic view of Judaism - that it was a 'carnal' religion, in contrast to the spiritual vision of the Church - Daniel Boyarin argues that rabbinic Judaism was based on a set of assumptions about the human body that were profoundly different from those of Christianity. The body - specifically, the sexualized body - could not be renounced, for the Rabbis believed as a religious principle in the generation of offspring and hence in intercourse sanctioned by marriage. This belief bound men and women together and made impossible the various modes of gender separation practiced by early Christians. The commitment to coupling did not imply a resolution of the unequal distribution of power that characterized relations between the sexes in all late-antique societies. But Boyarin argues strenuously that the male construction and treatment of women in rabbinic Judaism did not rest on a loathing of the female body. Thus, without ignoring the currents of sexual domination that course through the Talmudic texts, Boyarin insists that the rabbinic account of human sexuality, different from that of the Hellenistic Judaisms and Pauline Christianity, has something important and empowering to teach us today.


Geodetic SAR Positioning with TerraSAR-X and Sentinel-1
We report from very successful experiments conducted during the recent years with a radar corner reflector at the geodetic observatory in Wettzell, Germany, where we achieved a one centimeter (absolute) range pixel localization accuracy. The overall localization error can only be reduced from decimeters to one centimeter with our developed compensation methods which include the correction of dry and wet atmospheric delays, ionospheric total electron content, solid earth tides, continental drift, atmospheric pressure loading and ocean tidal loading.
With this high accuracy available, absolute pixel localization or speckle/feature tracking can be used as an interesting and powerful alternative to InSAR. The advantages are that 2D information can be retrieved (InSAR only 1D), absolute positions and displacements can be retrieved (no reference point required) and that the method is very robust since phase unwrapping is not required.
The accuracy in real world applications is limited by the pixel resolution, the object contrast and the coherence.
Our presentation gives an overview of monitoring results of a radar reflector over more than one year. Furthermore we report on the used methods for geodetic correction.
Finally, we give first examples of real world applications and predict the feasibility of our developed techniques for Sentinel-1.


Soil water content changes were supplemented with calculations of water flow between soil layers to provide an improved description of water uptake by dryland wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). This root-sink description of water use, recognizing both measured change in water content and vertical redistribution (upward or downward) of water by flow between soil layers, is needed for a better understanding of plant-soil and atmospheric factors involved in water stress when the wheat plant must rely on stored soil water for long periods. Water content changes were estimated from neutron meter measurements. Soil water flux was estimated from field measurements of both hydraulic conductivity and hydraulic head gradients; unsaturated conductivity beyond the range of field measurement was calculated with the pore interaction model of Marshall matched to field measured values at 250 mb. Seasonal water-uptake patterns, determined by the root-sink description, differed from those shown by only water content measurements. Peak water-use rates did not coincide with maximum leaf area index, but coincided with the period from heading to completed head extension. Water flux in the profile was important for supplying water during grain filling and was critical in this layered soil, which restricted rooting to depths less than 150 cm.


What makes us responsive, however occasionally, to moral demands? Why do people sometimes own up, go off to fight unwillingly in what they consider to be just wars, refrain from stealing a march on friends, and so on, even when they could by doing otherwise reap advantages far outweighing, in the scales of ordinary prudential rationality, any consequent disadvantage? Why has morality such a hold over us?


Provides a modern mathematical approach to the design of communication networks for graduate students, blending control, optimization, and stochastic network theories. A broad range of performance analysis tools are discussed, including important advanced topics that have been made accessible to students for the first time. Taking a top-down approach to network protocol design, the authors begin with the deterministic model and progress to more sophisticated models. Network algorithms and protocols are tied closely to the theory, illustrating the practical engineering applications of each topic. The background behind the mathematical analyses is given before the formal proofs and is supported by worked examples, enabling students to understand the big picture before going into the detailed theory. End-of-chapter problems cover a range of difficulties, with complex problems broken into several parts, and hints to many problems are provided to guide students. Full solutions are available online for instructors.


In today's world, natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, crises such as terrorist attacks and protests threaten the lives of many people. Hence, in this research we present a mathematical modeling that provide efficient and effective model to locate temporary depot, equitable distribution of resources and movement of injured people to health centers, with the aim of developing the multi-objective model and considering multiple central depot, multiple temporary depot and several type of relief items in the model . This paper is considered certainty state and uncertainty of influencing parameters of the models in robust optimization for three different levels uncertainty and in different size with consideration of traditional goals function and humanitarian purposes functions simultaneously. The model has been solved with multi-objective Particle Swarm optimization algorithm (MOPSO) and GAMS software to validate the model. Some numerical examples are presented. In Addition, we present sensitivity analyzes of model and study the relationship of the number of temporary depot location and the number of injured people to move to health centers and the number of uncovered damaged points.


For peer-production projects to be successful, members must develop a specific and universal language that enables them to cooperate. Complicating the development of language in some projects is the lack of formalized structures (e.g., roles) that communicate to members the norms and practices around language. We address the question of how do role differences among participants interact with the adoption and dissemination of new terminologies in open peer production communities? Answering this question is crucial because we want communities to be productive even when selfmanaged, which requires understanding how shared language emerges. We examine this question using a structurational lens in the setting of a citizen science project. Exploring the use of words in the Gravity Spy citizen science project, we find that many words are reused and that most new words that are introduced are not picked up, showing a reproduction of structure. However, some novel words are used by others, showing an evolution of the structure. Participants with roles closer to the science are more likely to have their words reused, showing the mutually reinforcing nature of structures of signification, legitimation, and domination.


: This article deals with a work by a contemporary Serbian composer Miroslav Miša Savić (b. 1954): St. Lazarus Waltz for one or two grand pianos, with or without children's toy pianos. Since St. Lazarus is a children's holiday, the composer's idea was to depict children by toy pianos, while the grand pianos are 'parents'. The waltz exists in several versions: from the first one, where the children pianos are quite small and their musical parts very restricted, to the version for two 'adult' pianos, which describes the moment in life when children have grown up and left their parental home. Aside from exploring these musical 'family ties', Savić implements a simple yet ingenious construc tive principle in all versions of this waltz. The structure of the piece is based on the ex ploitation of the system of equal temperament and on the Fibonacci row, and this frame is filled with several layers of musical references, including: Johann Sebastian Bach and other composers who wrote 'well-tempered' piano music; repetitive/processual minimal ism, a style that Savić and his peers brought into Serbian music, but have since evolved in different directions; the Serbian tradition of romantic salon piano pieces; finally, the Orthodox tradition, but referenced in a way very different from the 'neo-Orthodox' trend that has been present in Serbian art music since the late 1980s.


This thesis, 'Moving towards a parrhesiastic pedagogy', explores the relationship between experience, social power and transformation through a Foucauldian (1972, 1990, 1992, 1995, 1998, 2000a, 2002c) discursive analysis of the author's coming out journal. As a critical autoethnographic (Reed-Danahay 1997) study, it examines how the dominant discourses of the journal construct versions of sex, sexuality and gender that simultaneously enable and constrain multiple positions of subjectivity (Butler 1997b; Davies 1991).
This investigation into the nexus of power, discourse and the construction of the self is an important vehicle to advance critical and feminist pedagogy's agenda towards promoting individual social change and transformation (Taylor & Vintages 2004). The thesis explores how agency results from a critical reflexivity that examines the practices of self-constitution within/against (Lather 1991) dominant discourses and their concomitant relations of power. Analysing the strategies and techniques that are invoked to both sustain and resist the play of these relations maximises capacity for transformation and change (Foucault 2002c; Poster 1989).
The aim of the discourse analysis is to uncover and dissect discursive conventions and make apparent the partiality and situatedness of language and knowledge production. This will involve understanding the frames and boundaries that discourses establish around what can be considered as knowledge; how these knowledge systems construct normalising effects, creating fictions of truth that appear natural and unquestionable; the techniques through which the self is induced to govern itself and comply with these normalising ideas, and the ways in which the self is never fully subsumed within discourse, always refusing to be fully determined. A view of poststructural agency is constructed for educational practice that facilitates a critical ontology of subjectivity within parrhesiastic (McLaren 2002; O'Leary 2002) moments that disturb dominant versions of truth/knowledge/self practices (Foucault 1993, 1998, 2000; Gore 1993, 2002; O'Leary 2002; Tamboukou 2003).


Kyasanur forest disease (KFD), a tick-borne hemorrhagic fever known in India as monkey fever, has been a regular visitor to southwestern India9s Karnataka state since the virus first emerged in 1956. Year after year, the region would see, on average, about 400 cases and a couple dozen deaths. Then, in late 2012, the virus made a geographic break, sickening forest workers in the Bandipur Tiger Reserve, a popular ecotourism destination. The Bandipur outbreak alerted Indian scientists to disconcerting gaps in knowledge about KFD, and it reinforced a sense that the nation is acutely ill-prepared to combat emerging viruses, especially in hotspots like southwestern India that have high biodiversity and heavy human-animal interactions. To fill these gaps and gird itself against other emerging pathogens, the Indian government in 2013 launched a 5-year, $107 million effort to open 160 virology research laboratories nationwide.


The nonequispaced Fourier transform arises in a variety of application areas, from medical imaging to radio astronomy to the numerical solution of partial differential equations. In a typical problem, one is given an irregular sampling of N data in the frequency domain and one is interested in reconstructing the corresponding function in the physical domain. When the sampling is uniform, the fast Fourier transform (FFT) allows this calculation to be computed in O(N log N) operations rather than O(N2) operations. Unfortunately, when the sampling is nonuniform, the FFT does not apply. Over the last few years, a number of algorithms have been developed to overcome this limitation and are often referred to as nonuniform FFTs (NUFFTs). These rely on a mixture of interpolation and the judicious use of the FFT on an oversampled grid (A. Dutt and V. Rokhlin, SIAM J. Sci. Comput., 14 (1993), pp. 1368-1383). In this paper, we observe that one of the standard interpolation or "gridding" schemes, based on Gaussians, can be accelerated by a significant factor without precomputation and storage of the interpolation weights. This is of particular value in two- and three dimensional settings, saving either lodN in storage in d dimensions or a factor of about 5-10 in CPU time (independent of dimension).


This in-depth primer of the magic of the Northern Way introduces the major concepts and practices of Gothic or Germanic magic. English, German, Dutch, Icelandic, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish peoples are all directly descended from this ancient Germanic cultural stock. According to author Edred Thorsson, if you are interested in living a holistic life with unity of body-mind-spirit, a key to knowing your spiritual heritage is found in the heritage of your body-in the natural features which you have inherited from your distant ancestors. Most readers of this book already "speak the language" of the Teutonic tradition. Northern Magic contains material that has never before been discussed in a practical way. This book outlines the ways of Northern magic and the character of the Northern magician. It explores the theories of traditional Northern psychology (or the lore of the soul) in some depth, as well as the religious tradition of the Troth and the whole Germanic theology. The remaining chapters make up a series of "mini-grimoires" on four basic magical techniques in the Northern Way: Younger Futhark rune magic, Icelandic galdor staves, Pennsylvania hex signs, and "seith" (or shamanism). This is an excellent overview of the Teutonic tradition that will interest neophytes as well as long-time travelers along the Northern Way. —Contains four complete handbooks of magical practice in one —Gives practical instructions on how to carve runes and make hex-signs —Provides the history of the Northern Renaissance —Outlines the Germanic Gods and Goddesses


This paper tests for the importance of non-pecuniary costs of unemployment using a longitudinal data-set on life-satisfaction of working-age men in Germany. We show that unemployment has a large detrimental effect on satisfaction after individual specific fixed effects are controlled for. The non-pecuniary effect is much larger than the effect that stems from the associated loss of income.


Mutation testing introduces artificial defects to measure the adequacy of testing. In case candidate tests can distinguish the behaviour of mutants from that of the original program, they are considered of good quality – otherwise developers need to design new tests. While, this method has been shown to be effective, industry-scale code challenges its applicability due to the sheer number of mutants and test executions it requires. In this paper we present PIT, a practical mutation testing tool for Java, applicable on real-world codebases. PIT is fast since it operates on bytecode and optimises mutant executions. It is also robust and well integrated with development tools, as it can be invoked through a command line interface, Ant or Maven. PIT is also open source and hence, publicly available at http://pitest.org/ CCS Concepts •Software and its engineering → Software testing and debugging;


Title of Document: STORMWATER RUNOFF AND WATER QUALITY MODELING IN URBAN MARYLAND Jing Wang, Master of Science, 2015 Directed By: Dr. Barton A. Forman, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Urbanization significantly affects storm water runoff through the creation of new impervious surfaces such as highways, parking lots, and rooftops. Such changes can adversely impact the downstream receiving water bodies in terms of physical, chemical, and biological conditions. In order to mitigate the effects of urbanization on downstream water bodies, stormwater control measures (SCMs) have been widely used (e.g., infiltration basins, bioswales). A suite of observations from an infiltration basin installed adjacent to a highway in urban Maryland was used to evaluate stormwater runoff attenuation and pollutant removal rates at the wellinstrumented SCM study site. In this study, the Storm Water Management Model (SWMM) was used to simulate the performance of the SCM. An automatic, split-sample calibration framework was developed to improve SWMM performance efficiency. The results indicate SWMM can accurately reproduce the hydraulic response of the SCM (in terms of reproducing measured inflow) during spring, fall, and winter, but is less accurate in reproducing measured outflow during summer time. Similar results were found for the modeled (and observed) inflow water quality constituent, total suspended solids (TSS). STORMWATER RUNOFF AND WATER QUALITY MODELING IN URBAN MARYLAND


Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the reliability and validity of a global physical activity classification (GPAC) measure employed in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Methods: For validity assessment (N=6039), the NHANES GPAC was compared to NHANES accelerometry data. For reliability assessment (N=94), a convenience sample completed a 1-week test-retest of the GPAC. Results: The association between total physical activity and GPAC ranged from 0.25-0.40, with the range for moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) and GPAC being 0.17-0.39. Generally, associations were stronger for total physical activity and GPAC compared to MVPA and GPAC. Similarly, associations were generally stronger for men, younger individuals, and Mexican Americans. In the reliability assessment, the ICC ranged from 0.58 to 0.90, with the older participants having the lowest ICC (0.58). Conclusion: Findings of this study demonstrate suggestive evidence of both reliability and validity for the NHANES GPAC.


Emotional intelligence has been studied in conjunction with many topics since its conception in 1995; however, there is no research linking the concept to the marketing potential for any specific music genre. Emotional intelligence involves the ability to recognize your emotions as they occur and regulate them accordingly, as well as the ability to infer information about the emotions of those around you. K-pop is a music genre that has benefitted from globalization and business strategies that incorporate social media such as YouTube. Teens are the primary demographic for K-pop marketing, which coincides with the teenage propensity towards celebrity worship that has been used to capture merchandising opportunities. Celebrity worship has been shown to be negatively correlated with emotional intelligence; however, the emotional intelligence level of celebrity worship of K-pop fans, and how they score on emotional intelligence in general has not been studied. Nor has the emotional intelligence level of aspiring K-pop idols been studied to determine if they can handle the pressure of the role. This paper attempts to set framework to show that studies should be conducted to determine whether a focus on the emotional intelligence levels of fans and idols could reveal marketing techniques and business strategies which might lead result in increased profits for K-pop music companies. ARTICLE HISTORY Received 20 March 2019 Revised 24 May 2019 Accepted 15 June 2019


Drawing on a range of theoretical and empirical insights from strategic management and the cognitive and organizational sciences, we argue that strategic competence constitutes the ability of organizations and the individuals who operate within them to work within their cognitive limitations in such a way that they are able to maintain an appropriate level of responsiveness to the contingencies confronting them. Using the language of the resource based view of the firm, we argue that this meta-level competence represents a confluence of individual and organizational characteristics, suitably configured to enable the detection of those weak signals indicative of the need for change and to act accordingly, thereby minimising the dangers of cognitive bias and cognitive inertia. In an era of unprecedented informational burdens and instability, we argue that this competence is central to the longer-term survival and well being of the organization. We conclude with a consideration of the major scientific challenges that lie ahead, if the ideas contained within this paper are to be validated.


Between 1984 and 1995, at least 72 individuals were convicted during the national hysteria of mass child molestation and satanic ritual abuse cases. Almost all those convictions have since been overturned. This paper analyzes the present-day, on-going impact from wrongful convictions, focusing on the Friedman case, well-known as the subject of the landmark documentary film, Capturing the Friedmans. Though the US Appeals Court has ruled that Jesse Friedman was likely wrongfully convicted, the case has not yet been overturned. The impact on wrongly-imprisoned defendants is obvious, however the impact on hundreds of children has rarely been considered. Initially sure they were not sexually abused, and confident in their perceptions of reality, these children were dragged to a place of confusion, mistrust of adults, and uncertainty about themselves and the world. This paper provides new evidence and insight from extensive interviews with people police alleged were molested – and who now as adults confirm they were coerced into making false accusations. Also revealed are new witnesses who were present during alleged crimes against others, and now confirm there was no molestation. Child sexual abuse does happen, of course, and is a profound social issue; at the same time, false and hysteria-driven prosecutions robbed resources from cases of actual sex crimes, reduce the public's faith in the legitimacy of such prosecutions, and interfered with the protection of children. The Friedman case provides a unique opportunity to heal a community still suffering from the wounds of false accusation, confusion, and deceit.


Remote data access latency is a significant performance bottleneck in many modern programs that use remote databases and web services. We present Sprint - a run-time system for optimizing such programs by prefetching and caching data from remote sources in parallel to the execution of the original program. Sprint separates the concerns of exposing potentially-independent data accesses from the mechanism for executing them efficiently in parallel or in a batch. In contrast to prior work, Sprint can efficiently prefetch data in the presence of irregular or input-dependent access patterns, while preserving the semantics of the original program.
 We used Sprint to automatically improve the performance of several real-world Java programs that access remote databases (MySQL, DB2) and web services (Facebook, IBM's Yellow Pages). Sprint achieves speedups ranging 2.4x to 15.8x over sequential execution, which are comparable to those achieved by manually modifying the program for asynchronous and batch execution of data accesses. Sprint provides a simple interface that allows a programmer to plug in support for additional data sources without modifying the client program.


We argue civic virtue plays a key role in explaining the design of public insurance against unemployment risks by solving moral hazard issues which hinder the efficiency of unemployment insurance. We show, in a simple model, that economies with stronger civic virtues are more prone to provide insurance through unemployment benefits rather than through job protection. We provide cross-country empirical evidence of a strong correlation between civic attitudes and the design of unemployment benefits and employment protection in OECD countries over the period 1980 to 2003. We then use an epidemiological approach to estimate the existence of a potential causal relationship from inherited civic virtue to labor market insurance institutions.


The parasite Ichthyophonus is enzootic in many marine fish populations of the northern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Forage fishes are a likely source of infection for higher trophic level predators; however, the processes that maintain Ichthyophonus in forage fish populations (primarily clupeids) are not well understood. Lack of an identified intermediate host has led to the convenient hypothesis that the parasite can be maintained within populations of schooling fishes by waterborne fish-to-fish transmission. To test this hypothesis we established Ichthyophonus infections in Age-1 and young-of-the-year (YOY) Pacific herring Clupea pallasii (Valenciennes) via intraperitoneal (IP) injection and cohabitated these donors with naïve conspecifics (sentinels) in the laboratory. IP injections established infection in 75 to 84% of donor herring, and this exposure led to clinical disease and mortality in the YOY cohort. However, after cohabitation for 113 d no infections were detected in naïve sentinels. These data do not preclude the possibility of fish-to-fish transmission, but they do suggest that other transmission processes are necessary to maintain Ichthyophonus in wild Pacific herring populations.


In cognitive radio techniques, OFDM is usually regarded as the physical layer candidate. However, the weaknesses of the OFDM technique, i.e., using plain FFT for spectral analysis , decreased bandwidth efficiency due to CP (cyclic prefix), high out-of-band emission, have been pointed out and the introduction of filter banks based mul- ticarrier (FBMC) system has been advocated by a number of authors. In this paper, we propose an efficient FBMC system for cognitive radio network. At the transmitter, we propose a decimation transform decomposition method to eliminate the unnecessary zero operations. At the receiver, we utilize the analysis filter banks to sense the spectrum bands. In order to conquer the shortages of the traditional filter banks, we propose a multistage analysis filter banks, which can reduce the computational complexity while improve the detection precision when used to sense the spectrum bands. And with an adaptive threshold scheme in the power estimator, the threshold can be kept very close to the noise power, which can increase the detection prob- ability especially in the condition of low SNR.


The high long-term failure rate of synthetic vascular grafts in the replacement of small vessels is known to be associated with the lack of physiological signals to vascular cells causing adverse hemodynamic, inflammatory or coagulatory events. Current studies focus on developing engineered vascular devices with ability of directing cell activity in vitro and in vivo for tissue regeneration. It is also known that controlled molecule release from scaffolds can dramatically increase the scaffold ability of directing cell activities in vitro and in vivo for tissue regeneration. To address the mechanical and biological problems associated with graft materials, we demonstrated a degradable polyester-fibroin composite tubular scaffolds which shows well-integrated nanofibrous structure, endothelial-conducive surface and anisotropic mechanical property, suitable as engineered vascular constructs.
Tissue regeneration needs not only functional biomolecules providing signaling cues to cells and guide tissue remodeling, but also an adequate modality of molecule delivery. In fact, healthy tissue formation requires specific signals at well-defined place and time. To develop scaffolds with multi-modal presentation of biomolecules, we patterned electrospun nanofibers over the thickness of the 3-dimensional scaffolds by programming the deposition of interpenetrating networks of degradable polymers poly(e-caprolactone) and poly(lactide-co-glycolide) acid in tailored proportion. Fluorescent model molecules, drug and growth factors were embedded in the polymeric fibers with different techniques and release profiles were obtained and discussed.
Fabrication process resulted in precise gradient patterns of materials and functional biomolecules throughout the thickness of the scaffold. These graded materials showed programmable spatio-temporal control over the release. Molecule release profiles on each side of the scaffolds were used to determine the separation efficiency of molecule delivery, which achieved >90% for proteins in 200µm scaffolds. Gradient-patterned scaffolds were also used to program simultaneous release of two proteins to the opposite sides of the scaffold and sequential release of proteins to a defined space, which further demonstrate the ability of patterned nanofibers to spatially and temporally confine sustained release. Moreover, results showed that temporal release kinetics could be altered by the structural patterns. Thus, the hierarchically-structured scaffolds presented here may enable development of novel multifunctional scaffolds with defined 3D dynamic microenvironments for tissue regeneration.


Student success in pre-registration nurse education is becoming increasingly important in order to reduce student attrition and meet workforce needs in the United Kingdom (UK). Extensive quantitative research exists on student attrition and the predictive power of factors such as entry qualifications, age and gender, however there are few studies that have explored students' accounts of their own success.
The aim of this study was to identify and explain the significance of factors that enable high-achieving student nurses to become successful on their programme and to develop a model of student success in pre-registration nurse education. Traditionally, success has been defined as programme completion however this study has considered success in terms of high academic achievement i.e. those students attaining the highest average academic marks in the 2nd year of a pre-registration nursing programme.
A qualitative multiple case study was designed involving three cases of high-achieving students located in two UK universities. Transcripts from in-depth interviews with 37 third-year student nurses (adult field) and 23 lecturers were analysed using thematic analysis. Key educational documents were analysed to explore contextual factors influencing the learning environment. Adult learning and social learning theories were used as a theoretical framework for this study.
High-achieving nursing students identified that the most significant factors contributing to their success were: being highly motivated to become a good nurse, being actively engaged in learning and having effective support systems. High-achieving students have the attributes of adult learners: they are self-directed, independent and actively engaged in learning. Lecturers identified motivation and attitudes to learning as important factors in success but also considered high entry qualifications to be significant although this was not supported by the data in this study. Adult learning attributes contribute positively to success but experiences in the learning environment also influence student achievement. A model of student success in pre-registration nurse education has been developed that can be utilised by students, education providers and clinical mentors to understand and promote student success.


Nonlinear models have recently shown interesting properties for spectral unmixing. This paper studies a generalized bilinear model and a hierarchical Bayesian algorithm for unmixing hyperspectral images. The proposed model is a generalization not only of the accepted linear mixing model but also of a bilinear model that has been recently introduced in the literature. Appropriate priors are chosen for its parameters to satisfy the positivity and sum-to-one constraints for the abundances. The joint posterior distribution of the unknown parameter vector is then derived. Unfortunately, this posterior is too complex to obtain analytical expressions of the standard Bayesian estimators. As a consequence, a Metropolis-within-Gibbs algorithm is proposed, which allows samples distributed according to this posterior to be generated and to estimate the unknown model parameters. The performance of the resulting unmixing strategy is evaluated via simulations conducted on synthetic and real data.


"Harper's Bazaar" is a distinguished fashion magazine, revered for its contributions to fashion, photography, and graphic design in the twentieth century. Under the direction of Glenda Bailey, editor-in-chief, and Stephen Gan, creative director, in this century, the magazine has maintained its position as a cultural icon. Bailey is known for her elaborate visual productions: fashion features that use pop culture trends and the adventures of notorious public figures as the backdrop for elaborate narratives. The resulting images, shot by well-known photographers and featuring supermodels and super-celebrities, are both entertaining and beautiful. Their ultimate purpose is to bring the best and most inventive fashion to the widest possible audience. "Harper's Bazaar: 2001-2010" is a collection of more than 300 fashion photographs that chronicle the best high fashion of the twenty-first century. It features: Naomi Campbell races a cheetah in Africa in a photograph by Jean-Paul Goude; Karl Lagerfeld, Valentino, Donatella Versace, and John Galliano choreograph fantasies about their own fashions; Agyness Deyn pays tribute to Michael Jackson, shot by Terry Richardson; Lagerfeld does Courtney Love doing penance for wearing fake Chanel; Tim Burton, David Lynch, and The Simpsons do high fashion; and, Sarah Jessica Parker models Diana Vreeland for Peter Lindburgh. A celebration of fashion, a romp through a riotous and eventful decade, and a banquet of contemporary imagery, "Harper's Bazaar: 2001-2011" is also a glamorous object in itself.


After years of watching engineers model traffic flow with advanced physics to alleviate jams, a team of urban planners called Shared Space have adopted a simple solution based on a zoological concept known as the risk compensation effect. Basically, it means that animals tend to adjust their behavior to compensate for perceived risk. Applied to traffic, the idea is that people will drive more cautiously if they believe they are in a dangerous environment. The effect may explain why taxi drivers with antilock brakes drive faster or why wearers of bicycle helmets get struck down more. The Shared Space team believes that signs, signals, and the traffic rules they represent make the roads more dangerous because they lead us to believe we are safe. "Conventional highway engineering operates on the dumb molecule theory of human behavior," says John Adams, emeritus professor of geography at University College London and a Shared Space advocate. "And the human molecule is responsive to what it sees about it." Today five American cities are trying the approach, and seven major pilot projects are in the works across Europe. The town of Drachten in the Netherlands has only 2 of its 18 traffic lights left. Since the program began in 2004, accident rates at the town's main intersection have dropped to only one per year from a previous nine-year average of just over eight, congestion has fallen by 20 percent, and journey times have been reduced by 10 minutes. Stripping London's busy High Street Kensington shopping area of some of its signage, lights, and pedestrian barriers reduced traffic-related casualties by 43 percent. After the English town of Seend went bare, it witnessed a 5 percent fall in average speed, and accidents dropped by a third. Shared Space's success is about more than safety, Adams says. "I think that there is a dawning collective guilt about how we've allowed the car to wreck not just the physical environment but also the social environment."


L. VELKOVA-JORDANOSKA, 2006. Molecular-biological analysis of the parasite Capillaria sp. of the liver of barbel (Barbus meridionalis petenyi Heck.) in Lake Ohrid. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci.,12: 315-319 The analysis of parasites molecular variation has important implications on the taxonomy, phylogenic and population genetics studies. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) can have significant advantages over other morphological, cytological and biochemical methods. The aim of our investigations was a development of molecular diagnostic methods, utilization of PCR for detection of the zoonoses. We investigated presence of parasite Capillaria sp. in the barbel liver tissue in Ohrid Lake.


Active canopy sensors can be used to assess corn (Zea mays L.) N status and direct spatially-variable in-season N application. The goal of this study was to determine optimal sensor spacing for controlling whole- and/or split-boom N application scenarios for a hypothetical 24-row applicator. Sensor readings were collected from 24 consecutive rows at eight cornfields during vegetative growth in 2007 and 2008, and readings were converted to chlorophyll index (CI) values. A base map of measured CI values was created using square pixels equal to row spacing for each site (0.91 or 0.76 m in size). Sensor placement and boom section scenarios were evaluated using MSE (mean squared error) of calculated CI maps vs. the base CI map. Scenarios ranged from one sensor, one variable-rate to 24 sensors, 24 variable-rates for the hypothetical 24-row applicator. The greatest reduction in MSE from the one variable-rate scenario was obtained with 2 to 3 sensors estimating average CI for the entire boom width, unless each row was individually sensed. In every field, more accurate prediction ofCI was obtained by averaging sensor readings across the entire 24 rows rather than predicting CI for more than two consecutive rows using only one sensor in each section. Because of the nature of spatial variability in CI, some fields may benefit from an increased number of sensors and/or boom sections equipped with 2 to 3 sensors each.


1. Secondary and plantation forests are becoming increasingly widespread in the tropics. A recent meta-analysis on the impacts of land-use change on tropical forest dung beetles concluded that regenerating forests can be effective in helping to offset species loss following deforestation. However, our understanding of the extent to which these results can be generalized to new locations remains very poor. 2. We attempted to overcome many of the design limitations that characterize previous studies by collecting spatially independent dung beetle samples from primary, secondary and Eucalyptus plantation forests in north-east Brazilian Amazonia across a large quasi-experimental landscape that minimized confounding edge and fragmentation effects. 3. We recorded 9203 dung beetles, comprising 85 species. Species richness was significantly higher in primary forest and the majority of species were more abundant there than elsewhere, whereas secondary and plantation sites harboured an impoverished subset of primary forest species. 4. Our data illustrate the low value of tropical secondary and plantation forests for dung beetles in our study area, and our conclusions are more pessimistic than those of earlier studies. 5. Because of differences in the order of species rank-abundance and rank-biomass patterns, re-coding community data from abundance to biomass significantly altered the analytical weight of individual species in determining community patterns. Larger bodied beetles were more prone to local extinctions and abundance declines and this effect was consistent both within and between genera. 6. Synthesis and applications. Our study demonstrates that secondary and plantation forests in a large neotropical landscape host exceptionally impoverished dung beetle communities. Furthermore, the depletion of beetle abundance combined with a reduction in average body mass in converted forests is likely to have detrimental consequences for the maintenance of dung beetle-mediated ecosystem services in these habitats. Differences in biogeographical and landscape context, and the influence of common limitations in sampling design, may explain why many other studies have painted a more optimistic picture of the conservation value of anthropogenic habitats. In the absence of further evidence we caution strongly against the claim that forest regeneration schemes on degraded land can effectively offset the loss of species following deforestation, and urge that conservation strategies prioritize the protection of remaining areas of primary forest.


The use of green plants specifically chosen or tailored for the remediation of polluted soils and brownfields, the treatment of industrial wastewater or the removal of volatile organic compounds from indoor or outdoor air is becoming essential for sustainable development. Phytoremediation options are less expensive compared to physico-chemical approaches, even if the time scale required reaching the target end-points can be a limiting factor. Phytotechnologies are now offering efficient tools and environmentally friendly solutions for the cleanup of soils and water contaminated by organic pollutants. However this goal requires a sound understanding of how plants can specifically accumulate, detoxify and metabolise xenobiotic compounds. Significant progress has been made recently to better understand the soil, rhizosphere and plant mechanisms involved in the phytotreatment of organic pollutants; to implement phytoextraction, phytodegradation, rhizofiltration, and rhizodegradation as instruments for the removal and/or management of organic contaminants present in soil and water; and to identify critical points in overcoming bottlenecks in plant removal and detoxification of xenobiotics. Depending on the physico-chemical properties of the organic pollutant to be removed or detoxified, as well as on the specific plant physiology and biochemistry, different phytotreatments are available to decontaminate water and soils. For example, aquatic macrophytes or even terrestrial plants can be grown under hydroponic conditions or in constructed wetlands to remove many xenobiotic compounds, e.g. sulphonated anthraquinones and azo dyes present in wastewater from the dye and textile industries. Advances have also been made to remediate soils contaminated with hydrophobic compounds like PCBs, petroleum hydrocarbons or pesticides (e.g. lindane or DDT), highlighting the respective roles of plants, endophytic and rhizospheric bacteria, and the importance of their interactions. These examples illustrate the potential of plants for the phytotreatment of xenobiotics, as well as their ability to cooperate with microorganisms (phytostimulation). Exploring and exploiting the biological diversity of plant metabolism is necessary. Consideration of plant taxonomy and phytochemistry should be the first steps in the appropriate use of the huge potential of plant species, since plants often produce natural chemicals whose structure is close to foreign compounds. Finally, the success of phytoremediation also largely depends on the ability of plants to tolerate the pollutant(s) to be removed. The possible effects of these contaminants on plant physiology and biochemistry must be addressed, since they will determine the ability of a specific plant to deal with specific pollutants or a mixture of them, and thus affect the efficiency of any phytotreatment. It is thus of utmost importance to determine the maximal possible amount of the xenobiotic compounds that can be accumulated and detoxified without injury, critical stress and disruption of metabolism or redox processes in the plant species under consideration. Such information will help to maintain the plant wellness, a key factor to correctly design and size the constructed wetland to remove the foreign compounds present in a particular wastewater or to estimate the time required to clean up a contaminated soil.


Since its launch in 2005, YouTube has quickly situated itself as a major facet of popular culture. The prevalence of Shakespeare on YouTube is fascinating considering the diversity of the videos found, and the tremendous audience response to these clips. Is YouTube helping or hurting Shakespeare's reputation? This thesis explores this question through the lens of Pierre Bourdieu's theory of cultural capital.
 The argument is that amidst the process of reinvention, a redefining of what is Shakespeare is occurring. The support provided is framed through numerous video analyses, that cover a wide range of topics including: Shakespeare in education, Shakespeare in advertising, the question of authorship and the perception of art, Shakespeare for youth culture and the postmodernist movement, and questions of finality in Shakespeare's plays and the destruction of cultural capital. Like any other type of capital, cultural capital can be created or destroyed. The examples of Shakespeare on YouTube not only illustrate separate instances of this phenomenon, but the overall effect that it is having on the perception of Shakespeare.
 The term popular culture has been made unclear by its frequent use, relation with the media, and negative lowbrow stereotypes. Shakespeare was written for all audiences, and the idea that Shakespeare exists strictly for high culture is a result of the treatment it has received in the past. The Shakespeare that pervades the popular mind is a market-driven product, and YouTube is providing an avenue for the further democratization and demystification of Shakespeare today, while contributing the perception of universality.


The purpose of this study was to examine the change in lipid peroxidation and antioxidant enzyme activities in healthy subjects and to evaluate the concentrations of superoxide dismutase, glutathione peroxidase and malondialdehyde, an end product of lipid peroxidation in exercise and smoking. Study included 257 appearently healthy individuals, 133 males and 124 females. In all subjects, malondialdehyde (MDA) levels were analyzed as an indicator of the lipid peroxidation activities. Superoxide dismutase, glutathione peroxidase activities were measured as an indicator of antioxidant activities. Oxidative stress was estimated by the method based on thiobarbituric acid reactivity. Erythrocyte superoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) activities were estimated on hemolysates by use of commercial available kits (Randox lab., Dublin, Ireland). For all groups serum lipid peroxidation and erythrocyte SOD and GSH-Px were obtained at the initial and the following periods. Serum MDA level was higher in the elderly than in the children and in the adults. MDA levels were higher in the smoking, acute exercise than their counterparts in the control groups. GSH-Px activity was significantly lower in the acute exercise group, and higher in the trained group than those as controls. SOD decreased in the elderly, smoking and acute exercise groups and increased in trained individuals. There was a significant increase in lipid peroxidation activity and a significant decrease in antioxidant enzyme activity in cases of acute exercise and smoking as well as the elderly.


The aim of this research was to analyze the effects of increased N or P availability, increased air temperature, and decreased light intensity on wet sedge tundra in northern Alaska. Nutrient availability was increased for 6–9 growing seasons, using N and P fertilizers in factorial experiments at three separate field sites. Air temperature was increased for six growing seasons, using plastic greenhouses at two sites, both with and without N + P fertilizer. Light intensity (photosynthetically active photon flux) was reduced by 50% for six growing seasons at the same two sites, using optically neutral shade cloth. Responses of wet sedge tundra to these treatments were documented as changes in vegetation biomass, N mass, and P mass, changes in whole-system CO2 fluxes, and changes in species composition and leaf-level photosynthesis.

Biomass, N mass, and P mass accumulation were all strongly P limited, and biomass and N mass accumulation also responded significantly to N addition with a small N × P interaction. Greenhouse warming alone had no significant effect on biomass, N mass, or P mass, although there was a consistent trend toward increased mass in the greenhouse treatments. There was a significant negative interaction between the greenhouse treatment and the N + P fertilizer treatment, i.e., the effect of the two treatments combined was to reduce biomass and N mass significantly below that of the fertilizer treatment only. Six years of shading had no significant effect on biomass, N mass, or P mass.

Ecosystem CO2 fluxes included net ecosystem production (NEP; net CO2 flux), ecosystem respiration (RE, including both plant and soil respiration), and gross ecosystem production (GEP; gross ecosystem photosynthesis). All three fluxes responded to the fertilizer treatments in a pattern similar to the responses of biomass, N mass, and P mass, i.e., with a strong P response and a small, but significant, N response and N × P interaction. The greenhouse treatment also increased all three fluxes, but the greenhouse plus N + P treatment caused a significant decrease in NEP because RE increased more than GEP in this treatment. The shade treatment increased both GEP and RE, but had no effect on NEP. Most of the changes in CO2 fluxes per unit area of ground were due to changes in plant biomass, although there were additional, smaller treatment effects on CO2 fluxes per unit biomass, per unit N mass, and per unit P mass.

The vegetation was composed mainly of rhizomatous sedges and rushes, but changes in species composition may have contributed to the changes in vegetation nutrient content and ecosystem-level CO2 fluxes. Carex cordorrhiza, the species with the highest nutrient concentrations in its tissues in control plots, was also the species with the greatest increase in abundance in the fertilized plots. In comparison with Eriophorum angustifolium, another species that was abundant in control plots, C. cordorrhiza had higher photosynthetic rates per unit leaf mass. Leaf photosynthesis and respiration of C. cordorrhiza also increased with fertilizer treatment, whereas they decreased or remained constant in E. angustifolium.

The responses of these wet sedge tundras were similar to those of a nearby moist tussock tundra site that received an identical series of experiments. The main difference was the dominant P limitation in wet sedge tundra vs. N limitation in moist tussock tundra. Both tundras were relatively unresponsive to the increased air temperatures in the greenhouses but showed a strong negative interaction between the greenhouse and fertilizer treatments. New data from this study suggest that the negative interaction may be driven by a large increase in respiration in warmed fertilized plots, perhaps in relation to large increases in P concentration.


Though predominantly on oil and gas law, this is nonetheless a veritable Reference Book on the oil and gas industry in Nigeria. It places before anyone interested in the oil and gas industry basic and critical oil and gas issues not in common circulation in existing texts on the subject. The book is arranged in such a chronological order, like reference books and dictionaries tend to be,that a lay person in going through it would now know how oil is explored and found,how oil fields may be onshore and offshore, how oil blocs are bidded for, how oil is drilled, including associated gas deposits, among others. The transportation of oil and gas, storage of oil and gas, refining of oil and processing of gas, marketing of oil and gas,the impact of oil and gas exploration, production and revenues on the Nigerian environment, politics and economy and a myriad of other issues are comprehensively covered. The book should prove most useful to the lawyer, petroleum geologist, petroleum engineer, policy makers, investors, local and international development agencies and bodies, lecturers and students specialising in wide ranging subjects as economics, development studies, engineering, management, public administration, insurance, marketing, accounting and finance.