This paper aims to improve our understanding of the nature, causes, and multiple dimensions of how social assistance may address climate vulnerability and resilience within fragile and conflict-affected settings (FCAS), as part of the inception phase of the Better Assistance in Crises (BASIC) Research programme. Over recent years, social assistance, such as cash transfers and voucher programmes, has been seen as a way of reducing the impacts of climate-related shocks and stressors, and of increasing the resilience of recipient households and communities. It has also been seen as a mechanism for delivering adaptation funding, showing promise in tackling short-term shocks as well as longer-term adaptation to climate change. Yet despite FCAS hosting some of the most vulnerable populations in the world, so far there has been little attention to these settings. We examine the linkages between social assistance and climate resilience in FCAS and in turn, implications for BASIC Research. Specifically, we ask what the evidence is on whether existing approaches to social assistance are appropriate to reducing climate vulnerabilities and building climate resilience in FCAS, and, if not, how they might be reformed. We address this through three sub-questions. First, what are the major conceptual discussions on climate resilience and social assistance, and what is the extent of work in FCAS? This is addressed in section 2.1, based on an extensive literature review. Second, to what extent does the literature on social assistance and climate resilience apply to the particular concerns of FCAS? This is covered in section 2.2, based on a framework informed by work in political economy and political ecology. Third, what are possible future research directions? We conclude with reflections on what BASIC Research may contribute in section 3.


The in vivo and in vitro characteristics of the I2 binding site were probed using the technique of drug discrimination and receptor autoradiography. Data presented in this thesis indicates the I2 ligand 2-BFI generates a cue in drug discrimination. Further studies indicated agmatine, a proposed endogenous imidazoline ligand, and a number of imidazoline and imidazole analogues of 2-BFI substitute significantly for 2-BFI. In addition to specific I2 ligands the administration of NRl's (noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors), the sympathomimetic d-amphetamine, the α1-adrenoceptor agonist methoxamine, but not the β1 agonist dobutamine or the β2 agonist salbutamol, gave rise to significant levels of substitution for the 2-BFI cue. The administration of the α1-adrenoceptor antagonist WB4101, prior to 2- BFI itself significantly reduced levels of 2-BFI appropriate responding. Administration of the reversible MAO-A inhibitors moclobemide and Ro41-1049, but not the reversible MAO-B inhibitors lazabemide and Ro16-6491, gave rise to potent dose dependent levels of substitution for the 2-BFI cue. Further studies indicated the administration of a number of β-carbolines and the structurally related indole alkaloid ibogaine also gave rise to dose dependent significant levels of substitution. Due to the relationship of indole alkaloids to serotonin the 5-HT releaser fenfluramine and a number of SSRI's (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) were also administered and these compounds gave rise to significant partial (20-80% responses to the 2-BFI lever) levels of substitution. The autoradiographical studies reported here indicate [3H]2-BFI labels I2 sites within the rat arcuate nucleus, area postrema, pineal gland, interpeduncular nucleus and subfornical organ. Subsequent experiments confirmed that the drug discrimination dosing schedule significantly increases levels of [3H]2-BFI 12 binding within two of these nuclei. However, levels of [3H]2-BFI specific binding were significantly reduced within four of these nuclei after chronic treatment with the irreversible MAO inhibitors deprenyl and tranylcypromine but not pargyline, which only reduced levels significantly in two. Further autoradiographical studies indicated that the distribution of [3H]2-BFI within the C57/B mouse compares favourably to that within the rat. Comparison of these levels of binding to those from transgenic mice who over-express MAO-B indicates two possibly distinct populations of [3H]2-BFI 12 sites exist in mouse brain. The data presented here indicates the 2-BFI cue is associated with the selective activation of α1-adrenoceptors and possibly 5-HT receptors. 2-BFI trained rats recognise reversible MAO-A but not MAO-B inhibitors. However, data within this thesis indicates the autoradiographical distribution of I2 sites bears a closer resemblance to that of MAO-B not MAO-A and further studies using transgenic mice that over-express MAO-B suggests a non-MAO-B I2 site exists in mouse brain.


Increasing the efficiency of the school system is a primary focus of policymakers. I analyze how the time of day affects students' productivity and if efficiency gains can be obtained by rearranging the order of tasks they perform throughout the school day. Using a panel data set of nearly 2 million sixththrough eleventh-grade students in Los Angeles County, I perform within-teacher, class type, and student estimation of the time-of-day effect on students' learning as measured by GPA and state test scores. I find that given a school start time, students learn more in the morning than later in the school day. Having a morning instead of afternoon math or English class increases a student's GPA by 0.072 (0.006) and 0.032 (0.006), respectively. A morning math class increases state test scores by an amount equivalent to increasing teacher quality by one-fourth standard deviation or half of the gender gap. Rearranging school schedules can lead to increased academic performance.


George W. Bush has provoked the widest partisan differences in popular evaluations of a president's performance ever observed in the nearly seven decades that the surveys have been asking the job approval question. (1) In a new book explaining why Bush has become such a divisive figure, I argue that, while the polarized political atmosphere he inherited was a contributing factor, Bush's leadership style, agenda, tactics, strategies, and policy decisions (most notably, to invade Iraq) are the main reasons he has leapt far ahead of his closest competitors, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, to become the most polarizing president on record (Jacobson 2006). It is clear from Bush's example that presidents do much to shape how they are perceived by their own and the other party's identifiers and therefore how far they polarize the public. This should be true of other politicians as well. Hard-line ideologues, for example, ought to provoke more divergent reactions than moderate centrists. Politicians who lead or stand loyally with their parties on the fundamental issues that divide Democrats and Republicans ought to be more polarizing than party mavericks or those who keep low national profiles and busy themselves delivering local benefits. Context and agendas should also matter. Politicians holding office at the national level, where the parties have become sharply divided across a range of issues, should find it harder to attract bipartisan approval than those serving at the state level, where the agenda (not to mention the local political ethos) may not encourage sharp partisan divisions. And, because they can cultivate personal connections with a larger share of their electorates, politicians serving relatively small, homogeneous populations should find it easier to reach across party lines than should those serving large, heterogeneous populations. Data to test these hypotheses, and, more generally, to compare partisan differences in evaluations of President Bush to those for other prominent elected officials, have recently become available. Beginning in May 2005, SurveyUSA, a polling firm whose main clients for its political surveys are local news media, has been conducting monthly statewide polls in all fifty states. Their automated telephone surveys ask samples of approximately six hundred respondents in each state whether they approve of the performance of G. W. Bush, the state's governor, and both of its senators, as well as questions about each respondent's party identification, ideology, religious service attendance, and demographic characteristics (age, education, sex, race, and in some states, region). In some months they also ask respondents' positions on policy issues. The aggregate results, including breakdowns of the approval questions by all of the respondents' other characteristics, are posted on the Internet shortly after the surveys are taken. (2) Obviously, such data are potentially of great value for addressing a variety of interesting questions about state-level public opinion and elections--if they are of sufficient quality to be reliable. I thus examined the data carefully for internal and external consistency as well as intuitive plausibility and, as I describe in the Appendix, they passed all of the tests very satisfactorily. For the analyses that follow, I use the data produced by the nine monthly surveys taken from May 2005 through January 2006. Comparing Performance Approval Ratings I began by comparing the means and distributions of job approval ratings across states for the three offices. I expected greater dispersal for senators and governors than for the president, if only because I was comparing evaluations of a single individual to those of 50 (governors) or 100 (senators) separate officeholders. Figure 1, which displays the kernel density plots of approval levels across states for all nine monthly surveys, confirms this expectation, but barely in the case of senators. …


We study the problem of symmetry detection of 3D shapes from single-view RGB-D images, where severely missing data renders geometric detection approach infeasible. We propose an end-to-end deep neural network which is able to predict both reflectional and rotational symmetries of 3D objects present in the input RGB-D image. Directly training a deep model for symmetry prediction, however, can quickly run into the issue of overfitting. We adopt a multi-task learning approach. Aside from symmetry axis prediction, our network is also trained to predict symmetry correspondences. In particular, given the 3D points present in the RGB-D image, our network outputs for each 3D point its symmetric counterpart corresponding to a specific predicted symmetry. In addition, our network is able to detect for a given shape multiple symmetries of different types. We also contribute a benchmark of 3D symmetry detection based on single-view RGB-D images. Extensive evaluation on the benchmark demonstrates the strong generalization ability of our method, in terms of high accuracy of both symmetry axis prediction and counterpart estimation. In particular, our method is robust in handling unseen object instances with large variation in shape, multi-symmetry composition, as well as novel object categories.


A live showup (known as a street identification in the UK) allows the perpetrator to be identified shortly after a street crime. If the suspect disputes the identification, a video line-up often ensues. Four experiments examined the reliability of live showups and their influence on a subsequent video line-up using realistic procedures and conditions. Similar proportions of culprits and innocent suspects were identified from live showups and video line-ups. Both culprits and innocent suspects previously identified were likely to be identified again in a subsequent line-up, with delays from a few minutes to a month. Only a weak effect of clothing bias was observed. There was strong evidence of commitment to a previous identification but no reliable evidence of source monitoring errors. The results suggest that a live showup is not less fair than a line-up, but the use of repeated identification procedures introduces an unfair bias against innocent suspects.


More than one third of all traffic accidents with injuries occur in urban areas, especially at intersections. Therefore, a driver assistance system supporting the driver in cities is highly desirable and has a tremendous potential of reducing the number of collisions at intersections. A suitable system for such complex situations requires a comprehensive understanding of the scene. This implies a precise estimation of the free space and the reliable detection and tracking of other moving traffic participants. Since the goal of accident free traffic requires a sensor with high spatial and temporal resolution, stereo vision will play an important role in future driver assistance systems. Most known stereo systems concentrate on single image pairs. However, in intelligent vehicle applications image sequences have to be analyzed. The contribution shows that a smart fusion of stereo vision and motion analysis (optical flow) gives much better results than classical frame-by-frame reconstructions. The basic idea is to track points with depth known from stereo vision over two and more consecutive frames and to fuse the spatial and temporal information using Kalman filters. The result is an improved accuracy of the 3D-position and an estimation of the 3D-motion of the considered point at the same time. This approach, called 6D Vision, enables a detection of moving objects even if they are partially hidden. From static points very accurate occupancy grids are built. A global optimization technique delivers a robust estimation of the free space. Pixels moving in the world are clustered to objects which are then tracked over time in order to estimate their motion state and to predict their paths. This allows for powerful collision avoidance systems: pedestrians crossing the street are detected before they enter the lane; the same holds for vehicles from the sides which are not detectable by common radar systems. Since we are able to estimate the yaw rate of oncoming traffic, the prediction is not restricted to straight motion but can detect potential collisions with turning traffic, especially at intersections. Urban vision asks for a large field of view. Within the German project AKTIV a fisheye stereo camera system is under development with a field of view of up to 150 degrees. If the 6D-Vision principle is applied to these images, laterally entering vehicles are also detectable.


Vibrations of thin and thick beams containing internal complexities are analyzed through generalized bases made of global piecewise-smooth functions (i.e. GPSFs). Such functional bases allow to globally analyze multiple domains as if these latter were only one, such that a unified formulation can be used for different mechanical systems. Such bases were initially introduced to model a specific part of stress and displacement components through the thickness of multi-layered plates; subsequent extensions were introduced in literature to allow the modeling of thin-walled beams and plates. However, in these latter cases certain analytical difficulties were experienced when inner boundary conditions needed to be englobed into the GPSFs; in this work such mentioned difficulties are successfully overcome through certain affine transformations which allow the analyses of vibrating complex beam systems through a straightforward analytical procedure. The complex mechanical components under investigations are Euler and/or Timoshenko models containing inner complexities (stepped beams, concentrated mass or stiffness, internal constraints etc.). The ability of the models herein analyzed is shown through the comparison of the resulting solutions to exact counterparts, if existing, or to finite elements solutions.


The oxygen isotope contents (δ18O) of soil, xylem, and leaf water and ecosystem respiration were studied in a ponderosa pine forest during summer 2001. Our goal was to assess whether δ18O of CO2 could be used to quantify the relative contributions of soil and foliar respiration to total nocturnal ecosystem respiration. The δ18O in leaf and soil water showed enrichment over a 2‐week sampling period as the weather became hot and dry (leaves 0.9 to 15.0‰, and soil −10.4 to −3.1‰), while δ18O of xylem water remained constant (−12.9‰). Water in the soil was enriched in 18O near the soil surface (−6.4‰ at 5 cm depth) relative to greater depths (−11.1‰ at 20 cm). The δ18O of ecosystem respiration became gradually enriched over the 2‐week sampling period (from 24.2 initially to 32.9‰ at the end, VSMOW scale). Soil respiration contributed 80 ± 12 percent to the total respiratory flux, close to estimates from scaled‐up chamber data (77% [ Law et al., 2001a ]). Quantitative application of the isotopic approach to determine respiratory proportions required direct measurement of δ18O of soil and xylem water, air and soil temperature, and humidity. Better estimates of the isotopic signatures of component fluxes could be achieved with additional measurements and more detailed modeling. Results demonstrate that (1) there is variability in δ18O of precipitation inputs to ecosystems, (2) immediately following a precipitation event, δ18O of ecosystem respiration may reflect δ18O of precipitation, (3) periods of hot dry weather can substantially enrich ecosystem water pools and subsequently alter the isotope content of CO2 in ecosystem respiration, and (4) stable oxygen isotopes in CO2 can be used to quantify the foliar and soil components of ecosystem respiration.


Chronic asthma is characterized by pulmonary remodeling and sustained lung dysfunction. The expression of IL-13 has been demonstrated as sufficient and necessary to induce these pathologies. Despite the common assumption that T cells are the primary source of IL-13 in the lung following allergen provocation, the mechanistic events leading to IL-13 expression are unclear, including the potential importance of other cells (i.e., non-T cells). Methods: Co-expression of IL-5 and eotaxin-2 induces pulmonary histopathologies and lung dysfunction that are eosinophil-dependent (i.e., they are absent in triple transgenic I5/hE2/PHIL) animals. IL-13 knockout and CD4 knockout mice were crossed with I5/hE2 mice to assess the effects of these deficiencies on the induced pathologies occurring in this double transgenic model. Conclusions: The Th2 pulmonary pathologies associated with I5/hE2 mice included recruitment of pulmonary effector T cells and increased brochoalveolar Th2 cytokine levels. Conversely, I5/hE2/CD4-/- had only a ~50% reduction in IL-13 levels as compared to I5/hE2 mice, suggesting that a significant portion of IL-13 is non-T cell derived in these mice. I5/hE2/IL-13-/- mice are improved in lung dysfunction and mucus production as compared to I5/hE2 mice. All mice had similar levels of eosinophil degranulation. These results demonstrate a role for non-T cell derived IL-13 that contributes to mucus production and lung dysfunction in a mouse model of chronic severe asthma.


The opening, in 1876, of the Elmira Reformatory marked the birth of the American adult reformatory movement and the introduction of a new approach to crime and the treatment of criminals. Hailed as a reform panacea and the humane solution to America's ongoing crisis of crime and social disorder, Elmira sparked an ideological revolution. Repression and punishment were supposedly out. Academic and vocational education, military drill, indeterminate sentencing and parole--"benevolent reform"--were now considered instrumental to instilling in prisoners a respect for God, law, and capitalism. Not so, says Al Pisciotta, in this highly original, startling, and revealing work. Drawing upon previously unexamined sources from over a half-dozen states and a decade of research, Pisciotta explodes the myth that Elmira and other institutions of "the new penology" represented a significant advance in the treatment of criminals and youthful offenders. The much-touted programs failed to achieve their goals; instead, prisoners, under Superintendent Zebulon Brockway, considered the Father of American Corrections, were whipped with rubber hoses and two-foot leather straps, restricted to bread and water in dark dungeons during months of solitary confinement, and brutally subjected to a wide range of other draconian psychological and physical abuses intended to pound them into submission. Escapes, riots, violence, drugs, suicide, arson, and rape were the order of the day in these prisons, hardly conducive to the transformation of "dangerous criminal classes into Christian gentleman," as was claimed. Reflecting the racism and sexism in the social order in general, the new penology also legitimized the repression of the lower classes. Highlighting the disparity between promise and practice in America's prisons, Pisciotta draws on seven inmate case histories to illustrate convincingly that the "March of Progress" was nothing more than a reversion to the ways of old. In short, the adult reformatory movement promised benevolent reform but delivered benevolent repression--a pattern that continues to this day. A vital contribution to the history of crime, corrections, and criminal justice, this book will also have a major impact on our thinking about contemporary corrections and issues surrounding crime, punishment, and social control.


Abstract:Competitive authoritarianism—in which the coexistence of meaningful democratic institutions and serious incumbent abuse yields electoral competition that is real but unfair—is alive and well, nearly two decades after the concept was introduced in the Journal of Democracy. This is surprising, because the Western liberal hegemony of the 1990s, which led many full autocracies to become competitive authoritarian, has waned. Competitive politics persists because many autocrats lack the coercive and organizational capacity to consolidate hegemonic rule, and because the alternatives to multiparty elections lack legitimacy across the globe. Recently, new competitive authoritarian regimes have emerged in countries with strong democratic institutions, raising concerns about the diffusion of competitive authoritarianism to the West.


The early time evolution of an ionospheric electron depletion produced by a radially expanding electron attachment chemical release is studied with a two-dimensional simulation model. The model includes electron attachment chemistry, incorporates fluid electrons, particle ions and neutrals, and considers the evolution in a plane perpendicular to the geomagnetic field for a low beta plasma. Timescales considered are of the order of or less than the cyclotron period of the negative ions that result as a by-product of the electron attachment reaction. This corresponds to time periods of tenths of seconds during recent experiments. Simulation results show that a highly sheared azimuthal electron flow velocity develops in the radially expanding depletion boundary. This sheared electron flow velocity and the steep density gradients in the boundary give rise to small-scale irregularities in the form of electron density cavities and spikes. The nonlinear evolution of these irregularities results in trapping and ultimately turbulent heating of the negative ions. 27 refs.


This study proposes a series of 3 experiments to explore how different types of staging, pictures versus virtual reality, impacts potential buyers' likelihood of wanting to visit a home. Moreover, this study seeks to address how the type of market, hot versus cold, and type of home, luxury versus non-luxury, connects with staging and its impact on wanting to visit a home. In Experiment 1, participants will view 10 total homes, 5 randomly selected with staged pictures first followed by the remaining 5 with virtual reality, either within the hot or cold market. If VR increases presence, then people should be more likely to want to visit a house especially in a hot market given that there is a high demand for a constrained supply. Experiment 2 addressed the contrast effect limitation given that virtual reality staging always came after the pictures of staging within Experiment 1. Experiment 2 should replicate the results of Experiment 1 by removing the contrast effect. Finally, Experiment 3 will explore the impact of type of home, luxury versus non-luxury, and type of staging on wanting to visit a home. Researchers are expected to find that participants who viewed properties in virtual reality are more likely to want to visit the home compared to those that saw staged images because of increased presence, which will make them feel more connected to the home compared to viewing staged pictures. Ultimately, this study is important because it aims to identify the utility of VR in home sales.


POLITICAL, ECONOMIC, AND LINGUISTIC IDEALS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AFTER the founding of the European Economic Community (EEC), Jean Monnet's dream of a union of European states has become an indisputable reality. In 1986, the twelve European Community (EC) "member states" signed the Single European Act (SEA), among these Denmark; and many new membership candidates are soliciting membership from the Commission of the European Community in Brussels. Of the Scandinavian countries, the governments of Sweden and Finland have already delivered their official applications for membership in the European Union, and Norway, though still skeptical, is considering a similar move in the near future.(1) If we consider that the primary task of the EC countries is to communicate and negotiate through the channels of EC institutions, then we must also recognize that the democratic way to accomplish this is for everyone to be able to communicate in his or her own language. Thus, it is natural to assume that the EC principle of "egalite dans la diversite" would also include linguistic equality. And, at least on paper, indeed it does where the member states' official national languages are concerned. Article 217 of the treaty establishing the EEC stipulates that the rules governing the languages of Community institutions are to be determined by the Council of Ministers. A Council regulation of April 15, 1958 states that Dutch, French, German, and Italian are to be the official and working languages of the Community. When Denmark, Great Britain, and Ireland became members of the Community in 1973, Danish and English were added to the list of official working languages. With Greek membership in 1981 and Portuguese and Spanish membership in 1986, the number of official EC languages is presently nine. Among these, Danish is the smallest.(2) Currently, no member country is required to use a language not its own when participating in the official EC decision making process. But there is a difference between having linguistic rights on paper and exercising them without causing irritation and delay. Denmark's current situation--the extent to which Danish is used in connection with the "democratic processes" of the EC--reveals deficits on both linguistic and political fronts. The goal of erasing national borders from the map of Europe allowing people, goods, services, and capital to move freely within the geographic area belonging to EC member states has not been accompanied by the desire to erase linguistic barriers. This is a rather unique situation considering the fact that organizations like the Council of Europe, UNO, NATO, OECD, and EFTA have few official languages, and sometimes only one. The multilingual linguistic ideals of the European Community are indeed idealistic. COMMUNITY MULTILINGUALISM IN PRACTICE Sociolinguistics teaches that power and language usage go hand in hand, and the European Community is no exception. Behind the scenes, French has asserted itself as the dominant language from the beginning. It was the official language, or one of the official languages, of three of the six countries founding the EC, and these French-speaking countries have cleverly supported their linguistic position structurally by seeing to it that all EC institutions were placed in French-speaking countries. The Commission and the Council are located in Brussels, a city with a French-speaking majority. The Court of Justice and the European Investment Bank are located in Luxembourg, where French is the most important administrative language. And the European Parliament is located in Strasbourg, a bilingual city with French as its official language. When Great Britian and Ireland became members in 1973, English quickly moved into a close second place due to its position as a global lingua franca. With respect to population, we might also expect Italy, Spain, and Germany to provide competition, but size alone is apparently not enough. …


BACKGROUND
Teachers differ substantially in their instructional performance in the classroom. Thus, researchers and policymakers are interested in how these differences can be explained and how the instruction provided by low-performing teachers can be improved. Previous research has focused either on generic (cognitive ability and personality) or profession-specific (professional knowledge, beliefs, and motivation for teaching) teacher characteristics as predictors of instructional quality but their relative importance has not yet been tested.

AIMS
Hardly any studies have combined central generic and profession-specific variables in ascertaining their relative importance for instructional quality. In the present study, we seek to close this research gap.

SAMPLES
We investigated 209 German mathematics teachers and their 4,672 students attending grades 7-10 (13- to 16-year-old students).

METHODS
Teacher characteristics (cognitive ability, personality, professional knowledge, beliefs about, and enthusiasm for teaching) were assessed using standardized tests and self-report measures. Instructional quality (learning support, classroom disruptions, and cognitive activation) was rated by the students.

RESULTS
Using structural equation modelling, we found extraversion, enthusiasm for teaching, and pedagogical/psychological knowledge to be significant predictors of learning support (R2  = .31) and conscientiousness and enthusiasm for teaching to be significant predictors of classroom discipline (R2  = .21). We did not find significant predictors for cognitive activation.

CONCLUSIONS
Our results indicate the relative significance of generic and profession-specific teacher variables for instructional quality. Overall, a substantial amount of variance in instructional quality is explained by teacher characteristics.


Regarding the use of material, modern lightweight car bodies are becoming more and more complex than previous constructions. The materials nowadays are used for a more specific field of application and more high strength steels are used and also other materials like aluminium, stainless steel, reinforced polymers are used more frequent. The joining of these materials often requires new or modified joining processes. The aim with this thesis is concerned with the development of simulation models of the joining process as well as mechanical properties of self piercing riveted (SPR) joints and pierce nut joints. In both of these joining methods problems occur when introducing more high strength steel sheets. For SPR, fractures occur in the rivet, and for pierce nut the thread will be damaged. Since both the SPR process and the pierce nut process expose the material for plastic deformation up to 150%, correct material properties for very large strain and a simulation program that could handle this was required. With the commercial finite element program Deform2D an axi-symmetric model has been built for the SPR process and the pierce nut process. Because of the computational time, 3D simulations were only used where it was necessary. The developed 3D models use the commercial finite element program ABAQUS-Explicit. All simulation models have been verified with satisfactory agreement to experimental results. For SPR, an axi-symmetric simulation model was used for evaluating and optimising the setting process in the stainless steel sheets EN1.4301, HyTens 800 and HyTens 1200. Subsequently, 3D models were used for predicting the mechanical properties of new SPR joints that have showed reduced risk for rivet cracking. In pierce nut simulations, nuts with hardness 8 and 10 have been set in the high strength steel sheet DP600. An axi-symmetric simulation model was used for centred nut setting and two different simulation models in 3D were used to evaluate eccentric nut setting and torque resistance. This work resulted in more knowledge about the fracture risk in the rivet and how to reduce it. The strain and stress, which was used as fracture indicators, were reduced to the half with modifications of the rivet and the die geometry. Mechanical property simulations in shear and peel load resulted in satisfactory results for new SPR joints that have showed reduced fracture risk during rivet setting. New die and rivet designs can be developed effectively by combining the process and mechanical property simulations. For a pierce nut joint in high strength steel sheets (1.5mm DP600), the simulations show that the cutting of the sheet in combination with eccentric setting over the die causes the thread damage. The thread damage can be avoided by changing the dimension of the nut or by increasing the strength of the nut material. The simulation models can also be used to develop new nut and die geometries for future applications.


The primary objective of this research was to identify and address the factors
involved in overall quality production of ER Pharmaceutical products. A second
objective was to be operationlise. These factors with the system, "cetirus parebus" that
enable a company to shift from one with lower level of quality skills to one that would be
in line with the call of "Quality 2020". As expected the two factors come to the fore: - a)
quality products b) the ability to use quality to meet the needs and satisfaction of
customers.
Internal and external customers were assessed by Analytical Hierarchy Process
Survey techniques to assess the needs and identify factors in this study. Questionnaires
were issued and return monitored. The two objectives was to collect data as integrated
factors of Product Quality and Human Resources factors involved in Human Resources
related to product quality. There were thirteen product quality factors selected for this
research: 1) Visual appearance, 2) Friability 3) Disintegration 4) Taste 5) packaging 6)
Embossing 7) Hardness . The human Resource factors included in this paper were 1)
willingness to change 2) Knowledge 3) Skill 4) Commitment 5) Attitude 6) Teamwork
and 7) leadership. Analytical Hierarchy Process was undertaken to facilitate ranking
procedures. The subsequent ranking for product quality was 1) Strip Packing 2) uneven
color, 3) Visual appearance 4) Friability 5) Texture 6) Blister Packing 7) Disintegration
8) Taste 9) Crack 10) Packaging 11) shape 12) Embossing and 13) Hardness Th final
ranking of the human resources factors was 1) Willingness to Change 2) Knowledge 3)
Skill 4) Commitment 5) Attitude 6) Teamwork and 7) Leadership.
It was found that it was vital for process Engineers to consider the identified
factors and accord them with fundamental importance in establishing high quality
process function. Participation and input from Human resources was also gauged as
important factor in determining High Quality. HR participation is the transformation of
personnel as vital ingredients in successful output.


This paper proposes that in the near future –fron now to 2020– the prices of aviation fuels shall undergo dramatic increases due to the fact that energy will become more expensive on global level and, most of all, due to the severe imposition of tax burden provoked by the necessity of lowering the impact of air transport over climate change. From this starting point the increase of costs it is estimated that they will bring along two destinations such as sun and beach, for this reason Ibiza and Punta Cana. The paper also shows sufficient material to evaluate the impact of the increase of aviation fuel over other destinations such as the Canary Islands, Cancun and the Seychelles. The project incorporates features as the future technological evolution of commercial aviation and the incidence of the new tax philosophy already tested by the European Union concerning this mean of transport.


Recent clinical studies show that exercise rather than rest may be the best therapy for someone undergoing cancer treatments. The Healing Power of Movement addresses this significant shift in care recommendations and clearly illustrates fifty specific exercises-from simply sitting up or moving in bed to walking or lifting light weights-for different stages of cancer treatments, and for many different types of cancers. Written in consultation with a leading oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Center in Manhattan and based on practical advice gleaned from the front lines of the author's physical-therapy practice, The Healing Power of Movement will be recommended and empowering reading for all cancer patients, whether they are undergoing chemotherapy or radiation, or are recovering from surgery.


ABSTRACT Gold mineralization at the Titania Prospect in the Tanami Desert Region is buried by transported regolith including mixed aeolian and sheetflow deposits over palaeodrainage sediments. This prospect is the only example of discovery through significant thickness of transported regolith and therefore provides an important site for developing an understanding of geochemical pathways from buried mineralization. Plant sampling for biogeochemical analysis was conducted over this prospect in October 2005 with the aims of characterizing the expression of the mineralization and in particular what species best expressed the chemical signature of the buried mineralization. The multi-element chemical compositions of leaves or phyllodes were compared across the mineralized and adjacent 'background' areas as well as between adjacent plants at the same sites to directly compare the uptake properties of different plant species. The nine most widespread and abundant plant species at the prospect were sampled, of which three are of particular interest. The soft spinifex (Triodia pungens) expressed all of the key ore indicator elements (Au, As, Zn, S) and best delineated the buried mineralization. Melaleuca lasiandra and Acacia bivenosa also delineated the mineralization but their usefulness is reduced because of their more restricted distributions. Baseline elemental levels varied among species, and it is suggested that these differences largely relate to differences in rooting depth and thereby the plant's ability to access different parts of the regolith profile.


Public discourse often portrays Islam as the main obstacle for Muslim minorities'
integration, paying little attention to the contextual factors hindering
this process. Here, we focus on islamophobia as one destructive factor that
hinders the mutual integration between Muslim minority and Western
majority members, affecting both groups. In Study 1, the more islamophobic
majority members were, the more they expected Muslims to give up their
heritage culture and the less they wanted them to integrate. In Study 2, only
when Muslims experienced substantial religious discrimination did religious
identity negatively relate to national engagement and particularly positively
relate to ethnic engagement. Together, the studies suggest that religious
prejudice in the form of islamophobia is a major obstacle to Muslims' integration
because it increases the incongruity between majority and minority
members' acculturation attitudes.


This paper examines farms in areas undergoing development, using a longitudinal file constructed by linking several agricultural censuses. Individual farms are followed over the 1982-97 period. Survival, exit, and entrance rates are presented for three types of farms: recreational, adaptive, and traditional. The three types of farms are located where one would expect. Traditional farms are concentrated in nonmetropolitan (nonmetro) counties, while adaptive farms are concentrated in metro core counties. Recreational farms are least common in nonmetro nonadjacent areas, where off-farm opportunities are fewest. The concentration of adaptive farms in metro core counties does not appear to be the result of these farms simply surviving an urban environment better than traditional and recreational farms. In fact, adaptive farms have lower survival rates than traditional farms. Adaptive farms instead had a relatively high entrance rate.


Background and Purpose: Influenza (flu) causes many hospitalization and death in the year. It is recommended health care workers (HCW) receive the annual flu vaccine. But studies have shown that a few of medical staffs are vaccinated against flu. This study was conducted to determine the incentives and disincentives of flu vaccination in nurses. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted among 200 nurses in teaching hospitals in Shahid Sadoughi University in 2011. The Samples were selected randomly. The data collection tool was a 35-point self-administered questionnaire about the incentive and disincentive for flu vaccination. Frequencies, percentages, mean, standard deviation, and chi-square were used for statistical analysis. Results: According to the findings, 32.5% of nurses were vaccinated, the main factors for encouraging vaccination were: personal protection (95%), family safety (25.5%), not being concerned about spreading the disease (18%), and following other health workers (26.5%). The main factors inhibiting for the vaccination were: not believing in the effectiveness of the vaccine (26%), lacking of information about vaccine (31%) and not being worried about flu (26%). Conclusion: Based on the results, the incentives for vaccination in nurses were protection against the disease and the persuasion of other HCWs. The most inhibitors were the high cost of vaccination and lack of knowledge about flu vaccination. It is, therefore, necessary to promote vaccination in nursing staffs by offering more facilities such as vaccination in the workplace, providing free immunizations and educational actions.


Privacy threat is one of the critical issues in multihop wireless networks, where attacks such as traffic analysis and flow tracing can be easily launched by a malicious adversary due to the open wireless medium. Network coding has the potential to thwart these attacks since the coding/mixing operation is encouraged at intermediate nodes. However, the simple deployment of network coding cannot achieve the goal once enough packets are collected by the adversaries. On the other hand, the coding/mixing nature precludes the feasibility of employing the existing privacy-preserving techniques, such as Onion Routing. In this paper, we propose a novel network coding based privacy-preserving scheme against traffic analysis in multihop wireless networks. With homomorphic encryption, the proposed scheme offers two significant privacypreserving features, packet flow untraceability and message content confidentiality, for efficiently thwarting the traffic analysis attacks. Moreover, the proposed scheme keeps the random coding feature. Theoretical analysis and simulative evaluation demonstrate the validity and efficiency of the proposed scheme.


Introduction Whether patterns of physical activity in different communities can be attributed to the built environment or instead reflect self-selection is not well understood. The objective of this study was to examine neighborhood preferences and behavior-specific physical activity among residents who moved to a new urbanist-designed community. Methods We used data from a 2009 survey (n = 424) that was designed and administered to evaluate neighborhood preferences and behavior-specific physical activity before and after residents moved. Data were grouped and stratified by pre-move physical activity levels into low-, middle-, and high-activity groups. We used Student's paired sample t test and Wilcoxon signed-rank test to compare pre- and post-move scores and used an analysis of variance to compare mean changes as a function of pre-move physical activity level. Results After moving, the high-activity group continued to be significantly more active than the middle- and low-activity groups (P < .001). However, we saw the biggest increase in pre- to post-move total physical activity in the low-activity group (mean increase, 176.3 min/wk) compared with the middle- (mean increase, 69.5 min/wk) and high-activity groups (mean decrease, 67.9 min/wk). All 3 groups had significant increases in walking inside the neighborhood for recreation. The preferred neighborhood features with the most significant pre- to post-move change scores were those associated with greater walkability. Conclusion This study supports the role the environment plays in physical activity. These data suggest that moving to an activity-friendly neighborhood can positively affect physical activity levels, particularly among residents who had previously been least active.


Background Qatar demonstrated high incidence of low birth weight (8.8%), preterm deliveries (8.5%), and stillbirths rate (6.85) (Rahman et all, 2013). In addition, Qatari pregnant women are 1.2 times more likely to have a low birth weight newborn compared to other Arab women, where Gestational Diabetes (13.4%–20.8%) and Gestational Hypertension (15.2%–21.6%) were the leading maternal complications observed.). The WHO Qatar STEPS survey (2012) on chronic disease risk factors reported that 42.5% of the women in reproductive age have high risk factor for developing chronic diseases, while 68% are overweight with high blood pressure, elevated total cholesterol levels and fasting glucose. In addition to these data, the International Association of the study of Obesity has ranked Qatar sixth globally for prevalence of obesity. Methods/Design This is a prospective five year cohort study developed by SCH. Pregnant women (n = 2500) and offspring will be, respectively, recruited during certain critical periods of fetal development and the first years of life. The genetic, environmental exposures and potential human health risks (including cancer, immune, metabolic and cardiovascular diseases, neurodevelopmental abnormalities, asthma, and birth outcomes) will be investigated via specific questionnaires and collection of biological samples. The study comprises an extensive range of "omics" analyses for the in-depth investigation of the impact of the genome-exposome synergy in the establishment of adverse birth outcomes and early childhood diseases. This is a multidisciplinary study where SCH is collaborating with various research institutions such as PHCC, QU, WCMC-Q, QBRI, QBB, QEERI, TAMU-Q, Sidra, and HMC. Discussion Human epidemiological studies and animal research data propose a concept of fetal developmental programming whereby intrauterine environment is believed to trigger adaptations preparing the fetus in a particular range of environments. In this context intrauterine exposures have been referred to as the "fourth factor" in the causation of human disease. Consequently, the design of birth-cohort study is crucial for investigating the complex multidimensional molecular mechanisms associated with genetic, environmental and socioeconomic determinants, and their contribution to the development of chronic diseases and birth defects. This first birth-cohort in the state of Qatar has been launched by SCH with the main objective of evaluating the association of these exposures with the fetal development, reproductive outcomes, endocrine related outcomes, neurodevelopment, and obesity and with the occurrence of chronic diseases including asthma and allergies, metabolic syndrome and endocrine disorders that appear first in childhood but may perpetuate to future health problems. The main outcome of this multi-disciplinary project is to address the national concern of low reproductive health. The identification and quantification of the gene-environmental interaction affecting fetal growth and child health, shall provide evidence-based data to assist policy makers at SCH to develop better primary prevention programs and evidence based healthcare policies concerning Maternal Health, Reproductive Health, Pregnancy and Child Health in Qatar.


In this paper, we describe institutional support for the energy and environmental policy in Latvia. This includes large state institutions, sector administration and main functions. The main connections between energy and environmental institutions are defined. We describe the scientific institutions providing research on energy and environmental policy and, in particular, the research carried out at the Institute of Physical Energetics of the Latvian Academy of Science and at the Riga Technical University.


Ab s t r a c t : Three nodular-rich beds occur within a sandstone unit of the Precambrian Bandak group at Haugli in Telemark, southern ::\orway. The nodules have ellipsoidal shapes, are 2%-4% cm long, 1-2 cm across, are com posed chiefly of fine-grained quartz, and have a central coarse-grained quartz filled tube parallel to the long axis. The internal structure of the nodules is insufficiently preserYed to permit any definite conclusion as to their origin. An organic or organic-controlled origin (e.g. some primitive sponge or concre tionary development influenced by algae) seems more likely than an inorganic origin (e.g. lithophysæ, pisoliths or ooliths). The name TELEl\IAEKITES E�IGl\IATICCS has been chosen as a designation for the features.


This study is concerned with establishing the determinants of banks' exposure to risk and with predicting risk in banking. Using the COMPUSTAT data base, prediction rules have been developed for two aspects of risk: systematic risk (risk that is related to covariance with the market portfolio) and residual risk (the aggregate of specific risk and extra-market covariance). For each type of risk, several models have bean estimated: one model employs only measures of the asset and liability characteristics of the bank; a second employs these characteristics and other data taken from annual reports; a third model adds the history of the behavior of the price at the bank's common stock. The central conclusion of the study is that systematic and residual risk in banks can be predicted from predetermined data. Prediction rules estimated in this way can serve a useful function in monitoring bank risk. Further, the predictive significance of each variable serves as a measure of the appropriateness of that variable as an indicator of risk, and hence as a target for regulation.


In a chemical language, computation is viewed as abstract molecules reacting in an abstract chemical solution. Data can be seen as molecules and operations as chemical reactions: if some molecules satisfy a reaction condition, they are replaced by the result of the reaction. When no reaction is possible within the solution, a normal form is reached and the program terminates. In this article, we introduce HOCL, the Higher-Order Chemical Language, where reaction rules are also considered as molecules. We illustrate the application of HOCL to the specification of self-organizing systems. We describe two case studies: an autonomic mail system and the coordination of an image-processing pipeline on a grid.


Dictyostelium discoideum MyoD, a long-tailed class I myosin, co-purified with two copies of a 16 kDa light chain. Sequence analysis of the MyoD light chain showed it to be a unique protein, termed MlcD, that shares 44% sequence identity with Dictyostelium calmodulin and 43% sequence identity with Acanthamoeba castellanii myosin IC light chain. MlcD comprises four EF-hands; however, EF-hands 2-4 contain mutations in key Ca2+-co-ordinating residues that would be predicted to impair Ca2+ binding. Electrospray ionization MS of MlcD in the presence of Ca2+ and La3+ showed the presence of one major and one minor metal-binding site. MlcD contains a single tryptophan residue (Trp39), the fluorescence intensity of which was quenched upon addition of Ca2+ or Mg2+, yielding apparent dissociation constants ( K'(d)) of 52 microM for Ca2+ and 450 microM for Mg2+. The low affinity of MlcD for Ca2+ indicates that it cannot function as a sensor of physiological Ca2+. Ca2+ did not affect the binding of MlcD to MyoD or to either of the two MyoD IQ (Ile-Gln) motifs. FLAG-MlcD expressed in Dictyostelium formed a complex with MyoD, but not with the two other long-tailed Dictyostelium myosin I isoenzymes, MyoB and MyoC. Through its specific association with the Ca2+-insensitive MlcD, MyoD may exhibit distinct regulatory properties that distinguish it from myosin I isoenzymes with calmodulin light chains.


Web logs and other platforms used to organize a social life online have achieved an enormous success over the last few years. Opposed to applications directly designed for building up and visualizing social networks, web logs are comprised of mostly unstructured text data, that comes with some meta data, such as the author of the text, its publication date, the URL it is available under and the web log platform it originates from. Some basics on web logs and a description of such data is given in chapter 1. A way to extract networks between authors using the meta data mentioned is discussed and applied in chapter 2. The required theoretical background on graph theory is covered in this chapter and it is shown that the networks exhibit the Small World Phenomenon. The main question posed in this theses is discussed in chapters 3 and 4, which is, if these networks may be inferred not by the available meta data, but by pure natural language analysis of the text content, allowing inference of these networks without any meta data at hand. For this, different techniques are used, namely a simplistic frequentist model based on the "bag-of-words" assumption and so called Topic models making use of Bayesian probability theory. The Topic models used are called Latent Dirichlet Allocation and, expanding this model, the Author-Topic model. All these techniques and their foundations are thoroughly described and applied to the available data. After this, the possibility of predicting the distance between two authors of web log texts in a social network by comparing term frequency vectors(bag-of-words) or probability distributions produced by the Topic models in terms of different metrics. After comparing these different techniques, a new model, also building on Latent Dirichlet Allocation, is introduced in the last chapter, together with possible ways to improve prediction of social networks based on content analysis.


For this authoritative post-cold-war biography of Shostakovich's illustrious but turbulent career under Soviet rule, Laurel E. Fay has gone back to primary documents: Shostakovich's many letters, concert programs and reviews, newspaper articles, and diaries of his contemporaries. An indefatigable worker, he wrote his arresting music despite deprivations during the Nazi invasion and constant surveillance under Stalin's regime. Shostakovich's life is a fascinating example of the paradoxes of living as an artist under totalitarian rule. In August 1942, his Seventh Symphony, written as a protest against fascism, was performed in Nazi-besieged Leningrad by the city's surviving musicians, and was triumphantly broadcast to the German troops, who had been bombarded beforehand to silence them. Alone among his artistic peers, he survived successive Stalinist cultural purges and won the Stalin Prize five times, yet in 1948 he was dismissed from his conservatory teaching positions, and many of his works were banned from performance. He prudently censored himself, in one case putting aside a work based on Jewish folk poems. Under later regimes he balanced a career as a model Soviet, holding government positions and acting as an international ambassador with his unflagging artistic ambitions. In the years since his death in 1975, many have embraced a view of Shostakovich as a lifelong dissident who encoded anti-Communist messages in his music. This lucid and fascinating biography demonstrates that the reality was much more complex. Laurel Fay's book includes a detailed list of works, a glossary of names, and an extensive bibliography, making it an indispensable resource for future studies of Shostakovich.


This paper presents a practical side-channel attack that identifies the social web service account of a visitor to an attacker's website. Our attack leverages the widely adopted user-blocking mechanism, abusing its inherent property that certain pages return different web content depending on whether a user is blocked from another user. Our key insight is that an account prepared by an attacker can hold an attacker-controllable binary state of blocking/non-blocking with respect to an arbitrary user on the same service; provided that the user is logged in to the service, this state can be retrieved as one-bit data through the conventional cross-site timing attack when a user visits the attacker's website. We generalize and refer to such a property as visibility control, which we consider as the fundamental assumption of our attack. Building on this primitive, we show that an attacker with a set of controlled accounts can gain a complete and flexible control over the data leaked through the side channel. Using this mechanism, we show that it is possible to design and implement a robust, large-scale user identification attack on a wide variety of social web services. To verify the feasibility of our attack, we perform an extensive empirical study using 16 popular social web services and demonstrate that at least 12 of these are vulnerable to our attack. Vulnerable services include not only popular social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, but also other types of web services that provide social features, e.g., eBay and Xbox Live. We also demonstrate that the attack can achieve nearly 100% accuracy and can finish within a sufficiently short time in a practical setting. We discuss the fundamental principles, practical aspects, and limitations of the attack as well as possible defenses. We have successfully addressed this attack by collaborative working with service providers and browser vendors. key words: web security and privacy, side channel, user identification


In Halliburton Co. v. Erica P. John Fund, Inc. (Halliburton II), the United States Supreme Court reaffirmed the validity of the "fraud on the market" presumption underlying securities fraud class action litigation. This presumption is vital to bringing suits as class actions because it excuses plaintiffs from proving individual reliance on an alleged corporate misstatement on the theory that any public statements made by the company are incorporated into its stock price and consequently relied upon by all investors. Thus, the Court's decision to uphold the validity of the presumption has been hailed as a significant victory for those who bring securities fraud class actions. Overlooked by many commentators is the fact that in addition to upholding the fraud on the market presumption, the Court established a new avenue for defendants to rebut the presumption at the class certification stage of a case. Defendants can now rebut the presumption before a class is certified by presenting evidence that an alleged corporate misstatement had no impact on the price of the stock. This ruling is significant because securities fraud class actions, as a practical matter, often settle after a class has been certified. This article examines what that ruling could mean for modern securities fraud class action litigation.


In this paper, the combination of a thyristor-switched shunt reactor and a current source converter-based active power filter has been proposed for mitigation of power quality (PQ) problems of Light Rail public Transportation Systems (LRTSs) fed by long medium-voltage underground cables. A case study has been carried out on a typical LRTS to assess the performance of the proposed solution for both capacitive reactive power compensation of underground cables and harmonic filtering of 12-pulse catenary rectifiers. It has been shown by extensive field tests carried out that this solution meets the requirements satisfactorily, thus constituting a complete solution to the PQ problems of LRTS. Conventional PQ solutions have been also assessed, and the corresponding theoretical results are given in comparison with the proposed system.


Warm periods of the past offer the chance to test climate models, not just through comparisons with proxy data, but also through model intercomparisons. The idea of an analogue to future global climate change, albeit with caveats, has additionally created much interest in these past periods. Two examples of these warm periods are the focus of intercomparison projects which have been established to utilize up-to-date paleodata to reconstruct formal boundary conditions for climate simulations. The Pliocene Model Intercomparison Project (PlioMIP), now in its second phase, focuses on the late Pliocene, approximately 3 Ma, while the Deep-Time Model Intercomparison Project (DeepMIP) looks back further to the period between the latest Paleocene and the early Eocene, approximately 55-50 Ma. Ice sheets in the polar regions are either smaller than those of today or are completely absent. Here, some results using the mid-resolution MIROC4m coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation model will be presented. These results will focus on the most basic experiments specified in the projects, adhering to the protocols and using the boundary conditions provided. It is found that zonal mean sea surface and surface air temperatures exhibit stronger agreement with proxy data at low to mid-latitudes. Surface albedo and greenhouse gases are shown to contribute greatly to warming, especially at high latitudes. In the experiments using DeepMIP boundary conditions, different initial conditions can yield similar climate states but with differences in the Atlantic meridional overturning and downwelling in the Southern Ocean.


Applying data mining (DM) in education is an emerging interdisciplinary research field also known as educational data mining (EDM). It is concerned with developing methods for exploring the unique types of data that come from educational environments. Its goal is to better understand how students learn and identify the settings in which they learn to improve educational outcomes and to gain insights into and explain educational phenomena. Educational information systems can store a huge amount of potential data from multiple sources coming in different formats and at different granularity levels. Each particular educational problem has a specific objective with special characteristics that require a different treatment of the mining problem. The issues mean that traditional DM techniques cannot be applied directly to these types of data and problems. As a consequence, the knowledge discovery process has to be adapted and some specific DM techniques are needed. This paper introduces and reviews key milestones and the current state of affairs in the field of EDM, together with specific applications, tools, and future insights. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


Supplemental Digital Content is available in the text. Background: Despite treatment guidance endorsing shortened dual antiplatelet therapy (DAPT) duration in high bleeding risk (HBR) patients after drug-eluting stents, limited evidence exists to support these recommendations. The present study was designed to examine the safety and effectiveness of 1-month DAPT duration following percutaneous coronary intervention with zotarolimus-eluting stents in HBR patients. Methods: Onyx ONE Clear was a prospective, multicenter, nonrandomized study evaluating the safety and effectiveness of 1-month DAPT followed by single antiplatelet therapy in HBR patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention with Resolute Onyx drug-eluting stents. The primary analysis of cardiac death or myocardial infarction between 1 month and 1 year was performed in the prespecified one-month clear population of patients pooled from the Onyx ONE US/Japan study and Onyx ONE randomized controlled trial. One-month clear was defined as DAPT adherence and without major adverse events during the first month following percutaneous coronary intervention. Results: Among patients enrolled in Onyx ONE US/Japan (n=752) and Onyx ONE randomized controlled trial (n=1018), 1506 patients fulfilled one-month clear criteria. Mean HBR characteristics per patient was 1.6 with 44.7% having multiple risks. By 2 months and 1 year, respectively, 96.9% and 89.3% of patients were taking single antiplatelet therapy. Between 1 month and 1 year, the rate of the primary end point was 7.0%. The 1-sided upper 97.5% CI was 8.4%, less than the performance goal of 9.7% (P<0.001). Conclusions: Among HBR patients who were event free before DAPT discontinuation at 1 month, favorable safety and effectiveness through 1 year support treatment with Resolute Onyx drug-eluting stents as part of an individualized strategy for shortened DAPT duration following percutaneous coronary intervention. Registration: URL: https://www.clinicaltrials.gov; Unique identifier NCT03647475.


Kamerlin, N. 2017. Computer Simulations of Polymer Gels. Structure, Dynamics, and Deformation. Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Science and Technology 1596. 69 pp. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. ISBN 978-91-513-0144-0. This thesis presents the results of computer simulation studies of the structure, dynamics, and deformation of cross-linked polymer gels. Obtaining a fundamental understanding of the interrelation between the detailed structure and the properties of polymer gels is a challenge and a key issue towards designing materials for specific purposes. A new off-lattice method for constructing a closed network is presented that is free from defects, such as looping chains and dangling ends. Using these model networks in Brownian dynamics simulations, I show results for the structure and dynamics of bulk gels and describe a novel approach using spherical boundary conditions as an alternative to the periodic boundary conditions commonly used in simulations. This algorithm was also applied for simulating the diffusion of tracer particles within a static and dynamic network, to illustrate the quantitative difference and importance of including network mobility for large particles, as dynamic chains facilitate the escape of particles that become entrapped. I further investigate two technologically relevant properties of polymer gels: their stimuliresponsive behaviour and their mechanical properties. The collapse of core-shell nanogels was studied for a range of parameters, including the cross-linking degree and shell thickness. Two distinct regimes of gel collapse could be observed, with a rapid formation of small clusters followed by a coarsening stage. It is shown that in some cases, a collapsing shell may lead to an inversion of the core-shell particle which exposes the core polymer chains to the environment. This thesis also explores the deformation of bimodal gels consisting of both short and long chains, subject to uniaxial elongation, with the aim to understand the role of both network composition as well as structural heterogeneity on the mechanical response and the reinforcement mechanism of these materials. It is shown that a bimodal molecular weight distribution alone is sufficient to strongly alter the mechanical properties of networks compared to the corresponding unimodal networks with the same number-average chain length. Furthermore, it is shown that heterogeneities in the form of high-density short-chain clusters affect the mechanical properties relative to a homogeneous network, primarily by providing extensibility.


Computer-assisted language learning (CALL) is an approach to teaching and learning languages that uses computers and other technologies to present, reinforce, and assess material to be learned, or to create environments where teachers and learners can interact with one another and the outside world. This book provides a much-needed overview of the diverse approaches to research and practice in CALL. It differs from previous works in that it not only surveys the field, but also makes connections to actual practice and demonstrates the potential advantages and limitations of the diverse options available. These options are based squarely on existing research in the field, enabling readers to make informed decisions regarding their own research in CALL. This essential text helps readers to understand and embrace the diversity in the field, and helps to guide them in both research and practice.


Austin Sarat has described legal understandings of the transcript as "the verbatim record of a present soon to become past, a mirror/a record/a voice machine in which the "author" exercises no authorial presence." In this paper I argue that when seeing a transcript as an authorless mirror of court proceedings, lawyers and socio-legal scholars risk overlooking the ways in which the technology of transcripts influences the record that is produced. Paying attention to the laws and practices governing transcript production allows those who engage in transcript research to appreciate how the transcript is defined in relation to the spoken proceedings it purports to represent even while the act of representation alters those proceedings. In this paper, I interrogate the terms on which legal transcripts act as memory's handmaiden. While the work discussed in section two shows the power of transcript research to unearth hidden memories, I suggest that socio-legal scholarship has occasionally failed to pay regard to transcripts' limitations. Overlooking these constraints can lead a researcher to falsely believe that she understands and is able to empathise with the person whose stories she recounts. The methodology I propose in section three for reading and writing about transcripts builds on the predominantly Foucauldian work of other socio-legal scholars in this area using insights from the work of Jacques Derrida and Dorothy E. Smith. In the second part of section three of this paper, I explain the process by which transcripts are produced and suggest some ways in which understanding the relation between the written transcript and the court proceeding allows one to read these transcripts more effectively. The paper concludes by repositioning the transcript as a socially-produced record of a process (a court proceeding) that is both quintessentially legal and saturated with the conditions of its production. Understanding transcripts in this way allows one to read transcripts critically, with an eye to what they contain and a concern to unearth what they might efface.


This paper examines the relationship of the poorest with growth (absolute sense), and whether or not the relationship the very poorest people have with growth is different from that for the poor as a whole (relative). Impacts of economic growth on the poorest are routed through direct channels (raising their production or income levels) and indirect channels (due to increased public spending or remittances). However, benefits are not guaranteed to all people, and in some cases the impact of growth on the poorest may be adverse. The paper begins the process of assembling data on this relationship and unpacking some explanation for patterns.


Galaxy redshift surveys provide a distorted picture of the universe due to the non-Hubble component of galaxy motions. By measuring such distortions in the linear regime one can constrain the quantity s = O0.6/b where O is the cosmological density parameter and b is the (linear) bias factor for optically selected galaxies. In this paper we apply two techniques for estimating s from the Stromlo-APM redshift survey: (1) measuring the anisotropy of the redshift space correlation function in spherical harmonics, and (2) comparing the amplitude of the direction-averaged redshift space correlation function to the real space correlation function. We test the validity of these techniques, particularly whether the assumption of linear theory is justified, using two sets of large N-body simulations. We find that the first technique is affected by nonlinearities on scales up to ~30 h-1 Mpc. The second technique is less sensitive to nonlinear effects and so is more useful for existing redshift surveys. The Stromlo-APM survey data favours a low value for s, with s ?, 0.6. A bias parameter b ? 2 is thus required if O = 1. However, higher-order correlations measured from the APM galaxy survey indicate a low value for the bias parameter b ? 1, requiring that O ?, 0.5. We also measure the relative bias for samples of galaxies of various luminosity and morphological type and find that low-luminosity galaxies are roughly three times less biased than L* galaxies. For the galaxy population as a whole, we measure a real space variance of galaxy counts in 8 h-1 Mpc spheres of (s82)g = 0.89 ± 0.05. © 1996. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.


Numerous studies have examined the causes and impacts of human disturbance on birds, but little is known about how these impacts vary among habitats. This is of applied importance both for predicting bird responses to changes in disturbance and in planning how to reduce disturbance impacts. The Dartford Warbler Sylvia undata , a key heathland breeding species, occupies territories in a range of heathland types. Three territory habitat groups were identified: heather-dominated territories, heather territories with significant areas of European Gorse Ulex europaeus and territories containing Western Gorse U. gallii . Productivity was significantly affected by the timing of breeding in all habitats, but disturbance only appeared to have a significant impact on the productivity of birds in heather territories. Disturbance events in heather territories delayed breeding pairs for up to 6 weeks. This significantly decreased both the number of successful broods raised and the average number of chicks fledged per pair. Nests situated close to territory boundaries in heather territories, with high numbers of disturbance events, were more likely to fail outright. It was determined that an average of between 13 and 16 people passing through a heather territory each hour would delay breeding pairs sufficiently to prevent multiple broods.


Objective: To increase data quality and ensure compliance with appropriate policies, many institutional data repositories curate data that is deposited into their systems. Here, we present our experience as an academic library implementing and managing a semi-automated, cloud-based data curation workflow for a recently launched institutional data repository. Based on our experiences we then present management observations intended for data repository managers and technical staff looking to move some or all of their curation services to the cloud.

Methods: We implemented tooling for our curation workflow in a service-oriented manner, making significant use of our data repository platform's application programming interface (API). With an eye towards sustainability, a guiding development philosophy has been to automate processes following industry best practices while avoiding solutions with high resource needs (e.g., maintenance), and minimizing the risk of becoming locked-in to specific tooling.

Results: The initial barrier for implementing a data curation workflow in the cloud was high in comparison to on-premises curation, mainly due to the need to develop in-house cloud expertise. However, compared to the cost for on-premises servers and storage, infrastructure costs have been substantially lower. Furthermore, in our particular case, once the foundation had been established, a cloud approach resulted in increased agility allowing us to quickly automate our workflow as needed.

Conclusions: Workflow automation has put us on a path toward scaling the service and a cloud based-approach has helped with reduced initial costs. However, because cloud-based workflows and automation come with a maintenance overhead, it is important to build tooling that follows software development best practices and can be decoupled from curation workflows to avoid lock-in.


OBJECTIVE
To determine which nursing support behaviors new mothers rate as most helpful in assisting them to cope with labor.

DESIGN
A retrospective study using quantitative and qualitative approaches, including a ranking of means and a content analysis.

SETTING
The postpartum unit of a tertiary-care hospital in eastern Canada.

PARTICIPANTS
Eighty postpartum women, most of whom were married, employed, and 20-33 years of age.

INTERVENTIONS
Within 72 hours of their labor women rated 25 nursing support behaviors.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
The perceived degree of helpfulness of 25 nursing support behaviors.

RESULTS
All 25 behaviors were perceived as helpful. The most helpful behaviors included making the woman feel cared about as an individual, giving praise, appearing calm and confident, assisting with breathing and relaxing, and treating the woman with respect. Behaviors in the emotional support category were the most helpful.

CONCLUSIONS
Nurses can assist women to cope with the stress of labor. They must use a high degree of interpersonal skills in the care of laboring women in addition to being technically competent.


Historically, bovine tuberculosis has occurred and been eradicated several times on the Hawaiian island of Molokai. After the most recent depopulation of cattle, TB was again identified in an adult cow in 1997, thus continuing the investigation into why bovine tuberculosis is reoccurring on the island. The Centers for Epidemiology and Animal Health (CEAH) have implemented spatial analysis using ArcView software that, along with epidemiological investigations, attempts to identify the environmental factors responsible for maintaining this disease in natural foci. To examine the ecological aspects of tuberculosis transmission from wildlife to livestock, and to identify the foci of infection, we have used a combination of classification analysis, 3D modeling, and various spatial analysis techniques.


This article examines issues that arise when Indigenous epistemologies are interpreted through non-Indigenous ontologies in research settings. I use the concept of grafting to refer to the act of transplanting ways of knowing and being from a context where they emerge naturally to a context where they are artificially implanted. I start exploring this context through a poem that outlines the difficulties Indigenous people tend to face when inhabiting academic spaces whose architecture is built on the violent historical foundations of modernity. Next, I briefly outline critiques of recognition and inclusion in political and educational spheres to highlight how liberal discourses have tended to offer only conditional forms of integration that support dominant ways of thinking by presenting them as benevolent and inclusive. I then turn to a discussion of the implications of this analysis for Indigenous research methodologies. I conclude with tentative suggestions for further work in this area.


Author(s): Griffiths, Richard; Wegmann, Alex; Hanson, Chad; Keitt, Brad; Howald, Gregg; Brown, Derek; Tershy, Bernie; Pitt, William; Moran, Matthew; Rex, Kristen; White, Susan; Flint, Beth; Torr, Nick | Abstract: Rodent eradications undertaken on tropical islands have had a lower success rate than those attempted in temperate regions. A recent project undertaken to eradicate Rattus tanezumi and R. exulans from the 3 islands comprising Wake Atoll is illustrative. R. tanezumi was successfully removed from all 3 islands. R. exulans was permanently eradicated on Peale Island (95 ha) and temporarily on Wilkes Island (76 ha). R. exulans eradication on Wake Island (525 ha) was unsuccessful and the species has since repopulated Wake Island and recolonized Wilkes Island. We completed a detailed review of the project in an attempt to isolate potential causes of eradication failure. Based on the evidence available, we were not able to positively identify a single factor to explain why R. exulans survived on Wake Island. However, monitoring after the operation points to a sequence of events that comprised delayed mortality amongst a subset of breeding females and the emergence of young rats after bait was no longer readily available. Such an event was likely influenced by an abundance of natural food resources throughout the treatment area, a high density of rats, interspecific competition for toxic bait, and rapid disappearance of bait because of consumption by non-target consumers (land crabs). These factors are common to many tropical islands. We provide recommendations for addressing these factors in a future attempt to remove rats from Wake Atoll.


Temporal resolution is essential to speech acoustic perception. It may be altered in subjects with auditory disorders, thus impairing the development of spoken and written language. AIM: The goal was to compare temporal resolution of children with normal hearing, with those bearing conductive hearing loss and auditory processing disorders. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The sample had 31 children, between 7 and 10 years of age, broken down into three groups: G1: 12 subjects with normal hearing; G2: 7 with conductive hearing loss and G3: 12 subjects with auditory processing disorders. This study was clinical and experimental. Selection procedures were: a questionnaire to be answered by the parents/guardians, audiologic and hearing processing evaluation. The study procedure was the test to detect breaks in silence at 50 dB HL above the mean values of 500, 1000 and 2000 Hz in both ears in 500, 1000, 2000 and 4000 Hz. To analyze the data we used the Wilcoxon Test with a 1% significance level. RESULTS: We noticed a difference between G1 and G2 and between G1 and G3 in all the frequencies. On the other hand, this difference was not seen between G2 and G3. CONCLUSION: conductive hearing loss and auditory processing disorders can impact break detection thresholds.


A new system for high-frequency boundary layer profiling based upon radiosondes and free balloons was tested during the field phases of the Boundary Layer Late Afternoon and Sunset Turbulence experiment (BLLAST 2011, Lannemezan, France) and of the Hydrological cycle in the Mediterranean Experiment (HyMeX, 2012). The system consists of a conventional Vaisala receiver and a GPS radiosonde (pressure, wind, humidity and temperature), that is tied to a couple of inflated balloons. The principle of the sounding system is to permit the first balloon to detach from the rawinsonde at a predetermined altitude, allowing for the rawinsonde to slowly descend with the second balloon to perform a second, new sounding. The instrumentation is then eventually recovered. The expecting landing area is anticipated before the flight by estimating the trajectory of the probe from a forecasted wind profile and by specifying both the balloon release altitude and the mean ascent and descent rates of the system. The real landing point is determined by the last transmission of the radiosonde GPS and the visual landmark provided by the second balloon. Seventy-two soundings were performed during BLLAST (62) and HyMeX (10), with a recovery rate of more than 80% during the BLLAST field campaign. Recovered radiosondes were generally reused several times, often immediately after recovery, which definitely demonstrates the high potential of this system.


Fourier decompositions have been made of the light curves of a large sample of RR Lyrae field stars. The coefficients have been tabulated. Following the scheme of an earlier investigation of classical Cepheids, certain combinations of the low-order coefficients 21' R 21' and 31 -are plotted against period. The Bailey-type c pulsators stand out from the type ab stars, particularly on the R21 plot which is found to be a more sensitive discriminator of Bailey type than is the traditionally employed amplitude-period diagram. We compare the RR Lyrae plots of 21' R 21 , and 31 with those previously obtained for classical Cepheids. It is noted that, while the Cepheid plots display a tightly defined progression with period, reflecting the influence of a modal resonance, in the RR Lyrae case there is much more scatter. However, some evidence is shown to exist for a Cepheid-like progression appearing among the longer period RR Lyrae pulsators and culminating in the unique small-amplitude variable XZ Ceti. New observations will be required to confirm the reality of such a progression. Subject headings: stars: pulsationstars: RR Lyrae


Theological libraries have tended to be treated as a homogeneous group with no
distinction being made between the different types. Little has been written about the
libraries of UK Christian theological colleges that train men and women for
ministry. The purpose of this research was to provide some understanding of the
context in which they operate. In addition it sought to establish their effectiveness in
meeting the ongoing needs of their user communities.
Using three college libraries, a multi-method approach was employed in order to
reveal the environment in which these libraries functioned. The study comprised
reviewing college documentation, using a questionnaire survey and undertaking
semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions. An analysis of the
interview findings is presented, together with the data obtained from the
questionnaire survey and focus groups.
The main issues that emerged were those concerning the changes in the delivery of
theological education and the implications of these for resource provision. The need
of the denominational churches to increase their recruitment for ministry whilst
simultaneously reducing costs was found to have been the main driving force for
change within theological education. The research found that the introduction of
flexible training pathways and the diverse range of students that were now recruited
for training had little effect on the way in which the traditional library service was
provided by the colleges.
It was concluded that since academic learning is only one aspect of ministerial
training, resource provision had been given insufficient consideration and funding.
This had inhibited the growth and development of the library service and prevented
the college libraries from satisfying the needs of their part-time users in particular.
This study makes an important contribution to the knowledge of theological college
librarianship by providing an understanding of the prevailing issues and concerns.
Further areas of research have been identified and conclusions drawn which are of
relevance to the theological college library sector.


Natriuretic peptides (NPs) are a group of hormones playing important roles in cardiovascular and osmoregulatory systems in vertebrates. Among the NP subtypes, atrial NP (ANP), B-type NP (BNP), and ventricular NP (VNP) are circulating hormones expressed exclusively in the heart (cardiac NPs). The constitution of cardiac NPs is variable among species of vertebrates. In order to understand the evolutionary and functional significance of such variation, we performed a systematic survey of cardiac NP cDNAs in nine taxonomically diverse teleosts inhabiting environments of varying salinity. The discovery of the coexistence of the ANP, BNP, and VNP genes in the eel and rainbow trout suggested that the ancestral teleost had all three cardiac NPs. As the VNP cDNA was undetectable in ayu and six species of Neoteleostei, it is possible that VNP was lost before the divergence of Osmeroidei. The ANP gene was also undetectable in the medaka. Thus, only the BNP gene is universal in species examined in the present study. Synthetic medaka BNP preferentially activated two medaka GC-A-type receptors, suggesting that the three cardiac NPs share the same receptor. However, the regulation of BNP expression may be the most strict because ATTTA repeats in the 3'-untranslated region and the dibasic motif in the ring are conserved among teleosts and tetrapods. Linkage analyses in the rainbow trout located ANP, BNP, and VNP genes on the same chromosome, which suggested the generation of the VNP gene by tandem duplication as observed with ANP and BNP genes. If the duplication occurred before the divergence of tetrapods and teleosts, VNP may exist in the tetrapod lineage.


In this paper we present new results for the combinatorics of web diagrams and web worlds. These are discrete objects that arise in the physics of calculating scattering amplitudes in non-abelian gauge theories. Web-colouring and web-mixing matrices (collectively known as web matrices) are indexed by ordered pairs of web-diagrams and contain information relating the number of colourings of the first web diagram that will produce the second diagram.
We introduce the black diamond product on power series and show how it determines the web-colouring matrix of disjoint web worlds. Furthermore, we show that combining known physical results with the black diamond product gives a new technique for generating combinatorial identities. Due to the complicated action of the product on power series, the resulting identities appear highly non-trivial.
We present two results to explain repeated entries that appear in the web matrices. The first of these shows how diagonal web matrix entries will be the same if the comparability graphs of their associated decomposition posets are the same. The second result concerns general repeated entries in conjunction with a flipping operation on web diagrams.
We present a combinatorial proof of idempotency of the web-mixing matrices, previously established using physical arguments only. We also show how the entries of the square of the web-colouring matrix can be achieved by a linear transformation that maps the standard basis for formal power series in one variable to a sequence of polynomials. We look at one parameterized web world that is related to indecomposable permutations and show how determining the web-colouring matrix entries in this case is equivalent to a combinatorics on words problem.


To what extent was the 20th century schooling revolution in sub-Saharan Africa shared equally between men and women? We examine trajectories of educational gender inequality over the 20th century, using census data from 21 African countries and applying a birth-cohort approach. We present three sets of findings. First, compared to other developing regions with similar histories of colonial rule and educational expansion, sub-Saharan Africa performed comparatively poorly in closing educational gender gaps (M-F) and gender ratios (M/F) over the 20th century. Second, in most African countries, the educational gender gap rose during the colonial era, peaked mid-century, and declined, albeit at very different rates, after independence. Southern African countries were remarkably gender equal, both in terms of gaps and ratios. French (former) colonies had smaller gaps but higher ratios than British (former) colonies, which we attribute to slower expansion of male education in the former. Both on the world-region and country-level, the expansion of male education is associated initially with a growing gender gap, and subsequently a decline. We refer to this pattern as the "educational gender Kuznets curve". Third, using data from 6 decadal cohorts across 1,177 African regions, we explore sub-national correlates of educational gender equity. Better connected and urban regions witnessed lower educational gender inequality. In regions with large Christian mission stations in the early 20th century access to education was also less gender unequal, an effect that persisted into the post-colonial period. We also find that during the colonial era, cash crop cultivation was not consistently associated with larger gender gaps, while female farming systems were associated with smaller gaps. The sub-national cross-sectional results confirm the existence of an educational gender Kuznets curve.


A functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) method that focuses on neural magnetic fields has great potential to detect neural activities more directly than the conventional method. Because this fMRI method does not depend on blood-oxygenation-level-dependent contrast, improved temporal and spatial resolutions can be expected. Among various approaches of this fMRI method, the one that uses a spin-lock imaging sequence has attracted wide attention because of the possibility to detect small oscillating magnetic fields. To understand the mechanism of this approach, we visualized magnetization behavior during the spin-lock module with externally applied oscillating magnetic fields. A fast-and-simple method with matrix operations was used to solve a time-dependent Bloch equation. In addition, we investigated the influence of the duration of the spin-lock pulse in the spin-lock module, which interacts with the external oscillating magnetic fields, on magnetic resonance signals. Furthermore, to detect minute magnetic fields in the order of sub-nT, we carried out phantom studies on the practical use of this method as an fMRI approach. A single-loop coil generating oscillating magnetic fields was placed inside a saline-filled phantom. Time-dependent performance of magnetization during the spinlock module was thus visually demonstrated to aid understanding of the mechanism of the fMRI method with the spin-lock imaging sequence. In addition to this visualization, we found that the decrease in magnetization depends on the duration of the spin-lock pulse. Longer durations are appropriate for detecting minute sub-nT magnetic fields such as neural magnetic fields. Furthermore, we were able to detect magnetic fields of approximately 200 pT by choosing a spin-lock pulse of long duration and increasing the number of MR image acquisitions. Our results provide useful information for the understanding of the mechanism of direct detection of oscillating neural magnetic fields using MRI with a spin-lock imaging sequence. In addition, we propose an improved selection scheme for the duration of the spin-lock pulse and the feasibility of detecting oscillating magnetic fields of 200 pT considering practical application of fMRI.


This paper compares and contrasts the economic situation in Tanzania during the resurgence of gold and diamond production after 1999, with the situation that is now emerging as the country begins to exploit very large resources of natural gas mainly from the Indian Ocean. The mining boom after 1999, provided the authorities with significant lessons and opportunities associated with managing natural resources wealth. The paper assesses some of the key component issues and interprets these in the context of the new possibilities (and dangers) opened up by the natural gas revolution.


The cloud computing model has seen tremendous commercial success through its materialization via two prominent models to date, namely public and private cloud. Recently, a third model combining the former two service models as on-/off-premise resources has been receiving significant market traction: hybrid cloud. While state of art techniques that address workload performance prediction and efficient workload execution over hybrid cloud setups exist, how to address data-intensive workloads - including Big Data Analytics - in similar environments is nascent. This paper addresses this gap by taking on the challenge of bursting over hybrid clouds for the benefit of accelerating iterative MapReduce applications. We first specify the challenges associated with data locality and data movement in such setups. Subsequently, we propose a novel technique to address the locality issue, without requiring changes to the MapReduce framework or the underlying storage layer. In addition, we contribute with a performance prediction methodology that combines modeling with micro-benchmarks to estimate completion time for iterative MapReduce applications, which enables users to estimate cost-to-solution before committing extra resources from public clouds. We show through experimentation in a dual-Openstack hybrid cloud setup that our solutions manage to bring substantial improvement at predictable cost-control for two real-life iterative MapReduce applications: large-scale machine learning and text analysis.