In this thesis we studied different forms of transport at interfaces. Four different interfacial transport mechanisms have been investigated. In each of them one physical aspect of active and passive transport is discussed. The four systems are arranged and discussed in four separate chapters. In chapter 3 and 4 we study the effect of static or hydrodynamic interactions on the cross over from individual diffusion towards collective diffusion. In chapter 3 the diffusion of circular domains on a giant unilamellar vesicle is measured. By tracking the motion of hydrodynamic interacting domains on a curved membrane we determined whether it is possible to extract rheological properties of the bilayer membrane. A similar two dimensional system interacting via static dipole interactions is studied in chapter 4. A mixture of paramagnetic and nonmagnetic colloidal particles immersed into a diluted ferrofluid is self assembled into colloidal flowers. In this experiment the effect of static interactions on the modes of diffusion of the petals of the colloidal flower is investigated in a one dimensional system. The results are compared with the single file diffusion of a hard core interacting one dimensional system. In chapter 5, the effect of actively directing particles with fluctuating active forces in a symmetry broken environment is studied. We address the question how to competing symmetry breaking effects decide on the direction of motion. The system consists of paramagnetic colloidal particles placed into an aqueous solution above the liquid-solid interface of a magnetic garnet film. An external modulated field supplies the fluctuations and the symmetry is broken by tilting the external field with respect to the magnetic film and/or by a magnetic symmetry broken pattern of the magnetic film. The direction of motion of the paramagnetic colloids is measured and we give a theoretical explanation of why which symmetry breaking wins. The fluidization of a two dimensional solid to a two dimensional liquid via the yielding of the monolayer is studied in chapter 6. The monolayer is locally yielded with thermo capillary interactions by focusing a laser onto it. We investigate the yielding as a function of the chemical nature of the monolayer and determine the thermodynamic requirements necessary for thermo capillary yielding.


The measurement of mesozooplankton biomass in the ocean requires the use of analytical procedures that destroy the samples. Alternatively, the development of methods to estimate biomass from optical systems and appropriate conversion factors could be a compromise between the accuracy of analytical methods and the need to preserve the samples for further taxonomic studies. The conversion of the body area recorded by an optical counter or a camera, by converting the digitized area of an organism into individual biomass, was suggested as a suitable method to estimate total biomass. In this study, crustacean mesozooplankton from subtropical waters were analyzed, and individual dry weight and body area were compared. The obtained relationships agreed with other measurements of biomass obtained from a previous study in Antarctic waters. Gelatinous mesozooplankton from subtropical and Antarctic waters were also sampled and processed for body area and biomass. As expected, differences between crustacean and gelatinous plankton were highly significant. Transparent gelatinous organisms have a lower dry weight per unit area. Therefore, to estimate biomass from digitized images, pattern recognition discerning, at least, between crustaceans and gelatinous forms is required.


An experimental simulation program, which has been in progress at the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory since 1957, is described. This program uses the IBM 704 computer to simulate perceptual learning, recognition, and spontaneous classification of visual stimuli in the perceptron, a theoretical brain model which has been described elsewhere. The paper includes a brief review of the organization of simple perceptrons, and theoretically predicted performance curves are compared with those obtained from the simulation programs, in several types of experiments, designed to study "forced" and "spontaneous" learning of pattern discriminations.


Current state-of-the-art solutions for motion capture from a single camera are optimization driven: they optimize the parameters of a 3D human model so that its re-projection matches measurements in the video (e.g. person segmentation, optical flow, keypoint detections etc.). Optimization models are susceptible to local minima. This has been the bottleneck that forced using clean green-screen like backgrounds at capture time, manual initialization, or switching to multiple cameras as input resource. In this work, we propose a learning based motion capture model for single camera input. Instead of optimizing mesh and skeleton parameters directly, our model optimizes neural network weights that predict 3D shape and skeleton configurations given a monocular RGB video. Our model is trained using a combination of strong supervision from synthetic data, and self-supervision from differentiable rendering of (a) skeletal keypoints, (b) dense 3D mesh motion, and (c) human-background segmentation, in an end-to-end framework. Empirically we show our model combines the best of both worlds of supervised learning and test-time optimization: supervised learning initializes the model parameters in the right regime, ensuring good pose and surface initialization at test time, without manual effort. Self-supervision by back-propagating through differentiable rendering allows (unsupervised) adaptation of the model to the test data, and offers much tighter fit than a pretrained fixed model. We show that the proposed model improves with experience and converges to low-error solutions where previous optimization methods fail.


Proceedings: AACR 102nd Annual Meeting 2011‐‐ Apr 2‐6, 2011; Orlando, FL

Leptin and its receptor, OB-R, are overexpressed in cancer cells and their levels correlate to worse prognosis of cancer patients. Leptin is an important inducer of VEGF/VEGFR2 in breast cancer under normoxia through the activation of several signaling pathways and HIF-1α/NFκB/SP1. However, the specific mechanisms of leptin-mediated regulation of VEGF/VEGFR2 genes are still partially unknown. VEGF/VEGFR2 directly regulates tumor angiogenesis and also works as an essential autocrine/paracrine process for cancer cell proliferation and survival. We have previously shown that disruption of leptin signaling with our novel antagonists, PEG-LPrAs, significantly impaired the growth of breast tumors and reduced the levels of VEGF/VEGFR2. We hypothesize that leptin regulation of VEGF/VEGFR2 in breast cancer involves the activation of Src and Gbr2/Gab2/STAT3 and crosstalk to Rho-GTPases. Methods: To test this hypothesis, VEGF/VEGFR2 expression and activation of signaling intermediaries were determined in mouse and human breast cancer cells challenged with leptin as well as genetic and pharmacologic kinase inhibitors. Results: Inhibition of JAK2 partially reduced leptin-induced pSTAT3 levels but increased VEGF protein and mRNA. Moreover, leptin-induced pSTAT3 was related to Src and Gab2. Inhibition of Src increased leptin-induced VEGF and dramatically reduced VEGFR2. Rac1 inhibition also abrogated leptin-induced pSTAT3 and decreased pGab2 and VEGF/VEGFR2 levels. Conclusions: Leptin activation of Rac1 upregulates VEGF/VEGFR2 and promotes a negative feed-back, which downregulates leptin activation of Src/Gbr2/Gab2/STAT3. In addition, leptin activation of Src/Gbr2/Gab2 and Rac1 are needed for the induction of VEGFR2. These data suggest a high complexity of signaling crosstalk is involved in leptin regulation of pro-angiogenic factors and breast cancer growth. Therefore, PEG-LPrA combined with inhibitors for leptin-sensitive regulatory signaling partners could provide novel multiple target therapies for breast cancer. This could be of paramount importance for the higher risk patients: obese and postmenopausal women who show highest leptin levels. Our proposed studies could also be relevant to patients having the very aggressive and difficult to treat triple negative breast cancer.

Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 102nd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2011 Apr 2-6; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2011;71(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 1009. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2011-1009


Following a resolutely textual approach, Joan E. Howard examines the neglected but central role of sacrifice in the literary oeuvre of Marguerite Yourcenar.Marguerite Yourcenar was the first woman elected to the previously all-male bastion of the Academie francaise. However, while some readers have regarded Yourcenar as antagonistic to modem feminism, Howard shows that Yourcenar s works are susceptible to some surprisingly feminist interpretations. "Those who would co-opt Yourcenar into the conservative camp," warns Howard, "have not read her work carefully enough." In "Le mystere d Alceste, "for example, Yourcenar s Alcestis substitutes for her husband in death not out of wifely devotion, but to escape her stifling existence as wife and mother.By combining her textual approach with various strains of poststructuralist theory, Howard argues convincingly that Yourcenar s novels, stories, and plays call for a radical destructuring both of the human subject as commonly conceived and of the social, political, economic, and religious institutions in the Western world. Howard is the first to demonstrate that the largely unexamined role of sacrifice is central both to that critique and to Yourcenar s literary oeuvre."


Wetlands provide many ecosystem goods and services which include fish production. The sustainability of small-scale fisheries (SSF) has received considerable attention in recent years because fish is one of the major sources of animal protein to a considerable fraction of the global population which is estimated to increase to about 9.5 billion by 2050. Most of this attention has evolved around the pressures to which SSF are increasingly subjected, emanating particularly from population growth, rural poverty, weak institutional mechanisms, market forces, climate change among others.

 This thesis focuses on designing a sustainable management institution for the Elephant Marsh Fishery in Southern Malawi. With fieldwork which started in May 2011 to June 2013, this PhD study uses empirical data to understand the socio-ecological system of the Elephant Marsh Fishery and propose an actor-based institutional design which would achieve long-term sustainability of the fishery.

 After the introductory chapter 1, the second part of this thesis (Chapter 2) brings into perspective a clear understanding of the socio-ecological and land use setting of the Elephant Marsh as well as the ecosystem-based development potentials that exist at the wetland. The second chapter also highlights the actors and local institutions pertaining to the management of the wetland.

 Just like many similar ecosystems across the globe, the Elephant Marsh has come under increasing pressure in recent years which threatens the future of the wetland. Currently, Malawi does not have either a national wetland policy or a climate change policy and wetland issues are only marginally present in the National Parks and Wildlife Policy of 2000 and National Fisheries and Aquaculture Policy of 2001. As a result, the country lacks a framework that could be strong enough to achieve balanced and sustainable wetland management for multiple resource users. Chapter 2 of this study reveals that there are significant ecosystem-based development potentials at Elephant Marsh mainly in fisheries, recession agriculture, conservation, tourism and biomass for energy. Chapter 2 further shows that if these ecosystem-based development potentials are to be efficiently and effectively exploited at the Elephant Marsh, there is a need to rise above the institutional design principles of Ostrom which are based on nested enterprises and move towards real participatory approaches such as constitutionality (local people's sense of ownership in bottom-up institution building). Certainly, as the present thesis suggests, there will be need to strike a balance between the local wetland management system, where pressure on the Elephant Marsh emanates mainly from poverty, and the national and international interests of biodiversity conservation as advocated by the Ramsar convention. Although enhanced production and maximum benefits from ecosystem good and services are central to any management system of the Elephant Marsh, it is important to realize that there are always limits to growth. Any management program for the Elephant Marsh should therefore strive towards sustainable exploitation of the opportunities that lie in the wetland's goods and services.

 Globally, institutions that manage small-scale fisheries can be locally based, state controlled or of a mixed, cross-scale nature. The latter arrangement, widely known as co-management, is generally believed to be the preferred approach for fishery sustainability.

 In Africa, fisheries management faces many challenges due to unstable governance systems (weak states) whose role has evolved tremendously over the last century. The changes in the role of the state have mainly surfaced from a cautious realization that social actors (humans) respond to underlying incentives and are therefore central for any management system to work at all. With close reference to rich literature from across the globe, Chapter 3 of this thesis employs a crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis (csQCA) to examine cases of small-scale fisheries in several developing countries, in order to assess the degree of state involvement would be most relevant for designing a sustainable management for the Elephant Marsh Fishery. These degrees vary between: (a) strong top-down regulation irrespective of fishing community wishes, (b) a co-management mode of negotiation with fishing communities, (c) a merely supportive role of the state, or absence from the fishing scene. It was revealed that contrary to expectations, the sustainability of small-scale fisheries depended solely on the strength of collective social capital of the local communities at the resource scale. With weak local social capital, degrees of government involvement did not make any difference; the fisheries were unsustainable in all cases. The findings from this study have accentuated that the sustainability of SSF management in developing countries relies heavily on a strong collective social capital and a supportive government. Future practice and policy directions on fisheries management should understand the relevance of concrete community trust, networks, norms and values and strive to incorporate these in decision making and policy formulation. Governments, especially in developing countries, and their agents should realize the need to rise above the theoretical principles of "impose and control" and begin to take a more passive, non-conflictive position in designing working solutions for the sustainability of common pool resources such as small-scale fisheries. This can be done for example by encouraging civil engagement in transformative learning to reduce disadvantageous power differentials that exist in many fishing communities in developing countries.

 Chapter 4 uses the success and failure factors for SSF in developing countries which were identified in Chapter 3 to ascertain relevant factors for the sustainability of the Elephant Marsh Fishery. It is revealed that the Elephant Marsh Fishery sustainability depends on building strong local institutions with motivated leadership that can safeguard the interests of resource users. The present thesis therefore recommends that the government of Malawi should begin to take a more participatory position in designing locally crafted working institutions for the sustainability of common pool resources, such as small-scale fisheries at Elephant Marsh. In villages where fisheries fail due to weak local institutions or conflictive chiefs, the imposition of fishing rules is futile. The feasible government reaction then lies in (re)building collective social capital, especially the leadership of fisheries committees, and formally linking the established local institutions to the central government structure. In doing so an important inclusion would be the contextualization of key socio-causal dynamics of the management system at the Elephant Marsh. Cognizant of the importance of the socio-causal dynamics, Chapter 5 of this study used an actor-based framework (known as Action-in-Context) to unveil the issues that are crucial in devising a sustainable governance system for the Elephant Marsh Fishery. It was established that the key social variables for the designing a proposed three-pillared (locally based, weak and amorphous) resilient institution for sustainability of the Elephant Marsh Fishery are (i) the social reputation of the leaders of local fishery institutions and (ii) the power dynamics between traditional chiefs and these local fishery leaders. It is clearly evident from the present study that an actor-based multi-level analysis of rules and other mechanisms prevailing in a fishery can be instrumental in designing a cost-effective institution for the near future. For the design of longer-term institutional options, the assumptions underlying the actors-based method (Action-in-Context in our case) become weaker, e.g. because new types of actors may move in or because actor capacities and motivations may change or become more intertwined. This then necessitates a stronger reliance on both institutional theory and frameworks or (as has been my choice) the design of a flexible process of institutional development guided by an adaptive, learning organization. The last section of thesis (Chapter 6) synthesizes the main findings and proposes what needs to be done in designing a resilient management system for the Elephant Marsh Fishery. This PhD thesis ends by stimulating a style of thinking that may be fruitful for institutional science in general.


We analyze the foundations of cyclic causal models for discrete variables, and compare structural equation models (SEMs) to an alternative semantics as the equilibrium (stationary) distribution of a Markov chain. We show under general conditions, discrete cyclic SEMs cannot have independent noise; even in the simplest case, cyclic structural equation models imply constraints on the noise. We give a formalization of an alternative Markov chain equilibrium semantics which requires not only the causal graph, but also a sample order. We show how the resulting equilibrium is a function of the sample ordering, both theoretically and empirically.


Tau protein and its fragments self-assemble into amyloid fibrils in the presence of polyanions, such as heparin. By combining microscopy, scattering, and spectroscopy techniques, we studied the aggregation of the 26-mer Tau-derived peptide alone, Tau(306-327), the third repeat fragment (R3) of the microtubule-binding domain. We show that: i) the sole Tau(306-327) can self-assemble into amyloid fibrils without the need of aggregation-promoting polyanions; ii) the resulting structures consist of surprisingly large, well-ordered 2D laminated flat ribbons, with a log-normal distribution of the lateral width, reaching the unprecedented lateral size of 350 nm and/or 45 individual protofilaments, that is, the largest amyloid laminated structures ever observed for Tau or any other amyloidogenic sequence. Our results provide insight into the molecular determinants of Tau aggregation and open new perspectives in the understanding of the assembly of amyloid fibrils and β-sheet-based biomaterials.


Abstract. During the last decade several Mobile Mapping Systems (MMSs), i.e. systems able to acquire efficiently three dimensional data using moving sensors (Guarnieri et al., 2008, Schwarz and El-Sheimy, 2004), have been developed. Research and commercial products have been implemented on terrestrial, aerial and marine platforms, and even on human-carried equipment, e.g. backpack (Lo et al., 2015, Nex and Remondino, 2014, Ellum and El-Sheimy, 2002, Leica Pegasus backpack, 2016, Masiero et al., 2017, Fissore et al., 2018). Such systems are composed of an integrated array of time-synchronised navigation sensors and imaging sensors mounted on a mobile platform (Puente et al., 2013, Tao and Li, 2007). Usually the MMS implies integration of different types of sensors, such as GNSS, IMU, video camera and/or laser scanners that allow accurate and quick mapping (Li, 1997, Petrie, 2010, Tao, 2000). The typical requirement of high-accuracy 3D georeferenced reconstruction often makes such systems quite expensive. Indeed, at time of writing most of the terrestrial MMSs on the market have a cost usually greater than 50000, which might be expensive for certain applications (Ellum and El-Sheimy, 2002, Piras et al., 2008). In order to allow best performance sensors have to be properly calibrated (Dong et al., 2007, Ellum and El-Sheimy, 2002). Sensors in MMSs are usually integrated and managed through a dedicated software, which is developed ad hoc for the devices mounted on the mobile platform and hence tailored for the specific used sensors. Despite the fact that commercial solutions are complete, very specific and particularly related to the typology of survey, their price is a factor that restricts the number of users and the possible interested sectors. This paper describes a (relatively low cost) terrestrial Mobile Mapping System developed at the University of Padua (TESAF, Department of Land Environment Agriculture and Forestry) by the research team in CIRGEO, in order to test an alternative solution to other more expensive MMSs. The first objective of this paper is to report on the development of a prototype of MMS for the collection of geospatial data based on the assembly of low cost sensors managed through a web interface developed using open source libraries. The main goal is to provide a system accessible by any type of user, and flexible to any type of upgrade or introduction of new models of sensors or versions thereof. After a presentation of the hardware components used in our system, a more detailed description of the software developed for the management of the MMS will be provided, which is the part of the innovation of the project. According to the worldwide request for having big data available through the web from everywhere in the world (Pirotti et al., 2011), the proposed solution allows to retrieve data from a web interface Figure 4. Actually, this is part of a project for the development of a new web infrastructure in the University of Padua (but it will be available for external users as well), in order to ease collaboration between researchers from different areas. Finally, strengths, weaknesses and future developments of the low cost MMS are discussed.


Much has been written in recent years about the role of landownership in British society and, particularly, in structuring the social relations of 'rural' areas. There has also been a growing interest in the way social processes are 'patterned' geographically and are themselves shaped by contingent spatial circumstances. This thesis has two basic aims First, to examine the changing role of landownership - specifically, the relationship between capital and land - in the processes of economic restructuring in three economic sectors: agriculture, housebuilding and manufacturing. Second, to evaluate marxist rent theory as an explanatory tool for understanding the capital-land relationship, and draw some conclusions on the extent to which this theory can be operationalised. Finally, we will consider whether the capital-land relation imparts a unique stamp on the social processes effective in one specific location, a stamp which gives it a distinctiveness as a 'locality'. Landownership is therefore used as a way of examining the links between spatial relations and social processes, of probing the relationship between 'general' changes at the level of the British nation state and changes in one concrete location. The thesis takes as its case study a parish in West Suffolk and considers the way the capital-land relation has changed since the mid-nineteenth century, continually drawing on an analysis of the changes in Britain as a whole. Conclusions are drawn on the utility of rent theory, on the nature of 'locality' and on the role of landownership in structuring the social relations of contemporary 'rural' areas.


Many approaches to the Web service composition problem benefit from their use of formal methods to guarantee the correctness of the composite services that they produce, but these approaches often require the functionality of the composite service to be specified using one particular formalism (e.g., goal graphs, temporal logic, pre-/post-conditions). As a result, each of these existing approaches falls short in realizing a composite service when the required functionality cannot be fully expressed in the supported formalism. To overcome this problem, we propose a new formal meta-framework that (a) is capable of reusing any existing formalisms and (b) allows the use of functional requirements that are currently not expressible in any one formalism. Our technique assumes that any functional requirement can be decomposed and expressed as a boolean combination of "atomic" requirements, which are representable in at least one existing formalism. Based on this assumption, we use existing methods to identify sets of Web services that conform to the atomic requirements. Our meta-framework then identifies compositions that conform to the overall functional requirement by (a) employing satisfiability techniques to prune the (exponentially large) space of possible compositions and (b) building workable compositions from satisfiable sets of services. As a result, our meta-framework allows for easy and effective memorization of prior composition results, thereby enhancing the efficiency of generating new compositions.


Molecular aggregates with long-range excitonic couplings have drastically different photophysical properties compared to their monomer counterparts. From Kasha's model for 1-dimensional systems, positive or negative excitonic couplings lead to blue or red shifted optical spectra with respect to the monomers, labelled H-and J-aggregates respectively. The overall excitonic couplings in higher dimensional systems are much more complicated and cannot be simply classified from their spectral shifts alone. Here, we provide a unified classification for extended 2D aggregates using temperature dependent peak shifts, thermal broadening and quantum yields. We discuss the examples of six 2D aggregates with J-like absorption spectra but quite drastic changes quantum yields and superradiance. We find the origin of the differences is, in fact, a different excitonic band structure where the bright state is lower energy than the monomer but still away from the band edge. We call this an 'I-aggregate'. Our results provide a description of the complex excitonic behaviors that cannot be explained solely on Kasha's model. Further, such properties can be tuned with the packing geometries within the aggregates providing supramolecular pathways for controlling them. This will allow for precise optimizations of aggregate properties in their applications across the areas of optoelectronics, photonics, excitonic energy transfer, and shortwave infrared technologies.


Critical directions in applied linguistics can be understood in various ways. The term critical as it has been used in critical applied linguistics, critical discourse analysis, critical literacy and so forth, is now embedded as part of applied linguistic work, adding an overt focus on questions of power and inequality to discourse analysis, literacy or applied linguistics more generally. In this paper I will argue, however, that although critical discourse analysis and critical literacy still make claims to a territory different from their 'non-critical' counterparts, much of this work has become conventional and moribund. The use of the term 'critical' (with its problematic claims and divisions) has perhaps reached saturation level. This is not to say, however, that the basic need to bring questions of power, disparity and difference to applied linguistics is any way diminished, but rather that we may need to look in alternative directions for renewal. Here I want to pursue two main possibilities: On the one hand, the effects of critical work have been widely felt, so that the issues and concerns raised by work in this tradition have filtered through to many parts of the field. Work today that might be deemed critical may no longer need to wear this label. On the other hand, a range of different social theories (captured in part by a series of 'turns') has started to shift the thinking in many domains of applied linguistics in important ways. Just as work in sociolinguistics, for example, has shifted from a central focus on variationist accounts of language to include style, identity, practices and politics more broadly, and work in bi- and multilingualism has started to question the ways in which these are framed (hence, for example, multilanguaging, polylingualism and metrolingualism), so applied linguistics has shifted from a central focus on language teaching, testing and second language acquisition to a broader and more critical conceptualization of language in social life. It has started to take on board the implications of new 'turns' in the social sciences (practices, sensory, somatic, postmodern, ecological, decolonial) and new influences from previously overlooked sources (queer theory, critical geography, postcolonial studies, philosophy). Critical and alternative directions in applied linguistics, therefore, may be found across a variety of domains that are engaging with notions such as language as a local practice.


Measurement of soil phytase activity (PA) and delineation of the impact of this important phosphomonoesterase on the P-cycling process in soil and sediments suffer from the lack of a reliable assay. A method for measuring PA in soil that promises to be accurate and reliable has been recently published. The method involves the use of a novel chromophoric analog of phytic acid, referred to as T(tethered)InsP5 (5-O-[6(benzoylamino)hexyl]-D-myo-inositol-1,2,3,4,6-pentakisphosphate). This study was conducted to measure PA in a Clymer forest soil, which contained over twice the amount of soil organic C as previously tested soils, using the TInsP5 PA assay. This investigation specifically addresses: (1) the development of a soil dilution technique for determining maximal PA, (2) identification of previously unsubstantiated soil-produced dephosphorylated intermediate probe species, (3) the impact of increasing assay buffer pH on soil PA and (4) testing stability of the probe's amide bond in a highly (bio)active forest soil. PA assays were conducted by measuring dephosphorylation of TInsP5 in citrate-acetate buffered (pH 4.2) active and autoclaved (Control) soil suspensions. Phosphorylated probe intermediates (i.e., TInsP4, TInsP3, TInsP2 and TInsP1) and T-myoinositol were extracted from samples of soil suspension following incubation. Probe species were quantified using reversed phase high-performance liquid chromatography (RPHPLC) with UV detection. PA was calculated based on a mass balance approach. A soil dilution technique was developed to address the challenge of determining maximal PA in soils containing higher organic matter content. In the initial report on use of the TInsP5 method for measuring PA in soil, two 'soil-generated' UV-adsorbing compounds (designated Y and Z) were observed, but never confirmed as probe species. The experimental evidence presented in this report supports inclusion of compound Y as a phosphorylated probe intermediate species (i.e. TInsPy), based primarily on its UV adsorption spectra (diode-array detection analysis). Compound Z could not be substantiated as a probe species based on the evidence presented in this study. PA of Claymer forest soil decreased with an increase in assay buffer pH. Further, the probe's amide bond linkage was stable in a forest soil exhibiting high PA.


Abstract Getting to know the response of different groups of aquatic organisms tested in altered thermal environments to environmental conditions makes it possible to understand processes of adaptation and limitation factors such as temperature and light. Field sites were located in three thermally abnormal lakes (cooling system of power plants), in eastern part of Wielkopolska region (western Poland): Pątnowskie, Wąsosko-Mikorzyńskie and Licheńskie. Water temperatures of these lakes do not fall below 10°C throughout the year, and the surface water temperature in spring is about 20˚C. In this study, we investigated the species structure of the spring phytoplankton community in a temperature gradient and analyzed diversity of periphyton collected from alien species (Vallisneria spiralis) and stones. 94 taxa belonging to 56 genera of algae (including phytoplankton and periphyton) were determined. The highest number of algae species were observed among Chlorophyta (49), Bacillariophyceae (34) and Cyanobacteria (6). In spite of important differences in temperature in the investigated lakes, taxonomic composition of phytoplankton was comparable. Thermophilic species: Glochidinium penardiforme and Cylindrospermopsis raciborskii were found in the species structure (blooms were not observed). The obtained data also showed that the biotic surface of Vallisneria spiralis was a better substrate for Bacillariophyceae colonization than stones. The examination in the spring season of these thermally altered lakes, indicated the taxonomic composition of phytoplankton typical for eutrophic reservoirs (not heated). There was no replacement of any phytoplankton groups which are characteristic for spring conditions, even if there were changes in the competition dynamics.


The successful and sustainable development of groundwater resources is critical to the future of safe water supplies in Africa in addition to economic and social improvement and food security across the continent. This depends on a good understanding of groundwater and hydro-geology. But most often, high quality information about groundwater in Africa – even where it exists – is hard to find. The Africa Groundwater Map will help tackle this by increasing awareness and availability of information about groundwater in Africa, in individual countries and at a continental scale.


Context. Fornax is one of the most massive dwarf spheroidal galaxies in the Local Group. The Fornax field star population is dominated by intermediate age stars but star formation was going on over almost its entire history. It has been proposed that Fornax experienced a minor merger event. Aims. Despite recent progress, only the high metallicity end of Fornax field stars ([Fe/H] > -1.2 dex) has been sampled in larger number via high resolution spectroscopy. We want to better understand the full chemical evolution of this galaxy by better sampling the whole metallicity range, including more metal poor stars. Methods. We use the VLT-FLAMES multi-fibre spectrograph in high-resolution mode to determine the abundances of several a, iron-peak and neutron-capture elements in a sample of 47 individual red giant branch stars in the Fornax dwarf spheroidal galaxy. We combine these abundances with accurate age estimates derived from the age probability distribution from the colour-magnitude diagram of Fornax. Results. Similar to other dwarf spheroidal galaxies, the old, metal-poor stars of Fornax are typically alpha-rich while the young metal-rich stars are a-poor. In the classical scenario of the time delay between Type II (SNe II) and Type Ia Supernovae (SNe la), we confirm that SNe la started to contribute to the chemical enrichment at [Fe/H] between -2.0 and -1.8 dex. We find that the onset of SNe Ia took place between 12-10 Gyr ago. The high values of [Ba/Fe], [La/Fe] reflect the influence of SNe Ia and AGB stars in the abundance pattern of the younger stellar population of Fornax. Conclusions. Our findings of low [alpha/Fe] and enhanced [Eu/Mg] are compatible with an initial mass function that lacks the most massive stars and with star formation that kept going on throughout the whole history of Fornax. We find that massive stars kept enriching the interstellar medium in alpha-elements, although they were not the main contributor to the iron enrichment.


Wireless networked embedded systems, such as multimedia terminals, sensor nodes, etc., present a rich domain for making energy/performance/quality tradeoffs based on application needs, network conditions, etc. Energy awareness in these systems is the ability to perform tradeoffs between available battery energy and application quality requirements. In this paper, we show how operating system directed dynamic voltage scaling and dynamic power management can provide for such a capability. We propose a real-time scheduling algorithm that uses runtime feedback about application behavior to provide adaptive power-fidelity tradeoffs. We demonstrate our approach in the context of a static priority-based preemptive task scheduler. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm results in significant energy savings compared to state-of-the-art dynamic voltage scaling schemes with minimal loss in system fidelity. We have implemented our scheduling algorithm into the eCos real-time operating system running on an Intel XScale-based variable voltage platform. Experimental results obtained using this platform confirm the effectiveness of our technique


Red lists are important tools applied worldwide to species conservation, but dis- agreements between lists can affect their implementation and credibility. We searched global, national and local threatened species lists for Brazilian reef fish species and compared the differ- ences between them with respect to categories and criteria applied. Of 559 Brazilian reef fish spe- cies, 125 have been evaluated against threat criteria at different scales; a total of 43 are listed as threatened with extinction. Of 43 threatened species, 32 are mentioned in the global IUCN Red List, 11 are referred to in the national inventory, and state lists also cite 11. Six endemic species are threatened; of these, 3 are listed by the IUCN, 5 at the national level and 2 are threatened in Espirito Santo state. This highlights a mismatch between species lists: 84.8% of the species listed as globally threatened do not appear in the national list, whereas 54.5% of the species mentioned on the Brazilian list are not in the IUCN Red List. Moreover, we found disagreements in the set of categories and criteria applied in the different red listing processes. The same categories and quantitative criteria must be applied in all regional red lists, so that conservation actions are more effective and lists are trustworthy. This is imperative to attract financial support for threatened species management and recovery. Management plans must be developed for those species already listed as threatened in Brazil. In addition, a review of the national list and the inclusion of threatened Brazilian endemic fishes in the IUCN Red List are needed.


The balanced scorecard concept, developed in 1992 by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, became one of the most expedient management approaches on international scale. At the highest conceptual level, balanced scorecard is defined as being a "frame that helps the organizations to transpose the strategy into operational objectives, in order to direct both the organization performance and behavior". A success factor in implementing the balanced scorecard is represented by the use of dedicated software tools. The paper presents the basic concepts of the balanced scorecard method, the main functional requirements, the standards regulations for the method implementation in software tools and a specific information system developed by the authors. The developed system provides support for the balanced scorecard methodology application in the organization global performance assessment


Purpose:Hypoxia is an important characteristic of the solid tumor microenvironment and constitutes a barrier for effective radiotherapy. Here, we studied the effects of darinaparsin (an arsenic cytotoxin) on survival and radiosensitivity of tumor cells in vitro under normoxia and hypoxia and in vivo using xenograft models, compared to effects on normal tissues. ExperimentalDesign:The cytotoxicity and radiosensitization of darinaparsinwere first tested in vitro in a variety of solid tumor cell lines under bothnormoxia andhypoxia and comparedwith arsenic trioxide (ATO, an arsenical with reported cytotoxic and radiosensitizing activities on tumor cells). The effects were then tested inmousemodels of xenograft tumors derived from tumor cell lines and clinical tumor specimens. The potential mechanisms of darinaparsin effects, including reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation, cellular damage, and changes in global gene expression, were also investigated. Results: In comparison with ATO, darinaparsin had significantly higher in vitro cytotoxic and radiosensitizing activities against solid tumor cells under both normoxia and hypoxia. In vivo experiments confirmed these activities at doses that had no systemic toxicities. Importantly, darinaparsin did not radiosensitize normal bonemarrow and actually radioprotected normal intestinal crypts. The darinaparsinmediated antitumor effects under hypoxia were not dependent on ROS generation and oxidative damage, but were associated with inhibition of oncogene (RAS and MYC)-dependent gene expression. Conclusion:Darinaparsin has significant and preferential cytotoxic and radiosensitizing effects on solid tumors as compared with normal cells. Darinaparsin may therefore increase the therapeutic index of radiation therapy and has near term translational potential. Clin Cancer Res; 1–11. 2012 AACR.


Research in artificial intelligence and bioinspired algorithms is still being actively pursued in different fields of engineering. In this work, Brain Emotional Learning Based Intelligent Controller (BELBIC) is applied for real time positioning of laboratorial overhead traveling crane. This controller is based on biologically motivated algorithm originating from emotional processes in the limbic system of the mammalian brain. Simulations show that learning capability, adaptation, robustness and other control concerns of this controller are comparable with conventional techniques and lead to better performance in many cases. Two objectives, tracking desired position and keeping pendulum vertically, must be considered simultaneously. A bottom up strategy was utilized for designing the controllers. First separated BELBICs were designed for each control task. Next, in order to compensate the actual coupling between control tasks, the objective of each control tasks was considered in the stress signal of the other one. Obtained results in real tracking applications are also comparable with other conventional and intelligent approaches such as hierarchical fuzzy control (HFLC) and confirm the simulation results. Learning capability, model free control algorithm, robustness and fast response are main characteristics of this controller and designer can define emotional stress signal based on control application objectives.


Objective: To study the effect of rope skipping combining calcium pyruvate on the fat metabolism of female college students.
Methods: 60 cases of female college students who are over 58 kg were selected and equally divided into three groups. Group A was given single rope skipping exercise; group B was given single oral calcium pyruvate treatment; and group C was given rope skipping combining oral calcium pyruvate treatment. Groups A and C were given routine rope skipping for 60 min per d. Groups B and C were given calcium pyruvate of 50 mg/kg for 12 w and twice a day. The physical and psychological indexes of three groups before and after the experiment were observed.
Results: The weight, body fat ratio, Waist-to-Hip Ratio (WHR), body mass, and blood lipid level of three groups after the experiment were significantly lower than before. The differences were statistically significant, with P<0.05. Among three groups, the effect of group C was significantly better than groups A and B. The difference was statistically significant, with P<0.05.
Conclusion: The combination of rope skipping and calcium pyruvate can effectively speed up the fat metabolism and optimize body shape of female college students, which is worth clinical application and promotion.


The purpose of this report is to discuss the artwork I have produced over the past three years while in attendance at The University of Texas at Austin. My artwork consists of sculptures, drawings, and installations that investigate certain aspects of the politics of black hair as they relate to my identity as an African American woman. These aspects are intimacy, beauty standards, and empowerment. I use hair and hair care products as my materials with which to create. I specifically focus on hair care products which I used when I was a young girl including Blue Magic hair grease and barrettes, products which for many black women are associated with childhood. My aim is to create artwork that changes hair and hair care products from mundane grooming tools into valuable cultural artifacts.


A diet rich in polyphenols has been proposed to have beneficial health effects and to reduce risk of disease. Ellagic acid, a polyphenol common in red berries and pomegranates, has potential anti-tumorigenic effects that make it interesting to further study in different cancer cell systems.Neuroblastoma is a childhood cancer that arises during development of the peripheral nervous system. Neuroblastoma, being an embryonal tumor, show loss of function of genes controlling differentiation and apoptosis. Neuroblastoma is a heterogenic tumor disease, and highly malignant neuroblastomas are difficult to treat despite different treatment modalities, identifying a need for new and combinatory treatments. A common model for human neuroblastoma is the SH-SY5Y cell line resembling immature neuroblasts that can be differentiated in vitro with several agents including the phorbol ester 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate and the vitamin A-derivative all-trans retinoic acid.Here, the effect of ellagic acid on proliferation, cell detachment and apoptosis in non-differentiated and in vitro-differentiated SH-SY5Y cells were studied with the aim of identifying cellular target mechanisms and a possible therapeutic potential for ellagic acid.In non-differentiated cells, ellagic acid reduced cell number, inhibited cell cycle activity, and induced cell detachment and apoptosis. Apoptosis was partly mediated by the intrinsic pathway. 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate and all-trans retinoic acid both induced morphological differentiation, while only the latter induced G0/G1-arrest. Single-cell analysis revealed that 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate-treated cells continued cycling during neuritogenesis while these two read-outs were mutually exclusive in all-trans retinoic acid-treated cells. 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate- and especially all-trans retinoic acid-differentiated cells showed lower sensitivity to ellagic acid-dependent cell detachment and apoptosis.


The question of nations and nationalism always brings a lot of question for there does not seem to be an agreement on the roots of nationalism and the typology it brings with. The disagreement on nation and national goes that far that, there is no agreement on who used the term nationalism first and let alone on actual applicability and consequences it goes with.
Ernest Gellner, as an author of one, largely discussed, theory, sees nations as bi-products of industrialization and as made up where they did not exist before.
In this sense, he identifies three periods of human lives: hunter-gatherer (or, pre-agrarian), agro-literate and industrial and sees nationalism as an existing movement only in the third one. In this sense, he ties nationalism with imperialism for he claims that nationalism always seeks to spread the boarders and for the higher class to control the lower class. Also, he sees impossible for pre-industrial societies to be able to foster nation and nationalism as such since, for him, nations do not exist where there is no state.
This paper therefore discusses this theory based on other theories of nationalism that offered different views (namely Benedict Anderson's and Anthony D. Smith's theories) as well as some examples of nationalistic movements from Spain and Croatia. The issues questioned in this paper are thus Gellner's view of nationalism emerging after industrialization, non-existence of nationalism without the state; the system of the state education as a means of enforcing nationalism and cultural and national homogeneity.


A thesis submitted to Strathmore University in partial fulfillment to the requirements of the award of Master of Science in Information Technology (MSIT).
Full text thesis


Medicines out of control? Antidepressants and the conspiracy of goodwill Charles Medawar, Anita Hardon Amsterdam: Aksant; 2004 260 pp US$34.50 ISBN 90 5260 134 8

From its provocative title, this "narrative about a drug crisis still in the making" proceeds to an analysis of the history of various mood-soothing medicines (opium, cocaine, barbiturates, benzodiazepines and, most recently, SSRIs), whose unexpected adverse effects and potential to induce dependence were either ignored or denied. The content is both controversial and compelling. The authors ask difficult questions about rising prescribing rates for psychotropic medications and about the nature of the relationships between the medical profession, the pharmaceutical industry, researchers and regulatory agencies — the complexity of which may lead to a failure to identify adverse effects and the risk of physiologic dependency. Using common-sense language to convey a well-reasoned and well-referenced approach, the authors clearly intend to reach a broad audience, ranging from students of social science and pharmacy to health professionals and informed members of the public.

What expertise do the authors bring to these issues? Charles Medawar is director of Social Action, a British nongovernmental organization with a focus on policy development and safety regulation that critiques social policy and government accountability. His work, notably that on adverse event reporting, has been published in the peer-reviewed International Journal of Risk and Safety in Medicine. Anita Hardon is a professor of the anthropology of health care. Both perspectives provide insights sometimes lacking within medicine.

Whether or not you agree with the authors' concerns and conclusions, it is a fact that prescription medications for all conditions have become, in most regions, the most rapidly rising medical cost. The authors question whether the arrival of a treatment tends to determine the definition of a disease. Numerous historical examples are given, and Medawar points to the recent proliferation of anxiety disorders in response to the proliferation of SSRIs, each new disorder in the diagnostic manual providing a new indication with the potential to win a patent extension. Recently, this process has been complicated by direct-to-consumer advertising and the funding of patient advocacy and support groups by the pharmaceutical industry. We are also reminded that, a century ago, powerful medications were available without regulatory safeguards. However, regulatory agencies come under the scrutiny of these authors for their possible complicity in minimizing the recognition of adverse effects and for tending to provide speedy drug approval on selected evidence. None of these concerns is being raised here for the first time; all have been highlighted of late in editorials and commentaries in several major medical journals in response to concerns about the way the profession has become embroiled in complex conflicts of interest with the pharmaceutical industry. In Medicines Out of Control? one gets a broader and longitudinal overview of these issues.

Although this is a lively book packed with interesting stories, it does not make for good bedtime reading. For anyone who has not closely followed the checkered history of various mood-altering prescription drugs in the last century, this book will be hard to digest and likely to produce insomnia.

Nevertheless, I recommend this book to physicians of any specialty, particularly those in primary care or psychiatry. It is sobering, challenging and thought-provoking. The title asks a question that we must keep asking ourselves. The subtitle indicates the potential trap. There is no doubt that the medicines reviewed, from opiates and cocaine a century ago to benzodiazepines in the present day, have all been prescribed by caring physicians with a sincere desire to help. But it seems that the same pitfalls repeatedly appear. There is an assumption that sedation or soothing can occur without adverse effects, and there is a consistent minimization or dismissal of the importance of emerging adverse effects or of physiological dependency issues until the evidence becomes overwhelming. Medawar and Hardon present detailed examples of the problems of recognition, reporting and evaluation of adverse effects, pointing out the many flaws in the system that lead to delays in making connections between a medication and serious adverse events. We can be reassured that most of the drugs reviewed have found their appropriate place in the therapeutic armamentarium. But the authors point out that this actually is most likely to happen when a new potential panacea emerges and physicians are ready to let go of the last treatment. The cycle renews itself with remarkably naive optimism on the part of physicians. Typical examples are the rise of heroin after the morphine disappointment and, more recently, the rise of SSRIs after the disillusionment with benzodiazepines.

Is this book relevant to anyone besides an historian of medicine? We pride ourselves in undertaking evidence-based medicine. Yet Medawar and Hardon remind us that our evidence base is often "evidence-biased," and that in clinical practice our good intentions for rational practice are often outweighed by clinical realities and by the unrealistic hope that medicines will work without doing harm. More importantly, we had better read this book before our patients do and ask us tough questions. The whole thrust here is that physicians and even researchers, being human, have tended to see what they wanted to see and have not listened to contrary evidence. Some would argue that books such as this make it more likely that patients will not take psychiatric medications that they need. In fact, most patients will take seriously the opinion and recommendations of a physician who listens to them, weighs their concerns carefully, is honest about what we truly know and what we don't, and agrees to work collaboratively. We are at greater risk of undermining our credibility with our patients by not considering contrary opinions.

In the past year we have had to come to terms with new information on the effectiveness and adverse effects of SSRIs in young people and with concerns about the delayed recognition of serious adverse effects of medications for other medical conditions. The issues are very much those described by Medawar and Hardon. Getting a longer perspective on these phenomena may be helpful and produce wiser physicians. Therefore, I would also recommend Medicines Out of Control? for medical trainees early in their career. Ideally, however, a reading of the book would be accompanied by a mentor-led group discussion, as its message is so different from what is being received elsewhere, especially at the pharmaceutical-sponsored luncheons into which medical students are quickly initiated. That would be a shame, for those who are ignorant of history are condemned to repeat it.

E. Jane Garland Clinical Professor Psychiatry University of British Columbia Vancouver, BC

Figure

Photo by: Fred Sebastian

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The BigScience Workshop was a value-driven initiative that spanned one and half years of interdisciplinary research and culminated in the creation of ROOTS, a 1.6TB multilingual dataset that was used to train BLOOM, one of the largest multilingual language models to date. In addition to the technical outcomes and artifacts, the workshop fostered multidisciplinary collaborations around large models, datasets, and their analysis. This in turn led to a wide range of research publications spanning topics from ethics to law, data governance, modeling choices and distributed training. This paper focuses on the collaborative research aspects of BigScience and takes a step back to look at the challenges of large-scale participatory research, with respect to participant diversity and the tasks required to successfully carry out such a project. Our main goal is to share the lessons we learned from this experience, what we could have done better and what we did well. We show how the impact of such a social approach to scientific research goes well beyond the technical artifacts that were the basis of its inception.


Despite recommendations for higher choline intakes during pregnancy and lactation, there is limited research regarding maternal intake during these important periods. In the present study, we estimated dietary choline intake during pregnancy and lactation in a population of Albertan women and the contribution of egg and milk consumption to intake. Dietary intake data were collected from the first 600 women enrolled in a prospective cohort study carried out in Alberta, Canada. During the first and/or second trimester, the third trimester and 3 months postpartum, 24 h dietary intake recall data were collected. A database was constructed including foods consumed by the cohort and used to estimate dietary choline intake. The mean total choline intake value during pregnancy was 347 (sd 149) mg/d, with 23 % of the participants meeting the adequate intake (AI) recommendation. During lactation, the mean total choline intake value was 346 (sd 151) mg/d, with 10 % of the participants meeting the AI recommendation. Phosphatidylcholine was the form of choline consumed in the highest proportion and the main dietary sources of choline were dairy products, eggs and meat. Women who consumed at least one egg in a 24 h period had higher (P< 0·001) total choline intake and were eight times more likely (95 % CI 5·2, 12·6) to meet choline intake recommendations compared with those who did not consume eggs during pregnancy. Women who reported consuming ≥ 500 ml of milk in a 24 h period were 2·8 times more likely (95 % CI 1·7, 4·8) to meet daily choline intake recommendations compared with those consuming < 250 ml of milk/d during pregnancy. Choline intake is below the recommendation levels in this population and the promotion of both egg and milk consumption may assist in meeting the daily choline intake recommendations.


The BAT Reference Document (BREF) for Large Combustion Plants is part of a series of documents presenting the results of an exchange of information between the EU Member States, the industries concerned, non-governmental organisations promoting environmental protection, and the Commission, to draw up, review, and -where necessaryupdate BAT reference documents as required by Article 13(1) of Directive 2010/75/EU on Industrial Emissions. This document is published by the European Commission pursuant to Article 13(6) of the Directive. This BREF for Large Combustion Plants concerns the following activities specified in Annex I to Directive 2010/75/EU:  1.1: Combustion of fuels in installations with a total rated thermal input of 50 MW or more, only when this activity takes place in combustion plants with a total rated thermal input of 50 MW or more.  1.4: Gasification of coal or other fuels in installations with a total rated thermal input of 20 MW or more, only when this activity is directly associated to a combustion plant.  5.2: Disposal or recovery of waste in waste co-incineration plants for non-hazardous waste with a capacity exceeding 3 tonnes per hour or for hazardous waste with a capacity exceeding 10 tonnes per day, only when this activity takes place in combustion plants covered under 1.1 above. In particular, this document covers upstream and downstream activities directly associated with the aforementioned activities including the emission prevention and control techniques applied. The fuels considered in this document are any solid, liquid and/or gaseous combustible material including:  solid fuels (e.g. coal, lignite, peat);  biomass (as defined in Article 3(31) of Directive 2010/75/EU);  liquid fuels (e.g. heavy fuel oil and gas oil);  gaseous fuels (e.g. natural gas, hydrogen-containing gas and syngas);  industry-specific fuels (e.g. by-products from the chemical and iron and steel industries);  waste except mixed municipal waste as defined in Article 3(39) and except other waste listed in Article 42(2)(a)(ii) and (iii) of Directive 2010/75/EU. Important issues for the implementation of Directive 2010/75/EU in the Large Combustion Plants sector are the emissions to air of nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide, hydrogen chloride and fluoride, organic compounds, dust, and metals including mercury; emissions to water resulting especially from the use of wet abatement techniques for the removal of sulphur dioxide from the flue-gases; resource efficiency and especially energy efficiency. This BREF contains 12 chapters. Chapters 1 and 2 provide general information on the Large Combustion Plants industrial sector and on the industrial processes used within this sector. Chapter 3 provides data and general information concerning the environmental performance of installations within the sector in terms of water consumption, the generation of waste and general techniques used within this sector. It also describes in more detail the general techniques to prevent or, where this is not practicable, to reduce the environmental impact of installations in this sector that were considered in determining the BAT. Chapters 4 to 9 provide the following information given below on specific combustion processes (gasification, combustion of solid fuel, combustion of liquid fuel, combustion of gaseous fuel, multi-fuel combustion and waste co-incineration). Chapter 10 presents the BAT conclusions as defined in Article 3(12) of the Directive. Chapter 11 presents information on 'emerging techniques' as defined in Article 3(14) of the Directive. Chapter 12 is dedicated to concluding remarks and recommendations for future work. Printed in Ispra (Italy)


SOME districts that set out to establish small learning communities simply assign teachers and students to them at random. In doing so, they are missing a tremendous opportunity. Small, themed schools can be enormously successful as high schools. And the themes can help bring together a group of teachers and students who will make a good match. Once, we dreamed of comprehensive high schools that would enroll all youngsters in the name of democracy. It took nearly a century for us to realize that the contortions this arrangement required were often anything but democratic. Then the question became, How can we group students in ways that will be democratic? One of the soundest answers seems to be grouping them according to their interests. Set up schools with different themes, and let students select the theme that interests them enough to engage them in a full curriculum. It is possible to devise themes that are at the same time attractive to adolescents, broad and significant enough to lead them into a full curriculum, and not inequitable. Moreover, we can do this in ways that will not penalize youngsters who make poor choices. Themes play an equally significant role for the faculty. They provide a faculty with something to coalesce around--be it an area of shared interest or a general approach to thinking. And developing and sustaining the theme makes collaboration necessary in order to provide coherence to an otherwise disparate array of subjects. Here are some examples of high schools that have succeeded well at sustaining their themes. The Alternative School--a school within-a-school housed in Wheatley High School in East Williston, New York--has run a triple-themed program for almost 30 years. (1) Its three emphases are human relations, democracy, and a rigorous program of electives among which students choose. One visitor commented that this is "a school with a strong sense of fellowship and a special graciousness." (2) Students' commitment to the place is truly extraordinary, and that strong sense of ownership is not surprising because students actually run the entire program. An elected student moderator presides at weekly meetings of the whole community, a student committee chooses among proposals from teachers and students for which courses should be offered during each six week module, and another student committee plans human-relations activities, including retreats. Yet another student committee mediates grade disputes between teachers and students. Although applications and admissions are open to all students, those enrolled usually include a number of Wheatley's most outstanding students. The School of Environmental Studies in Apple Valley, Minnesota, otherwise known as "the Zoo School," has the unusual feature of being located on the grounds of a zoo. It enrolls ap-MARY ANNE RAYWID is professor emerita of educational administration and policy studies, Hofstra University, Hempstead, N.Y., and a member of the affiliate graduate faculty at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. proximately 400 students who share a particular interest in researching animals, learning from zoo officials, and experiencing "a sense of community and a feeling of connectedness with other students." (3) According to two observers, it is that desire for connection--rather than career interests in becoming environmentalists or veterinarians--that lures most students to the school. Every morning they enter a large, open, and inviting space. At the Zoo School, students enroll in an array of interdisciplinary courses, as well as taking part in internships, apprenticeships, and community-service options. These last options are made possible because every seven weeks of classes is followed by three weeks of study and service within a community. The School for Writing and Publishing, known as "SWAP," was located in Harlem. Though SWAP is no longer operating, it is a good example of a small, themed school. …


Most of the western tonal music is based on the concept of tonality or key. It is often desirable to know the tonality of a song stored in a symbolic format (digital scores), both for content based management and musicological studies to name just two applications. The majority of the freely available symbolic music is coded in MIDI format. But, unfortunately many MIDI sequences do not contain the proper key meta-event that should be manually inserted at the beginning of the song. In this work, a polyphonic symbolic music representation that uses a tree model for tonality guessing is proposed. It has been compared to other previous methods available obtaining better success rates and lower performance times.


This paper uses a structural multi-country macroeconometric model to estimate the size of the decrease in transfer payments (or tax expenditures) needed to stabilize the U.S. government debt/GDP ratio. It takes into account endogenous effects of changes in fiscal policy on the economy and in turn the effect of changes in the economy on the deficit. A base run is first obtained for the 2013:1-2022:4 period in which there are no major changes in U.S. fiscal policy. This results in an ever increasing debt/GDP ratio. Then transfer payments are decreased by an amount sufficient to stabilize the long-run debt/GDP ratio. The results show that transfer payments need to be decreased by 2 percent of GDP from the base run, which over the ten years is $3.2 trillion in 2005 dollars and $4.8 trillion in current dollars. The output loss is 1.1 percent of baseline GDP. Monetary policy helps keep the loss down, but it is not powerful enough in the model to eliminate all of the loss. The estimates are robust to a base run with less inflation and to one with less expansion.


SUMMARY Processed soya bean meals are commonly used in piglet diets, as they are likely to contain reduced anti‐nutritional factors that can be problematic when fed during phases of early development. The objective of this study was to investigate whether the inclusion of a processed SBM in the diets of broilers to 41 d, at either 7.5 or 15% at the expense of standard soybean meal, can lead to improved performance parameters. The diets were formulated to be balanced for energy and digestible lysine with all other amino acids in appropriate ratio. At almost all time points, the BWG and FCR of those birds fed the processed soybean meal diets was significantly better than the control diet, and in some cases the 15% diet was superior to the 7.5% diet. To d 41, only the FCR of the 15% diet was better than the control. When FCR was corrected for the mean BW, birds on the 7.5% diet also performed better than the control. The inclusion of processed soybean meal did not affect feed intake until d 14. Thereafter, independent of the inclusion level, intake was significantly increased vs. the control diet.


EDITOR,-The design of the study reported by the Royal College of Radiologists Working Party' seems flawed. Using an uncontrolled study to report a reduction in referrals from general practice in the year after introduction of the guidelines and then to ascribe this drop to the guidelines themselves is somewhat naive. A control group is needed to exclude a secular trend contributing to the reported reduction in referral rates. This could easily have been a series of practices such as our own in areas where no education or communication with the local general practitioners took place. Such a control group could also have been identified easily as all practices have been keeping records of their referrals for x ray examinations since the introduction of the new contract in April 1990. Our practice shows a reduction in referrals for x ray examinations of 14 per 1000 patients between the last two full annual report years of 1990-1 and 1991-2. If this behaviour represents a national trend then the influence of these guidelines on the sample doctors' behaviour may not have been as pronounced as the study suggests.


An ensemble is a group of learning models that jointly solve a problem. However, the ensembles generated by existing techniques are sometimes unnecessarily large, which can lead to extra memory usage, computational costs, and occasional decreases in effectiveness. The purpose of ensemble pruning is to search for a good subset of ensemble members that performs as well as, or better than, the original ensemble. This subset selection problem is a combinatorial optimization problem and thus finding the exact optimal solution is computationally prohibitive. Various heuristic methods have been developed to obtain an approximate solution. However, most of the existing heuristics use simple greedy search as the optimization method, which lacks either theoretical or empirical quality guarantees. In this paper, the ensemble subset selection problem is formulated as a quadratic integer programming problem. By applying semi-definite programming (SDP) as a solution technique, we are able to get better approximate solutions. Computational experiments show that this SDP-based pruning algorithm outperforms other heuristics in the literature. Its application in a classifier-sharing study also demonstrates the effectiveness of the method.


Special autonomy which given by republic government of Indonesia is pisaller to act of Note of Understanding Helsinki between Republic Government Of Indonesia with Movement Aceh Independence. In arrangement of the special autonomy poured in Law Number 11 Year 2006 concerning Governance of Aceh, arrangement of special autonomy of Aceh give special rights to government of Aceh one of them rights application of un-gone into effect by Islam syariat in other area. With application of Islam syariat in Aceh shall no longger use national law that is shall no longger use Book Criminal law and Civil Code as material law, is for the law of formal shall no longger use Book Procedure of criminal and Book Procedure of civil law. This Matter which become object at the same time the problem of this research is how evaluation of yuridis conception Republic Of Indonesia unity state with existence of special autonomy evaluated from rights applying of Islam syariat in societal life and have state to for Aceh society.
Research method which used in this research is normatif yuridis exploited technique analyse descriptive data qualitative that is performed a Law study or seeking Governance of Aceh to Constitution 1945 and other legislation order with a purpose to answer problems which have been told.
Pursuant to research result, Before UUD amandemen 1945 Indonesia as stiff unity state, where all areas arranged at a time and uniform there no differentiation between special region and other area. After UUD amandemen 1945 and existence of Note Agreement of Helsinki between Republic Government Of Indonesia with Movement Aceh Independence to keep maintaining Aceh so that remain to in wings of NKRI given by arrangement of special autonomy for the Governance of Aceh. Where special autonomy for the Aceh give different arrangement of other area in Indonesia particularly rights applying of Islam syariat for Aceh people. With existence of rights application of Islam syariat in NAD shall no longger in using national law as in other area of KUHP and KUHPERDATA and of KUHAP and of KUH Perdata, in NAD entitled to use based by law is good Islam syariat of arrangement and dubious of him as well as for the law of formal or material law of him . Is as unity state in practice during all these of areas is used by national law all is same between areas. In the practice of politicals one area shall no longger use national law and have separate law is in practice federation state. Indonesia Are is unity state like written in Section 1 sentence (1) UUD 1945 and the form do not earn to be altered written in Section 37 sentence (5) UUD 1945 hence application of Islam syariat is deviation of unity form and with existence of special autonomy for the government of Aceh, Indonesia shall no longger as stiff unity state like before amandemen but along from the special district demand of Aceh which wish seceded, hence government give different arrangement according to desire of people of Aceh so that Aceh remain to in wings of Unity State Republic Of Indonesia so that this matter make Indonesia as dynamic unity state or is unity state running system of one system multy state.
Conclusion of this research is Indonesia in running state as unity state shall no longger as stiff unity state like before UUD amandemen 1945, but along the existence of unity state area demand adapt to to have the character of dynamic in arrangement for special region specially Aceh so that remain to in wings of Unity State Republic Of Indonesia. With [gift/ giving] of special autonomy of Aceh have special rights that is rights go into effect ground of Islam, the right to form local political party, the right to form custom institute, rights application of Islam syariat, the right to form Lawcourt of syar'iyah, the right to form MPU, counter balance rights finance for NAD, the right to use flag, and device of himne, rights examination of qonun differing from other area. Rights application of Islam syariat give characteristic very khusius for Aceh and application of Islam syariat [in] NAD, for Islam people in Aceh shall no longger apply national law like other area that is KUHP and of KUH Perdata, KUHAP and of KUHA Perdata. This Matter is taken to keep maintaining unity state form for Indonesia and Aceh remain to in wings of Indonesia unity state. Hence with law enforcement of Islam syariat in this NAD of Indonesia as unity state running system of one system multy state.


A functional genomic screen reveals that the ligand neuregulin and the purinergic receptor P2Y mediate resistance to ALK inhibitors in lung cancer. A fusion protein involving the tyrosine kinase receptor ALK promotes nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC), but some patients exhibit resistance to ALK inhibitors. Wilson et al. performed a functional genomic screen and identified genes that when overexpressed conferred resistance to ALK inhibitors in the NSCLC line H3122. Among the validated genes were those encoding the HER3 (human epidermal growth factor receptor) ligand neuregulin (NRG1) and several members of the purinergic receptor P2Y family, which are GPCRs (G protein–coupled receptors). Upon activation, HER3 dimerizes with HER2 to transduce the signal. Resistance to the ALK inhibitor TAE684 in H3122 cells overexpressing NRG1 was decreased by coapplication of the HER2 inhibitor lapatinib. ALK inhibitor-resistant H3122 cells overexpressing P2Y1 or P2Y2 had increased abundance of activated protein kinase C δ (PKCδ), and combining the ALK inhibitor crizotinib with a pan-PKC inhibitor decreased the growth of P2Y1- or P2Y2-transfected H3122 colonies. Exposing parental H3122 cells to a nonspecific PKC agonist decreased the toxicity of the ALK inhibitor ceritinib, and the abundance of activated PKCδ increased in parental cells cultured under the selective pressure of ceritinib. GSEA (gene set enrichment analysis) identified expression signatures associated with NRG1 or P2Y receptor signaling in crizotinib-resistant lung tumor tissue compared with treatment-naïve tumors. The findings reveal new potential therapeutic targets for NSCLC patients resistant to ALK inhibitors. F. H. Wilson, C. M. Johannessen, F. Piccioni, P. Tamayo, J. W. Kim, E. M. Van Allen, S. M. Corsello, M. Capelletti, A. Calles, M. Butaney, T. Sharifnia, S. B. Gabriel, J. P. Mesirov, W. C. Hahn, J. A. Engelman, M. Meyerson, D. E. Root, P. A. Jänne, L. A. Garraway, A functional landscape of resistance to ALK inhibition in lung cancer. Cancer Cell 27, 397–408 (2015). [PubMed]


In 2016, an extreme drought occurred in the southeastern United States. Dry conditions resulted in unprecedented wildfires throughout the southern Appalachian Mountains, specifically in western North Carolina. Western North Carolina is an important source of water for nearby metropolitan locations. In the future, climate change is expected to increase temperatures, alter precipitation, and stress water resources in the region, which could lead to more frequent drought and wildfire. The recent drought and wildfire events offer an opportunity to assess vulnerability and prepare for resilience. The study explores the spatiotemporal characteristics of the recent wildfires by identifying wildfires that contributed to diminished air quality across the state. The study then explores wildfire vulnerability by identifying communities with the greatest socioeconomic vulnerability to wildfires and locations with the greatest physical vulnerability to wildfires. The result is a future wildfire vulnerability index for western North Carolina. The results indicate that quality of life was significantly impacted by the recent drought and wildfire events and the greatest wildfire vulnerability occurs in the southwestern portion of the state with a gradual decrease heading eastward. The individual socioeconomic and physical characteristics of locations must be considered when determining emergency management practices relating to drought and wildfire.


Nepal, a landlocked kingdom, has only 2.3 million hectares of cultivated land of which less than one-third is located in the hills supporting two-thirds of the nation's over 18 million people. Hills are deficit in food supply. With the population growth rate at 2.3 percent annually, if the agricultural production remains at the present level, Nepal would have to import 2.2 million tons of food in the year 2000. To increase food production including crops and livestock is therefore the prime responsibility of the government and the people in the coming years. Potentials do exist but special efforts are required. Government policy in the early years gave heavy emphasis on tarai development, then shifted its attention the hills, and finally focused on the balanced regional development. Experience show that effective means to develop hill agriculture have to rely more on the mobilization of local resources particularly the surplus rural manpower. To build a strong foundation for future modernization of hill agriculture, the immediate development strategies by mobilizing local resources are the establishment of garden farming the construction of track network, the development of rural markets, and the extension of non-formal education.


Abstract The quantification of in vivo 1H magnetic resonance (MR) spectra measured from the rat brains provides important information about the brain metabolite concentrations and can help to understand the role of the metabolites under normal and pathological conditions. The purpose of this study was to compare the most frequently used algorithms for quantification of 1H spectra: LCModel (Linear Combination of Model spectra) and QUEST (QUantitation based on QUantum ESTimation) from jMRUI software (Java based Magnetic Resonance User Interface). The comparison was done on a rat model of vascular dementia (VD). The MR spectra were measured on 4.7T spectrometer with ultra-short echo time by sequence SPECIAL. For these types of spectra the contribution from the macromolecules and lipids is large. Our analysis revealed that all values determined by QUEST, except for one value, were lower in comparison to values obtained by LCModel. The minimal differences were found in N-acetylaspartate/(phospho) creatine (−0.3 %) and maximal in inositol in both control and VD rats. This underestimation of a metabolite concentration in QUEST may be caused by an overestimation of baseline. Although our study found the different values of metabolite concentrations by these two methods, the quantified metabolite changes in pathological brain were comparable in both analyses.


Two years before, North-Korean Government sentenced they have been had Nuclear Weapons. In correctly, October 9th, 2006, North Korean Government announced they had tested the Nuclear Weapons at the northern part of their territory. Also, they insisted their testing was successful with in triumph. They sentenced their country will be stronger than any other countries. It's means that they will have the hegemony of the Korean Peninsula.
By the way, South Korea, U.S. and Japan also China didn't want to accept the North Korean Nuclear Weapons. They worry about the break up with North-Eastern countries' weapon balance. Also, for South Korean people didn't want the existence of Nuclear Weapons in Korean Peninsula. They thought the Nuclear Weapons will not be a good environmental condition to unify the divided two Korea.
Anyway, the effort to remove the North Korean Nuclear Weapons is most important subject for Asia-Pacific countries. Therefore, they set up Six Party Talks to solve the North Korean Nuclear Weapons. Also, they made the promise to solve the North Korean Nuclear Weapons. On Feb.13, 2007 North Korea and Six Party Talks members agreed to shut down and disable its nuclear programs and weapons in return for incentives provided by other members of Six Party Talks-United States, Russia, China, Japan and South Korea. But, up the present North Korean Government didn't make a satisfactory response. I wonder if how the North Korean Nuclear Weapons be destined to future. I'd like to research 'What's the North Korean Nuclear Weapons' Future?' by Complex Systems Approach.
Key-words: complex systems, satisfactory response, nuclear weapons, weapon balance.


ABSTRACT Four of six specific pathogen-free cats were infected after intravaginal exposure to molecularly cloned lymphotropic but non-Crandell feline kidney (CRFK)-tropic feline immunodeficiency virus strain TM2 and its AP-1 deletion mutant. The sequences of the env V3-to-V5 region which defines the CRFK tropism were unchanged in the infected cats through the infection. These data suggest that the strain was transmitted across the mucosal epithelium without a broadening of cell tropism.


ABSTRACT This paper explores arrangements and conditions enabling and constraining teacher collaboration to extend classrooms through Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs). It draws implications from a participatory action research project in three small, rural Finnish schools funded by the European Social Fund (2015–2017). Data were mainly collected through discussions and interviews with five teachers. The theory of practice architectures serves as a theoretical and analytical framework. The collaboration challenged and enabled cultural-discursive, material-economic, and social-political arrangements on three levels. On a classroom level, the VLE enabled new teaching practices (e.g., student collaboration, formative assessment). However, a lack of digital competence among teachers and students hindered the cross-classroom collaboration. On a school level, the school leaders enabled or constrained the arrangements depending on the provided support or lack thereof (e.g., schedules, faculty involvement). On a regional level, the infrastructure (e.g., transportation) for collaboration would require arrangements developed in dialogue with the schools (e.g., digital systems). The paper concludes that changing teaching practices in relation to VLEs requires slowly evolving previous and new architectures simultaneously on all three levels.


Spending per scientist declined precipitously within African agricultural R&D agencies over the past several decades. In 1991, average cost per researcher across 147 R&D agencies was $119,300 in 1985 international dollars — or US$59,500 when measured in United States rather than international dollars — 34 percent below the corresponding 1961 figure. This trend reflects the rapid growth in numbers of scientific staff compared with the slow growth in funds to support them. Comparatively low, and often shrinking, real salaries per scientist are a factor too. African scientists were paid an average of US$5,000 in 1991 (or roughly US$7,500 with fringe benefits included), while comparable average salaries for academic staff working in large public universities in the United States were $58,889 (or $72,667 with fringe benefits included. The new, agency-level data reported in this paper reveal significant variation in the costs per scientist not apparent from the country averages. There were 67 agencies (46 percent) that spent less than $100,000 per scientist per annum. Simple econometric procedures were applied to a sub-sample of 107 agencies in 21 countries to investigate reasons for the large variation in costs per scientist. The intensity of support staff per scientist and the intensity with which expatriate researchers are used are important sources of variation. Larger stations lowered the costs and having more stations raised costs, but not significantly so. An agency's organizational type had a significant influence on its costs. Semipublic agencies typically spent considerably more per scientist than government agencies with 1991 figures of $207,700 for the former, compared with around $104,600 for the latter (in 1985 international dollars). GDP per capita and various other unspecified, country-specific effects also accounted for much of the observed variation in costs per scientist.


The purpose of this study is to obtain solutions in the potential development of botanical pesticides, cheaper, easier to come by, do not damage the environment and are not toxic. In addition, to determine the effect of the most effective ways against death of Siput Murbei ( P. canaliculata) . Research carried out for two months, in the area Lempake Village, District of North Samarinda, Samarinda. The research used Completely Randomized Design (CRD) consisting of four treatments were repeated four (4) times, namely: Without giving jengkol skin or controls (a 0 ), chopped jengkol skin 1 kg plot - 1 or 2500 kg ha - 1 (a 1 ) , mashed jengkol skin 1 kg plot - 1 or 2500 kg ha - 1 (a 2 ), soaked jengkol skin 1 kg plot - 1 or 2500 kg ha - 1 (a 3 ). Results of the research indicated that: (1). Jengkol (Phitecolobium lobatum) fruit skin can be used as a plant-based pesticides to kill pests Siput Murbei (Pomaceaecanaliculata). (2). Without     jengkol friut skin (a 0 ) no one died and suffered breeding, whereas rind jengkol given on day 15 died. (3). jengkol friut skin giving way most effective is soaked, because of the rapid death rate, ie 8.36 days, 8.67 days chopped, pounded and 9.17 days. Thus jengkol fruit skin effective in killing Siput Murbei.


A deep convolutional neural network was trained to classify 45 speakers based on spectrograms of their productions of the French vowel /ɑ/ Although the model achieved fairly high accuracy – over 85 % – our primary focus here was phonetic interpretability rather than sheer performance. In order to better understand what kind of representations were learned by the model, i) several versions of the model were trained and tested with low-pass filtered spectrograms with a varying cut-off frequency and ii) classification was also performed with masked frequency bands. The resulting decline in accuracy was utilized to spot relevant frequencies for speaker classification and voice comparison, and to produce phonetically interpretable visualizations.


We assess the robustness of partitional clustering algorithms applied to gene expression data. A number of clusterings are made with identical parameter settings and input data using SOM and k-means algorithms, which both rely on random initialisation and may produce different clusterings with different seeds. We define a reproducibility index and use it to assess the algorithms. The index is based on the number of pairs of genes consistently clustered together in different clusterings. The effect of noise applied to the original data is also studied. Our results show a lack of robustness for both classes of algorithms, with slightly higher reproducibility for SOM than for k-means.


Very accurate variational calculations of all rotationless states (also called pure vibrational states) of the HD molecule have been performed within the framework that does not assume the Born-Oppenheimer (BO) approximation. The non-BO wave functions of the states describing the internal motion of the proton, the deuteron, and the two electrons were expanded in terms of one-center explicitly correlated Gaussian functions multiplied by even powers of the internuclear distance. Up to 6000 functions were used for each state. Both linear and nonlinear parameters of the wave functions of all 18 states were optimized with a procedure that employs the analytical gradient of the energy with respect to the nonlinear parameters of the Gaussians. These wave functions were used to calculate expectation values of the interparticle distances and some other related quantities. The results allow elucidation of the charge asymmetry in HD as a function of the vibrational excitation.


Bahr and Hutton recently developed a new approach to calculating correct compilers directly from specifications of their correctness. However, the methodology only considers converging behaviour of the source language, which means that the compiler could potentially produce arbitrary, erroneous code for source programs that diverge. In this article, we show how the methodology can naturally be extended to support the calculation of compilers that address both convergent and divergent behaviour simultaneously, without the need for separate reasoning for each aspect. Our approach is based on the use of the partiality monad to make divergence explicit, together with the use of strong bisimilarity to support equational-style calculations, but also generalises to other forms of effect by changing the underlying monad.


This paper summarizes the proceedings of the inaugural meeting to establish a new international collaborative project for the coal industry -- the first IIASA Industry Study to be carried out under the generic title of "Issues for the Eighties". The purpose of this paper is to provide information for those who may be interested in the project to understand what has so far been done, and what the value may be of cooperation.

It may be worth saying something about the general concept lying behind the IIASA Industry Studies. The purpose of these is to bring together representatives of the same industry from many countries, to identify the key issues which the industry faces over the next ten years, to identify the way in which systems analysis can assist in the major policy and investment decisions, and to engage in a collaborative program of information exchange and research. IIASA's role is essentially catalytic. It is our task to identify needs, and seek to create the conditions in which they can be satisfied. Its unique international -- but nongovernmental -- position in the systems analysis field, and the fact that it works in so many fields of concern to industry (Energy, Resources, Environment, Manpower and Health, Management, Technology, etc.,) makes it an ideal base for a creative exchange of information methods and ideas. Funding limitations restrict the amount of research that it can undertake but, in any case, the knowledge and research skills lie within the industry itself. The fact that the work will be collaborative is fundamental to its success, which we hope will result in better information and an improved methodology for those involved in policy decisions.

Up to the present, two such industry studies have been set in motion, one in coal and another in the forestry/forest product industry. The reasons for selecting the coal industry, and the general background to the study, are set out in Appendix A which was sent out in advance to participants at the inaugural meeting held at IIASA in March 1979. A brief report of that meeting, together with recommendations for future action follow. Various supporting documents are set out in the Appendices.


Estimating Short-Term Human Intent for Physical Human-Robot Co-Manipulation Eric Christopher Townsend Department of Mechanical Engineering, BYU Master of Science Robots are increasingly becoming safer and more capable. In the past, the main applications for robots have been in manufacturing, where they perform repetitive, highly accurate tasks with physical barriers that separate them from people. They have also been used in space exploration where people are not around. Due to improvements in sensors, algorithms, and design, robots are beginning to be used in other applications like materials handling, healthcare, and agriculture and will one day be ubiquitous. For this to be possible, they will need to be able to function safely in unmodelled and dynamic environments. This is especially true when working in a shared space with people. We desire for robots to interact with people in a way that is helpful and intuitive. This requires that the robots both act predictably and be able to predict short-term human intent. We create a model for predicting short-term human intent in a collaborative furniture carrying task that a robot could use to be a more responsive and intuitive teammate. For robots to perform collaborative manipulation tasks with people naturally and efficiently, understanding and predicting human intent is necessary. We completed an exploratory study recording motion and force for 21 human dyads moving an object in tandem in a variety of tasks to better understand how they move and how their movement can be predicted. Using the previous 0.75 seconds of data, the human intent can be predicted for the next 0.25 seconds. This can then be used with a robot in real applications. We also show that force data is not required to predict human intent. We show how the prediction data works in real-time, demonstrating that past motion alone can be used to predict short-term human intent. We show this with human-human dyads and a human-robot dyad. Finally, we imagine that soft robots will be common in human-robot interaction. We present work on controlling soft, pneumatically-actuated, inflatable robots. These soft robots have less inertia than traditional robots but a high power density which allows them to operate in proximity to people. They can, however, be difficult to control. We developed a neural net model to use for control of our soft robot. We have shown that we can predict human intent in a human-robot dyad which is an important goal in physical human-robot interaction and will allow robots to co-manipulate objects with humans in an intelligent way.


Climate change is anticipated to escalate flood impacts, and thus it is important to assess flood risk closely in terms of extent and location. This study aimed to assess present and future flood risks, particularly flood risk change, over the Asia-Pacific region with consideration of climate change impacts by using a topography-based analysis method. By analyzing the output of the super-high-resolution global atmospheric general circulation model, it was found that future flood risk will increase in response to extreme rainfall under climate change. Results of this study also indicated that flood risk will further increase in the far future (2075– 2099) than in the near future (2015–2039). Analyses of inundation area and flood inundation depth (FID) also showed upward trends; most of flood plains in the AsiaPacific region may experience a 0–50cm increase in FID.